• art: I did a little pixel animation and a lot of doodling trying to remember how to draw. Almost a bit of character design, too.

  My pixel art keeps getting compliments, which is really cool, but at the same time I’ve been frustrated with how lackluster my non-pixely art is. I tried repainting an idea from last year on a whim, but used the DB32 palette (which I’ve used for pixel art before), and it came out kind of_amazing_. So that confirms my problem is color, and it’s given me a few ideas for how to think about color differently.

• isaac: Level transitions now work, though the spawn point is still ignored, so it’s pretty common to get stuck in a wall. Isaac grew a simple jump animation and a… sleepytime sequence. The appearing platforms now look much better, and the resurrection rune is now animated.

  The cave texture I had was kind of underwhelming, so I tried drawing a new one at a higher resolution. That stood out way too much, but after a few attempts and refinements, I ended up with something very nice that also lets me draw edge tiles fairly easily. I also wrote a shader from scratch for the very first time and was reminded of what a pain GLSL is!

  Between using a textured blending brush for a Bob Ross style background in the above painting, and a whole lot of studying Cave Story art (and actual cave walls) before finally landing on the tiles above, I feel like I’ve finally started to grasp some deeper idea about how the illusion of depth and form works.

• music: Finally, finally tried my hand at this for real. I even made a whole song, which is not very good, but is better than having made zero songs. I’ve sketched out a bunch of simple melodies, but none of them are particularly great yet; it’s going to take a lot of experimentation before I can really make any music worthy of putting in Isaac HD.

  I also worked on recreating sound effects, with some modest success. I’m not satisfied with what I have yet, but I’ve learned a lot about combining waveforms and how to use a bunch of knobs in LMMS. (I must’ve spent four to six hours just trying to make a satisfying grinding-rock sound.)

• veekun: I tracked down where most of the remaining Sun/Moon data is. I’m still, er, trying to finish the game, but I’m getting close to the end, I think!

I’m having to teach myself half a dozen new things at once for the sake of Isaac HD, which feels like slow going but is ultimately kind of great. I think I’m on a good pace to have the original levels playable by the end of the month. (I don’t intend to stop there by any means, but it’s a great milestone.)

Not having four lengthy posts looming all month is a huge weight off my shoulders, by the way. I’ve barely even thought about writing tons of prose in a week and a half, and now I have enough prose juice saved up that working on a book for a while is sounding appealing! This is great. Thanks, y’all. ♥