Why hello there! A quick note before we begin: Inside me there's a small child version of myself bouncing around my brain, getting very excited about the fact that my friends are writing and trying their hardest to convince me to join in. Beside them is an adult version of myself who is staring through half-open eyes at the child, gesturing exhaustedly to the number of times I wrote an introduction to this post before deleting it, and slowly raising an eyebrow. Truly a showdown for the ages.
Speaking of pitting imaginary manifestations of my own psyche against each other, have some fools!
Hurrah for the two idiots finally meeting. Now it'll only be *rifles through notes* nine or ten months before they get past the awkward introductory phase. Assuming I don't write more in the meantime. Which I did.
Besides spreading my tentative wingage into the bustling flock of OC shipping, what creative eddies have my whims been gliding along this past fortnight? Well my wild prediction of completing the Dead Island highlight video (part 1, at least) wasn't quite as unblinkingly optimistic as I feared. I've only got three doodles left to make and wiggle about before it's ready for rendering and subtitling. But Crispy, you may squeal rather abruptly, what do you mean only three doodles? Well, uh... I may have gone slightly overboard.
And that's just the first batch of the first video. And also none of the musical jokes. Of which there are too many.
Now despite there actually being a non-trivial amount of drawn things floating above and below this paragraph and an equally non-trivial amount of as-yet unreleased material for the video, I can't reasonably complain that this fortnight has been unproductive. But I can feel it. So to dissuade any doubts I've also congregated a gaggle of disparate bullets and bullobs wot I've done to fill in the blanks:
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Worked on a commission for my brother of a poster of Margaret Thatcher in the style of the Uncle Sam 'We Want You' poster, only with the legend 'It's My Fault';
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Fixed my unravelling cardigan pocket through the ancient art of crochet;
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Re-learned how to use my great grandmother's Singer sewing machine (I really need to oil it) to prepare a bunch of fabric sheets for paper-making (I made too many);
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Wrapping my head around Ellipsus (and/or wrapping Ellipsus around my head) and importing October Noir and some Outliers notes, cleaning them up and organising them in the process;
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Developing (and spending too much time playing) a little solitaire game with 5d6 and a pack of cards which, honestly, is less of a game and more of a series of (sometimes impossible) puzzles. I know they're impossible because I also programmed something to check.
Flanking all of this flimflam is, of course, the inimitable flow of the Crispy stream! Mornings have largely consisted of forcing me to focus on making the above assets for the forthcoming highlights, although will soon be making way for, uh... something. Not sure yet. Maybe I'll remember NOctober existed.
Dark Souls II's randomiser is galloping full-steam ahead, by which I mean I smashed my head against the wall for several days until it broke. That should be wrapping up this week or the next and making way for HITMAN 3 / HITMAN Season 3 / HITMAN World of Assassination (because who only needs one title these days?)
Saturdays find us once again delving a tad too deeply, a tad too greedily, and just a smidge too troll-alertingly into Return to Moria. Finally Sundays present us a mix of idle doodling with friends with a smidge of chaos that is Gartic Phone! We rather like the new exquisite corpse mode, it transpires.
With that all being said (written) and done (d...done) what remains? Well, everything else, but more specifically what can you expect this time next fortnight? Well...
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The first of the Dead Island highlight videos shall be heartily slamming down on the dinner table some time in the next few days;
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Work continues on the Calendars' origin comics with February's introduction to the world, alongside another little standalone doodle of January's time before the rest showed up;
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I plan to, once again, try to get my commissions up and running. You know, before I run out of money. That'd be nice;
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Finishing my existing commission and also working out what I can get printed at the same time, because they do bulk discounts 🤔
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Some personal well-being work, like getting into a fitness schedule, planning a cheap day out to myself and similar such meat-maintenance.
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Chipping away at the brick wall that is my megalithic project back-catalogue (October Noir, Chaos Chess, drawthrough albums, THUNK, etc)
Of those I'm aiming for 60%. Seems reasonable.
As for you lot I hope your plans go as swimmingly as the universe allows, and that you don't blame yourself if the universe doesn't. Allot free time in your schedule, play that game, take that walk, bake those muffins, draw those [REDACTED] and treat yourself like the friend I consider you to be. I'll do my best to too.
Thank you as ever for your wonderful support, it's extremely welcome during a period of mental wibbliness (that's the technical term), but I hope you know how grateful I am at all times regardless. Right, time to wobble some PNGs.
Look after yourselves,
Crispy 💜