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Nsyse Yearly Art Review 2020 by ScruffyBrush

Nsyse Yearly Art Review 2020

ScruffyBrush

Jan - Royal Smugster : https://www.deviantart.com/nsyse/art/Royal-Smugster-836477901
I don’t know if I have anything to add on top of the wall of text of the original submission.
I’m surprised I didn’t mess with it and completed another piece.
I did have a second cloud made with it, but it didn’t turn out too inspiring. I tried training it on some of my pieces but they contain too much empty BGs so it gets as lazy as me


Feb - Koby’s Soup Adventure : [TO BE POSTED]
Noxid quit his job to dedicate himself to personal projects and collaborate on friends’ recently. Really excited to see how they turn out. That piece was some fanart/promo but mostly an excuse to get me to doodle something when I was out of ideas.
Having nox drop his job while I was just a few months into mine was a bit scary but I think we did the calculations right and everything should be fine. I hope to join the indie game scene too when I feel ready for it, but I don’t think I have similar autodiscipline to work on my own beyond art commissions here and there. Doesn’t mean I still won’t try but in a slower, more risk averse manner. More on that in november.


Mar - ACNH paintings collection : [TO BE POSTED]
I’d like to say “In march something terrible happened” but really it’s “2020 started”. I was scared af, didn’t finish probation yet, but the studio adapted pretty well and very quick to work from home situation. I’m really glad I started working there and still hoping half (or ideally, but unrealistically more of 2021) can be normal and I can work AT work.
The one good news is ACNH was so relaxing it literally puts me to sleep when I sometimes play it. I don’t like the game all that much, I mostly collect fish, bugs and fossils and obsessively focus on nookpoint missions to get currency I won’t even use. But I bought it anyway because finally a multiplayer one and I remembered it’s where I actually started pixelart on NGC. So I ended up doing some more pixel commissions with it, the strange rescaling algorithm was really fun and weird to work with. I think I ended up refunding about ¼ of the game with ACNH comms :)


Apr - Ghosts : [TO BE POSTED]
That piece was expanded from one of 4 song-long prompt, (Ghosts, Caravan Palace) Here’s the 4 song-long concepts : https://imgur.com/a/xpiuGaW
Something sucky happened in April and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to mention it but I can’t find anything I drew that doesn’t relate to it so I might as well.
Joined an art server and ended up posting scraps and WIPs. I was trying to get back into the rhythm of drawing on top of 40h week, which is harder than school and I didn’t do art or projects as much as I would’ve liked this year (familiar tune I hate to be playing again).
Anyway that server was full of nice people but it took one bad apple to ruin it for me. Which to make things worse was someone I once looked up to.
They’d always offer unasked for, unwanted and unhelpful criticism: they’d not even be pointing out the flaws in the drawings (which were rarely finished anyway), but directly stating it sucked instead (while they haven’t posted anything themselves in 5 years, obviously). They somehow wanted you to politely and gratefully go out of your way to treat them better than they did everyone else, praise their undeniably superior knowledge and claw out what the actual criticism, tips and advice they were purposely withholding were.
Fuck that.
When they couldn’t poop “criticism” to one of my WIPs they instead probed to know what was my process behind it instead, claiming it wasn’t the one true and correct way to produce art, I replied with this meme https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/mobile/000/028/207/Screen_Shot_2019-01-17_at_4.22.43_PM.jpg then they finally drew a sketch that explained what they suggested instead (which was not any different than what I did, except she included written self hatred in hers. Damn, I might have comforted her if she wasn’t a total waste of space) I left a few days after when I realized her presence was too toxic to make the rest of the group worth it.


May - thinking bf : [TO BE POSTED]
The good news is I started recovering art-wise. I like to think I never did shit like she did but I more consciously try to give precise art advice and encouragements whenever relevant now.
More importantly, I kept making doodles, still trying to get back into sketching after rushing hard at school at the end of 2019. (Oh yeah I graduated last year btw, finally I’m free for real.) Work can be similarly stressful, but I do what I love with people who actually also help me out (unlike school, which I still do nightmares about sadly).
I practiced speed during april-may, lots of streams just timing how long 30 min actually is, that’s definitely the best of those 30 min sketches. I’m not sure how quick I had already gotten in 2019 but I think overall I’m twice as fast now for sketching, which is in part why I haven’t changed my comm prices much this year. It’s cute how I can draw noxid without looking up his ref anymore :>
Never remember which side of the glasses is blue/red though.


Jun - Owl Headshot Commission : [TO BE POSTED]
Forayed back into pixelarts because I sometimes worry I might forget how to do it.
I experimented with purposely less harsh edges contours on this one and dam I loved it, newer pixels I did all incorporated that I think, basically had the revelation that not everything in my pixels benefits from a harsh outline. Also my birthday is in june, I forget what we did if anything for it :( (Maybe we went to lego store again??)


Jul - Socialist Teeth Léon : https://www.deviantart.com/nsyse/art/Toothy-Leon-848483663
A really fun hashtag was trending around on Twitter about how left leaning furries all had scary toothy PFP so I had to do myself one (And because apparently basic shit like free healthcare is considered a privilege, I consider myself a toothy furry). Experimented a bit with making some parts of the image subtly pixellized (Google Sheets is informing me right now that pixelated is the correct term, but I know better) because I had been too lazy to recreate my lost rough pattern brushes I used to rely on and thought it looked a bit bland texture-wise.
In the end I don’t think the pixel filter added much but I’m glad I tried. Kept experimenting without textured brushes still throughout the year, not sure if there’s any reasoning behind it or I’m just too lazy to want to recreate the brushes I lost by clearing my PC after completing school. Hakuna Matata, I probably still reached my new best in sketches this year anyway.


Aug - Are your clothes cursed : [TO BE POSTED]
Doodled this while on a call with a trans friend. Mostly an experiment with blending grayscale some to shade it properly and see if I like it better than rough raw strokes (still unsure, guess I like rawer??).
It’s inspired by the first time I played Alyssa in DnD (sadly campaigned died immediately as usual).
Alyssa is a complexed low-key bully. She starts off with her magical focus warped around self worth and suppresses her jealousy with deprecation of others.
I wanted to play her as a character nobody initially likes but ends up getting softer as the others grow on her or they save each others’ butts etc (“I saved you because you’re a valuable asset of our company, don’t read into it or I will reconsider next time.” type deal). This is her first interaction with a magical girl party member, it went :
Magical girl player describes their clothes
Alyssa : “Are your clothes cursed?”
“No why?”
“It would explain why you’re still wearing them.”
I let them know OOC their ref and description was great.
Along with Mathieu it was the most fun I had roleplaying in a campaign (he was a paladin who had mildly heated argument about whether his god was real with the sorcerer), sadly that game didn’t last 2 session either (though never drew that one)


Sep - ZBrush Kate Scrap :
I messed some more with ZBrush tutorials. I bought a subscription to force me to get somewhere around that time.
Learned a lot so far watching and applying about 8h of video tutorials. I made this mostly as I watched but sometimes I got overzealous, skipped ahead and did shit all wrong before I learned to do it proper.
As a result I didn’t get further on it yet and had to undo/redo the hands entirely to get to this. ZBrush is still a program I want to learn badly. Now I remembered I’m still paying for tuts access I’ll have to do some more today. Feets were unfinished blobs, that’s why I cut em out here.


Oct - Meanamite scrap :
October sucked. I think it was work related stress, but I forget. I think I didn’t make the mistake of trying to do daily drawings in october this year though. This is another of those I doodled trying to tell a story, she’s dropping a fancy cigarette holder into an oiled wick. Nox saw me render the head and asked what I was drawing, I answered :
“Idk, but she’s MEAN!” as I zoomed out.


Nov - Chaser, Project Pico :
Rough reverse engineered concept sketch I made from 3 sprites of a shmup project I started/revived around then.
The Chaser is a placeholder name for Kate’s stance-ship in the placeholder name Project Pico.
So far you can move around in nothingness, shoot, kill and die. Currently working on making it online-capable, then I’ll worry about making a game out of it. I expect I’ll create it very very slowly on and off.
So far this is the most satisfying point I got to : https://twitter.com/ZeNsyse/status/1330357495878070272 Now need to sync enemies and multiple player life bars. :s
//rant
I’ve been wanting to start this for a while and set unreasonable goal to complete it that year etc, but I was delaying it because I wanted to see what was Unity’s upcoming networking library. Scoop : It’s been like 5 years since they announced current one was unsupported garbage and a new one was coming soon (™). Fuck it, we starting now with unofficial free solutions (Mirror, really good recommendation thx again Lyze) and we’ll check later. There’s already so many technical constraints I didn’t expect just from throwing Mirror online coop in the equation and frustratingly issues I don’t wanna deal with (Was making a wide component-based architecture but Mirror can’t have that). I hope to reach a point sometime in 2021 where most of the technical issues are behind and I can worry about making it fun. /rant
I really wanna talk about what I want the game to be but I’ll eat my words like forever if I do start making promises as usual so no + talking about it is satisfying enough I might be satisfied and not want to actually make it anymore.
Just a shmup, probably online coop.


December - Resounding Voice :
December was finally a good month for art, I had some things I had to pick between unlike most of the year (though january had many I’m still happy with too, note also my bookkeeping was really bad this year).
Needed a break from work and ended up spending days off on the last few fridays/thursdays and week of 2020. Had time to make dum popcat meme icons (that meme put me in a good mood for some reason). Everything that month was either popcat or pixels if I recall.
Notably, my snepi Izzy ended up commissioning a new phone background. Izzy was really nice to work with and made me feel like I was good at what I did (impostor syndrome follows me everywhere I go). Took the time to do a quick side/side comparison as a joke (you vs the guy she tells you not to worry about) but it made me realize how far I’ve gotten in 3 years of on and off pixelling.
I normally present myself as a Bard or a hole filler half jokingly. I take pride in believing I’m knowledgeable or decent at a lot of things and being good at a single one is unnecessary. But now I think I can allow myself to be specifically proud of where I got my pixelart too :)


Resolutions time
Last year review :

  • 1+/week code : Definitely consider this one achiever now that coding is my job.

  • 1+/week draw stream : Missed the mark on that one, better luck next time

  • 45+ min/week exercise : We WERE doing 1h30 over 2days/week but then it kind of became unsafe to do so. Better luck next time (Also I got THICC, this will not be easy but I do want to resume it really bad)

  • Note down things I'm happy I did before bed, no detailed logging though so I don't get lazy doing it again : Oh shit I forgot about that one. I got 5 days logged... That goal was dumb but I think once/week sounds better, the whole point of it was trying to actively focus on small daily wins because I tend to beat me up over every mistakes but forget the good. I’ll find and reinstall one of those weird gameified good habits apps to try again but set it to weekly instead.


New year :

  • More ZBrush (make a textured and colored clothed character by next year)


    • Get a custom printed mini to explore feasibility of making custom sculpts comms (Stretch goal : paint that mini)

  • Setup Project Pico closed tests once it feels more like a game than a baby tech demo

  • Invite friends over when/if it becomes safe to again and draft the MTG cube

  • Resume weekly art/gaming streams on twitch (@ZeNsyse on Twitch; sundays 14:00-18:00)

  • Skip less meals

  • Finish Bango Kazooie

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