Enemies patrol along a certain route, scanning the area for anything unusual or out of place. Many are well armed, well numbered, and physically difficult to overcome for a single, smaller intruder.
Lucky for Cole, some guards have certain…blind spots.
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For the brand new year, I’m stepping up to handle my anxious mindset and bolster better flow for my creativity.
Continue readingTo push myself to improve my writing, I joined a competition to write a 1000 word short story for the Local Coffee Shop writer’s group. Despite my self-doubts, I was able to brainstorm something that could go with the prompt: “agency without freedom OR freedom without agency.” The competition was loose with formatting and genre rules but I pushed myself to depend on the words to show the visuals and characterization instead of half-assing my scripts to draw later.
There’s clear stuff I see wrong and I’m resisting the urge to go back to revise it and let it go to writeI recently participated in a writing competion with my a better new story. You can read the story below or listen to the narration by Edyrem on of the voice actors on the server. You can even download a PDF to read yourself.
Continue readingDespite the ups and downs over this year, I’ll recount the art I’ve done over 2025 and my pitch my plans for 2026!
Back in 2024, I purchased a new iPad Mini after months of not having one. Like with the previous ipad I lost back in November 2022, I wanted a portable means to draw digital and get in more practice. Funny enough, instead of using the iPad as my Procreate machine, I ended up using Pixquare more often for commissions and game dev art.
Like most internet artists, I don’t like drawing backgrounds; but for Blackmask’s development, there’s no choice but to figure it all out. So I’m doing what I can to figure out how to make my environments interesting to draw for myself.
Doing all this helped me drum up cool world-building ideas, that might save development time. A fun idea for the dog folk to have peephole windows in their doors to stick their heads out to greet people.
With my writing for Blackmask, I’m refining the art direction and themes of the various kingdoms in the world. I spend my time on an architecture grind, looking at buildings and histories to match themes I’m going for. I shoot to go beyond, “fantasy version of real life country.” Doing these is part of my daily “frog swallowing” to get myself to draw an environment sketch under a theme, starting with the Dog Kingdom.
Right now, I’m working with the theme of “Freedom Vs. Security” with a Dogs Vs Wolves thing that Cole, my raccoon protagonist, stumbles upon. With this “Walled Garden” sketch, I wanted to use the grated fence to subtly look like jail bars. It’s on the nose when I explain this but, it’s something to lean into.
Sirititus, the Dog society is this authoritarian kingdom under a leader with a simple world conquest motive. While my Rudwulf, wolf clan, tilts toward sword and sorcery barbarian warrior nomad stuff.
The wolves overall have been a struggle to give more to because, they started as typical nomadic raider hordes that my Cole has to fight or sneak around, and I wanted to give more motives to them.
The function of the dogs was first going to be wolves. With some wolves having a more “civilized” society that would be trying own control the territories of other wolves, similar to Romans conquering their surrounding societies.
The big thing between the dogs and wolves I’m pushing is how similar they are with separate “breeds” being a culture divide than specific breeding thing. In the big Blackmask lore, they’re the same to other animals, but dog societies arbitrarily separate wolf societies away for their own ulterior motives.
Through more brainstorming, I continued the theme of the dogs having a higher order they’re obedient to, so I started making sketches beginning to gesture toward a religion they’d have. After all “Dog” spelled backwards is “God” so dog paladins and clerics are a natural fit.
Much of this is in flux and I can’t worry about pondering every tiny societal detail to what’s basically enemy characters who patrol dungeons and fortresses Cole must infiltrate for his own goals. This shit’s ballooning enough, and I’m fighting to not dumpster it all.
This personal visual development grind also got me doing cat themed buildings along with the dogs. The ear shaped rooftops might be on the nose, but it’s a start.
Obviously, the cats have a rivalry with the dog kingdoms, with their own means of espionage and warfare. No matter high an army can build their walls, Cat Warriors will find a way to scale them.
The Lion Knights of Felira are the world-class fighting force of the mighty cat kingdom. Donning armor and maned helmets, they venture into far lands to enact the will of King Lionide IV in the inevitable journey to conquer the world for catkind.
The Lion Knights are a blended force, with the majority female lions, donning maned helmets to look cohesive.
The Lion Knights are a huge thing I want to explore, but there’s still much that’s still needs to be elaborated on. Big Cats and Small Cats can’t fit in a similar category like the canines, so I need to figure out what their motives can be.
Lions making a society makes logical sense as group hunters, but cats in general are more individualistic, so it’s a puzzle to dive deep into what they can do that hasn’t been done a million times. But I’ve done something unique with Foxes, so I can’t give up.
Another batch of Olivia drawings this time in a old school cheerleader outfit. I don’t want to distract myself, but she end up in many of my sketchbooks. Many times, Olivia pops up to cover my unwillingness to draw buildings.
Sketch to see if I still remember how to draw humans. I could stand to go back to do some figure drawings as I’m sure I’m falling into bad habits as a general artist.
My human designs aren’t as creative as my animal designs, yet I wonder if I could still try. I still ache to be a comic artist, but that dream is in the toilet. I can’t think of any ideas that do will for more human designs but it does well up in my head from time to time.
The year is almost over, yet I still feel so behind…. I’ve made an okay amount of art but I think I’m hitting the later year slump.
Continue readingThis month was hectic from making significant progress on Blackmask, to hoping around doing day job stuff. I’ve been drawing up a storm!
This drawing began and ended with, “Haha, wouldn’t it be funny if Jill valentine, police officer of Raccoon City, was an actual raccoon? Crazy!” The drawing ended up exploding for me on Bluesky, so I continues on a series making the rest of the S.T.A.R.S. Members.
Continue readingOver the weekend, I went to the Chicago Indie Game Showcase and played a fine collection of upcoming games developed in Chicago, Illinois!
The show is run by Indie City Games, a local Chicago scene of indie game developers. I applied for a table in the summer to show off a playable build of Blackmask, but it’s for the best as there were killer games out on the floor that Saturday!
Click below to see some of my faves!In the past four weeks, I created this large fighting game sprite commission! Despite it’s length, the turnaround was faster than my previous commissions taking me more than a month on an off with streams on my Twitch Channel. I’ll go through the process creating it all from the start.
It’s a hot July and my art is going hot too! I’m building up more digital art and making strides with pixel animation too! I haven’t made as much sketches as I have, as I’ve been hard at work on a commission on my Twitch streams.
The online store is improving with my newer stickers, such as my Werewolf, Hot Dog, Choco Pug Cone, and Caramel Hound Ice Cream Dog stickers!
I’m transitioning my cat stickers to get started making dog stickers and vary things up. It’s a small run to gauge interest. If people like the dog stuff, I’ll make more sticker packs and mats.
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