Hey, sorry this devlog came a few days late. The final week of May and beginning of June was unexpectedly busy for me, so I couldnt really post this devlog until now.

First of all, an announcement: The Perfect Portrait is featured in Issue #41 of Indiepocalypse! Thank you to Andrew for featuring the game, and buy it so you can play a bunch of awesome indie games and support small developers like me!

Second: The Queer Games Bundle for 2023 is live! Go grab it for the same price of a AAA game and get a ton of creative games, as well as supporting queer developers by putting money directly into their hands.

Now for the main meat:

This month was less about developing and more about organizing and housekeeping. I have been doing GUI updates and even made a new game in the past few months, so it’s a nice time to take a break from that stuff!

May saw a lot of me actively working on old stories and writing content for the artbooks, as well as putting in a lot more work into my portfolio site. My website isn’t done yet, but I did get a wireframe going so now I’ll be digging into my archives to find art I want to display. Chances are, alongside working on old stories, you’ll see me post some out of context stuff and maybe even draw some new stuff I’ll be posting on all my socials! (Which you can find here!)

I was hoping to get Wolf’s Wool’s artbook or its big UI update done by its second anniversary on May 12th but sadly my hands were too tied up. Admittedly, a good portion of the month was me having a bad bout of depression and anxiety taking over my self-worth as an artist, but working on the portfolio website had been helping me regulate my thoughts and helped spark interest on some old projects I’ve been wanting to whittle at. 

Now I'm gonna be a little vulnerable for a moment, especially regarding the aforementioned meltdown and my goals as an artist.

I've actually been feeling this terrible, empty way for a while now, but it didn't rear its head until recently I had a mental meltdown over how unhappy I am with my career goals and how I had to put what I love doing aside for the sake of making money to pay bills. Said dayjob constantly busts my emotional kneecaps so I have no mental capacity to talk to my peers, support them, or hell even do anything I want to do to make me creatively satisfied and, therefore, happy. It doesn't help that my boss and customers just don't value any sort of work I do as a graphic designer, and it eats into my stamina and motivation so much that I now realize it's one of the biggest reasons why I have been frozen on the artbooks for so long.

All of this has contributed to my depression and anxiety (which are already bad in of themselves) draining my self worth as an artist more than usual. Impostor syndrome and lack of confidence in my own skills really reared its ugly head on me for a while because I haven't actually done an illustration or design for myself in so long. The last time I did either was in The Perfect Portrait, and as fun and freeing as it was to draw everything for it, admittedly that's all assets for a game.

With the code for my portfolio site done, now it's time for me to fill it. But, lmao well, I haven't been able to make anything new, thanks to dayjob. I've been stuck in a perpetual loop of "I should apply for that position to get out of this shitty job!" to "Oh no my portfolio isn't great or updated, I cant submit this!" to "Crap I cant make anything for my portfolio and therefore cant apply for that position because I'm so tired from my dayjob, I wish I can quit!" to "I should apply for that position to get out of this shitty job!" and so in and so forth.

I've made a decent financial cushion for myself to sustain me for a bit, so what I've decided to do is to dedicate more time making art for my portfolio in hopes of being hired to do art, especially background art. I love drawing backgrounds and landscapes and I want to get back into doing free monthly visual novel backgrounds. In fact, I'm working to make that my main goal for now in hopes of it being a main stream of income on my ko-fi.So if you can donate to my ko-fi, I'm eternally greatful!

Also for the record: I want to be hired as an artist and have a career as an artist. All of my game dev is essentially a hobby and a means for me to make more art so I'd rather not be hired as a gamedev. I mean lmao, it'd be fantastic to be paid to make visual novels for the rest of my life, but that's if I'm working for myself on my own projects. That being said, I'd love to be hired on to make art for games, especially for visual novels!

So what I’ll be working on for the upcoming pride month will honestly be dependent on what I’m feeling since I'm actually slated to be super busy until the end of June. I'll be working out some plans and new art for my website, as well as the artbooks and the UI updates, or maybe just resting! Who knows~ All I can say is that since my realization and reassessing my goals, I've felt so much better.

Anyhoo, hope you all had a great month, and be sure to purchase this issue of Indiepocalypse (and older ones too!) as well as purchase the Queer Games Bundle 2023 so you can help out tons of people that really need the money! Happy pride, y’all! :D

       ~Knickknack PJ