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Posts authored by 3/2

So Long, 2023- Not the Worst Year, Not the Best Year

So Long, 2023- Not the Worst Year, Not the Best Year published on No Comments on So Long, 2023- Not the Worst Year, Not the Best Year

Honestly, having an overall middling year where most of my troubles were my brain’s fault was kind of a breath of fresh air. Being out of commission for most of last year with a fucked up knee at least got me thankful every morning I can get up and walk around without a brace or cane. I don’t really agree with the doctors and my Dad that I’m “young” but I’m apparently still young enough I can heal. That said, I’m kind of let down in myself for letting depression and laziness get the best of me like, worse than usual this year. It hit kind of hard when sitting back and going through old archives of content and realizing that:

Sketch-A-Day was 2015
Eishi and Dixie was before that
Revolver Knight ran from 2005-2008 or 2009

Meaning I’d basically failed to really deliver on any of the series/game/etc ideas I’d pitched from 2016 onward with the arguable exception of the dungeon crawler card game’s first version. If anyone was curious as to whether I’d touched on some of that stuff in the meantime the status of my Things right now is:

  • Angel Dust (The Gatty Thing)- Pretty much axed, as much as I love the character, it was kind of turning into edge for edge’s sake. The thing about Gatty Ling is I’ve had the idea of an erratic, destructive but adorable and well meaning character kicking around for ages but she’s kind of just a blank slate beyond those traits and I’ve tried to plunk her into like three completely unrelated settings with different origins. I was also attempting to kind of do a distinct art… sub…style with her stuff closer to a moe VN look, really pump up the cute to make the dark stuff pop, but well, Madoka already exists and the last iteration was basically Madoka with Robots. I probably wouldn’t rule it out forever but I’ve kind of been using some bits and pieces of the setting to flesh out the Plane Girls Thing
  • Revolver Knight Reload- I got like three pages into drawing a complete remake of my old webcomic, but kind of got cold feet from a combination of things. I didn’t think I was ready to take on another gigantic long form story, though I promise that the new version was *MUCH* more refined. Like Gatty, I wouldn’t say it’s *impossible* I mess with this, but I think I might look into something closer to a light novel with spot illustrations than a full on comic in the interest of like, finishing before I die.
  • Critical Heaven (The plane girl thing)- Still active, but having a bit of an identity crisis. It began as a ‘skirmish’ tabletop wargame then I got to thinking about it as more of a shmup-inspired duel game. The format of tabletop/print is also kind of iffy because I know people would be more likely to play it digitally and I have like, zip experience putting a substantial game project together. There’s also a more or less complete ‘campaign’ jotted half in my head and half in my notepad (putting it in a game with multiple endings would save me from deciding which ending to give it, hmmm.) But in short, yeah this is still being picked at.
  • Irrgarten (The Dungeon Card Thing)- I know I lead off with kind of the downer limbo thing but I’ve actually not totally abandoned this, definitely not the setting. Surprise, Radona is from this world! Really, I could probably bring this back pretty easily by revising the original game rules, the biggest issue we ran into play testing was that items didn’t ‘feel’ very valuable- characters were strong enough on their own not to need them. Maybe I can bump this up in priority.

There are probably other story ideas I’ve mentioned over the years and not followed up on, but characters from axed stuff do tend to surface in other projects if I’m attached enough to them. If there are any particular things that you enjoyed my work in or reading about in the past, do let me know. I’ve had a hard time motivating myself, so a nudge wouldn’t be a bad thing about now. Next year, I would really like to put more effort into having a regular “thing” to work on, maybe I’ll bring back some gag comics. Definitely plan to do more drawing in general because drawing one decent thing then going radio silent for two weeks leads to needing to de-rust like, every time. I’m a creature very vulnerable to inertia.

So, no promises here, but my goals going into 2024:

  • Put some time into practicing more ‘dynamic’ content like simple animation and game design since I have like three game making programs sitting around
  • Regular art posting, with a focus on improving quality and speed
  • Minding my health more since it’s easier to be active when there’s less of me to move
  • Establish a more regular streaming schedule since it helps me trim down my backlog

This kind of turned into more navel gazing than I had planned to be doing, but I thought this was a good time to touch base on some things since I’m back to posting here… well, okay, ‘regularly’ is a stretch, but there are a lot of things I’ve brought up before and not followed up on in a long time. If anyone has still been reading this- thank you, truly. I hope that with a bit more focus and less dwelling on the gnawing darkness in my gut, we can have some fun here again.

Oh, yeah, by the way- also been kicking around a top X games list I may get to posting soon, but may save for New Years Eve.

Holiday Sludgeposting

Holiday Sludgeposting published on No Comments on Holiday Sludgeposting
Radona bathing again
Radona meets the Slime Queen
Radona Annoys The Slime Queen
Anis from NIKKE

Pardon the lack of updates after *finally* getting back into something of a groove again, but the holiday is upon us, like some kind of smothering flood of burning molasses and I’ve been tied up with things.

Autumnal Reverie

Autumnal Reverie published on No Comments on Autumnal Reverie

I’d really intended to ride the momentum from finishing out the Slayers Artober thing and keep more active drawing, but work has been kicking my ass and there’s a shitload of RGL events I have to put layouts together for when I have the energy and attention span for it so maybe I’ll put my energy toward making a nice Xmas card for you guys so at least that much can get done on time.

I’ve been kind of disappointed with my output this year, emotions and drive have been all over the freaking place but probably still in a better place than I haven been in a while, overall.

Critical Heaven has gone through some behind the scenes mutations and left it feeling sort of adrift, unsure what direction to really take it in at this point. I sort of worry about putting a whole lot of stake into the whole warplane girls thing knowing that the manufacturers take licensing seriously enough that cheapo Matchbox depictions of real world planes need to put legal info on the packaging and the military is very uptight with their depictions in the movies. Not that I expect it to blow up to the point I need to worry about it or anything, but it’s always kind of in the back of my head. The entire thing pretty much just comes from liking the designs and engineering of jets since I was a kid and wanting to pair that with my love of designing cute/badass girls and not wanting to cash in on a brand name like third world shoemakers throwing Mike Air Jorduns on shelves. I’d still like to keep moving forward on it but I’ve also been getting more concrete ideas what I want to do with Radona beyond “she’s fun to draw,” which is generally enough for me but, y’know.

Been lightly dabbling with game maker stuff again, think I might try to coax myself into focusing on Godot since it seems like a less limited tool than some others but I’m not particularly sure of its porting options if I ever made something good enough to pursue consoles on.

Have been making shmup practice into a semi regular Twitch project lately, big thanks to dot_lvl for sending a good sized raid my way last week or so (I’m bad at time.) Between Shmuptember introducing me to some cool people to watch and finding more games I like, I’ve been feeling more of a push to improve at them. Wish it was a little easier to talk about them sometimes, it’s almost like “you had to be there” as an entire hobby- sometimes a shmup sounds amazing on paper but the feel or the aesthetics or even just the sound design make it not click for me. If you’d be interested in following my progress or whatever else ends up happening, drop me a follow here, trying to get more regular with it.

Slayers Artober- Finale

Slayers Artober- Finale published on No Comments on Slayers Artober- Finale

Originally I was going to draw Zangulus for “the rival,” but I don’t draw Naga often and she does have a song literally about being a rival, so… here she is. I tried to pay more attention to the pauldrons this time because I usually wind up drawing them looking like they’re halves of a giant Chun-Li bracelet. On figures they’re a bit wider and look like actual armor. Go fig.

Dynast Grausherra came to mind immediately for the prompt “Chessmaster,” but things were complicated a bit because there’s like no official reference for his face. I pretty much tried to reverse engineer a front shot from the chibi art of him and Sherra back to back. Either he has a mouthplate or he has the facial structure of a Dragon Half character.

I wanted to use “A-cup Angst” as an excuse to draw a really out-there expression mostly. I was going to have Naga holding the tape but I couldn’t figure out the pose and I wanted to finish by the end of the day, when it will no longer be… Tober.

I think most people ran with Halloween costumes, and they are fun to draw for sure. The ‘impossible’ part comes from wanting to draw one of those kind of sleek, shapeshifting living outfits like Morrigan or uh, Venom I guess has, but I probably killed that with all the ornaments. She’s kind of inspired by a mix of Bayonetta and the new variant Theresa from Honkai. I made her hair white for the hell of it because I like the look and wanted to draw it like that without the ‘baggage’ of her having pushed herself to the limit for once.

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