#<- context is that i drafted them all at once and ive been slowly posting them

[sssoto]

Creator’s update #1

Hey guys! So I’ve decided to start actually blogging on this blog and tell a bit about the various things I’m working on, share WIPs, music I’ve been digging recently etc. I realise that I rarely post anything, so it seems like I’m super inactive - which is totally not true, I just have so much stuff going on and take a long time to finish things, and I’m also pretty picky about what I put up online lol! For the sake of keeping those of you interested in the loop, I’m gonna start this series of creator’s updates in which I’ll update y’all on the progress I’ve made on my various creative projects. The goal is to give an update a few times a month (hopefully lol)!

This past while I’ve been super inactive in the writing department, but very much productive in the art department, so my writing update will be mostly a summary of what I’ve been doing the past few years up until this point.

Mood: Feelin’ real good cuz my parents finally brought my comfy double bed over from my mum’s place this past weekend, which means no more sleeping on the couch yaaaaaas.

Music I’ve been digging recently:

Skye Sweetnam - Boyhunter So, the other day I randomly listened to this song on my way home from work, and I totally realised that Skye Sweetnam is the perfect voice for my character Caitlyn, and this song totally embodies what Caitlyn is all about lmaoooo. (The song isn’t very accurate to the time period Caitlyn lives in, but it’s super accurate to her character essence and personality, and I just find that so lit hahahah) 

Fallulah - Out of It This song is basically my MC’s theme song?? It’s performed by a Danish artist and was super popular in Denmark a few years back as it was the theme tune to a Danish tv show (a show I loved!). The lyrics are just so Daniel, it’s not even funny. It mostly fits his mental state at the beginning of Renaissance.

Girl’s Day - Love Again Ugh I just love the tune of this song so much, I can’t really place my finger on it, the emotion is just so great. I love the guitar riff especially, and Girl’s Day is a four member girl group, so it’s one of those songs where I can imagine my main girls Annaliese, Caitlyn, Mary and Serena singing as each member lmao.

Nine Muses - Remember Another four member group now, this song is also one where I can imagine my main girls singing each member’s part lmao, and having that aspect to a song always makes it a little better for me! Forreal tho, this new release from Nine Muses slays, and we all know it. The music video haunts me.

Sistar - Lonely This song makes me sad and happy all at once, cuz I’m not ready to say goodbye to Sistar, but at the same time this ending is probably the best one any fan could’ve wished for because there was no drama or anger, just well wishes and hope for the future. I know these girls will go far, and this song just pulls at all my heart strings man. The melody of the bridge and chorus, Dasom and Soyu’s parts in particular, really works for me. And yeah, Sistar has four members too, and once again I can picture my main girls singing as each member lmao. It’s a thing I have, okay?

Moana OST - We Know The Way + Know Who You Are I recently watched this movie, and while I sorta felt like the plot was a bit rushed and tropey in many ways, I totally adored the visuals and the MUSIC OMG. These two songs are my favourite, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s vocals never miss, and Auli’i Cravalho’s high note is gorgeous! Also dat choir in the background tho, and in context with the movie scene that song just makes me irrationally emotional mkay. (That ending was the best twist ever, it definitely lifted the story up a notch for me!)

Writing

So I’m writing a book! You might have seen me mention it a few times already on here, but I’ve not really shared much insight into my process or what sort of book this actually is (other than talking about characters here and there), and as I’ve not been making huge progress lately (I’m in an art state of mind duuuh), I thought that I’d keep this section short and sweet, with a bit of an introduction into what my book project is all about.

I call it a book project because I don’t feel comfortable just calling it a book when I don’t have rights to publish. Technically my book is a fanfiction based on the horror video game Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and as such I don’t own copyright of the small percentage of my story that features the canon elements. However, I take this as seriously as anyone else would writing their own book, because I’ve poured my entire heart and soul into it, and the vast majority of the content (plot, characters and world) is my original creation. It’s my own little big project lol!

You might be familiar with the game, and even if you aren’t, that’s not a prerequisite for reading my book since everything is introduced and set up just as in any regular book. The protagonist is an Englishman named Daniel, and we know little of his past through the game. I won’t go into too much detail on what the game is about (if you really wanna know, you can look it up), but the point of my book is to explore the protagonist’s life from his childhood up to the events of the game and beyond, and afterwards connect his story to the game sequels featuring other protagonists within the same universe. It’s a bit complex and elaborate, which is just the way I like it!

As the games are set at various points during the Victorian era (game #1 is set in Prussia 1839, game #2 is set in France 1858, and game #3 is set in England 1899), you can probably guess that the entire thing will be pretty long. That’s why I’m making it a series! I have at least seven books planned so far (though there’ll definitely be more, since I’m not near the end of the timeline I need to cover yet), and I currently have the first book written and am writing the sequel - however, the first book will need a complete rewrite once I’m finished with book #2, because I’ve since developed and changed a lot of stuff, and I have many new interesting ideas for a more fleshed out version of the first book. Still, the fanfic version is available online, so if you’d like to read it, you can find it here. You’ll get a pretty good idea of the general story and the characters, but keep in mind that it’s super outdated and will be very different after my rewrite!

For reference, this is the list of books that I’ve planned (and titled) so far, so you can keep up with what book of my series I’m talking about at any given point:

I - Amnesia: Memoirs

II - Amnesia: Renaissance

III - Amnesia: Voyage

IV - Amnesia: Noir

V - Amnesia: Encore

VI - Amnesia: Rogue

So what I’m doing right now with this project is revisions. Uuuuggghhhhh. Yes, that’s right, I’m stuck in revision hell. I’ve not even finished the first draft of Renaissance yet (I know, sacrilege, writing blasphemy, don’t start your damn edits until you’ve finished your draft dumbass), but I had some pretty major changes to make, changes so big that it would be a waste of time and effort to go on drafting without implementing them first. Mainly the changes are surrounding 1) a change of ages of my main cast (I aged many characters up a few years), and 2) changing and figuring out the specifics of the illness which my MC’s sister, Hazel, is afflicted with. She’s not such a major character in Renaissance, but she plays a big role in Memoirs, and since I had all these new ideas for the rewrite of that, I wanted to implement the ripple effects in the second book so it wouldn’t be too much of a hassle to edit later when Renaissance is a finished 3-400k first draft lmao (I have a lot of words okay?). These changes mostly affect the early chapters of my book - chapters I wrote about three years ago, which means that these early chapters really need a face-lift. In addition to the age and illness change, I wanna revise the first five chapters by cutting the fluff and tightening up the beginning so we get to the action a tiny bit faster. Adding to the fact that these early chapters are three years old, the prose also needs an almost complete rewrite. So long story short, all of the edits are taking a long ass time, and I’m not having a good time lmao. Doesn’t help that I had to stop drafting right at one of the juiciest scenes in my book?!?!? (that’s a lie, it gets juicier, but I was just getting to the real good stuff yanno?)

(Side note: for someone who said that I’d keep this short, it sure turned out long lmao. I just have too many damn words.)

Chapters edited: 2/16 (working on 3 right now and it’s an effin’ pain)

Current total word count: 120,591

Current total chapter count: 17 (the number will go down to 16 once I finish the revisions, as I’m merging two chapters)

Look at all the dumb shit I still have to edit for chapter 3. Look at it.

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

Art

Man, I’ve been doing a lot of artwork recently, and by a lot, I don’t mean that I’ve finished any.

I think I’ve been focused on developing my actual drawing skills rather than making finished illustrations, because I’ve been so overwhelmed with inspiration and I’ve wanted to try out drawing a bunch of different motives, so my mind is on a lot of different art projects at once, and I’m making baby steps of progress on each of them because I just wanna do everything lmao. I should probably take a step back and settle on one thing at a time, but at the same time, I feel like this is working for me because I’m so inspired and motivated and super excited for every single art piece; I don’t feel myself losing interest in any of them, in fact I just feel like my switching between different artworks keeps every piece fresh and interesting for me, yanno?

So here’s one thing that I’ve been slowly chipping away at for the past few months. I’m drawing a full body group picture of my main cast from Renaissance!

I’ve drawn the anatomy sketches of all the male characters (though I’m debating whether I should add some others), and now I’m adding the female characters one by one, so these are not all of the characters yet. But man, I just love seeing the characters side by side? The variety in their body language, body types and heights is just so interesting to look at, and it’ll be even better once I get around to actually adding their facial features, expressions, hair, attire, and then colouring them as well omg! I’m a sucker for this kind of thing, blame it on @juliajm15 and her amazing diverse character designs.

It’s gonna be a huge picture with a lot of characters, and I’m stoked for it!! This is a piece which I hope I’ll be able to show ya’ll the progress of bit by bit in every few updates. (also, if you feel somewhat familiar with some of my characters, you’re welcome to make guesses at who’s who (; )

Another project I’m working on is making official character portraits of my main cast (and possibly minor characters as well). I just think it’s nice to have official portraits as reference for anyone who’d like to see what the characters look like, and also for myself for whenever I need to refresh the specific features and expression of each character. It’s just a nice thing that satiates my very Type A personality lmao!

So the characters above are Owen Wright (to the left) , Daniel’s puppy bff with the fluffy hair, and then from left to right I’m colouring the portraits of the Armstrong siblings: Caleb, Caitlyn and Tristan. Their dad is a duke! n.n Caleb is the oldest, Caitlyn the youngest, and Tristan is the bland middle child. He’s a little brat LOL but I still love him.

Also, due to this glorious reference I found, I finally figured out how to draw Daniel. Bless this model, I never knew I wanted Daniel to have big puffy lips, but apparently I do.

He looks actually nice now? Which is nice? I’m amazed. Also his hair? I can never draw his hair, but this looks nice so yay? Also, I dunno why I never draw clothes on him, I guess I’m just lazy lol, but he’s gonna need to wear clothes for the official character portrait soooo... That’s a thing I’m gonna have to do.

Now that I’ve figured out his features, it’s gonna be fun to remodel all his family members accordingly. I sense that he’ll have gotten those cute puffy lips from his mum meheheheh.

I also did some Disney fanart of my two favourite Disney ladies; Esmeralda and Kida <3

I actually never really draw fanart any more, it’s been yeeeaaaars since I did, and when I used to do it, I was always very particular about staying as true to the original art style as possible. But now that I’ve spent the past couple years focusing on developing my own art style, I actually decided not to care about that so much and just draw the characters the way I’m used to drawing my own, and lo and behold - it looks pretty accurate to the Disney style?? I assumed that the characters would end up looking very different, but other than the eyes being smaller I feel like they look the exact same lmao. It’s interesting to me, because even when I used to do fanart, I usually did so of Japanese art and manga, not of Disney or any other western art. Also, I don’t consider my own style very Disney, but it pleases me a lot that the characters look so much like themselves even in my art style! The most important thing to me is to capture the essence of the character anyway, so any fan can recognise the character they love so much n.n

So that’s about it for this round! I’ve been working on other things as well, but I’d rather not disclose them to the public just yet - perhaps later, when I’ve made more progress, or (gasp!) actually finished something!! Bahahah, with the many things I’m working on, hell will freeze over before that day comes. *cries*

Youtube

I’m adding this Youtube section because, in addition to writing and doing artwork, I also like to record vocal covers (mainly of kpop songs, but I’ll do anything I’m in the mood for at any given point), aaaaand as of today I'm gonna be uploading speedpaints as well! Which is probably good since I don’t upload my covers nearly as often as I finish them lmao.

I’ve not uploaded any new covers recently (though I really should, I do have some covers lying around on my laptop mwerp), but I’m gonna list a couple of my favourite covers I have on my channel here so you can take a listen if you’d like!

And today I uploaded my very first speedpaint to my channel, so check that out if you’re interested in that sort of stuff! It’s the process of my Christmas portrait piece for Serena. I aim to be more consistent with uploads since I have a few unedited recordings lying around, so keep an eye out for that!

If you’ve read this far, thank you for sticking around and taking a look at my work, even if it’s only in WIP form. I wanted to start doing these updates because I’ve been watching my friends do them for a long time, and I always love reading their writing updates; they motivate me so much to get working on my own stuff, and I just wanna be able to perhaps do something similar for anyone else who’s watching me out there. So thank you sincerely to @coffeeandcalligraphy, @sarahkelsiwrites and @shaelinwrites for sharing your process with the world and being such an inspiration to me and many others, I love seeing you all make progress on your own projects <3

So that was all for this round, I hope you guys enjoyed a little sneak peek into what I’ve been working on! Until next time, folks!