It has been a while since I made an update.
Here are some stuff that’s been happening:
I’ll probably write more, many stories I wish to tell.
Lots of drafts are sitting by.
Paintings/sketchings/animations will be used to supplement these (before, it was often painting first and writing later).
I’ll need a proofreader.
Grammarly isn't quite enough for some sensitive sentences I use.
I’m still experimenting with animations.
It’s inadequate for long and complex stories due to its workload.
It’s great for capturing exciting moments or some emotions that are hard to describe with words.
Thoughts on images as a storytelling device:
I have about 3 painting styles that I’m comfortable with and 3 animation styles that I’ve been experimenting with (and occasionally had fun) (plus 3D stuff).
The tough part for me is polishing them. For me, once it tells the story I want it to tell, it’s done its job, becoming an uninteresting work, a chore that maybe takes 10 times the time and skill to polish from that point. This is making things hard for me to progress past the rough sketch. I don’t have enough patience or enthusiasm for cleaning lines or coloring details that graphic designers usually learn for the industry. This is also why I went the coloring-without-sketching route with some paintings so they can show more gruesome details before I get bored of them after the sketching phase.
I’m experimenting with ways to use this as an advantage. One of which is primarily writing while occasionally a type of concept art appearing to show some events that are hard to be described or imagined. Or its ambiguity can be used as a mystery and horror aspect.
I feel animation will still be its own thing for the moment as they are still in the experiment stage. This takes significantly more time for the quality and more chances of something looking wrong. It’s relatively easy to make a 2D body bounce in a loop from one angle. But I normally find those quite unengaging and I feel sex and its emotions are something quite more dynamic. I’ve been aiming to meet this dynamic with the characters’ subtle body language without cartoonishly exaggerating. I have not been able to capture this consistently. Plus, there’s the monster, who knows how many limbs and feelings this thing has? A lot of work. But I can still make excuses to justify the amount of work because it would be interesting to see moving images in my novel pages since all of my content is digital.
Speaking of dynamic emotions with sex, a similar reason is why I’ve also been avoiding writing to express the act of sex and instead been trying to show it in image forms to avoid the lack of dynamicism (which is a word not in the dictionary but you are probably accurately guessing what it means) in the existing vocabulary in our dictionaries. (I’ve been typing synonyms and thesaurus for a decade with this. I should know by now) I think the words that are used to describe the act of sex or sexual parts of our bodies in the two languages I can speak are too culturally appropriate and limiting. None of the words I found in dictionaries are quite grotesquely delicious nor overpoweringly elegant (at least not to satisfy what I feel). These words are stiff, censored, and belittled. They’re shy. It’s like these words are made by cultures with lengthy histories of sexual oppression (‘ramming my passive-aggression on this much?’). Creating images has helped me to avoid this collision with the cultures that the languages are based on and I have been able to insert my own queues through it.
However, I found even this is not adequate for some viewers either, often leading to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. Everyone needs a reference to translate obscured images. I wouldn’t know how to read hidden messages in museum art. I’d just feel what I’m used to feeling looking at those objects. But some art major-trained students go over those arts and I overheard some absurd hidden translations of a simple yet stylish black-and-white dark alleyway painting. I’d have scoffed that they're a bit too opinionated with that painting. But they were agreeing with each other and added more supportive statements that I still couldn’t see. I gathered that they have been educated in ways to see the background histories/references that I am not aware of.
This would go exactly the same way with some of my content (and they have been). In vore images, it’s not so unconventional to have the person in it being heavily obscured by flesh and fluid to show how overwhelming it is and that the stimulation is happening throughout the whole body simultaneously. But if the audience can’t see the vored person in it, then how is the viewer supposed to know what’s happening? So do I show the body by not showing that something is touching there instead? Or show that she is touched but by obstructing the person being touched? And this is how I start talking in a circle.
I’ve seen many workarounds with this such as X-rays/half-transparent objects but to varying degrees of impact and confusion. I’ve had some viewers not able to understand what was supposed to be happening in some of my vore images. Meanwhile, it’s easy to understand someone’s giving another a blowjob even if it’s happening outside of the screen because many adults have references for that. But not for the vore genre I make that doesn’t even have a singular definition to describe it other than “a cousin of soft-vore and tentacle eroticism”. We have no reference for what’s eating her genitalia nor what she’s feeling and thinking being trapped in this. This ends up being a bit heavily dependent on the audience’s imagination (and I’m grateful for having audiences with such rich imaginations to describe my images).
The same goes for the woman’s emotions expressed mid-hot-vore-situation. One may be frowning on her face because she is shocked in the initial phase but perhaps enjoying it and gradually building up to it. Or maybe she’s in a near climax and often the ladies I’ve seen frown, jaw dropped, maybe scuttly (another word not in the dictionary) laughing while these happen. Frown and shock are associated with anguish often enough that when I put a frown on one of my girls while she’s being molested by tentacles, some audience translated it as her not enjoying it. This is fair. Shouldn’t she be smiling if she’s enjoying it? But I’ve rarely seen a woman who can hysterically laugh or smile at a climax without a hint of a frown. It’s an intense feeling for some people where common sense goes out the window. It’s like listening to intense music one enjoys and frowning while emotionally diving into it. Singers do this often. It’d be weird for me if she just peacefully or frantically smiled. So I put a frown on one and now we’re not sure if she’s happy in there. And it’s a woman being molested inside of a monster. So of course we’d assume terror when seeing a frown in it. That’s the reference that we have in our cultures such as from movies. This is the reference point that I had a difficult time channeling the audience to balance with the images alone. This is why I have to write.
As infuriating as I am about not being able to find a singular ultimate solution to all my storytelling problems, I accept this dance and I look forward to working more for it. It’s an interesting challenge for me and I felt it’s been pretty fun and dynamic so far.
Major stories in development so far:
I’m glad I did a quick survey not so long ago about how the ladies would feel in a lewd flesh wall and storytelling preference between written and painted.
This gave me some focus on how I would tell stories and now I’d like them to be mostly written for a while.
Here is the list of some bigger story concepts made and tucked away so far:
1. A story where an explorer/scientist is trapped in some sort of a time-loop purgatory. She explores an anomaly that is a ruined human city now occupied by tumorous flesh structures and their inhabitant creatures that find her irresistible. Then she finds out that when she wakes up from sleep, unconsciousness, or death, she finds herself in a different time in the same place, sometimes waking up in a distant future, sometimes in the past, and sometimes just missing her other self in the present while watching what is happening to her. ‘That’s what happened to me the last time I met those creatures? Or is that something that’s going to happen to me later?’. Her goal is to find out what is causing this and solve this mystery. Meanwhile, she keeps finding *spoilers* *bleep*. And she learns to play with its eroticism.
This is largely inspired by the video game Returnal (and another horror-themed story that I can’t remember at the moment).
This was a comic book idea a couple of years back and had a phase 1 part of the story draft written. It’s been halted because the visual art wasn’t quite where I wanted it to be and I lost track of the story while figuring that out.
I will definitely be getting back to it.
2. A story in which the main character is the tentacle eldritch monster woken up by a human female-like entity who claims she is not a human but more of a guide to the main character created by an unknown origin. The main character is weak and small initially and its guide helps it a lot. But it is able to possess other beings and grow (similar to the monster from The Thing). Its humanoid companion allows it to do anything it wants with her, and eventually, her attractiveness leads it to explore her sexual side. She, also, grows her personality as the story progresses and eventually gets into identity/relationship-related drama and asks some ethical questions which later can develop into deeper personal intimate situations. They explore a ruin of sorts, part temple, part lab, to discover who they’re meant to be and how they were created. But their challenge is made more difficult because of all the hostile creatures residing where they must explore and the two main characters try to take advantage of this to progress further into this ruin that they are trapped in.
This is another one heavily inspired by a video game. This one is from Dragon’s Dogma. I thought it was kinda creepy how I can choose the shape and personality of a “pawn”, as the story calls this companion, who is basically human in biology but whose personality is essentially a house chore bot (which I thought was explained decently well why they might be like that later in the story when I put some puzzle pieces together). This is also happening in a world full of fantasy monsters. And some trolls have women as their preferred prey. I had one fight in a cave where a troll took a lady pawn of mine, ran deeper into the cave where two more trolls started rampaging, and it started eating her while she was trapped in it, groaning, and struggling. The rest of us were too busy with the other trolls to save her for a while but I was eventually able to break her free from the troll eating her face. And I thought, ‘Well, this is awful. We’re all gonna die and she most disturbingly so. But it’s kinda hot.’
It’s in the early draft stage and it has about one chapter story arc done. I’m still figuring out the lore for them to explore with this one.
3. A choose-your-own-story type.
A girl on a beach, explores a cave, flesh monster, leave the cave or explore further? On the next page, you are the monster, how would you treat this woman? On the next, you are the woman again and now interacting with the monster that you made to do things to you earlier, and so on.
I had an idea of how I can use some of my online gallery functions for this and I thought this one might be fun to go through.
The draft and structuring the mechanic are finished and I just need to write the full version of it and some visual artwork, likely pixel GIF animation loops, more complicated art style for pixel art than my previous ones but fewer frames to loop so it’ll look more like a retro still image that moves slightly.
This will be gradually updated rather than uploading everything all at once so it doesn’t take forever to make, I’d get some feedback while it happens, and I thought this would help me with my motivation as well. I can post stories first and images later after I finish polishing them. If any story choices need fixing, updating, or expanding, I can make quick adjustments. It’ll be a bigger project that's not too serious and therefore not too stressful and hopefully, more fun to work with.
Originally, this story would contain more creatures and environments such as some horny and not-so-pretty mermaids, mind-breaking jellyfish, giant starfish trap, giant swamp leeches, a ghostly slender witch, a giant toad, One of the forests has flesh trees, there is a cave where all her ending faiths are displayed all at once, and such, all to get to a village (sequel) or readers being able to switch to different story branches depending on choices but without ever looping. This draft is also completed too and I was quite proud of that. But this was a bit too ambitious in scale and it was hard to focus on a theme because I was too busy trying to make the mechanics work, ending up with too many uninteresting story-bridging pages. So I simplified it into one theme that I like and expanded upon it.
If it does go well, I’ll probably make a larger-scale one later.
4. A story where an explorer travels across the galaxy meeting different cultures, characters, and aliens.
A few phases of the story draft were written then I had writer’s block. The storytelling structure was also designed as a comic book. Considering how I’m struggling to make a comic book as well, it was like having writer’s block on top of another.
The dialogues for this that have been written so far are quite short. It was more to show the story while the main character casually remarks on some significant events that happen or pass by, never clinging to one story plot for too long. Some of these were making love with an alien entity that invaded her spaceship (where she just says, “I came across with an interesting traveling companion”) or some severe brooding purist cultists trying to destroy her because of it (“Then there are these guys”).
The tone of it is inspired by the comic book “Saga”.
And while the story will probably not get that level of treatment, I thought the universe and cultures I’ve developed for this have some interesting sides and I’m hoping the novel book format can bring some light to it in the future.
Outside of these works, some life issues of mine have been distracting me quite a bit.
The biggest one is my visa situation. A flimsy one, that. Some of you might understand. And my goal is a residency. I’ll likely need a higher qualification job than what I have and in specific fields that this country is low on staff of, meaning more distraction from what I’m actually passionate about.
The other ones are painting some animal portraits for my friends or their friends because their pets are dead or dying and their owners are grieving and they figured it’s comforting gifts.
Studying a few philosophies. I’ve been suggested some audiobooks that might help my mentality of things. And I’d like to discuss them with the person who suggested them and maybe even the authors. There were some good directions and different ways of seeing things that I liked. But there were too many hypocrisies and self-righteousness, so many things that they say one shouldn’t do except the ways that they do them, maybe even some naive mindset for an ideal world. I’d like them to tell me what they should mean or if they are aware of what they’re suggesting.
Routine chores are the standard job fatigue and time restraints from it, looking after the property I’m living in because I love the place, and etc etc.
It’s been like this for some while and they had to take priority as having a roof over my head is depending on them.
But as I go through them, especially the immigration one, my projects should pick up the pace.
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