sugarfiendgfx

[sugarfiendgfx]

Uploading some recent pieces from the last few years.

This is my otso, taking clipping from his willow tree.

[sugarfiendgfx]

I just think they're neat

the Vaporeon was a christmas gift from the other year.

[sugarfiendgfx]

Progress is being made! Can't wait to add the people and the banners and the first piece of art for Silversong will be complete for the first time in literal years

[sugarfiendgfx]

Illustration sketch titled judgement.

Kinda pivotal to my rewriting process and getting back in touch with these characters and kick-starting the next part of this story.

[sugarfiendgfx]

New haircut for Bowen

[sugarfiendgfx]

Progress report!!

I've rewritten on the plot properly for Silversong, with flow charts, creative maps so that my brain can follow it and not distract itself.

I have rescripted chapter 5, rethumbnailed scene 4 because I've lost all thumbnails from the before times.

I have a plan to illustration futures scenes I'm excited about so that I can stop myself RUSHING to get there.

I'm 2 months behind where I wanted to be because of agency work but money is money.

Also been the doctors about my joint pains and I think we're close to a diagnosis (hopefully)

Next is clearing up the debris on the website (SSL Certificates, yay) and put a defibrillator to the comic platforms.

Once we have a nice little backlog of comics waiting in the wings we're ready to start rolling these out weekly.

After that is clean up of the publishing side and rising funds to order books for selling, either at markets, online and/or indie stores.

Let's go people!

Thanks to Paul Sobecki for being my sounding board man! Love ya!

[sugarfiendgfx]

[sugarfiendgfx]

Getting to grips with old characters with new software. All the while on some new outfit design.

[sugarfiendgfx]

Warm up of a future concept. I've been going over the written concept and outlines, adding and pruning and how to remind myself how to draw this characters on demand.

More to come. Like the social media icons logo needs a redo.

Comic website need a spring clean and new SLL certificates and what not.

Give this post a like or thumbs up or whatever to give this old girl the boost to push onwards and upwards (also poke my ADHD that I was doing a task before I got distracted)

[sugarfiendgfx]

To those on Cara, this is my handle!!

[sugarfiendgfx]

So it appears has though my creativity was like a dormant volcano.

In the space of week, since unleashing my pent up sadness/rage/guilt I have ...

-write a DND campaign (short, 5 sessions)

-gotten a kids book idea from brainstorming with my son.

-started reviewing the silversong chapter rewrites (not the existing content, the unpublished stuff)

-been brave and attended a illustrator meetup and hoping to go to more.

[sugarfiendgfx]

Trauma's a bitch ...

2018, that was my last post. I've been doing a lot of soul searching the past few years. Life's been hard, but who here hasn't felt the that things have gotten rather tough?

So what the excuse for the absence? Why did I stop drawing) why did I let my comic ROT! Just good old trauma. You know the saying that the grass is always greener on the other side? Well I guess I fell for that old adage. I took a job, closer to home with better pay and seemingly better prospects, and within 18 months it began to eat away at me from within. All my flaws left magnified, my every step under scrutiny. At first you tell yourself to grown up and get on with it, be an adult and learn to cope. But it's taken until now to truly understand that a part of me knew something was wrong and that I was hollowing myself out.

I got pregnant in 2018, had my boy in 2019 which was classified as a traumatic birth. We both nearly died and mainly due to noone hearing my concerns, I knew something was a miss and I was right. I won't get lost in the weeds. Tired and in survival mode I trudged on, went back to work.

Then you spot it, the same pattern, the way the company likes to remove people they don't think are a good fit. No meetings addressing the issue, just cutting their involvement in mainline projects, assigning their work to others, cutting their dept budgets or assigning them unreachable goals and then you see it happening to you, and you KNOW what comes next. It either a 'redudancy' or an off-site sacking followed by a fake ass company wide email about how YOU decided to leave the company to pursue your passions.

I get pulled into a manditory 6 months review meeting to check how I'm doing after coming back from maternity leave, only to be served a redundancy marked the same day as my birthday. Happy birthday to me! 🎉

I saw it coming, but it STILL stung. "It's not you, it's just business" but you know that's not true. These smiling assassins have performed this play by the book to everyone else who wasn't well received or who didn't play ball. But they don't like confrontation, they'd rather the problem just disappeared. They want me to disappear...

Cue COVID!

The chaos, the stress, the fear, the isolation. The world changes, but you're still hurting. The healing doesn't really come. You feel broken and damaged but you have a child to look after, so you're stuck survival mode.

I had not found joy in my creations for sooooo looooooong, and that hurt. The guilt, the anger, the sadness trapped in a loop.

But in the past year or so, I've felt that spark start to ignite again. The path to healing hasn't been straight forward but similar to that of an artist. The wobbly line that climbs upwards so you progress. with leaps and setbacks along the way but the healing is happening and I am starting to recover, I'm starting to feel 'me' again.

Why'd it have to take years? Who knows, but looking back on this blog, my deviantart account, my comic, I'm feeling that enjoy again. That cruel voice in my head quietening. I've lost so much time, or have I? Is this what was needed, this very painful journey or growth? Had that toxic job consume too much unnoticed and this was what was needed to repair? Who knows.

What I do know is that I took a look and decided on what I wanted to be not want people expect. I did the same for my art. The worse part was that I ever let them make me believe my art wasn't good enough. Perhaps I wasn't the right fit, but I and the art was still good.

Getting this out has been healing. And once I hit post it'll feel real. And even if noone reads it, I'll know it out there in the void, it's been aired and I can move on finally and stop dwelling on the past and get on with it all!

If you stuck it out this far, kudos! Give yourself a pat on the back! That was a long read!

[sugarfiendgfx]

I didn't like infinity wars...

MASSIVE SPOILERS! IF YOU WANNA SEE IT VIRGIN, DONT READ

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Ok, so last night was practically the first marvel film I didn't enjoy. I mentioned this my husband we left and said "but you deathly hallows part one? They're practically the same!" And that got me thinking and reaffirmed WHY I walked away disappointed.

My first point, the pacing. Its so fast it could give you whiplash. It barrelled along at breakneck speed to show you all the awesome characters from the MCU but at the cost of character development and leaving everyone feeling like flat characters. The only one that didn't was Thanos. I enjoyed his development but not at the cost of undermining several interesting and compelling characters. So my second point, character development.

And here I'll draw comparison to deathly hallows for my husband's sake. DH did develop its characters, in fact it stressed it. The whole point of part one was gear them to the fight with a try and fail cycle. Every downbeat in deathly was followed up by an uptick in either determination, friendship or introspection. The pacing allowed for that and nurtured it. Where as in IW ... It's was all downbeats that undercut the character previously done development or tried to uptick on a one liner punchline. Intact at 5 minutes in I seriously questioned 'what was the point in Thor Ragnarok?' its message and Thor character progression was robbed in mere moments. Intact ... Thor's whole arc in IW destroys Ragnaroks message. This is recurring problem with nearly all the 'heros' in the story, they all fail and learnt nothing and don't progress, hell the only ONE I think that did learn died so that moment was kinda robbed too.

Now the narrative does follow logical conclusions are it barrels along. The main problem is that the hero's of the story achieve nothing, they learn nothing from thier failures and therefore don't progress. Even the deaths are anticlimactic, not one was an heroic death, one almost was before it went for a do over and fell flat. By half way, I could see the formula, knew what was coming, wait for the twist that never came and emotionally checked out. Infact it became so formulaic that Thanos used the same tactic 3 times to achieve his goals. Torture loved one in front of hero, hero tries to grin and bear it but gives in, hero gives Thanos what he wants, Thanos then kills the hero. 3 times! In one movie!

By half way, I stopped enjoying the jokes and fight scenes because I knew the out come and was sorely disappointed.

So back to what my husband said, why did I enjoy Deathly Hallows and not Infinity wars? Well at the end of DH it's was grim, fearful but a strong sense determination and will in the face of death. IW left me exhausted defeated and learning nothing, and the movies hinted resolution from it part two is a cryptic notes about a magical caption mcguffin that's had no screen time of emotional build up that I assume at this point will perform a Deux Machina and that doesn't inspire me.

In all honesty, this should have been 2 movies ... There were too many characters on screen that fell flat or were undercut or retro developed, the pacing didn't get a chance to breath. And some scene were just pointless too, like the neuro surgery scene that goes nowhere plot wise.

I really really want to like this. I've been looking forward to this for year and I hate that all I did bwas walk out disappointed and unentused to see another marvel movie.

[sugarfiendgfx]

More #starfinder sketches!! Toli our curious mechanic and Alex our incompetent employer (NPC)

[sugarfiendgfx]

A NEW interview with yours truly!!! http://artofwebcomics.com/silversong-exclusive-interview-with-sam-chapman/ #webcomic #comicbooks #comics #fantasy #yafantasy #interview #makingcomics #adventure #dungeonsanddragons #storytelling #support #indie #creators #blog

[sugarfiendgfx]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sam Chapman (@thesilversongcomic)

WHOOPS! Had a pretty bad typo on yesterday's page! All fixed now thou! http://silversongcomic.com/comic/chapter-5-page-3/ #comic #page #support #indie #creators #webcomic #ya #manga #heroine #comics #fantasy #adventure #comicbooks via @RiplApp

[sugarfiendgfx]

I coloured it.