~•Threads•~

WIP/Abandoned Stuff • Tips & Tricks

First month down, and I'm already at a good pace drawing-wise. Surprised I did so well, as I was all over the place with my projects. Wonder if I'll be able to keep up this month.

~~Artist of the Month~~

@Kriskull

Here's an artist that I was following that drastically changed their art-style overnight. I like both of their styles they had. The old style was very clean, and shiny.

Their new style is grungy, and full of details.

I love them both, but I like their new style just a little more. It almost feels like it's a true reflection of their personality, and it stands-out way more.

Almost makes me want to experiment with my style some more since it feels a little too clean at times

~~Old Art Showcase~~

Probably showed this one before, but with all the retro cartoon fan-art I've been making, I might as well showcase an old favourite of mine.

~~>Last Month

Man, never thought I'd see both a green Christmas and a green New Year in Canada of all places. so weird. Though, all that snow that was supposed to go down in December arrived all at once this month, so I guess everything is back to normal.

I'm a bit annoyed that I always seem to post at the same time as an important event. Like, just recently I ended-up posting something on the exact day that Pizza Tower was released. How the hell do I keep doing this accidentally?!

Also, recently got some more news about my living condition. I'm gonna go to court against this idiot landlord in late April! Which is still quite a ways away, but at least I have a date. All I'll say is this dude's gonna regret the day he bought this property.

While I was working on last month's drawings, I was also tinkering with a few technical things behind the scenes, so tape your eyelids open for this one.

[Or just skip the rest of this if you don't care]

Firstly, I'm slowly tinkering with Linux to upgrade my rig (software wise this time). Mostly switching the UI to a snappy tile-based one instead of the kinda slow traditional Windows look. Haven't switched to it now, but it's still being tinkered on when I have spare time. I also experimented with another Linux Distro (NixOS), but as usual Arch is always better in the end for some reason. [Just the way it is I guess]

Secondly, I tinkered with another vector animation program. This one being Glaxnimate...don't use Glaxnimate. It sucks, really bad, don't use it. It's to the point where it makes OpenToonz look like the easiest thing to use. Even then pretty much every vector animation software on Linux is just unfinished garbage (glares at Glaxnimate, Pencil2D, Envee, Synfig Studios, and TupiTube...OpenToonz is OK)

You know it's really sad how so far the best program for anything vector related, be it graphic design, art, and animations is Inkscape. A vector art program that's good for graphic design, isn't good for drawing, and wasn't even designed for animation. It's like saying MS Paint is the best animation software out there, it's that freaking bad! I want this to change one of these days on Linux because I'd love for something like an open-source version of Flash, but I don't think it'll happen in the next 10 years or something, if ever really, seeing as most of these projects that do vector animations aren't even 5 years old yet.

In the mean time I've took matters into my own hands and I'm writing a script that'll finally let me do what I want with these vectors. It can only do drawings at the moment, but soon I'm gonna tweak it to do animations as well. Shouldn't be too hard, I already did most of the heavy lifting already.

[famous last words]

Still, it frustrates me how the only good vector animation program is one I have to cobble-up myself using programs that weren't designed to do that in the first place, and using a bunch text manipulation tools. Ugh...the advantages of being a coder I guess. All the power to do whatever you want, but with the motivation of a sloth.

[I swear, I feel like I'm designing some sort of art Rube Goldberg machine just to do some extremely niche thing that no one will ever understand]

~~>This Month's Plans

More of the same really. Fanart, tinkering with animations some more, and upgrading my rig slowly but surely. Might be a whole lot slower since I'm doing a lot of software changes, as well as creating a vector animation script for my next animations.

I think I'll be doing a bit of Rayman fanart this month. Always wanted to do some sort of cover-piece for that Rayman 4 leak that happened last year. Or just expect something Rayman related if that ends-up being too ambitious.

That's all for now! These early months tend to be the slowest because of all the changes that happen.

Hope that tape you put on your eyelids earlier is still sticking. It probably is if you're reading this. Either that or you drank 5 cups of coffee while reading this, in which case you've probably got a coffee addiction, please seek help.

As usual, see you next post!