Hey adventurers and code goblins! 👋

Day 36 (yeah, time flies when you're buried in animation software). 13 days ago I said "2–3 weeks" for the big high-res public build. We're not there yet, but damn, the progress is wild.

The short version: I fell down another rabbit hole, learned a whole new tool, and it's making everything faster, lighter, and better.

The big pivot: goodbye multi-app pipeline, hello OpenToonz

After wrestling with Inkscape → Krita exports for weeks, I finally dove into OpenToonz and learned it properly. Why the switch?

• Keeps everything vector until the very end (no premature rasterizing)
• Lets me preview animations frame-by-frame like Aseprite, but still fully vector
• Built-in rasterizing at export with perfect control
• One app instead of three = way less friction

Best accidental discovery: the way I'm building spritesheets now is basically identical to how professional tools like Spine package animations. I figured it out on my own because I’m obsessed with keeping VRAM and performance tiny for low-end machines, while leaving room to crank quality later.

The method: Instead of massive sheets full of duplicated pixels, I break everything into shared "blocks" (limbs, body parts, reusable details) and unique pieces. Export one optimized atlas → compose full poses at runtime with minimal draws and almost zero wasted VRAM. Lightweight, scalable, future-proof. I love it.

What actually got finished these past 13 days:

• Complete revamp of the rat enemy in OpenToonz → full optimized high-res spritesheet exported and in-game
• Brand-new enemy designed from scratch: all states drawn, animated, optimized sheet exported and working
• Built a full template library in OpenToonz: pre-drawn body poses and movements for common actions → Now I can grab a template, trace/adjust for personality, and pump out new characters/NPCs way faster
• Player progress: 4 out of 9 major body state animations finished (the rest are in progress)

The template system alone is going to save hundreds of hours moving forward.

The new timeline: The full high-res public update is now targeting next Friday. I’ve got about 5 more player states to wrap, then final export passes on everything else.

Bottom line: the delay sucks, but the foundation I’m building now is so much stronger than what I had planned two weeks ago.

Back to the drawing tablet – time to toon out the rest of these assets so I can finally drop the update you’ve all been waiting for.

See you next Friday (for real this time)~ ✌️ (Now disappearing back into OpenToonz until the player can properly swing a sword without looking awkward)