Trying To Wake Up While Heading Off To Work In A Train

My family needs help, please reblog this.

My family filed and was accepted for bankruptcy about 6 months ago. Since then, my father has lost his job and now my 51yr old mom is the only one bringing home a paycheck. She makes less than 1500 for two weeks of work at a job she has worked at for nearly 15 years. My father refuses to seek employment or look at his options. We had 80$ for groceries this week and as of next week, we will be in debt 400$. I’d like to make a goal of about 750$, all of which will be given to my mother to ease the blow.

If you can, please donate to my PayPal or purchase a 5 dollar sketch/lined commission from me, which is half of what I would charge. torisketch@outlook.com. Every penny helps us as we wait for snap to kick in. Please, I beg of you, spread the word.

When was the last time you saw someone actually writing a letter?

Not application letters, I mean a nice, warm letter to a loved one

*Tring tring!* “POST! POST!!”

For some reason, the six year old me would get excited to hear the arrival of a post. I was always eager to receive letters. The kind old post man would pretend like all those letters or invitation cards or bills were actually addressed to me; he’d hand them to me with an impressed look in his face saying “Arey! Look how much letters you got today!”

As years passed I became busy in studies, career and never realised that the concept of sending or receiving a letter had disappeared from the back of my mind. Until one day.. One day, my husband showed me a video from the Malgudi Days series that I felt nostalgic about my younger, somewhat dumber self.

Thats when I realised that I’ve never seen a postman for a few years now. Especially after the rise of telephones and mobiles, no one ever sends snail-mails. Even when there’s the occasional bill or post, the postmen don’t have their usual smiles or kind words anymore. Being a postman has become just another job.

Here’s the episode from Malgudi Days for the curious :) The episode is in Hindi but the Youtube CC subs work fine

So when I watched that particular episode from Malgudi days, I was touched. It tells the story of a postman who knew everyone in that small village, he was friends with everyone, talked to everyone. He spoke encouraging words to the jobless ones who sent applications everyday and rejoiced with the family that had some good news from relatives of another another town, he shared the sadness of the ones whose loved ones were having a hard time in another village, in short he was an integral part of everyone’s life…

There’s one house/family in particular that the story focuses on. The postman has seen their daughter grow up from being a toddler to a girl ready to get married. He himself brought the letter that the groom’s side wanted to meet them and the good news that they have agreed for the marriage. He with all enthusiasm delivers the invitation cards all over the village and rejoices with the family on the wedding day.

As he’s about to leave the post office to partake in the wedding, a telegram arrives for that particular family. Now, in those times when there were no phones, a telegram almost always meant bad news, an accident or a death. The postman’s sixth sense tingles and he knows, delivering a letter of bad news will mean disaster for the wedding so he does the forbidden and opens the letter. As expected, a close relative has passed away.

The postman, withholds the news, not telling anybody until the next day. The family understands why he did not tell the news and their respect for him increases. They are grateful for him for not spoiling the wedding mood and the family do not report him.

The story was quite lovely and it was a trip down memory lane to see the old locations and houses. It certainly was fun — writing letters and receiving too! I’m excited to see new technology that the future holds and to look back at the past with nostalgia.

Lurking in the deep...

My first isometric illustration, under a frozen mountain lurks a monster... Adapted to that world thrives an ecosystem with strange creatures and plants. Done in Illustrator, this illustration has been spinning around in my head for the past few days.

Wooooo!! Look at those adorable buildings and animation!! :O 

Dev Update 2

Welcome to our December edition of the Kingdoms and Castles dev log. Michael and I have been hard at work on all kinds of stuff.

Probably should mention we prepped and launched our crowd funding campaign on Fig.co around the end of November and we’re at 480% funded as of right now. Thanks to all our backers and the fig folks, it’s been awesome and we’re so excited people are digging the game.

We also got greenlit on Steam that same week, so Kingdoms and Castles will definitely be coming to Steam!

Now onto more gameplay side stuff, here’s what I’ve (Pete) been up to:

Siege Ogre - Once the vikings discover you’ve got a castle that can fend off their ground troops, they’ll send invading parties with the siege ogre! It arrives by boat, lumbers over to your castles and tries to take down the walls.

Arrow Tower - These towers now shoot arrows at invaders. Their range increases the higher up on a tower they are placed.

Ballista Tower - Now that the vikings have a siege ogre, you’ll need something to help defend, so we’ve introduced the ballista. It’s a giant crossbow manned by four people and packs the punch needed to deal with siege ogres.

Here’s all three of them coming together in a little weapons test:

Villager Names, Thoughts, and Skills - Villagers can have names now, and we’ll be adding those who funded the fig campaign at the “Noble Noble” into the name pool. Villagers also have little thoughts which sometimes respond to what’s happened or what you’ve done, but other times are whatever is on their mind. They also gain skill at what they do over time:

Tavern - Got some community help from our discord making the tavern. Note the little people enjoying themselves outside!

Road re-do - Roads now include sign posts on three and four way intersctions, and fences on straights and curves. Also ended up changing the tavern roof color as it was too similar to our large houses:

Weather effects - Took another pass on our lightning, rain, and clouds during storms:

Dynamic Music - We’re now working with Aether on music for the game, and implemented a first pass dynamic music system where the music reflects the complexity of your town:

And now for Michael:

Hello everyone! 

This month I’ve been putting together a shiny new resource system. Now, resources such as wood, stone, wheat, and apples have a physical representation in the world. The new system has been hooked into all the existing resource creators (quarries, foresters, fields, and orchards) and well as the new stockpile building. I’ve also extended the concept of constructing buildings by adding Builder jobs. It’s the job of the builders to collect the resources necessary to construct their buildings.

The following GIF gives show a lot of the new resource system features at once, minus Builders fetching resources. You can see: Stacks of wood and stone resources, wheat being picked up and carried to the keep, and stockpile workers collecting stone from the quarry and dropping it off at the Stockpile.

Fun fact: If a quarry or foresters’ production stack is not regularly retrieved by stockpile workers, production will get backed up and halted!

Also, Last month I wrote a destruction effect for buildings that create a spreadable crack-like effect over the faces of buildings. You can see it being used in Pete’s Ogre vs Tower GIF above. Here is a close-up overly exaggerated example of the tech:

That’s all for now, until next time!

Lookie here! A work in progress of another illustration inspired by Jungle Book. I loved the movie and the series and wanted to draw a jungle background so bad! Here’s the progress

My #best9of2017 I'm happy about my progress in art the past year. Here's my favorites among what i did till now 😆 #best9 #illustration #collage #art #vector #children #childrensbook #inspiration #fun #happy #animals #love

Chibi I did long ago

I did these 2 for some profile pictures a while back. These are based on a fiction/fantasy story written by @poetshri  illustrations are copyrighted by me

The rat band! Done with watercolor pencils 🐀 yes they're eyebrows.. I messed up 😐 #rat #mouse #band #art #illustration #children #book #sketch #watercolor #pencil #waterColorPencils #guitar #horn #trumpet #drum #play #happy #funny #joy #love #inspiration #artistmichi #artistOnInsta #artistforhire #photooftheday #followme #cute #music #grey #perform #squeak #feature

Yay! Tumbling on Tumblr!

After months, nay, years of pondering, I decided to grace Tumblr with me presence. I must say I am quite pleased with it’s interface and I be looking forward to post here!

Here’s a couple of my artworks, aye! I be an artist who plans to take o’er the world_ uh I mean who plans to *enchant* everyone of yee with her art! Muahahaha!

Behold my fine art works!

Another munster! #munsterPerDay #doodle #art #sketch #cute #kuku #adorable #music #cartoon #band #happy #artistOnInsta #monster #monstersInc #bunny #drum #inspiration #joy #dream #love #draw #michi #renuka #me