Part 1 of 10
Oh boy, ok, so this thing is super old and I have very mixed feelings about this so I'm going to allow myself to ramble about this piece a bit.
In general I'm trying to work on talking more about my art haha ;w; (and just...talking more as a whole)
For the TLDR: I started this like 12+ years ago, had a breakdown...bon appetit. Joking aside, I just started becoming incredibly self critical of my work which stopped me from finishing this for the longest time.

As for the long and rambly version, I started this piece waay back in school. It was supposed to be a gift for all my school friends at the time, plus I just really loved drawing pokemon all the time back then and wanted to challenge myself with a big group picture. Back then I was somehow less intimidated by big projects, I just loved drawing things all the time. But somewhere around that time, and I don't even know if this was the first piece that it happened with, I became more and more critical of my own work. Things weren't good enough, or as good as I wanted them to be. (Even though I'm never this critical of anyone else's work, and often loved other people's rough art)
As a result I would start pictures that would end up sitting in my WIP folder for years because I couldn't get it to look just right. I still have many of those old pictures in my WIP folder - I tend to become very emotionally attached to my art, even if I haven't finished it, because most of the things I draw, I draw for a reason. Either it was meant to be for someone, something I really liked the idea of or some way to process something I was thinking or feeling at the time.
Over the last couple of years I've been trying to work on myself in that regard, to be gentler with my work. To remind myself that I'm allowed to make art I think is bad, because I still love the process of drawing. That is also still very much a work in progress haha, but I think I'm slowly starting to see that progress.
Finishing this piece was a big part of that. I initially redid the sketch 3 times I think, started the lineart some years in between the beginning and the end of it, and managed to push myself through finishing it. Now I know that I'm under no obligation to finish a piece, but it was my intention to do so, so I could not let that go.
I'm still frustrated with many parts of this, anatomy being one of the biggest - but again, I knew that if I kept redrawing this piece I would not have been able to finish it. It helped to see it as a collab with my past self, rather than a completely new one, and despite my many negative feelings about this picture, I'm still proud that I managed to draw something with so many characters in one piece. I also need to admit that my past self would probably be more than happy with how this turned out.
So yeah, that's most of the story behind this one. I'm hoping that I'll keep on finding the courage to make/finish art I may not entirely be happy with. That I can just get back to the time when I could just draw for fun and not feel guilty about it not being "perfect". It's been about the fourth year in a row now where one of my new years resolutions has been to finish more of those old WIPs, and the last two years I did manage to do much better in that regard, so maybe this year I'll be able to keep the forward momentum.

I also need to remember that I'm allowed to talk about my art and my feelings behind it. I get so worried about annoying people that I forget that folks can always choose not to read things I guess.
In any case, thanks for reading all my dumb emotional bs if ya did. I hope y'all are doing okay and aren't being so hard on yourselves in your own work ;w;