Category: Uncategorized

Hi-ho, y’all!

I don’t know about you, but The Holidays™ are already demolishing me. I suppose that comes with the territory when one’s day job is retail, but y’all, I’m ready for January.

That’s not to say I intend to be a Scrooge or a Grinch or a third character who doesn’t like Christmas but then does so it’s kinda weird to use their name as shorthand for not liking Christmas, but this December is going to be Busy with a capital Buh for me. I feel like I’m almost starting to get back into a creative groove, but when I come home from work exhausted and sore, making things is tough. (Why does retail make you sore, you ask? Well, you know those eight-foot artificial Christmas trees that people buy and then return when it doesn’t fit in the space? Yeah, somebody needs to handle those returns! I’m that somebody!)

I hope to have something to share with y’all in 2026, but I’m stuck in Make the Things Good mode at the moment. Thank you for your patience! See you in the new year!

Love,
Josh

P.S. If the Wham!s and Mariahs are beginning to grate, I offer you Sufjan Stevens’ Christmas music catalog. Enjoy!

Hello, friends!

Did You Know?: Making things is hard! Even in the best of circumstances, it’s hard to take an idea from inside your brain and put it down on literal or metaphorical paper. Doing it while working a full-time job and living through *gestures broadly at everything*? Yeah! It’s tough!

I say all of this not to make excuses (…Well maybe a little bit to make excuses), but to set more realistic expectations for myself. Since, even if nobody else does, I know that at least I read these posts, so I should include a message for myself. Making an entire game is hard! Even if it is just a tiny li’l game, it’s still a game!

So I’m trying a new approach to game-making for my li’l game. I’m going to spend two weeks focusing on a more narrative-heavy game, then switch back to my current mechanics-heavy game, and alternate back and forth for… The foreseeable future! I hope it’ll help get me out of my current rut. I’ve been making progress, but it’s slow, and being stuck in slow progress is not my idea of a good time.

Those are all of the words I have to write for the moment! I hope you had a spooktacular Halloween, and that your November is one to be thankful for. See y’all next month!

Love,
Josh

Howdy and hello, friends!

This past month, I drew a picture of August Mina every day! And I also spent way too much effort over a period of 2-3 days in pre-pro making a 50-frame animation for one of those days!

(See if you can spot the animated one! Somehow!!)

I’ve done this for the past two years, and it’s a fun exercise to explore a character’s design in different outfits, poses, etc. I didn’t have a specific theme in mind for any particular day pre-planned (except the 8th), so sometimes coming up with that was the toughest part. If you want to stretch your creative muscles, try it with your favorite character! If you want! I’m not your boss!

I haven’t had much time for other things worth sharing, but I think I have Issue 3 of The Devil That Knows You‘s script all but written, and I have some silly ideas for jumping back into gamedev, which is usually a good sign or a very bad sign. We’ll find out!!

I hope you’re doing well! It’s… Well, the world is what it is out there, but we can still be there for each other. That’s nice, isn’t it?

Love,
Josh

Howdy hey, friends!

As a wise man once said, it’s hot in McKinney. When I go outside, my brain, it is soup. And not a nice chilled soup, either.

Thankfully, air conditioning exists.

Progress has been… better? this month, but is still slow. I did a little work on Video Game, and I have most of the next issue of The Devil That Knows You… scripted. I didn’t meet my goals! But that’s okay! Sometimes goals are just there to look pretty, and maybe inspire us to do better if we’re lucky.

This month, as has been my tradition for the last few years, is the August of August Mina, where I draw a picture of my semi-original character August Mina every day for the whole month! You can follow along by following me on Bluesky and/or Tumblr. What fun!

(I know I won’t remember to upload them here for the next 30 days, but here’s August the 1st!)

My long-term goals for the year remain the same — finish Issue 3 of TDTKY and get something like an alpha for the game done. Will that goal do more than look pretty? I dunno! But I’ll let y’all know about it, one way or the other.

Love,
Josh

Howdy and hello, friends!

I’m gonna try to be more regular with the updates this year. Or, as I almost typed, more gregular. Who’s this Greg I was referring to? Why is Greg so dang regular? Your guess is as good as mine. Truly, this is the mystery of our day.

I’ve been fairly locked in on gamedev for the last two weeks, learning a new dialogue system and plugging it into my project. Y’all, it’s already so much better than my old, semi-homemade system, and it’s ironing out a lot of the problems I was having. There are still plenty of obstacles to overcome, but I’m feeling less worried about them than I was two weeks ago!

My current ambitious goal is to have a gameplay alpha ready to go by April 1st (no foolin’). It will still be very much in prototype form, but there are a lot of gameplay ideas I have that I can’t convey very well verbally and very much want people’s feedback on, and getting the game in other people’s hands is the best way to get that. Watch this space for details if you want to try it out!

Also this past month, I was a guest on Stitches in Time: A Doctor Who Podcast and showed off my extensive(??) Doctor Who knowledge. Did you know that Doctor Who usually isn’t the name of a character in the show?? The more you know!! You can watch a YouTube video with my episodes here, here, here, and here. Convenience!

That’s just about all I have to report! Hopefully I’ll have some excitement to share this time next month!

<3,
Josh

Howdy and hello, friends!

I don’t know about you, but for me, the last month and a half have felt both endless and instantaneous. January felt like it would never end, and now, suddenly, we’re halfway through February. Time is strange and mysterious.

My main creative focus for 2025 since releasing The Devil That Knows You Chapter 2 has been gamedev, a word that my web browser insists is a typo but is in fact a real thing. I had a breakthrough while working on a little widget; I learned that Unity saves its Saved Variables to the Windows registry, which is not something I want to do for the use cases I was using it for, so I had to spend a few days trying to figure out a solution that isn’t inherently busted. I feel like that’s what a lot of the coding side of gamedev is for me at the moment: Find out something I assumed was easy is actually a using an atrocious workaround, and figure out the actual right way to do it.

Bigger picture gamedev-wise, I’ve been having some revelations about planning out the game and recognizing that I’m not quite as far along as I thought I was, which is somewhat disappointing, but also relieving. My projects for the rest of February on that front are learning a new tool I’ve downloaded and writing out a gameplay document so I have something to reference instead of vague ideas. After that I should be ready to jump back properly into development. Hooray!

The Devil That Knows You Chapter 3’s writing is still underway. If we can be perfectly honest with each other (and I certainly hope we can be), the response to Chapter 2 has been disheartening. According to my Site Stats, its page has 18 views as of this writing, and none of those 18 views have led to a PayPal or ko-fi donation, the only way I’ll make money off of my labor making the comic. I wish I didn’t have to think about making art in those terms, but if I want to keep the dream alive of being an artist full-time (which, spoiler alert, I do), I have to at least consider the financial reality of the situation, and the financial situation is a big ol’ thumbs-down emoji at the moment for webcomics in general. I had hoped that releasing the comic as a cohesive unit would lead to better success, but so far, TDTKY‘s success has been roughly the same as DWATC or The Guildmistress‘s, which is to say “effectively none in financial terms.”

I know the economy is dire for just about everyone who’s not actively working to dismantle the U.S. government these days, but unless you’re in the top 1% of comic artists, you’re probably not earning a living wage from your art, and if you’re not in the top 1% of that top 1%, you’re just barely keeping your head above water. It’s really, really bad for comic artists, y’all. I think it’s usually bad for comic artists, but a vicious combination of the rise of generative “artificial intelligence” and the consolidation of media under the big studios has made it hard for anything to break through and capture people’s attention. The struggle, as famously advertised, is real.

Similar story with The Hartvane Chronicles Book II. I don’t think I’ve sold a copy of Book I since 2023, and it’s been hard for me to get excited about diving back into that world (pun fully intended) while dreading another tepid response.

I know that there are people out there making things and having people read/watch/play them and having those things spread to other people, but having that happen to me feels so distant right now. The hard work of being known on the internet feels like it’s harder than it’s ever been, and I was never any good at it to begin with. I wish it wasn’t a prerequisite to reaching more than 18 people, but maybe it is.

Which leaves me with the choice: Do I work hard at being better at marketing myself? Or do I make peace with being an artist who will likely never reach beyond my very, very close friends with my art?

It’s a question I’m wrestling with. And one I have wrestled and will wrestle with. I think I’ve written a version of the back half of this post a dozen times, and I’ll probably write it another dozen times.

Thanks to those of y’all who have been and will be with me on this ride for them. You’re appreciated more than words can say.

<3,
Josh

WordPress wants me to use their AI tools. When I add an image, it asks if I want to upload one, use one from my library, or generate one. This made me wonder, why would you add an AI-generated image to your post?

What could be gained from an AI-generated image in this post that’s tangibly different from me writing “think about or look up a picture of (insert whatever my AI prompt would be here)” instead? I think the answer is that we’ve come to expect a certain amount of filler from our internet browsing, and when it’s not there, it feels wrong.

Maybe that’s what we need, though. An embrace of minimalism, or at least a friendly handshake with it. Maybe Twitter was better when it was 140 characters or fewer. Limits can be helpful, not just for fostering creativity in how to communicate despite them, but for allowing more room for more voices.

There are many good reasons to dislike AI. I concur with many of them, but I am not here to preach about them today. I will, however, say that an internet that is less crowded with generative content is an internet I prefer, and the only choice I can take to make it so is the same only choice most of us can make: to not use it myself. An internet that makes it easier for me to see the work that other humans have spent time making for me to enjoy is an internet I will gladly fight for, and forsaking generative content to make it so is an easy sacrifice to make for me. The rest of the internet may not be so easily convinced, but it has to start somewhere.

Hello, friends!

Wow, 2023 sure has been, and will continue to be, a year! And 2024 will, most likely, also be a year! Here’s what I’ve done, and what I’ll be doing in the future!

The Past

The Guildmistress: End of an Era

After six years of weekly comics, The Guildmistress wrapped up in May! I’m immensely proud of it, and I learned a lot while making it. Do I wish more people had read it while it was active, and will read it in the future? Yes, absolutely! Do I know how to solve that problem? No, I do not! My attempts at improving my reach have been so unsuccessful over the years that I’ve largely accepted that I’ve carved out my little niche of weirdos, and I’m only going to add to that collection slowly, very slowly. That makes making money off of the art-making difficult, but I don’t know any other way, so I’m going to keep at it!

The Hartvane Chronicles Book I: The Outcast and the Chosen One

My second novel, and my first good novel! (Souls Incorporated is fine and it’s still very dear to my heart, but it also has a lot of flaws that I’ve learned from, hopefully.) Hartvane is such a wonderful world, and I love to write in it. From those kind souls who have read it and told me nice things about it, I understand that they enjoy it, also, which gives me motivation to work on Book II! (Also, Book I is available for 20% off this week on itch.io for its birthday, which is also my birthday!)

There was also a companion comic for The Hartvane Chronicles that I was posting on Twitter back when it was Twitter and I was still on Twitter, but I kinda lost steam when a) it didn’t seem to be driving in sales and b) I realized the little story I was telling didn’t have enough juice to keep it interesting for me to draw. That happens! No matter how well you plan out a story, sometimes you can get to it and go, “Oh, this wasn’t actually anything.” Nobody ever asked for the next page, so I’m okay with it staying unfinished and focusing on other things!

The Present

Twitch Streams

I’m still streaming on Twitch! Almost every week! Like I’ve been doing for over a year now!

There was a period where I was making a real effort to make Twitch at least a part-time-job-level gig, but while Twitch streams are significantly easier than the other projects I’m mentioning here, they’re emotionally draining, and I was burning myself out with so many streams. Now I’m doing about three streams a week, and that seems to be a good rhythm for me. Is my current repertoire of Tim Schafer adventure games and PS1/PS2-era Final Fantasy games gonna be everyone’s cup of tea? No! Do I care? …I mean, it’d be a lie to say a blanket “No,” but I’ve tried chasing the crowd and gotten nowhere with it, so I’m just gonna do my own thing and be happier with myself!

It’s hard for me to get people hyped for a chill stream (that occasionally gets a bit more intense when the chocobos refuse to show up), but that’s exactly what I’m building, and if that doesn’t draw in the clicks, then so be it! I’ll keep doing my thing anyway.

Patron-Picked Art

On the first day of every month (schedule permitting), I post a piece of art based on my Patreon Pals’ suggestions/poll choices! This most recent one was Sailor Awoo, which is “What if Sailor Moon was a werewolf?” It’s a question that we all have asked or should have asked, and I’m happy to have answered it.

The Patron-Picked Art has kept my skills sharp post-Guildmistress, and given me room to explore a lot of fun topics I wouldn’t have considered otherwise. If you want to suggest something, then a) support me on Patreon, and b) leave me a comment when I ask for prompt ideas! (Just voting in the poll is also good, but I would love to draw a bona fide request for someone. The dream…)

The Future

The Hartvane Chronicles Book II: Title Pending

I still have a lot of work to do here. I got about… 20% of the way into a first draft before I bailed on it, and that was about four months ago now. I have some big ideas of what’s going to happen in Book II, but making all of those pieces fit into place is tricky! I’m hoping to have Book II out in Spring of 2025, but there are some substantial error bars on that estimate. Stay tuned for more details!

Star-Crossed Mercenaries

SCM is a Lite RPG/visual novel video game set in the 24th century, focused on a wannabe pilot thrown into the middle of alien diplomacy, interplanetary conflict, and corporate subterfuge. What will Mavery decide is right or wrong when an entire galaxy of choices is before her? And, perhaps more importantly, is her new captain… y’know… interested interested in her, or…?

Star-Crossed Mercenaries still has a metric butt-ton of work left to go (still in pre-production), but I would love to have it done in the 2026-27 timeframe. Fingers crossed!

I’m also working on a prototype/proof-of-concept game that will use a lot of the same mechanics. That’ll be done sooner (which makes intuitive sense), but is probably too full of inside references for anyone but its pixel-precise audience to enjoy it. …Which means it’s probably gonna be a breakout hit, now that I’ve said that.

The Devil You Know (title pending)

When a dungeon crawl breaks bad and a novice cleric is forced to make an impossible call on behalf of their paladin escort, all sorts of shenanigans ensue. In this upcoming comic, new companions create hellish complications, but maybe a little bit of complication is exactly what’s needed!

The Devil You Know (or whatever it’s gonna be called) will come out in issues of reasonable length (15-40 pages? Still figuring that part out), and I hope to have the first one done and posted on the internet in June 2024!

Wrap-Up

Wow, that’s a lot of stuff! And the Twitch streams and Patron-Picked Art, too? You might be asking, “How can I help?” Well, I’m glad you (might have) asked!

-Share my stuff on the internet! Do you have a friend who likes gay mermaid pirate stories? Tell them about The Hartvane Chronicles! Does your co-worker keep saying that nobody’s streaming the exact combination of Tim Schafer games and the PS1/PS2-era Final Fantasy games these days? Point them to my Twitch stream! Does your uncle’s mechanic’s niece’s choreographer like webcomics? Show them The Guildmistress and Don’t Worry About Their Classes! These are all good ideas that anyone can execute, definitely. There is no doubt in my mind that these are all equally universal

–Join my Discord server! It’s a very chill place, and it’s the best place to hear about the latest news from me. You’ll also get to see some Jake pictures in there, and if you don’t want to see the world’s cutest cat, then I don’t think there’s anything I can give you that would grab your interest

–Catch my Twitch streams! Follow me! Chat in the chat! Subscribe, if your funds allow! Don’t worry about it, if they don’t! Even if you don’t have a particular interest in the game, I’m always happy to have someone to chat with in the stream

–Support me on Patreon! Money is helpful for securing goods and services, plus it’s a nice boost to know that someone believes in me enough that they want to show that with their wallet. (Like with Twitch, I recognize that this isn’t financially viable for everyone! But it’s greatly appreciated if it is)

There are probably other things, but those are the things that come to mind right now!

Hopefully I’ll have some more news to share soon. Until then, see you around the internet!