April 2025 Newsletter

what's going on in the world of amelia?

I quit my job and I'm moving halfway down the country to live with my partner.

Anyway,

AMELIA GOES 3D

I've now finished modelling my 3D avatar in Blender and have been cracking on with the texturing.

With this avatar, I'm going for something a little edgy, a little punk, and kinda hot in a dirtbag way. It's heavily inspired by the brilliant 3D work of Lilith 'b0tster' Walther, but it's a little higher poly and I prefer to keep it 3D for mouth shapes. Not that that last bit is relevant here, since I've covered 3D Amelia's mouth with a gas mask breather thing.

I used to unwrap (arrange the 3D faces into a 2D layout you can slap a texture onto) my models completely before I even opened my image editing app of choice (MediBang). But with this model I've tried focusing on making nice textures first and THEN unwrapping the faces onto them. It's working MUCH better for me. It's meant I can lock in on giving my textures some...well, texture.

It also means you can do little tricks like this. That's 24 faces all sharing the same texture patch. You get a whole skirt from just one 16x64 segment. Looks seamless.

Hopefully next month this gal will actually be finished, and then she'll be unleashed onto the world. What a terrifying day it will be.

THE FREYA PROJECT: SECOND DRAFT

Last year was all about producing and releasing my first audio drama, Dying In Space With You. I'd shat out silly 'audio stories' years ago using copyrighted music and sound effects, but those were fairly rough and ready- and they'd be better off forgotten. If you're one of the few people who have heard them, I hear God is handing out free passes to Heaven as compensation.

For this one I actually had to try and make it good. I had to actually cast actors! I had to make all the sounds! I had to give the script more than just a brief glance before I started recording it! I'd like to think it came out pretty well and I learned a lot while making it- but I wasn't thrilled that it had taken me a year and a half to come up with 32 minutes of audio drama.

So this year, my goal is to lock in. Use what I've learned to speed things up a little. By the end of December, I will walk out of 2025 with an hour-long audio.

I'd spent my January brainstorming ideas and mushing them into some kind of outline. I'd had an idea a year or two back for something I'm currently calling 'The Freya Project' and already knew it would be my next audio after Dying In Space. Not giving away too much just yet, but it's got time travel, it's angsty, and it's VERY trans. That was the easy part.

Then in February, I began work on the first draft of the script.

Something I've learned from years of fantasising about being a writer is that your head is a safe haven for ideas. ANY story you come up with will sound cool in your head! The page, on the other hand, is a hellzone where your idea naively charges into gunfire and razor wire and shitloads of bombs while you get to watch through the gaps inbetween your fingers. And the concept you thought of as robust and well-cooked comes back to you punched with holes and missing an arm and begging to die- and you feel, for a haunting moment, as if you have failed not just it but the human race.

In two weeks, it was already obvious that this idea was NOT ready yet. The characters were stilted. The pace could be charitably described as nonexistent. The themes and emotional core STRUGGLED to be heard beneath huge wads of monologue and exposition.

In other words, a normal first draft. Still sucks though. So I spent March totally re-jigging the story from the ground up. I cut a lot of fat. I added some new characters. I gave the villains more spice and more screentime. And I cranked up the sci-fi to make it that bit more exciting.

Right now this new draft is sitting at 14 pages. And while I'm not expecting it to be perfect, it's definitely going to be a big step in the right direction. I can't wait to share more of this in the coming months.

AMELIA'S ALBUM OF THE YEAR 2025: APRIL

This month I didn't listen to quite as much as March- 28 albums, 20 from this year. I don't think I listened to anything I've liked on the same level as my favourite albums of last month, but there's still three I kept going back to:

MADI SERKET COMMITS SUICIDE - Madi Serket

Between UNKILLABLE ANGEL, Perverts, and now this, the cheat code to my heart seems to be edgy transgirl vocalist/producers. I don't really have much to say about this one other than that it has some KILLER beats good god.

FAV TRACKS: SQUISHY SOPHIE, CLAP!, GET A LIFE

From The Private Collection of Saba & No ID - Saba & No ID

My other cheat code this year is rap albums with black and white covers.

FAV TRACKS: Woes of the World, Westside Bound Pt. 4, How to Impress God

A City Drowned In God's Black Tears - Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals

Rap album. Black and white cover. A rage-filled album that doesn't hesitate to start flinging shit at zionists, which is always a plus.

FAV TRACKS: The Iron Wall, Everyone I Love is Depressed

FINAL BUSINESS

That's basically it for this newsletter. Hopefully the next ones will be more exciting once The Freya Project actually enters production.

So, till next time. Seeya.