KaleidoscopeTrigger

Draws stuff/writes things/wrangles code/makes noise/all of the above

[auro-cyanide]

2016 Indie Visual Novel Developer Demographic Survey

Hey everyone! We ran a demographic survey back in 2014 about our community of developers and we are doing it again!

If you are a developer of Visual Novels and wish to contribute please fill out the survey here!

I would also really appreciate it if you could reblog this post or share it where there are communities of developers, especially languages other than english. I want to try and capture as much of our diversity as possible :)

Thank you and please let me know if you have any questions!

[trasskingdom]

For everyone who managed to access the bonus content of our album, the length of the bonus is about 4 hours, so if you thought you’ve finished it after opening it just once, try opening it again and see what you missed =w=

[kaleidoscopetrigger]

Trass put a tonne of work into this thing.

[trasskingdom]

Hi guys!

IT’S FINALLY HERE!!!

The album I’ve been talking and promising about is finally out. Yes, it’s called “Cerulean Mono-Rainbow”. Two years in the making!!

Us? We are the indie music group ‘harmonicblend’ and I am Trass, probably best known as the composer of Dreaming Mary’s OST!

This is a really big project for me because the album contains 12 songs sung by 5 different singers. This is a concept album where all the songs are blue-themed one way or another. I’ve always loved blue and consider it a part of my identity, so in a way this is an album that says a lot about me as a person. I hope it will be enjoyable! Oh, also as you may have noticed from the pv, one of the song is called Blue Dreams. Yes, this is the exact same song that is used as the theme song in the game Blue Dreams, sequel of Dreaming Mary.

You can purchase the album on bandcamp over here https://harmonicblend.bandcamp.com/album/cerulean-mono-rainbow

Or you can listen to the whole album for free instead over here https://soundcloud.com/trass84/sets/cerulean-mono-rainbow

Yes, the entire thing for FREE! In case you can’t afford to spend money on me but like my work!! (The download in soundcloud is enabled too)

If you do decide to support me and purchase the album though, there is a ‘little surprise’ waiting for you as bonus content. What is it? Find it out yourself, of course! I’m not telling!!! (PS. you may also learn more about Blue Dreams /psst)

composer // Trass illustration // accha art direction, design & crossfade movie // accha mixing // clea leshlick (tr1~7, 9~12), Usachii (tr8) mastering // clea leshlick vocals // accha (tr1, 11, 12), Lollia (tr2~5), KT (tr6, 7, 11), Usachii (tr8, 9, 11), Lunacy (tr10, 11) lyrics // Trass (tr1, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12), Geiky (tr2, 3, 7, 9, 10), accha (tr8) produce // Trass

[kaleidoscopetrigger]

There’s a couple of songs with me on in this! I’m super proud of Trass for finishing this thing, everyone worked really hard.

I recommend getting the bandcamp version if you can, the secret extra is really really cool and it is taking supreme force of will not to spoil it :)

[kaleidoscopetrigger]

I really enjoyed Insert Disc 5′s new comic, ‘AAAAA’ so I made a quick n’ dirty little sprite thing because she’s cool. Don’t give up, AAAAA!

(Go get her comic it is cool)

[kaleidoscopetrigger]

A quick go at the owner of the cafe those cutesy chairs are for.

(Way too much movement for a proper idle, but trying to get used to the anchor and IK functions)

[kaleidoscopetrigger]

Some placeholder animations I made while getting my head around Spriter. It’s been years since I animated anything and I’ve still got a LOT to learn but I’ve been having fun with it. Not allowed to do any more to these until I’ve started on other characters though because as your player sprite, I know this should be the one I take the most care over and if I let myself get caught in a redraft loop I’ll never get anything else done and I’ll STILL end up wanting to rework them once I’ve gotten more of the cast made.

This character is player nameable, but I placeholder their name as ‘Tacey’, which apparently comes from the latin for “be silent”, as they’re not the most talkative at the start of the game.

[kaleidoscopetrigger]

Making some props to figure out the colouring style for this thing. MC placeholder sprite left in for scale. When I showed TK the chair she demanded I make a spinning gif, so spin gifs for all.

This cafe is going to be cute as hell.

(EDIT: How the hell do I stop tumblr making these MASSIVE?)

[kaleidoscopetrigger]

The House on the Hill

(SoundCloud) 

 An old tune, but as The Lighthouse is on a bit of a hiatus while TK builds up some more assets... I felt like sharing it as it's one of my favourite BGM tracks for it so far, but doesn't appear in the demo and it was making me sad nobody else could hear it. The flutes might be getting replaced with some real ones eventually, and it needs a bit of tidying up, but I still like it.

[kaleidoscopetrigger]

Needing to keep the drawing train going, despite winter being terrible nonsense this year. Me and a lot of my friends have been pretty sad lately. Me and a lot of my friends really like cartoon skeletons lately. Consequently, motivational sans doodle time go. I REGRET NOTHING.

(I tell a lie, I regret not being able to think of a motivational bone pun, but I wanted to post this before I went to bed)

[kaleidoscopetrigger]

Was feeling kinda down but need to keep momentum, so here’s these 3 again. Might work this up with an actual background instead of just one conveniently placed tree etc.

[kaleidoscopetrigger]

So, uh

I’ll try and use this a bit more mostly because I should probably hide a bit less. I’m thinking I’ll keep this as ArtBlog/DevBlog/NoiseBlog, and I’ll make a side blog for rebloggy things. (Blog blogblog blog, blog??? B L O G.)

[EDIT oh hey here we go.]

Art rehab and all that. I’ve still got a bunch of burnout that needs kicking in the shins (or giving tea and sending on its way, I’m not sure what you’re really meant to do with burnout.)

Onwards onwards, let’s go.

[kaleidoscopetrigger]

Concept sketching for an unnamed game I’m kicking around. Having a lot of fun learning Unity, though I’m a long way from anything really showable. (I’ve made myself some placeholder sprites, a fairly involved dialogue system with typewriter animation and formatting tags, pub/sub events & flags, and a basic following camera with simple parallaxing backgrounds. Which isn’t bad for a couple of weeks’ tinkering in my spare time)

Left to right we have our namable player character, their fluffy sidekick/guide and the grumpy mentor for them both.

Been nice to drift back to a cartoonier style for this stuff.

[trasskingdom]

Trailer video for our next hymmnos fan album, Cosmocrystal!

Amazing video by accha @ilutiern Vocals by Kilotango (KT) Music by me! (Trass)

Website Previews Pre-order

[kaleidoscopetrigger]

So, this is a thing I’ve been doing with a big chunk of my free time lately. It’s a doujin album inspired by Ar Tonelico. I don’t usually do a lot of super-involved fandom stuff any more, but Ar Tonelico’s OST was what made me get back into writing music. It’s a 10 track album, 9 of which have me as vocalist and a few of which were composed by me, the rest being collabs with Trass. Even if you’ve not played the games, if you enjoy conlangs and silly amounts of vocal harmony you might enjoy it.

There’s previews of the 7 character songs on the site.

Lovely character art and killer PV by Aria and accha respectively.

[rejectedprincesses]

Five animated shorts for five female animation pioneers

 For this year’s Annency animation festival, the students at Gobelins made five 1-minute animations to honor five female animation pioneers.

They’re all phenomenal. If you have five minutes, please watch each of them. Warning: some hit HARD.

Mary Blair (1911-1978)

Worked for Ub Iwerks, MGM, and eventually Disney. Known for creating incredibly vibrant watercolors, which clashed with the studio aesthetic at the time. Disney eventually let her loose, and her aesthetic can be strongly seen in Cinderella, Peter Pan, and especially Alice in Wonderland.

Evelyn Lambart (1914-1999)

Hearing-impaired Canadian animator who worked with Norman McLaren on several pieces that the Canadian government would later declare masterworks. She directed her own films, making her one of the first women in animation to take the director’s chair. She was known for scratching up film stock to create “jazz” like patterns, the sort of thing you’d later see in Fantasia, Donald in Mathmagic Land, and the like.

Lotte Reininger (1899-1981)

German director who created the technique of silhouette animation, preceding Disney by 10 years. Started out making titles for movies and moved on to make her own animated feature, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, in 1926! As for the rest of her career, well - watch the short.

Claire Parker (1906-1981)

Created the “pinscreen” animation technique, where 240,000 tiny metal rods were manually manipulated in and out of a board in order to create an animation – think tweaking pixels by hand. She and she alone owned the patent on it.

Alison de Vere (1927-2001)

One of the first women to work in British animation, and was design director for The Yellow Submarine. She went on to create many animated shorts at a commercial studio, winning prizes for virtually almost every single one of them. She is often credited as Britain’s first female animation auteur. 

(much credit must go to cartoonbrew for posting about this in the first place - thanks, y’all!)

[chevreau-deactivated20110830-de]

[kaleidoscopetrigger]

Dammit I wanna watch Kaiba AGAIN now.

[eskiworks]

Orphan Works is BACK!  This time under the guise a new proposed US copyright law change, that ALL we artists need to be aware of!  I’m going to write out some quick points, and then point you guys to places where you can get more info.

Current US copyright law protects your work as soon as you make it.  The moment it’s created, it’s yours.  This includes photography too guys!  The proposed changes to the copyright law would strip artists of that inherent right, and force you to pay for and register for every single work you make, and every single work you have made in the past.  And not even with the copyright office, but with PRIVATE COPYRIGHT REGISTRIES. 

Proponents of the new law argue that creators are too hard to find (boohoo, it’s too “hard” to do the right thing), and that the things we create are too important culturally to allow us to have control over the things we make anyway (yeah, because my ability to make a living from MY work isn’t important, right?).  What they really want is the legal ability to use art without having to pay for it.  This is already being done all over the place, but right now we artists at least have the ability to fight back under the law.  This will all get taken away if we don’t speak up. What can we do?

WE ALL HAVE TILL JULY 23rd TO SUBMIT LETTERS TO THE US COPYRIGHT OFFICE AND VOICE OUR DISSENT.  The Illustrators Partnership has already put together all the info you will need, so please visit this link for more info.  You will see sample letters, the correct place to submit, and more information on the proposed law change.

Click here for more info, and to help!

I also urge you to take some time to listen to the following youtube interview for a more in depth look at the issue. Yes, it’s long, but I listened to this while I was working on a commission and didn’t miss a beat.

Everything You Know About Copyright is About to Change

Please, take the time to educate yourself about this issue and write a letter to the US Copyright Office.  Without our voices to challenge this, it WILL get pushed through! This law is a danger to all artists!

[eskiworks]

To be clear, this is NOT a petition!  The US Copyright Office is asking people to write them before July 23rd, answering five questions (which can be found in the first link above).  This does take some time, but the link also includes some sample letters for you to reference if you wish. The US Copyright Office actually wants your genuine and personalized feedback.

Please take some time to write a personalized letter and submit it online (also available in the first link here), so that your voice is truly heard.  They are listening, and this will make an impact if you send your concerns and answer the posed questions.

[whimsy-cat]

Glow in the dark jewelry by Papillon9.