Given that I’m halfway through the year and technically on track, I thought it would be a good time for a little self-assessment on this sketch project, and while I’m at it, go over what I’ve got going on as far as future projects.

Overall, the idea of making myself draw/post every day was simply to overcome my inertia and attempt to keep myself from getting into more major slumps or depressions like I had through the latter half of last year, especially. I guess I could blame a lot of it on my chief motivation for creating over the past 3-4 years in particular was just, “who cares?” I’m hardly anybody online, but I’m not really ashamed of what I’ve done or presently do, so I don’t feel a need to completely reinvent myself, but at the same time I do kind of dislike the overall scattershot content I have over the years thanks to shifting from “Seanbaby knockoff” to “taking this niche of games kind of seriously” to “I’m a real webcomic artist, honey!” to “okay, whatever.” Scattershot is a pretty good description for my approach lately, really. I have a lot of time during my day job where my mind wanders and I have about a dozen projects I’d *like* to do, but really struggle to focus on any one thing. So, by making myself draw a bit daily, I’m keeping myself from feeling rusty while at the same time, hopefully actually improving.

One major thing I’ve failed to stick to was I wanted to practice backgrounds and environments. In part, I kind of feel like the ones I have done haven’t been interesting to post, due to plain-ness and character art getting more attention/feedback in general. I do have a bit of an easier time doing a backdrop around a character, but I’d aimed to produce some re-usable assets to make future comics a bit less plain. I saw a pretty cool tip for drawing rooms on Tumblr that helps with spacing things out, though my ability to actually draw the furniture itself isn’t the most helpful.

Another thing is I’ve been trying to get away from just drawing lazy headshots and busts as filler, just as a general practice- in [+/-] I’ve tried to present a largely banter-centric comic in passably interesting ways, and people do seem to appreciate the effort! I feel like I’m getting a better grasp on figure drawing, though I’ve always been weak at drawing from life and using models. I have an easier time staring at a subject, ‘downloading it,’ then tweaking the details after the fact to strengthen the resemblance. Legs and hips are still a problem area for me, and feet are awful. Still, by blocking out areas and doing line art over them, I’m liking the result a lot more than just trying to sketch out the full body. That’s part of why I’ve been using a more painty style off and on, it also tends to look a bit, I don’t know, “richer” than when I do my default anime cel shading thing.

Off the canvas, I admit I’ve been having time management issues I need to get around. It’s not so much a big deal for these, but I worry about procrastinating on commissions (though it’s been a while since I had one.) It’s not been a problem in the past, it’s just a habit I want to break. The hell of it is, it’s not even like I’m wasting time gaming or anything, I keep getting tired or falling into funks and just watching YouTube or or staring at the wall for hours on work days, then spending my days off just reveling in not needing to do anything so I don’t start until fairly late in the day. I’m fighting that trend today already by writing down my thoughts instead of just stewing about it! Maybe I’ll try drawing a background to celebrate.

Of course, this is all just me talking about myself, which I don’t enjoy nearly as much as it might seem I do. I really do appreciate any feedback you guys have on my work, and I try to reply to all my comments unless you’re somebody I happen to chat with on messenger on the side a lot anyway. So let me know if I put up something you like, or if you notice something particularly glaring I ought to work on in the future, let me know!

So in the background here, I’ve pretty much got the new series I want to start, Angel Dust: Bleed plotted out, but have been putting off starting it because I have trouble with beginnings and I want it to have a good, strong start. I waffle a little on whether to begin all the way at the beginning or start somewhere further in, but I think I’m pretty settled on starting with the latter so when some motivations are revealed it will have a bit more punch. I’m hoping that you’ll all like it, it’s a bit different from what you might be used to from my usual recent work.

I’m still picking at [+/-] off and on, and plan to finally post a proper comic on Freedom Wars next week since I’ll be off. I would also like to start doing some one offs just about the girls for the hell of it since they’re fun characters to write. I’ve got a lot of material in my head about their backgrounds, motivations and so on. Some alternate-setting stuff would be fun too. One I was kicking around was kind of a Slayers-ized account of my Guild Wars 2 play, another kind of a throwback to 80’s cyberpunk anime aesthetics.
The other project I’ve been picking away at slowly and mentioned before is an attempt to make a dungeon-crawler/JRPG themed card game where the players build and fight through a dungeon while taking on each other for loot and glory. I’m about to where I’ll have something testable, so I’m actually kind of excited for this project in particular, especially once I get the basics nailed down and can begin the fun part of making a buttload of characters and dungeon chambers. It would be really cool if I could get this to take off enough to make it into a legit product down the line, too. As a fun side thing too, I think it would be fun to do some fandom-themed “doujin pack” boosters to go with it… as if I weren’t already likely to put a bunch of shout-outs to my inspirations into the core game anyway.