As per usual, this is a crosspost from my website, Hydromecha.website.

Man, January felt like it went by really quickly. I didn't finish anything this past month, but I made some good progress on a couple major things, plus a couple smaller things. I'll start with those smaller bits first.

Minor Comic Reader Update

While I was getting things set up for this month's update I noticed the Back/Next buttons in the reader weren't staying highlighted when they were supposed to when you turned a page. This was caused by the stuff I had implemented last time to gray out the Back/First or Next/Newest buttons if you were at the start or end of a comic. It didn't account for keeping a button highlighted if you still had your mouse over the left/right side of a page. This should be fixed now. If you're still encountering the issue, try clearing your browser's cache. The reader template on Archive.org has also been updated with this fix as V1.2.

The Return of Bugalo

Wonderful & Fancy Highschool Bait Club (better known simply as Bugalo) was removed from the site a little while back, with promises of returning it as an archive when I updated the comic reader. It's back now and this time it'll be receiving new pages on consistent schedule. Expect at least one new page per recap post (There are two new pages this time!).

For some context, Bugalo is a weird sort of collaborative comic. I'll draw a page (without text) and then a friend adds dialog, narration, etc. afterwards. I have no idea what he's going to do and have to try and make the next page make sense with what was added and then the cycle repeats. What's resulted from this is definitely a comic. One could even call it one of the comics of all time.

I decided to bring back this deranged nonsense as a way to get myself to draw something every month. I tried doing a solo weekly comic before for the same reason (this hasn't been posted publicly anywhere and is arguably worse than Bugalo), but it just wasn't sustainable (it didn't help that I also ran out of ideas for it xd). I can't promise Bugalo will be very polished or make much sense, but it will definitely update consistently. If you want to see an actually coherent comic with better art, go yell at me to finish Hazardous Materials over in the Guestbook. I did get some progress done on it this past month, more on that in a moment. If you want to give Wonderful & Fancy Highschool Bait Club a read, check it out under Comics.

Hazardous Materials Progress

Wonderful & Fancy Highschool Bait Club (better known simply as Bugalo) was removed from the site a little while back, with promises of returning it as an archive when I updated the comic reader. It's back now and this time it'll be receiving new pages on consistent schedule. Expect at least one new page per recap post (There are two new pages this time!).

For some context, Bugalo is a weird sort of collaborative comic. I'll draw a page (without text) and then a friend adds dialog, narration, etc. afterwards. I have no idea what he's going to do and have to try and make the next page make sense with what was added and then the cycle repeats. What's resulted from this is definitely a comic. One could even call it one of the comics of all time.

I decided to bring back this deranged nonsense as a way to get myself to draw something every month. I tried doing a solo weekly comic before for the same reason (this hasn't been posted publicly anywhere and is arguably worse than Bugalo), but it just wasn't sustainable (it didn't help that I also ran out of ideas for it xd). I can't promise Bugalo will be very polished or make much sense, but it will definitely update consistently. If you want to see an actually coherent comic with better art, go yell at me to finish Hazardous Materials over in the Guestbook. I did get some progress done on it this past month, more on that in a moment. If you want to give Wonderful & Fancy Highschool Bait Club a read, check it out under Comics.

Toxitron Custom Progress

Back in the September '23 Recap I posted a WIP pic of this custom, explaining that I had messed up the stock figure's hands and needed to make replacements. I just recently finished up some models to do just that. Toxitron now has nozzles in place of his previous lack of hands along with some toxic sludge claws that can be plugged into them (the nozzle has a 3mm peg on the end so it's also blast effect compatible). The picture above shows some test prints using older versions of the models. Below are a few screencaps of the finalized models from Blender. I have those versions printed out, I just need to do some post-processing on them and paint them. I also want to make a fluid tank for Toxitron's vehicle mode that can turn into a turret or something in botmode.

Closing Thoughts

Looking over the footage I had taken of making the Magma Wyrm scratchbuild I finished a couple months ago, I don't know if I'll actually want to make a video on it. I didn't really record much of the actual process of putting it together and the camerawork wasn't very good. I also feel like I could make a more interesting model for something like that. Recording that stuff for the Wyrm was definitely a good learning experience, so it was still a useful thing to do.

ANTARCTICA MUST FALL, the Doom mod I'm working on, didn't see any progress this past month. I've got a lot that needs to be done for it, but other projects took priority. I would like to get back to it at some point, it'll just take a while. If I see a sudden influx of interest in it (you can show that in the Guestbook) I'll definitely get back to it sooner.

I'm considering writing some more blog post types of things (these would be on my website) about various games/shows/music/books I've been playing/watching/listening to/reading. There are a couple albums I've been listening to a lot lately I want to talk about, among other things.

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