BJ @bj@xeno.chat

🐾 Him. Place number eight on the council of twelve. August.
⎉ …I have questions.
🐾 Yep. He's confusing.
⎉ This looks like math. What does this have to do with finding whimsy?
🐾 August is the master of abstraction. Of pure ideas that represent reality without being weighed down by it.
⎉ Ideas unconstrained by reality, huh?
🐾 That's why you need his help, not mine, but he hasn't been seen in ages.
⎉ Didn't I meet—
🐾 That was his assistant. Filling in.
⎉ Oh.
🐾 He only left this behind. "1+1=3".

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I might make a habit of posting my work doodles as a warmup. Having a few minutes between test runs or waiting for a package upgrade to finish is a good excuse to get something done, and it lets me emphasize speed and control instead of having to obsess over details. Patch in winter clothes (and big ear covers), a lineup of Delyria folks with their continents' emblems, and a pika with an abacus. What his deal is might be revealed later, but for now he's just a doodle.

Also, while I'm thinking about it: Bitkin don't need to breathe. The empty space in the System is just that - empty. There's no air or any need for it; wind is just "space that moves things in it places". This is one way (and hardly the only) their world operates on video game physics. That said, water will still slow Bitkin down who don't have a way to mitigate that effect, so even if they can stay under for as long as they want to, they might just not want to.

After looking it up, I've learned that those things in his arms are properly called "thrusters", and they work just like they look like they ought to. With his arms held in the right pose he can zip through water and even leap out of it like a dolphin.

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Bonus Bitkin sketch tonight. This is Viento, whose arms contain spinning propellers - they don't do much good in the air, but he can use them to zip through water at surprising speed. His part of the Lower System is the Spiral Coast, where liquids from everywhere in the System drain to in order to get filtered, sorted into useful parts, purified, and recycled back out. It could've been a grimy cistern, but Viento's much happier dressing it up as a tropical beach.

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Novenna and Vidrio had a talk earlier about what he can do to follow that tiny dragon-thing back to its own world to help its people out. She's a good person to ask when it comes to what kind of shapes can exist in what kind of worlds, but her answer was unexpected.

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Vidrio has been wandering around between worlds, trying to find interesting new experiences to bring back, but often the experiences come find him instead. Whoever this tiny dragon with unusual crystalline floaty wings might be, they're desperately in need of help. They've come to the right place.

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Just another quick sketch I drew some time ago and only got around to uploading. Fala and Elfilin (of Kirby and the Forgotten Land) have a little chat over tea, swapping stories and comparing their experiences. They have more in common than it might appear at first.

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I liked the Patch and Glitch sketches enough that I decided to try a few more. These would make pretty good Telegram stickers - I might extend this to a full set and color it when I've got the time energy.

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Assorted Patch and Glitch doodles. These were done at work, so I'm not counting them as tonight's post, but I really like the expressiveness here. Glitch is just so grouchy and sour about everything.

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Clio, a bat/spider clothling, mostly keeps to herself off in the lesser-populated areas of Elseways. She and Geo López are friends of a sort, but since they're both loners, they don't mind not seeing each other that often. Her own history is long, though, and something she only dimly remembers herself. Her spirit is centuries old, and she doesn't remember what bound her to a foot-tall body made of cloth and wire, but it's low-maintenance and doesn't age, so she doesn't mind all that much.

Playing with pixel art wasn't a total loss tonight, at least. I made Patch more proportional to how they are in my head, and changed the color palette around to match the NES one (because why not). This is the version I'd be animating.

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Since animation isn't going well, I decided to draw this character inspired by some ideas from @spottyfox and @evelyn - Feta Roquefort, mouse reporter for the Underville Herald. Because Underville is so vast, they need ways to communicate what's going on, so they have a huge network of news centers set up to inform everyone of important goings-on everywhere they can put reporters. The mic is a heavily modified earbud (functionally reversed), and she's recording to a flash drive on her back.

@spottyfox @evelyn

If you combine them it sounds like some kind of mouse reporter. Feta Roquefort, Underville Herald.

Animation remains difficult. I have some other ideas I want to try to make it easier. I think, in the meantime, I'll work on an actual level editor so at least we can start playing with rooms.

@spottyfox

I like the sound of "Roquefort".

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When in doubt draw deertaurs, I guess? I had a long day at work today and it took me a while to work up the energy to draw anything at all, but in the end I decided - sure, this'll work. They're fun to draw, anyway, and this one is loudly annoyed at something off-panel to the left.

@Felthry This is what Patch's source image looks like. As I add animation frames there will be more columns, but right now it's just the one standing pose.