Video games, personal websites, pixel art, zines. For a lot of us, those were separate boxes. For Venus (she/her, 14), it’s one continuous sketchbook. You might know them from their Instagram @venusxite — a feed of soft‑glow pixel portraits, Game Boy colour experiments, and snippets of HTML that look like they could run on a Pocketstation. But their real workshop is the website they built from scratch: venusxite.neocities.org/test (yes, it’s always under construction — that’s the point).
We met Venus through a mutual love of weird licensed GBA games and the utopian idea that a teenager can own their space online. What started as a casual DM became a conversation about creativity without a curriculum, the appeal of handheld limitations, and why being 14 might be the perfect age to build your own internet.
“I wanted a place that felt like a bedroom, not a portfolio”
HOUDINI: Your Instagram and your Neocities feel connected but different — IG is polished, the site is more like a sketchbook. Is that intentional?
Venus: Yeah, totally. Instagram is where I show the finished thing — the frame‑by‑frame animation, the piece that took three weeks. But the website is where I think. I have pages that are just colour tests, or old game sprites I redrew, or a list of every licensed game I want to play because Ultra Tetra’s article made me obsessed. (laughs) I’m 14, I don’t need a professional site. I need a site that feels like my desk with stickers all over it.
“I’m 14, I don’t need a professional site. I need a site that feels like my desk.”
H: You mentioned Ultra Tetra’s guide — we ran that piece last month. What was it about those handheld games that clicked?
V: The restrictions. Like, on the GBA you have a tiny screen, limited colours, but the good developers made it sing. That’s what I want to do with web pages. The test page on my site is literally a playground — I try to make something that feels like a GBA border, or a DS loading screen. I’m not coding anything huge, just small, warm things.
🕹️ Venus’s current handheld rotation (a mini list)
Inspired by Ultra Tetra’s format, Venus shared three games they’ve been studying for “vibes and spritework”:
- Dragon Ball Z: Buu’s Fury (GBA) – “the way they animate hair is illegal, it’s so good.”
- Hamsterz Life (DS) – “unironically cozy UI design.”
- Shrek: Hassle at the Castle (GBA) – “it’s not even a good game but the swamp tileset lives in my head.”
“I don’t want to wait until I’m grown‑up to make things”
H: You’re part of a little wave of very young artists online — making zines, websites, indie games. Do you feel like you have to prove something because of your age?
V: Sometimes adults treat you like you’re “cute” or “promising”. But I’m not trying to be promising — I’m making stuff now. I coded a little click‑and‑play thing where you decorate a room with sprites from Barnyard GBA. It’s janky, but it’s mine. That’s the energy I like: people like Ultra Tetra or the people behind Astro Boy Omega Factor — they made things because they loved them, not because they were old enough.
Venus calls this Astro Boy GBA sequence “pixel poetry” — a big influence on their art style.
“The internet should feel handmade again”
H: Your Neocities has a section called “shrines” — to what?
V: Oh! (laughs) One is a shrine to the GBA boot screen. Another one is for the background bushes in Atlantis Squarepantis DS. I’m dead serious — they’re so perfectly round. I take screenshots and redraw them. It sounds like a joke but it’s how I learn. If you look at my Instagram, those bushes show up in my original art all the time. I’m just remixing stuff I love.
“I want to make a game that feels like a blanket”
H: You mentioned you’re learning basic game dev. What kind of game would you make?
V: Something like Barnyard GBA but even softer. A slice‑of‑life where you just walk around, talk to animals, fix little things. No combat. Maybe you collect mojo balls like in Billy & Mandy but they’re just… shiny things. I want it to feel like being wrapped in a blanket while it rains. That’s the energy of those old licensed games — even the fight ones had cozy menus. I’m trying to learn GB Studio but also I might just keep making web pages that feel like a game.
H: Speaking of web pages — your site URL ends in /test. Is that forever?
V: Probably! I like that it’s never finished. Grown‑ups always want things to be “launched” or “done”. But my brain changes every month. The test folder is honest. If you go there you might find a broken link or a page that’s just a colour. That’s okay. It’s me at 14.
Follow Venus on Instagram @venusxite and visit venusxite.neocities.org/test. They also recommend the Neocities webring.
We almost ended the interview there. Then S.E mentioned, almost casually, that they're directing an anime.
Not planning to direct one. Not hoping to someday. Directing one. Right now. At 14.
Persona-lity is an original animated series created and directed by S.E , a character-driven story following a boxer who fights under a name the world loves, a sister who carries more than anyone knows, and the people orbiting them. Loyalty. Obsession. Identity. What it costs to be seen.
The project is funded and animated by Wit Studio, with a mixed production team of Japanese animators from the studio and international freelancers the director has hired directly. The first episode is targeting a release before spring 2026 , though S.E says it'll probably be sooner.
H: Wait. You're directing an anime. With Wit Studio.
S.E: (laughs) Yeah. It sounds insane when you say it like that..
H: It is insane.
S.E: I mean.. I had the story. I had the scripts, the character designs, the soundtrack. I'd been building it for a longgg time alone. At some point it stopped being a project and started being something that needed to exist. So I made it exist.
H: How does it feel to be leading a team that includes professional animators?
S.E: Honestly? It's collaborative in a way I didn't expect. They bring things I couldn't have imagined and I bring the vision. It's a conversation. Everyone's building the same thing.
H: And the soundtrack , you've been reaching out to independent artists.
S.E: That was really important to me. Every track is from a small, independent creator .bands I've seen live, artists I've followed for years, people who make things because they have to. The music had to feel the same way the story does. Honest. A little raw. Real.
H: Is Persona-lity connected to everything else you make ; the pixel art, the website, the zines?
S.E: It's the same sketchbook. Everything I make is the same impulse ; I want things to feel handmade. I want people to feel something. Persona-lity is just the biggest version of that so far.
H: You mentioned the project has references to your friends in it.
S.E: Yeah ..a lot of them. Characters, details, things only they would clock. It started as a story and somewhere along the way it became a love letter too. I think that's what makes it feel real. It's not just fiction. It's people I actually know, things I've actually felt, places the story needed to go because life went there first. I genuinely do that for my friends <3
