Nonfi Nis, week 23

First of all, what exactly has kept me from working on this game for almost three months? Let's see...

Other corners of that world

• I took part in the "Peculiar Plants" challenge on World Anvil. I love plants, and oh my, the participation badge was so irresistably pretty... You can find the result here: Umpu Deraksi (species)
• I got lost in the Imperial Bloodline again. Unnecessary details that no one except me will ever care about. A good exercise in exploring the Nimýric culture and the Empire's political structure, plus a welcome excuse to work on my Ichtýd character configurator in Unity.
• I translated a lengthy quote from a historical figure into the Rilsu language. And spent a considerable amount of time on the problem of how I should present both the English and the conlang version. The result can be seen in this article: Sakal the Crop Bringer (person)

Random unrelated art stuff

• I found a prompt on DeviantArt which asked for a purple artwork. I need more purple in my gallery, so yeah.
• I was catching up with other artists' work and suddenly felt the urgent need to paint a griffin.
• I decided to create another world on WorldAnvil which could be a home for all my non-Kaleidoscope creations and the three creatures I've won/adopted from other artists.
• I was gathering pictures for all the creatures that I wanted to place in the new world, and figured I should polish up an old 3D model to represent the Glass Unicorn.
• I sketched an entry for a creature design contest.

• I got really excited for the Mass Effect Legendary Edition and prepared for that.
• I got completely distracted from that game about a week before release, because just then my family suggested to rewatch Doctor Who starting from the Eccleston season. And since I need to catch up with that show anyway, and watching together is more fun...
• I bought some classic Doctor Who episodes to completely overdose myself during the weekends.
• I spent an evening trying to get Rebecca Shepard's face right in the character editor of the Legendary Edition. Still not happy with the colors - where the **** is that pale lipstick option I had in the original game?
• I remembered that old idea I had about building my own not-quite-sonic screwdriver. Went searching through online shops for suitable components, then modeled casing parts for them. 3D prints are now on the way.

Okay, so I have been very busy with a lot of other stuff. But if I look closely, there has been some progress on Nonfi Nis after all. Not quite the progress I had planned, but better than nothing.

It's tempting to call unrelated projects a waste of time. But most of them also gave me something that will come in handy for Nonfi Nis as well.

• The "Umpu Deraksi" article had me create not only one, but four images in Blender. I've learned a couple of tricks for creating better-looking renders and speeding up my overall workflow.
• Translating Te-Sakal's quote to Rile gave me a better understanding of that language. This will be useful for figuring out the key differences between its predecessors Rilangun and Zuni. Neither the Rilanga nor the Ran-E-Zu have magical sci-fi translators, and I fully intend to work that into the plot when the families make contact.
• The Imperial Bloodline had me explore the connections between the kingdoms making up the Nimýric Empire. Since the Nimýric Empire and the Pereqaian Alliance are meant to resemble the Rilanga Union and the Ran-E-Zu Confederation, respectively, this exercise will certainly help with fleshing out the latter two.
• The unrelated artworks? More practice in image composition, creature design and using my tools efficiently.
• Designing my Whovian multitool made me look more closely at numerous flashlights and swiss army knives. The Op family will certainly have to do some maintenance around their shelter, so it can't hurt to familiarize myself with various tools that I may need to model someday.

If you have been following along, you've probably noticed that I've been dancing around the task of fleshing out the characters of the Op family. I can't help but wonder why - maybe it is some form of writer's block, maybe I'm having problems because there is no connection to my main story around which I could develop their biographies.

Well, one piece of advice that I see frequently is to step back and do something else when the brain gets stuck. This serves two main purposes:

1. It recharges the creative batteries. Thinking about the same thing day and night can be very tiresome, so focusing on a different thing gives the brain a chance to rest.
2. It exposes the mind to new ideas. Inspiration rarely comes out of the blue - most of the time, it's bits and pieces of information that we've seen or heard somewhere.

When I look at the remaining distractions, I quickly recognize two of the franchises that I wrote down for playing/watching in case of a dry spell. In fact, I wrote them down because the founders of WorldAnvil keep stressing the importance of these "Big Guns". So why are these two among my "Big Guns"?

1. Mass Effect is the game series that had me going "Yes! This is what teenage me had in mind for the Kaleidoscope thingy!" Learn from the best, people say.
2. The universe of Doctor Who is a treasure-trove of ideas, and the stories cover all sorts of moods, plots, characters and settings. And it's already started to bleed into my own world - my ancient magical hive mind became notably more playful and silly after I started watching that show... ;)

Getting back on track

Okay, so it seems like my brain had decided to take a vacation after the first three months. And now that I think about it, starting the project so soon after the big WorldEmber challenge on WorldAnvil might have been a bit too hasty... But what matters is that I did remember that this project exists, and that I am returning to it.

There's one thing that I have not looked at yet - and that's the tiny bits that I managed to squeeze in between getting distracted. So let's take stock of these:

• I tried my hand at the "Adventure April" challenge on WorldAnvil, which invited people to write a one-shot RPG. I did not submit anything, but I got some useful ideas out of my draft - the name of the Ran-E-Zu family, some potential character backgrounds and some things that could go awry in the shelter.
• As mentioned above, I spent some time getting a better grip on the Rilsu language, Rile. Besides that, I've already started working on articles for Rilangun and Zuni.
• I've narrowed down the region of interest on Ranul's map, and tentatively placed the two shelters within it. And I've started thinking about why they would be so close to the border in the first place. Though I haven't quite found the answer yet.
• I started planning the architecture of the shelters. I googled for references and sketched out a bedroom in the Op family's shelter.
• I did some spring cleaning on WorldAnvil. I sorted my stub articles into the overall category structure, started re-organizing my tags and made a central hub for accessing the information that I would need for Nonf Nis.

What really helps me with my worldbuilding is looking for prompts and artist challenges online. You can find them anywhere, floating around social media. For instance, October 2020 was "OC-tober" for me, as in Original Character. A group on DeviantArt had put up a cool list of daily prompts for that - I only completed part of them, but every little bit counts as progress.

Between my day job, my thesis, the pandemic and all the aforementioned distractions, I barely noticed how July is already around the corner. And with it comes another massive challenge on WorldAnvil - Summer Camp!

Last year I took part for the first time, and it was a really fun and productive month. So what would be better than focusing on this little corner of my world this year?

Apparently, the founders of WorldAnvil have read my mind. This year's homework before the challenge starts with exactly this question: What project will I be working on? Honestly, I love that the people behind this platform are part of the target audience themselves.

Well, with that question answered, it was straightforward to fill in the temporal and spatial extent of my focus area. One other question that I find really useful is when I plan to work on the prompts. I admit that it feels a bit weird to commit to a fixed schedule for a hobby, but then again, it's not that different from having training sessions on a particular evening each week.

You can look at the finished homework here: SummerCamp 2021 Pledge Document

Summing it up

Don't feel too bad when other stuff gets in the way of a project. That's life. What looks like a distraction may serve a purpose after all - practicing a skill for later, triggering inspiration or just letting the mind cool off. The most important thing is to keep moving, at least a tiny bit. One way to do so is to set intermediate goals - for example, by taking part in one of the many challenges that can be found on artist or worldbuilding platforms.

Do you have your own tricks for getting back into a project? I'd love to hear about them! Feel free to comment below.

I suppose the next blog post will be at the beginning of August, after the Summer Camp challenge is over. If so, it will sum up what I've managed to write during that time.  Well then, take care!