March Meh-ness

The month of March has been mild. The most I can say is that I celebrated my birthday and trudged forward on small art projects.

As of the 3rd of March, I turned 30 years old, and I’m trying not to get crushed by the anxiety of aging. I covered it up by having dinner with my family and buying myself an iPad and Procreate! Now, I can draw on the go! I’m writing an article about my time with Procreate at a later date.

Conventions

On April 8th, I’ll be at the College of DuPage Convention answering questions and selling art! There, I’ll be selling the finally printed Pizza Man book! So if you’re in the Northern Illinois area, stop by and grab a copy with my stickers as well!

Mastafran CODCON XXV

The week after, I’ll be at the Schaumburg Library Convention on April 16th.

More Events

I have a big thing planned in the summer later this year! I’m preparing some of my art for something I’ve never done, before. So, I’ll keep you in the know once everything is arranged!

Writing Blackmask

Most of my art time has been occupied with writing Blackmask as a story. My focus is split between re-editing existing ideas for the demo story and the big narrative of the entire game.

My personal hope for Blackmask’s main quest is that players can choose a level toplayin any order they want, Mega Man style. A connected Metroidvania-style world or an Open World is tougher to design without ballooning the scope even more.

My programmers and I check in on each other in our messages. We’re both doing our best to keep going during our bigger commitments. Adam’s tackling enemy AI next, as there’s not much left to do with Cole’s abilities for now.

Other News

I’ve been doing tiny website tasks to streamline my websites stuff. The Art Page now has all my art on it instead of having separate pages for each category of art I make. If it ends up making loading issues a pain, I change it back, but right now I want my archive front and center

Budgie Knight Color

There’s more blog articles in my back burner that I want to finish up, such as my tutorial series on making Incident at the Game Store. There are other articles that I want to write when I make the time.

I’m struggling to keep my focus on one specific art task. I keep dipping so much into different shit that I can’t choose an art direction for myself. My schedule is a loose cloud of “what is currently unfinished that I could finish now?” on my project list.

It doesn’t help that I keep falling into that trap of posting on my socials to say I’m alive on them. My game stuff is in my programmer’s hands. I’m messing about, sketching, and procrastinating on writing a game story. Am I busy or making up meaningless tasks for myself? I need to improve my personal project management skills.

Running to the New Year

It’s almost the new year and I look back on 2021 with thoughts. It started out with promise, but I think it went downhill closer to the end. I can’t help but say I felt directionless and the stuff I’ve been doing wasn’t as amazing as I’d like for it to be.

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Let’s Make A Comic Part 2: References

I continue from Part 1 of my Thumbnail Art Section

In this section, I’ll be demonstrating gathering references for creating my comic story, Incident at the Game Store! If you’re up to having a signed physical book for yourself, you can stop by my Etsy store and grab a copy!

Since the story takes place in GameStop or a legally distinct version of it, I gathered references of the store chain.

GameStop Reference Collage

Here’s some research how I want the Fedorable Man (That’s my name for him) to look. It’s a funny thing to design a stereotypical “Neckbeard” nerd character. There are many ways to tackle it, and there’s no one way to make any character.

Neckbeard Reference Image Collage

I grabbed a few refs of fat people and how fat works. I got some refs of baby hands, as they seem the fattest of the hands.

Fat Folds Reference Collage

When I think about the horror he turns into, I imagine a fat, bloated nightmare. Examples like The Boomer zombie enemy from Left 4 Dead or Nurgle the Plague God from Warhammer come to mind.

Grotesque Fat Monster Reference Collage

Reference hunting gives me an excuse to find anatomy references (These are the safe for work refs I’ll show you ;P). Don’t spend too much time, you only need the references that are relevant to your project. It helps to keep a large folder of past references to save from internet searching.

Butt Grabbing Action Reference Collage

There’s minor fighting actions, so looked for punching and choking references. This is the best time to restudy drawing hands and fists.

Air Choking Reference Collage

Some refs for the crazy fluid attack on page five! It was inspired by this hilarious Rocket Jump video called The Milkman! I remembered the part where he punishes the criminal by spraying milk out of his mouth like a firehouse, drowning him.

Water Hose Reference Collage

Finally, when I can’t find a specific picture to use as a reference, I take my own pictures as references! Sure, I look like a dope, but this is what happens when you make your own references. Never feel bad about using your own body as reference for a pose.

My Face Reference Collage

I made sketches of the characters to keep them consistent in the pages. I don’t think I made any new sketches of the Girlfriend, which sucks! It’s not perfect, and I should’ve made more refined art to save the hassle.

Fatty Turnaround Ink Drawing
Boyfriend Sketches

I gather more references as I work on the comic pages, Now it’s time to start drawing the comic pages!

Autumn Draws

I’m making the finishing touches on my freelancing work. Plus, my Twitch streaming is returning while Blackmask development is moving along. I’m also preparing for next year’s convention season. All this and more below!

 

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Altered Book Plans

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!

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Making Changes

I’ve recently had an interview with Will Humphrey on his podcast Will Vs. You Talk Too Much! It’s a great time, and nice to touch back with my old friend from college!

You can listen here!

I’ve been making changes to my website when I have the time. Been video editing, drawing, and some other things in life.

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Making of the Furs of Fury Illustration

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.

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Art Doings

Here’s a new check-in blog post today! Things are mostly the same: drawing things for clients and dabbling in my video game, Blackmask with my pixel art streams.

I’m struggling with my direction to take the game assets without a straightforward gameplay loop that’s not full of wish fulfillment and feature creep. So, I’m stepping back from working on pixel art until I have a face to face meetup with my programmer and learn some more Unity.

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