Foreground is done, now for the background (Oh god)

Happy New Years everyone! (At least it is in my timezone)

2023 has been a bit of a rollercoaster for me personally, with some very high highs and very low lows.

If you don’t care about any of this just CTRL+F to where I talk about the updates.

Looking back, I felt my art was a lot more experimental this year compared to 2022. My first three years on the site was mostly me trying to find my footing to see what clicked with me.

By late 2022 I found a style that clicked with me and while I’ve added onto it in the days since then, a decent chunk of my art from this year was me trying different stuff for fun.

As for what I feel my biggest improvements are:

Composition:

Though I feel my knowledge on composition still isn’t 100% there yet, there’s definitely a drastic improvement in how my art is composed around the middle part of the year where characters are no longer positioned like in Mike and Melissa shots.

Clothing:

This was the year I really started pushing for more detail in my drawings, and I think that’s the most apparent in my approach to clothing. I went out of my way to add folds where I feel applicable.

It’s small but when I look back on my older art now, I can’t believe l went without it for so long, it makes my drawings feel much more alive than ever before.

Posing:

I was a lot more comfortable with my anatomy skills by this point, so I tried doing a lot of subtle body breaking to make poses feel more dynamic. Though sometimes this lead to complete disasters.

Lineart:

I’ve been trying to achieve stylish lineart for a long time now, but by the end of the year, I feel like I’ve finally got it down.

Colors and Shading:

This pretty much only applies to my most recent piece.

By late 2023, I’ve been pretty dissatisfied with my use of shading, so I’ve tried changing it up a bit with a second shadow layer, but even that wasn’t doing it for me. It wasn’t until my Secret Santa entry that I realized it was actually the colors that were bugging me.

The use of more desaturated colors in that piece was actually a complete accident, but I ended up liking it so much that I decided to make my art in general less saturated going forward.

I ended up changing my shading style because of this as well, so the magenta shadows are retired!

The chalky shadows also came from experimentation and wanting to make my art more detailed.

I’m still tinkering around with this new shading style, for example: I’m considering dropping the white highlights as well. But you can expect my art to look like this from here on out.

I feel with this new style, I finally got my art the cool look I always wanted.

As for what I’ve accomplished in 2023:

I received my first ever frontpage with my Pico Cross entry

I’m not a big fan of this one, but I’m glad it resonated with people somehow.

I was lucky enough to be one of the first people to host a collab with the Art Portal update. That being the complete shitpost known as “The Boner Collab”.

It was a bit of a mess getting it set up considering I made it as a joke, not expecting that many people to enter, but it was a blast seeing everyone’s funny lil skeletons.

At the end of the year, I started up the Adult Swim Collab, the full collab is set to release early 2024.

UPDATES JUMPSCARE

First off, I now have a Twitter and Bluesky account, this is just so I can expand to more places on the internet, so please consider following me on those platforms if you wanna help me grow.

I’m considering opening commissions as well just as a little bit of extra income (I’m even considering drawing some more spicy stuff, if you catch my drift). So if you’d be interested, please let me know.

I have two other projects on the way, both are being planned to come out this year:

One is another art collab, this time for Pico Day. I won’t spoil the surprise, but if you’re desperate for a hint, you’ll need to look back to the past.

The second and most important, starting now I’m working on right now, a passion project of mine codenamed “Project Origins”! What is Project Origins you might ask? Is it a cartoon? A game? A comic? Stay tuned for more details.

Also, because of the workload required to make this project possible, it’s gonna have to cut into my free time a lot more, meaning that I won’t be drawing as much. But this is something I wanted to make for a while now, and I finally have the motivation to do it. I’m really gonna try to get this thing out this year, but if not expect it be come out early to mid 2025.

Anyways, hope you enjoy what comes next and I especially hope you enjoy Project Origins. I’m gonna go crash in bed because I’m tired as shit right now.

My submission for this year's Secret Santa is finally done. It should be uploaded around Christmas Day or the day after depending on how busy I am that day.

Fuck you Seth McFarlane, ya lying bastard

It’s hard dealing with the loss of a loved one. But it’s for the best.

the gang in question:

In all seriousness, thank you everyone for your amazing artwork in the Boner Collab.

I never thought people would care this much about a joke collab I came up with when I was half awake.

tl;dr I fucked up real bad

For those wondering why Parts 2 and 3 took so long to be posted, it’s because I fucked up really badly.

Originally the collab was planned to be in one piece but was split up due to file size issues, so I scheduled them to be uploaded at midnight today, except I forgot to schedule the other two parts.

And because of being asleep and me currently being at work, I couldn’t take immediate action.

Sorry for the rough arrival, but better than nothing hopefully.

However, I'm currently having technical problems with the collab, so I might have to extend the deadline.

Apply here: https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1528375/1