Tag Archives: Blackmask

Slow Art Week

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Things are going well for me, despite being a slow art week in general. I’m still rolling along with my commissions and art stuff and Blackmask is going forward.

Adam is at the point in his programming stuff where I don’t need to hand him any new assets to make a demo for. He recently got a new job to pay the bills so progress will slow down on Blackmask slightly.

My own art priorities have moved to more design things, so I’ve been doodling logo and user interface ideas. I’m not as confident in my logo and lettering as I want but I have a passing knowledge of logo design thanks to Blambot explaining what goes into good logo design.

Blackmask Logo Sketches

Of the sketches, I think I’m going with 4 or 5, preferring 5 the most out of them all for the more adventure fantasy theming I’m going for. From showing it around, people seem to be the most drawn to the last two sketches since they’re the clearest to read, though, I’m personally not a fan of the “Schoolhouse Rock” look of the last sketch.

Blackmask UI Sketch Idea

Soon, we’re setting up our Blackmask stuff to have its own social accounts to post news related to the game on. Now if you want more Blackmask news, you can follow on Twitter and Instagram and soon an actual website!

If you missed out on last Saturday’s stream at Virtual HPL FanFest 2020, you can watch the recording on YouTube! Thanks again to Hammond Public Library for hosting me!

Doing this presentation has me interested to make a full article about making zines, so expect that in the future. I also need to get the print version of The Pizza Man done because I let it slip away.

Finally, I finished my stock of the original monochrome copies of Incident at the Game Store from my Etsy Store. Now the colored version of Incident at the Game Store will be the only version sold for the foreseeable future.

What I’ve Been Up To: Doing the Arting

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I’m doing alright for the past few weeks as there isn’t much to report. I’m still plugging away at my ongoing freelance commissions and Blackmask.

Artwise, I wasn’t very productive. My day job is beginning to pick up again and I spent most of my week making a promotional video for my Youtube Channel.

On Saturday, October 24th, I’ll be doing the Hammond Public Library Virtual Fanfest doing a 9am livestream on YouTube about making mini comics.

HPLVFF 2020 Promo
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Doing What I Can

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Staying busy with my art stuff for the last few weeks. I’m doing what I can to pack my days with activity and take my mind of things. I feel good when I’m focused on a project that I care about.

I did some “Brand Synergy” and renamed my web domain from “ryanfrancisart.com” to “mastafran.com.” Since my username on Twitter, Instagram, Twitch, Artstation, and Newgrounds gets me more search results of my art than my actual birth name, I’ll just use it for my general “brand.” It’s still the same site and if I set up my redirects right, the old site name should redirect to the new names. If there are any problems, feel free to message me.

I edited together a progress video of our game tentatively called “Cole Blackmask and the Scrolls of Soleon” or just “Blackmask” It’s a Game Boy styled action-platformer about a raccoon merchant adventuring an outlandish animal world for ancient magic scrolls of cataclysmic power.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mual9nuoCd0&t=4s

This is actually older footage melded together but I wanted to have a bigger elevator pitch video to show off to people. There’s still so much to do before we have enough for a playable demo. The music isn’t even ours because it’s from Final Fantasy Legend 2, so the music stuff isn’t squared away yet.

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What I’ve Been Up To: Project Blackmask

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If you’ve been following my art and this blog before 2020, you know that I draw a lot of anthropomorphic animal characters. These animals were ideas for characters and world for a webcomic idea that I was thinking about for the past nine years.

Cole the Weapon Seller

It would’ve been the ongoing adventures of a plucky adventure merchant named Cole Blackmask as travels to strange lands, questing for loot to sell, battling powerful warriors and mystical forces who reside all over this funny animal world.

Cole Jacket Poses
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Project Blackmask Update 2/24/2019

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I’m still writing Blackmask slowly and steadily when I have time, but I’ve been tackling some new freelance artwork and commission stuff. I’m still trying to fund printing for Incident at The Game Store in color but some car problems have come up, so money’s lacking.

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