This Gravity-defying Run Features Tons Of Enemy Bouncing, Claw Swinging Acrobatics And Pulling It Off

This gravity-defying run features tons of enemy bouncing, claw swinging acrobatics – and pulling it off is every bit as tough as it looks!

Unfortunately I flubbed up right at the end, but it’s a relatively minor mistake and getting this run took over 45 minutes, so I stuck with it.

Moonshot Scaffold | SSG-R79-3HF

A treacherous ascent up a space elevator that’s still under construction! As you go up, less of the elevator is constructed – meaning fewer platforms to catch you if you fall. One slip could send you tumbling back through the stratosphere…

The Missing Sketchbook

I finally found one of my missing sketchbooks last night! Naturally, my first instinct was to take pictures and post it online, lol. It's around ten years old, so I've forgotten about nearly everything that's in here – this is a big deal for me!

This is the first page??? I don't remember the context of this sketch, whether it was by reference or whatever – but I definitely don't remember ever drawing anything this complex. The fact that I even attempted it kinda blows my mind 🐲

Holy frick it's a redraw of a super old Kirby puzzle I made... Every row, column, and diagonal has something in common – can you figure them all out? (Probably not, some of the answers are really obscure details that I could never quite capture.)

Once again, I have no memory of ever drawing something this complex, but my inner 14-year-old's heart is fluttering with excitement. The Mario vs. Donkey Kong series was my first time really sinking my teeth into level design! But that's a story for another day...

Mini golf courses! These are fairly simple, but I was always fascinated by the design and gimmicks of a particular one I went to as a kid. There's a bunch more of these in the other sketchbook I'm missing, including one with a waterfall!

WAIT WHAT??? ANOTHER BIG PAGE????? And it has a bunch of redraws from the original AAAAAAAA

Okay, okay, before I get carried away, the Big Page was something I did in my first sketchbook where I would fill in a bunch of boxes with little Kirby scenes!

Here's what the original (four or so years prior) looked like – much bigger page, but much, MUCH smaller boxes, lol. I remember it being so hard to draw that small, looks like I corrected that mistake in the newer one. Maybe I should do this again sometime...

Wait? Wisps?? Sonic Colors???

counts out the years on my hands

Yeah I guess that adds up, doesn't it...

I did a lot of perspective drawings in this particular sketchbook – it was kind of a natural extension of the mazes I drew in my graph paper notebooks (which I always did way more of than sketches).

This one was a test for the next two...

SPACE! This scene was inspired by the later levels of Thruspace, which I can't seem to find screenshots of. I really loved how the walls open up as you go, and you start seeing more outside the tunnel.

I hope I can stream Thruspace one day, it's still near and dear to my heart.

This sketch helped me map out the image on the right – one of my first pieces of digital art! I'm still really proud of the concept behind it. No two pixels touch orthogonally... although one's missing from the digital version, whoops!

This was for Mario's 25th, ten years ago.

Here's some Mario items and enemies, to practice shading with just a pencil. Honestly, it wasn't "practice" at all – I just thought they looked cool like this, and I wanted to try it out in different ways. Whether it looked right didn't matter as much.

I really miss that mindset…

Some more assorted sketches:

A few Chao in various shapes and sizes. They sure are a diverse little species, aren't they?

A Zelda dungeon room – I don't remember how it works. I just remember wishing I could make whole dungeons! (Still do, honestly.)

Finally, here's the wackiest one of all: A concept for a rotating game system! Each of the four colored sections has a control stick, two buttons, and a "paddle" at the bottom (the colored-in part). There's also an accelerometer, so you could rotate it and play from any section!

One game might ask you to put one hand on either side, like a regular controller. Another might ask you to hold it from the bottom, like a Game Boy… but four people could hold it and play like that all at once! It's a little like the Switch's multiplayer, but pre-dated by nearly ten years!

I didn't really come up with any games for it, though – and in hindsight, I think it may be a little *too* out there for anything much more than the obvious:

A Platformer But With Gravity

Steering Wheel

WarioWare: Twisted

But I'm just amazed I came up with this at all.

———

Anyway, that's mostly it! This is a tiny sketchbook with 24 pages, and I've shown all the big stuff.

Drawing was usually a way for me to express ideas rather than practice quality, but I'm surprised by how much I tried to push my limits here – only to completely forget it all.

This was the last sketchbook I kept up with regularly, before being overtaken by "I can't draw, all my drawings suck" for several years... right as I had just started looking at quality on my own terms. Luckily, I'm starting to catch up again lately ✨

I'm still missing one other sketchbook in between this one and my first, but it might be lost to time – I knew this one was buried in a box somewhere, but the other had been missing for much longer. If I find it, we'll do this again!

In the meantime, back to drawing.

Redraw of my current Twitter avatar – my Animal Crossing OC, Rivers! I should properly introduce her here sometime.

I’m finally getting more comfortable with the idea of finishing college at some point.... if I don’t also have to work. I would have to completely switch out one for the other, which is not possible currently, but at least I can dream about it now!

I had about a year left, but it would probably end up being two, simply because the CS curriculum has to update as fast as the industry does; I was mostly doing C++ in college, which is less of a thing now. I’d have to catch up with Python or Javascript or whatever the kids do these days.

Besides, a second year means I could fit some electives in – art, higher math, music, psychology, improv??? Frankly, that's the most exciting part! These are all things that I enjoy enough to want more formal training with, or never had any in the first place.

Despite knowing it would take extra time, I really would like to finish my degree! That’s a huge step up from this time last year. I’m finally starting to get past the amount of stress that just thinking about it would put on me.

The burnout? Not so much, still dealing with that.

But if I had to work on top of college, for two years, then I would either have to do part time and focus only on the classes I need to finish – skipping electives entirely – or I would explode into a bunch of tiny stress sprinkles. More importantly, it would probably be both.

And so, despite my stance changing from last year, the answer is roughly the same: “It’s not in the cards right now.”

I’m back in the Mari0 scene with a new project! Here’s a (slightly crusty) video showing my progress so far. Not sure why the graphics look Like That, I might have to clean the contacts on my cartridge…

it is weird to have effectively come out a second time and only now start having such realizations as "oh i do get to have gender euphoria" and "oh i am trans after all"