Yet another surreal year of a surreal life. This year, a lot of positive progress has been made. I have started Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to remedy the constant self-criticism and berating, I am more outgoing and more approachable than I ever was before.
The first notably bizarre event of the year was the rediscovery of my SD Cards and recovery of their contents, which were lost in late November 2021. This all happened in late March 2023.
The second surreal event came on July 21st and 22nd respectively. In which I left a school I had been attending for over 13 years (September 2009 - July 2023), prompting an album.
This year also had its negatives, in which the chaos from October 2022 still persisted until only recently. Another notable event of the year was a betrayal I suffered at the hands of a former close friend of mine, whom denounced the fact that I had endured abuse for most of my life at the hands of my father, calling me a "liar.". Whilst, simultaneously, I build a stronger and closer friendship with an entirely different person, which spawned its own uniquely titled album.
Another thing I'd like to point out, on the topic of my former supposed "friend" calling me a "liar" is this: For years, I thought it was normal to be in an abusive home. Being berated, dehumanised and insulted to my face and behind my back by a supposed "father figure". It was normal, however, since the chaos from last year has well-beyond settled, I now can rationalise my feelings and realisations. Since I realised the fact that I was abused and traumatised, I began to feel a deep sense of resentment, anger and pain. As well as hatred and bitterness towards my father. These feelings have not gone away and will persist for a long while. I have a haunted past that affects me even today and it will take a while before I am strong enough to face it. That is, by seeing my father.
As such, this delightfully surreal year has got a unique name all to its own: "Achieving Salvation? - The Great Pendulum", since it has its fair share of positive and negative experiences. Since this year is a continuance of 2022, there's a reason the word "Salvation" appears here, as that's what the mission was and currently is, for this ongoing period of my life. The words "Great" and "Pendulum" also appear here, because of how quickly my mental state would switch from being in a positive frame of mind, to a negative and depressive state, which has persisted irregularly throughout this whole entire year.
Link: SY_1 - S-R_1 - Achieving Salvation? - The Great Pendulum (2023) : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
I thought I'd look at games that have a similar art style to mine being black and white, monochrome to give me some ideas and inspiration and make me think about how I should go about creating everything.
Hero core was an old black and white shooter game that was very pixely and whilst I thought it looked nice it didn't feel like it would be the right style for my game. Minit and gato roboto were also games I also looked at and it had a very similar style to hero core.
Echo chrome was a game that I thought looked very stylistic and phenomenal with it all looking hand drawn and playing with the ide of shadows but I thought personally I don't have the skill or patience to make a game like this one.
Limbo is a game I looked at and instantly fell in love with the art style and design, the character design with the two small pin eyes was something I liked the idea of, the sleekness of it all and the contrast of everything felt perfect in my eyes, the sleek style is something I wanted to incorporate in my own game.
I also admired the game Inside for similar reasons to limbo with its bleak sad dystopian style of it all.
Mad world was a black and white game with a very stylized manga and anime comicbook style look to it, personally I wasn't a huge fan of this style.
Return of the obra dim was another game I looked at and it also gave me a similar feel in design sense to Mad world
Plug and Play is an absolute classic award wining short but sweet game that I remember from way back that had a very basic style with not any background decoration and everything just being the solid colours black and white I thought it looked very modern and appealing to the eye and I took inspiration from this game for my design work
Trek To Yomi is a side scroller samurai type game that is very appeasing to the eye and has a similar feel to kurosawas black and white samurai films this game makes the monochrome look contrast well and really pop by having the foreground and surroundings black and white greyish light shining down upon you
The very popular game bendy and the ink machine is a game that uses the black and white art style in an effective way as the title suggests its all about ink, its darkblack sludginess effect it gives off makes the game look eerie and is effective, I liked this style but my game is going to be a more 2d cartoony type of style
Logos I made for a class assignment. We were required to make logos for the Vancouver business Dark Black. Mine are inspired by the third quarter moon! #buisness #buisnesslogo #moon#thirdquartermoon #dark #black #darkblack#logo #logos #graphicdesign#graphicdesigner