#ask mhai

[mhaikkun]

Crashing into your inbox, I just saw your display name on twt saying 'getting married' and omg Congrats!!!! I wish you a wonderful wedding and marriage!!!

AAAAAAAAHHHHH YES YES IT IS TRUE thank you so much!!!!!!! ;U;

for folks who aren't on twitter (which is the only place I've talked about it so far bc I don't have photos of the ring yet lol) I'm getting married!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! to my boyfriend of eight years 🥰🥰🥰

[mhaikkun]

I just wanted to say, I’m so impressed by how far your art has come! I remember seeing your Mystic Messenger art way back in the day and I happened to stumble back upon your page again recently and I’m so impressed by how much you’ve grown. Wishing you luck with all your endeavors even though you probably won’t need the luck, haha

;_____; omg this is so sweet of you to say!!!!! thank you so much for checking in with me and taking the time to say something so nice 😭 happy new year!!!!

[mhaikkun]

It's been years that I've been following you, but I saw your leon but a knight post pop up on my dash and felt utterly compelled to tell you just how much I adore the way you draw faces

Everything about them is just chefs kiss

I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week!!!

oh man oh man ;_____; this is so nice of you to say, thank you so much!! it means a lot to me because I spend inadvisable amounts of time working on faces in my art compared to any other part of an illustration and I'm happy you like them ;v;

[mhaikkun]

I was wondering whats happening with the crime city visual novel i hope your still doing it it looks awesome

hello!!!!! thank you so much for asking about it, yes I'm still doing it!!! right now I'm prioritizing work but development for the visual novel is still going on in the background :3

[mhaikkun]

Your art is so pretty that I was mindlessly scrolling when I realized that I didn't really give your art the pause and attention it deserved, so I had to scroll back up and offer my apologies in the form of appropriate admiration, soaking in the juxtaposition of colors and line thickness until I felt I had repented. Please continue to bring loveliness into the world. Thank you!

no lie, this is truly the most thoughtful comment I have ever received in my time as an artist sharing work on the internet (and I think I've been doing this for 14 years). I don't think I'll receive greater praise than this and I want to say thank you for taking the time to not only give my art another look, but for writing this for me!

[mhaikkun]

Recently I've gotten really into making visual novel type games using ren'py since I decided yes, I will make a mini video game for my animation final despite having no prior coding experience and it is much easier than it looks tbh

I've been working on a visual novel too!!!! I don't post as many updates on tumblr but I DO have an official twitter account for it and my ko-fi members get a bunch of perks like seeing all the sprites and CGs~! it's called crime city and you can romance 10 different criminals :3c

you can choose your own pronouns and date anyone you like as well!

I just started toying with the art school idea today while idly daydreaming about what kinds of visual novels I wish I could play

for anyone who's been second-guessing making their own dating sim or visual novel, it's actually much simpler than you think thanks to programs like ren'py! there are a bunch of tutorials online that made it absurdly easy to figure it out. I would say the most challenging parts of it (for me anyway) is drawing all the environments and backgrounds and writing a cohesive story with good routes!

[mhaikkun]

It’s that anon from before (with the art appreciation compliment). I’m really happy that my words were so well received. To be honest, I was feeling pretty depressed when I sent in the ask, but I felt a lot of appreciation for your work; so I thought, if I could do nothing else, I should at least try to offer my praise and gratitude. Sometimes, I don’t have much to give, but I can usually still find a way to express my love and admiration for things - as if, no matter how extreme the weather, I will always come to a river, and in it, a particularly nice leaf will be floating down the water. For me, it’s usually worth it to pluck the leaf from the surface and offer it to someone along the way in the hope that they can appreciate it and find some joy in it. In this case, I feel as if that one little leaf has been put on display. For multiple people other than you to enjoy it, well, I’m so glad I shared that I’m tearing up a little.

I'm so sad to hear that you were going through some tough times when you wrote your original ask, but I hope you know just how much you've moved people by writing what you did.

twenty-one THOUSAND people have read what you had to say! please feel free to read through the comments and quote retweets yourself to see how you've made people realize that they'd been doing this all along and you just happened to word it perfectly, or look to the future with hope that someday they can make art that can make people feel the way you felt about mine.

and this is just a lovely side-effect of sharing your words with others, but it actually drew quite a LOT of people to my twitter page to follow me because they felt that they just HAD to see the work of the artist who could elicit such heartfelt words of appreciation. I'd been feeling really down about my growth over the last several years because art is my job, and when people can't see what I do it might affect my livelihood (or even just the enjoyment of sharing my work altogether).

you've really made a difference!! you're the best!!

[mhaikkun]

okay so full disclosure I'm not anon-

anyway I randomly stumbled across your tweet about that ask you got. it totally made my day to see something so positive and heartwarming!! I nearly just kept scrolling, but then realized that I never, y'know, looked at the art they were complimenting?? felt kinda silly to do the exact same thing the anon felt guilty of and not make it right

so anyway that's the story of how I started scrolling through your account for the past 30 minutes and why I literally cannot stop (also fun fact I had already liked a couple of your art pieces without realizing all of them were by you!). I absolutely adore how you render things with so. much. CHARACTER! like that hero of Hyrule drawing?? I can't get enough of how stylized the shading is, especially on those palm fruits :D (i'm not an artist so Idk how to verbalize "drawing make HAPPY" but you hopefully get the point lol)

anyway just wanted to say that the comment from anon brightened my day and I have them to thank for slowing down and actually appreciating your absolutely incredible art ❤️

the original anon actually did send another ask in reponse to people's reactions to the first, so I hope they also see that they moved you to write this. more evidence of the influence they've had on others just by saying what was in their heart!

I'm so grateful that you found me and my work because of the beautiful things they said. lately I've been feeling so overwhelmed by people's comments on my art that I don't even think I have the right words to convey how grateful I am just to read them!

in my case, it's also hard to verbalize "comment make HAPPY" but hopefully you get the point too :')

thank you, thank you, thank you!