Weekly Summary 2023/47

Hello everyone! How are you doing?

It's a crazy week on my side! Again, I had very urgent things that absolutely have to be taken care of by the end of this week, so I had no choice but to leave most of my works on the desk and settled the things.

Post 1939 ~ 1943 + this 47th weekly summary are all made on Sunday, 26 November 2023 because of this. Thank you for your patience!

Because of the Urgent Things, I didn't have much that I did in terms of creating. I shared a few art stuff that I did for Mrs. Peregrine, and some recent commissions.

Oh, I tweeted (posted?) this some days ago:

(Maru's art is there too, they're so cute wah!!)

In all honesty, I think I picked my proudest piece of each respective year. I shared sketchy pieces and full pieces. I do notice one thing though: my improvement is, um, nothing huge at all? Have I really improved though? Hmm... (self-doubt mode:on)

Here are more pieces I did in 2018:

And here are the ones I did this year (2023):

Most of the time, I couldn't come up with a word for the rationale behind my art. I consider them okay when I feel that they're right. I'm afraid this is not very helpful and informative, but one thing I'm certain: to get better at something, we have to keep doing it!

I don't think the way I did faces changed much in the past five years (so it's not something I'm very proud of, although I'm happy with it). But I know that I now draw things at a much better speed (they finish much faster usually) with equivalent quality of outcome. This isn't necessarily a good thing, but the speedy progress gives me more time in exploring and learning new things, and I consider that a privilege.

I have artists that greatly inspired me and I aspire to make such beautiful art as them, on the way, I'd probably create my own art-style branch as a mesh between my inspiration and what my brain and hand create. I think that will be very rewarding. I should compile a list of artists that I love...

With so many privileges I'm having, I'm going to make the best out of it! I want to get better at many things that I love doing (that itself may sound kind of selfish haha) and share them to the world. I'm rooting for future me, I want her to be proud of what she'd have gone through.

I think making (cute and beautiful) art is still one of my favourite activity and I'm very happy that in the past few years I've been able to do this (almost) regularly. Here's a recap of the eventful moments (the bullet points are a bit messy and not chronological...):

• I started daily art posts in 2018 – 01 August 2018 to be exact. Daily sketches and doodle on Patreon, it was a fun habit. I hope that I can keep on doing this here in BTS.
• Since 2020 (or was it 2021?) then I expanded into writing, then comics (remember that pilot Illa Café comic that I did in 2021? I should repost them here...), then I built Illa Café concept with the characters that I came up with in 2019, tried to write it painstakingly.
• By the end of 2021, I shifted back to making a short comic (when Pippa the Witchy was born), I did To:You in early 2022 for a short valentine romance comic, which somehow evolved into Blooming Chimes one year later.
• Illa Café was even more solid in between those events, with 55,000+ words written (and counting), Blooming Chimes was started on April this year, which I wanted to just be a tiny sequel of To:You – it turned out to be another monster project of almost 40,000+ words. I released it from the jam pressure because of its size, then I continued progressing on it slowly.
• I randomly came up with Tuna Rice on July, and this short project taught me so many valuable things about development. This was a huge light bulb moment; these small things are perfect teachers! I want more of them! I want to be slapped with mistakes and failures on my journey so that I know what to do next. The painful progress to exceed my limitations, I want that. I think it's very fun (not in a masochist way, I just think, these achievements are very rewarding, at least I feel it in my heart!)
• So, I wanted to have more short projects that can teach me things that I need to make Blooming Chimes and Illa Café the proudest works they could ever be. With that, I conceptualised Mrs Peregrine for November and December Jam. I could barely restrain myself from making it another monster (my brain must have kept lots of hidden baking soda, everything I pound keeps growing crazily hahaha).
• As I'm progressing with Mrs Peregrine now, I have yet conceptualised even more fluffy ideas of cute people who care so much of each other, a very interesting potential Spooktober entry (which I may consider joining next year!!) and a Chobits-like story (I talked about it here).

I'm going crazy... This is so many, yet so fun. I want to live a good, long life so that I'm able to make all of this come true... I think I just want to please myself with so many cute things that I make, hahaha. Also, so many other things I bought on Steam that I started to read slowly now... They're all so good, I start to dream of them hahaha...

This weekly summary is kind of lengthy isn't it? I was thinking about my art journey this week while I was outside. I think it would feel good to pin this down.

On the other topic! I may have found a solution in 2024 wall calendar making!

I don't think I'll be able to make the concept that I planned in October, so I will scrap that idea. I will instead: incorporate the cats and the characters around the calendar grid and hide the cats all over the calendar instead! It will still be a "find me" mini game, but the concept is much lighter, and I think it would be much faster to produce. I need to finish it by mid December, so I think I'll juggle between this and Mrs Peregrine. I think I have to abandon my webtoons list and CROB for a few weeks so that I'm able to do this, hahaha.

Other things:

• Listening to: N/A – I've been mostly outside and I didn't really listen to anything. I recalled some fun musics in my head instead hahaha.
• Reading: In Fair Spirits! It's so cute!
• Watching: Kakushigoto (finished, the last episode was very rushed – still very good, but I'd like more episodes!) Tsure-zure Children (this is so cute, omg...)
• Playing: N/A – I'll return to the game when things are more free!
• Others: I'm currently taking care of a few non-art/dev related things IRL, I'll announce it next year!

Thank you for reading!
- Konayachi