What I’ve Been Up To: Doing the Arting

I’m doing alright for the past few weeks as there isn’t much to report. I’m still plugging away at my ongoing freelance commissions and Blackmask.

Artwise, I wasn’t very productive. My day job is beginning to pick up again and I spent most of my week making a promotional video for my Youtube Channel.

On Saturday, October 24th, I’ll be doing the Hammond Public Library Virtual Fanfest doing a 9am livestream on YouTube about making mini comics.

HPLVFF 2020 Promo

Lately, I’m working on a tumbling animation for the Blackmask Game on my art stream!

Been reusing the tumble frames for an updated jump too. It’s never bad to reuse existing drawings when you can, after all, Blackmask is supposed to evoke a low budget, resource conserving Gameboy game!

Cole New Jump and Double Jump

Adam is currently in the process of putting all the art assets and dialogue stuff together into a playable demo!

Blackmask NPC Dialogue

He’s reworked the controls and physics to more effective. Adam’s hoping to have something to show off at PAX if they’re having it!

Cole Dodge Role Sketches

Meanwhile, I’ve been experimenting with Aseprite for the first time to many people’s suggestion. It might take getting used to from my setup in Clip Studio Paint, but it seems to have some good tools.

Cole Sword Animation 4 Direction Preliminary

The new vertical sword attacks are my first attempts to work in some stuff into my Blackmask workflow. I really want to work in Aseprite’s layer’s system to make better tail and other secondary animations. The Game Boy obviously can’t do so many sprite frames but again I gave up trying to stay 100% accurate to the console a long time ago.

I still have my Pastry Cat Stickers for on sale on my Etsy store! So stop by and show me some support!

Holographic Bread Cat Stickers Gif

I’ve been updating the site by reworking my Illustration and Sketchbook Pages! I looked at my website on my mom’s iPad for the first time. It revealed how many broken image links and missing images there are in there, so I reworked the page.

I’ve also joined the Amazon Affiliate Program to monetize the tools and supplies I recommend on my Resources Page. The only thing you pay for is the product you’re buying and Amazon drops me some money for recommending it.

I’m trying to make it more of a thing to step away from my monitor and drawing desk to just veg out on weekends. I started reading books I purchased a long while ago and hadn’t read yet. I started reading Ice Haven by Daniel Clowes. I likely bought this book because of its comic strip style.

The story is a series of short comic strips connecting of the character’s lives in their small town of Ice Haven. It’s interesting to see the different comic strip styles factor into the characters and plot and it’s worth flipping through it twice to catch the whole story that connects the strips!

It’s a short read, so if you wanted to you can get through it in an afternoon.