The Anaether

I think I might be getting somewhere with my style of color and lighting. I have a pretty good idea of what I want to do, but execution’s difficult. I wanted to replicate the success I had with the color and lighting with my last cuddle illustration, but it’s hard to keep outcomes consistent in higher or more desirable levels of success. I’m never that sure when it comes to keeping harder or softer edges for lighting. It took me a while to figure out how to break up the monotony of the tones I already had. Maybe I should’ve splashed on more of those laser-y magenta colors. They look kind of like those sniper laser pointer things, but I meant for them to be alarm lights.

There’s a lot more I probably would’ve done with this illustration, but honestly I just wanted to move on from it, like most of the work that I do, and tell myself that I always improve over time when I push my limits every time. Like, “It’ll get better, it’s time for me to move on to something else.”

I always feel a rush of more motivation for this whole project when I finish another portion of work, whether it’s a comic page or an illustration. I’m always stoked to start something new and also daydream about finally showing you guys at least like, one act of my graphic novel series. Though in case I haven’t mentioned it before, I’m actually planning on re-thumbnailing/re-sketching my entire Act I so that it’s shorter and my plan is more hashed out. I’m not sure when I’m going to do that, though I should probably just do it concurrently with the actual prototype pages.

Uugh but at this pace, it feels like I won’t finish the prototype chapter until the end of this year. As inclined as I am to do this ritual of self-abuse by telling myself that I’m incredibly slow and rudely making my audience wait for more story to come out, I’m going to tell that negative voice in my head to shut up and let me do what I want. I’ve been happy with the level of productivity I’ve been having, and I know I can do better in terms of quality and speed of delivery. As always, I’m very eager to show my audience a proper and captivating story.

While we’re on the subject of delays, I planned the next two days to be dedicated to just me and my boyfriend working on developing a game together. Basically a game jam. I am also eager to talk to you about it buuuuut, unfortunately I won’t, in the interest of keeping my two lives separate. I am pretty excited about the project and hope something more comes of it *cough* (investors). We started it a few years ago and I already did a bunch of graphics for it, we of course just petered out as most projects go. I’m not sure I’d want to work on it consistently like I do with The Anaether though, since I really hate spreading myself out thin. I can’t imagine succeeding at doing more than 3 main things at a time with my life like lots of over-achievers do. We’d probably just work on it every once in a while like in sprints rather than over time. Probably his best games were made overnight anyway.

Oh god. After I’m done with my prototype chapters, I super duper want to do animated mockup screenshots of an Anaether game. I mean, in all honesty I might just do a few assets before that, like some animated pixel portraits of Vas or something.
I just hate daydreaming about stuff out loud like this before I deliver.

Anyway, I’ll likely be getting back into comic pages by midway next week and complete another batch of 5 by mid-May.