#maybe i can participate in artfight this year after all then! i think... maybe... possibly... (<- hasnt set up my profile yet)

[aria0fgold]

I'm fired up now. No more struggling, I'm going to finish this drawing before June 30th and I WILL MAKE IT HAPPEN!

[pine-niidles]

2024 July Monthly Update - Artfight

Another July gone by, another Artfight draws to a close. This month's update post will be primary looking at what I've made for Artfight, but first some personal updates:

I mentioned in my last post I was dealing with wrist pain but it was getting better. It got worse. The last few weeks of July I spent not moving my hands as much as I possibly could because both hands were feeling so bad. Luckily I managed to figure out the cause (I bought myself a wheeled bag to take stain off my back when grocery shopping, turns out wheeled bag + cobblestone streets = wrist destroying vibrations) and once I eliminated it my wrists started actually healing. They're feeling much better now, not fully healed but well on the way :) I'm just glad art wasn't the cause. With any luck this'll be the last monthly update this year with a 'personal circumstances' blurb at the start and I can get fully back to just making and talking about art ✨

Artfight

This year was my 8th year participating, which is kind of wild to think about. My first year was Sun vs Moon, on team moon and I drew 34 total art pieces. I don't think I've ever beat the number but I certainly got close this year having drawn 30 attacks!

I didn't have a specific plan going into artfight this year, I usually don't other than maybe a list of people I'd like to draw for. I treat artfight as a super low pressure way to experiment and draw fun designs. Not every piece comes out exactly how I want it but that's part of the fun and every year at least one artfight drawing makes it's way to my fav art that year. 

At the end of June I'd just made a template for doing these chibi icons and I was having so much fun with them I started off artfight doing a bunch of them for attacks:

I think they turned out super cute but they look a little awkward side by side due to the different dimensions of each one. I've yet to find a good way to display batches of them 😔

The first bigger drawing I did was of a character I found in my bookmarks and I love how it turned out:

It was the perfect piece to break the last shackles of my artblock away and drawing it felt smooth as butter. I didn't really do anything similar the rest of the month but there's several points on how I lined and colored this one that I'm keeping in mind to experiment more with in the future. 

After the first piece I was feeling in a more environmental mood and freehanded these two attacks featuring characters in funky landscapes.

My wrists were still feeling pretty iffy at this point so the lines for both of these were a very loose first pass over a rough sketch but to be honest I don't think anyone would notice unless I pointed it out. 

I really thought I'd do more in this style but 🤷‍♂️ it ended up not happening. Maybe I'll do something with some ocs soon

The last three attacks I got out before my wrists got too bad to draw I did all in the same day

These two characters were exactly my type & I love to draw chibis on some kind of environmental base or prop so I wanted to do something with that this artfight as well. I think they turned out pretty cute!

Another one with a base, this time more like a character standee that I love to give dnd characters. Physical character models moving around on a map is one of my favorite tactile experiences of tabletop games.

The last one I did before I had to take a couple week pause - I wanted to experiment around with linework specifically and while there's a lot I like about this drawing there's several things I had to rush or simplify because of my wrists and overall it didn't end up being the strongest piece. Ah well, that's how it sometimes.

The day after I did these I went grochery shopping again and then my wrists really gave out. I didn't draw anything for artfight from the 12th until the 29th when my hands were finally starting to feel good enough to try and do just a few last drawings before the end.

I started off simple with some blocky chibis with saturated lineart. I'd played with colorful lines in the past but I never ended up liking because having all the lineart be one bright color always felt too much and too distracting. However, earlier this month I saw this gorgeous attack by ebelcities which made my realize the extremely pointless arbitrary restriction I'd been putting on myself: you don't need to have ALL the lineart be a bright saturated color, of course you don't! How trivial! And yet this was a huge breakthrough. I have to thank ebelcities for having such beautiful art 🥰 Seeing her work is always sooo inspiring. 

I still didn't want to push my hands too much so my next attack was done mostly using the lasso tool, with a few textures added on top. This attack received the least attention on social media out of all of them but personally I'm pretty proud of it 🤍

In the last two days my hands were feeling MUCH better and I took advantage of that to try and reach my initial goal I had at the start of the month - 30 attacks to fill up a whole page on my all attacks section with attacks from this year. 

​I had 7 left to do - and I did it!

I wanted to keep them simple both of the sake of my hands (drinking game for this post - take a shot anytime I mentioned my wrists) and to actually finish 7 drawings in 2 days. But I also didn't want to just give people rough sketches, especially since most of these were revenges for some really lovely art I'd gotten. So I came up with the idea of A) a border template and B) using tones!

I've been really into dot tones recently but I've not really been using them as is the traditional method - it was a bit of a challenge doing them in these! Picking tones, getting a range of values, matching textures, getting the size of the dots right... so many decisions to make. I'll have to keep experimenting with them, maybe for some actual comics in the future :)

And that's it for this year's artfight. We'll be hearing the results soon but even before hearing them I think seafoam has probably lost haha, we've been lagging behind all month and I had a feeling this would happen when I saw the team numbers but I still love seafoam regardless <3 I'm looking forward to seeing what the teams will be next year!

[bisectro]

2024 art summary

It's been a wonderful year for Pinks and Blues. In honor of probably the most creatively active and fulfilled I've ever been since 2018, I figured I'd make a blog style recap. This is a blog after all.

I did a 6 page colored comic, did an animatic (another full colored MV in the works. More on that later) and discovered that I LOVE making things move. Comics, I love you, but I think my passion lies in the gratification of making videos.

I also cleaned up my itch.io page and uploaded a digital sketchbook! It's mostly reflection ttrpg related. Participated in two more zines (Marcanne zine and Empower Zine) this year, oh me oh my.

I also did some artfight! Wahoo to artfight!

I ran a TTRPG session for the first time?????

I mean I played many ttrpgs as a player before, but GM-ing?? This was me swimming in uncharted waters, at least for me. I have been going about making a ttrpg from scratch, but how could I do that if I haven't played every game I could get my hands on, or at the very least, get over my stage fright and RUN A GAME.

After mulling over the idea of wanting to run a game for years, I finally gathered the courage to do it when I found Sentiment TTRPG.

What is the Sentiment system? Sentiment is a tabletop roleplaying game with a focus placed squarely on the emotions and complexity of each character without too much mechanical bloat. The goal of the game is to give players tools to understand their characters as people and to give all participants an understanding of the other characters at the table. And then it's also built to, if you so wish, put those characters in incredibly stressful or dramatic situations just to see what happens. How does it work? It’s an ultra flexible ttrpg system using d20s, d6s and the primary colors. Sentiment is a system that handles combat quickly and entertainingly, but the focus of this game isn’t just big climactic battles. Those same rules can easily and elegantly handle sled races. Fishing competitions. Jousting on the moon.

Source: Sentiment TTRPG patreon - About section.

Here's the blurb for my own campaign if you're curious:

On an asteroid far away, 4 crew members get dropped off with the mission of building a restock station 7.8 light-years away from Earth.

Uses Sentiment system rules. Content warnings: heavy workload, death by asphyxiation, death by crushing, and drowning.

So I gathered up my bowels, rolled up my sleeves and decided to port a mixture of mechanics from Oxygen Not Included, Chicken Invaders, Wolf 359, and Signalis into the Sentiment system and see how it worked.

My conclusion? It went well!!! I feel very fulfilled. I'd probably run another similar game that is set in either the water, or the desert. I have a few ideas for those already. Possibly going to run a Heart: The City Beneath campaign. That could be something for 2025 me to write about.

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Animatics

It all started with a Spiderverse edit by JaQenka. It was set to an audio clip of Americano by Lady Gaga.

I recall working really hard on my college paper at the time and was just about fed up with it that I started sketching out really cool scenes from me and my friends' written reflection ttrpg roleplay. I told my friend "hey. Give me a deadline. Make sure I get this done by Wednesday." and I took off.

One day I'll polish this, but for now I am sooo happy with how it turned out. Like oh my god the transitions?? The coffins popping up as soon as Rosetta and Finn clashed blows?? The.. BULLETS RICOCHETING??? maybe I should endeavor to be a VFX artist.

Anyways, while we're still on the topic of Animatics here's what you ought to look forward to, Animation-wise

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Animation

After my very ambitious endeavor with Americano FlowC animatic, I set my sights onto tackling a New ambitious endeavor. This time instead of being OC focused, I plan to highlight the Reflection's main characters and what they did in Act 1. It will be set to the music of the RPG meme. Kind of like a Promotional Video of sorts, as a way to give back to the many things this show and the Stabbyness crew inspired me to do.

The reason why I talk about it is because I have been working on it for 2 months as of writing this and I'm pretty committed to making it real. Here's what I have to show for it. Currently in various stages of thumbnailing, compositing, and style tests.

For 2025, hopefully* released around the time Act 3 of Reflection TTRPG drops.

*I say hopefully. because as of Writing this (november 25th), apparently I am also writing a school paper that's taking up all of my time and energy. (future pen editing this here: Yeah... No that's too hopeful. I'll try anyways).

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Solitare Deck

Various side projects are being worked on while I am studying for college. One of them is the custom card deck for my RP group.

Occasionally pausing them while I power through commission work. Me and my friends discussed what our characters would likely be on a solitare deck and made a list. The deck, as I show it to you, is unfinished.

With hope, I will continue to make them as 2025 goes on. Art is a continuous process, after all.

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Bluesky

So let's talk about twitter. I had an account that I ran from 2018. It's how I found and met the friends I talk to now.

A few years ago, I stopped doing Homestuck art. This is for numerous reasons, the main one being is that "I am not having fun anymore."

Coupled with the undesirable side-effects of twitter's new ownership meant that all the growth in numbers that i had are null and void; No one interacts with my interests, art posts, no one reblogs, retweets, or expresses their appreciation for other artists (I comment on every post I can that has touched me, which I encourage people to do).

I also found out that I got shadowbanned for not posting on twitter for a year. So like, okay, I cannot be found. What now?

I needed a fresh start. And I've been getting a good of a start as any on Bsky. I've been getting to talk to new people there and have fun and praise people for showing their works to me, and IN TURN I get inspired.

It's my wish that people continue to talk and talk and talk and talk the good talk. Please be respectful, and please encourage each other. That's the kind of world I want to live in.

Closing Words

I want to mention that even though I posted a lot of my own Visual art here, I've been writing just as much in private.

I've decided that I wanted to revisit some old darlings of my past--namely Bakugan -- and incorporate new things into my worldview (dungeon meshi, witch hat atelier, amphibia, gundam unicorn) and see which sticks

This year has been a year of processing and synthesizing different things. I'm trying my best to consume and digest other peoples' creations and a part of my whole being. Spiritfarer, FFXIV Endwalker, Signalis, Reflection, Look Back, and my own friends' creations. I Love You!!!

You're all a part of me now, a part of my art, and the way I walk, talk, and eat.

It's been a very scary year, a lot of personal things happened that I would rather keep close to my chest. That's super why I am very thankful for all the people who helped me whether it's through inspiring me through their works, or paying it forward by including me in their projects, or even giving me their best wishes. Thank you!

as a person who has had to write a 48-page research paper last month, this post isn't that long to me. But it's long for some, so I thank whoever reached the end.

I'll continue to make art. And I'll continue to Yap. #theYapper ✌