It’s been a hot minute since I last posted here, got a bit lazy mirroring my artwork here that I posted to the socials and haven’t really been doing anything out of the ordinary worth reporting on. Really enjoying the iPad as an art tool the more I get a feel for proper settings, may still look into other software since it seems worth the investment. I’ve also found that my desk space is *way* more comfortable now that I’ve removed the arm rests from my chair. It struck me while I was streaming the other day that my elbows were kind of getting ‘pinched’ inward awkwardly while holding the controller and I’ve been apparently subconsciously contorting around the rests and developing extra neck and shoulder pain. So hopefully that tweak leads to some more productivity.
I haven’t really had the juice to update the plane girl stuff for a while, had some surprise work drop in my lap like the *day after* the TTS demo went up and got hit with a wave of pretty bad burnout once I caught up to everything I needed to do, and it also coincided with one of my vacation weeks so I didn’t really get to unwind as planned. I feel like my head is on a little straighter this time partly because I kept my time off a freaking secret so I could work ahead early then decompress a bit before I go back for the holiday boss rush that caps off the year.
I’ve been participating in the Slayers Artober event again this year but I’ll save my contributions for a masterpost at the end this time since I’ve already waited this long. I’ll go ahead and catch up some of my other doodles since last time while I’m here, though!
I’ve been trying to keep up a good (but not daily) drawing pace this month so far so I spend less time feeling rusty and crappy and also experiment a bit more. It’s been ages since I tried to just paint something without guidelines, so here’s a little speedpaint of V1 from Ultrakill. Only took an hour or two, really.
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.
