My freelance work is nearing completion. The ball is in my client's court. There's notes and adjustments that I need to make before my final approval and completion. It's been a feat, and it's convinced me to assess my next possible art projects more. Next time, I want to set up my future projects to let me livestream and add some activity to my Twitch and YouTube.

Been preparing for next year's con stuff from interrupted by the Plague. I'm vaccinated, so I'm in a better situation to not be vulnerable. No amount of medicine can stop "Con Crud" so I'm nervous about returning to conventions. I can confirm that I'm tabling at Anime Central 2022. That spot has been in my vice grip for two years, so I'm pressing forward on this!

I haven’t streamed on my Twitch channel in months! Concentrating on finishing this freelance crap and my day job, I’m never in the mood to draw more. The games I play are currently on console, such as Metroid Dread and Shovel Knight. By November, my freelance art stuff should be wrapping up, I’ll start streaming again. There’s indie games I want to show off, like: Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo! I’ve been watching get made by my friends for the last few years! I want to show off the demo on stream, but if you want to try it out yourself, the demo is on Steam right now!

Blackmask is making tiny baby steps. My programmer buddy is in a place that I don’t need to do much else with pixel art stuff for the moment. Still, I can’t stop thinking about working on the game. I keep sketching up character designs with no rhyme or reason. Thinking about it, I’ve been in a comfort zone with my social media sketches. I keep harping to myself about doing more writing and background stuff

I have bad news and good news about working on my self-published comics.

Some bad news is that I changed my mind about making The Pizza Man a book. Good news is: I’m going to put The Pizza Man, Shirley’s Day and Incident at the Game Store, in one bigger book!

I made several proofs, and I was just about to go forward on buying prints, but I realized that instead of sitting on many floppy comics that don’t sell that much, I’d make a big trade paperback containing not just my comics work so far, but behind the scenes stuff like my original pencil art and inks! I can even include other illustrations and sketches in the book to show off more of my artwork!

I’m still rocking my Pumpkin Cat Stickers for the month of October! I’m keeping these up for the month, so if it sells out, I won’t be making more until next October.

Been changing up some things I want to do for my next print books, plus sketchbook updates and more on my website!

I made a new Halloween-themed Pumpkin Cat Vinyl Sticker based on my latest art, and it's up for sale on my Etsy Store!!

The sticker is smaller than the initial Bread Cat sticker at 3x5 inches, but I'll see if I can order larger ones when the initial prints finish up!

In addition, I'm also having a Halloween Sale for the month of October of all my stuff on Etsy for 40% off! Not only can you pick up a Pumpkin Cat sticker, but you can get the rest of the Pastry Cat Stickers and my print comics!

There’s not much to write about besides being laser focused on my freelance stuff. Since I was between notes on work, I took an impromptu commission as well. I should’ve taken a harder line on my commission times, but I needed bills money and the commissioner is dependable.

Progress on Blackmask is making baby steps. I haven't been doing too much pixel art but after the few meetings Adam and I managed to put together, we're at a good understanding of what we want to accomplish for the demo, so stick around for more news on that! Currently, I do bits of writing when I can to have some ideas so story stuff.

Adam's the programmer, so I leave him more in charge of the gameplay systems, with little bits of feedback here and there. Despite me always worried about overscoping, Adam continues to impress me with all the stuff that he's able to do! The next demo video should be a monstrous one!

In terms of other life stuff, I'm hanging in there. I haven't streamed in a month because I'm too much of a downer right now. Perhaps I'll be in better spirits once I can take a longer break from the heavier art projects.

I even drew a cool idea for the holiday season!

A short clip from one of my Twitch streams of what I've been up to lately, talking about Furs of Fury, The Pizza Man and Blackmask progress.

I want to share my process making illustration art for the Indie Real Time Strategy game, Furs of Fury. Working on this illustration pushed my skills to it's furthest because this game needed this treatment! I initially completed the art in December, but I finally got the time to make a process post and video of this illustration.

The programs I use to create most of my art these days is Clip Studio Paint. Most of the sketching and painting is done in it. I worked on this illustration on and off for roughly 5 months in 20202 over several sessions of Art Streams, weekdays, weeknights and weekends. With this time-lapse, I managed to edit it down to over 20 minutes.

You can read the rest of my process on my website!

The Indie Real Time Strategy game, Furs of Fury is out now! I made a large illustration of it a while ago! I'm currently plugging away on an article about the making of this painting, so stay tuned for that! If you like Warcraft 3 style Real Time Strategy games, pick it up on Steam!

It's been a hot minute since I've posted here, so let me drop the run down on the progress of my indie game, Blackmask. Progress still continues on my Twitch streams, so follow me to see the current progress on the game!

I’m learning more workflows and thinking of a direction for making the background tile assets for a real demo. For a short moment, I've been learning Pxyel Edit as it makes it easier to create repeatable tile sets. The program's missing so many features that I ended up going back to learning more tricks in Aseprite.

Here's made some rough mockup of how an environment could look. They might be more elaborate than an actual Game Boy game, but I don't have those limits for real. They show enough depth to keep the gameplay elements separate from the background. Making a night environment is more tricky since Cole blends in the backgrounds too much for me. Overall, many people seem to like the look despite how rough the art looks to me.

There's still so much to learn, but I'm taking it one step at a time. I take to time to learn new tips from pixel artists like MortMort, CupOhJoe and LumpyTouch when I can. Plus, I’ve also been trying out converting my art into pixels from 2D Will Never Die, I’m not as happy with the current results, but it’s promising.

Besides this, I’m staying a float, sporadically posting on my Twitter and Instagram. Most of my sketches I post there are environment concept sketches for Blackmask. Sketching has taken a bit of a back seat more toward thumbnailing and writing game ideas down during my day job.

Updates have certainly slowed, but honestly, not much news I can report besides livestreaming, my birthday and continuing to work hard on Blackmask.

I've been working on concept environments for Blackmask. They won't be in color in the game, but it helps to have a sense of art direction. Since my time is crunched, I've ended up coloring art I draw in my SketchWallet and not getting insane about detailing them.

You can read about it more on my website.

With the fruits of Adam's labor reveals a new progress video for Blackmask!

This progress video done between the last video and now, includes new additions of Slopes, Dashing, NPCs, and Enemies. There's some jank of course, but development still persists!

Between this and my other art tasks, I'm working on some Dog and Cat NPCs that are Cole's size, unlike the Deer NPCs who're twice his size. With these lil' guys, I'm figuring out a system where I can make quick variants of the characters to swap out heads and bodies. I'm sure this will be my system in refining my npc or enemy sprites.

You can read more of my game progress on my website!