Good morning Weasyl. Been a little bit since I’ve posted. Hope you’re all doing well since summer has started. Winter for all of you on the bottom side of the planet :P. I’m just sorta opening up talking a bit and giving a little preemptive heads up on what I’m looking at this summer.

Outside of some working trips I’ve had a pretty static eight months or so without any serious external issues dumping out of the ether on me. So that’s nice. Hopefully that continues and no hurricanes in my near future.

Over the next couple of months I’m going to start putting more attention to RL existence than I have been lately, and relegating arts to some practice stuff for maybe then next month or two. Plus, I’ll have a couple of weeks dead time where I know I won’t be able to draw at all. So, some basic skills practice that I might maybe dust off my steaming software to broadcast. Not sure yet. Made those promises before and nothing came of them. However, one thing I am going to do is start trickling out an image or two a week and I should be able to do that into the fall since I do have a backlog of at least decent enough scraps to share. I would like to keep a steady flow of engagement here, instead of just dropping a whole bunch and remaining quiet for another six months.

That's great Menagerie, but why are you telling me all this instead of posting when you can like normal?

Well, because when I look at what I’ve got a lot of it is those conjoined, belly faced taurs. Which, checking my stats page are clearly not the most popular creations I’ve made up. So, what’s going to happen is this summer is it’s going to appear like I’m suddenly fixated on these guys at the exclusion of a lot else, which isn’t actually the case. I’ve just posted everything else as I completed it over the past year, while a pic involving them went straight to the storage directories, and I’ve been poking at ideas for them over the past 18 months. I’ve seen artists I’ve followed dive into something they’ve become fascinated with at the exclusion of all else, and it’s frequently something pretty niche or not what the bulk of the audience is there for. I just wanted to let you all know I’m still drawing all the ‘other stuff’ I just don’t have much that’s good looking to post right about now. Those kinds of images should pick up again as I get them done.

So why did you draw all these things and not some of the more, clearly popular characters or ideas that you’ve made?

Heh, I’ve got no good answer for this other than the muse goes where it goes. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I have indulged in a lot of world building with the taurs which has actually been enjoyable to the exclusion of other ideas. There’s like 23ish paired characters I came up with and working out character dynamics, and story threads, and scenarios they could go through has been a fun, low level exercise while I’m driving, walking, or whatever else to engage in that I haven’t done, on this scale, in quite some time. While worldbuilding I think is an important part to writing a story, it’s like the fun part that doesn’t require nearly as much work as writing an actual story where I need to develop narrative, plot, chop down which characters I’m focusing on, the point of the whole thing, etc. And it’s a story I’m not really gonna do. They’re also easy for me to doodle and I don’t build the expectations I have for myself with my other work, and thus not as much pressure so I can just say ‘stop’ on an image more easily whenever it stops being fun, and not bother with how they all look together. So, I’ve also used them to see how some comic layouts look, practice some composition techniques, pencil settings, and other ideas. More than I have with someone like Jack.

So, I hope everyone else has a good summer ahead of them, and I’ll see you all around.