ok so i know i havent posted a lot of comics and thats on me but like. guys. guys?¿??? orb has been a thing for TWO years oh my goddd????

UMM. thanks! seriously seriously thanks!!! its so wild to me, right, like i've had other projects last more but this is like, such a personal one, and i normally suck at managigng projects like this!! so the fact that i've been able to make it last for a couple of years means SO so much. O.R.B. is my baby and i love it with all my heart, I love making these little stories and drawing my gay women, and I LOVE THAT PEOPLE LIKE MY GAY WOMEN??? theres people actively waiting for the next comic (sorry for the wait!), theres people making fanart, i've been getting guest comics from people who JUST heard about the comic, and i think i even saw someoene use the promo O.R.B. image as their background somewhere??? like holy shit people ACTUALLY like this and its not just because i keep shoving it up every discord server's face?? thanks! thanks!!!!

fuuuck what. what else am i s. oooh. yeah right i did. say i didnt forget about the anniversary. yeah so what i meant by that was i made an album and a videogame to be released today. surprise!

(youtube playlist)

im gonna talk about the album first, becasue that's the smaller project. it's a compilation of several tunes i've made over the years for several O.R.B. related projects (minus the other one releasing today), some of them for cancelled projects, some others made for fun.

it opens and ends with an... opening... theme for a hypothetical O.R.B. anime i made up in my head and ends with... erm, an ending theme for said anime- i have no plans to make one atm and it's sort of a pipe dream, but it's one that i sort of think about a lot, and i like to imagine what it would be like (you might have seen a video on my bsky of my headcanons for the voices of ivory and mint!). that led me to composing a lil tune that would hypothetically serve as the opening theme! they are heavily inspired by ween (the op borrows inspo from Even If You Don't and Dancing In The Show Tonight, and the ending borrows a bit from Ooh Vah Lah), with several hints of Nelward and all the other bands I've heard here and there.

it is also my first time writing lyrics!! the ones in the opening are spoken fron mint's perspective, and talk about being stupid and aware of it, and also sad about it sometimes, but also being quick to recover from said sadness thanks to the person you love, who always makes you feel special even with your flaws; and the ending is ivory's story about overcoming your own lack of confidence and gender (social) dysphoria, particularly the feeling of doing something you weren't born to do and didn't grow up doing so you have no idea of what you're doing, and how pushing through becomes easier when you have the right person in your life, someone you love despite their- no, including their eccentricities make you feel less weird for still learning how to be yourself.

the lyrics dont exist as part of the songs yet, as i really suck at singing and i dont know how to use vocaloid, so the singing voice is represented by a midi instument and you will have to imagine the lyrics in your head as you read them. the rest of the song is also midi, as i dont intend to do any production work on them.... yet! they're demos, and very recent ones at that, and i'd like them to eventually reach a sound that i'm satisfied with, but for now, i'm happy with having laid down the composition work, and i'm really proud of it. the rest of the tracks include songs i wrote for my (not even written yet) O.R.B. rpg maker game, the song I made for the 3ds homebrew theme i released, and a few miscellaneous tracks

second, here's the game i talked about!! literally my first solo game ever!! it's a yume nikki fangame called "Sweet Dreams Mint", and revolves around mint's dreams!! if you aren't familliar with yume nikki, don't worry, you don't need to play the original to play this one, but i would also recommend you do anyways because it's a goddamn awesome game. as of right now my fangame only contains three efects, around 4 maps and a couple easter eggs to discover, and also no horror elements, unlike the original because i just didnt feel like it and its my game my rules etc etc etc. it's also not a psychological analysis of mint's character or brain, though you can learn more about her through the game, if you like her character!.

it's a game i made purely for fun, anwyays, not a project that is to be taken super seriously or is meant to be revolutionary, but it's still one in really proud of and wanted to give my all on and i really want everyone to try it!! the whole thing took me around a non consecutive month, with the bulk of the work being done this month, and it would have taken me way longer if not for clockwork prince's super helpful ynfg template!! it had literally almost everything i needed to start, in terms of base events and npcs (effect npcs, waking up, effects affecting the game's behavior, etc, but i still had to make everything else including the sprites, music, world design, and tinkering with the default events to adapt them to my vision. theres like, three assets in the game that are still the default ones, but like, those are fine to keep for now, they are mostly just sfx and one background, and dont affect the experience at all.

for a 99,9% solo project, i think i'm proud of everything i've accomplished: i tried to make sure the worlds would be entertaining to walk around, the effects would be fun to find and that the music set the atmosphere right (i'll release it on my music channel eventually). it's extremely short, again clocking in at only three efects, and you can find them all in around 10-15 minutes. i have plans to expand on it trhoughout 2026, and im NOT spoiling all of it but i htink this game is gonna be fun to work on throughout the year, hehehe. shoutouts to deedee, memmy and zaylok for playtesting the game!

so, whats next?

i... kinda just wanna make comics and see what other projects come up, i guess. i have other stuff in the backlog, but not all of it is orb related. but there will be more of orb in the future! promise! and there will also not be a 4 month gap between comics!!!! PROMISE!!!!!

i also really wnat to start focusing a little bit more in ivory and mint's relationship. i wrote orb initially as a silly comic with fun characters and literally nothing else, and the more comics i write and the more situations i put these goobers into, the more i realize... orb is exactly that, but also a story of two girls learning to accept themselves and their own excentricities, and this realization has given me a more clear vision of how i want these characters to interact, and lowkey even extra confidence to write more of these comics? orb is not gonna stop being funny or stupid or quirky, but i will definitely start honing in the fact that these two are weird, and continiously helping each other be proud of themselves for being it. its something i've realized a few months ago, the thing that made their their relationship click all of a sudden, what made me understand how it works. mint is weird and very stupid, she is usually very aware of it, and very self conscious over it as well, as people have criticised that side of her a lot in the past. ivory is shy and has repressed herself a lot in fear of how others will see her. their relationship allows for a safe enviroment for both, where mint can be herself with no judgmental looks whatsoever, even if she fails or says something stupid, and ivory can learn to gain self confidence and learn to indulge in her own interests, make friends and express her own gender in the way she always wanted (did i ever mention ivory is trans?)

eventually, i think i'd love to make merch for fun too, i'm not in a financially dire situation and profitting from O.R.B. has never been my priority, but i think making cool trinkets and objects based on the characters could be a fun project for the future. what i think i'll do for now is, in the future, if im lucky enough, i will probably open a stand at some random anime convention in spain (as im currently unable to travel to any other country by myself, especially across the ocean) and sell random merch from general characters, to basically promote myself as well as my comic. this probably makes more sense than JUST theming it around my comic, i said people activley follow it but it's not a lot of them and i imagine running an online shop and making lots of merch would be too expensive for just 2 people buying things from me. or maybe not? idk. and if i DO get to make O.R.B. merch, i think i'd love to design postcards, bookmarks, maybe notebooks, and if i can somehow pull it off, a physical version of the first-ish 20-50 non-guest comics! it's kind of a fantasy, to be able to make psychical objects based on my own microbes, but definitely not an impossible one, hopefully. who knows!

and i think thats... all!! yes thats all omg. yay. from the bottom of my heart thank you for literally everything, i'm so lucky that people like my comic and i don't take it for granted. thank you all!! i will do my best in 2026!

(fanart by an anonymous artist!)

- caramel64