Improvement Movement 2019

Along with my yearly recap of art in general, I revisited an old project this year called the Improvement Movement!

It was hard to keep up with it in addition to doing daily projects and things, so some of my last ones were done late, but it was a fun way to keep on working on projects that helped with world-building throughout the year.

Here's a recap of what I did each month:

This was a project I did with a few of my friends, and was meant as a way to keep us all drawing, and kind of simulate the feeling of drawing together. We did the same projects and would post them in a channel on Discord.

It was a fun project, but with everyone having busy lives and other projects, it was hard to keep up as a group. I ended up barely finishing all of the prompts, since it did take up a lot of time, but overall I think it was a fun project.

I don't see us doing it again this coming year, but maybe we'll revisit it another year in the future with some new prompts!

Check out our website here to see everyone else's!

2019 Recap

So it's that time of year where the year is ending, so I'm gonna reflect a bit on how this year went. Let's start with how it went in my art:

I started out by experimenting with inks and watercolors to try out some different traditional mediums. It was fun and I enjoyed the ink tests. I ended up doing a few illustrations of scenes from The Nays, but not a whole lot. I did my 47 Days of Positivity project again. I did Inktober, Huevember, and Digicember as usual. And then some sketches here and there.

Overall, things went pretty well, but something felt kind of static.

I feel like I wasn't really getting into my drawings a whole lot this year. I was just kind of drawing for the sake of drawing and posting, rather than for fun like I used to. I was looking at how many Eventures I wrote and it wasn't a lot for this year. I redid a bunch towards the beginning of the year, but once summer hit, it kinda went downhill.

At my job, summer is a crazy time and it's easy to feel overwhelmed and busy. I think that's why I would play video games or do something less involved when I was done with work or on weekends. I also visited a lot of friends in the fall and winter, which meant going out and having fun. While I love doing those things, I was noticing that I kind of neglected working on my story and drawing for fun during those times. And that left me feeling kind of unfulfilled in a way, even though I was having a lot of fun doing other things.

So overall this was a really weird year for art. I drew a lot and accomplished a lot of things, but it didn't really pay off and put me in a weird place, artistically. I have some plans that I'll talk about in my next 2020 post, but that's all for now!

And as a bonus, here's my 2010 recap to show the difference between the beginning and end of the decade.

Sketchbook Planners

These are just a bunch of sketchbook doodles I've done in the past few months.

Some quick inking tests when I was doing inktober.

I was helping my brother figure out the proportions for his Indivisible fanart, so I did this sketch.

A quick draft of my first inktober, but I didn't like how it was turning out, so I redid it.

Firebreath's Exploration

This was the first full project that I coded from scratch in JavaScript! It's a short choose your own adventure game where you follow Firebreath, a self-proclaimed dragon, through various scenarios.

Play the Game at this link:

I created this as a present for my brother's birthday. The style was inspired by one of his favorite games, Famicom Detective Club (which the music also comes from).

This was a short project made for fun, so enjoy!

Here are some screenshots from the game:

Return of Gesture Drawing

It feels like it's been forever since I've sat down and done gesture drawings from a website. I used to do it a lot before I was busy with work, but lately, it's been hard to find time to do any. But I finally found a bit of time to do a few, so of course, I'm very rusty!

 

 

Detective Pubby

For this month's Improvement Movement prompt, I played around with colors and lighting. I decided to take a scene from Detective Ragger for this one. I wanted this scene to take place at night, but I had fun coming up with different light sources and light colors.

These are all 4 of the variations together!

This is the original with flat colors.

And the process it took to get the flats laid out.

First I did the window lighting.

And here's the window lighting process.

Then I tried out moonlighting.

And this is the process for getting to the moonlighting.

And finally, the police car lighting.

And the final process for the police car lighting.

September Music Mania Doodles

I listened to music and doodled during my lunch break today to take a break from coding.

Trails of Cold Steel Sketches

Some recent fanart sketches I've done related to Trails of Cold Steel!

I've been playing a lot of Trails of Cold Steel recently, so I decided to doodle the characters. It's been a while since I've played through a really long RPG that wasn't Final Fantasy or Persona.

I always like when we get to see video game characters in outfits that aren't their usual uniforms, so here's a doodle of Claire from Trails of Cold Steel in her fancy undercover clothes from the bar scene.

Rush Sketches

I've been working on planning an Eventure having to do with time travel, so I've been sketching Rush more often.

Here's a sketch of what Rush might look like when he gets older!

Rush never seems to get things done whenever his friends are around, but he's usually pretty productive in his studies when he's by himself.

Alternate Timelines

I've been working on planning the Truth of Yaguzi Eventure, so that means making art about it!

This is what Zandra might look like in an alternate timeline.

Ilsa's ready for a pool party in the last few days of summer here.

Eventure Sketching

When I can’t think of what to draw, I’ve been sketching these mini-Eventure sketches for my Twine story where I’m converting my Eventures into Twine format!

RPG Maker Games

I've been working on RPG Maker games during my weekends for fun recently. These have been fun weekend projects overall!

I figured out the functionality on the programming side and have been working on the interface/art for one that is supposed to be a psychiatrist simulator.

I've been making progress on my custom Turn-Based battle system for one of my games! The art is still super rough, but I've been working on getting the gameplay mechanics functioning in RPG Maker.

The Revenge of Gert

I decided to make this short video on a Sunday afternoon. One of my first RPG Maker 2003 games was about a bad guy named Gert, so I randomly decided to bring that name back for this short "movie trailer" that I came up with. The quotes are from various video game screenshots I took.

The Revenge of Gert from Michelle Rakar.

And here's a gif of the beginning:

Gen 8 Doodles

With lots of Pokemon news and the game coming out later this year, I did some doodles related to gen 8!

I figured I would doodle some Gen 8 starter evolution predictions before it's too late. I'm guessing they're gonna be class-themed to go along with the Sword/Shield fantasy theme.

There was a lot of cool stuff in the Pokemon announcement trailer, and I'm pretty excited that they're bringing back new region-exclusive forms. Galarian Linoone looks pretty cool.