It’s incredible that it’s already summer and halfway thorough the year! I’m keeping my nose to the grindstone, working on Blackmask, and popping up at small conventions to keep my art out there.

Let me give you a scoop on what I’ve been doing for the past few months and what the future brings for the next few months!

Blerd Bash

Blerd Bash 2024 was a nice time to meet up with the fantastic folks in Skokie,IL. I had a nice front seat to watch a local Tekken 8 tourney and get drunk off silly anime themed cocktails.

Sales were so and so like usual, but it’s still nice to see fans who recognize me from previous shows! Between all that, I filled the time with some inking or old sketches I had. These characters will be relevant in a future time, but not now.

Making the Jump on Social Media

If you missed my last few announcements, I made a Cara account due to my dissatisfaction with Instagram, Twitter and many social media sites. I’ll admit it’s dumb, desperate and hypocritical to make ANOTHER social media account assuming things will be better, so I’ve been on the cool down from social media in general.

It’s not all doom and gloom with these many accounts, though. I manged to get front page on Newgrounds twice within a month of each other! It’s been a real confidence booster! The page has been intimidating even back in 2001 as a lurking aspiring animator who couldn’t make a project past crappy loops and motion tweens until I applied myself in college.

Blackmask Development

There’s progression on the development of Blackmask from my new sprites to my weekly streams on Twitch!

These days, I’m taking more time away from art duties to do some more writing tasks. Even after three comics to my name, I still feel inexperienced as writer. I still make doodle sketches from time to time of sprite ideas and enemies I want to draw for fun.

I also make related draws and sketches for my own fun and distraction.

Working on a Zine

I’m on and off in making an artbook zine for cons. Much of it is digging through old work and choosing interesting enough ink drawings that I can print out quick 5×8 ashcans. Because I have more art, I’m starting with a cat themed art book. I’m also making a dog themed one too, but that need more art.

I made this first pass on an art zine printed on my home printer. Getting the pages to print back to back is easier than I though, but I need to fiddle with the margins to fill the pages.

Diesel Bizarre Redraw Zine Collab

I did a fun comic collaboration with Cheesymanfredo on Twitter for a redraw of the 1997 comic, Diesel. It’s a fascinating, Americanized rip-off of the Stardust Crusaders part of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure!

I physically drew and inked my page on paper and colored in Clip Studio Paint. I had a passing knowledge of Diesel, but I hadn’t dived into it further than it being a Jojo rip-off until this point.

Looking back at this now and comparing what I did next to all the other collaborators, I should’ve stuck with the comic’s design instead of converting the characters to their manga equivalents. All and all, this was a nice excuse to make more Jojo fan art.

Inking also went fast, I even tried a new thing where I drew the speech bubbles in the page itself instead of waiting to do that digital. But I did mess up with the forth panel’s bubble because it wasn’t needed. Still, I’m happy with the results and it makes me miss drawing comics badly.

Timelapse of the coloring process in Clip Studio Paint. I didn’t want to overthink the coloring to save time, just simple airbrushing and flat shades at key areas. I do wonder if a flat coloring would be more than enough for my inking style.

I was nice to break out the 11×17 Bristol board and dive into some full sized comics. The penciling process was faster than I expected due to planning to thumbnails, plus not needing to worry about the script as much.

You can see the full thread of the comic on Twitter here! You can also get the PDF Version of the comic as well!

Other Life Stuff

Apparently Student Loans will be forgiven. One last ditch effort from Brandon to get me to care about the nothing the US Government does. I suppose that’s one financial weight off my back. I could be cynical about this, but I’ll try to let this go. RIP Bozo.

Smaller Art Endeavors

With my personal social media mind purge, I’m taking more time away from my computer screen to dive into painting more. I purchased a round of paints back in April along with the other expiring paints, and I’m getting myself to meditate on a canvas. I need to take back my artistic mind where I can not worry about doing good art and just…do art.

It’s been tough to rip away my unreasonable expectations, which is why doing a painting in a physical medium is important to do. Gouache is a new paint medium I’m learning in private. If there’s a piece that I like enough to share, I’ll share it when I want.

Here’s a digital draw of some Gary Larson style cows to test brushes. I went back to basics and tried working with Clip Studio Paint’s Default Gouache and Dry Gouache Brushes.

With some modifications, I’m getting used to making good blends with them. I’m also doing my best to limit my colors down and work with the blends more. Backgrounds still seem to be a pain in my butt because, my learned techniques for bg painting, going large brush strokes to small, doesn’t work with my badly performing machine. It’s beyond frustrating.

Scarf Cats

A scarf cat piece that was buried in my files until I decided to finish coloring it on a whim for Valentine’s Day. It’s likely I made this intending to make a sticker like all my other cats, but I fell off hard on working on this. I don’t know what I’ll do with this beyond putting it in my Illustration page for your seeing pleasure.

Sure, I sketch in my sketchbooks during my lunch breaks, but I fire and forget them, I take forever to follow up because I’m being an unreasonable perfectionist. I have trouble picturing my finished work out of my comfort zone and I still feel like a failure when I experiment with my workflow.

Wrapping Up

For the longest time, I’m still being a weird perfectionist about blogging and figuring out what to blog about. I have pages of drafts that I started or are on the cusp of editing. The continuation of The Making of Incident at the Game Store still lingers in my drafts, and there are other tutorials and articles that I struggle to edit to a finish. I’m sure a bigger focus on this website can help me push this writing out.