Thank you, discord, for putting an X button on the profile screen of a friend request that denies the friend request instead of just closing the profile. To whoever send a friend request today, sorry if I declined it...

Sooo, some of you may remember me and Sailoranna exchanging birthday presents for years. In 2020, I did post the final image of SA's gift to me, but I withheld the rest of the series because of... well... Rayne-y exposure. Since Sailoranna has shown more of Rayne lately, though, I feel I can now safely post the rest of it... or would it be the bun sharing it?

Over the next few days I'll add the years after that as well, so prepare for a considerable load of SA's artwork on my pages the coming days!

Uploaded at this point:

Cosplay Boutique (2020)
Birthday delights (2021)
MMO Time (2022)

Artfight 2022 is over now and it's time to make up the balance!

Some time before the event started I had scoured the random characters list for potential targets. I collected a whole bunch and then, when the time actually came, I barely even used the pile. I did pick some targets out of it, but not nearly as many as I had intended. I attacked some old targets and some new targets. Unfortunately not all my regular targets had signed up this year, so no Dustybun this time around.

Statistics

I did 20 attacks in total, 5 of which were friendly fire. Since the latter only give 20%, I scored lower than last year, but I still got a respectable 1214 points. Well and truly above the team average (which, unfortunately, I can't calculate right now, but just trust me on it).

In response I received 11 pictures (10 on artfight, 1 afterwards). There were 1 Sterling, 1 Faith, 3 Siobhans, 3 Yi Meis, a Carbon, a Nicole and a bun. That's about everyone I listed on there represented except for yours truly, so I'm quite happy with the variety ^^

Observations

Character art seems to come in two flavours: there's drawing a likeness of a character, and then there's drawing the actual character. While there are absolutely gorgeous likenesses out there, I find that the more memorable pics tend to be the ones that really capture the soul of the character. The ones that show what a character is like.

In my case, the reverse seems true as well. I tend to do my best work when I have character-traits to work off of. When I'm faced with a character with no particular personality, I really have a hard time drawing them. It is such a shame how many OCs I've encountered on artfight who just show no character whatsoever; not in the reference image, nor in the description (if it even exists). Notable offenders are of the "adopt" variety. More often than not they're a relatively generic pose with a relatively generic body type and, to make them actually distinct, a very specific fur pattern. The latter unfortunately does not compensate for the former. The references often look astounding, yet they're utterly lifeless; they spark no ideas in me whatsoever.

It just makes a little sad. So many potential doodles that are just stillborn because there was no description whatsoever, when a couple of words would've sufficed. "Sweet tooth"? Draw something involving cookies. "Nerd"? Involve computers or games. Such, such a shame...

Another smaller observation: toyhouse must have THE most obnoxious watermark ever. It's just their logo plastered top to bottom, left to right all over the image to the point of actually obscuring the actual character. It's a hard pass for me the moment I spot one of those in a user's gallery.

Conclusion

The fighting was good this year and I like to think I drew some good quality attacks. I had a bit of a slump toward the end (I didn't receive anything for 10 consecutive days), but it picked up again at the end.

I will start posting my attacks over the next few days. Apologies for the dump (I really should just post them while the fight is happening...)

First off: he's still alive and kicking (figuratively, of course. I don't think they'd appreciate him doing so in the hospital bed). I had a brief chat with him earlier via discord and he asked me to pass this along so he wouldn't have to repeat himself. I don't know the exact details, but I'll try to communicate the gist of it.

From what I gathered, he lost a fight with a bagel and started choking. Having noone around that could help him, he swallowed it down hard and that fucked up something along the way down. He ended up in the hospital due to overwhelming pain, the cause of which could caused him to go septic. He'll be having surgery in two days at which point they'll be able to remove the tubes (by his own account, he's currently "down to like 7 hoses in him"). They're keeping a close eye on him.

I told him to take it easy, but I'm sure the hospital staff will make sure of that. And of course I wish him a swift recovery.

I probably should let you all know that I posted a whole load of sketches for my twitter anniversary. I actually set up my twitter to have a place to post them as I did them... and then I never did. Figured I'd catch up a little.

Also: I'm on twitter -> Leo_Ipsum.

Sooo... Artfight 2021 is over and it's time to get another retrospective going.

Considering the servers had gone down for the first week for the last three years now, I had done some preparation beforehand. Looked up some references, copied their permissions, etc so I would have them handy while the servers were down. So imagine my surprise when the servers actually stayed up! A tad slow, at times, but fully functional. I didn't regret my preparations, though, as I could jump straight to the doodling.

On to the statistic:

I did 25 attacks this year, one of which was friendly fire. The latter was unintended, as I could've sworn they were on team cyberpunk. Oh well. At least friendly fire still gives 20% of the points this year. The last attack was 2 hours before the end and I finished it with half an hour to spare! Aaanyhow, that all gave me 1719.75 points. Considering the team average was around 245 last time I checked, I'd say I did my part in this fight!

In response, I got 10 defenses, consisting of 4 Siobhans, 2 Carbons, 2 Natalies, 1 Nicole, and 1 Graphite. I'll be posting those shortly.

All-in-all, it was a fun fight. I had hoped to receive a bit more in response, but eh... it is what it is. It was good fun drawing all those varied characters anyhow ^^

After hovering around 980ish for what feels like many years, a few weeks back I actually managed to reach 1000 watchers (1003 right now, even!). I wasn't sure what to do for it, but then I saw another artist holding a raffle and I went: eh, why not!

Now, there are some rules to these kind of things: watch me, fav a piccy, make a comment, repost the journal etc. I'm going to ignore most of those. Instead, my rules are:

1. You need to have been watching me at the time of me posting this journal! I want to reward those that watched me not just because there's a chance at free art.

2. You need to make a comment with a reference of who you'd like see drawn (and if applicable, what kind of art is allowed of said character). You may suggest something they might be doing (within reason, of course; try to stick to stuff I would normally draw as well) and said suggestion may include one of my characters.

3. Sharing this, reposting it, etc will not net you bonus points, so don't bother.

4. No need to bother with numbers. I'll figure that out myself.

That having been said, I'm doing this for fun. If I find any issues with your entry (suggestion I won't draw, etc), I'll let you know. I'll randomly pick the winner by some means I'll decide on once I know how many I have to pick from.

Deadline is um... saturday morning after I've finished breakfast! (nice and vague, huh? :D)

Eeeeeeeeeeee! Go! Look! -> Lion and Sakura

Retrospective

The fight is over! And it was a long one this time around. As usual, the service was um... flaky... the first week, so it got extended to the 10th of August. Then just before the end, things got flaky once more and it got extended by another day, all the way up to the 11th. I hadn't really intended to take advantage of that, but I ended up doing so nonetheless.

My goal for this year was to take it a bit easier and have some fun pairing up my characters with other people's characters. After all, you get full points for your own characters as long as you're also attacking someone else. And to boot, even if I don't receive art back, I still have art of my own characters from myself! That's certainly a rarity with how often I tend to draw others. And as always, I was going for full-sized pics. I do horrible portraits and I just feel that full pics are just that bit more memorable.

All-in-all, I had a good time; drew some fun stuff; got some good art. Quite a successful artfight, I'd say. So glad I didn't give up after last year's less-than-tremendous fight.

Stats

At the time of this writing, the final winner hasn't been announced, but the stats should be accurate enough. I was part of team Spice and we attained a 50.04% battle ratio (woo, we're ahead) with an average of 109.74 points and 5.49 attacks. My stats are a battle ratio of 65.63% (attacked more than I received) and 579.61 points over 19 attacks. I also did 2 friendly fires this year, but those don't count as far as points are concerned. I definitely did my part in this fight!

Of the 21 attacks I drew, 2 were friendly fire, 9 were solo OCs, 3 were pairs of their OCs and 8 were a pair-up of one of mine and one of theirs. In total I attacked only 11 people, though. 6 people got attacked twice; one even got attacked 5 times!

I got attacked 11 times and for just a bit, I was actually falling behind. Several of the people who I had attacked last year decided to attack me back this year. I ended up receiving 5 lions, 2 Nicoles, 2 Carbons, a Siobhan and (surprisingly) only one bunny. All but 4 came from different people. Those final 4 were counters to my 5 attacks.

I'll be posting them all over the coming week or so, so prepare to finally see some stuff from me again!

I don't usually do this, but I'm going to make an exception just this once. I wanted to take this opportunity to signal boost Astrofenn's work. She's been working on a species called hivedogs and she has just put up four more adopts.

I've done some work on Aegis, a hivedog of my own (still need to figure out how to draw his body x.@) and I've had some interesting discussions with Astro on their species, their clothing, their community and such. I'm having tons of fun exploring that stuff and I was really hoping to mess around with those topics further. But that's easier with more hivedogs around, soooo... wanna buy a hivedog? :D

#6: Dragontail butterfly (my personal nickname for him is "the Fop")
#7: Birdwing butterfly (totally a "Mischief" as far as I'm concerned, but that's not up to me, of course)
#8: Spiny isopod (in my headcanon, he and Mischief are the kind of friends that have him eyerolling a lot)
#10: Dragonfly (no personal headcanon there yet)

And to sweeten the deal a bit, first one to adopt one will get a free picture of their hivedog from me!

I've been having some motivation and inspiration problems lately. There's not much you can probably do about the former, but I thought you lot might be able to help with the latter by making suggestions. I'm not really looking for a bunch of "draw me" cases, nor for people to avoid posting because they're self-conscious about posting "draw me" posts, so I thought I'd give it a "draw something for another" theme instead.

So here's the rules:
- you can suggest one (or more) person(s) who you feel deserve some art (a "why" might be interesting there as well); person, not character.
- if it's someone I might not know, provide me a link or something to their stuff.
- you may suggest a character of theirs that you think I should draw and what to draw of them. I reserve the right to change it, though, if another character of theirs catches my fancy more or if I'm just not seeing the scene.

I'm hoping your suggestions will give me the inspiration and motivation to do some soon, but even if not, it's a handy reference for later if I'm ever looking for inspiration.

Then direct thy gaze yonder and enjoy! -> Well-stuffed bun!

Another year has passed. A decade, even! This would usually be the time for a glance back at the past 365 days, but well... it's pretty much the same old, same old. Lots of stuff drawn for others; hardly any stuff for myself; periods with lots of art and complete dry spells. This would be where I vow to focus on my own characters and draw on a regular basis from now on... eeeexcept I'm not going to. It's not going to happen, so why bother with empty promises.

That doesn't mean I won't try to make some changes, mind you. I still intend to draw stuff for others, but when I do, I'm going to try to think of settings that involve my own characters as well. I'd also like to do some trades too, provided anyone is interested.

Finally, one thing I really want to do is create a game of some sort. Something a bit more complicated; something a bit more fulfilling. I know I have enough programming experience to do it, but I just never seem to get around to actually finishing anything. If you have any suggestions on how to fix that, I'm all ears.

I've tried the occassional "Ask me anything" in the past, but this time I thought it might be interesting to turn it around and pester you about stuff instead!

- Piercings? Yes? No? Ears? Nipples? Nethers? Other? On your characters? On others?
- Naughty or clean? Clothed or unclothed? Male? Female? Male and female? Male, male, male and female? Male and many females?
- Plot or "plot"? Or plot and "plot"? Mostly plot with some side-"plot"?
- Magic or realism? Bit of both? Divine? Elemental? Demonic? Modern? Ancient? Future?

Um... that's about all I can think of right now. I'm curious how you feel about these topics!

Though technically Art fight will still be running for another week (they extended the deadline due to server-issues in the first week), I don't think it will make much difference when it comes to this retrospective. As such, I'll be posting this now. I'll also start posting the stuff I've drawn and received over the next few weeks.


Since this was my second year participating, I had a better idea of what I was getting into this time. Still, there were some things that hadn't happened before, things that had changed since last time, and just things that might be of interest. In no particular order:

I did more attacks than last year. By the end of last year's fight I was at 13 attacks. This year I am at 15 and counting! The 16th should be going up soon and I have a few more in the works. So far I have been attacked 6 times this year, putting me on par with last year.

I got attacked first for the first time. And by none other than Xizana, too. To be fair, it wasn't entirely out-of-the-blue as we had had an exchange about it beforehand. She just beat me to it :P

I got ignored for the first time. At the time of this writing, I have five attacks that have had no response whatsoever; no defense, no comment... nothing. Two of those are fairly new, so those might still get a response, but the other three have been up for weeks now. Particularly the early ones proved rather demoralizing, but I'm glad I kept up because some comments on later attacks more than made up for that.

I've fallen behind on the latest in character-design. The number of mouths in non-mouth places seems higher than last year (as will be evident in a few of my attacks). The same for characters with a screen for a head. Either I hadn't noticed them last year, or those have become really popular over the past 12 months. If I rejoin the fight next year, I might have to design a few characters aimed specifically at the artfight audience.

I drew an animation! The extra couple of points you get for a "simple" animation make it totally not worth the effort, but it was fun to draw and a good learning experience to boot. Now I know all the things I shouldn't do next time.

I apparently need descriptions to draw characters. Fairly often I'd encounter a character that looked interesting to draw, only to find out that the owner hadn't bothered writing down a single word about them. More often than not, this leads to me moving on to the next character as I always try to make the art a bit more personal; draw some activity they might enjoy, a character-trait they exhibit or an ability they can manifest. No info on the characters means no ideas, which means no art.


All-in-all: will I do it again next year? Probably. We'll see. Can I recommend it to others? Not sure, to be honest. It can be pretty taxing at times; waiting for a response; hoping to see that notification that you got attacked. I can definitely recommend going into it with a "I'm just gonna draw people stuff and not worry about the rest" mindset.

*sets out cake and sweets and drinks and games and party hats and balloons and such*

Hitting ye olde 41 years of age, now. Woooo, time flies. I've known some of you all for half your lives at this point :D


P.S. Woo, I'm a prime number old again!

Sailoranna's visit, followed by my ear-operation and its recovery has rather wrecked my sense of time. As such, I hadn't realized that my birthday was creeping closer once more. Since I know some of you like to have some advance warning, I will hereby say:

On May 28th, I shall be turning 41!

Consider yourself warned!

Surgery's all done. Bit sore, bit tired... so pretty much the usual. Now to enjoy a week of bandages and an inability to wear my glasses.

If all goes as planned, I will be undergoing surgery on friday. More of the usual, I'm afraid (I'll let you google cholesteatoma yourself). At least it doesn't seem to have returned on the left side, so it's only the right side this time. Anyhow... afterwards, I should be back online some time on saturday!

Sooooo... Sailoranna is still downstairs, slaving away at pictures for me, but I haven't been slacking off myself either. I figured I'd give you all a bit of a status-update by listing the titles of the pictures I've drawn so far ;)

"Shamrock" (technically doodled it beforehand, but I inked it during SA's visit)
"Sneak attack!"
"Mary was there too"
"Sightseeing"
"Foto flash"
"Talking sense"
"Mystery box"
"A thoughtful gift"
"Late night DJ"
"Say yes to the dress"
"Dibs"
"Top bunk!"
"Au naturel"
"Fata Morgana"
"Shut up and take my money"
"Pardijn"
"Drinking buddies"
"Morning routine"
"Say yes to the bunny"
"Party games"
"Clever horsy"
"Dressed to impress"

There may be more to come. I'll update this journal if they do!

In a few hours, Sailoranna will be arriving once more here in the Netherlands and if all goes as planned, there will be plenty of doodling happening. Now I'm sure we can think of plenty of stuff ourselves, but it never hurts to have some backup plans, too... which is where I want to involve you guys as well!

Do you have any ideas for what Sailoranna's and my characters might do? What shenanigans will they get up to? Who is sleeping in what bedroom?! Will they fit in the car?

If you have any ideas, just toss them out there! I'm not saying we'll draw them all, but it can certainly serve as a source of inspiration :)

Ugh, I fell into the trap again of thinking that there might be mobile games that won't annoy the fuck out of me. Alas, there really don't seem to be. I did learn a lot about what is needed to build a mobile game, though!

1. If a player completes a level, award three stars! If you actually track enough stats (time/moves/etc), you may subtract some stars if they fail to hit their objectives. If you don't track enough stats: three stars!
2. If a player completes a level, make sure to tell them how wonderful and great they are. Did you read that last sentence? Awesome, you are so smart! There's nothing you can't do!
3. Your game needs in-game currency to allow players to buy upgrades. You do not want to worry them about how much they're spending, though, so make sure that there are a few layers of indirection inbetween, like diamonds, gems, purses and wallets.
4. You may opt to hand out some currency for completing levels. But don't overdo it! We wouldn't want players to miss out on the excitement of buying currency!
5. Has the player been playing too long? Make sure you don't allow them to over-exert themselves. Instead, give them a limited number of lives that are replenished over time. Do offer an option to buy more lives, though, for those that can prove that they have also spent time outside the game.
6. Is the player making good progress? Well, we wouldn't want them to finish the game too quickly and get all sad about it. Make sure that the later levels are sufficiently challenging that they practically require divine intervention to complete. And while we're at it, wouldn't it be funny to give your in-game store a funny name, like um... "Divine Intervention"?

Now you too can make a fun, exciting mobile game!

Go look at, fav, and comment on Stush's stuff!

As much fun as it was drawing other people in the hopes of getting something in return, I was thinking there might be more effective methods available to me. Soooo... anyone want to do an art trade with me some time? Doesn't have to be now, or anything. Just gauging interest at the moment.

Soooo... did ya miss me? I've been over on Art Fight, denouncing one hot beverage I don't drink on behalf of another hot beverage I also don't drink! They really should've put in cocoa or something... Anyhow, for those who don't know Art Fight: it's a month-long event where you get assigned to one of two teams. You score points for your team by 'attacking' opposing members by drawing their characters. Sailoranna did it last year and I figured I'd see whether it was any fun.

Well before the fight even started, I gave what I wanted to get out of this some thought. Obviously I was hoping to get some art of my characters. That was a crappy reason to join, though; I didn't expect to get all that much without putting effort into it. So instead I decided to focus on said 'effort' and just see what it would get me. My personal rules: attack people at random, draw some fun stuff that I normally might not, and maybe even meet some new people I would not have met otherwise.

All-in-all, I have rather mixed feelings about the whole experience. It was fun drawing other people and fun seeing their responses. The site doesn't lend itself to comment-chains, though. I didn't get attacked out of the blue even once; not without me attacking them first. I hadn't expected much, but there was always the hope for more. So yeah, that was a smidgen disappointing. Will I do it again next year? To be honest... I don't know.

That having been said, prepare for a bit of a flood of art-attacks. I've got 13 attacks and (so far) 6 defenses (art by others). The event will be running for two more days, but I don't intend to draw anything more for it.


Now on to some random artfight observations:

- I seem to be about twice as old as the average art-fighter. I felt a bit self-conscious at times...
- So many people seem fine with gore, but nipples?! Oh nonono! Seriously... the amount of profiles that state "Gore is great; NO NSFW, THOUGH!" is just ridiculous.
- Portraits. Sooo many portraits! They're the staple of the art-fight community! I suppose it's inevitable when drawing random people, but even so... they can be a tad impersonal at times. That's why I tried to make things a bit more interesting; tried to find some activity for them.
- Artfight needs a way to reply to comments.
- Artfight also needs a way to specify that you're only looking for random characters on the opposing team. Friendly fire defeats the whole purpose of art-fighting!