This month has wrapped up my convention stuff, so I’m hoping to get more work on art for the rest of the year.
I’ve felt like my schedule has been out of control and my work output has suffered for it. Not only that, but I feel like I do clerical crap more than I draw and while it’s necessary, I hate doing it and I feel like it’s punishment for not doing art.
As of writing this at the beginning of March 2022, I purchased an iPad Pro for $799.99 USD, an Apple Pencil 2 for $129 USD, and a copy of Procreate for $10 USD. Here’s my review of the first 30 days of using the iPad and the App!
The last time I used any Apple product is when I had an iPod Touch. I dropped them for an Android phone when it became a pain in the butt to transfer my music files from ripped CDs that I had.
The month of March has been mild. The most I can say is that I celebrated my birthday and trudged forward on small art projects.
As of the 3rd of March, I turned 30 years old, and I’m trying not to get crushed by the anxiety of aging. I covered it up by having dinner with my family and buying myself an iPad and Procreate! Now, I can draw on the go! I’m writing an article about my time with Procreate at a later date.
I have a big thing planned in the summer later this year! I’m preparing some of my art for something I’ve never done, before. So, I’ll keep you in the know once everything is arranged!
Writing Blackmask
Most of my art time has been occupied with writing Blackmask as a story. My focus is split between re-editing existing ideas for the demo story and the big narrative of the entire game.
My personal hope for Blackmask’s main quest is that players can choose a level toplayin any order they want, Mega Man style. A connected Metroidvania-style world or an Open World is tougher to design without ballooning the scope even more.
My programmers and I check in on each other in our messages. We’re both doing our best to keep going during our bigger commitments. Adam’s tackling enemy AI next, as there’s not much left to do with Cole’s abilities for now.
Other News
I’ve been doing tiny website tasks to streamline my websites stuff. The Art Page now has all my art on it instead of having separate pages for each category of art I make. If it ends up making loading issues a pain, I change it back, but right now I want my archive front and center
There’s more blog articles in my back burner that I want to finish up, such as my tutorial series on making Incident at the Game Store. There are other articles that I want to write when I make the time.
I’m struggling to keep my focus on one specific art task. I keep dipping so much into different shit that I can’t choose an art direction for myself. My schedule is a loose cloud of “what is currently unfinished that I could finish now?” on my project list.
It doesn’t help that I keep falling into that trap of posting on my socials to say I’m alive on them. My game stuff is in my programmer’s hands. I’m messing about, sketching, and procrastinating on writing a game story. Am I busy or making up meaningless tasks for myself? I need to improve my personal project management skills.
Things have been picking up for February! I’ve been starting up the con season, doing commissions, and more art! If you want to keep up with my tasks in real time you can follow me on Twitter and Instagram! I’m also cultivating my new Ko-Fi page for tips, so stop by there as well!
Most of Early February was preparing for Northwest Indiana Comic-Con, the first con I’ve had in years due to the plague. It’s nice to resupply and get ready. I’ve been taking on extra hours at my day job to get more money to print and reprint missing things. Luckily, NWI Comic-Con was better than I worried about! My Cat Stickers are a smash hit, they sold even more than my comics!
My stickers have grown with my newest addition to my growing collection of stickers!
Thanks to StickerNinja, you can get a large 5×4 size of my Hipster Medusa stickers!
While there, I took one nice marker commission of a Tracksuit Mafia guy from the Hawkeye show and comics.
His comic-inspired colors were simple enough, though I was worried I’d run out of ink in my Copics.
My next cons are CODCon, and Schaumburg Library Con. All of these before my giant event at Anime Central in April! It’s going to be a big jump for me, and I have a bunch of rethinking of my convention approach to do.
I’ve been working on new digital commissions as well! This Family Portrait commission is another experimental one where I’m doing my hardest to try simple painting. I’ll say that I’m getting faster and cleaner at painting, since I’m not getting lost in the weeds with brushes. I also decided to stick with my stylization and not stress hard about an exact likeness.
This one is more of a likeness drawing, and I get kinda nervous when it comes to commissions where I draw likeness. But my client was satisfied with the sketches, so I’m no longer worried.
The Art experiment continues where I skip the inking process and go straight to colors. The coloring went faster overall because I began the flat coloring at a lower resolution and I didn’t use the lasso tool on my line art.
To break out of my comfort zone, I bothered to look up how the skin varies in temperature. Unfortunately, I got frustrated by the odd in between look of this painting, thinking I was making the face look clownish. I settled for a subtle red splotch in the middle to settle my mind. I’ll figure this out if I do studies in my own time.
This next part is the more tedious part, as I’m painting over my pencil art like a physical painting. Without formal painting training, I’m going off of tutorial videos. Many about basic edge control and blending.
I don’t like the rendering step in the process because it’s boring, and I have no idea how to make it interesting. The rendering is half the reason I don’t like painting. Despite that, I press forward!
I tackled another large commission for a friend. This one was for an icon, which is simple enough for me!
I’m getting used to sketching in the Artflow Phone App on my Samsung Galaxy Note 9. I draw all my icon sketches on 150 dpi 3 inch canvases because it emulates drawing on a Post-it Note.
She liked sketch number two on the top middle and wanted the Mohawk to be longer, so I obliged.
I ink and flat color in my trusty Clip Studio Paint program! It’s a common step where I use my Lasso and Hard Round Brushes to get down a drawing area. Once that tough part is done, I can plunk down the basic colors I need with a Clipping Mask!
There’s plenty of trial and error with figuring out my lighting. Other than that, I took enough breaks to get out of my own head and simplify what I wanted to do.
Add some detailing to show off the materials and I complete a great looking icon for silly Discord conversations!
Here’s some old art from a game jam Adam and I worked on 2018 about being a liar in an office space. I was messing around with silly designs for office workers. Adam converted my art to pixel art, as I didn’t know about making pixel art at that time.
Other Art I’ve been doing and uploaded to my Illustration and Sketchbook Galleries. A bunch of bird people just vibing. I don’t draw that many birds. There’s too much to draw out there.
Some dog guard sketches that I’m brainstorming for Blackmask. I’m still doing new writing for the game, as I’ve sent so much pixel art for Adam to program. Adam’s shooting for having a playable demo ready for summer, but I’ll keep you all informed.
Monkey Knight Sketches I’m also considering for Blackmask. I haven’t thought about monkeys that much before recently. But now I’m figuring out cool ways to work in Blackmask. Having a prehensile tail is a straight-forward, yet unique way to add some flair to a sword and board warrior.
And finally, some more miscellaneous sketches I drew of people I see around when I’m at work or anywhere else. It gets tough seeing people’s faces with their masks on, so I use my imaginations on many of them.
These posts get long in the tooth, so next time I’m going to make shorter blogs for easier, faster writing. Otherwise, follow me on Twitter and Instagram for more of my daily tasks. I’ll be off to celebrate my 30th birthday!
Back in 2013. I took a Freelance Project for Dan Verssen Games that I only know as “Nephilim.” These are some sketches I did for that game.
I had some basic write-ups about the world, and I wanted to do a good job and have lots of detail in the character designs because that was the typical thing in tabletop game art.
That tabletop art informed my choice to put my characters more realistic compared to my general cartoon style.
This is the cleanest my pencil art has ever been, as I draw them on 8×11 printer paper. Looking back to this art compared to my current art, I feel like my pencil sketches have gotten looser because I ink my own artwork these days and I leave the cleanup for that instead.
My earliest art for when I realized that I needed to study animal anatomy more. The bear doesn’t look offensive, but it does look stiff and lifeless to me. I also never paid much attention to fur rendering. My fur rendering is still spotty, but not as spotty as back as.
It’s been several years, and I’ve never gotten word on if the game released or not. My client seemed to have liked the art enough, but I’m indifferent to it these days.
I made several proofs, and I was just about to go forward on buying prints, but I realized that instead of sitting on many floppy comics that don’t sell that much, I’d make a big trade paperback containing not just my comics work so far, but behind the scenes stuff like my original pencil art and inks! I can even include other illustrations and sketches in the book to show off more of my artwork!
I’ve recently had an interview with Will Humphrey on his podcast Will Vs. You Talk Too Much! It’s a great time, and nice to touch back with my old friend from college!
You can listen here!
I’ve been making changes to my website when I have the time. Been video editing, drawing, and some other things in life.
Recently, I’m posting art that I haven’t posted on this site before. As much as I maintain my Twitter and Instagram to keep my art in people’s eyes, I still need to remember that I built this website to archive my artwork.
After someone scrutinized my website, I found some issues that I’m taking time to fix. I haven’t been able to focus on personal projects as much as I’d like, as I’m crunching and focusing on finishing my freelance work for Flawless Extra-Ordinary Super Heroes.
The Indie Real Time Strategy game, Furs of Fury is out now! You might remember me making a large illustration of it a while ago! I’m currently plugging away on an article about the making of this painting, so stay tuned for that!
I’ve been taking art commissions for the past few weeks as I’m looser on time and I had bills to catch up on. I’ve been posting them on Twitter, Instagram and livestreaming my work on Twitch! If you’re interested in taking a commission, stop by my page for information and fill out a form!
Here’s a new check-in blog post today! Things are mostly the same: drawing things for clients and dabbling in my video game, Blackmask with my pixel art streams.
I’m struggling with my direction to take the game assets without a straightforward gameplay loop that’s not full of wish fulfillment and feature creep. So, I’m stepping back from working on pixel art until I have a face to face meetup with my programmer and learn some more Unity.
