This is more of a blog, but this is where updates are posted or archived! Filed into two categories for updates that were behind the scenes about the project development, and older announcements that were from the index page before they were archived here. Click the links for quicker navigation to either section!
Each update has its time on the front page. When it's time is up to keep the front page from getting too cluttered, older updates are archived here.
The first WIP post for episode 32 has been posted to The Production Room!
This episode will be an adaptation of pages from the previous version but with several additions and changes. This WIP shows a new panel and part of a scene that will be expanded.
The production notes for episode 31 are added to The Production Room!
Episode 31 of Anathema to Commonsense has been published and in time for the end of the year! This episode wraps up the first night at the hotel, covers the next morning of the new timeline, recaps the events of episodes 20-23 and gives the arrivals their first objective! Check the Trivia page for trivia for this episode!
Having a magical transformation device that looks like a pocketwatch isn't always convenient...
Episode 31: Running in the 80's! Claudia is an All-Star on Morning Radio!
Production started for episode 32, which will start the next major arc!
A WIP post for episode 31 has been posted to The Production Room! Progress may be on track to publish this before the end of the year!
The last Huevember drawing for this year, and it's an ambitious wrap-up! This entry has been added to The Scattered Archives in the first timeline!
This is the longest Scattered Archives entry for the first timeline and reveals more about the successful creation of a transforming magical weapon which would lead to the founding of the Nova-Class Mages as a new class of mages, and the Magical Renegades as the group to represent them. Avogadro immediately saw the potential, but success was just as fraught with peril as failure would've been with this experiment!
In his writing near the end of the entry, he also mentioned another historical event that shaped the timelines.
Although November has passed, the Huevember challenge still continues for a while more! An entry with three drawings to go with it has been added to The Scattered Archives in the second timeline!
The story for these drawings takes place soon before the space-time incident that'd create the third timeline!
Another drawing for Huevember that has an extra story with it! This is a long one with more lore about the extended royal family and about Aliverti's personality!
This story is in The Scattered Archives in the third timeline! This page was also tweaked a bit to move some of the entries around so they'd be in chronological order. The first entries in the third timeline are events dated to August 24, 1884, the point of divergence. The event of Aliverti's portrait takes place August 24, 1887, which is just 3 days before the space-time crash and reboot!
Headers with titles were also added to each of the entries on the third timeline because it has the most. This is a refinement that's in-progress and if I can get anchor links to work on it, then this'll help link to specific entries without having to scroll for it!
Two more drawings for Huevember have extra stories with them!
This story is for the Travel Logs!
Log 6: Time to Sit Back and Wait...
This story is in The Scattered Archives under the second timeline. It shows a night of Alicia with some of her friends at an event, and more details about her backstory involving a corrupt school that she left.
In place of weekly WIP posts throughout October is a page about daily progress with the production of episodes 30 and 31 with commentary about the production process! Click the link or banner to view it!
The drawing of Aurora leaving the Academy has been colored for day 1 of Huevember, and a new drawing with a story was posted for day 2! This new entry is also in the first timeline and has more details about the early stages of the Magical Renegades!
Episode 30 of Anathema to Commonsense has been published, and debuts a couple of characters who only appeared in spin-offs. This is their time on the stage and in the main story! Check the Trivia page for trivia for this episode!
Episode 30: Showtime for the Ghostly Stand-Up Comedians! First Night at the Stranded Inn Time Hotel, Part 3 (of 3)
A duo of ghostly stand-up comedians give survival advice to the stranded group in between gags!
The production notes will be coming soon about extra details that would've been in the episode if the length or the time it would've taken to include everything weren't an issue. Didn't want them to go to waste so they'll be in the production notes!
Production for episode 31 has started and will take place the next day, and lead into the next major arc and battle!
Production for episode 30 of Anathema to Commonsense continues! Instead of another WIP blog post this week, WIPs and details about the production process are being posted throughout the month! You can read about it on Mastodon.art here!
The story for the drawing of Aurora leaving the Academy has been posted to The Scattered Archives! It's in the first timeline and takes place soon before the second timeline began!
A new WIP post for The Production Room!
This entry shows more of the auditorium that will be in the next episode with some steps about the stage area was created!
A new WIP post for The Production Room!
The WIPs show how this sketch (in The Scattered Archives, third timeline) was incorporated into episode 30 of Anathema to Commonsense!
Another entry for The Scattered Archives!
This is from Sketchtember day 10 "Hang in there", and is in the third timeline!
The next Magical Renegades drawing for this challenge is for day 13, "Bye bye":
A story is in-progress for it, and it will have more details about the Academy for Time Travel, and what led Aurora to leave. This'll be in the first timeline.
Production for episode 30 of Anathema to Commonsense continues; most of the panels have rough sketches for them now. It's a slower pace than before, but keeping most of the sketches for Sketchtember simple has allowed production to continue!
Another entry for The Scattered Archives! This drawing is for day 8, and the prompt is "Underdog". The story for it spans each of the timelines so it's in the Unsorted category. This one gives glimpses into Aurora's first interactions with the Magical Renegades at the start of the second timeline and ties it into her role in the third timeline!
Episode 29 of Anathema to Commonsense has launched!
Episode 29: Where and When Do You Want to Call Today? First Night at the Stranded Inn Time Hotel, Part 2
Content warning: Mentions of death.
This episode delves into more about the backstories of some the stranded people and whether they're just trying to survive, or become mages and fight for new opportunities in the new timeline!
An art challenge started this month which led to new sketches, and the first new entries to be added to The Scattered Archives since November 2020!
A new entry for the second timeline and two for the third!
Episode 29 of Anathema to Commonsense is almost ready to publish! There will also soon be new entries for The Scattered Archives! The first new sketches and stories are almost ready, but today's sketch (prompt: "Back to the Drawing Board") is part of the Travel Logs, and has been posted!
Log 5: That Should Be Fixed!
Another WIP has been posted for episode 29 though some of the scenes in this WIP might be split off into episode 30 for length (and to mitigate mood whiplash in the same episode). It's in The Production Room!
Another WIP has been posted for episode 29 in The Production Room!
This is a glimpse of the webtoon, before shading:
Transcription:
Panel 1: Hey... I'm not making this up when I say this, but Katt and I won't be back for dinner, because we got stranded in the 1880's.
There are a few more 3D renders of the phone booth and its controls.
The production notes for episode 28 of Anathema to Commonsense were added to The Production Room!
This update also includes the first WIP for episode 29.
Episode 28 of Anathema to Commonsense has launched!
Episode 28: This Night Goes On! (This Night Goes on...) First Night at the Stranded Inn Time Hotel!
The Trivia page has also been updated with trivia for this episode!
The plans to publish all of the episodes here as a mirror are on hold, but the on-site link to episode 27 was moved here. It'd be the smoothest and most consistent reading experience since the spin-offs are also hosted here, but I still haven't figured out what I need. I'm still thinking of other options to have a mirror for the episodes.
Episode 29 will also be at the hotel and will cover more lore and character motivations. After this episode may be the best opportunity to finish the characters page that was stuck as a draft! ^^;
Another WIP has been posted to The Production Room, and includes several images!
The updates before April were moved from the index page to the The News Stand Archive to free up some space on the index.
The first set of WIPs of new rooms in the hotel for episode 28 have been posted to The Production Room
Episode 27 of Anathema to Commonsense has been published, and brings the story back to the new "present" of the new timeline!
Episode 27: One of Those Days Stranded in the Town Square? Here's Lucy! The Tour Begins!
With the launch of this episode, I'm trying something different! A new page was created to host the latest episode and will be updated again with there's another new episode. This is a short-term measure since I considered hosting them here as another way to view them, but I still need to figure some things out before I tried to host the rest of them.
I didn't think I'd try to host any episodes here when this site launched, because I thought the image quality would have to suffer for the sake of being able to load on older computers, and that I'd run up against the storage limit without paying for an upgrade. As a long-running series, and since I have a lot of other things I want to host, it'll eventually happen.
Waiting a long time for images to load also isn't a part of the 90's Web experience I want to replicate! ^^;
Creating individual HTML pages for every episode also would've been far too tedious! I considered that, but when I imagined attempting to, I shuddered at the tedium of it... There are pages for each Extra! Chronicles episode, but that's not so bad. There wasn't such a large backlog to upload.
An efficient solution? JavaScript. I may have to continue learning it. I didn't use any on here before because I didn't need to use it for anything, but I'll need to make a concession if I want to display all of the episodes here more efficiently. There are other options I'm considering, but JavaScript would be the most elegant if I can get it to work.
Episode 27 WIP and Vega render WIP, part 2
This week has been focusing on working with Blender! Part 2 of 2 WIPs were posted; it's a double feature!
Trivia for chapter 13 of Extra! Chronicles was added to the Trivia page!
I usually don't update in the middle of the week, but I fell behind last weekend and am catching up. This site and my home page were updated today! The Production Room update has more details.
Chapter 13 of Extra! Chronicles has been published, and features the interview with the king and queen, after a 3 chapter build-up!
Chapter 13: Let's Talk Cooking and Revolution! The Post-Banquet Interview with the King and Queen!
The next updates will be WIP posts for episode 27!
This month has been very busy that an update was missed, but there's still been progress every day!
The Production Room has been updated with production notes about episode 26 of Anathema to Commonsense with a preview of episode 27!
At last! After 2 months in the making, episode 26 of Anathema to Commonsense has been published! It was great updating the ATC page with the new episode title, but this is a sad episode.
This episode is the longest one, and includes the backstory of Susana's family, grief over losing a teammate, and finding out why...
Episode 26:The Room and the Radio Say It All! A Confirmed Departure! (click to view on Tapas)
This episode also has trivia for it that has been added to the Trivia page!
Another WIP for episode 26 of Anathema to Commonsense has been posted in The Production Room!
Sorry for the late update. I was very busy and trying to finish up episode 26 by last weekend but didn't have enough time. The latest WIPs show off more of the room that was modeled for this episode. The episode should be finished within 2 weeks if everything goes to plan!
There are also some more plans for site refinements. Several older updates from the index page were moved to The News Stand archives to clean up the index!
Chapter 12 of Extra! Chronicles is published! This is the last part before episode 26 of Anathema to Commonsense and the interview that'll be in chapter 13! ^^;
This chapter introduced four members of the royal extended family and each of them featured in an illustration!
The Trivia page was also updated again with more trivia details for this chapter!
Chapter 12: On Business for the Great Celebratory Banquet! Part 3
A new WIP has been posted to The Production Room, and has WIPs for Anathema to Commonsense and Extra! Chronicles!
Sorry for the late update. I wasn't ready to post it, but there was another update last weekend: The home page redesign was that was shown as a WIP in February launched!
It may not display properly on smartphones at this time because the layout uses absolute positioning and widths to hold it together. If you see this button:
That's not there just to be snarky! A future refinement to the home page design will be to make it responsive so it'll properly display at any resolution.
More refinements were also drafted to the site over this week and deployed today!
Episode 26 of Anathema to Commonsense is still in progress along with chapter 12 of Extra! Chronicles.
Chapter 11 of Extra! Chronicles is published! It was just the illustrations that were holding back this chapter from being published last weekend, but there are two illustrations and they are of characters who are related to two of the Renegades!
The Trivia page has several details for this episode and more about how some of the Renegades' relations are to their families, and another major event in the timeline!
Chapter 11: On Business for the Great Celebratory Banquet! Part 2
More site refinements are in-progress and almost ready to launch!
Another WIP for episode 26 has been posted to The Production Room with a few more lore and worldbuilding details!
The Anathema to Commonsense index page was updated to include the title for chapter 10 because it was left out from the last update! ^^; Chapters 10, 11 and 12 of Extra! Chronicles cover the same event a day or two after episode 25 of Anathema to Commonsense and during episode 26.
The News Stand underwent some more organizing! The episode WIP posts were moved to a new behind the scenes page with a production post about episode 25 added today, The Production Room!
The first WIP for episode 26 has been posted in latest News Stand entry!
This WIP features previews of some backgrounds and techniques I stumbled across in the making of them! It's the first to include a list of efficiency tips that I learned to make this part of production more efficient. I should start compiling them into an article.
The first chapter of Extra! Chronicles of the year is published! This chapter and the in-progress chapter 11 take place shortly after episode 25 of Anathema to Commonsense, and around the same time as episode 26.
Chapter 10: On Business for the Great Celebratory Banquet! Part 1
Paige is invited to the celebratory banquet the royal family is hosting to provide interviews, and while she's there, she gets glimpses of the palace, and crosses paths with a familiar-looking guest!
This is not an April Fool's joke!
That's what I would've said if I published episode 25 of Anathema to Commonsense yesterday! After multiple WIPs and more than a month between episode updates, it's finally been published!
Episode 25: Going Their Separate Ways! To the Party and to the Headquarters!
This is the longest episode yet and introduces a lot of lore! Some characters who only appeared in spin-offs make their first appearances here, so beware of spoilers if you click the link to see the latest episode or view the updates to the trivia page
Click here for episode 1 to start from the beginning!
The next updates will be an announcement that gives more lore and trivia, and another will be a post about the production process.
Chapter 10 of Extra! Chronicles will be one of the next updates and will be the first chapter released this year!
Whoops... I forgot to announce it last week, but Travel Logs 4 was published last weekend, and another WIP for episode 25 was posted today in The News Stand!
Episode 25 is almost finished, and should be posted soon! The WIP shows a few more renders of parts of the Magical Renegades headquarters!
An updated WIP for episode 25 of Anathema to Commonsense, but there's more in the latest News Stand entry! The 3D backgrounds that were made for this episode used a different technique, and this WIP includes a preview of one of the characters who will make their first on-screen appearance this episode!
A WIP for episode 25 of Anathema to Commonsense. Renegade Liberty is reverting back to her normal form just as she stepped into the Magical Renegades headquarters. The background for this scene and a few others has been the most challenging part of this episode, but there's a lot to say!
Read more in the latest News Stand entry or on Record Compendium for more!
Several more graphical refinements were made to 90's Resort. As you can see from the index page, it's a lot more animated! Animated GIFs as dividers, bullet lists, or decorations throughout added a very lively touch to sites!
I didn't make those. I don't have the skill for animation! ^^; Up to this point, I created everything here. It's fun, but sometimes exhausting. Even on the days of the Old Web, creators didn't have to make everything themselves, and having resources that were free to use saved time. There was a culture of sharing and generosity since there had always been sites that provided backgrounds, animated gifs and buttons that were free to use. Many creators weren't the jack of all trades, and that's okay! There were resources that could cover for that!
The animated GIFs I used are from AnimatedGif.net.
The refinements:
The index page is undergoing a major redesign inspired by the layouts of 2000's era sites!
Next major updates that are planned for 90's Resort:
Episode 24 of Anathema to Commonsense is almost ready to launch, but in the mean time, I'm also making refinements to the look of the site. Two of them have already been added in the menu!
It's launched! This was a long one in the making! ^^;
Episode 24: A Renegade Must Leave Early? A Bittersweet Time to Celebrate!
The Anathema to Commonsense page has been updated with the episode 24 title, and the look of the notice was tweaked to make it more readable. The News Stand entry about this episode will be up soon after some rest!
Episode 25 is in-progress and will be another practically new episode. More WIPs and refinements to the site will follow. The next major update for the lore will be a characters page. A draft and a basic layout have been started!
Before the last-minute plans to throw together a different index page, 90's Resort was going to be my only Neocities project. I made a splash page for it that was ready to be launched until this change in plans!
It was almost ready for launch, but it's being brought back in the menu!
See the splash page that almost was!
This is the basis for Chapter 3 of Travel Logs! Anchor links were added in this update to make navigation to a specific chapter easier, and save you from a lot of scrolling!
Another News Stand post with two more WIPs, for episode 24 of Anathema to Commonsense and chapter 3 of Travel Logs!
The illustration for Travel Logs is another time that I used Blender to model props and the background. See more commentary about that in the post!
While I resumed my draft of the creation philosophy and small web manifesto pages, I worked some of the ideas that were in them into the new Development section of the About page!
Along with that update, a WIP of episode 24!
Transcription:
Panel 1:
Eminence: Thank you so much, your majesty! Aren't you like totally pumped too, Liberty?!
Panel 2:
Liberty: I'm sorry, your majesty, and Eminence. I need to go back to the headquarters to rest...
The News Stand was updated with a behind the scenes post about the production process for episode 24, and the changes that led to new episodes branching off from expanding on just one idea!
Latest update, freshly adapted off the Wordpress blog!Episode 23 of Anathema to Commonsense has been published!
Episode 23: Who's Going to Clean This Up?! A Smoking Path of Collateral Damage!
Exhibit A: A smoking path of collateral damage!
The finishing touches are being made to episode 23, and by finishing touches, I mean lighting and background effects that can still take hours to do! XD
Since this episode is a large update, here's another WIP that shows another panel that was adapted from an extra with a comparison! The difference in the speech bubble placement is from the format. The top panel is from a 4 panel comic strip, and the bottom is from a webtoon.
Episode 24 will be even larger yet, since it's an almost entirely new episode with extra steps in the production! There will be multiple WIPs for it, and blog posts about the production. This episode will put the spotlight on some characters who haven't appeared much!
Hint: They've appeared more in The Scattered Archives.
The updated version of the Creation Philosophy page still hasn't been forgotten! ^^;
The News Stand has a new section for older updates that were posted here, before they were moved! I'm not sure where I will place web buttons on the current layout of the index page, but if they'll be placed on the bottom, moving older updates to an archive page would save visitors from a lot of scrolling!
Episode 23 of Anathema to Commonsense and Chapter 10 of Extra! Chronicles are in-progress! While working on those, I made a few more refinements to the site.
The Scattered Archives index page has another image added to it, and the opening of the About page was reworked.
Magical Renegades 2021 in Review
This is an adaptation of a post from Record Compendium.Twas the season for art summaries! I would've said "Tis the season" if I posted this before the new year, but Happy New Year! I would've liked to make one that shows something I drew each month, but I'm not sure if I could do those without cheating for some of the months because the episodes are still adaptations of comic pages. It'll be a while before the episodes would be completely new!
There were 170 pages and a few extra strips that were finished of the comic before it was discontinued in 2019, and rebooted in 2020. Episode 22 puts me up to page 66 and the first panel of page 67.
2021 wasn't as good of a year for updates as the last. There were a lot of struggles, but never did I lose my resolve.
Nearly every day, I made some incremental progress on any of these projects. Every bit of I made with them, and with helping others was a success to me, and three spin-off series also launched!
Episodes published: 9.5: Episodes 13.5 - 22
The trial concludes, but not without a couple of surprise visits!
The Magic Gatekeepers are frustrated by their own bureaucracy that keeps them from just defeating Legionnaire Imperatrix then and there. They're frustrated by the Magical Renegades for opposing their bureaucracy, yet see them as one of the only hopes of someone overthrowing the League without causing the disaster of SPACECON 1.
The League of Paine gets a grand introduction, and this year of updates ends with a flashback to when Legionnaire Imperatrix went back to the start of the new timeline, and how the showdown between Renegade Liberty and the Minions of Nemesis leadership played out differently.
She actually got to use this! This episode was the most exciting to adapt!
A preview of what will be next! The king's and queen's combat outfits and weapons in full-color!
I revived the Magical Renegades twitter page after I was inspired and had more of a direction with my posts, but it wouldn't last long. :-( It went on hiatus again because it felt like too much of a rat race, and I couldn't keep up. I was demoralized over my inability to post frequently that I didn't try to network, but what was I expecting with my update schedule?
Some short-form updates are still posted here, because having content in a short format like twitter does is still useful. Neocities has a far more relaxed atmosphere.
Magical Renegades had a few April Fool's updates in its run, but this year had the most elaborate one!
Chapter 8 of Extra! Chronicles were also part of this update!
First space-time, and now the fourth wall and beyond! This was the cover page on Tapas! The rest of the images that were made for this update are on this Record Compendium post.
Chapters published: 9
Magical Renegades ~ Extra! Chronicles launched in May, and is a slice of life webnovel spin-off that repurposed the extra story episodes into a separate spin-off for a smoother reading experience. Links to the extra stories used to be posted as episodes on the Anathema to Commonsense Tapas page, but that was clunky! -_- (why did I think it was a good idea?) Chapter 9 was the first brand new chapter to be part of this spin-off, and the earlier chapters were fit into it.
They were adapted with new narration that introduced a new protagonist who reports on the events that weren't covered in Anathema to Commonsense, and events that were covered from another perspective.
It's another opportunity to showcase characters who haven't appeared as much, or don't have a large role yet while looking into their lives in the new timeline!
This was a month that I took on a lot! ^^; I didn't get to launch the series of static pages that I hoped, but three of them were launched and can pave the way for more.
Part 1 of my progress and commentary was published, and a draft for part 2 was made, but it was put aside before it could be finished.
This is another post that could be adapted to this site for later.
Pages published:
I began this project around the end of May when I was introduced to Neocities, and it launched in November. Looking at sites on it brought me back to the Old Web era and reminded me of nostalgia for it! Personal sites decorated with drawings, spinning 3D renders, pixel art, patterned backgrounds, web buttons, and webrings, oh my! It was a long time since I've seen many of these sites! This era was nearly forgotten to me as social media became dominant, and with it, the limited customizability that became the norm. The style of the Old Web never went away when more people forgot about it. It's still around and thriving!
Seeing others continue to have an interest in the old web is exciting and hopeful! Seeing Neocities, and the Yesterweb webring in particular inspired me to write a manifesto of my own supporting the small web! Whether they have nostalgia for it, or this era was from before their time, and they are rejecting the dominance of social media they grew up under, seeing others make sites to express themselves is wonderful! :D
From developing 90's Resort, I also practiced pixel art, making web buttons, and more 3D renders! Most of "phase 1" of development has been completed, but it would've been perfect if I completed it all by the end of the year. The only page from it that's left to be published is my revised creation philosophy.
The manifesto I wanted to write about supporting the Small Web and the Old Web had to be put aside to focus on the more immediate pages to include in phase 1, but I could revisit it in phase 2 of development.
2021 was a year of preparing spin-offs for launch. 2022 could be more focused on refining existing pages, and revisiting ideas that were put aside.
Episode 23 of Anathema to Commonsense and chapter 10 of Extra! Chronicles are in-progress! These will continue throughout the year.
The Scattered Archives will be updated if I participate in more art challenges and write stories with them. Travel Logs won't update as regularly, but it will update when I get more ideas, and can juggle them.
Planning a roadmap for phase 2 of 90’s Resort, and more material for my main Neocities homepage:
Record Compendium:
Adapt more material between it and 90's Resort. These sites would be brought closer together in design by adapting material from one of them to the other. They'll keep their different looks. Mirroring material between sites would make it more accessible.
3D modeling:
Pixel art:
More pixel art of scenery, buttons and dividers. May create a page that hosts images that can be freely used for sites. This would also be part of phase 2 of 90's Resort.
Belated happy new year! This was pixel art practice with a limited color palette, and my first drawing I started for 2022!
Happy New Year! To celebrate a new start, a preview of episode 23 and one of the panels that it adapts that was from an extra strip!
Filling in links, and more rambling by the end of the year?
Another step towards completion. The About page has been published and added to the menu!
The News Stand is almost ready It's ready now!, and the creation philosophy draft is being reworked again, which will complete phase 1 of this site. After it's complete I can focus on adding refinements to these pages, and the next set of pages!
When I looked back at one of the earliest entries about the roadmap of material I wanted to have ready at launch, some of it wasn't included in the launch! It was a lofty goal since getting each of these pages ready for Neocities took longer than I estimated, and I was juggling them with the webtoon and other projects again!
This seems as good of a time as any to publish the pages that are in the menu on the index page but don't have links yet. I launched the About page today after tweaking it again, and this page with this update. Two pages down, one more to go to complete the list of links in the menu page!
Soon enough...
I reviewed my draft for the About page and changed it a lot again before I launched it today. I'm reviewing my draft for my Creation Philosophy page again, which will be different from the first version that was published on Record Compendium. The version for this site should be more refined, but I'd also have a lot to add about my decision to host a site on Neocities.
I like Wordpress as the platform for Record Compendium, and I used it to create static pages. It could become the Magical Renegades home page if I put a static page as the front page instead of the default view that shows blog posts, but the default view is more convenient for immediately showing viewers the latest updates.
90's R e s o r t and Record Compendium could be complementary to each other. Record Compendium is more modern, and 90's R e s o r t fills an interest in old web design and has full customizability! The Tapas page is where the episodes are hosted for Anathema to Commonsense, but there's no option to add anything else, which the requires an external site.
I was reminded of The Duck and Comic Fury again as the holdouts of the old school webcomic sites. They allow users to have extra pages for other material with their comics. However I might've locked myself into Tapas because I don't know how well The Duck or Comic Fury can support vertical webtoons. I'd have to think this over...
What those sites do for their users is admirable, as is their commitment to keeping highly customizable user pages for webcomics around, but Anathema to Commonsense is better suited continuing as a vertical webtoon.
Episode 22 of Anathema to Commonsense has launched! This would be the last episode update of the year, but ends this year of episode updates with a bang!
Beware that the links to the latest episodes may contain spoilers. If you want to avoid spoilers, you can start from the beginning here.
The Anathema to Commonsense page was updated with the episode 22 title, and the Trivia page was updated with entries for episodes 22 and 23!
Episode 23 hasn't been released yet, but is planned to be a big episode! View the Trivia page for more details!
There's also a new Travel Logs entry that adapts a drawing that was made for a promotion challenge on Tapas! This story shows a little bit about the winter festival that's celebrated in the S.O.C. A country not prepared for real snow because of its climate, but its people love the idea of wearing cheesy holiday sweaters and beautiful winter scenery!
The next set of updates should also include publishing the News Stand, the Creation Philosophy and About pages to add those links that I alluded to into the menu at last!
Who likes trivia? A trivia page has been added! This compiles the bits of trivia from the Record Compendium blog posts about most of the episodes into one place!
Episode 22 of Anathema to Commonsense is in-progress.
Episode 21 of Anathema to Commonsense published!
Renegade Liberty supercharges her weapon, but her foes she fought before in the previous timeline aren't deterred? When they were more prepared, they noticed that Renegade Liberty can't defend herself when she's wielding a massive, two-handed weapon with a slow charge time.
The supercharged weapons provide a great boost in raw magic power (and glam rock-inspired makeovers), but power always comes at a price.
This time around, she has another ally on her side!
The Scattered Archives launched! These pages are a compilation of the drawings that were made for art challenges, and have stories to go with them. These drawings and stories built onto the lore, and several of them feature characters that currently haven't appeared much in Anathema to Commonsense so they still have chances!
Refinements here, refinements there!
All of the content I planned to launch didn't on the same day since I needed to figure out how I'd get images and links from different directories to display properly, but I got it now, and the next updates should be smoother! B-)
The refinements included changes to the text color on the 90's Resort index page and the other pages that use the same color scheme to be more readable
The Scattered Archives pages launched! They compile the art challenge drawings that have stories with them from the Wordpress blog, and sort them by timeline so they're easier to find. Images are smaller than on the blog, but more of them are displayed at once. I would've liked to participate in Huevember this year since that was a very fun challenge, but focused this month on launching this site after months of development.
However, I could still find inspiration from those palettes any time of the year. There are only a couple of entries on the first timeline, and I would've wanted to make more drawings about it to show more hints of what it was like.
On the to-do list from the 16th, only one item is left to complete! :-D
The page for Anathema to Commonsense launched! That's one thing from yesterday's list that can be crossed off! The episodes would still only be hosted on Tapas to save space, and I broke my self-imposed rule of not directly linking to any modern websites except in The Time Machine page. Linking directly to the Tapas page to read the webtoon there would save readers an extra step.
That's not the only change today.
Tweaked the coding on this page to fix the backgrounds for the table cells. Preparing the next batch of updates:
90's R e s o r t has launched! It's still under construction, but there's a lot in the works for it! More ideas for material, and for more pixel art and 3D renders to decorate the site! :-D After months of development hell, practicing skills, juggling other projects yet again, the first version is ready!
The portal page for my site launched on the 7th. I mentioned on it that a lot had been going on, and still is, but I've been making incremental progress every day on either this project or the other one in the works to not give up on them.
Episode 20 of Anathema to Commonsense also launched with a trip back to the past showing how the new timeline started. Renegade Liberty returns, but crosses paths with a "new" Renegade!
Episode 20: Here We Go Again! Showdown at Sunrise With a New Contender!
If you're new to this, you can catch up on the episodes by going to my Tapas page in The Time Machine, and read more about the lore on The Lore page!
The episodes of this series might be too big for me to want to host on Neocities, but the spin-offs are hosted here!
The Scattered Archives will be the next addition to the site.
This is an archive of news updates from behind the scenes! The updates before November 15th 2021 show glimpses of the site development before the launch!
Episode WIPs have been moved to The Production Room!
It's launch time!
The resort is still under construction, but open for business after months of development hell! See the earlier entries for last minute things that kept this from being published!
Some delays were for reasons that were out of my control, but other delays were from refinements I wanted to keep making, and my choices to make not one, but two ambitious projects that are ongoing!
Looking at what I wrote about my creation philosophy, I ignored pragmatism when I went beyond just making this site a mirror that was adapted to a format that's friendlier to older computers, but I had a lot of fun developing this, and going beyond!
Development of this project began around the end of May as I planned out how I'd adapt material for this site while I wrote new material for it, made a lot of images for it from scratch, and learned or practiced several skills along the way. Pixel art, HTML and CSS coding, the 3D renders, web buttons, a splash page and more!
The gears were a bit tedious to model. This didn't take the most time to model of the pieces I made for this site, but it took the most time to render!
I sometimes used 90's programs, or programs that would replicate the experience for this challenge! Most of the pixel art was made in Krita, but the computer icons on the "Keep Older Computers Useful!" Buttons were made in Claris Brushstrokes, and all of the 3D renderings here, unless I note otherwise, were made in Infini-D 3.0!
Those renders might've been a lot easier in Blender, but it could've been harder to make the renders look like 90's CGI, so until I figure that out, why not use an actual program from the 90's for this? :P
What you see at the launch is just the beginning! 9 0 ' s R e s o r t will be a mirror for the Magical Renegades series, but I also have several more ideas of new retro content for this site!
Major steps out of development hell! :-D I created my Neocities account and launched the index page with some material made for it!
When I began developing 90's R e s o r t, it was slated to be my central project. I made a splash page for it that would've been the index, and linked to the main page, but I had ideas for other things I wanted to host that aren't part of Magical Renegades.
There was a change in plans. I needed to make the index a portal page that would link to each of the projects I wanted to host here, and decide on a username that isn't related to any of them so I wouldn't feel tied down to one project. I was wanting to make this change for years but nothing stuck, so I thought over this until something clicked before I'd move on to the next step. For inspiration, I looked to the vaporwave scene and the naming conventions of a lot of artists and musicians.
The name of Synergy Eclipse or Synergy Eclipse/30? Synergy is one of the most overused corporate buzzwords, and the vaporwave genre lampoons consumerism and corporatism. Eclipse is a Classic Mac hardware codename, and the /30 part is in reference to the Macintosh SE/30!
When an idea for a name clicked. That was another hurdle cleared, but I needed to throw together an index page that would be a portal. Where would I start? A banner felt essential. An explanation that this page would host other projects, and a little bit of extra art.
I needed to tweak the Creation Philosophy page again, and will be focusing on that as one of the last refinements to make before I launch the first version of this site.
Perfectionism with the other project also put this one on hold and delayed their launches. I've been juggling both of them throughout October, but this is the reason I don't like to announce a project will be released by a defined date. There have been life issues slowing me down for months. Without them, I was still juggling multiple large projects was going to slow each other down. These have been a recurring issue with past entries.
At this time, I'd only want to do that for a project that is quick to develop and its development was going smoothly enough that I could feel sure of the release date I set for it. One of them that I succeeded with somewhat was the launch of the webtoon. I wanted it to be on the 20th of a month in 2020.
On 20th April I was very determined to get the finishing touches of the first episode done when they were almost, but not quite ready, but I pushed through and launched the first episode that day! February was the month I intended, but it wasn't ready yet, and I didn't want to wait another month.
On both of these projects I've been focusing on which pages should be ready to launch. After launching the version, refinements to the visuals can be added to them later.
These would be index pages with introductory material and a menu, an About page that gives more in-depth information about the projects, a few pages about the lore, and at least one chapter of material that demonstrates that lore. Both projects also have development log pages where I write about the development processes behind them.
Almost vaporwave vaporware
The site was almost ready to launch but I got caught up in last-minute perfectionism yet again! What was it over this time? Contemplating whether to make the index page a portal so that it could host other projects. I saw another Neocities site do this. It looks like a great idea when I was considering hosting multiple projects here, and I was juggling that other one too!
Episode 19 was still in-progress, and I resumed it. It just needed the finishing touches!
As for the title, when I read of "vaporwave", I often misread it as vaporware, but as of late when I read of vaporware I misread it as vaporwave! This site is both! :-P
Last minute perfectionism strikes! >=-(
I was almost ready to launch the site yesterday, which would've been perfect since it was the anniversary of one of the most popular OSes, Windows 95! If I had been ready to launch this in July, I would've chosen the 26th since it was the anniversary of another 90's OS, Mac OS 8. Alas, something happened at the last minute... A compelling sense of perfectionism, which I tried to hold back by letting myself launch the site while it was still under construction.
As I was about to publish the pages that were ready, I lurked a bit more on Neocities for 90's style sites and to see if there were any other webcomic creators had them, and they do! I was concerned if 9 0 ' s R e s o r t was too corporate upon launch because when I was trying to use twitter, I was focusing on "building a brand". That's the norm for accounts for webcomics, webtoons, webnovels or videos.
The next page I wanted to add before I launched the site was an amended version of my creation philosophy page. The original is on my Wordpress blog, and when I was adapting a copy of it for here, I realized how corporate it sounded as I was trying to build a brand, and neatly curate everything on the blog and on twitter. I thought about how everything flowed together for the reader's experience, and what would fit, which isn't bad in itself, but it kept me from showcasing some of my art ideas that feel like a better fit here.
Seeing the non-corporate atmosphere of Neocities, and a bit of gopherspace and Geminispace was a breath of fresh air! This is a space where I can focus less on that and over curating material to be neatly packaged, and more towards a site that is fun to design, and experimental!
More last minute refinements and site development things
The episode list table on the Anathema to Commonsense page was expanded to include the Extra! Chronicles chapters to show where they fit in with each other. It's not fooling you. Chapter 1 isn't the first chronologically, and it fits after episode 4.
What? Did you expect a series with time travel to be entirely straightforward? :-P
The last stretches before launch?
Testing that everything is in order before launching the site. Without a WYSIWYG, and because I use text editors that don't color-code keywords or HTML tags, I have to carefully look through the HTML file to look for anything that is formatted incorrectly. Wrong image URLs causing broken links. Text being bold or italicized when I didn't intend it because I forgot to close a tag somewhere further back in the document. Ah... These are part of the experience coding by hand!
The Souvenir Stand has been set up with the first batch of 88x31 web buttons I made, and plan to make several more about the old web, programs and retro tech, but could still branch out into other things about webtoons or webcomics. > '__' °°° ( )
That was an attempt at a thinking emote.
There are no modern emojis on this site. Only ASCII emotes, or smilies as they often use to be called!
I began making the web button for this site, and finished it the next day:
How ready enough is ready enough?
Development of this project for a 90's web-style spinoff began this May. It was going to mirror content from the blog Record Compendium on Wordpress with a 90's web flair, but branched off into a lot more as I learned more about the Neocities community and non-web protocols such as Gopher and Gemini. I'd love to set up a phlog (Gopher blog) or gemlog (Gemini blog) at some point, but that'd be for later.
These gave me a lot of ideas, but added onto development time, and I started to have to decide which content I planned should be ready for launch with the site, and what can be put on the back burner for later.
The most daunting content I planned to include with the launch were mirrors of the Anathema to Commonsense episodes, in their reduced-for-the-90's-era-experience-and-to-fit-storage-limits-quality glory, and a manifesto about my support for the small web.
I've been so busy developing this project and needing to do other things in my free time that I haven't kept up with the series I'm subscribed to on Tapas. :-(
This is a roadmap of my plans:
To be ready at launch:
To be ready later:
Other ideas in-progress
Easing coding by hand?/Coding from scratch can be a pain in the wrist!
I began converting the Extra! Chronicles chapters into txt file copies before I converted them into HTML documents that would be added to this site. My coding experience is like the old adage "I walked 10 miles to school every day in the snow... and we liked it!"
No WYSIWYG editors, but I couldn't find one that'd work with my daily driver! This was all coded by hand on a text editor! On most of the pages, I even had to replace the punctuation with manual HTML codes to make the punctuation display correctly because I didn't begin those drafts in a raw text file or HTML file. When I was replacing them, I had to check that I didn't miss any of them by reloading the HTML drafts in my browser. Frequently moving the mouse to where I needed to replace punctuation by copying and pasting the codes (such as to display extra spaces, but think of all of the quotation marks, apostrophes, question marks and exclamation marks I also had to replace) is tedious!
This was part of the 90's web experience for some coders, but this gets *painful*! It didn't start to hurt my wrists when I was adding each of the HTML tags and codes to the Scattered Archives story pages, but I was feeling it when I started adding the tags for each of the paragraphs of the Extra! Chronicles chapters.
I learned to use vi several years ago, would've used it for this if I remembered the commands! Org-mode and Emacs were recommended to me, but I don't have them set up yet. I'll try to figure them out, but for now, I switched from solely using TextEdit to nano to code HTML. (Functions that rely on alt-keys aren't very reliable on Macs so I haven't entirely given up TextEdit for copying and pasting manual HTML codes) It'd help me get used to Emacs if I switched to it, though I'm liking nano a lot as it is!
Figuring out the essential commands to navigate between characters, words or lines saved me a lot of mouse clicks and wrist strain!
The first of the Travel Logs was originally written in a .txt file instead of being copy-pasted from another format so there were never any issues with the formatting, and all of the punctuation properly displayed without me needing to manually replace them with the HTML codes. Realizing this was an important lesson. Moving forward, I'll begin writing content in .txt files because it's easier to convert it to rich text than to convert a plain text file *from* rich text!
