Hey! It's been a while since I posted an updated and I wanted to talk a bit about why I've been so inactive with posting stuff lately.

For starters, check out my new song! I wanted to post something special as a "sign of life" for you guys instead of just a regular old blog post.

Jamuary 2024

Jamuary didn't go so good. I wanted to post more songs and feedback for others but I got burnt out way quicker than I anticipated. Having to juggle a full-time job sucks. Maybe next year will be better.

Collabs

No plans to participate in any upcoming collabs as I'm neck-deep in two games.

Any new songs?

I always have a dozen songs in the works but they're all on the backburner while I work on this game.

Yea ok so What are these Games?

I don't want to be the guy that's constantly hyping up stuff instead of, you know, actually working on anything, but I don't want to lose any of the momentum I've been building with you guys. First game that I hinted at back in November is a puzzle game called Xgram. If you've played Picross or Paint it Back, you will feel right at home with this game. It is functionally complete and nearing a Beta release but needs significant polish and accessibility features.

Puzzle games aren't sexy to look at so even though this game is functionally complete it doesn't look good enough to show much of. Maybe I'll post some pixel art in the coming weeks. Once I've made some major UI fixes I'll try to post a video demonstration of the game.

The next game, tentatively titled Pearson Blade, is a top-down action game in the style of The Binding of Isaac and Zelda: Link's Awakening. It's more of a "pet project" than anything, but the fact I don't feel a need to do elaborate accessibility design or UI coding makes it a very fun and feasible project to debut with. Everything here needs some major art passes later, but I'm about halfway through pre-alpha and I've gotten a number of enemies up and running so far.

That's it for now! I'll get back to it and I hope to have some big updates around the corner.

Jamuary 2024 is live! I'm trying things differently for this year's event, as doing a song every day is hard when you're out of the house for almost 12 hours a day.

The plan right now is to drop a song every 3-5 days. The first song is already up, and you can listen to it here. It's not very good though, for reasons I go into in the song description. Hopefully by spacing these out I can still be considered a decent participant without burning myself out or anything. I have lots of ideas for future uploads that are much less restrictive and should be much better quality. I'll try to put some time in to review submissions as well, as I enjoyed hearing what other people made last year.

As for life updates, nothing major this time around. This boy finally got health insurance after like 3 years of being uncovered.

New game is coming along well. I've shown a late-stage alpha build to family + friends and they have enjoyed it. It still needs a few tweaks before I'm ready to bring it into beta, but it is pretty much feature-complete. I want to wait until I have a snazzy logotype before I start teasing it here though. I am possibly going to be needing artist help, as I've been toying with creating a cute mascot girl for the game. It would be a paid gig and I can be flexible, but I'm not ready to talk details just yet. If you or someone you know is looking/available for work, please send me a com sheet and I'll keep you in mind once I'm ready to scout. It's a free game so no royalties, just credit and upfront payment.

Last thing I'll leave off with is a plug for a YouTube gaming/shitpost/content channel called Fear Over Web that I host with my best friend. Right now we only have two videos up, but we have a GTA5 video that should be dropping later this month and hopefully we'll be accelerating production of future content. Go ahead and check us out and subscribe if you like our dynamic. My microphone quality is dogshit but for future sessions I plan to use my actual condenser mic, so that should significantly improve quality and cut back on breathing noises. We'll also be rebranding the channel to go with the new video drop!

Alright my fingers are getting cold so I'm gonna stop typing now.

Oh man. Oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man. It has been an age.

For starters, I have a new song out!

It's the first part of an OST I'm making for a game I'm developing! No big info dumps yet but it's a puzzle game that will be hosted free on Newgrounds, and the plan is to allow for custom content. It's a small game, mainly to prove that I know how to type 1's and 0's into a computer to make fun stuff, but hopefully I can use it to snowball into really cool projects that I also have in the works.

I guess I owe a bit of an explanation for my absence. Last time I was truly active here was back in #Jamuary2023.

So what happened? I got burnt out from cranking out songs. And then I had a major life event. Not pregnancy. More like "I need to figure out how I'm going to eat and pay bills." So I ended up renting a room in the mountains and I'm finally starting to get back on my feet, and I am hungry to pick up where I left off.

So aside from the game and OST, what else? I want to try and spend more time engaging with community projects as they show up in the portal. I always like discovering new stuff and I felt guilty I haven't been able to follow up with a few of them lately. At some point it'd be cool to make standalone songs again to practice my skills and develop new techniques, but my time is limited. Once the game is out then I can start building more audio stuff.

So that's about it! It's good to be back! Stay tuned for more info on the game over the next few months!

Big news!

I'm more or less moved in. The west coast has been getting battered with storm after storm after storm, which prevented me from getting anything set up in a timely manner. I'm ashamed I wasn't able to check out uploads or contribute anything until now, but you know what they say: man makes plans, god laughs.

JAMUARY 2023 uploads resume tomorrow, January 20th. For the time being I can probably only do a couple songs a week due to my current living situation and full time job. I will try to pop my head in a few days a week to check out the latest uploads, I miss hearing what everybody's been working on.

It's good to be back!

I was hoping not to have to write this post but it was kind of inevitable.

As stated in an earlier blog post, I'm currently moving cross-state, and it's been eating up a lot more time than I anticipated due to weather concerns and my schedule already being kind of a mess. In order to save myself the burnout, I'm holding off on Jamuary songs for a couple days while I get myself situated. I'll still be popping my head in to rate and critique uploads, I just won't be able to contribute for a bit. Once things even out I plan to go back to a song a day. Fingers crossed it's not too long!

Alright! December is just about over, this horrible rotten no-good year is almost over, and I've kept to my promise of new songs for the month!

My plan to use Photoshop while my wallet has been malnourished has proven effective, albeit not the most eye-catching. I just dropped my newest song, TreeTrips, and I have a couple more songs in the works, but with no definitive release date.

So, what's next?

Welp, I'm moving in a week! Cross-state, so things are gonna get a bit hairy for me. That's why I've decided to do the only sensible thing and participate in a month-long creative grind called JAMUARY 2023. That's right, I went from promising 1-3 songs one month to promising 31 songs the next month! I'll also be popping my head in regularly to try and give feedback to others participating in the event.

Now, these aren't going to be full-on songs or anything. I currently work full-time and am juggling a bunch of other stuff, so at best these will be smaller, enhanced exercises, but who knows? Maybe a few of the beats could end up ascended into other, more elaborate projects?

So yeah, get your feeds ready for a song a day. Aside from that, the only other thing that's worth sharing right now is that I want to make a game. I'm currently juggling a few ideas in very very early stages though, so nothing to share yet, but I'm excited at the possibilities! I'm not really hiring or enlisting for anything right now, but send me a message if you want to help in some way and I'll see what I can do!

I guess in the meantime, have a great New Year and I'll see you all for JAMuary!

(Oh! Also, some kind soul scouted me on Newgrounds the other day, so my submissions will now show up in the Music Portal! Thanks, stranger!)

I'm embarrassed.

Three weeks ago I promised anywhere from 1-3 songs this month. I also promised to start including custom art with each song. That's unfortunately something I can't deliver on like I had hoped.

The songs are basically done, but I'm having trouble securing artwork. I'm having some short-term financial problems that prevent me from commissioning artists. I also can't draw and I don't have a good camera. All this means no art, and no art means no song releases.

"What's the big deal," you say, "it's just art!" That may be true, but a good piece of custom-made artwork can really tie a song together in this day and age. Plus it just looks professional. With my fourth upload I'll apparently be eligible to be "scouted" on Newgrounds, which basically exposes my music to even more people here. Having artwork will help me stand out and avoid looking "underdressed" in a music lineup.

My only other option at this point is photoshop. I'm pretty good at mashing public domain images together using brute force, so there's a chance I could at least have SOME visual aspect to go with these songs.

I refuse to overpromise and I refuse to underdeliver. So here's the bottom line: I guarantee you one song this month WITH snazzy photoshopped artwork made by yours truly. If the image editing thing works out, I may be able to upload another song before the end of the year. Either way, once January rolls in I should have recovered financially and can start commissioning pieces again and get on with my schedule.

Fingers crossed! I'm gonna get to work.

Alright! I managed to deliver on my previous promise of having a song out by November. This was a nice one, but now is not the time to celebrate, as I've already started work on a few more exercises. I don't know what the NEXT song will be, but I want to have at least 1 or 2 more out this month, maybe even three. I think it could be cool to participate in more events on this site once I work up the courage.

Also, I recently got the opportunity to work with Newgrounds user Toxicooz to create some adorable artwork for my first uploaded song Cardbone. Be sure to check that song out if you haven't, and go give the artist a follow too! This was my first time commissioning anything and while I was nervous and didn't know what to expect, they were very friendly and helpful throughout the commission process.

Going forward, I want to have custom album artwork available day and date with the songs I publish, hopefully from a wide range of individuals. I will eventually go back and get some artwork made for the other two songs I've currently released as well, so be on the lookout for that. If you or someone you know is an NG user and is currently looking for paid work as an artist, shoot me a link and I'll check it out!

That's about all I have for right now. Things are gonna get a lot more interesting around here!

Hey guys! I just started a job that's biting me in the ass so I can't say I'll have another song out in the next few days but I'll try! If nothing else I want to have a song posted be the end of this month 👀

I wanted to have another song out last week but I'm in between work right now and I've got this sinus infection or whatever that's messing with my ability to mix properly. hoping to have something out by tomorrow night