the fun side

So yesterday was the annual re-opening of one of my favorite little virtual spooky season traditions:

The Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival!

made and maintained by adamgryu on itch.io

It's a little virtual ghost town where the main attraction is carving pumpkins! As far as I know, you can carve as many as you want and place them around the town and see other people's pumpkins. You can also bump into anyone else currently active on the server as ghosts and play little games together, go on the haunted hay ride, solve the haunted maze, and take pictures!

Me and my friends gathering to take a quick selfie at the top of the tower at the end of the maze during last year's festival. It's honestly a very cute and wholesome little tradition that's pretty near and dear to my heart, and people make some pretty amazing pumpkins!! Anyways, if you're bored and have a few minutes to spare, I'd highly suggest checking it out and maybe even bringing along a couple friends. :)

The pumpkin festival is open until some time in November, so check it out while you can!

"What is a fun blog," I hear nobody ask.

Yes. Thank you for noticing. The original intent actually has nothing to do with actual english language concept of "fun," but we can all pretend it does.

Funwalker is my social media handle everywhere that I can get away with it. It's my very clever way of not having to fight 6 other people on the internet for the coveted "funambulist" handle.

You see, it all started long ago, when I was a wee Sydney...

I played Garden Story.

It's a cute little game. Not quite what i expected when I played the demo (however many years ago that was now).

I had assumed it would be an adventure game in the vein of The Legend of Zelda where you pick your way through the world fighting monsters and solving puzzles, but it's really quite different from that, sort of blending in management sim(?) elements (managing your towns by gathering resources every day, fighting off monsters, fixing broken things around town, etc.).

Complex mouth rigging + Added in some animation smears.

[For context, this is an avatar I made for a client some time earlier... this year?-- _{How does time work...} yes, this year (2024)--anyways, I made it in live2D. For the uninitiated, it's the current major alternative to making 3D vtubing avatars that use face tracking.]

Since [I was asked on cohost] how I did it, I'll just do a quick breakdown here.

Make yourselves at home.

Earlier this month, cohost announced that it would be shuttered by the end of the year. It was a pretty small little place as far as "social media" is concerned, but I had a good time with it. It was kind of nice having such a niche little community.

I'm not really expecting to gain any semblance of "community" around this little blog, but I thought I'd start posting some longform content here and turn it into a more frequently updated space. Else, what am I paying for? I'm sure the spiders that have taken up residence in my server space have no problem with me leaving this little site forgotten (and I won't evict them--I do love spiders after all), but I'm just going to dust off a little corner just for me.

I've resolved to post more often on my tumblr as well, and it will likely be a lot of the same content, so if you would rather read these on some sort of "dashboard" you can get a similar experience over there.

Subject-wise, I'll probably keep this mostly down to the subjects of:
^{(click for a little dropdown with more info)}

Art

Of course, I'll probably be posting about art. How can I not? I've actually been working a lot on more traditional art lately (sculpting and block printing), so maybe I'll talk a bit about that.

Video Games

I've been learning Godot for the past few years and finally released a little game called [Zoo-ika](http://funwalker.itch.io/zoo-ika) with my friend Maya Kern back in August. I'm also trying hard to get another little game finished by sometime next year (also more details for that on my [itch](http://funwalker.itch.io) as well). In addition, I'm a big nerd who just plays a lot of video games. I post occasional thoughts about them on my tumblr and twitter, but I might write some more thoughtful, longform posts about them here (and tumblr).

My Store...

I know it's been closed for a long time. I haven't gone to a convention in nearly five years now and the pandemic really just killed my will to keep it open, but I have been working on some new stuff mostly for fun. If I re-open it, I may do it in "drops" rather than an always-open storefront, since it's kind of a pain to deal with during my regular routine. Maybe I should just make a dedicated post about that unto itself... I have many thoughts.

Aaaanyways... We'll see how long this lasts. lol
Stay fresh.