Everything I draw ends up wearing a bow-tie

still here!

just a head’s up I am (probably) not leaving dumblr for good but like, on principle I am severely cheesed off with what they’re doing and as evidenced by the chaos of the past 12 hours their filter does nOT work and is flagging completely innocent stuff all over the place- I’ve always been a sfw blog, but that doesn’t mean I’ve escaped unscathed from their rampant flagging spree. I, however, happen to have a life and do not have the goddamn time to go through all my posts and find what they’ve done that to so I’m basically gonna ignore that and just live with the consequences. I’m also definitely going to start posting on Pillowfort, which is apparently going to go back up sometime this week! There’s also the small possibility that tumblr will realize What A Huge Oops they’ve done and will change things but who even knows? We’ll see.

Anyway. Regardless of all that I just want to say I love you. I’ve made so many wonderful friends here and I wouldn’t be able to do what I do without you. This site has been my main platform for over half a decade and it has given me access to encouragement, inspiration, education and emotional support from the highly creative individuals and art spheres I’ve found because of it. Regardless of what happens next, I deeply appreciate everything you folks have given me while I’ve been here. Thank you so, so much.

So, yeah. I am reluctant to leave on the basis of this rashly made and poorly executed decision by the people who own the site. I’ll let y’all know what’s good when things are more clear, but even if I’m starting up new places to post work and words I’ll still kick around here for a good while yet.

my crappy sketch process press J to skip

pretty much always but I’m bad at tutorials and I’m tired so here have a bunch of WIP screencaps or something

so yeah first get that diggity darn basic sketch down, here I pushed Fred’s pose to look more like the cartoony double-bounce step walk I reckon he would have but his proportions are pretty humany so he’s not too different structure wise

needed reference for how the cuff would crease so I took a shot of my own sleeve (egads whodathunk you can use yourself as reference)

I tend to draw things a few frames after the reference if it’s moving; it’s a habit from animation, but basically to get away from that stilted rotoscope look that some heavily referenced pictures get I try to ‘animate’ the picture and draw it as if it’s the next key frame in a sequence, so here the coat has been pushed forwards by Fred’s hand and the folds are following that through

slapped on the rest of them clothes because ain’t nobody wants a naked android strutting about, also he’s not going to be on a catwalk in the picture so I threw in some blustery wind to help that hair and action line out. You’ll probably have noticed that I also leveled out the floor so his feet are both more duck-toed and at a different perspective

throw in a loose map for the lighting and there’s your goddamn scribbley-ass sketch. After this I red line it and fix all the mistakes I’ve made before going to inking and yes there are a metric shit tonne in this one but I’m hella tired so this is as far as I got :|

hope that helped somehow but yeah, reference; it’s great, use it, but don’t copy it, copying leads to dead awkward poses that your character wouldn’t do and really you don’t learn as much from copy pasting even if it’s by hand

Okay so after another inbox full of WHAT YOU DID THE SKIP ANIMATION THING I figure I ought to just make a quick post of shit that I’ve done that you may/may not have seen and or give a shit about.

SKIP - short classical animation

Dinosaurs - short flash (abused to be classical) animation

My Deviantart god don’t look

My blog that I need to update more

That damned web comic I don’t shut up about

and I also used to run a Jervis Tetch askblog and a Mad Mod askblog but they’re dead and I don’t intend to restart them any time soon if at all sorry to be a bummer the muses just dried up for me :|

I guess there’s other stuff I’ve done out there but I can’t remember it right now so yeah that’ll do.

Interesting stand point, and not actually one that I agree with. I’ve been writing stories for a while now, in different ways- text, animation, comics- and whilst I wouldn’t profess to being an expert in the field, the thing that I love the most is that you can communicate your ideas to hundreds of people, and yet every single person interprets it in their own unique way.

The best stories don’t rely on one ‘true’ interpretation; they work on different levels. To condemn people for not seeing the bigger picture is a pointless and, frankly, petty exercise. How people see a story depends on their own story, just as how you see the world around you is constantly affected by how you have experienced it up to this point. I don’t want to write stories with a market audience; I want to write stories. Something that can be read by anyone at any point in their lives and still be entertaining and relevant to them.

So, yes, you can take TPoH as an openly metaphorical journey, or as an exploration of the idea of a story itself, but you can also take it at surface level and I won’t think any less of you. In fact, dealing with stories that are constantly trying to belittle the reader by being philosophical and highbrow often make me wonder why the author decided to write a story at all. We are taking the reader on an adventure, not testing them. Why beat people around the head if they’ve never read Plato or Socrates before this? I’m certainly not expecting everyone who reads this comic to know every silent comedy inside out. If they know the material, they will see it and appreciate it, and if they don’t, it should still enrich the story for them without complicating it. Nothing is lost by putting a little extra in, and perhaps one day they will make those connections, and who knows? Maybe it will be this story that helps them to understand the others that it relates to.

It actually interests me to see what people take from what I make. It’s also worth noting that not everyone who reads it will comment on it, and people who comment often do so by agreeing or disagreeing with the preceding comment. Everything is context.

TL:DR

Chill it bro, we all good.

Y'know I really ought to play Epic Mickey.

I have a Wii.

I love Oswald.

Why have I not combined these two factors yet? Oh yeah maybe it’s out of fear that it might not be a good game but I guess I won’t know unless I play it so pthhhhhp.

44 comic pages thumb-nailed out and I nearly cried twice.

Not sure if this is a good sign.

I think it is

but

:I

Yeah, I really am sorry about that, but as for losing inspiration, there’s really no way of knowing how or when it will happen. I can’t make any promises with TPoH, but I have a good feeling about it, so let’s hope that I can keep chugging on with it.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

I do not think I am a great artist. I struggle to think of my as an artist most days; but I’ll tell you what everyone else has told me, and what I’ve eventually started to realize for myself.

Everyone can draw, but there are different levels of ability. No matter what level you are at, there is always someone better than you, always someone worse than you, and you can always, always learn. If you love it, do it, get better. Make mistakes, make horrible mistakes; mistakes that you will treasure and cry over and keep close to your heart so that you never ever make them again. Don’t ignore people who say that your work looks bad because you did something wrong- ask them what is was and how to do it right next time. Do ignore people who just say that your work looks bad because they don’t like it- art is opinion.

You can’t please everyone.

Listen to your instincts- if you think a picture isn’t going as planned; stop, do something else, come back to it later, come back to it a year later if you have to, but don’t give up. Don’t think that you shouldn’t try. Don’t think that, because you aren’t good enough, you aren’t allowed to do something (unless it’s brain surgery). You still don’t think you’re good enough? Of course you aren’t good enough; you’ll never be good enough for you. Your brain is always five years ahead of your hands. Your own expectations of yourself are higher than anybody else’s. If you think that you’re the best at what you’re doing, that’s probably proof that you’re missing something, but that doesn’t mean you should constantly think you’re the worst. If you can’t believe in yourself, find someone who does. There will always be someone who does. Sometimes it’s a whole bunch of someones, and some day, maybe, that’ll mean that you can believe in you as well.

And then maybe you’ll start drawing a webcomic.