Rocking & Rolling (With The Punches)

It's hard to believe I haven't posted any meaningful updates since last year, but here we are! 

I've been going in circles with this particular post for a while now, editing it, rewriting it, deleting everything and starting over time and time again. I keep getting into these long-winded diatribes about mental health and the state of the internet and it just... isn't necessary, or very fun to read. I'm gonna try my best to make this post short and sweet for y'all! It might be a little repetitive (I've made a lot of "I'm not dead" posts over the years, here and on other sites), but please bear with me. 😅

I just want to say- definitively, out loud, for everyone- that I have not stopped.

I am not going to stop.

If you're one of the few people out there who knows me from the internet and you like the kind of stuff I draw and write, first I want to tell you thank you, and second I'd like to humbly ask that you not give up on me! I know I do go a very, very... very... long time without uploading things sometimes, but I promise you it's not because I don't want to create.

I haven't quit, I haven't fallen off, I haven't lost interest. It's just... well... I probably don't need to tell you this (in 2026 no less) but life is complicated. There's... a lot going on right now, to put it lightly. It wears on you. Makes you tired. I still wanna do all the things I said I wanna do, it's just hard to muster up the energy some days. Or the time. Sometimes I do have the time, and the energy, but I still don't do anything! Well, sometimes I need to use those days just to take care of myself! That's important, especially in times like these, and I hope you're all doing the same for yourselves!

One little thing I've been doing for myself the last few days is painting rocks!

 I've wanted to give this trend (painting rocks and hiding them for other people to find and re-hide) a go for years, but never had a lot of luck and always got stuck trying to find the right paints. This year I got lucky and found some affordable paint-pens that are very easy to use and show up better than the last few I had tried, so I ended up doing a bunch! I'm no painter and it definitely shows, but it's been soothing just drawing little dinosaurs and things for no better reason than because I can. The harlequin beetle (tan & teal, third from the bottom left) didn't turn out very well, but that's okay. I just painted over it and...

 Made it into a volcano! Huzzah! Now it's one of my favorites! I just finished spraying these down with sealant today and will start to scatter them around local parks and trails in the next few days. Here's one of the spots I had in mind, consider it a bonus! So beautiful!

 

I don't know how many of my little rocks will actually be found or how good the chances are that people in the American South will love a bunch of non-JW style dinosaurs, but I enjoyed doing this and hope it brings a little joy to someone else's day too! I'm definitely going to do more and I like to think the little creative jumpstarts I get from doing things like this better my odds of getting the bigger projects done. Speaking of... I can't really do one of these posts without mentioning The Big Unnamed Overambitious Age of Fire Successor, can I?

Here's the latest update on that:

You mayrecall I deleted a post earlier this year where I teased the size of the roster and the names of each creature. This was removed because, while I was done with that, I wasn't happy with it. Some of the names just weren't gelling with me, I was going back and forth and changing them a lot, there were still choices I felt unsure about etc. So I made a difficult decision and went back to the drawing board: I threw away all 44 names and the system I'd been using to come up with them, adopted a new one, and made 52 more names... and yes, that is a bigger number, even bigger than my last estimate. Yeah, the roster's grown again, so sue me!

As I mentioned in a previous update the emphasis this time will be on covering as many diverse and in-depth playable creatures as possible, so it will be a pretty ridiculous sized roster, albeit at the cost of far fewer skins. The estimate I gave before was <12, but it could be as low as 4 or 5. It's not a decision I plan on finalizing until I actually get to drawing things!

To make such a massive roster manageable I'm planning on breaking it up into "seasons", kind of like expansion packs. I haven't made up my mind how many there will be yet but four is the obvious first choice. It mirrors my prior approach but feels a lot more doable since it's only the characters I'm doing four sets of, plus each "expansion" would still be fewer characters altogether than the rosters of Age of Fire/Aether (13 if there are four parts, versus 20 for each installation of Ages).

Almost everything in the planning stage is complete now. The main two things I have left to figure out are what the title will be and how I want to get certain things drawn.

I mentioned before that I'd like to depict a menagerie of real prehistoric plants. This is mostly because there's a new eating mechanic where playable creatures recover their lost health by felling ambient plants & animals on the battlefield, but also because there are now distinct biomes that each need to feel distinct from each other. It stands to reason then that I should probably include just as many ambient plants as animals and go to the trouble of illustrating them! The problem is I don't like drawing plants nearly as much as I like drawing animals, nor am as good at it, nor can I do it as quickly, so I'm really afraid that if I tackle it I'm just gonna delay the whole project into oblivion because I'll spend a year drawing pine trees and ferns and stuff and burn myself out. If I was a soulless flippant bastard who didn't care about the quality of the results or the cost of making them I could just ask AI to do it... hoho, wouldn't that be easy!

But no, seriously, I'd rather do jumping jacks on a LEGO set.

The best plan I actually have is to commission another artist to draw the plants for me. I've just gotta find someone who likes to do botanical art and is in my price range; it was an honor to help fund so many of the creatives I've made friends with over the years when we did Ages but I can't afford to spend even half that much money now. 2026 is lookin' to be a pretty expensive year... though I do have some pretty fun commissions of my own to look forward to later this summer, so stay tuned for that!

Speaking of things to look forward to in this summer, the new Monster Hunter title is likely just around the corner! To be completely honest, Wilds is actually in the running for being one of my least favorite MH games so far, but to be fair Ryozo-san and co. already won me over with Iceborne and Sunbreak after World and Rise didn't quite satisfy my monhun itch, so maybe this "Wilds Ultimate" expansion can do the same! Even if it doesn't I'm still super curious to see what the team is cooking up! Following the monster reveals and new trailers is always fun regardless. We'll probably get our first sneak peek at what they're working on in the next couple weeks, either at the big Sony State of Play or (more likely) Summer Games Fest. Can't wait!

Who knows, maybe it will inspire me to do some new work on Verge~