I’m Gonna Go Ahead And Do A Twitch Stream*, So Feel Free To Say “hi!”

I just realized that I could have easily made an MS Excel spreadsheet for the economic model I usually construct for quoting design, instead of doing everything by hand with a pen and paper.

It would even automatically calculate annual metro-area inflation discrepancies FOR ME if I structured it like that, so that I can just feed it yearly data without worrying about it.

Doing it all on paper is just punching myself in the face.

I felt like my headphone cords draped around my head would make a neat aesthetic. I was right. Also, I like my face.

My style of procrastinating—work on other things that aren’t immediately productive, but are productive for things later on down the road that I enjoy.

That said, I’m still a sad sap who’s trying to make black and brown work. (But oh boy, can I tell you how much I like dark reds combined with black?)

Also, because I mentioned this guy’s in the Twitch stream earlier today without realizing that I never properly introduced him, this character is not “Vaporwave Trash Child” (as I’m now nicknaming the character on the cover page), I was explaining who on earth the small dude by the door of the first page I’m working on is, and it might not be easy to see a tiny layer label in a Twitch stream, ...I will also show a character design thingy I did a while ago for the small dude by the door on the first page I drew.

I also wrote @plaguenurse‘s comment of “10/10 elf” on there, because I felt like it.

I may also have to fix dem eyebrows, because his eyebrows really shouldn’t be solid if I was planning on him being some shade of blonde.

So, I finally got to making the base vector for my webcomic’s logo...other little fixes aside. Also, this means that the name of this project is out there. :P

(That said, I have learned that it’s actually significantly harder to make wordmarks in Adobe Illustrator that look like wood carvings than it is to do more curvy handlettering in it. Yikes.)

I was thinking about how I starting learning Adobe Photoshop stuff way back in 2007 when I was 15…and back when Adobe Photoshop CS2 was cutting edge, you had to pay for it. Which is unlike now, where CS2 is officially free from Adobe (sort of), but Creative Cloud subscriptions are a thing, but that’s even more expensive.

I also thought about the first album design I ever made back then as well, and my dad kindly posted it on Facebook and tagged me in it.

I forgot how bad it was. Dear lord, the back and front have no cohesion, warped text is terrible, there’s way too many fonts, and tilting text is generally a no-no unless you really know what you’re doing… but I actually appreciate looking at it, because I’m looking at it and going “Oh wow, I’ve improved a lot in the past 10 years.”

It’s also really interesting to see what’s stayed the same, because there’s a few things I can clearly pinpoint as consistent things. Firstly, I clearly like either A) bright colors, or B) dark and moody stuff. Secondly, I am clearly a nerd, considering that the first one has a modded amp tube diagram on the back, and the second one has a Sierpenski gasket. Thirdly, I always seem to have ridiculous ideas for song names.

It’s nice to have reminders of how far you’ve come. It really is. I was the kind of kid who got frustrated with a lot of my work and would just wantonly throw things I made out if I deemed it to be terrible for what I could do later. That hasn’t helped me too much nowadays.

(Also, I’m very, very tempted to redesign the old one. I could probably make something a lot better now.)

So, I made a bit of progress on the first comic page, and I made a little bit of progress on the logo stuff for the comic.

Also, @plaguenurse had a comment on Twitch that basically made me laugh maniacally for a good minute or so while working on the architecture on the top panel.

I forgot to upload this here, although I did it a while ago with a friend who I did a lot of design challenges with to keep both of our skills as sharp as possible. We tend to alternate who comes up with the theme, and it was his turn when we got to this one.

We basically tried to design something based around the Bruce Lee quote “Be Water, My Friend”— which is a really eloquent quote. We also had a time limit of about 45 minutes.

Anyway, I’ve made these into stickers a few times. They were actually really popular at the last exhibition I had my work in. Also, this is transparent for all of your transparent needs.

Lastly, I should also note that the overlaid image -is- public domain, but it’s the Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, if you don’t know it.

I’m so glad that I managed to finish this tonight! It’s been something I’ve been wanting to finish for a while now. That said, I’ve learned that my current stamina for drawing without getting hand cramps is somewhere in the ballpark range of about 6 straight hours.

Anyway, enjoy these sad saps.

I’ve been working on my current rebranding from weliad to Dandy Rebel, and other than the first letter, I think I have the general draft of how I want the first part of the logo ready to go.

Also, I swear that these aren’t the final colors. I just wanted to fiddle with them because I usually use turquoise as the color I draft things in, so I figured that it’d be fun to make an orange and turquoise halftone during the process, before I do proper inking, make a vector version of the file, etc.