2022 Art Summary
Despite assorted Life Things happening, 2022 is a year where I'm really proud of the progress I made. Blaseball has done wonders for my art motivation, and while my output by raw amount of content wasn't as high as the year before, I feel like I made way more artistic progress. Notably this is because I started trying a new art style, in this summary it doesn't appear until the latter half of the year but I'd been occasionally tinkering with it throughout. It's probably an understatement to say my usual art style that I've been using since ever is pretty stylised. It's cartoony, 9/10 characters have ovals for heads, they don't have ears or noses, but I still like it, it's exaggerated and fun as all heck to doodle, but as someone who generally likes angst over fluff there was some dissonance between what I was trying to convey and my art style. It can work, don't get me wrong, and if you like dark themes and cutesy styles then great! But it's not what I wanted to be drawing.
Because of various Anxiety Thoughts I'm not going to get into, I'd never really put much active effort into breaking out of that style despite it pretty frequently bothering me. (It can be hard to convey emotions when the eyebrows usually blend in with the hairline!) Because of blaseball, purely accidentally, it gave me the push I needed to start properly trying. Funnily enough, the design that first made me start trying (Coin's) isn't actually on the summary. I've only done 1 or 2 finished pieces with her, but it was thrilling and refreshing and all kinds of wonderful to finally be able to start getting thoughts I'd had but never been able to draw onto the canvas. I still get huge anxiety about sharing it, and I've only put it out there directly for people to see like twice, but I'm still proud of it. And I hope it's nice to look at.
Anyway onto the actual heckin art
January 31st - PARTY CRASH
As I write this, it's january 2023, so short circuit 3 was a while ago now, but WOW, it was a fun time. For those unaware, the Party Crash is a name for the disaster that was the midseason fiesta in SC3, in which the garages and millennials almost played themselves, which would have apparently absolutely murdered the game sim. The card item head you see here, Ajax Black, was the garage set to pitch against himself. Funnily enough, he'd already been headcanoned to have somehow conned his way into getting the team fully reverbed earlier in the season, which lead to the fun idea that his cons were at play here too, and he broke something so badly he ripped reality open, leading to red cards getting mixed into his previously all-black deck of cards. Shenanigans! It was also a REALLY good season to visit the garages, which is great because that's exactly what I was doing at the time! And then I never left.
Anyway as for the art itself, I ADORE glitch effects so I got really excited to draw this. Maybe using something I drew on the 31st is cheating, but hey, it was still january!
6th Feburary - DIMI STATIC
Another SC3 piece, Dimi Wobbler was the little bird the garages decided to static at the end of the season. I love this funny bird. A little guy who ran on pure vibes alone. The lil friend was my discord icon for a while, which is a high honour considering I change it once in a blue moon. This art hits a little bit differently now that Dimi got pulled out of the static and onto the pies, which is incredibly funny, being just a little tiny bird.
I don't think I was ever 100% satisfied with this, but it came out pretty cool regardless. I'd say I miss the bird, but, well. They're just not on the garages now, and that's better than being kind of super dead! (if a pies fan is reading this and they're still on your team, take care of our lil guy <3)
March - Too Many Heckin Chibis
If I ever compile all the chibis I made in march to put in one nice neat image I'm not doing it today! There are too many and my files for them all are horrifically messy. But long story short I went on a chibi drawing spree and drew a ton of them. It's a fun way to draw a character without putting hours into it!
29th April - THE GRAND BARGAIN
I love Namerifeht. Canonically they may be an upside-down flame, but to me they're a big, scary, triple-eyed, multi-armed sun god, and as soon as I got the idea for this composition I just! Went for it! To this day it's still one of my favourite things I've ever drawn, I have no heckin clue where the motivation or energy came from but I pumped it out in a day and I'm extremely proud of it! I don't usually do any form of prior sketching (because my sketches usually are my lines) but this had like. five sketches, including the final one. It was wild! It took heckin forever! I'm proud of it!
14th May - Shroedinger's Catboy
(the title makes sense, promise)
More SC3 art. I can't remember which day and I can't be bothered to look it up right now, but at Some Point, Ryan Bluff got incinerated. Because of a bug, he didn't actually leave the team. He was marked as dead, but he... kept playing. His replacement disappeared off the roster. For about 10 games, he continued to play as if he had never died, and then disappeared off the roster at the end of a game as if he was never there. He had been headcanoned as an alien cat person who wasn't adapted to the atmosphere and always needed to wear a space suit, so he became Shroedinger's catboy.
I was never completely satisfied with the layout of it but I do like how it looks, especially the shading on Ryan. And hey, it was another excuse to use a ton of glitch effects and funky bright colours!
18th June - Old Family Photos
Oh, Parker. The Parker in this isn't one that I've made a page for because he's pretty underdeveloped, but short version is he was raised to be the perfect money making son and instead just kinda ended up emotionally repressed. And very angry on the inside. And he might have a sword.
I wish I could have done this idea justice, I love the idea of a vandalised MacMillan family photo (especially with some gentle ambiguity as to who did it and why it was vandalised the way it was, even if it was probably Parker) but I don't think I portrayed it as well as I could have here. That said, I'm still really proud of how it came out, especially the composition and the burnt out faces. It's an idea I want to go back to someday!
8th July August - The Reader
As I made this page I realised I drew this in august, not july, but it's before the actual piece for august, and I can't be bothered to fix it right now, so, uh. oops. it's probably fine. i didn't draw much in july we can pretend i just drew this a week earlier.......
Anyway this is the first summary art of that new style I mentioned, plus one of two pieces of it I shared publicly (the other being a few doodles that aren't summary worthy). I really love my Reader design, both my usual style (where they're a floating eye and a cloak) and this one. I don't know where Reader having a big hat came from but it's a piece of fanon I adore, I LOVE big hats despising actually drawing them. So purple and yellow (very good combo) + cloak and big hat (impeccable fashion sense) + eyes motif (so much cool imagery potential) leads to one very fun design. And I gave them fingerless gloves because I think it makes them look gender
Bonus fun fact, their outline is patterned with eyes layered over and over each other, I made a brush for it and everything! I think it lead to a pretty cool effect.
12th August - Feedback Is Lights In The Sky
My contribution to the Reality Flickers zine jam zine! I'd had the thought that feedback is wiggly lines in the sky for a while but I hate drawing backgrounds so I never acted on it, but this zine was a really good reason to finally get around to it! It took absolutely forever but I'm really proud of how it turned out. The perspective especially took a ton of tinkering, but it was worth the effort in the end! It's not of anyone in particular, just some undetermined players looking at the sky.
The zine jam was a delight to participate in and this wasn't the only piece I did for it, so if you haven't already, you should have a look at all the cool things people made!
14th September - >:I Parker
More of THIS guy. I drew this while coming out of really nasty and demotivating art block after a friend recommended Diamond Stuff by black midi to me. That song has VIBES, and a little while later I have a spookily lit Parker! I was really proud of it at the time, mostly because of the lighting and the way I lined his hair, and I still really like the atmosphere, even if it is something pretty small. (Diamond Stuff also afflicted me with bad "animatic I'll never make stuck in my brain forever and ever" disease)
The art block sure didn't end immediately after this, but it was a sign I was managing to pull myself out of it. Art is complicated!
31st October - Many Teams, One League
Blasetober day 31, "many teams, one league". This definitely wasn't the only thing I drew (I drew 9 other pieces, in fact) but it's definitely my favourite. I struggle to express how much blaseball means to me because I'm really REALLY really bad at finishing big projects, but the time limit on this was a good motivator! One lil square for every team, in alphabetical order. No team with special effort or special placement. (heck, my own team's square isn't even my favourite!) I was really proud of it and I still am. We are all love blaseball!
28th November - The Static Ghost
Now, I, uh, this was the piece I was most anxious about having to share when I decided to do this page, because I very specifically cropped it in the summary itself to only show Megan, because I don't like New Megan's side as much. I don't hate it, but she scares me a little bit!
Anxiety aside, this is static ghost Megan and an unfortunate New Megan. It's not on the story page yet as I write this but the story here is that Megan possessed New Megan before the semi-centennial, cut their hair to the length hers was and proceeded to be all menacing and scary to strike fear directly into Parker's soul. Megan wasn't actually visible during this (possession and all) but her being there makes for a cooler visual so I drew it anyway! And also I knew I needed to practise having more than one character in the same picture in this style. The result was !
On the positive side, Megan's static effect is a delight. I'm glad I got to include it in the year's summary somewhere!
12th December - Parker, age 10
Parker only being 19 makes me burst into sobs every time I think about it. Imagine getting that much guilt and pressure put onto you before you hit 20. I'm so very Normal about it so in order to make my heart hurt even more I drew him before Everything Went So Horribly, Horribly Wrong. [in despair] he has no idea whats coming. wails
Anyway I'd thrown paper textures and gritty filters over art in this style before, but in this one I also used some gradiant map magic and some EXTRA filters to give it more texture. I really like the result it made, it even looks dithered in places, when in reality it's just a layer filter I do not understand. But hey, it looks cool!