On requests

Before you ask anything about my dress ups, please see if your question has already been answered in the F.A.Q. Thank you.

Enough with the marshmallows, time to change skin. And whining ahead, you have been warned. But I have this need to rant a bit.

So this journal is about dress up requests people regularly give me and why I'd rather not get them. I haven't counted them, but I'm sure that since I uploaded my first game (Nami dress up) I've received over 50 of them.

Firstly, the only reason I make dress up games is because I find it fun. When I was a kid I loved making paper dolls, and that fascination has transferred to digital versions of them as well. As digital dolls are easier to operate and they provide more options (like different eye and hair styles), it was natural for me to get interested in making flash dress ups myself. To me the only (somewhat) sane reason for spending countless hours in front of my computer (and getting back pains and headaches because of it) unpaid instead of doing something healthier like prancing happily in the nearby forest with small woodland creatures is pure personal interest in what I'm doing. This is a hobby, just like stuff like playing the guitar, horseback riding or reading; I'm doing it because I think it's a fun way to waste my free time.

So what kind of game is fun to make then? Usually it's either liking of the series or the character (like my favourite series One piece), or interest in the outfits (like I hate all series Arina Tanemura has produced, but the clothes in her art inspire me). But because making a game takes quite a lot of time I have to be very interested in my subject to even consider starting it. Every time I'm watching or reading some story my dress up fanatic brain is constantly subconsciously thinking, "would this series make a good game?". When I saw Tim Burton's Alice in wonderland, I thought "whoa, nice dress. It would be nice to make an Alice game with lots of blue dresses and white aprons". When I watch Ghibli movies I get the sudden urge to make a game of the girls. Even if I don't like Misa (Death Note) that much, her clothes inspire me. When I saw Sasuke try to murder Sakura twice in Naruto I got the idea of a dress up where Sasuke's threathening Sakura with Chidori. That's just how my mind works.

Then to reasons that do NOT motivate me to draw. I'm enough of a cynical little meanie that I'm not trying to spread the love and joy and make as many people as possible happy (as you've probably noticed). I'm selfish enough to think that a product of my free time has to primarily please me. I upload the games in teh internetz, because apparently a lot of other people like them too. It's not like it costs me anything, and of course it's cool if they can entertain someone. But making the resident of Earth #4'500'423'007 happy isn't really my main thought while drawing anything.

And most importantly: Internet popularity is not my goal nor a driving force behind making the games. I am not trying to achieve X amount of pageviews. I am not constantly thinking of ways to please a larger and larger audience. I did not get my mommy and daddy to buy an expensive computer program because I wanted to be favourited by X amount of people. Sure it's nice to get constructive feedback, and of course it's cool to see how many views and pageviews I have, and see my username appear a lot on google etc., but I'd still make games even if they weren't as popular as they are. For example I still update the Seth game with new clothes because I like her outfits, even if there are about 5 people who could recognise them, and I have plans of making stuff like Hanabi Hyuuga, Pippi Longstocking, Srike Witches and Elyon (W.i.t.c.h.) dress ups, even if I know that they're quite unknown series/characters. But they're still important to me, and I think they deserve a game, even if it doesn't earn me insta-100k views. I like the Yotsuba game more than the Naruto character creator despite the difference between their views.

Now then apparently people like my games, because they ask me to make a game of their favourite series. That freaking Bleach probably gets asked the most. I gave the manga a whooping 3 tries, but I found so few reasons to keep reading (and way too many to quit) that I'm not going to try again. And I don't know anything about Yu-gi-oh or Kingdom hearts, and I wouldn't even know that something called "Bakuman" even exists if people didn't ask me to draw it. Why the heck would I spend my time on drawing something I hate or don't even know? butbutbut it dosent hurt 2 ask rite ??? Well it gets a bit annoying after it's asked 10, 20 or 50 times.

The games don't mysteriously appear from some space-time vortex. They have to be drawn, one item at a time. Plus they have to be coded. The larger games can have thousands of lines of codes behind them, invisible to an average player who can just easily click the buttons and move the clothes. Especially character creators with multiple colour options require quite a lot of boring coding. But you don't need to be an experienced dress up game maker to know that drawing 200 or even 50 items takes time.

So when you say "Can you make a ___ game?" it's pretty much the same as saying "Can you spend a large amount of your free time in drawing something you might not even know for me, because I happen to like it but I'd rather not do it myself?". It takes you ten seconds to ask for something that could take weeks of work. Sometimes people try to get away with this with saying "suggest" or "just asking/wondering". Yeah, there is a big difference between "Can you make a ___ game?" and "Can you make a ___ game, just a suggestion"... Do you go to a store and ask the salesperson "I'm just wondering if I can have this chocolate bar for free? It's just a suggestion!!"?

So there really is absolutely no point in requesting me for a game. Because if I happen to
A)Like the series,
I already have considered making a game of it, and therefore there is no need to ask, because I'd make a game even without your question, or
B)Dislike or don't know the series,
there is no way I'd want to spend my time on it, and random people asking for it doesn't change anything.

So if you want a specific game, why not make it yourself instead of asking other people to do the work for you? You can get a free trial of Flash here, and this is a good dress up tutorial for beginners. The coding for dress ups is very easy, I was able to make a movable shirt in the first 10 minutes I used the program.


la la la~ i feel happyyyyy~