#teoft rambles

[teoft]

I'm not really a car person, but there's something about driving with a manual transmission that just makes you feel like you are a part of the machine. With automatic, you just press gas and go, but with stick, you feel the engine, you feel the transmissions of power, you act as a part of the whole. The rhythm of clutch, brake and gas, the heartbeat of the car.

You get to know the engine, what it needs, what it wants. Is it like a tank that can crawl up a hill without any throttle, or do you have to slowly ease off the clutch and rev up to get moving on a flat road. The way you switch gears is like a conversation, and the car tells you if you fucked up. To know and feel the car and the engine so thoroughly that you can get the maximum acceleration when needed.

[droppingartintotheinfinite]

Made a compilation of my favorite pieces from each month of 2024. I’ll put the template I made in a reblog if anyone wants to use it. Top right of each image lists character and fandom, bottom right is which day of the month I drew it. (which is different to the date it was posted here, in most cases, since this blog runs on a queue that’s usually around a month long)

Ramblings about each month and the year overall have been placed under a cut.

It’s interesting looking back… I didn’t even realize how recent some of this stuff was until I was going through my photos. Like September and October weren’t that long ago, but it feels like it’s been ages since I drew those pieces…

I’d completely forgotten about my brief foray back into dsmp stuff at the start of the year. Sure is wild how many of the creators turned out to be terrible… Honestly, that’s a big part of why I haven’t gotten back into it in earnest at any point - every time I feel like I’m ready to get back into it, some completely insane controversy comes out about another cc and I end up backing off until it’s been long enough that it doesn’t feel insensitive to being up the “character =/= creator” argument again.

Unsurprisingly, Undertale has a big presence throughout the year, along with Deltarune. No matter how much time goes by, I don’t think I’ll ever stop being into it. First ever fandom, you know? Shaped my personality at a formative age, and all that.

I didn’t really do much colored stuff in January, apparently. Guess I was more focused on playing around with negative space that month, given the dsmp drawings. (and the Chara one, which is just me doing that but with color. I actually did drawings like that for a couple Undertale characters, but the Chara one was my favorite so that’s the one that made it in)

In February I drew a whole bunch of Burgerpants. Only grabbed one, since I did some other neat stuff that month too, but there were a whole bunch to pick from. Something about him just really appeals to me. I did some Homestuck that month too, along with a fair bit throughout the rest of the year. It’s really terrible that Homestuck is so good despite the everything about it. I think it’s going to live rent free in my brain until I die.

In March I did a little bit more dsmp, but I’m pretty sure it was basically only that drawing. What can I say, nuke imagery is simply too fun to play with. I was really happy with those Undynes as well. I was experimenting with color a lot that month and honestly I’m still proud of those pieces. I should try doing more stuff like that…

There must have been something in the water in April, because I was just absolutely churning out some of the best digital paintings of my life… that third one especially, with Frisk in the bed of flowers, is just… damn, I need to do more stuff like that.

May was another month where I didn’t do much colored stuff, but I did do some Trigun art. I think that was probably the month I rewatched the original anime and realized how good it is. The Chara drawing was inspired by - you know those old pieces, I think the artist was called Teoft? They did a series of Undertale pieces with various characters as super ominous looking angels. My style doesn’t really carry across vibe as well (at least not with the brush I was using there) but it was fun to play around with and I never get tired of drawing wings.

June is all OC stuff, because that’s the month before Artfight so I was remastering all my old OC refs. Inevitably, I’ll end up doing that again this year, since I’ve changed a bunch of their outfits since then…

July is Artfight month, which I usually put this blog on hiatus during, but I ended up drawing so much stuff that year I didn’t have to. Like not only was it the most prolific I’ve been as far as Artfight attacks go, but I was also doing enough stuff on top of that to have had genuine trouble picking only four pieces to put here… like, again, clearly something in the water.

In August I was playing around with representations of the player in Undertale and Deltarune. Puppet imagery has historically been my go-to for that, but that was around the time I finally played Slay the Princess, so I had hands on the mind too. The eyes were inspired by Murderbot Diaries fanart, because there’s a character in that series who often gets represented that way and I always thought it looked super cool.

I had a really cool piece I was working on September for the Undertale anniversary, but I never ended up finishing it. So instead there’s a bunch of Deltarune stuff. I mean, close enough, right…?

In October we see the first appearances of both Parkciv and ISAT, though my earliest ISAT stuff is actually from late September. All of the Parkciv drawings I’ve posted were done in one day and I haven’t drawn anything for it since. ISAT, on the other hand, is still dominating this blog. When the hyperfixation hits, amirite?

November is entirely ISAT, somewhat unsurprisingly. What can I say, I just really like Loop. And drawing them in dresses is fun.

December, on the other hand, is entirely Undertale! Not that it was the only thing I drew necessarily - I did some ISAT stuff too - but that was the month I started my Undertale AU askblog, so it was occupying an even larger portion of my head than it usually does. Actually, the majority of the art I did last month was for the askblog - I’ve been focusing on it pretty hard. It’s probably the most consistently invested I’ve been in making an au since like… Reverietale.

Overall, I’m really happy with what I’ve made this year. I don’t think I’ve necessarily made any insane strides as an artist or anything - I got slightly better at anatomy and perspective, but nothing crazy - but in a lot of ways I think that’s a mark of how far I’ve come as an artist - that I’ve reached a level where I don’t really feel like there are any big changes to my style as a whole I need to make to keep improving, and instead I’m taking what I already have and refining it. I think over the course of the last year I’ve reached a point where I actually consider my art to be consistently at a professional level.

I think, at some point soon, I’m going to start actually doing commissions for real. I’ve already got most of the pricing stuff figured out…

Well, happy new year! Despite everything… I think I’m looking forward to the future.

[teoft]

Hot take but one of the problems with Bluesky is that it's The Leftist website. Which on one hand is good, as people there actually have empathy, but on the other hand the same people are being actively oppressed. The atmosphere is full of despair, and my timeline is filled with people with no money passing around each other's donation links. It's just bleak over there, and nobody can help anybody. And yet every other post is like "WHY ARE YOU STILL ON TWITTER RAAGH".

Every single time I try to do anything there it's fucking crickets all around, or I get ghosted. Twitter is complete insanity, but a lot of normal people unfortunately still use it, and I consistently get commissions there.

All in all, seems like the current main options are The Pit of Despair and The House of Madness. Pick your fucking poison.

[teoft]

Slowly coming to terms with the fact that I'm most likely on the autism spectrum, which would explain many aspects of my life. The thing making it difficult is this echo of an idea that I have to be normal to be worth anything. Also the fact that "autist" has been a derogatory thing for so long.

It's funny though, like this whole Yoji Shinkawa thing was a clear hyperfixation, but now it just is a part of my career and what I'm known for. I'm essentially making money off of my biggest hyperfixation.

[teoft]

It's like Tumblr has become almost a diary for me, thanks to no character limit and a read more button. This atmosphere of acceptance and understanding helps a lot too.

I'll get back to posting actual art, juggling with Twitter and Bluesky along with commissions is taking up a lot of my time.

Anyway, thoughts about art community and being social

For the longest time I've had this feeling of being an outsider in this vague community of artists that see as colleagues of sorts. Like I meet all the "criteria" of being in the group, and yet don't really feel like I'm part of it. Well, it seems I am right in some way, and the reason is that they interact with each other, while I sit here drawing alone.

Unfortunately I've always been prone to isolate myself from others. I grew up feeling like I should be ashamed of loving to draw, since it was always fanart monsters, creatures and cool guys instead of "proper art" like animals and portraits. Before social media, I only drew for myself and never showed anything to anybody. I hid my art from my family, from the world, so that I wouldn't be judged. I think it is one of the biggest reasons why I have trouble interacting with people in the context of art (tbh I'm shit at being social anyway but that's a whole another problem).

Even when I had a scanner and means to post my art online, I never did, due to the whole "if you put something online it'll be there forever" mindset. My first actual account anywhere online must've been Facebook in 2010ish, where I only had a few friends. It was the perfect place for me to finally post anything online, and so I did: I used to post pretty much everything I drew on there. Slowly gaining courage, I eventually made my original Tumblr account, then Deviantart, Twitter, etc.

Still, all I did was throw my art out there in hopes of somebody liking it. I didn't really know how to interact with the people who commented on my posts, so instead I mostly just... made more art. I did have some friend groups here and there, but either they ended up falling apart or my social battery drained in such a way that I slowly drifted away. I had gotten used to just being by myself and relying only on myself in the online art world.

During my design studies, I started putting more thought and work on promoting myself, so that it could be one career path for me to take. My mindset was that I'll work hard and become "big", even if it meant that one post gained me just one follower. In 2020 I ended up going viral with a meme and suddenly getting tens of thousands of followers. It was great and a welcome boost of morale, but unfortunately 2020 was otherwise one of the worst years in my life.

Throughout the years people have come and gone, so the only constant for me has been myself, and my drive to develop my skills. Thus it's been too easy for me to just isolate myself. In a way it has been my strength with regards to art, but sometimes I wish I knew how to make lasting connections. I think/know I might be autistic to some degree, which adds to the difficulty of being social. Though, to be honest, I don't know if I'd gotten this far without my autistic hyperfixations.

I guess the thing I need to do now to fix this problem of loneliness and isolation is to just... slowly try and be more social. To reply to comments and talk to people. All of which is easier said than done. Still, just gotta take that first step and then keep going.

Despite lacking the kind of community I yearn for, it seems I've made a name for myself, enough so that people seem to take pride in knowing me. Or at least that's the impression I've gotten a few times. But still, I am happy that I've had a positive effect on people. After all, my two main motivators in art are that I like doing it, and I like when people enjoy my art.

[teoft]

Social media is a fuck

Yesterday I drew that "my invincible war oc" meme, and posted it here, Bluesky and Twitter. Well, as you might know, Twitter was almost unusable and possibly under a cyber attack. Despite this, can you guess where the post went viral?

Twitter. Even when the clusterfuck of a shitshow of a website was exploding, the post still got 500 retweets and 4.5k likes. I can't even fucking look at the comments.

Meanwhile it got 20 reposts and 100 likes on Bluesky.

I hate what Twitter is now, and Bluesky feels so much more welcoming, but the problem is that I just have no reach on BS: I've yet to get a commission client on there. It's just dead on there.

All of this makes me feel like I'm some sort of gimmick artist; that I need the ability to go viral to succeed. That when posts have to stand on their own merits, when the art has to be good enough to be liked and shared, I fail.

I feel like the artist version of a meme: funny when shared, but mostly worthless as a thing itself.

[teoft]

Don't wanna complain on Twitter, there's enough going on there anyway:

Twitter was the first and only of my accounts that became big. It was one of my biggest achievements in a way, since it was "concrete evidence" that a lot of people enjoy my art. I haven't been able to replicate the numbers anywhere, and I'm afraid I never will.

Even though big number is nice, it was always mostly about visibility and finding commission clients. Without that and the financial boost from commissions, I just... don't know. This shit couldn't be happening at a worse time. I don't have the energy to just rebuild everything.

I guess it was cool to larp as a big artist for four years, but now I feel I'll just fade away into the underbrush of social media once again.

[teoft]

Most of my commissions are more or less OC illustrations, but every now and then I get a client who needs an illustration for promo or merch and such.

I can't really tell too many details, but a while back I got a client who needed an illustration for a collaboration pitch. I was pretty happy with the work, and the possible collab could've been cool. Unfortunately a certain rapper dropped an album soon after and I don't think the collab is going to happen, due to ruined public images.

The thing I'm most sad about is that I don't know if I can ever show off that commission. Many such cases over the years.

[teoft]

The other day I was reminded that there are different levels to getting soaked in the rain:

Your jacket is wet, maybe pants too, annoying but manageable, the clothes might dry out in the time you run around a store etc.

All your clothes are starting to be wet and heavier, socks and underwear included. This fucking sucks, gotta change all clothes when possible.

The moisture has soaked deep in your being. Your soul is soaked. Your mind is saturated. Nature laughs at your waterproof clothing. Being dry seems like dream. Rain is all you know, and will ever know. You start to dissassociate due to being so wet.

[teoft]

I think the fact that a slashed zero is visually similar to the simulations of a black hole is a beautiful coincidence.

[teoft]

Something something assigning blue to raspberry makes sense since colors like red, blue, green, yellow are easy to reproduce, and red is already strawberry, green is apple and yellow is lemon.

Still, the fact that it's blue makes it feel like it tastes different. I'm not the biggest fan of raspberry, but blue raspberry? Hell yeah.

[teoft]

Made an oral sex noise into a catchphrase, seemed to be set for life (minus the crypto rugpull)

Called a kid a slur, on way to becoming a millonaire over the weekend

Sometimes it's all just completely fucked

[teoft]

I think this year might've been the funniest time to start trying to work on my mental health.

[teoft]

"not all Americans" is starting to sound a lot like "not all men"

[teoft]

A few years back I was checking out a bunch of streamers, mostly due to raiding and shoutouts by other streamers. I used to do a bunch of doodles for them while watching the streams, and I ended up with the reputation of "appears out of nowhere and posts MGS style fanart".

At one point a streamer kinda "gently" kept urging me to watch their streams, which gave me uncomfortable vibes: it turned out they were hoping for fanart, as I had done that with a lot of streams I watched. I don't remember exactly how and I don't feel like checking the messages, but I ended up drawing a fully colored bust commission for them, and never got paid for it. Maybe it was a miscommunication or whatever, but at that point I cut my losses and I haven't associated with or watched the streamer since.

[teoft]

I keep reading about artists who are infamous for taking years with commissions and owing tons of people art or refunds.

And here I am getting bumped by a car and lamenting about not being able to work on a commission due to arm hurting. So maybe I can cut myself a bit of slack.

(Re: car: I'm ok physically, in the end only thing that was hurt was my shoulder and my trust in other people in traffic. Mentally though, idk. worrying about everything else but yourself after an incident is not healthy, but I'm working on that.)