Happy New Year’s Eve!
It’s seems like this year has dragged on for too long. However, even as one chapter ends, another peaks over the horizon illuminating new horizons of what is to come. I am excited for next year, and I hope it goes better than this one.
I’m going to start going into all of the self reflection of the year at the current moment in the news post, and if you think you’d be bored by that, or you just don’t want to read it at the current moment, you can skip to the last passage. I’ll summarize everything there.
Through my drawing this year the things that I have improved on were definitely timing, shading, perspective, form, and color. I learned with “And Ya Know Snipers?” for Pico Day, that if I’m going to do a scene drawing, the perspective needs to be set up almost immediately. In “In The Middle”, I did an experiment with color going off of two main tones. Color experimentation can be seen earlier on, but this was the big one. A hand for a hand was an experiment giving me an idea into my personal animation process. Anubis’s Christmas helped with shading as I even mentioned in the description of it, EVERYTHING REFLECTS LIGHT. Along with time, I wouldn’t have been able to produce as many pieces as I had this year if I hadn’t gotten my time down to a reasonable amount. My drawings have been averaging out to about six and a half hours, with a few exceptions or some taking closer to seven.
Other than that, I know what I have to work on. Anatomy for humans, which will help me in the long run, needs special work as a weakness of mine is human faces. I want to make sure my shading is completely accurate as well. Most of my drawings, present and past, have one single subject and or character in them. I want to change that, showing more interaction.
However, I’ve felt like something is missing in my drawings. I don’t know precisely what it is, but I have a reasonable guess. It’s missing emotion, expression, making things pop! Make the wild even wilder, make the curious even more curious, make the sassy even more sassy. Show the reactions of others to these wild characters. And overall, make them seem grounded. By that I mean, it’s hard to relate to a plague doctor isn’t it? But it’s easier to relate with another person of their anger at said doctor for burning their house down (“TDLR; It’s Fine”). There needs to be a reference point, that is why I believe most concept artists include a human standing in awe of everything else that is before them. From there we know the size of the entire location, and we can put ourselves in their shoes. Even adding more emotion to a usually straight-faced character could help me.
Sometimes I do forget that all 89 of you, and about 5 more who stumbled across this news post, don’t know what’s going on in my head. As an example, the character in “Are You Ok Traveler” has a name! I briefly mentioned this on my Twitter, but the blue bird you see in two of my drawings, and previously my icon, he’s part of a larger story that connects him with the Courier (“An Eye for an Eye” and “A Hand for a Hand”)! What I’m trying to say in its entirety is that there are more stories I need to tell you, and I need to say more of what I’m doing so I don’t seem like I’ve succumb to a plague of some sort.
And.. yes of course! The dark part of the newspost. Slowly throughout the year I started to become aware of this repeating pattern, but nevertheless, I accidentally told my story through my drawings this year. Most of them anyway. In retrospect, I begun my year off being a blind dreamer holding on to something that was never going to be there. However, I still found that I had a gear heart and Trooper showed up as quite literally my personal conscious about robotics. However, I was still stuck in the middle with most things this year. And with deepest respects to my past self, in the middle of the year everything was not as fine as I made it out to be. I was just trying to float along with how everything was, and still is so tightly woven with each other and constricted me through the year. I had to change allegiances with some things, and it was rough.
Anyway, I did a lot of extra stuff this year though, including being the shirt designer for my school’s powerpuff shirt. It was surreal having the design plastered on every shirt at the game. I ran off early for.. Robotics. There is more, but it’s time I wrap this up and get to the finality in this all:
IN SUMMARY
To those who read through that big body of text, thank you, and to those who skipped, I don’t blame you. As I head through the last three and a half months before my 5th anniversary on Newgrounds, I hope that you’ll see changes for the better (those who read know exactly what I’m talking about). However, I’m not sure how I might be able to fit this all in, and I might not be able to at all. There is a serious possibility I might be going “dark” for the next few months with robotics, studying for and taking the SAT, and making sure my grades can be the best they can be. It kind of bums me out that as I’m reaching for that big five I can’t do anything as I approach it. I have to remember this is all speculation as I don’t know how strong robotics will come on this year until Saturday. It’s gonna be stressful, but good stress.
The year was a 1 out of 10, I would only do it again for the Newgrounds meet up in March and the meet ups with @Temariix and @GabbyXD-Animations . I will be around for Pixel Day, I hope I can “knock everyone’s socks off” this year with it.
Happy New Year, and thank you for following the development of Yandere Simulator.
(I'm running out of my house at the current moment, but there is a "last drawing of the year" coming out tonight!)