
Oh gosh, the year just keeps happening, huh? Here I was all ready to hunker down and hibernate until the next one but apparently that's 'unsocial' and 'selfish' and 'physically impossible unless you're a hedgehog or a tardigrade'. Bloody social norms, pfft.
Speaking of norms, here isn't: It's December!
And with that wraps up our Calendar comic run! Not that there aren't a whole gaggle of shenanigans left to doodle them in of course, what with Tori and August's awkward crushing and the little origin stories of the family I have firmly wedged up my cardigan sleeves. However my comic style this year is going to shift more towards 'actually reasonable levels of work for a webcomic' for the purpose of making more of them a reality in a sensible period of time. How well that'll integrate with everything else I'm doing remains to be seen. Then again 'remains to be seen' isn't a bad description of the Calendars, is it?
In my ongoing efforts to re-train myself in the subtle art of 'Simple Doodles', whilst also practising using my drawing tablet screenlessly, morning warm-up doodles have been progressing! Well, they were until tight-deadline commissions took over, anyway.
Incidentally I've instituted a new little system for my work in which, as I complete things, I maintain a database of all of the info for all illustrations, comics and doodles I complete to better stay on top of advertising my work! Things like titles, alt-text descriptions, date last posted, etc. I say database, it's actually a spreadsheet, because databases are clunky and some of the displeasure I had for my secondary school IT teacher has rubbed off onto them. Okay now I feel bad for databases. It's not their fault.
Also worth a quick little jot-down is that, as part of my process to newly renovate my relationship with social media, I have finally taken the plunge and deleted my account on the website formerly known as Twitter! I was on there for 16 years, it being the vector through which I first found many of the people who are now my closest, dearest friends. But then it caught fire and I have no desire to sift through ash. Times they never cease to a-change and onto the commiseration pile it goes atop my MySpace, Bebo and SmackJeeves accounts. RIP little bird.
Urnsturn!
Yep, only a short couple o'dozen months after carving the blocks, Ornstein has finally found his way into a finished linocut print! And in doing so I have come to a pretty sturdy conclusion: I don't like printing oil inks! I'll still press on (heh) with the twinned 'Manus' print, because that was at least designed to be bolstered by the strengths of oil-based printing. However my desire for subtle shades and interplaying overlays of colour has been met with too many roadblocks to consider this an enjoyable, satisfying or fulfilling path to follow. So, uh, woodblocks ahoy!
In the vein of things I keep saying I'm going to do eventually, I've at last begun assembling a rough-cut of Dead Island highlights! Granted this is largely to remember what on earth I'd already started writing, but it's something. Progress trundles now that I'm scheduling it into my working week, but it's a ways off yet what with time-sensitive commissions elbowing it out of the way. Soon enough you'll find me scribbling out-of-context doodles for it in the morning streams!
Streams! Nobody's been able to stop them yet! We're on the verge of winding up our sub-sea-level tulipian foray into Escape Simulator with Cheeb on Tuesday, as well as it's quick and charming replacement Haven Park on Wednesday. This will give rise to a much anticipated return to the world of bastard foliage in Ori and the Will of the Wisps!
Saturdays see us continuing our Grim Hollow RPG-let, plugging the mental and physical health gaps with healing doses of Return to Moria. And Sundays, of course, are for doodlage with friends!
Morning streams, freshly emancipated from the shackles of Calender-based tyranny have transmogrified their way into amorphousness! Who knows what they'll entail in the forthcoming weeks? Music? Crochet? Game making? Painting? More doodling? Other comics? Who knows!? I sure don't!
I shall end this update with a brief recommendation borne of my attempts to actually try new games in my free time: Teslagrad! Long-standing regular on my to-play list, this short, charming metroidvania builds itself around a surprisingly rich yet wordless history of despots and corrupt kings, whilst building puzzles around magnets! It's more interesting than I've just made it sound and very charming it was too. The boss fights are on an increasing slope of mechanical frustration, built around the old-school form of 'Memorise The Pattern / One-Hit Kill' play, but the rest of the game is very chill, interesting puzzling, lovely art direction and gives as much as you put in. Solid 8/10.
And with that I shall bid you all adieu until fourteen more sleeps pass our shuttered eyes. Thank you, as ever, for your incredibly unwavering support! I'm still trying to work out what I do to deserve it but when I do, boy, you'll get something special!
Have a lovely, everyone!
Crispy 💜