massive visual update today!! finally decided to try my hand at expanding the main content box.... it sounds so easy when you put it that way lmfao but it involved so much trial and error to figure out how to properly scale everything and make all of the boxes as even as possible. i had to eyeball everything; i've done enough pixel art that i'm decent at being able to count pixels from a distance, but i'm sure there are still areas that are off and that i'll notice later down the line lol. for now though i'm glad i managed to do it without irreparably breaking anything. i'd been too scared to try until this point despite the misalignments having bothered me since the moment my site went up lol.
while i was in there i also changed up a bit of the text formatting to carry the headings throughout the site, added a link to my youtube account on the index page, and evened out the spacing on the character directory boxes + made their names bigger and more attention grabbing. i'm really pleased with and proud of all the changes i made today and could feel how much faster i've gotten at figuring out how to do all this stuff! i'm learning!! unfortunately though i did sacrifice more of the mobile friendliness for this which is a bit of a bummer but perhaps a mobile-friendly version of the site would be a good future project!
btw.... the reason i had time to do all of this today in spite of it being a monday is because i threw out my back this morning just laying on my couch doing absolutely nothing..... back problems are scary, please take care of your back..... TToTT
hit and run with a change to character page formatting; i put suwa's likes and trivia into his collapsible bio because i think it looks neater that way. i also added another page for his gallery, and i intend to make both his and kouga's galleries contain 10 images per page moving forward so that loading times are less intensive. i also made some art updates real quick and i mounted my site on my computer's drive so that i could make updates a bit more easily and quickly!
in other news, i'm actually taking time away from social media and from replying to anybody right now... i would pretend like i'm completely afk but that's just not true lol i've been lurking and scrolling and browsing etc but i think that like, lately,,, i've been putting way more time into responding to messages and comments and replies to posts and such that i've deprioritized myself. i think i need to set healthier boundaries with social media and online time, solidify the who/what/where/when in regards to replying to people, and set firmer time windows for when i'll actually be available to people online. because as it stands i feel like i have no private alone time anymore and i'm.... drained? exhausted? idk. i think at bare minimum, i need to set a hard limit of no messaging or replying when i'm at work since i'm technically not supposed to be on my phone during my shift anyway lmfao.
idk why i'm posting this here, it's not like anyone will see it anyway. but i guess that's kind of the point. i think i need to care less about what other people have going on so that i feel less hurt and exhausted all the time. if i'm the only one that's gonna take care of me then i should put more time and effort into doing that ^^;;
i came back with the milk and cigarettes to update galleries and also!! i didn't update my blog the last time i was here but i've made two suwa-related videos now!! i made an oc intro on a whim because i recorded a speedpaint for my last sketchpage and thought it'd be fun to try it out, and i ended up getting really warm reception on it. ;w; i was really pleasantly surprised by how many views it got too... it's currently at 860 which is kinda insane to me for a personal video. and the zatsu-type sketch and yap video i just uploaded yesterday got a comment from someone saying they always wanted to try making videos like it but never did because they were worried it'd be boring, but since they enjoyed mine they wanted to try. that really meant the world to me because one of my biggest dreams in life would to inspire other people to just get out there and try new stuff without worrying about the end result ;w;
i've also had a lotta super awesome things happening in my personal life lately and so in spite of the state of the world, i'm suprisingly really content. i hope i can look back on this period of my life if i get down again or if things get really bad and just remember life can be like this if i put in an honest effort to enjoy it. wow sorry to be sappy anyway i've spent a long time this morning replying to people and stuff so i'm ready to stop typing LMFAO
a few new updates today!! updated suwa's galleries and changed the home page up a smidge to include a gif of the new vtuber model i illustrated and rigged for him hehe. i decided last month to stop letting my dreams be dreams and finally just commit to making a vtuber model from scratch by myself even if it came out like shit or if i gave up. thankfully i didn't and i'm genuinely really proud of what i was able to do for my first time using live2d. had a lot of struggle thanks to an early mistake that i didn't realize was a mistake and didn't have consequences until way down the line but! i managed to figure it out in the end. this tutorial series by merely wufeii was a godsend and i highly highly recommend it if you intend to learn how to rig a model. i finished the rigging with 36 days left of my free live2d trial thanks to this which meant i didn't have to spend a cent!! definitely cheaper to DIY than to commission a model artist and rigger lmfao.
i also finally got around to utilizing the new organization system i set up back on the 10th to add a character directory and a page for one of my other OCs, kouga!! i figured it was about time to add him here since i draw ship art of him with suwa often enough that it only made sense. and now that i have a character directory set up, i should be able to add even more characters in the future should i ever decide that i want to!
i think a project for another time will probably be to make another sub gallery on each of their pages for gifted and commissioned art, because i'd really like to show off the art i've gotten from others as well!! for now though, i think i'll probably call it a day. but my OC brainrot is particularly strong at the moment so more updates and art may be incoming sooner rather than later. guess we'll see!
new upload in the bone zone B) also long time no update on account of i spent most of my free time working on commissions back in august because i'd been dealing with mad sciatic pain and went to the doctor to get my shit fixed and turns out i have lumbar degeneration at age 30. so. emergency commissions to pay for the visit and x-rays and a new chair so that i have better lumbar support when i'm drawing lmfao. the chair's been working wonders and i don't have to deal with sciatic pain much anymore thankfully, but now i do feel the pain in my back quite a bit more orz. regardless though!! my commissions are done and so i'm taking at least the rest of the month to focus on personal stuff.
although... uhhhh i kinda fell headfirst back into oshikatsu stuff. rip. so now i'm trying to juggle both oc brainworms and vtuber brainworms at the same time lmfao. but hey on the bright side i made this cool-ass turnaround gif from a bunch of my suha fanart over the last year or so!! i'd been wanting to make one of these for ages but my style hasn't ever been consistent enough until recently. i'm so happy i could finally do it TToTT
added a guestbook (and in the process figured out how to edit the links sidebar without destroying the formatting lmfao)
somehow i always manage to write these before i've actually finished updating things to my liking for the day ^^;;
so not only did i go back and add subfolders as stated, i also added a subfolder for site buttons and went a little ham decorating with them on the home page!! i also figured out how to get youtube embeds working so naturally i had to embed my favorite suha karaoke stream lmfao
and then i got to thinking "hm.... i sure wish i had music for my site" but i ran. into a bit of a dilemma. you see i initially wanted to do just a button with an embedded playlist, but i didn't really wanna just steal an artist's work to promote my own in that way. so then i was like. okay, youtube embed. which i tried at first using a button because i didn't really need the video player, but i couldn't get it working at all... so then i decided to try a playlist embed, but youtube's embed code uses an iframe and when i tried to add it to the index page it was putting the links and resources page there instead?? i still have no clue why lmfao but! i found a code to let me embed it without an iframe and now i have a working playlist in the corner that doesn't stop when you navigate from page to page and will update if i decide to add more music in the future. i'm genuinely so proud that i managed to figure this out you have no idea how embarrassingly long that took.
i also updated some of the overall language on a few of the pages, and finally i changed the table on the first page to reflect my personal links because i couldn't think of anything else i would want to put there lol. wow. i've been doing this for like 8 hours now. time to collapse now!
long time no update! took a break from the site for about a month because of personal reasons (been dealing with a lotta sciatic pain that makes sitting for long periods of time difficult; turns out my spine is disintegrating a lil earlier than most on account of my shit posture lol). but now that i've had some time away and have drawn some more suwas, i figured it was time to come back and update again! so i added my newest suwa arts of course, but also. i spent some time reorganizing things to make futureproofing easier. meaning: i added folders so that things will be way easier to find as i move forward and add more to the site. figured it would be wise to do that now while there are still relatively few images and assets on here.
that's probably the biggest drawback of making your own website i guess... you do have to think forwards unless you wanna cause problems for yourself later down the line, but thinking forwards and preparing for the future is hard when you don't have any experience. something as simple as just adding folders for organizing behind the scenes, where someone visiting won't even know or see the difference unless they were paying attention to direct image URLs, took like over an hour of going back and adding the file paths to all of the code orz
but as much of a pain as it is, it's nice to learn and the pain is worth it for the sake of something i'm doing out of passion. plus while i was in there i decided to future-proof in other ways, like reorganizing the galleries to sort from newest to oldest and adding completion dates to each of the images. now returning visitors (me lol) can see my newest art first without having to scroll all the way down, and i think the dates help show the progression of the time spent developing a little bit more clearly.
in fact, as i'm writing this i think i may go back and add subfolders to my art gallery to distinguish between seiso and unseiso art, and maybe even put everything under another folder labelled suwa just in case i wanna make pages for other OCs someday... hmm....
back at it again at krispy kreme dude. spent some time making a site button this morning! (tiny little floating pixel suwa head my beloved...) i also changed up the backgrounds for each of the different boxes on the index page; not sure why, but my changes aren't visible via my desktop browser yet even though they're showing up just fine on mobile. so i'm assuming it's not a coding mistake and is some other nebulous issue i haven't figured out yet. and finally i added expandable details sections to the suwa containment area just to make it feel a bit less overwhelming. :')
but more importantly!!!! i nabbed a custom domain and bit the bullet to pay for a neocities supporter subscription hehe... goodbye swaginald.neocities.org hello suwa.channel!!! i was gonna grab suwa.art but.... it turns out .art domains are expensive as hell lol. but this one was only $7 for the year with a $7 renewal fee next year and it reminds me of vtuber channel names so i'm like, cool that's familiar and cute and comfy i'll take it! .ink was also an option but i think that would have felt more right to me if i were a tradional artist.
i still have things i'd like to do like filling out my links page a bit less hastily and also figuring out what i should put on the home page, but for now i'll slow my roll a bit and make edits in smaller chunks. the suwa stuff is what's most important to me, and i think i've got it mostly how i'd like it for the time being!
ok even more edits; i kind of got on a roll i think!! added a visitor counter, filled out all of the suwainfo and uploaded all of his gallery thus far, added and filled out an nsfw section, figured out how to make links within the iframe open in another window, made the formatting from page to page a bit more consistent, and added a page title and favicon! had a bit of a scare when i saw that all of the kanji in his name were broken up until i learned that i needed to specify the use of utc-8 for his bio section in order for them to show up properly lmfao. but i'm proud of myself for figuring out how to fix that and for everything else i've completed so far. this has definitely been much less scary to work on than i feared!
wow okay more edits already! i found a very very easy free-to-use responsive gallery code so i added that to the suwa containment area, and i also figured out how to change the iframe border color and remove the main border so that the double border effect that had been bothering me went away lol. i also changed the size of the marquee text to fit better! currently just adding more personalized flavor and preparing to fill out more suwa info.
hi i am learning to code currently wow so cool and awesome yippee