Disclaimer: what follows below is likely not interesting. Don’t read. You have been warned. If you get bored to death I will not be held accountable.
With that aside, greetings.
I had promised to put something out (that is not a fire) every Sunday, even if it’s about as marvelous as a pile of crap in the shape of Mona Lisa. So here we are. This serves the same purpose as throwing salt and hanging garlic garlands around the house: to ward off the evil voices lurking in the brightest crooks of my curly brain. The ones that might corrupt me into going MIA for another 6+ months out of shame or fear or a distant calling for a cryptid lifestyle. Or just cause I suck at this.
Yet I kindly remind myself that even if I really suck at this right now, it’s not that important (as long as I get over it myself). On one hand, it’d be ridiculous to actually expect anyone to see or care to read this in order to be appalled by the quality and lack of direction.
On the other hand, if by any humorous turn of fate you, dearest reader, made it here (dare I ask what is even going on in your search history) and didn’t click away upon seeing my initial disclaimer, then that’s on you honestly. If you clicked this thinking it’s some kind of clickbaity reverse psychology sham revealing the gossip of the century or my way of hiding feet or NSFW art in plain sight then…
Well, worth a try but I must disappoint you. Perhaps spend a few minutes this Sunday to question the nature of free will or what society has done to you. Sundays are great for looking back and judging your life choices before Monday comes around to flush that down the drain in a required emergency dissociation intervention (economy who, economy what). You won’t find feet pics, I’m not the kind of ghost that has feet (no need to rub it in, I have many complexes to deal with I don’t need feet – or lack thereof – up on that list, okay).
Although.
(Does this count? Someone tell me if this counts. It’s all this humble peasant has to offer)
You might find anatomy studies of feet. Like those I made a while back.
I do love practising anatomy, a bit ironic considering how much I hated biology in school. And still do. In my defense, school-taught biology suffers from a downfall similar to history. Both would be immersive if framed a certain way, yet end up as cumbersome heaps of terms, tears, numbers and convoluted phrases with little to relate to.
All this biology talk reminds me I want to try making an écorché sometime soon. If new to the term (I learned it by chance a few months ago), an écorché is basically a sculpted model of the bones and muscles, a more hands-on 3D approach to learning human anatomy. Think small version of the skeletons chilling in biology classrooms or labs.
Still haven’t even decided on the more appropriate type of clay for that. Why is starting always the hardest bit? Not like I’m so marvelous at wrapping things up, but hey. At least, by that point, I’d have something to show for it that’s not just a brain MRI of my neurosity. An MRI that I can’t even afford.
Anyway, I’m debating making shorts about it once I do get started, since I tried looking up full écorché tutorials on YouTube only to be disappointed. Perhaps my process would save someone else from the pain of crying in front of 3D models and dusty anatomy books or from having to pay for proper tutorials or materials. Can’t guarantee the quality, but it would be enough for anyone to get the gist of it if desiring to go through the ordeal themselves. And it would be free.
But there are lots of things I still want to try out and need to make until I get to that. I’m working on sorting out my manga notes. Fun, taking forever, making me question what sanity tastes like, so very much in the spirit of manga-making. Will take forever more, but it’s currently the most productive and satisfying thing of the day so I’m not complaining.
I won’t even mention my list of projects, but I did come up with this thing I like to call the Franken Factory of Illustration (quite the mouthful, sue me). In the same spirit as the name might hint at, it’s basically a setup to attempt to use up a random selection of the many and varied art supplies I own (cough that I’ve been hoarding and too afraid to touch cause I have commitment issues cough) by cranking out illustrations despite my outstanding ability to avoid deciding on a single idea/approach to start with for weeks and months on end because how could I not question every thought of using up precious rice paper or precious little garden pebbles.
What if I don’t use it for the IdealTM project and waste all that PotentialTM? What if I use poor Precious and then I need Precious but Precious forever gone?? What if I use Precious but mess something up and the whole thing goes up in flames?!
(At least it’d be warm, my hands could use that.)
Realistically, nothing I make will ever be ideal or up to par as far as I’m concerned. Might as well kiss Precious goodbye sooner so I have more space for new art supplies to play with (embossing stuff, some softer air dry clay – I really want to make dolls – dare I dream of bookbinding?). So I went through all my Precious supplies, wrote them on strips of paper, put them in containers, and next time I want to make something but don’t know or don’t care what, I just pick paper strips at random and improvise. I’ve got canvases, materials, colour schemes, themes, moods yada yada. Rules are on a case by case basis, could roll a d20 to decide number of materials or kind of project, could just shove a hand or sticky thing in and use what stuck to it.
I could limit to using only those materials, but most likely I’ll just make sure all get included and anything extra is allowed since the whole point is to use stuff up and make something fun and cool. (Cool is subjective. Very. Subjective. Fun is about me having fun. I do not have the power to guarantee entertainment value. Sue me) So this kind of Frankenstration process might make it into a video, eventually, once I find my head and screw it back in place with healthy amounts of rocket glue. As a bonus, I intend to have most Frankenstrations relate to my manga, Golden Tiger, whether featuring actual concept design environments, characters, objects yada yada, or just inspired by the thematic of the world or specific characters.
On the topic of videos and the manga, here’s a sneak peak of some animation thumbnails for the next manga short animation I’m making, mainly focusing on just Aqua and Mitas this time. Pretty rough but can’t give too much away now 🙂 Except that I had wanted this to be just a quick and basic 4-5 main frames and ended up with 25+. Oh well.
All skits can be found on my YouTube channel, check them out here.
Alas, this is most of what I can show for now. My brain has been a mess and this has been weirdly therapeutic so there’s that.
TL;DR: Told you it’s not that interesting, if you scrolled down for a conclusion then too bad, life doesn’t just hand over conclusions. Nothing is concluded here, everything is potential, a work in progress, just like my mental state.
Farewell, till we meet again (praying a week from now at the latest),
P.S. Why does editing anything take so long?