Tootkin's blog

Terms of Service

2025-04-24T00:00:00Z

Hello and thank you for your kind interest in my work!

By purchasing art from me, you are agreeing to the terms below. Terms are not negotiable unless discussed prior to commissioning. Questions may be directed to me at tootkin[at]protonmail[dot]com.

I. GENERAL TERMS

Payment must be EUR. Payment must be made through Ko-Fi.

I (Tootkin) hold the rights to produced work. This means I may use art of your character or design in commission examples or post it to social media. I will post credit to the character or design owner on any and every platform it is posted on. This comes with the understanding that if my produced work is posted with public access it must be properly credited back to me. Uncredited distribution is art theft.

Any art you purchase from me comes with a license for non-commercial use. If you'd like to use my art in a commercial project, such as video games or comics with a monetization system, a commercial license fee applies. Please contact me directly by e-mail at tootkin[at]protonmail[dot]com to discuss the details of your commercial license.

I (Tootkin) reserve the right to make stylistic decisions on minor features. This includes: Color shifts to account for lighting or mood, proportions based on style, outfit variation if character permissions allows so, simplification of complex design, brushes used for line art, etc. This does NOT include: whitewashing, body shaming, discrimination of any kind, getting character traits or items wrong, large or important elements missing, or anything else hateful not included in this list. If you feel that this has been violated in any way, please reach out to me.

I (Tootkin) reserve the right to refuse service to anyone, for any reason. Notably, I will refuse gore, watersports/scat, politics or heavily controversial material, and illegal material.

II. COMMISSIONS

100% of payment is due upfront before work will begin on a commission.

Completion time varies depending on complexity. Generally 1-2 weeks.

Works in Progress (WIP) will be provided at various stages depending on the commissions, such as: sketch, colour, shading, etc. You are entitled to one major revision per stage, such as a position change (sketch) or drastic palette change (colour). Up to three minor revisions may be made at any time until final completion, such as brightening a colour or adding/removing details. After final completion, no more revisions will be made.

Commissions cannot be used to produce and profit from merchandise, sold under another designer's name, used for machine learning, used in any NFT- or crypto-related products, or used in any hateful materials.

III. ADOPTABLES

100% of payment is due upfront before ownership transfers.

Adoptable designs are sold for non-commercial use. This means adoptable designs may be redrawn, resold, traded, and minorly changed (such as brighter/more pastel colours). They cannot be majorly changed (such as a change of species), used to produce and profit from merchandise, sold under another designer's name, used for machine learning, used in any NFT- or crypto-related products, or used in any hateful materials.

IV. OTHER

I (Tootkin) keep records of all order conversations. Fraudulent chargebacks that are filed will be reported, and rights to my artwork will be immediately revoked.

It is recommended that once you receive your artwork that it be saved somewhere within your possession. I (Tootkin) guarantee my work files for 30 calendar days after a project's completion. Once this grace period has expired, I can no longer provide a backup in the event that you lose your copy.

On Burnout, Joy, And Grief

2025-04-04T00:00:00Z

It was 12 years ago, I think, that I gave up on my dreams. Caved in the pressure of my parents, after a year and a half of trying, with no tools, no support, no community, and abandonned 3D Art for the much more reasonnable studies in programming.

Now I can look back and see: How much I tried. How heartbroken I was. How hard it was, and how I couldn't do anything else with what I knew and had at the time. How the more i tried the worse it became. Now I can put a word on this abyss of pain I was in. Burnout.

A lot happened in those 12 years, I was able to accomplish quite a lot actually. I graduated from full studies in programming, I spent years with someone who... Tried their best to help me but hurt me more than they helped. And I tried, regularly, to get back into 3D modeling. I couldn't. It was too hard. I could open 3DSmax or blender, maybe start a model, but never continue it. I used to be able to create a whole diorama, with handpainted textures, in a week! I had such big projects about 3D. And for years I couldn't get anywhere close to it.

For years I thought that I needed discipline, that with the right schedule, the right motivation, I could just do it. But I always had the motivation, right? If I hadn't I wouldn't be looking for advices and end up on blogs about stoicism, self-discipline, and all this things that are touted as the road to success but were, for me at least, the road off the cliff.

What I needed was consistent support actually. After a few years of getting most of my needs met and receiving support in my projects, I have finally been able to make a game and to do some 3D without having a panic attack! This is huge! I've been waiting (and working) for that for years! I should be jumping with joy...

And the truth is, it's bittersweet. Getting back into 3D now, there's so much joy. But there's so much grief. I started to make some assets for my game, I have to relearn so many things. UV mapping used to be a bit of a chore, now with blender it's super easy. How fun! How cool! How cruel, that I didn't know. That I wasn't there when it changed. That the world of 3D, My World, moved forward, and I couldn't follow.

I looked into materials too. Do you know about Emissive? It's such a cool thing! You can define parts of a 3D model that emit light! It makes awesome effects, and Blender has it in the basic material. I thought only Unreal Engine could that, but no. It's a basic now. That's so cool, I can't wait to use it, I can't wait to learn more about it! I try not to dwell on the fact that it used to be one of my domain. I was good at making materials, you know? Best of the class, holding my own in my first job. Now I have to relearn it all. And it's cool in a way! It's fun to learn! I know very well that once I get into it, I'm gonna have a blast.

But. I feel robbed. I am so lucky to be able to get back into it. It took a lot of internal work and a lot of support from my partner. And now that I reconnect with that joy of making 3D, I understand why I was so disconnected from it, why I couldn't get anywhere close to it: It's too much! The joy! The JOY! It's what I love! It's what I spent years to learn because I wanted to! It feels so good to do it again!! It was my passion, and it. Still. Is! It's still there, right where I left it, burning bright despite the layers of dirt put above it. So intense it makes me cry if I hold it too tight.

And I am. So. PISSED. That it was taken from me. It was my fire, it was my soul, it was my reason to get up in the morning and to sleep at night. My parents saw that and all they could think was how to make me stop. How to push me into a "real job". How to cut me from it so I could fit better into the molds of capitalism. I needed help to find people to talk to, to exist, to express myself, to create my project. And all they could do is pressure me into quitting until I did. Until I broke. They were so happy when I did.

And so, going back to 3D now, there's so much joy, and there's so much grief. I grieve for those years spent cut off from myself. I grieve for what could have been, in a different world. And I try to welcome that pain with grace and kindness. I went through shit during those years, and most of it was unnecessary and cruel, that's true. It could all have been different, but it wasn't. Most importantly, I did my best with what I had, I chose the best with what I knew, and that has to be enough. I'm just a little goblin, I can only do my best. I will keep doing my best.

At least now I can bask in the joy of making 3D art again!

The joy of Pre-prod

2025-04-03T00:00:00Z

It's been a few week and progress have been good, considering... gesture at the world around ... all of this.

I still haven't re-started the godot project itself, but I have made a class diagram and a few sequence diagrams. I have started to rework the GDD to be closer to my vision, and I have written this whole document detailing a sequence of gameplay, from which I have made a pretty good list of all the mechanics I will need to implement. I even made a first Milestone out of it! Which I hop to reach before the end of may! I wish I could say "before the end of april", but life is a bit busy...

What I did start though, is a small 3D diorama to set the graphics of the game! I made a few pipes, I'm working on an alembic or two, and I have started to make several assets of foliages, trees, rocks, jar, bench, stone walls, grass floor, etc... The goal is to make a very small scene with limited assets that I will assemble in Godot to get as close as possible to the final render I wish to obtain. It's a great way to get back into 3D after years of not being able to. I'm having great fun painting the textures of leaves and grass and copper. I had missed painting textures so dearly. If money was not something to consider I would spend my days just doing that. How cruel and unfair that I can't just sit down and paint textures all day without thinking about anything else.

And the materials! And the Shaders! Oh so much fun to be had! I can't wait to get all of this into Godot and to experiment with shaders and lighting. I still don't have a clear vision of what I want to make, but I go toward this unknown with joy in my heart.

I'm having fun on this project =)

From Gameplay To Game Mechanics

2025-03-21T00:00:00Z

As I work on my design documents for Fadunn, I have been faced with the overwhelming part of listing the Game Mechanics. Even a small puzzle game like Fadunn can have quite a few mechanics to implement, so the question of "where do I even start??" can be a big blocking point. But having this list of mechanics is super important to have plan out and prioritise the devlopment of the game! As I was trying to define what my next milestone would include, this lack of visibility was an issue I needed to tackle.

I ended up with a 3 step method to make the list:

Detailed Gameplay sequence
Detailed Game Mechanics list for each gameplay step
Select Game Mechanics for the milestone

It took some times, but it was a lot less overwhelming than trying to just list the game mechanics from memory! It also helped me see how the elements of my game interact with each other, and started a lot of thoughts about how the Player will interact with the game, thus leading to a first view on what accessibility options I would like to have if I was playing it myself. It will also be a great document to share with other people with different sensibilities who will be able to point out accessibility concerns that I didn't catch myself.

Below is the entire document I wrote while following this process, I share it in the hope that it will help someone else in going through this process.

Fadunn Milestones

Extract from the GDD:

Fadunn is a puzzle game inspired by Factory and automation games, where the player is an alchemist trying to progress through a dungeon by manipulating the Essence of things (aka: hexagonal Shapes made of 2 concentric circles of 6 parts each) with their alembics.

The game is made of a series of rooms locked by an alchemical seal that needs a specific shape to be broken. Each rooms has a various amount of basic shapes available. The player needs to build alembics connected by pipes to move, manipulate, and combine those base shapes to create a more complex one that matches the seal and progress further into the dungeon.

1 Detailed gameplay sequence

Extract from the GDD:

The core loop of the game would be:

Enter a room

Check locked doors and resources available

Build pipes and alembic until it creates the right shape to unlock a door

Proceed to the next room

Sometimes, the player will need to go back to previous room to unlock different doors and/or change the alembic pipeline to provide different resource elsewhere.

Here’s what a detailed game session could look like:

Boot the game → splash screen → main menu
Click “Continue” → launch most recent save → open room (let’s suppose it’s a new room)
Inspect Lock Nodes (Lock Nodes are the place where the player must bring a specified Shape to unlock a specific Door)
Inspect Shape Nodes.
Build Shape Extractor on the Nodes to use
Select an alembic to build, point toward the place to put it, rotate it once or twice, then validate to create the alembic.
Select the straight pipe tool. Connect 2 Shape Nodes to the alembic.
Preview the product of the alembic
Select the rotate tool. Place rotating section on the straight pipe.
Preview the product
Repeat the process of placing an alembic, connect it, preview result until the product match the chosen lock.
Build a pipe between the last alembic and the Lock Node. Validate the pipeline → unlock the door the next room
Move to the next room. Check Locks and Shapes → Let’s suppose this room doesn’t have the required base Shape to match the Lock
Check for Bridges (Bridges are special Pipes that allow to move a Shape between two adjacent rooms)
Move to adjacent room. Create Pipeline to obtain desired Shape.
Connect last alembic to Bridge
Move back to blocked room
Connect Pipe to Bridge to get the Shape from the adjacent room
Proceed to build Pipeline to unlock the door.
Repeat until completion of the game

2: list of mechanics

Let’s use the detailed game session to define the different mechanics needed.

- Boot the game → splash screen → main menu - Click “Continue” → launch most recent save → open room (let’s suppose it’s a new room)

main menu [TODO: Define menus and options]
save/load game

- inspect Lock Nodes (Lock Nodes are the place where the player must bring a specified Shape to unlock a specific Door) - inspect Shape Nodes.

move the camera around the room
move the cursor to highlight buildings and gameplay elements (how to move cursor with controller? “cell by cell”? Stick controlled cursor? What about keyboard only?)
inspector tool. Either an “alchemist view” that toggles on/off (toggle or “while pressing”? Leave choice to player in accessibility options) that shows the result of each relevant node (Shape Node, Locks, Alembics, Rotating Pipe) or a “on hover” tool, or a “tooltip”, “hover and stop” kind of tool. All of them? What options for controller support?

- Build Shape Extractor on the Nodes to use

Shape Nodes: Elements of the Room that can be used by the player to extract a specific Shape. Can be a plant, a mushroom, some rocks, etc. Shape Extractors can only be built on a Shape Node
Shape Extractor: Building that can only be built on a Shape Node. Once connected with Pipes, it gives access to the Shape of the Node.

- Select an alembic to build, point toward the place to put it, rotate it once or twice, then validate to create the alembic.

Building selection (HUD and shortcuts)
Building preview following the cursor, with different shaders to show if the build can be built at the current location or not. In case of pipes, preview bends and forks too
Building rotation clockwise and counter-clockwise.
CTRL + Z, back/forward button with a few moves historic
Reset room button with “are you sure?” pop-up check if cannot be added to the undo function.
Create Building (check if can be created, add it to the room, connect it to neighbor buildings). Once built, make another preview of the same building with the same rotation.
Move Building function (select already built building, remove it from the scene and turn it into a preview, can be placed elsewhere. Cancel brings it back to where it was.
Destroy Building. Specific tool the player need to chose to destroy the building they click on.

- Select the straight pipe tool. Connect 2 Shape Nodes to the alembic.

Create Pipe by rotating it then doing a single click. Pipes fork and bend automatically. A single source of Shape can furnish a virtually infinite amount of end points by forking the pipes. There’s no amounts in Fadunn, a Shape is always available in infinite quantity. The game is about designing a pipeline, not scaling it to bigger production rate.
Create a chain of pipes by holding click and moving the cursor (toggle option for accessibility, varying controls for keyboard only and controller). The pipe will try to find a short path between start and end point while avoiding obstacles and creating Cross Pipe where needed.
Pipe color coding. A chain of pipe can have infinite output, but only one input. This function gives a random color to all the pipe segment chained together to improve the reading of the room. Can be toggled On/Off by the player while keeping the data of color. The player has a tool to change the color of a pipe segment. (Maybe change the color of alembics? For aesthetic and screenshots reason?)

- Preview the product of the alembic

→ Same tool as inspecting the Locks and Shape Node at the beginning to see the Shape at strategic points. In the case of Alembics, the player can choose to show the Shapes at the entrance and/or exit of each Alembic.

A “Process” button that fill the Pipes at a specific rhythm defined by player (“[0.0 – 5.0] second per unit of pipe”, with a 0.1 increment unit.) and shows the result of Alembics and rotating pipes along the way.
Stop process button: purge all pipes and Alembics and stops showing the previews. If the process is ongoing, the player can modify the pipeline, any impacted pipe or Alembics get purged and refilled in real time.

- Select the rotate tool. Place rotating section on the straight pipe.

Rotation Building. A segment of straight pipe that cannot bend, and turns the shape by 1 to 5 notches (6 being a full turn). System to define, either a set of 3 buildings rotating by 1, 3, and 5 notches, that the player needs to select then place. Or a “rotating value” placed on base Pipe that turns it into a rotating pipe of the amount of notches defined by the player.

- Build a pipe between the last alembic and the Lock Node. Validate the pipeline → unlock the door the next room

Unlock Door. A Door is an asset linked to a list of Locks and with a Room Attribute. The player needs to give the right shape to every locks at the same time to unlock a door. Once unlocked, the door remains open even if the player destroy or modify the pipeline. Once unlocked, the Room attached to the Door become accessible to the player.

- Move to the next room. Check Locks and Shapes

Move between room: The layout of a Room (the sum of all Building with their rotations) is saved each time the player exits a room. Upon entering a room, the layout of the room is loaded so the player can move freely between rooms and keep the entire pipelines made along the way. (Does it keep the connections or is it more efficient to reconnect everything when loading the layout? Does the filling of the pipe get saved too, or are all pipes purged when a player move between rooms? Is it more efficient to preload neighbor rooms in the background process? Maybe cluster of loaded rooms when a puzzle require to use Bridges?). Player can move between Rooms with dedicated input (keyboard keys? LT/RT + direction on controller?) and by clicking on the door.
Map Menu: Menu that shows the layout of all rooms and allows player to jump from a room to another. Might create loading time as rooms far away cannot be preloaded. Except if they are bridged. Ideally: the map would be able to show the Layout of a room in schematics and a list of the available Shapes in a Room.

→ Let’s suppose this room doesn’t have the required base Shape to match the Lock - Check for Bridges (Bridges are special Pipes that allow to move a Shape between two adjacent rooms)

Bridge: Special buildings that cannot be created by the player and link two rooms together. The rooms needs to be aligned with no other rooms in between. Could be named Bridge to allow for more flexibility and allow a room anywhere to be bridge to another one, but it might be too confusing for players. Unless the bridge acts as a Door that brings the player to the relevant room if this room has already been unlocked. And if the map has a way to clearly show bridges. So maybe?

3: milestone 1

Fadunn 0.2:

A rebuild of Fadunn 0.1 in 3D.

Mechanics to include:

Move camera
Building Selection
Building Preview
Create Building
Destroy Building
Create Shape Extractor
Process Shape
Stop Process Shape
Basic Shape vision (shows shapes output of every building and required shape on locks at all time)
Basic change room (Only move forward, player cannot move between rooms. Effectively just successive levels with no interaction between rooms).
Unlock Door (except no door, but when the player unlock all locks at the same time they can choose to move to the next room)

Buildings to implement:

Basic Pipe (with bends and forks)
Rotate Pipe (basic version with 3 different pipes of 1, 3, and 5 notches)
Cross Pipe
Alembics (Albedo, Nigredo, Citrinitas, and Rubedo) revamped as needed.
Shape Node
Shape Extractor
Lock

Content:

Tutorial improved from Fadunn 0.1 to better explain the forks of pipes and how the alembics work.

Graphics:

Basic environments with a few props.
All Pipes and Alembics.
3 to 5 Shape Nodes
HUD and menus

Back to the drawing board

2025-03-15T00:00:00Z

Welp, I've done goofed.

I had setup a git to be able to share the project with my partner and with future collaborators,but being the only one working on it right now and not being a big fan of git, I didn't push anything in two weeks. When I finally commited and pushed... I forgot to add first. And when I had conflicts at pull, I didn't realize fast enough and botched the merge. Anyway, I lost 2 weeks worth of gamedev work.

That's ok though, shit happens. I'll be more careful with git in the future. I was actually struggling a lot with this project, and I take this as a great opportunity to restart something cleaner.

So far I was trying to modify my existing code from the prototype, to fit the new version of the project. The issues were multiple. First of all, the prototype is a 2D game and I am now trying to make a 3D game. Even while keeping most of the gameplay and logic, the translation into a 3D space brings its faire share of changes! But the biggest issue was the state of the project. This project was done in a month, with the pressing deadline of the Draknek Grant and the immense help of a very good friend in the last week. It works, it works well even, but now after a few months not working on it and no documentation whatsoever, I don't know HOW it works. Of course I can read the code and have a good idea of what it does, it's pretty well written. But no matter how well written a piece of code is, it will never tell you Why it does what it does.

So here we are, with a few weeks of works gone to dust, leaving behind a better understanding of the underlying issues and an invitation to redo it better.

I've started to write the 3rd iteration of the GDD, and I'm working on a big class diagram and a few sequence diagrams. This should help in redefining the project more precisely, and create a structure that is easier to understand, maintain, and build upon.

Oh I've also started on the Art Direction and making some environment assets on top of the placeholders! Can't wait to show some of that =)

It's Vector work...

2025-02-24T00:00:00Z

... Not to me, Not if it's my game.

Yesterday and today were spent translating the code of the Grid and of the Building parts from 2D to 3D. Changing the Grid from a dict of Vector2 to a dict of Vector3 was easy enough. Since the camera looks toward -Z, it perfectly reproduces the 2D axis with that Y going down. UP and DOWN becomes FORWARD and BACK respectively, any Vector2(a,b) turns into a Vector3(a,0.0,b), and it's done.

Now the Building parts, that was a bit harder. Because I needed to translate the rotation functions. Goodbye my beloved rotation_degrees = value, you were so easy to use. I did find a suitable replacement with rotation = Vector3(0.0, deg_to_rad(value),0.0) but it took some times to find! I tried something with transform.basis.y = Vector3(coord pointing toward rotation wanted) but it had the small side effect of obliterating the object by putting its scale at (0,0,0) and thus generating a line of error per frame per object. Not. Ideal.

Then I had to redo my scene for the standard pipe. Which handles all the bends and forks of the pipes. I had to create a function to destroy all meshes, instantiate the new one and add it as child. Not that complex in itself, but much more than the sprite_2D = new_sprite that it was before.

It really is a lot more work, making a 3D game rather than a 2D one. Each action needs several lines of code to reproduce a simple instruction. But I quite like it! It's very satisfying when it works, and I love doing 3D! Next up will be the build mode, being able to place a Building on the grid with a click. That one is bound to take time because all my Vector work needs to be tested now! Fun times ahead! And after that... well, I could add the collision in the camera to bind it around the room, or I could find a way to handle the room's size to let the Grid decide whether a building can be placed or note. I could make all the other pipes and alembic in 3D to start incorporating them in the game. I could start to look into the shapes and the shape viewer...

I think it's time to dust off the old Codecks, sit down, and define the exact scope and steps for this version 0.2 of Fadunn!

The Grid is back online!

2025-02-22T00:00:00Z

Now that I have a raycast to go from mouse cursor to 3D coordinates in the XZ plane, I need to be able to place buildings! for that I need the grid to translate the XZ position into grid coordinates, which will bring us back to the realm of 2D and therefore allow us to reuse the code from Fadunn 0.1 with minimal modifications.

It was quite easy to get the function working, I just had to change from cell.x = int(mouse.x / cellsize) * cellsize + (cellsize/2) to cell.x = round(mouse.x / cellsize) * cellsize.

The int function truncated the result, leading to a slight but bothering offset in the result, the round() works much better. And the "+ (cellsize/2)" had to go because my 3D blocs don't have the half-cell offset that the 2D tileset had.

Most of the work went into importing the files from the old project, because I didn't use the same file structure and it broke a lot of references, but once that was fixed everywhere it worked like a charm.

Raycast achieved!

2025-02-21T00:00:00Z

It took a few hours, but I made it! I have a Raycast that goes from the camera, follows the mouse cursor, and intersect with the XZ plane.

The struggle came from the fact that it was very hard to find a tutorial. Most of the resources I found were actually step by step with no explanation, and I would rather understand what's going on than blindly copy paste pieces of code. On top of that, Godot have changed the code recently. Now instead of having a raycast function full of parameters, you have to build a RaycastQuery object that gets all the parameters, and use that as the only argmuent in the raycast function.

Godot has also introduced the Raycast3D node, which is supposed to simplify the whole process by not having to redo the whole query in lines of code, which is pretty neat!...

Or it would be, if it worked. Using the Raycast3D Node gave me a weird offset in the result, it was very frustrating.

In the end I had to patch together 4 bits of code from the official documentation, and now it works. Yay!

I chose to intersect with the XZ plane rather than the ground because I want the freedom of having an uneven ground (for aesthetic reasons) but the pipes and alembics will stay all at the same height so I don't have to deal with matching the IN and OUT of the pipes. And I think it cost less to intersect with a single plane rather than hundreds of blocs?

Import-Export fine tuning

2025-02-19T00:00:00Z

Took more time to fine tune the Import-Export process between Blender and Godot. redesicovered materials in the process, the SSS and emissive options in blender are very cool! can't wait to try them! The whole thing took time because it seems like the accepted process is to have one blend file per asset, and that's gonna be a No from me. After some tinkering I managed to have a system where a single blend file holds several assets that are imported into several .res meshes, which are still synced with the blend file (theoratically. Still need to validate that). I also managed to import the material, I also need to try out the sync status of that, but if everything works it's very exciting! So much more practical than the old process of exporting in fbx, importing in the engine, and recreating the materials and everything in the engine.

Now comes the scary part: actually coding. I've decided to start a new Godot project from scratch, in which I will cherry-pick what was done in the prototype as I go along.

First Devlog of the Fadunn 0.2

2025-02-18T00:00:00Z

After several months of being blocked on the production of Fadunn, I finally took the decision to get back to it.

I was just stuck after the initial rush to make the prototype in a month. Once the deadline was gone and the pressure to make something no matter what, suddently I had to make an Art Direction, and I had no idea how. Getting back into the code was very hard because I had lost touch with the code in the end and now have to revisit it entirely. And I was just stuck.

So what changed? Well, I've decided to do it in 3D!

The first day was, therefore, dedicated to making a first batch of assets to start the tests. I made the a bloc to use as a base for the terrain, and I made a kit of pipe parts to reassemble in Godot. Then I tried to import it from Blender to Godot, and it didn't work. It took 2 hours of sys-admin fight with the great support of Lysandre to find out that the problem was flatpak. After uninstalling everything and reinstalling from the official sources, it works! It's also 2Am, so we went to bed!