protopinkshot - Tumblr blog

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My artfight attacks so far - the alien is Jexa, who belongs to Lumiixen. The catgirl is Cheshie, who is the vtuber design for ZombieCheshireProductions on Twitch. The gyaru belongs to BrunoKomaeda. This is my first year for artfight, and it's been fun!

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Oh man oh man, things have been golden lately! I ended up buying a Wacom Cintiq 24HD for a criminally low price ($120). It was sold "as is" with the idea that it might not work. No power supply, no pen. I already had a grip pen from my Intuos that was compatible, and found a power cable. It works, and it works beautifully. No lag and a total dream to work on!

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I'm loving the new Fallout show! But seriously, the curtains!

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In your view/experience. is the rate of "incompleteness" among webcomics more or less the nature of online personal projects as a whole? Or is there something specific to webcomics like laboriousness, audience expectations, relative medium infancy or whatnot?

well for one thing webcomics has changed significantly in the last ten years. it used to have a much lower barrier for entry, just get a smackjeeves account or set up a website with a wordpress plugin. starting a webcomic when i started my webcomic vs starting a webcomic now are totally different experiences.

so i can only speak to people who started their webcomics roughly ten years ago. and roughly ten years ago a lot of us were a whole lot younger with a lot more time and energy to spend on a comic for free. this part is probably still somewhat true for new artists.

but then you get older. your ideas change. your skill develops and the old stuff isn't as good. or you don't have as much time, you got a day job. unless you're one of like five people on earth your webcomic is not paying your rent. you need to make money. your shoulder hurts. you're 30 now. you're struggling to make updates on time between whatever else makes you happy and what else you need to do to live. you wrote this story when you were 21, you don't relate to it anymore, you have different ideas, you've grown up, your audience has noticeably dropped off from the peak, social media managing is hard, you have to go to work, you're so tired, all the time.

it's a lot of things.

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Happy TBT, everyone!

These are roughly from 2019. Copic markers in a small sketchbook.

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Now what?

For a very long time I was burnt out. Almost a decade now. During that time I kept posting, but I noticed a very common theme in all of my posts.

"Attempting to draw again!"

"Shaking off the dust!"

Almost always one of those two. I refused to admit how hard things were, except to my nearest and dearest. I especially didn't want to admit it to myself.

I watched both of my parents, back to back, die from cancer. I worked retail during the pandemic. I accepted a promotion to management in order to keep hours. I was so ill fitted to be a manager that I ended up not having a sober night for over a year. I left that job and the drinking stopped immediately. I moved mountains and managed to get my dream job. The kind of job that sounds like a myth - amazing pay, interesting work, great coworkers, great cause.

Then my own health issues kicked in. Dislocated knee. Pulmonary embolism. I spent Christmas with a very talented group of people pulling blood clots out of my lungs and heart. I lived.

I spent the two months following that completely altering my diet, and being very aggressive about physical therapy. I wanted to walk again.

I can (almost) walk normally now.

I was awake through my surgery. I spent a lot of time thinking when on the table. With any operation there are risks. I sat down and though, okay, what is it that I actually want to DO?

I wanted to spend more time with my family and friends, and I wanted to pick up that fucking pen again.

I've been making good on spending time with the people I care about. I spend a lot of time doing that. Now it's time to make good to myself.

Art is a funny thing. Fresh off of my surgery I managed to do a full watercolor painting as a gift for a friend. Since then though? It's all felt empty. I'll pick up a pen, get immediately tired, and walk away to do something else.

I no longer know any of my tools. I have so many of them, collected and maintained over a lifetime. I want to get to know them again.

Time to get up, coward.