Returning to the Real World

I’ve made myself busy over the start of my new year and I already feel stressed out with all the stuff I put on my plate.

Currently, I’m video editing stuff from my art streams and game dev progress on Twitch, and I having trouble deciding out what to keep or dump. I’m doing what I can to not worry about doing a phenomenal job and just focusing on getting some clips made.

Along with this is some gift pixel art I made for my 100th follower on Twitch! Thank you and here’s to 100 more!

From my January 29th Twitch stream, I made a tutorial going through the basics of animation with a ball bounce! It might be rote, but it’s a good primer to get people to started just drawing objects multiple times and staying consistent with them. It went smoothly if you ask me, so I’m interested in doing more tutorials when I scrape up the time!

Most of my art time has gone to freelance and big book projects like Flawless Extra-Ordinary Super Heroes, so my sketchbook has been getting neglected. I’m trying not to let it burn me out since I am drawing “useful” art. But here’s art from the past few weeks that I have scanned.

I’m in this odd in-between feeling of having plenty of free time for personal projects but no free time because I’m taking on so many projects. I’m still not good at relaxing but old habits die hard.

My sketchbook priorities are going to the purpose of writing and rewriting the Blackmask story to a real plot. My programmer has plenty of character assets, so now I’m working harder at sketching environment assets.

I keep psyching myself out over how much this matters to me and I need to remember to ask for help and not take this insane stuff alone even if I think I’m bothering people about my obscure ideas that I struggle to explain.

Somehow, I’ve self-published and sold comics,yet I still feel like I’m stumbling when I’m trying to convey the overall direction I want to take Blackmask’s story. I’m sure I’ll figure out sooner or later, since the game will be edited and iterated on as it goes.

2/8/2021 Blackmask Recent Development Stuff

With the fruits of Adam’s labor reveals a new progress video for Blackmask!

This progress video done between the last video and now, includes new additions of Slopes, Dashing, NPCs, and Enemies. There’s some jank of course, but development still persists!

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2020: A Year in Review

I had plans, but they went to crap last year. With all the virus stuff, so many cancellations and changes in my life I didn’t get my goals done. The two freelance projects I had taken up most of my time for the year, but they kept me alive and maintained over 2020.

At the beginning of the year, I joined the Global Game Jam with Adam Mortell and made my first ever pixel artwork. Committing to learn pixel art, I plunked down $9 for Micheal Azzi’s E-Book, Pixel Logic – A Guide to Pixel Art.

From doing that, it lead to me starting to make a video game called Blackmask. I want 2021 will be the year Adam and I go full throttle on Blackmask! I want to have more update videos for the game on the development YouTube channel. Another goal is to make a Kickstarter campaign for Blackmask and get development going on it.

I reached 100 Followers and even got Affiliate on my Twitch Channel! To celebrate that and the New Year, I did a request pixel art stream for any viewers who commented. In the future, I’ll give it a year of streaming on Twitch while posting clips on YouTube Channel.

100 Twitch Followers Request Icons

I finally finished my illustration for Furs of Fury! I think I was too precious with the work as I wanted to make this and give the game a good first impression. I think I’ll get the hang of it once I figure out more of a work flow for any future projects.

I’m still doing my sketchbook stuff and I want to do more to put more purpose to my sketch and concepting work.

I’m also going to talk a bit about some music and bands I’m listening to on Bandcamp. Currently, I’m listening to a Russian Sludge Metal band called Old Sea and Mother Serpent.

I can’t listen to a majority of my faves on my livestreams like Pink Floyd and Camel. My solution is to look through Bandcamp to find bands, genres, and musicians I’ve never heard of. I’m a big Prog Rock fan, enjoying ridiculously long songs and albums, so Doom and Progressive Metal seem like a nice transition from Prog Rock. If you like Sludge and Doom Metal, give Old Sea and Mother Serpent a listen.

For this year, I want to get more choosy about the freelance jobs, my clients, and commissions I take on. My other 2021 hopes are to get more prints of Pizza Man made and selling on my Etsy store! It’ll be a small run since I’ve been sitting on many copies of comics, so I want to get through them before printing more. There are a few conventions that’ll hopefully run, so I’m pushing to get more things like stickers and pins! My website needs a massive overhaul, such as my own online store to not depend on Etsy to sell my work.

Art and Logo Working

Development for Blackmask is going to slow down as Adam and I are dealing with unrelated new day job stuff. I’m going to reduce these posts down to once a month due to how uneventful my life is going at the moment.

I recently became a Twitch Affiliate and close to getting 100 followers on Twitch, which is incredible and I need to do something to celebrate that. I’ll still be doing Twitch livestreams to work on art assets and concept art for gameplay ideas and Adam will still be plugging away at the game in his spare time away from his contract work.

Blackmask Game Deer NPCs Pixel Animations

We’re hoping to try and have a small playable demo around PAX East or so but if not we won’t rush it. If you want to keep up with new updates, we set up a Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube specifically for Blackmask and that’s where I’ll do the more development focused updates to separate it from my personal art accounts.

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What I’ve Been Up To: Doing the Arting

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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What I’ve Been Up To: Game and Art Progress

I’m okay but getting a burned out of my stuff. I’ve been slowly attempting to move away from my Twitter and Instagram, trying to keep my sanity with actual galleries sites like here. I’m doing my best to stream as frequently as I can on my Twitch Channel so follow me to catch me working on art stuff commissions!

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What I’ve Been Up To: Busy, Busy!

I’ve been drawing small stuff to pay my bills, fill my portfolio, and staying busy. Despite, constantly feeling like I’m behind on everything I’m getting the things expected of me done.

Progress is being made working on the Illustrations on Flawless Extra-Ordinary Superheroes, knocking out a larger illustration and pushing forward to the next few ones.

Flawless Extra-Ordinary Super HeroesS.T.E.A.M. Intro
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