shout out to syrupyy, ayy

web developer (made comic studio) & content creator ~ working on a video game ~ syrupyy.dev

[syrupyy]

when you feel bad about yourself, the question to ask is "do the cards suck or am I playing the wrong moves?" if you're playing the wrong moves, learn the right ones; if the hand sucks, bide your time until you get better cards

in my case, I learned I was in the wrong game entirely and started working on my own

[paintrushapp]

PaintRush Shutdown Notice

TL;DR: PaintRush is shutting down on March 31st at 12:00 AM EST. The code will be open sourced. All unused credits will be refunded.

What's PaintRush, Again?

An art commissions website with a focus on livestreamed work. You'd go to an artist's schedule (or just send an immediate request to one that's online) and basically pay to "book" their time - if they accepted, you could come back at the agreed-upon time and watch your creation get made live. There was gonna be more to it, but that's where it stands.

PaintRush was something I made because I wanted it to exist. I had a few of my artist friends' priorities in mind - the kind who specialize in quick, cheap commissions - but ultimately, my main goal was to rethink art requests entirely. I built some features rivaling the offerings of other companies like VGen and Fiverr, even if it wasn't enough to become competitive with them. It even got the attention of a couple artists I looked up to! So...

Why the Shutdown?

Long story short, the site hasn't been doing well. Sales lagged as I stopped talking about it publicly, yet the cost to run the server has remained the same, which means we've been running at a loss - and real-life circumstances have cut my finances, meaning I can no longer sufficiently shoulder the risk.

Let me clarify that this outcome was sorta obvious in hindsight - when I posted the trailer in November, I had sufficient extra funds to be predicting that I could just spend money to acquire clients if that became the bottleneck... by the time I realized that was the case, I had spent myself dry on Christmas presents for my family, a point I still haven't fully recovered from yet.

Loss of Attention

A few more changes in my life that took me away from PaintRush:

After the first 3 weeks of grinding away at the site, it was the Christmas season and I promised my partner I'd take 2 weeks off for it.

When I came back, I was being a lot more careful about code quality. I started implementing fun additions like the quick drawing tool to keep myself entertained, but I kept putting off the Not-Fun things like better admin controls, dispute resolution handling, setting up analytics providers... instead, I mostly just did cleanup work and called it a day. In retrospect, I think I'd call it burnout.

By February, Comic Studio work started back up internally. I jumped between projects, struggling to context-switch as I worked on whatever was needed of me. This is the point where the revenue stopped coming in, which didn't help with motivation either. Also, I ran out of ADHD meds.

This month: a major shift to CS I can't announce yet which is even more damning to my other projects. I no longer have time to work on several codebases at once, and I need to run Comic Studio as it's the only thing making me money. I'm about to figure out my taxes, and the most convenient date to end the site as a financial liability is at the end of March. I cancel my plans for a hail mary update.

Between my financial woes and recent lack of time, it strikes me that I shouldn't have made something that runs on other people's money if I can't be there to give my all to it - my all as in money to spend on the site, and also as in time to be able to fix all of the issues in time for people to use the site.

As mentioned, I will be refunding all unused credits at the end of the month after the site shuts down. You can still add some now if you want to enjoy the site one more time; I'm sure the artists that are still there would appreciate it. If you need help with anything else, message me on Discord or Twitter, or send me an email.

But! Some Cool Stats

In the 3½ months the site has been up, we've had:

289 accepted artists with public profiles

755 requests made

$1,497.95 in commission volume

12,944 chat messages sent

30,016 views on YouTube (trailer, now unlisted)

Not bad at all! A better businessman could've turned this into something big. That doesn't feel like me, though - I'd rather make cool things for the sake of making and sharing them. Speaking of which...

Open Source Version Info

After I clean this up and outline what needs to be done for this codebase to really be usable by anyone else, I'll be publishing the site's entire React + Next.js + Convex source code on GitHub under a permissible license. I figure that if I can't make it work, someone else could at least get some use out of it. I'd love for other commission sites to adopt our tools!

No repository yet, but I'll update this post when there is one (should be before the actual shutdown). It'll also be linked on the site.

In Conclusion

Thank you to those who put their faith in my weird idea!! I had a lot more planned for it (you'll see in the repo), but I have to call it here. This is the first and only time I've run a SaaS-type application like this, and I've learned my lesson - no more taking other people's money until I can give 100% of myself in the process. Free stuff is less stressful anyways!

Big updates to Comic Studio soon, look forward to it if you care. You can follow my main blog @syrupyy for updates on that + the game I'm making in my free time. My other socials can be found on my website.

Rest in peace PaintRush 11/29/2025 - 3/31/2026

[syrupyy]

2026 // now begins syrupyy's year of slop...

[syrupyy]

hello! I'm building a tool for artists that struggle with motivation, and for anyone who wants something specific drawn quick. it's basically DoorDash for art commissions join the waitlist, it's free ↓ paintrush.net paintrush.net paintrush.net there's also a Discord server and other socials linked on the site. I made a Tumblr for it @paintrushapp (activity will depend on how busy I get) thank you all for being patient while I go crazy 💙

[syrupyy]

jesus christ

I made this page to talk to my old bestie's tumblr friends and to moderate @cookie-run-guild-rats, which was run by another friend... I didn't really spend my time doing anything at that point. then I made those two friends a roguefort comic website and now it'll be remembered as step 1 in my world domination

dropping insane new website soon-ish

[syrupyy]

so this rage comic-themed crypto token named $RAGE is embedding ragecomics.comic.studio on their website, and because there are no other developers associated with the token publicly, a bunch of people seem to think I'm affiliated???? and I'm getting a ton of new X followers from it 😭

the funniest part: it launched an hour ago. apparently it rug pulled within FIVE MINUTES of going live:

people in their replies r so maddddd

[syrupyy]

art donated by @saltzerland <3

[syrupyy]

finally updated my blog theme for the first time in... 3 or 4 years???? god the cream unicorn ovenbreak art was getting old LOL

this was the first syrupyy account. I think that old profile predates my twitter, youtube channel, the comic creator and all that... new era calls for a new look though. unfortunately the 2010 tumblr theme is gone; maybe if I'm ever not working on 4 projects at any given time I'll make a new one

[syrupyy]

dreamnet character refs

Q: what is Dreamnet? A: it's a game I wanna make when I'm done with all my stupid web projects. the story is about a crew of weirdos saving the internet (which is also their world) from corporations pretty much . and I do not have a lot more to say until there's gameplay footage because I have learned showing is better than telling

Q: how does it play? A: right now it's like Pokémon Mystery Dungeon mixed with Deltarune, with a little bit of Balatro? so basically a deckbuilder roguelite, but I swear it's really cool and fun and you'll like it and'

Q: why should I care? A: This is what I'm doing instead of Cookie Run now for the most part

Erlyn (they/them). main art by @metropolitankei

Thorne (she/her). main art by @saltzerland

Mizzi (he/him). promo design by lucumiau on xitter/bsky

Oomo (any pronouns). main art by an anonymous friend

[syrupyy]

updated the Cookie Comic Creator GitHub repo to include all the changes made to the site in its final years. if you know how, you can run it locally w/ all the sprites and images by extracting the .zip file on the Releases page. I even restored the long lost April Fool's update!

sniffle... before Cookie Comic Creator, this blog had like 6 posts on it, and I was completely inactive on social media. now look at where we are... all thanks to my 644 followers 😎

scene studio this year!!! look forward to it!!!! also, look forward to me posting about my game in like a week when I have the rest of the character reference sheets finished <3

[syrupyy]

end of an era (10/27/2021-01/07/2025)

cookie run fans,

it is with sadness in my typing that I announce the end of the original (pre-Comic Studio) Cookie Comic Creator. the hosting company killed it b/c the debit card that was paying for it expired, and I completely did not see the payment failed notice in the flood of spam emails they send me every month - I have so much more I could say about why this company sucks, but point is I do not have all the files as they were before, and it would be too much hassle to bring it back when the site has been all but replaced with Cookie Run Comic Studio

if I don't forget to (and can find it all), I will add the last few changes I made to its code to github.com/syrupyy/cook... but, as it hasn't gotten new cookies or updates in a year+ anyways I just redirected it to Cookie Run Comic Studio, which is better and you really should be using it anyways...

thank you all for making comics with the stupid site I made for my friends to celebrate crob's 5th anniversary for so long HAHA. I know some people (in South Korea and China especially) still prefer CCC over CRCS, but the host has basically forced my hand here - and it's for the best IMO! we've put so much work into Comic Studio over the past two and a half years, and if you haven't tried it I highly suggest you do :')

also, it's worth mentioning that Comic Studio is doing great and is not going anywhere for as long as it pays my (and my friend and helper, illbloo's) bills. I keep daily backups of all its content, and HyperHimes has been keeping the Cookie Run studio up to date for me, so rest assured this will not affect anything on that front!!! we're also working on Scene Studio, and a whole bunch of other projects under a company I recently started - expect to hear more about that soon. for now though, we mourn the site that put us on the map; the idea that started it all with 600 lines of hastily assembled JavaScript.

(note: the official tag for posting comics on Tumblr will still be #cookie comic creator. this is for legacy reasons, but I also think it's cool to keep the original name going in spirit - you can always just set the panel size to Classic and pretend nothing has changed, after all!!)

so long and thanks for the unicorns, syrupyy

[isat-comic-studio]

Title: compilafrin

Poster/Creator: @syrupyy on Comic Studio

Date: December 13, 2024

Text transcription in ALT

[syrupyy]

I needed a way to quickly add sprites to an image, so I added a Comic Studio feature for it. just press "Import Image" or paste/drag an image onto the welcome popup and you can make quick & easy edits w/ any studio on the site! <3

comic.studio

[syrupyy]

Vivian finally being out as trans in the new Paper Mario remake hit me like a truck and it took me a while to fully understand why (light spoilers for chapter 2)

it's like.. I don't know how to describe it. I play a lot of indie games and I've gotten used to many of them having the full array of LGBTQ+ representation, and at this point I look at it and smile and then move on

with a huge corporation who has everything to lose like Nintendo, it feels like an entirely different world. here, I step back into this game I've owned on disc since I was a kid, and everything's the same if not slightly better... and then I start noticing the changes, one by one. picking up all the little clues, when suddenly I get to this line

I had already been spoiled on her full confession by Twitter, but... when I saw even this much with my own two eyes, it felt like something that had been hiding in my mind for 12 years just leapt out. the subtext is now text. the characters of this world that I've thought about all this time, that I would doodle in my notebooks, that I used to read so much fanfiction about... are canonically going through the same real struggles as me and so many others I know

and I just felt... seen. like, as if I'm finally allowed to be a real person, like I'm not crazy for telling people to use gender neutral terms around me, like I'm truly nonbinary and not just in writing

I never really talk about my gender identity in public because I've never had that validation telling me that it's not just in my head. my friends will reassure me, my mom won't hate me for it... but at the end of it all, Nintendo raised me since I was three years old, and that was a pillar of my life whose approval I never expected to have

so when I saw this, I just... sat there, staring, for a full minute. processing these emotions I never even realized I had. it's just one little sentence in a 30 hour long video game, it shouldn't mean that much, but... it did to me. the writers actually cared. they stuck their faces out the window that is the trans experience and they came back and rewrote the script to match. they left the Fire Emblem toad the same, not even changing "GBA" to "Switch" or "3DS", but they knew to change this

thank you, Vivian. I understand how you feel now

[syrupyy]

if all works out well, on january 18th i'll have something to show you when mitmh 2024 becomes declassified.

👀

why does it automatically become huge NKFCDHGNLKMFDLKMNH

[syrupyy]

only like 5 of my friends are on tumblr and none of them are cookie run people, so it's really wacky for me to revive what used to be my CR tumblr and then they follow me and it's like "well shit. now do i make content for my 500 cookie run followers or my 5 friends"

i'll keep doing the former at least for now, but know that these days i mainly only think about the game bc i have a yt channel around it. over time i'll start expanding my interests and find more kinds of content to make and my posts & videos will finally start being coherent to everyone else

[syrupyy]

NEW VIDEO!

this time i'm joined by cherrow, groiny and dreakt (top 100 arena player) to help me figure out how to play cookie run in a world where everything has 1 HP...