hcnone

Friday Rambles 2022-11-11

Added 2022-11-12 02:10:16 +0000 UTC

It's the Friday Rambles.

So, I published this on my Email Distro which will serve as a weekly newsletter, and I guess it's just merging with the Friday Ramble now. Which means more content for you! That's good, right?

There's also bonus stuff below which would normally be for paid subscribers, which I've added for my dear Patrons, as promised before.

Anyway, thanks for your support!

Published this week:

Endless Monday Monthly Issue 3

Published the monthly zine this week! Yeah, it’s the main reason why this email distro even exists! I had a lot of fun making it, and spent most of this week packing orders for the really cool people who have been buying a physical copy every month. Honestly, I can’t believe how cool they are. Anyway, click below to read: CLICK

Sundowner Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (request)

A commission. I had fun with it, if you can tell. If I can just make goofy faces all the time, all commissions would be fun.

Tiger-chan

After her appearance in Issue 3, I just wanted to draw her again. Tiger-chan! Rawr!

This newsletter

Pretty meta, huh. I’m putting effort into it, I swear!

Other things I’m working on

I’m working on some new stickers for the shop. I’ve found from selling physical copies of the zines that people also like to buy other stuff with them too, but I don’t have anything new for this third issue! So for the next one I’ll have a bunch of new stickers for the returning fans ;)

I’m working on finishing up my commissions. Once I’m done, I’ll probably be focusing purely on my original works (with some fanarts for stuff I like sprinkled here and there, of course). Drawing other peoples’ characters for money, while fun, feels suspiciously like a job, and I want to explore doing other creative things before I have to resume my “real” career in a couple months. Unless something magical happens, which I’m not counting on…

I have more shop orders to pack, and I’ll probably be shipping them all out tomorrow. I went to the post office today to ship the first batch, and found that it was closed for a holiday. I don’t know when holidays are anymore!

Stuff I cared about

Serif released “version 2” of their Affinity creative suite this week. After dropping my Adobe Photoshop subscription I’ve been using Affinity Photo almost every day for editing and adjustments for exporting my artwork and zine scans, and it works really well. They’re having a 40% off sale right now for all apps in the suite (I should start using Affinity Publisher to fancify the zine a bit, too…)

Ghibli x Star Wars? A Baby Yoda short by Studio Ghibli releasing tomorrow on Disney+… That reminds me, I still have to watch Star Wars: Visions. And Andor. I don’t know, I used to be super into Star Wars before the new trilogy made me stop caring, but I did like the Mandalorian series and the Obi-Wan series, too. Maybe it’s a good time to catch up again.

I randomly logged into Battle.net for the first time in like 5 years, and I was surprised by a gift of 150 free Hearthstone packs. I don’t know if I have the patience to climb the Hearthstone ladder again, but I do like the dopamine hit of opening those packs… and hey, it’s free…

Mob Psycho 100 is probably my favorite anime that’s been released in the past 10 years. I only add that qualifier because Nichijou was released 11 years ago (wow), and that’s my favorite anime of all time. Anyway, every season has been so good, and Season 3 is no exception. Go watch it if you haven’t!!!!! (Also watching this season: Spy x Family, Pop Team Epic 2, and on my watch list still: DIY, Bocchi the Rock)

Pikmin Bloom is having its first anniversary Community Week event this week. I’ve been dutifully walking and planting flowers to find all the first anniversary special Pikmin and grab all the Community Day badges I missed over the past year (just 4 of them!). I love my Pikmin. I will keep them happy by walking many steps and planting lots of flowers.

And lastly, yeah, yeah, Twitter is going down in flames, and I had a really long and cranky rant all typed up for the bonus ramble below, but I ended up deleting it because it’s not interesting and everyone already knows what a train wreck this week has been. Now I don’t have anything to post in the bonus section except a new Tiger-chan comic. So I typed up some words about how much I dislike going to the mall. Such is life.

Bonus words and Tiger-chan Interlude comic below!

First of all, I really appreciate you. I still kind of can’t believe how many people actually like the EMM, and I’ve gotten so many nice emails and words. People have told me that they normally never buy stuff from artists but they bought physical copies of every issue of the zine because they related to the words so much (which is wild to me). And that’s worth way more to me than some fanart post on Twitter with 100k likes where like not even 10% of them are from people who care at all that I drew it. I hope to make it worth your while and post fun and interesting stuff each week, because I do have a lot of words in me. A real chatterbox I tell you what.

This section will just be extra bonus stuff, like comics and a ramble. It’ll probably vary wildly in terms of what topic it is, but it’ll all be stuff I’m personally interested in, and maybe stuff you’re interested in.

I had a long ramble here (and it was really long, like a damn essay) about how incompetent the new ownership of Twitter is, but it was boring and needed way more editing and in the end I decided it didn’t really fit the spirit of the newsletter in the first place. It’s becoming my writing process, though, where I have a bunch of drafts that I end up not liking, but I guess that’s the same way it is with my artwork too. Sketch a bunch of stuff, and maybe one will end up being okay enough to finish. The replacement ramble is kind of like one of those funny faces I have Skye make for a picture when I’ve gone too long without drawing anything and need to reset.

I went to the mall and did not think about Twitter

I was at the mall all day with family, who are visiting this week. Due to the holiday, which I had forgotten about due to no longer having a work calendar, it was completely packed, and it took 30 just to find parking. Then we waited 50 minutes to eat at the Cheesecake Factory. It was loud and there were people everywhere. My pandemic brain is not used to so many people in the same place, and now I’m very tired. I could feel my soul lifting out of its body, and felt like I was fading away into the crowd, like a ghost. At least I got a lot of steps in with my Pikmin.

When it’s not a holiday or weekend, I actually like going to the mall a lot. It’s empty and a nice place to walk around, like you’re in an actual functioning walkable city center. I’ll miss being able to do that when I’m working normal work hours again.