I feel kinda awkward doing these in public, it seems unprofessional, but I feel like I really need to be scrutinised. And so! March-april happenings.

The game I've been working on at CA comes out soon, like, April 19th so..next Thursday! Check it out if you like strategy and stuff, I'll probably post a link to it on the day.

On to more pressing matters, namely art rehab.

The end of march saw me taking part in Molyjam, which was quite a boost, its been a while since I fully immersed myself in that way of thinking, I've always had one foot in that kinda... bizarre/pretentious/arty game pool, Its the kind of thing which gets me excited about games, though not necessarily the only thing, or the most satisfying thing.

My problem now is that I really need an attitude check. My art has been kinda deflated recently, partly because I spent so much of 2010 and 2011 depressed that I lost a lot of the 'professional' arty mindset which has held me in a bit of a better place for progression in the past, and partly because my attitude is starting to stink up the place a bit.

I dont really want to go into a rant on how I see games or the state of the industry or whatever, but a lot of bitterness has crept in which I'm kind of sick of dealing with. Again, I'm not really going to go into where that came from. I've always had my own taste in games and the more mainstream stuff like COD doesn't really register on my radar as a gamer, but more recently I've started to rage out against pretty much any genre which doesn't accommodate for adorable furry animals with nice things to say, as a point of protest more than anything- its not like Silent Hill has those, and I respect the heck out of that series.

Its fine to have ones own point of view, but it has got to the point where I've pretentious/twee'd myself into a corner, and refuse to allow myself to draw like, a human fantasy warrior or something, because I 'dont like that games are kinda strictly genre-ified at the moment', 'moreso than they used to be', and 'fantasy warrior' is a bit of a cliché.

See what I mean though? Its kinda insufferable, I dont really agree with myself there either, and its pwning my art because the only alternative to 'hurr cliche' is 'abstract/graphic as fuck', which is all well and good, but it doesnt exactly give my skills a good workout, and its a terrible attitude, because its not like everything that high fantasy or space marines or whatever has to offer has been covered already.

I need more of this [link]

And less of this [link]

Or at least, fuck, turning the latter into something which would actually have any kind of relevance to anything beyond ' its kinda weird and I played about with brushes a bit'.

I was told as much at Animex this year, I was told as much fucking 4 years ago when I graduated, but life has been a bit of a swirling clusterfuck of trying to learn how to walk since then, and I think I kinda went from learning how to walk to attempting to learn how to run without much of the whole ' learning how to actually reach a destination' thing inbetween.

And I'm still blocked, I'm blocked by my abysmal attitude, and I'm blocked by the fact that I let my self discipline slip, and I'm forever blocked by the confidence peaks and troughs which come alongside not being happy with my performance lately. . And this shit has to change, because I'm sick of running round in circles.