Magfest was a lot of fun this year. That's pretty standard. I was a lot more tired going into the convention this year because of an intense vacation near the end of December--you know, one of those vacations where you come home more exhausted than before you left and you want a real vacation from the vacation.
Anyways, I think I spent most of this convention in panels. I'm going to go off on a bit of a "Magfest is the best" thing here. I really feel that Magfest goes out of its way to have outstanding programming. Their events are good. Their panels are great, and cover a wide variety of topics. There is always something interesting going on. This year I attended a mix of cosplay makerspace panels, tabletop panels, and MAGES panels. I gave a panel in MAGES on tabletop roleplaying and relationships with Shaun as a follow-up to last year's panel on gaming in general as a couple. We got a bunch of questions related to roleplaying games after that panel, so we put together one on that topic. He gave two other panels that went over well. I think the only thing I've ever been super meh about was the Marketplace. There were many years where the vendor space was too small. This year, there just wasn't much that I wanted to see. I think my favorite vendor was the leather vendor in the very back of the room, who sadly does not have a website to share with everyone. They had some really cool binders and DM screens in tooled leather, and I really need to get one of the leather tunics they have... one of these years, when I have more money.
Anyways, most of the panels and events I attended this year were fantastic. They were either interesting or informative, and bonus if they were both. I came home super motivated to get back into cosplaying, which I've wanted to do for awhile now. I have ideas for several original cosplay designs, plus I have a long list of characters I want to cosplay. I'm also really excited about pushing forward on several of our larger (and smaller) projects. I'm not going to say a lot about them right now, since they've technically been on the board for a couple of years now, and although close to completion now (relatively), I don't have a clear idea of when exactly they will be done. Assuming I can stay out of the hospital this year and have no more major issues, then I'm pretty sure we'll start seeing some of these things wrap up early this year, but I've been saying that for a couple years now, and so far it hasn't worked. =P Anyways, I'll post when things actually happen.
All in all, Magfest was the best way to start 2019.
My family got a Switch for Christmas two years ago. It's been monopolized primarily by my kids and my husband, but I recently picked up Octopath Traveler to play on it. I loved Bravely Default, and Octopath Traveler seems to be cut from the same mold--I'm a big fan of old-style RPG games. I never transitioned well to the 3-D environments, so I appreciate games like these that are throwbacks to older graphical styles. I had high expectations for Octopath Traveler, and this post is going to be my opinion on the game, at least as far as I've played.
I have played through each character's first chapter. I have been struggling through the second chapters and side quests. I'm not sure if the combat system just didn't click--I mean, I understand the break system with the weapon/elemental weaknesses, but there also seems to be bias toward certain characters in certain parts of the game. For example, I played through Tressa's second chapter. Clearly Tressa is required, but my impression was that the other three character slots could be filled with whoever I wanted (true) and it would be decently effective (false). In this example, you cannot complete this chapter without Ophilia. I am getting the idea I will be wanting Ophilia in most of my parties in this game. That frustrates me because I don't particularly like playing with that character.
I've also found some of the side quests frustrating because the recommended level does not seem to match the actual difficulty of the quest. Or maybe this goes back to not understanding how the characters work together, and I need to be playing with a different group. I think I've gotten decent equipment for my party, but maybe not. I feel like I'm missing something with it, and it shouldn't be this frustrating.
I'm going to put it down for a little bit, but I do plan on eventually trying to finish it. Another potential problem is that I do tend to play the game around 3 a.m., which is probably not the best time to do anything that requires any amount of coherence. =P Maybe I'll have better luck when I have a little more time to play the game.
I'm attempting to move away from using Photoshop and using Clip Studio entirely. I recently invested in a Microsoft Surface Pro, and Clip Studio runs better on it. Normally I use Photoshop to do all my coloring, but I am attempting to learn to use Clip Studio for that now. This means that I am moving a little slower than I'd like.
Like I said last week, I will be working primarily on smaller things. This is going to be released as a badge and a button (and maybe a sticker too, but doing stickers might be chasing squirrels at this time).
I meant to publish a post reflecting on Magfest, which was this past weekend. So, this post is just going to be a quick summary of my last couple of days.
To provide some context, we broke our van while we were in vacation in Florida, Orlando area, in December, and we had to leave it in Florida for repairs. And that's all the backstory we need for this post. =P
Fast forward to last Sunday. We packed up to leave Magfest mid-morning and drove to North Carolina -- we live in the south central part of the state. This was about 6 hours give or take. Once we reached NC, I changed cars and people I was riding with and left again. From NC, we drove to the north part of Orlando, FL. I did this because I had received word while at Magfest that our van would be fixed and ready to pick up Monday. Monday morning, we drove to the car place where we dropped the van off, because I had been repeatedly told to pick up the van where we dropped it off. We got there and the receptionist gave me an odd look and said, "Ooh, I'm sorry, but your vehicle is in another castle [location]." I knew that they had sent the van to another location to complete repairs because they had an earlier opening to start the repairs. They were supposed to have sent it back to the original location. Communication clearly broke down because the van was not returned, and I was not informed of the change in pick-up location. This was mostly a nuisance and a lot of extra driving. Moving on, I finally got the van yesterday around lunch time, and I spent the rest of my Monday driving back to North Carolina.
Needless to say, I am very tired of being in the car. I did not get time to put together a post for Magfest, because I'm pretty sure driving and typing are incompatible activities. XD Anyways, I'll put up a reflection on Magfest in a week or so.
Shaun and I will be at MAGFest this year as attendees and panelists. We have two panels this year!
Shaun will be on a panel this morning at 10:30 on Heroes. This is a group discussion on how video game heroes have changed over the years. Many of the tropes that characterized the heroes of our childhood no longer apply to the game heroes of today. Why? What makes a hero now? He and his fellow panelists will be addressing these and other questions.
Tomorrow (Saturday) at 11:30, Shaun and I will be giving a panel together on relationships and tabletop RPG gaming. We've been married for almost 19 years, and playing RPG games like Dungeons and Dragons has been a big part of our relationship. We're going to address topics like playing together as a couple and how that might affect game dynamics. We're going to look at how other players might perceive the impact of the relationship, especially if one involved is the GM. We're also going to look at how to handle couples when they are inattentive and distracted or when things are going south in the relationship and the toxicity is spreading into the game. This is a more focused version of the panel we gave last year. I'm looking forward to it. Yay! My second panel.
If you're going to be at MAGFest, please stop by our panels! Of course, if these topics don't interest you, don't come. =P We won't be offended. Both panels will be in the MAGES section.
It's been a while. I've been ill, and it turns out I'm allergic to most of the meds they like to put you on for the stuff I've been dealing with. Shaun has been ill. Shaun had to work an overload at work--as a teacher, this means he's teaching more than a full load of classes. 2018 was not a great year for us. All of this has also made it difficult to keep working on art or anything fun while keeping up with our day jobs. That also made 2018 a not so fun year because doing nothing but being sick or working sucks. I have high hopes that 2019 will be a better year. I'm trying to keep my goals and plans reasonable because at this time we both still have full time jobs, and we are still dealing with some of the medical issues from 2018 (better than last year, but it's the kind of thing that takes time to manage/recover from). So, here are some things we're going to be doing (or trying to do this year). I'm excited to see what actually happens.
1. Blogging: We are going to try and get the blog back up (again). I want to go back to regular posting Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
2. YouTube: We are going to try and put together some YouTube videos. Especially for the first part of the year, this will be experimental and something we will be playing around with, seeing what works and what doesn't, but since Shaun's field and area of interest is in film, he's been itching to get back into production. We may do some Vlogging. I may do some live drawing or crafting or whatever. We may do some game play throughs--we have gotten a request to do Doki Doki Literature Club. All in all, not sure what exactly will show up here or will come from it, but I'm definitely curious. I will post here if/when we get this up.
3. Art: Since this is an art studio, I, of course, plan on creating some art. Because I am limited on my ability to travel this year and taking everything is also difficult, I am going to be limiting most of my new creations this year to smaller items: badges, buttons, and bookmarks. I think this will keep my table space from being so cluttered because I am going to keep it to just 1 table. It's also easier to travel with the smaller items. Most larger items (mostly prints) will be available online only. Ideally, I'll be able to get 1 new piece done each week, since I will be mostly working on smaller pieces. That may be a bit ambitious, but we'll see.
4. Other things: There are, of course, a lot of other things I'd love to work on. I have a lot of print ideas, and I may work on a few of those even if they're not my focus for this year. We also have a couple of games we are working on (a card game, a 5e version of Anime D20, and an app). I would also love to make some costumes because I miss cosplay. I'm also going to try to post more regularly on Social Media. I'm not really a Social Media kind of person, but since I won't be attending very many conventions, this will be my only way to interact with people, so I'm going to have to figure this stuff out. Ideally I'll post consistently around Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr, which are the sites I have accounts on for now, but right now, posting at all could be considered an accomplishment. =P I'd also love to see my website regularly updated, so that the content on it is more accurate. This would be good since I've been moving away from Etsy, and I plan on selling directly from my website.
5. Manic Mysteries: This will be a 6-12 episode (at least 6, but we might write more) audio series. This is one of those just for fun projects that we've been working on off and on for the last year. Hopefully we will have the first 6 episodes ready for release starting this summer.
So, Ekoja was going to post this week, but he's been down and out for the last several days with the flu, so you've got me again. =P I'm writing this now on severe sleep deprivation, so prepare for a lot of rambling and possible incoherence.
Ekoja is still working on his mystery podcast, although progress has been slowed by illness. I'm drawing... all the things. Follow my instagram for WIP pictures. I'm still working on getting into a good groove for posting on there, but that is where I'm posting most of my progress pictures and finished pictures. And also cats. And occasionally some other more personal things, mostly fun shenanigans, like the 2 headed snowman my kids built when it actually snowed here or Sophie's hair when I put it up in a Rapunzel-inspired braid. But it will mostly be WIP and cats.
I'm almost finished with the next chibigurumi plushie, and I look forward to sharing that with early in March. I might link that from here. I will definitely share it from my Facebook page. You can see the Pikachu I finished for this month on my Etsy.
Since we design games, we also play a lot of games. We meet with friends once a month to play some kind of tabletop role-playing game. Usually it's D&D or Pathfinder. This month we started a Starfinder campaign. I'm not super-hyped on the setting, but then I'm not really into sci-fi in general so it's nothing personal. I do, however, love my character. I'm playing an Android Envoy. I'm playing her like a bard, so think Vocaloid. Her name is Muse. I really appreciate that our current GM is flexible with how we play our characters and what we can do with them. Even if we're following a set adventure, it doesn't feel like we're being led along or shoe-horned into a particular course of action. Needless to say, I had fun. Most of our group seems pretty pleased with the Starfinder system. My participation was limited to primarily skill checks (by choice because that's how I'm playing this character) so I can't speak personally, but by the overall positive response from the others, it seems like it's a pretty solid system.
I've also been watching things. I'm slowly working my way though a bunch of things, like only watching one episode or so at a time over a longer period of time. So, if I watch 3 episodes in one evening, they're from 3 different shows. Right now I'm watching Shannara, The Irregular at Magic High School, and Your Lie in April. The Shannara series appeals to me because I read and loved the books when I was younger, and although the series follows one of my least favorite books from the series (The Elfstones of Shannara) it's not horrible (actually I'm kind of enjoying it, although I wish the main characters behaved a little less like teenagers). I'm still undecided on The Irregular at Magic High School. I'm going to give it a fair chance, but I do find the way the sister flirts with her brother a little creepy personally. I'm waiting for the plot, as I've only watched the first episode or two where they're introducing characters and setting. However, I am loving Your Lie in April. I think it probably appeals to me because of the music theme. I used to play music when I was in middle school and high school, and even a little in college. I have not played in a very long time. Sometimes I miss it too. I'm going to watch an episode of this when I take my break at work tonight to eat my dinner/breakfast meal thing. On this note, I'm feeling inspired to add Lord of the Rings and Shannara (based on books not so much the series on Netflix). I'm also considering doing some bookmarks for some of the Pern books as well. Because the world always needs more bookmarks for people like me who just cannot transition to digital books.
