Hello there! And welcome to my 300th post in a row for my first Year of Creative Habits. It’s been quite the fantastic journey throughout the entire process, but today I’m just going to look back at the last 100 days. Same as I’ve done for my 100th, and 200th post. Today feels a bit different though, because there isn’t another 100 posts ahead of me, there’s just 65 days left. Well, until I’m done my first year anyways. That’s… kinda exciting.
So, before I get started on the reminiscing, look what I made today! Well, I actually got started on it last night, but it really started to come together today. It’s a new graphic for my Patreon page. Right now, there’s just a whole bunch of random artwork and a lot of text on there. That’s no good. I don’t think a lot of strangers would want to read through all of that text just to find out who I am. So, I came up with this graphical idea that you can see above! I love it. Last night I wasn’t too sure how to make it look more fun, but I just needed to give it an identity. Now it’s a bunch of photographs, and some folded paper with some notes written on them. It’s not completely finished yet as there’s still a little bit of shadows that I need to add/edit, but so far it’s pretty awesome.
This new graphic has a lot less information than what was written on my Patreon page before, but there’s more than enough “extra” info available all over the place if anyone wants to find out. I’ll make sure to include some links to my content in the header image that I have yet to make. Anyways, I’m a little fuzzy on all the details, but so far I think this is going to be a lot more pleasing to look through than what is there at the moment.
So, the big thing that happened in the past 100 days is that I joined Patreon. For those unaware, Patreon is a service for artists to use where they can show off their work, and who they are, and patrons can help support them. All while the patrons get bonus content, or whatever is offered. There’s also a fun goal system in place.
I’ve already seen some people (or groups of individuals) join and become successful with Patreon pretty quickly. It hasn’t happened for me yet, and it may not. I just understand the importance of having options for people that do want to support my work. Nobody can come to my website, or see my artwork anywhere online, and not be able to easily buy a t-shirt with my artwork on it, support me with just a couple bucks through Patreon, or order actual prints of my work. I believe it’s all pretty easily available, and I’m also extremely easy to get in contact with if there’s any problems. So I believe I have all those bases covered.
Alright, let’s get started with looking back at the last 100 days. I’m sure I have lots to say about what I’ve made, what I’ve written, and the overall experiences I’ve had.
So, this painting isn’t really anything all that special. I completely forgot about it, actually. However, the post that went with it was all about having Internet woes. I forgot that I was having net problems more than 3 months ago as well. I have the issues all sorted out now I think, but for the past few weeks my modem was going bonkers. I guess I’ve been dealing with the intermittent downtime longer than I initially realized. There were a few moments where I almost missed a day of posting, and days where I thought about quitting altogether, but I stuck with it. I always get encouraging advice and comments when stuff like that is happening. The last 65 days should be a cinch!
I love this one. This post was all about how I still wanted to try my hand at creating some Nintendo inspired pixel-art. I was trying out a few ideas to see how they looked, and I feel this one turned out wonderful. Even though it’s just 3 colors, it feels like there’s a lot going on here. Maybe that’s just me? I dunno. Anyways, as we’ll see in a moment, I ended up completing my Nintendo pixel-art shortly after making this picture. Also, this was around the time when I had high hopes for my Toronto Maple Leafs. Go sports team! Yeah… that season did not go well at all.
Oh yeah! So this is when my diet went completely awry. Reading through this post reminds me that when I was painting this in Photoshop, I was basically running on Pepsi and Skittles. Yup. Anyways, so this turned out really awesome. This was exactly what I had in my head since somewhere near the beginning of this Year of Creative Habits project. Likely within the first 20 days or something, I think. I wanted to recreate some NES title screens from my youth, as accurate as I can, but doing every single pixel by hand. I guess it’s a little weird to do that, but these games were a huge part of my childhood, and I think it was the only real way for me to feel more connected to these games. Well, more connected to the artists that made these graphics. Does that make sense?
Now we’re talking! Star Tropics is one of my favorite games of all time, and I wanted to recreate one of the images that showed up at the end of the game. A pixellated slideshow appears at the very end of this NES game, highlighting a bunch of the most memorable moments throughout the adventure. Every time I go to replay this classic I get about as far as beating this octo boss, which results in saving a baby dolphin. This time I didn’t recreate the image pixel by pixel, and instead just painted it freehand by looking at the original pixellated version.
Here’s the final piece of my Nintendo fanart series. It’s probably my favorite of the bunch because it took so long to do, and I was getting good at recreating these from the original versions. Blaster Master is also one of my favorite games on the NES. Reading the post I see this was about the time where I started to feel really optimistic about my future as an artist. From about this point on I started putting more hours into my artwork each day, and I was excited about just recently starting my Patreon page. I’ve been spending more and more time researching, drawing, and interacting with social media ever since.
I like this frog guy, and I just want to share him again! Besides, I haven’t done a whole lot of awesome pencil and pen drawings at this point yet, so why not? I drew this frog because I was reading about a newly discovered species of amphibian that could shapeshift it’s skin from smooth to thorny. Though, my post talked a lot about how I have questions about my future. You know, where I’m going to be, will I be a successful artist, etc. It’s something I feel I bring up kind of often in my posts, actually. Those questions are always floating around in my head. It’s just that sometimes I ignore them when they stray a little too close to becoming negative thoughts rather than positive ones that help keep me motivated.
Now here’s a big project. I kind of forgot that this was done in the last 100 days! I remember I received a bunch of fantastic comments from friends and family over this one. It’s nice doing a long-term project every once in awhile, and this might be the best one I’ve done. Likely it’s not going to end up as being one of the most important projects though. Because the artwork I’ve been doing lately, I feel, is going to end up being the type of artwork I do when it comes to creating a web comic. Or whatever that’s going to end up being. A series of some sort, I believe. Though I don’t have all the details yet, I just know I want it to be something different. Not another web comic. Because there’s plenty of those out there already.
Oh Axiom Verge, I never did go back to you after I beat hard mode. That just took so much out of me! This was a PS4 game I purchased, and immediately fell in love with. It feels very much like a combination of the NES games Blaster Master and Metroid. As far as action exploration games are concerned, this is pretty much my dream game. That took a lot of ink to fill in all the black there in the picture, but I’m glad it was worth it. I’m very satisfied with the results.
I never did show off this Photoshop recreation I did of this doodle I called “Genetic Doodle”. I’m sure this isn’t one of those drawings that people will remember, but for some reason I remember the process of drawing it being really fun. I think I was just messing around with the original pen drawing in Photoshop and I guess the result was cool enough to save. Because it’s been sitting on my desktop every since. I guess today’s as good a day as any to share it, finally 🙂
You know, this has been a really varied 100 days, hasn’t it? There’s all kinds of artwork that I’m really proud of, and they all look so unique from one another. I love doing these realistic space scenes, but I think I enjoy doing what I’ve been doing as of late even more. The kind of cartoon looking science fiction stuff, I mean. I still hear from people around me that these realistic outer space ones are some of my best stuff. So, maybe there’s some room for a couple more in my last 65 days.
Here we go. This is the first cartoon/comic inspired piece of artwork I made. I remember right as soon as I finished this picture, I wanted to jump right into a new one. I’ve been on a roll ever since, just making one after the other. I can’t put my finger on exactly why I’m so excited to get into these projects specifically, but I’m guessing it’s because I feel that these are looking more and more professional. Where 99% of the art I make I can nitpick and probably keep working on them until I go mad. Where these, however, feel relatively finished. I have an idea – and sure that evolves and changes as I go along – but when I get it all down on paper, so to speak, it feels complete. I’m not sure if I’m making much sense though, so how about we move on? Okie dokey.
I wanted to do something less cluttered when compared to the previous comic inspired picture. I bet this would look good on a brochure or something…. hold on a sec. There, that’s better! That actually turned out better than I anticipated o.O
Hey, it’s Eric! And he’s wearing a super awesome Mario Ukulele shirt. I remember when he asked me to do this sometime last year. It was probably around last summer sometime, and I said I would try it, but didn’t give a time frame because I wasn’t sure how exactly I was going to tackle it. Now, he brings it up and I have it finished the next day. No problems at all. Man, I truly feel that I’ve come a long way because of this year long project. I can literally visualize almost everything I’m going to do in Photoshop to get the specific look I need, even before I open the application.
I don’t want to create books anymore! Don’t make me do it! This took so long to do, and so many hours. This is probably a 30 hour picture. Maybe I’m underestimating that! However, I couldn’t even imagine doing a project like this months ago, let alone before I started my Year of Creative Habits. So it’s artwork like this that reminds me how far I’ve come, and one of the reasons I’m doing this Year of Creative Habits project in the first place. Not only to build a portfolio, but to gain experience, and get better and better using the tools I’ve been given.
Lastly, but certainly not leastly, is one of my most recently completed projects. This “Zero Battle” sci-fi video game picture. There’s just so much going on here, not unlike the wizard in the library really, but I find the objects in this picture more interesting than a bunch of books. Who else wants to play this game though? Exploring a colorful universe, blasting enemy ships, trading and upgrading, maybe a little terraforming as you take an uninhabitable planet and shape it to your will. I said this in the actual article that goes with this picture, but the Maxis game Spore feels very much like that.
Alright, so that’s that. I’m done. Time to get outside and maybe take a walk. At least take out the trash maybe. Here’s to another 100….. nay, 65 days! Thanks for checking this out. I would love to hear from you in the comments, or wherever. If it wasn’t for the awesome people supporting me in all the varied ways they do, I know I wouldn’t have kept this up. Something that started as a lonely art project that would help build my portfolio, has turned into something way more social. Whether I figure out the financials or not, this is also now a career I’m focused on achieving. If there’s one major takeaway from this Year of Creative Habits project, it’s that I can now call myself an artist and not feel weird about it.
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