What's up, RMers?
04-27-2020, 10:39 PM
WHERE IS DOLLMAGE?!
The latest of anything I can find on Dollmage was around 2009... until today, where I saw he/she had posted in the early months of 2010, and once in August of 2010.
Yeah, I can't find anything at all. He/she's been off the map for a decade, and I'm worried.
I know for a fact these few things:
1 - Dollmage got in an argument with someone years and years ago about the battler they had requested becoming public use instead of being personal for their own game, which ended in the person leaving and Dollmage keeping many images private from then on.
2 - Dollmage has been gone for years, and is, as far as I know, not a member of this forum, and has nothing personally posted here except for the rmrk archive we created to ensure the site doesn't get lost in time. At least, nothing under the "Dollmage" name is here, and nothing as far as animated battlers has been posted.
3 - Dollmage was working on a "Suikoden-style" game called "Aurora Dreams", and had a lot of updated versions of already-released battlers for personal use. Zig-zaggy lines were smoothed out on the gladiator battler, there are "Dead" and "bloody pieces" versions of the characters, among other random things.
4 - Dollmage has a lot of skill when it comes to making battlers, and pieces of said battlers to animated them properly. Many of the monster battlers that Dollmage has teased are in gif form, and not spirtesheets like the earlier ones were, which may be due to the above argument leading to privacy on releases.
5 - Dollmage has used Photobucket to host almost every image on the internet, leading to a lot of them becoming lost in time on sites. However, Dollmage's account (Zieg1615) is still there. The latest "known" image date is from 2011, and they're screenshots from a God Eater game. Many unshared images are there, including an image of a woman (Maybe Dollmage?) and unused kooky stuff like the Ziegfried battler riding a mount and shooting guns, as well as apparently-unused or old/obsolete signature images, one even having a quote, likely from the game they were working on. There are also side-scroll platformer type images, and possible images for another game entitled "Armed Gear" that also doesn't seem to have gone anywhere.
6 - Dollmage's game "Aurora Dreams" doesn't seem to have been released anywhere. The latest images of the game's charactersheet has blank spots, meaning it stopped being updated at some point. The images that linked to the WIP version of "Aurora Dreams" seems to lead to a dead page on a Stencyl website. The game may have been abandoned, and searching "Aurora Dreams" seems to shed some light as to why it may have been abandoned; "Aurora Dreams" is the name of a 2011 anime, which seemingly may have taken the wind out of the sails of Dollmage's ship. I know I'd be bummed if "Destiny of End: The Anime" came out and it was a cutesy slice of life idol anime as I was in the final stages of making it.
Dollmage's absence from the internet is something I've been confused about in this thread before, but I keep coming back to the wish that I could hire them for animated battlers, or get to know them and their process, or just be friends in general. But as of right now, the Dollmage mystery still goes unanswered. After all of my sleuthing, I still- STILL- can't figure out what happened here. It worries me sometimes.
Perhaps Dollmage just got bored of making animated battlers?
Maybe something happened? 
Possibly Dollmage has gone incognito under a completely different name? 
Perhaps Dollmage is reading this now? 
We miss you, Dollmage. Not just for your skill, but simply because of the sudden disappearance and secrecy. I hope everything is well, I really do.
The latest of anything I can find on Dollmage was around 2009... until today, where I saw he/she had posted in the early months of 2010, and once in August of 2010.
Yeah, I can't find anything at all. He/she's been off the map for a decade, and I'm worried.
I know for a fact these few things:
1 - Dollmage got in an argument with someone years and years ago about the battler they had requested becoming public use instead of being personal for their own game, which ended in the person leaving and Dollmage keeping many images private from then on.
2 - Dollmage has been gone for years, and is, as far as I know, not a member of this forum, and has nothing personally posted here except for the rmrk archive we created to ensure the site doesn't get lost in time. At least, nothing under the "Dollmage" name is here, and nothing as far as animated battlers has been posted.
3 - Dollmage was working on a "Suikoden-style" game called "Aurora Dreams", and had a lot of updated versions of already-released battlers for personal use. Zig-zaggy lines were smoothed out on the gladiator battler, there are "Dead" and "bloody pieces" versions of the characters, among other random things.
4 - Dollmage has a lot of skill when it comes to making battlers, and pieces of said battlers to animated them properly. Many of the monster battlers that Dollmage has teased are in gif form, and not spirtesheets like the earlier ones were, which may be due to the above argument leading to privacy on releases.
5 - Dollmage has used Photobucket to host almost every image on the internet, leading to a lot of them becoming lost in time on sites. However, Dollmage's account (Zieg1615) is still there. The latest "known" image date is from 2011, and they're screenshots from a God Eater game. Many unshared images are there, including an image of a woman (Maybe Dollmage?) and unused kooky stuff like the Ziegfried battler riding a mount and shooting guns, as well as apparently-unused or old/obsolete signature images, one even having a quote, likely from the game they were working on. There are also side-scroll platformer type images, and possible images for another game entitled "Armed Gear" that also doesn't seem to have gone anywhere.
6 - Dollmage's game "Aurora Dreams" doesn't seem to have been released anywhere. The latest images of the game's charactersheet has blank spots, meaning it stopped being updated at some point. The images that linked to the WIP version of "Aurora Dreams" seems to lead to a dead page on a Stencyl website. The game may have been abandoned, and searching "Aurora Dreams" seems to shed some light as to why it may have been abandoned; "Aurora Dreams" is the name of a 2011 anime, which seemingly may have taken the wind out of the sails of Dollmage's ship. I know I'd be bummed if "Destiny of End: The Anime" came out and it was a cutesy slice of life idol anime as I was in the final stages of making it.
Dollmage's absence from the internet is something I've been confused about in this thread before, but I keep coming back to the wish that I could hire them for animated battlers, or get to know them and their process, or just be friends in general. But as of right now, the Dollmage mystery still goes unanswered. After all of my sleuthing, I still- STILL- can't figure out what happened here. It worries me sometimes.
Perhaps Dollmage just got bored of making animated battlers?
Maybe something happened? Possibly Dollmage has gone incognito under a completely different name? Perhaps Dollmage is reading this now? We miss you, Dollmage. Not just for your skill, but simply because of the sudden disappearance and secrecy. I hope everything is well, I really do.