long time no blog. i got caught up with artfight prep, con prep, and a whole thing and a half with a nightmare of an event organizer.

where did the time go!!! i feel like ive been busy since february. ugh.

i wouldve wanted to update my site much earlier, but i lost steam in the middle of planning out a fiorethan page. i couldnt figure out the layout and saving all my doodles instead of screenshot-copy-pasting was too much of a hassle that i kinda forgot about it.

this blog post's format is inspired by LEN's.

what ive been up to

• artists' drive for drivers [instagram]: i was an artist for a fundraiser for PUV (Public Utility Vehicle) drivers in the philippines, whose livelihoods are affected by rising fuel prices. we raised almost 50,000 pesos - 800+ USD (!!) - and funds went to PISTON Land Transport Coalition, who will be providing relief packs and hot meals for PUV drivers. i might make a gallery for the art ive done for this.
• commissions: semi-related to the above. i did like two sticker sheets and then got thrown into 40+ commissions for the fundraiser. vgen link plug!
• con prep: honestly ive been kind of slacking on this because of more immediate deadlines (see above). ive got two cons this month.
• driving lessons: taking my theoretical driving lessons. my girlfriend makes fun of me for being a man that cant drive his girlfriend around
• akiba amakuma: a maid cafe collaboration for maid day. anyone is free to submit entries, i hope mine gets accepted or i might DIE. i banged out my entry in three days so i could meet the deadline. it's fiore, of course.
• small challenge - 1 personal art piece per month: i want to do more finished personal pieces! prompted by seeing my ethan art summary of 2025 and having trouble finding pieces to add for each month. i am still going strong (thank god for february, huh), commissions have been kind of killing me though
• gamedev: still developing a game with my girlfriend! i forgot if i mentioned this before, my girlfriend and i are back to working on journalistgame (and hopefully we'll have a demo soon for real).

other stuff

non-art stuff have been a blur. ive been enjoying slay the spire 2 a lot - my friend showed me the power of silent shiv build and i just rode that all the way to a10. ive barely touched any of the other characters.

its also hot as FUCK here right now. the heat index / 'feels like' heat has regularly been over 40c. ive been relying on cold drinks so i dont die from the heat. i can turn on my air conditioning but i want to save on the electricity bill..

more testosterone progress! i am getting noticeable body hair & started shaving every other day (especially if im going out). i hope for more bottom growth. skin is oily as fuck and i have acne EVERYWHERE. i think my hairline is also starting to masculinize. i hope i dont go bald. i probably need to get another blood test because the injection site was probably full of tgel.

the new tomodachi life! i'm remembering OCs i completely forgot existed. it's fun. i got my friend who hasn't played video games in a while to. play video games.

ive also bought a few commissions & received some gift art! mostly fiore because she's my favorite and im greedy. one day i'll set up a fiore shrine. i also have 2 fiore comms marked as WIP. exciting.

more comms

nsfw/suggestive comms

tomato egg stir fry

ive been big on tomato egg stir fry with all the cherry tomatoes my family's been buying. my recipe is adapted from the woks of life and chinese cooking demystified's whampoa eggs but the latter is halved and measuring is my least favorite thing. so heres my recipe for the people who are lazy as FUCK

i just eat this on its own as a snack. its the best when the egg is a bit runny and theres a bit of sauce from the tomatoes. the fried shallots & sugar give it a nice sweetness, and i love the flavors of the shaoxing wine + sesame oil. tomatoes are always good.

i'm not gonna lie, it's been a lot! i've also signed up for doodles4palestine because i love doing charity commissions and being busy and having no time for anything else (joke). i want to open commissions for myself again & ive got one waitlisted for late may. i also have an art trade to do! i'll also focus more on gamedev when i dont have upcoming cons.

extra gallery

done with my third month-long oc art challenge! if you haven't checked it out, go look at fiorebruary now. i am very proud of it. out of the past three i've done i've enjoyed it the most, it's probably my best one yet. it's a satisfying feeling being able to draw backgrounds and interesting lighting and actually like it.

for once, i find myself missing it after it's done. (i've been filling the hole in my heart with fiorethan doodles.) i'm not used to this. my past two challenges always ended in relief that it was over. there was a little bit of that "thinking you have an assignment doubl when it's summer" feeling for a few days, but never like this.

when i close my eyes, i think about thumbnailing and drawing lighting. when i go shower and apply my tgel i keep needing to remind myself that i can take my time, i don't need to rush back to my computer to draw. maybe 28 days is too short. maybe i want to draw more fiore scenes. maybe i miss seeing her scarred face and fiery red hair, her beautiful brown eyes staring back at me from the canvas. huh whuh what were we talking about

i hope this isn't too difficult to read! i did my best to write an outline and re-read this a few times but i tend to get very rambly. apologies.

the challenge

same challenge as usual: draw an OC every day for the entire month. this time, it's fiore! she's also the current featured OC if you want to know a little bit about her. i'm kind of obsessed with her. (this part is important and helps me stay motivated to draw the same character every day.)

i also use these challenges as an opportunity to try something new. in august august, i was learning color palettes, mood, and building my confidence to draw scenes. in ethantember, i was a bit more familiar with scenes and color palettes, and decided to go full send into backgrounds. these daily drawings are supposed to be quicker than a full piece, not-extremely-high effort, and done in one sitting as to make "trying something new" less overwhelming for myself.

with jujutsu kaisen season 3 airing and and largeonions' 100 days of arknights challenge [youtube] fresh in my mind, i settled with "movie stills" for fiorebruary (or at least, more scene-like and cinematic shots).

i love how the jjk epsiodes have been feeling like short films. there's so much detail and effort into the animation, the camera angles are great and there's a lot of symbolism i thought was cool (yuji walking in a sunny path while megumi walks in a path with shade, etc etc). even the op and ed are great, i dont skip them when i watch. the last anime i did that with was link click s1. jjk exudes love for art. the opening is filled with references to famous paintings, of course the animation is gorgeous as always. i havent even watched kill bill but i thought the references in episode 3 were hype as fuck. i'm really sad gosso isn't directing the next season!

if you've seen largeonions' challenge, you can probably see its influence on fiorebruary! her 100 days of arknights illustrations were cinematic depictions of moments in arknights stories, as a dedication to her favorite operator nian (who is a film director). i watched her 33/100 video a while back. a lot of it still sticks in my head, and is the reason why i'm doing a wide movie ratio and letting myself add tons of adjustment layers for fun lighting and mood.

fiorebruary was very different from past challenges. i went for higher effort pieces - averaging about 3 hours per piece, while with previous challenges i only aimed for 90 minutes. i wasnt as strict with my process as before, either. the main reasons for this were: 1) i wanted to make these look cinematic with pretty lighting, and 2) i wanted to print these out and not have them come out extremely tiny. i wanted to have some fun now and not restrict myself too much after practicing colors, composition, and storytelling and just apply what ive learned over the months.

the process

for each piece, i'd sketch out one thumbnail, maybe more if i could think of any. this usually takes 30 minutes to 1 hour (maybe one and a half?) depending on how detailed i want the thumb, and includes blocking out lighting to figure out the subjects and composition. i'd start timing my process once i transfer this over to the proper canvas size. i'm honestly not sure why i didnt count thumbnailing time in the time taken in the fiorebruary page.

i always start with drawing fiore. for some reason i draw her bangs first LOL. if the pose and background were simple enough i'd just go straight to lineart, if not i'd probably do 1-2 sketch passes. after lineart i fill tool the colors or fill the background with an underpaint color and block out major sections of color, then i base my palette around that and pick colors until something fits.

then comes shading and lighting. for highlights i usually just draw with a whitish yellow and mess around with "add" and "overlay" layers. for shadows i pick the colors myself and just do minor adjustments with multiply layers (mostly for darkening areas, but i dont really like using multiply for shadows because it can look kinda muddy).

if i remember to, i play around with a few brushes for texture (rake brush and alcohol marker, these are most visible in fiore's hair highlights). then i paint over to add loose hair strands and highhlights. and thats pretty much it. very simplified, but yeah. unfortunately i dont take timelapse videos because they take up too much space in my computer.

i forgot how fun adjustment layers are to use. i dont usually use these because i dont want to depend on them too much but damn its fun putting on filters on your art. theyre also so useful for glow effects.

the things ive learned

i learned how to draw cars! well ONE car. and i still have trouble with it but i've been getting faster at it. it's fun. i'm growing as an artist by learning to draw armor, cars, guns, backgrounds, etc.

i also learned i really like hard lighting and rim lighting. i love it when the light hits an object and it almost just blends into the bright area with no shadows or lines separating them. i was very heavily inspired by my mutual pandocrow [instagram], whose lighting i really admire.

fiorebruary gave me the opportunity to execute ideas, knowledge, and techniques ive been wanting to try for forever, but either never had a chance to or was too overwhelming because it had to be part of a "full piece". so of course, the solution is to make 28 of them with time pressure. i know it sounds kinda silly but drawing more with quicker artworks helps a lot more for my art than drawing less with higher quality pieces. quantity over quality etc etc, the more you fail the more you learn.

i remember two years ago i'd see compositions with a character in front of a big cloud and thinking, "wow, i wanna do that!" and finally being able to draw a piece last year during ethantember. ive been wanting to draw dappled light, rim lighting, blurred foregrounds, reflections on glass, and so many cool shots and stills. and i did it during fiorebruary! awesome.

full pieces that take more than a day still scare me, i guess thats just a constant with me and digital art. at least ive branched out a bit from my usual plain white backgrounds.

the other day my girlfriend asked how i can come up with all these scenes. i thought for a while. i was flattered by the compliment but at a loss for words: i actually dont know! i can't explain it, but ill just see it in my head and then sketch it down. i was pretty surprised she said that, knowing that she's the movie watcher between the two of us.

sometimes it takes me a while to think, but her prompts push me in the right direction to imagine a cool looking piece. despite how much time i spend thinking and worrying about drawing, most of my ideas come to me when i'm holding the pen. i'll start doing a thumbnail, then another idea will come to me in the middle of it, repeat this until i eventually come up with something i wanna go with. i've kind of always been like that though whenever i have a deadline. i always found that the idea of starting a creative project/art piece is a lot scarier than the act of starting it.

my god hard lighting is a cheat code to make art look pretty though. a lot of the pieces i mightve disliked are saved by hard light.

fiore

fiore kind of hit me like a truck. i drew her maybe last year january. come march, she was already taking over my mind.

the file is somewhere but i cant be bothered to look for it - fiore's original concept was called "gojo cat". as in satoru gojo. she had white hair, a hime cut, and sunglasses. honestly she hasnt really changed much apart from her outfit and the fact that shes a trans woman, i originally made her nonbinary but changed my mind. (u can see the boob growth from pic 1 to pic 2, estrogen is good to her. this is pre-BA because her boobs are still kinda small. half joking) if im being completely honest her hair is based on the porter robinson's hair in his cheerleader MV with the short brown hair, bangs, and red highlights. or at least, it was how i remembered it to look.

i started considering fiorebruary after finishing ethantember. it was initially a joke, but over time my obsession with fiore kept growing and eventually jan 31 hit and i was like yeah, i'm doing fiorebruary.

as a character i think shes very cool and awesome. i dont have the vocabulary nor eloquence i'd like to talk about her, i think her story is super cool and i enjoy the freedom theme very much. its both freedom in a positive way (hometown responsibilities and organized crime) and a negative way (her family is dead). its also a transgender allegory but shes already in the late stages of transitioning. and of course i have a huge crush on her. embarrassing!

i enjoyed this one a lot more than ethantember too, fiore has a bit more action in her life and a future story written so i got to draw a few more intense, not-so-slice-of-life scenes too. ethan is kind of just a guy nowadays, though this'll probably change as my girlfriend continues to write journalistgame. i liked adding in the pieces that show fiore's violent side (and covering her in blood)

i also think its pretty fucking cool shes a racing driver with lioness, tomato, and shark motifs. i love tomatoes. ive also begun to love her car a lot.

i've also been thinking a lot about fiorethan lately, i just really like their dynamic. it's a little basic, just a heated rivalry (dont talk to me about the show ive never watched it) with sexual tension that became a very close platonic relationship. theyve tried and a romantic relationship probably wouldnt work out (i disagree) but they still very much care about each other and arent scared of being intimate or fucking (though they probably wouldnt say it out loud). camille is cool with this & also joins in for the fucking and is close with fiore too. maybe camillefiorethan are poly LMAO.

i'm also very thankful for D4RKN55, a car girl who happened to come across my day 3 artwork. i honestly wasn't expecting anyone to enjoy the car references this much (and not like i knew how to make any deep ones)! i did have some motorsports mutuals but i didnt think this would hit anyone that hard, i'm really happy it did. this made my entire month and more! she stuck around for the rest of the art too and i'm so so thankful. i'm a little starstruck really, she said she used to own an e24 AND was looking forward to learning more about fiore. i dont think my art's ever touched someone like this before, and my god it's an amazing feeling. i hope she has a wonderful life.

three years of challenges

its kind of wild to think about how far ive come, ive NEVER finished a "draw something every day" art challenge until august august 2024. i'd do like three or four days of inktober, maybe like 2 days of mermay before giving up. hell, i even attempted august august in 2023 but i did a few days before they started piling up. been going strong since august august 2024 though. (i'm so glad im picking these challenges on months where im not busy at all. if i didn't cancel my con i wouldn't even be writing this blog post!)

it amazes me to see just how different each of the "waking up" prompts look from each other. august august -> ethantember was a 13 month difference while ethantember -> fiorebruary was 5 months. maybe not completely comparable though, fiorebruary was intentionally much higher effort than the first two. i probably spent double the time on a fiorebruary piece than an ethantember piece.

till next time

its been almost two days since the end of fiorebruary as i write this, i'm missing this more than ive ever missed the other two. tomato hot pot broth and endfield BGM will forever taste like fiorebruary. my month long situationship with fiore changed my life (yuck)

ive always been a fan of the journey over the destination, my favorite parts of story games (library of ruina and 13 sentinels come to mind) have always been the mid-game where youre still making your way through everything and learning new things. i'm glad i can finally rest, but as i'm writing it i find myself partially wishing i was in the middle of the challenge with weeks to go. a mutual put it very nicely: "fiorebruary ending is like finishing ur fave series and feeling the bittersweet feeling of it ending" [oheyitsmar.bsky.social].

i dont really have a plan for a next challenge. maybe ill do ethantember again. maybe ill do another fiorebruary next year. who knows? i usually do these on impulse anyway, so ill cross that bridge when i get there.

very sorry this is very rambly, ive probably repeated myself in multiple places. if you got to this point, thanks for reading! if you liked this or fiorebruary, i'd appreciate it if you left a comment on my guestbook!

it's also my birth month now i'm gonna do a bunch more commissions so i can treat myself to beautiful fiore art. please vote on the poll btw tell me your favorite fiorebruary day. if you want to vote multiple times just open an incognito tab or wait a day.

edit: i forgot to say: i encourage you to do something like this too! doesn't have to be this time consuming per day or grand, just small doodles every day or every other day works too. i kind of set my own rules for this challenge, so feel free to do what you want. if you want to improve your art while being really obsessed with a character a challenge like this does help a lot. if you're really you could do 100 days but even im not that strong yet.

fiorebruary is done!!!!!! go look!

well i still want to maybe fix up the css and i still need to go back and add all the thumbnails. otherwise, finished! i've grown to like the basic html so i think i'll just do some minor changes. i also might go over and replace the images with lower-res versions but im not sure how much i care.

i want to do some kind of fiorefeb reflection/retrospective soon! wasnt able to do that with ethantember because i got too stuck, so i hope i can actually get something on my blog this time.

started my fiorebruary challenge! check it out.

this is the only thing here because i want people to see this on their rss feeds. i'll figure out the css later. i do have a cool idea for a movie theatre look but i have no idea how i'll fit all the commentary in there yet.

edit from the future: this was written on 01/27 but this will probably be posted at a later date

finally made a proper theme for this site & moved most things over to eleventy. things feel sooo much more organized and convenient to edit, I'm almost tempted to say I'm motivated to update this site more often (when I know I'll probably come back to this maybe five more times this year lol). I hope this font is more readable, I really like pixel fonts but they're usually kinda small and don't scale well. as much as I love Helvetipixel it strains my eyes when it's a lot of text. this one's called Bigmalist by Chase_333.

vacation with da girlfriend

I went on a trip to Taiwan with my girlfriend recently! technically. we both had family trips there anyway so we met up and hung out. She finally found the flannel and leather jacket she's been looking for, I got a denim jacket and my grandma gave me 2 inch platform shoes lol. I also had the best beef noodle soup I've ever tasted in my life. It had tomato broth, of course. #TomatoLover

After getting back home I went out for Haidilao for the first time with friends. I get the hype now. The tomato broth was so good we were drinking that shit straight from the pot LMAO. Kiiinda pricey but I really want to go back. idk maybe I'm just hungry while writing this.

started hrt

I *did* actually start testosterone in January! My anniversary's on the 16th, just a day after Fiore's birthday (so close). Coming out was really smooth, my family was really supportive of me wanting to start HRT so soon. I started off with tgel first because I'm kind of bad with needles, I almost passed out during the blood draw. Not out of fear or anything I hope, but I didn't sleep a lot & didn't have a meal before it. Not the first time this has happened. I was fine after like 30 minutes though.

maybe it's just placebo but I've been told my voice is slightly deeper! awesome. i can also feel the bottom growth & the libido increase, they were right it did hit like a truck. I think I also have more energy and a bigger appetite but the latter was already pretty big pre-T (rubs my belly). I also still got my period, but it was meant to start around this time anyway so starting T probably wouldn't have made much of a difference.

convention & nostalgia & websites

finished my first convention of the year! it was a nostalgia-themed event so I had a lot of new merch (mostly fruitiger aero -- I still have a little bit of FOMO from missing out on my Australian art market last August). It was really fun overall! They played nostalgic songs and had a karaoke machine near the stage, the line for that was crazy. I also profited this time, after three shit events so that's really nice LMAO. not by a lot but it makes a big difference not being bored and doomscrolling most of the event, or suffering from food poisoning and period cramps.

I recently learned that the originals-only con I was part of last year was actually the lowest attended event the organizers had in 2025! that sucks. I do feel less bad that I didn't do well but GOD i've gotta get better at judging whether an event's gonna do well or not. the bigger originals-only con they had earlier in the year had more than seven times the attendance. that sucks. I got waitlisted for that one but I've yet to hear anything back. I hope I can manifest something by posting this entry LMAO.

the event itself is what inspired my site redo in the first place, actually. I made a "you should make a website" zine and I gave out about 15? copies. I honestly wasn't expecting people to be interested at all, I only printed that many because I figured people would just want to take it because it was free. I found it really touching that so many people WERE interested in it, and I do hope I convinced at least once person to pick up HTML and CSS and start working on a site. I was also really glad to meet starrs.neocities.org, who asked me if I had a Neocities and I immediately handed over my zine. I don't know a lot of locals with their own personal sites (not including strawpage or carrd).

I ended up drawing a LOT of fruitiger aero and sea animals, so that's why I'm wetting my site (as in, the water background, if it wasn't clear). I didn't think I'd enjoy drawing water and bubbles so much but now I kinda can't stop.

Here are some artworks and PNGs from this month. I really didn't expect to make three full pieces (not including commissions either) but I'm really proud of how they turned out:

still got a lot of things to work on -- I'm part of 2 zines and there's a third I really want to join that's opening apps on the 31st. i hope i'm not stretching myself thin with this. this is the first time in a looong time i've been excited to make fuller pieces and i hope i can keep it up without burning out.

that's all for now! thanks for reading this far. As a bonus, take this Code Vein 2 Fiore I've been losing my mind over. she's so handsome. she's so hot.

- hal

tempted to make a forum signature style thing to end all my blog posts. i also feel more inclined to write with proper capitalization when doing these longer form blog posts but i think theres a little bit of personality if it's inconsistent (what is this guy talking about?)

happy new year! things are getting busy again for me, i've got an artist alley in like, two weeks and i am nowhere near ready.

i started off my new year by getting sick. i got a pretty bad fever and cough out of nowhere and ive been taking ginger tea, decongestants, and paracetamol for the past few days. my sinuses were so congested i guess i couldn't taste anything for a whole day, i was kind of panicking i got covid again. which extra sucks because nobody else around me wears masks anymore.

that was a lie by the way. i actually started off my new year by coming out to my family. i went up to my mom in tears and for a couple minutes i feel like she was expecting me to tell her something horrible instead of that i was trans. i've been agonizing about how to tell her and what to say and all the possible scenarios and what to do for the past month? maybe two months? because at some point something changed and i just wanted to start T already. it went really well and now i feel kind of silly for worrying at all!

i was *supposed* to get my bloodwork done today actually, but i've still got a low grade fever so. next week it is!

i do feel a bit weird because now i'm not *as* restless or thinking about getting on HRT every waking second but i guess that's because its actually real. i am still really excited and i cant wait to put "💉XX/XX/XXXX" in bio when i finally start (but let's be real. i'm probably gonna start with gel because i am terrified of injections). i only came out to family and a few close friends, just because i think it'd be a little funny to surprise my cis friends if my voice gets deeper.

My god there's so many things i want to do this year (mostly art related). i want to finish the proof of concept of my girlfriend and i's overdue game jam submission so we can finally work on another game we've (she's) been planning on and off for the past few years. i want to design a horse character for lunar new year and develop more of the High Speed Regulation Group cast. i wanna take more commissions and take it more seriously. i wanna finish the cometwatchers' designs so i can make a pinup calendar LOL. i really REALLY want to get into the big all-originals artist alley this year.

i hope i can keep doing sticker mail regularly. the idea of a sticker club also sounds enticing, but there's a lot of planning behind the scenes that i don't know about yet - and i don't think i can fully trust phlpost just yet. it's also pretty unreliable to send things with philippine mail, even registered (ran into some issues with to a friend in the US), and it's also expensive agh. it is really exciting seeing my friends recieve their mail and tell me about it though. i love adding some extra stuff and seeing their reactions when they see the surprises. so fun.

i think i was supposed to write more but i kind of lost my train of thought. after february i wanna do more website stuff and finally move to 11ty so i dont have to update every single page when i want to fix the sidebar. speaking of which there's a broken link to my bluesky AUGHHHHHHHH

once i get through all my deadlines i will be back i hope. see you soon!

hal

ive been meaning to make a blog post for a while! but every time i do my mind goes to wanting to organize everything. then i go "aughhhhh" and then go back to doing something else.

ill keep this short, otherwise this may never get posted LMAO. so heres a short list of things i wanna do in the new year:

• start T - i will do whatever it takes to start in january
• reformat all dates to be MM-DD-YYYY & maybe add a year folder for my blog posts (sorry. its just more organized for my files like this)
• move to using 11ty
• add more fun pages to the site (design the recipe page, maybe make oc pages or an oc wiki?)
• finish my girlfriend's website
• redo site theme
• learn to drive
• work on journalistgame
• draw at least 1 finished piece a month
• maybe open an international online shop?
• design a horse oc for year of the horse

okay yeah thats it happy holidays and happy 2026

i started working on my girlfriend's website! she made the design but she doesnt like programming so i'm doing it for her. this is also making me realize theres a lot of things i wish i did differently with this website. maybe ill set up 11ty and figure out a new theme and maybe some other fun pages. i ALSO might just change the dd/mm/yyyy format of my blog links to become mm/dd/yyyy or something just so theyre in order in my files. and you know ill finally make it consistent.

i'm also considering turning this url more into idk. a portfolio site or at least something more in line with my artist stuff and then making a separate more personal website. maybe. idk. i would just change the url of this one but i dont wanna break any links.

the artist alley

i joined my first original art-only artist alley recently! fanart wasn't allowed, and it was mostly focused on original characters. i'm not much of a picture taker so these are my two best ones, the rest are just photos for taking stock LOL. the first one is my corner next to my tablemates' section, and the second one is ethan printed on an OC wall tarp.

it was fun! huge thank you and shout out to my tablemates mak (fran aka mak), momo (ms.momocreates), sleip (sleipliir, nsfw warning), and kaiibgan for inviting me to join them! it was my first convention with this organizer and with these artists and i really enjoyed it.

i actually did very bad compared to other cons and only made half my costs back lol (i'm lucky enough to profit usually). though i dont feel horrible about it! its a looooot more fulfilling than regular artist alleys. maybe partially because i'm not really into making fanart nowadays. i do still get into things but my interest dies down pretty quickly so then it turns into "man what am i gonna do with all this stock lol". idk it's a nice feeling when people are genuinely interested in your original creations that feature the characters u love. (though i also did make my stickers have text and tried to be funny and relatable)

i also met some mutuals in person and also made new friends! the community was so nice, i traded lots of oc trading cards and bought lots of commissions. idk what happened maybe it was my social battery or something else, i kind of got shy towards the end and was too hesitant to trade

1. met someone from an OC discord server i was in by complete surprise. it was their first time going to one of these too, they went up to my table and were like "wait i recognize this style. are you from [discord server name]" and i was like no fucking way lmao. small world
2. met two artists who also had a dogboy oc named ethan and a cat partner with red hair. Sound familiar?
3. didnt feel like shit during the con! i had 3hrs of sleep day 1 but the sleepiness only started hitting near closing. i also had food poisoning during my last con so i really appreciated having an appetite.

fiore umemployment was top 1, butch imaginer pina was top 2, and camille matcha is top 3.

all new art for this event

wanted to do a bit more since it was an oc event. the maid ethan and fiore polaroid artworks were part of stamp rallies! i really like how they came out though, i do want to sell them on their own in the future. a lot of people also liked the ethan sticker sheet, it was my second most popular one! i still havent sold a single tomato sticker sheet though lol

anyway to make up for the lost costs i'm gonna finally clear out my commission waitlist. ive got like. nothing in my merch prod bank account thanks for reading. i need to get to working on those pages about my art process i like talking about it a lot

happy october! i've finished ethantember, please check it out. i'll probably be editing the layout in a bit so it's in chronological order instead of reverse chronological, and maybe add a page or a few paragraphs about how i do these challenges. i really enjoy talking about my art processes.

i'll make a longer blog post soon, i hope! i've got to get to making more sticker mail. i want to make sticker mail a lot more of a regular thing! i usually ask people on my bluesky, though you can also send me an email if you're interested, and send you an email when i'm sending out another batch. I hope the auspost staff doesn't hate me.

i've been wanting to cook more again, i don't cook as often as when i was dorming. i also want to try cooking new things! i'm kinda tired of eating the same things every other week.

recently i made reunionese sausage rougail! a friend commissioned me to draw his oc with reunionese bonbons miel, a fried pastry glazed with honey (wikipedia link). they kind of look like donuts! i'd never heard of reunionese food so i went to read more about it, out of curiosity. and sausage rougail immediately caught my eye. because, well, i'm a sucker for tomatoes.

^{my reunionese sausage rougail, still simmering in a pot.}

it was really simple to make! i used recipes from reunion island's tourism website and this recipe from michel dumas (i showed my girlfriend the latter and she translated the first two sentences of the 'about' sidebar - she's impressively retained a good amount of her high school french!) for substitutions, i followed the latter - cayenne powder in place of chili and canned tomatoes in place of fresh. i forgot what sausages i used, but it was the only french sausages available at the supermarket. even so, it was soooooo good. tomatoes and sausage with rice i can definitely imagine this being comfort food. i'm considering regularly buying sausages so i can make this for myself.

i also made a post on bluesky a while back asking for recipes, and i've tried like. one of them so far LOL. it was a pad thai recipe by recipetineats, it was good! a bit dry, but i could only find flat rice noodles (which are better used for pad see ew) and too much beansprouts (its okay though i like beansprouts).

i asked another friend, who's from brazil, for his favorite food and he told me about bejinho and brigadeiro, and also tutu. he's also mentioned couve to me once, so i'm probably gonna try that next!

PLEASEEEEEEEEE send me your favorite foods from your cultures! if you have a recipe, that'd be great, but i can handle the recipe finding! if there are any variations between your dish an another country's version of it also let me know. travel is expensive and i want to eat new things. please answer this google form

no information is stored other than what you input in the form!

hi hello, it's hal again. just finished another convention, was fun talking to a lot of artists. pretty slow, but i'm really happy i got to meet and talk to a lot of people! one of my highlights was meeting iwi (bsky), formerly an arknights merch artist i used to go to conventions for and buy from. iwi and their partner anag-nesis (bsky, 18+) were such a delight to talk to! theyre both very friendly abd talkative and i like that a lot

i've made a page for my newest monthly art challenge: ethantember, where i draw ethan every day for the entire month of september. please enjoy. i'll try to update it as much as possible. these will also be posted on my socials of course, but these blog posts will have special info bits like i did with august august on cohost.

i also have one more upcoming convention - patrons of the arts: originals 2 this november! very excited for this, it's an original art centered con. this one specifically is OC focused which is awesome, and it's really encouraging hearing that originals is usually artists' best events in terms of sales. i'm currently recovering from post-con fatigue (and some really bad period symptoms) but i'm excited to start making merch for this!

that's all for now! sorry to plug so many i guess, business stuff i wont do it a lot i promise but i would like to earn money. last one - i have a vgen now! i'm planning to open commissions sometime this month.

see you in the next blog post!

hal

i think about making new blog posts often. when i'm working on our (my girlfriend and i's) game, sometimes i'll start imagining writing something between a paragraph tag instead of whatever mechanic needs my attention in gdscript.

things got busy again! girlfriend and i tried to squeeze in a game demo between march and yesterday, realized we probably wouldnt have made it, and now we're taking a little break. if you've been following my bluesky, i've been posting quite a bit about making a game. i'm not gonna go into details now, maybe in a proper devlog in a blog post of its own, but it's going!

ive got a lot of stuff to talk about for next time - from new ocs to getting back into traditional art to albums ive been listening to, and probably a couple more things i cant really recall right now. ive also got a printer at home now, been figuring out printing settings, making stickers, and sending letters again.

see u then :]

this is like my third time writing this now, i think the main reason i'm a bit lazy / been putting this off is because i can't just. screenshot art program -> post image & i actually have to save them as files -_-

this went from a "reminiscing about my old art" to "art log with commentary" and i think im just gonna do whatever now.

collections will be pretty unorganized for the most part, i'll try to keep the dates chronological but i just want to show off the art ive done recently. ive had this in the works since some time in 2024 so i might as well free it from my drafts.

oh yeah, it was my birthday last march 17! happy birthday to me.

this is gonna be a long post, answer this real quick?

i made this whole fake VN confession screenshot thing for valentines with help from my girlfriend. this was more of a self indulgent thing for the ocs because this would NEVER happen, but hey. i like drawing them blushy and cute. these are only a few of the ocs of course and the cast is only going to get bigger - which one are you asking out on a date? (vote below!)

i really wanted to do a short in-browser game that was clickable and had animated text, but alas - i got too excited and just posted these on their own already. while i got pretty far (character select screen into actual character scene with javascript), i kind of lost motivation and ended up giving up. if you can find the page on this site you could probably test it out.

since my last blog post.., (2024)

the bass isnt even that important to pina in canon i just think she looks cool playing it LOL. there's also halloween art of august and akeno in here. theyre not very "yaoi" anymore on the account of. well. august is transfem, good for her!

some finished art - recent conventions

i tabled at twilight kaicon (twikai) and komiket recently, both were pretty fun! met a lot of cool artists and i got to sell a few of my oc stickers. ive applied for 2-3ish more markets at the time of writing this, i hope i get accepted...

right click -> open image in new tab to see it in full. I MESSED UP THE ORDER IN THE PHOTO PLEASE IGNORE THAT!!

participated in my first stamp rally! hosted by shiirei (instagram link). can you guess which one i made

ding ding ding i made the snake. her hair and scales are supposed to be iridescent. our only guidelines for the outfits were for them to look celestial and to have a chinese knot as part of their outfit so they all have something in common.

chinese zodiac oc concept/wip sketches

i spent maybe 2 weeks trying to figure out her outfit, going back and forth between looking at changshan pictures and fashion lookbooks. eventually i just settled on something ive actually worn before.

ive also got a couple of other photocards, though theyre either all fanart or as gifts/trades for others. making photocards for friends is pretty fun, but i feel like if i turned it into a commission thing it'd probably be too much.

arknights maids and butler photocards. they came in a set with the chibi art as a sticker!

i enjoyed making them and i enjoyed them a lot more a couple weeks ago LOL, though thats mostly because i dont really play or follow arknights anymore. ive started doing this thing where when i play a grindy game i just think, "why am i even doing this. what is my end goal" and it just kills my motivation completely

photocard sketches. never got to draw degenbrecher, huh

bocchi the rock sticker sheet art. this took me a WHILE to make, but i'm happy with how it came out. i hope i can say the same for when it prints.

im using a bsky link i hope this works. porter robinson fanart

oc art (2025)

now that i have a lot of free time ive been making lots of oc art - ive designed a few new ones!

camille. the head of a cleanup crew type group to help freearms clean up the scene after a job. also dating ethan (inspired by my girlfriend, if you couldnt tell)

charlotte, char for short (hey, does her name and the previous character's name remind you of anything?). helps out with her family's commercial fishing business and also provides bodyguard services a freearm. this will be important later.

this is about as recent as it gets. as you can see, i went back to making more merch designs. i wanted to add more stickers to the rotation and hopefully retire some that im not as proud of anymore. and also because i'm applying to smash and i want to make my portfolio look better.

theres probably a lot more i can and want to say but - i think its better for me to start fresh on a new HTML file instead of rewriting this a fourth time. if you've reached the end, thank you for reading, and see you in the next blog post!

god i hope i remember how to add this to the rss feed

i started writing this blog post around the middle of december because i wanted to update my website, but ran out of energy and got caught up with holiday stuff.

i got my grades back for the semester and I PASSED (around 80% in all 4 subjects, for reference 85% is the highest grade in australia [this is Weird to me])! i Will be graduating next year (im not ready)

ive got a convention coming up so ive mostly been drawing fanart, which i have now learned is Not as fun as drawing ocs. its definitely enjoyable reading ppl's tumblr tags but at this point i dont really. feel strongly about any fanart i do nowadays. on the other hand i've finally made myself start going through design ideas for the main characters of my gf and i's game

art

i drew a LOT this year and i think i got better

games

i would make a games of 2024 list but i already have some stuff written for "games ive played since the last blog post" so i'm just gonna make it a mix of these two i guess. ill just write until i dont feel like it lol

• until then by polychroma games cw: grief, death
  a gorgeous coming-of-age game set in the philippines. it hits really hard & close to home (in a literal sense), i love recognizing the familiar filipino parts, they really look like places i've been to before. i also read a little of the filipino localization but i'm unfortunately. not fluent enough to understand completely
  
• unicorn overlord by vanillaware
  no link because its only on console unfortunately, afaik vanillaware isnt planning to port it to pc anytime soon. shame! unicorn overlord is fun as hell. the story is pretty basic, but i love the gameplay a lot, it's probably going to be one of those strategy games i go back to once a year to play through (i do this with xcom 2).
• wizardry variants daphne - this is the ONLY gacha game that i'm willing to put on the list just because of how it barely feels like one. it's my first experienve with the wizardry series, though the Right Hand of Reversal and cursed wheel are pretty interesting mechanics that i wasn't really expecting from a gacha. it also made me doomscroll less often
• witness link by mel !!! cw: graphic descriptions of blood, gore, and violence, suicidal ideation, self harm and self mutilation, delusions, drowning, sexual content, vomit and piss, fantasy animal death
  Ok a little biased because mel is my friend but if you like yuri & eroguro check her game out!! i am not very familiar with eroguro but i liked this a lot. the music & writing are awesome, i rlly like the descriptiveness, you can really FEEL everything. very excited for the next chapter
• the dark queen of mortholome by Mosu - boss fight from the pov of a boss. i understand how it feels to play as a boss. dont have the words for it right now but something something how the player can grow and improve at the game while the boss remains the same & the relationship between the hero and queen. i think its neat
• fantastic annihilation by FantasticHumans - 10 minute clicker game (i like clicker games but i dont play a lot of them)
• build the sun by PUNKCAKE Délicieux - turn your campfire into the sun with little round sprites. wasnt able to finish the game i played for like 4 hours straight. very cute i love how they carry stuff on their heads
• neurokino retrograde by gibarian & zarubin cw: swearing, dying, flickering lights
  45 minute scifi vn. the ui/graphics for this are sooooo good.
• under a star called sun by cecile richard cw: allusions to grief & death
  a beautiful game about grief. i cried a lot
• webfishing by lamedeveloper - played a little with my girlfriend. i'm too shy to join a public server so i just fish on my own or with her. she bullies me a lot
• atlyss by kissoft - i tried the demo out after i saw a few mutuals playing, and i thought the character customization looked neat. i bought it the next day and got to level 20 on a fighter that looks a lot like akeno (the oc). i cant draw furries or anything yet so this is the closest i'll get to making anthro versions of ocs and being able to play as them. very neat game that i feel would be fun with friends, but i haven't been able to convince anyone to join me yet!
• honorable mentions: the games i made for school
  making games is fun! though i've only made games when it's a requirement for graduating university. i Cannot show them unfortunately so you'll just have to wait for an astr_hal game when my girlfriend and i start working on ours.

this deserves its own blog post because i'm proud and i want to say hi to anyone who's subscribed with an rss feed. my about page is up and with a completely different theme! (1920x1080 recommended)

website updates

i messed around with absolute positioning and javascript for this, i'l really happy with how everything turned out! the pina in the corner took an absurd amount of time to position to look good and i'm honestly STILL not satisfied. i've gone back and forth between having the image fixed or absolute, just because i want it to be on the corner of the main container rather than the corner of the screen. and i also don't want it to block too much content aghhhh

i wanna add more art to this eventually & collect more buttons. i havent found a lot of buttons i liked so i ended up making my own. save for the actual astr-hal.neocities.org blog button (made by xan), i made all of these! (though i just overlaid the philippines flag over some text for the second one LOL)

^{my buttons :)}

i really like the idea of turning my stickers into buttons. it's like i'm converting physical stickers into digital stickers

aside from the about page, you might have noticed i have a "links" page in my navbar now! other than being a place to put my guestbook link, i'm keeping some bookmarks and adding the button wall of other blogs too.

other happenings: games

i also finished unicorn overlord... it's been what. two weeks? the auto battling aspect is SO fun. i especially enjoyed the coliseum battles and working my way up the ranks so i could get amalia. i played on the easiest difficulty in my first playthrough. i'm trying out true zenoiran for my next one - this time i'll actually follow some kind of build guide.

UO was also nominated for best strategy game in the game awards! funnily enough, i found out about vanillaware games (specifically 13 sentinels) because it was nominated in the game awards a few years ago. anyway i dont really care about the game awards but i hope it wins anyway. i also really really love travis (<- watched the ring scene & ending over and over again)

next on my to-play list is metaphor refantazio. i've been excited to play it ever since the first trailer released (i was so proud of recognizing the seiyuus - kensho ono AND natsuki hanae i was SO hyped). i watched my girlfriend play a bit of the demo, it's pretty similar to persona (which was expected anyway), but the general consensus i've heard is that it's wayy better than recent persona games.

as for other games i've been playing, i tried out the dice'n goblins demo a few days ago! i'm a big fan of the watercolor cutouts for the characters (one of the inspirations for the artstyle of the game i made last semester), and the combat gets so so fun once you get the hang of the dice combos.

coincidentally, my girlfriend has also been telling me to try out wizardry variants daphne - the recent wizardry gacha game (same dungeon crawling style). she's been playing it nonstop with her team of griffith, margaret nearl, and others. i've been trying to make space on my phone by deleting my unnecessarily large screenshots on my phone. something something my photos app takes up like 20gb of storage right now.

until then also just got its filipino localization! i'm in no way fluent so it was slightly challenging for me to read... that being said, it's very fun seeing all the characters swear in tagalog. i remember wishing there was at least a little taglish when i was playing it. maybe i'll pick up a space for the unbound soon for the back-to-back southeast asia experience lol

end

i thought about talking about other stuff but ended up just talking about games oops. feels weird now having the free time to actually play things.

also hopefully trying out adding entire blog pages in the rss reader instead of just the first paragraph or so. sorry in advance if you happen to get this multiple times on your reader

hi! i finally got around to working on my website. most if not all the css here is temporary, i just wanted to make it look a liiiitle nice while i figure out what to do.

i actually DID do a bunch of html/css stuff when i was younger, maybe from around 10-15? i was introduced to inline css and w3schools in a roleplay forum because i wanted to make my posts look nice. eventually, i took the codecademy course for it too (along with some other languages, because they had a LOT of free courses back then) because i was really getting into html and css by then. once senior high hit, i decided to take an extracurricular, face-to-face web design course - immediately killing any motivation i had to do any personal website projects.

but i'm getting back into it now! at least i learned some stuff from my courses. i am kinda bummed that i wasnt able to do this earlier, though more due to uni assignments than being averse to making a website. it would've been nice to talk about this on cohost but yeah, these past couple of months have been busy as hell.

busy in a good way though! i finished my second full game for uni, i did two artist alleys, i sent out some chostcards, and for the first time, i finished a month-long art challenge, not a day missed (but several late).

the game i worked on is a boss rush roguelike! i was almost exclusively doing the art assets, unlike my last game where i still did a handful of programming. we didn't use a pixel art style like last time, so i hand drew and animated all the attacks......... (it was fun though! i learned a lot about animation)

kind of sucks that its tied to my school so i cant really share it publicly. but if we know each other or have met in real life i could probably send the link to you LOL

chostcards were also very fun, i didn't expect to get so many emails. all of em (save for one, though i'm planning to send it in january) were sent, and most of them received the letters! some haven't replied back, i do hope they received them though. i've become a regular at like, two print shops already. i dont even know their prices anymore because they always give me more than i ask for and its always cheaper than when i calculate it

now that i actually have Time ive also started unicorn overlord!!! im 40 hours in. i played the tutorial months ago, picked it up and've been playing it since. i wouldnt consider myself a fan of tactical rpgs - not that i dont like it, i just dont play a lot of them - but i am HOOKED. next games on the list are nine sols and metaphor refantazio. i also watched my girlfriend play mouthwashing, that was also really good. i do have another artist alley coming up in january so i wanna get a few new things out.

aside from *playing* games, my girlfriend and i do want to get some games out too! we've had an idea for about a year already as a sort of intro game to her original universe and now that we're on break, we really wanna get started on it.

in terms of where i am online now: ive moved to bluesky after cohost went read-only. i tried pillowfort but it felt really clunky to use, and not a lot of chosters went on dreamwidth so i stuck with bsky. social media is still kind of unbearable with numbers, so i've installed a no numbers userscript that removes most engagement, save for reply counts. it really helps me just use social media to make friends and share art, instead of trying to "grow" and become "famous". related to this is a blog post from aurahack, i really like, and she definitely puts it into better words than i can right now. being a teenager concerned over numbers and recognition on social media is not something i'd go back to.

oh i'm also. done with uni. as in, if results come in and i pass the semester, i'll be graduating next year. scary!!!!!!!