The Heart of Cherry’s Sky






Yoshi's Island Neutral Pic


Yoshi's Island Scoreboard
Making the grade in Yoshi’s Island.


Yoshi's Island Baby Mario Lost and Stars






We’ll figure it out, Cherry Sundae. We got this.



Gaspar’s Ghost Panic




5 months later:



GGP Action Shot

But then it’s wonderful when your impossible suddenly seems easy.



Coffee With Cross GGP Episode 2:





INFJ Creativity and I

I’m a big fan of the MBTI, as self-understanding has always felt hard-fought for a weirdo like me.

Most Recent Test -

After a lot of mistyping and thorough research, I finally realized that I was INFJ (a both harrowing and wonderful revelation). Arguably the rarest male type:

So abstract that most children on the playground used to just stare at my mouth when I was trying to make sense; horrendous and wonderful empathy so absorbent of other people’s emotions that I have trouble finding my own; still quite capable of abstract logic, but my own logic; and still in daft need to do something with this big head/heart-lifeworld my personality creates, thus the endless, endless creations.

Digging deeper into the theories, I liked when I saw the personalities broken even further down into introverted and extraverted versions of the different preferences (i.e., Introverted Feeling vs. Extraverted Feeling), and once I used the MBTI to help heal myself up from horrible times, I came to realize its potential for aiding my creativity.

INFJ Intution

So INFJs have:

-Introverted Intuition-

-Extraverted Feeling-

-Introverted Thinking-

-Extraverted Sensing-

I don’t see a lot of literature on how creativity manifests through function order, though. The general explanation of these more precise functions isn’t hard to find (here’s a nice general one and this one hits on them for INFJ), but I’ve never seen them in specific context of how I view creativity:


INFJ Functions and My Creativity

(least, you know, as I understand it)

Introverted Intution

I’m a reader, and I mean in the sense of life, and not even in the conscious sense. I don’t have to read between the lines, I just fall right through them with every step I take. Everything I absorb is weighted with meaning. It’s dense and symbolic, and creates a strong mind’s-eye. There isn’t a point in my day where there aren’t images floating around in my head that are symbolic composites of just stuff I’ve absorbed. I used to feel tortured by it at times, but this floating galaxy of stuff in my head is who I am. Taken ideally for art, I’m basically a reserve of potential creativity.

Extraverted Feeling

Wipe me across the floor of human emotion and I’ll just suck up everything. Sure, feeling the feelings of the person you’re talking to is great for relating, compassion, and understanding, but it can also be viewed as an info bank in a way, how the world of emotion works. Coupled with my intuition, I’ve naturally been picking up on emotional patterns my whole life, similarities–I’ll know when I’m seeing an emotion in someone that I’ve seen in another before. Over time this has given me the ability to have a strong idea of how people will react to something even if it doesn’t “exist yet” (the point where your umbrella is stolen in Cherry in the Sky, the death of a character in Ali So Far). It lets me create evocative prose and experiences that can pull on universal emotional heartstrings (least I hope I’m doing that), and as exhausting as it is sometimes, it’s imperative that I continue to collect the emotions of the world to ever improve my abilities.

Cherry in the Sky is a really feely, feely game.

Introverted Thinking

This is where my internal logic lies, where I categorize the symbols and emotions, and organize the world to my understanding. I’m not so much a system builder like a thinking type, more of a world builder. My intuition just brings the symbols into my head haphazardly, but this function allows me to take active command of where abstract is placed and organized. It is where my sense of artistry lies. “This will go here and this will go here to reflect the meaning and produce the emotion my first two functions informed me of”. This is my eternal student function, and it is what will leave me an artist for life. Lately, I’m realizing my mathematical ability lies here as well, but I haven’t come into full understanding of it yet. Continuing to write code should bring that to light. There’s some link there that eludes me.

Extraverted Sensing

We’re getting down to point where I feel baffled and unclear on functions due to them being less developed, but I do have a child’s aesthetic sensibilities. To me, it’s just a feeling at the front of my head. I put down some colors in one of my games (colors symbolically selected of course), but then I have to play around with the appearance until this feeling in my head moves from “ew” to “ahhh”. This is also where my drive to move these head worlds into reality lies, often in an out of control manner–I overdo, exhaust, and sometimes hurt myself by just making too much and doing too much. I’ve got to grow to temper this blade like all my others. It will make me an even better creator in the end.

3rd Grade Flowers
I made this in Elementary School. My sensibilities actually haven’t changed all that much.

I’m sure all INFJ don’t experience this the exact same way, but I’m sure it’s closer to my experience than that of the other types. Hopefully this aids some other creative–my two cents in the MBTI pool. Maybe I’ll get into my enneagram someday (4w5), but it’s pretty basic at the end: at my greatest I make art, and at my worse, I seriously just want off this planet. But I’ve got too much to accomplish to do anything but make neat stuff until I can’t anymore, and I’m rather looking forward to seeing this intense INFJ art-guy thing out to the end, whatever may come.

Baddie Parade in the Sky

I’m really just sharing this because I’m proud:

Pi Composite






Flo ConceptsFlo Concepts - 3D


Gorbos Composite 2


Gupper & Guppi 2


Halo Grimmy & Grim Grimmy


Chime and Cherry Look - Final

Ali So Far

Ali So Far Cover







-Clanny the Terrible


-Ali So Far





Eventually I’ll work my way up to my newer stuff.

Anyhow, presenting:

Ali So Far

The Visual Question


Engagement? Conflict? Good Baddies?
And the magic of 3D modeling helps disguise my infantile hand…


It’s brought me to think a lot about sensory appeal lately.









The first level?


Incredibly incomplete, flawed, but visually curious?





I have no idea.

The Glue Against Freedom

Gluten Free Flag


Praises to the glory of gluten-freedom for I have found salvation and release from the worldly desires that once bound me. Be they hamburger, pizza, or Bagel Bite, I’ve done cast all ye out for sake of a cleanliness a purity that brings a tranquility to my mind, a consistency to my rest, and balance to my creativity.

Least, going gluten-free feels like religion, I’m beginning to think. Something that you have, know to be the truth, and are eager to tell everyone about but… yeah, some listen, but unless it’s a very popular religion, or you evangelize when someone’s at an extreme health low, most aren’t too keen on your proselytizing.

Google has a bountiful wealth of gluten-free resources now. A simple search will really turn up everything you need to know, so it’s not difficult to get people to understand as long as I refer to it as an illness, a disability, a problem…

Which is where my problem with it has more or less come in.

There–especially back when I first found out about it–there wasn’t a lot of information on how to deal with going gluten-free in a world so culturally pro-gluten. I mean, I’m pretty comfortable with less traveled roads, but going gluten-free brought on some shockers.

I had awful asthma the majority of my life (perhaps contributing even further to my artistic-analytic introversion), and I mean awful on the level of emergency room visits, oxygen tubes hooked up to your nose, ambulance rides–the inhaler always in your pocket sort of asthma, the weekly allergy shots so the springtime doesn’t kill you asthma, the ‘am I going to live past 30?’ sort of asthma.

So, when my Mom (after six doctors failed to determine what was causing hairline fractures on her spine) was diagnosed with Celiac Disease (interfering with her calcium intake), on a gut-level I knew that I had something like it.

So I went to the hospital and took the test…

and it came back negative.

The doctor just told me that, aside from asthma, my iron levels were kind of low, and I should probably take iron pills to solve that.

Unconvinced, I went off gluten away.

Within three-weeks, I was completely absolved of my dependency on asthma steroids. I didn’t need any Qvar, I didn’t need any Proventil, even my allergies had lessened to the extent that my Flonase and Nasarel must have felt exceedingly nostril deprived, until the day I threw them into the trash.

It was unbelievable. I was so excited. I wanted to tell the whole world.

The responses were baffling:

“Are you sure?”

“You might want to talk to your Doctor about it first.”

“Oh, too bad for you.”

Even more surprising were the responses of outright fear-anger. The ‘My Great Great Great Grandmother’s Apple Pies Have Been Family Tradition for Generations. How Dare you Even Conceive the Notion that they can Be Anything but Holy.’

I couldn’t understand how people could be upset with me for curing my asthma, or how people could think I valued apple pie over oxygen, or how they would tell me to talk to my doctor after I told them my doctor provided me with an insufficient answer.

I mean, it’s all quite simple:

Eat Gluten = Has Asthma.

 Don’t Eat Gluten = Asthma Goes Away


Why do you need a M.D. to know when you can’t breath?

It really shifts your perspective on the world. I basically pushed my diet after that point, focusing on my own internal reactions to things, until I wound up nearly Paleo (which can be difficult to pull off sometimes, but is comparatively very much worth it).

And I feel great.

Oxygen and life is good.

And 30’s looking to be just a drop in the bucket, rather than Mount Everest.

So, I guess like everything else, these couple years of transition have just made me a stronger person, this time physically as well as mentally.

If anything, my asthma was an illness of perspective and thought, cured by information and low-risk experimentation.

Asthma be gone; nonsense be gone.

And I learned to take a clue from the Vegans and Vegetarians I’ve met: ‘Keep it on the dl until you really need to bring it up.’ Because ‘no one likes a Bible Thumper, except for those who’re already keeping rhythm with you.

Though, really, I’d still like to tell the world.

Novel Design



Specialization is a terrifying thing.


Or maybe nobody needs a lady in a pink suit.




 1.) I want to do X.

2.) Can the program I’m working with do X?













Sailcloths Made of Other Things


Beyond the very informative sociological commentary on the trials of the African-American soul on the journey to equality in “The Souls of Black Folk”, Mr. Du Bois really elucidates the complexity of attempting to end something like slavery and segregation. Complexity that ultimately doesn’t have as much to do with skin color as it does with the culture that forms as a result.

Culture is a complicated thing–one that’s neat and interests me yet baffles me all the same. It’s a definition of who you are before who you are? Or perhaps it only defines you if you accept it, lest you define yourself by your rejection of it? Maybe it’s just something that exists because we like patterns and certainty–baffling, still.

But, thinking about culture contrasted with the old negro soul at least lets me know why I can feel strangely concerned (cautious?) when talking to many substantially older black folk (and a few still young, occasionally)–the sort outside of the artistic/scientific frame of thought I like to inhabit. The sort naturally looking for belonging, togetherness, and group identity–the sort that are more loyal rather than inquisitive, exploring, and skeptical.

I was moved from the near-ghetto to near-rural suburbs in California, suburbs that were initially nearly devoid of black folk. I was weaned on honors classes and allotted a safe place to live that allowed me time to focus on literature and Sonic the Hedgehog.

I hardly know anything about oppression, not like the sort Du Bois informs me of, not like my grandmother knows it, not like all those old folks know it–just the bits I got in history class, “we shall overcome” really, the “it was bad but now it’s good” stuff.

I think that’s where this careful awareness comes from. I think that’s why I feel so cautious even when writing about it. I’ve occasionally stumbled in conversation with folks more personally linked to all of that, upset them when I glance over it, dance past it, don’t value opportunities only available due to conquering those days–I’m from a very different world (hopefully, one that will become too common to inspire a blog post), and I guess the situation is just as upsetting and confusing to them as it is to me–they wanted me to have a world where none of that stuff concerned me, but ironically, now that they’ve helped me obtain it, they occasionally appear frustrated, if not confused, with the result of it.

Mr. Du Bois connected these dots for me, somewhat touching on this in his book: Chapter XIII: “Of the Coming of John”, the only chapter of fiction in Souls. His “John” graduates from a well-to-do school and visits his people in the south, and finds they’d rather snarl at him and holler about oppression than listen to his education and experience that could provide grounds for the escape they sing of–his little sister the only exception.

“It’ll get better for the next generation” is what he’s saying here, I think. This is a process. It takes time, and it’s probably not going to be high on companionship–wilderness vs. roads, I suppose.

It’s still quite difficult for me to fully understand, but at the very least, I feel absolved of the strange guilt that would haunt me–less heavy, easier to travel forward in my continued studies and art.

If I ever chance upon your grave, Mr. Du Bois, I’ll give you closest thing to a personal “thank you” I can. You’ve made things that much lighter… and you also write beautifully as well!

Lava on a Hot Stove

Sonic the Hedgehog_009






But Probably This




Dear Phoenix Cave, I still hate you.




We were all put on this Earth for our 5000.