Inktober 2019 Results

I finished up Inktober and used the official prompts this year.

Here's all of them together!

And then below are all of them individually:

2020 Plans

Happy 2020, it's a new decade!

Before I start talking about what I plan to do in 2020, I'd like to showcase my improvement from 2004 to 2019:

I always have a lot of plans for how to make the next year better, but the past few years, I notice my comments have been fairly similar with a theme of "I tried to do daily projects less because I had less time to draw." And then every time, I start to feel guilty for not drawing every day and just start doing it anyway. And then October - December comes around and I get burnt out from doing those daily projects.

Well, this year was a little different. Usually, January is a time to start over and feel refreshed, but I was kind of already there in December, and that's because I did things differently.

November and December last year are what I'm basing this year's plans on. In November, I used it as a chance to draw characters every day that would appear in the Eventure that I wrote the last week of November, for NaNoWriMo. It had me anticipating writing that part and really keeping me motivated to keep on working on it because I was excited to write that part. And then it ended up being a really fun week and I liked how that one came out.

In December, I decided to use Digicember as a chance to work on an offline project instead of posting every day. While I didn't end up drawing every day, there were days where I was so excited to work on it that I drew for 7 hours straight without realizing it. And that's the excitement I want to bring back, where drawing is fun!

Posting my art became an afterthought, where I would think "Oh yeah, I haven't posted in a while. I'll post this sketch I did the other day" and it really helped me out mentally. So basically, this year I want to bring that mentality back and really focus on just making art for myself entirely.

I notice that when I'm writing my story or planning out parts of my story, I get more into that zone. And when I'm in that zone, I just want to draw story moments for fun, even if they're quick or sketchy. It just helps me to really visualize these scenes more. And I find that my drawings are overall better when this happens too.

I want to focus more on world-building and writing so that I can naturally create good art. This way, I won't just be creating art to post a sketch a day. Those drawings tend to be more boring and just generic headshots without a lot of storytelling or context. I want to create art with purpose.

So the end of 2019 really helped me realize what I was lacking, and I found out why I felt so unfulfilled. When I'm super in the zone and doing things about The Nays, that's when I'm most happy and motivated to create.

And so for 2020, I don't want to set specific dates or timelines on how often I'm going to write or draw, I just want to do it more often. At the very least, I'd probably like to create something once a month, but we'll see how that goes with life.

And when I say creating something, that could be anything related to my story. It could be working on the website, docs, writing an Eventure, drawing a comic, making a Twine, or anything else!

December has been super productive and enjoyable and I think a lot of that is because I stopped posting art every day on social media. I'd like to start posting again more than I did last month, but maybe I'll make a point to post more sketches or WIPs, and not worry about finished illustrations or stressing about the posting aspect of things. I'm gonna try real hard on that one because I know I say something similar every year. But this time I'm thinking I have more of a reason not to and a direction for what I want instead of just less.

So anyway, those are my thoughts and ideas for 2020. I'm excited to start progressing more in my story, whether that's rewriting old content, or making parts that are completely new. I have a pretty good feeling about this next year.

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.

Old Forgotten Posts of 7 Years: Part 2

This is part 2 in my old blog post series. I'm setting the date for 2019 but posting this compilation technically in 2025!

Mr Dude Redesign (December 29, 2019)

For December's Improvement Movement prompt (and the final one of the year!), I decided to redesign Mr Dude! 

Here's his final design! I included the different hair concepts I made in the process too.

And then here is his old design to show a side-by-side comparison of what I improved, too.

Life Drawing (October 19, 2019)

These are some various life drawings I've done the past few months.

Yaguzi's Family (September 29, 2019)

I've been planning out eventures all weekend, so I decided to make the Lynx family tree to try and figure out how this family works. They don't have names yet, but that'll happen soon!

Here's the family tree!

So basically, Yaguzi is 25% deamon (which is about 50% demon). I was playing around with the idea of how deamon traits are passed down through families. I decided that demons likely come about when deamons breed with another species, since they become more people-like. Since Yaguzi's family lives in Compass World, they become demons pretty quickly down the line.

For his grandparents and great-grandparents, I got a lot of inspiration from different types of cats. His great-grandpa is based on a Norwegian Forest cat, his great-grandma a tiger, and then his grandpa a maine coon. This was a lot of fun to make, since I really think genetics is interesting and how important it is in how characters look, in relation to their families.

Ralphie (September 15, 2019)

After a bunch of traveling, it's been hard getting back into drawing often. I've been trying to do some quick doodles to get back into it though.

Here's a quick doodle of Ralphie!

More from The Nays Comic (August 8, 2019)

I realize it's been about a year since I've drawn a comic page. I've been so caught up in writing more of the story and making concepts that I haven't really spent a lot of time drawing the beginning. This was fun, but also took a lot of time to draw, so I guess that's why I haven't been keeping up to date on drawing these. Maybe I'll draw more before another year passes!

Read the previous pages here!

Page 6

Shelter 128 Floor Plan (August 3, 2019)

Here’s a floor plan of Shelter 128. The M and S Nays generally spend a lot of time here when they’re not on missions. Bird-in-Trainings use the computers in here to do work, and one of the Higher-Up Birds resides here to oversee work.

This was originally for this month's Improvement Movement challenge, but I might do another one since I'm not sure if I wanna draw a full illustration of this one yet.

Kominushu (July 8, 2019)

Some more NAD drawings I've done. I usually don't get to do these in the summer, so it's been fun to finally draw some of these more main characters!

Kominushu is the kind-hearted younger sister of Trekkon who looks up to him. She is very calm and gentle and likes to see the good in others. She believes everyone has a little good in them, even if they choose to do evil deeds. Despite the hardships she’s gone through in her past, she has always kept a smile on her face and stayed positive. Her strong-hearted personality has made her very likable and inspired others. She’s close friends with both Clove and Sarah, and will do whatever she can to keep her friends safe.

Hide & Seek (July 7, 2019)

I've been writing the Hide & Seek Eventure, so I decided to do some quick sketches of a bunch of the scenes!

Detective Ragger (May 23, 2019)

Some more sketches!

I've been playing Detective Pikachu on 3DS and it's been making me want to get back to working on Detective Ragger. Maybe someday I'll have time to make games for myself again.

Sketches with Emotion (March 5, 2019)

Sometimes I get that feeling where I put a lot of myself into the sketch and it just flows better and looks less stiff.

Here's a shot from the Eventure I rewrote. Gair's running from the White Cloaks, and in turn, even pushing his friends away in fear.

Gamishness Revisited (March 3, 2019)

I decided to start up this project again of drawing the Eventures of The Nays in the style of games I've played.

This one is Dragon Quest I (or, Dragon Warrior, as I played). I played this game a long time ago, so I don't remember a whole lot about it. This Eventure is Complex.net when Scott and Chozu take over the Bouncy Room, so this is the Bouncy Room Lady trying to defend herself against them.

Midi Inspirations (February 24, 2019)

I've been in the mood for listening to midis recently.

I called this the Music Mania Easygoing Remix since I listened to the songs twice in a row instead of once so I would have time to put quick colors behind them. I'm planning to use these in a game I'm making.

Biggert City Sketches (January 9, 2019)

Some drawings of Biggert City characters!

My friend was jokingly saying we all needed to draw frogs, but I took her seriously and drew Josinda.

 

When DMunn obtains The Gek's powers and takes over his brother.

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.