*Knocks at your door*
*The door opens and I fall in*
*Lands face
first on the floor*
*Stays there*
*Remains motionless*
*You
think this is a bit and I'll get up in a second, but I never do*
*Aeons
pass*
*A plaque is erected to commemorate whoever Crispymandius was*
Right, update time, and in term of headlines, we've sure got one:
"I refuse!"
Well that's the line
my head's been saying all fortnight. But I still managed to get
something done even if my brain wouldn't unionise with my hands.
Firstly, as you may have been pestered to see, I uploaded the full 80 & 100 day doodles to Patreon for the perusal of supporters, including a couple of progress doodles I made to test the waters for each project.
Secondly I refreshed a couple of doodle portraits for my OC Height Chart, as well as adding a bunch more. Quite a few of them still need the written details filled in, but progress is being made. I can only think of one character worth giving public explanation to who's currently absent, so perhaps after that I can move on and actually make the whole thing look good. 😅
Part of this most recent brain rebellion started when I went to doodle (what I thought would be) a quick little comic with young Jan & Feb. Having made sketches for the first few panels right after the last update, I remembered that I had at some point already doodled the last panel and sought it out as a reference. Having found it, I also discovered that I'd actually sketched out the whole comic and that the old sketches were better than the ones I'd just made. A mild mental miasma ensued (fuelled by a panoply more significant back-end fogs) and here we are comicless thirteen days hence.
In an effort to get out of the funk of being unable to draw from scratch, I decided to doodle some of my OCs in a bunch of screenshots from our current stream game. This was scribbly, but went acceptably. In a professional capacity I shall consider these as anatomy practise because, you know, I had to remember to include the middle third of the human face, and how thin arms actually are.
Other distractionary activities included collating, reorganising, and adding to the notes and script for an Outliers story 'Now In Colour', as well as having a crack or five at painting with ink.
I'm not sure why ink appeals to me specifically as a physical medium. Maybe it's because it's a process that most closely resembles the kind of rendering I do on doodle streams; maybe it's because it's quite stripped-back in its preparatory nature; maybe because inks were traditionally the arsenal of physical comic artists; maybe it's because of this artist I follow who makes very nice ink-based character art, including many a fictional boyfriend; maybe because it's cheap. Probably the latter. I was painting on the inside of some cereal boxes, after all.
Streaming! Oh yeah! It's streams! They happen! Boy howdy! Girl wahoo! Enbyippee!
Having plundered the full(ish) depths of the Oldest House and seen into dear old Darling's secret music career, we've swapped over from Control and into the charmingly janky noir stylings of FMV game The Dame Was Loaded. And I'll be perfectly honest, I'm finding the experience a lot of fun, and quite fascinating. Fascinating in that very worrying 'I want to make a game now' sort of way. Yes, I know I was making a different game, shut up. XP
Saturdays see us beginning to wrap up personal sidequests in Grim Hollow, presumably to give way to more Elden Ring Co-op shenanigans. And the final song of the sevenday brings us all around the campfire to doodle our cares away in delightful chatty company.
So, what of the following fortnight? I'll be honest, I'm afraid to make promises. A certain degree of soul-searching is going on right now and I don't know what destination that's going to bring me to. At the very least I intend on getting that stubborn little comic out the door before this week is through, come hell and/or high water! And given the sudden heat and humidity it feels like both.
Thank you as ever for your support, so unwavering and consistent that it only accentuates the erratic nature of my output. Frankly if I were you and this was a larger institution I'd complain. Which, I mean, you still can, I'm not stopping you. But I will make big, watery puppy-dog eyes at you in a very unhealthily parasocial way, so do be warned. 🥺
Look after yourselves,
Crispy 💜