Heya there~
Just wanna do another lil check-in. More updates on:
- the state of my projects & what I plan to work on
- what I’m thinking of working on
- any other updates
- and let any of you all ask open-ended questions you’d like me to answer.
— Projects & Plans —
I’m nearly done with the sketch comms I opened for supporters back in April. They’ve taken me longer to finish than expected. The reason for that is I wanted these sketches to look really good by my newer standards, so I would spend a lot of extra time planning out details like dialogue, best positions for the characters, and the ideal camera angles. I think if I open them again, I will offer full-color comms publicly, because for all the time I spend planning those details, I could get more mileage out of those details being brought into full-color for a higher price.
My plans right now are: 1) Finish the sketch comms; 2) Continue work on Down in the Dungeon; 3) Make the next animation with sound; 4) Open for public commissions.
When I open for public commissions, I plan to offer 2 types: regular full-color pics OR animated loops. I’m still interested in doing more animation, and I think offering those as a commission option will help me get better. Also, if someone wants me to color a sketch I already made them, or animate it, I plan to offer a discount, because I’ve already made the base sketches, so some of the work is already done.
Also, while all of this is going on, I’m still working on the Pushing My Buttons comic. When I wrote the last journal, I’d been writing daily for a week straight. Now, I’ve been writing that way for over a month. I’ve been doing so much writing that I finished the story, read it over, decided I wanted to change a major part of it, and rewrote the whole thing. I got some feedback from some people too, and that’s helped me improve entire scenes of the story. I used to not like the idea of opening up to feedback, because I felt like “This is my story and I’m gonna tell it the way I want to tell it at the end of the day.” But now I’m open to the idea that getting feedback from an outside perspective can help me tell the same story… just better. It’s nice to hear the story from a fresh perspective - from someone who doesn’t know every detail about my characters because they’re not in my head all the time like I am.
The overall story is done being written, and what I’m doing now is planning out the way the comic pages are going to look for each scene. I write down what the visuals will be and how many panels will be on each page. I think getting feedback during this stage is more important than the part of writing the overall story, because this the part where I lay out how I plan to present information to people, so it’s easy for there to be confusion or communicating the wrong ideas at this step.
— Ideas —
I’ve traded doing personal drawings for personal writing lately, which feels super weird, but also nice, because I’ve never had this kind of drive to write stories before.
I don’t have a lot of ideas I’m not working on at the moment. The only thing I can think of is that I would like to draw more anthro Mila mouse, because she’s got a lot more body for me to play with. :3
— General Updates —
Things have bee going good! I’m on a little bit of an odd sleep schedule due to traveling here lately, but I’m doing well. I plan to head back home in about a week.
When I get back, I really want to play music. I know I’m gonna be super rusty, but I wanna bust out the bass guitar and play some classics. The first song I ever learned to play on bass was Fireflies and Empty Skies by God is an Astronaut, and I wanna go back and play that again.
Oh! Big update! I got my braces removed! OwO
I got a clear retainer to keep my teeth in-place for now. I do plan to do braces again in the future, because I still need to fix my far back teeth (my main goal with the braces was to fix a few teeth in particular, but now I want to fix them all), but I’d rather do something like Invisalign over the wire braces I had before. I don’t know when I will start that treatment, but it will probably be in about a year from now, for budget reasons.
Apparently, I developed a lot of cavities while wearing wire braces because it was really hard to clean my teeth, but I’m getting those filled, and it will be easier to clean my teeth now. I’m also brushing super often because of my retainer - like, brushing after every meal now, instead of just before bed.
— Feedback —
If you have any feedback you’d like to give or questions you’d like answered, feel free to ask. Suggestions, technical stuff, how I do certain things, if I’m okay with something, anything.
