For these past few months after Comifuro, it felt like a slowing down time for me with developing merch and content – I do have three upcoming conventions in close times (Chibicon in August, Cocoma in September and the next Comifuro in November), but I feel it’s a short time and I may not be able to make new stuff or restock things on schedule (as usual, life throws things to plans haha).
On the brighter side though (for me at least) – I got to enjoy some new stuff I enjoy like K-Pop Demon Hunters, To Be Hero X, Clair Obscur (watching the gameplay but it still emotionally destroyed me), and more. I even got to finally watch through The Lord of the Rings movie which uh, I fell asleep in my previous watch attempt whoops so I finally got my redemption arc :’)
I get to draw some new pieces inspired from the things I watched – and KPDH music is definitely looping on my playlist until today! There are more things I wanted to draw but haven’t got around to though, but hopefully I can get around to it for future events. I’m thinking to squeeze in some more KPDH stuff for next convention, but it seems like a tight time so we’ll see if I can make it…?
I managed to make some of them into prints for future events – also got to make the derpy tiger and sussy magpie art I did into magnet bookmarks! I’m happy to see how it turns out and hope other KPDH fans enjoy it too. They will debut on Chibicon Jakarta on August this weekend!
Update – I ended up finishing the Huntrix girls and made them into sticker sheets on time for Chibicon! I had fun rewatching the movie and finding which iconic expressions that looks fun to draw! I hope I get to draw Saja Boys next too.
I feel I draw most when I get inspired by the fandoms I like – for these months the long running fandoms I’ve been stuck with are mostly Honkai Star Rail and Nikke. When people ask why don’t I make original content more, well I often get too invested in the fandoms that I like that it drives me to draw heheh.
I haven’t got ideas for comics style art as I used to back then like in Genshin era, but there are characters that I feel are just calling on to me to draw them – either from the design I see from the start, or emotional moments in the game that got me attached to that character.
I tried to draw different concepts to showcase the character while also making sure I can finish the art for not too long time since I have limited time with work and stuff – and also making the art can showcase the traits I like of the character. Most of my recent art is done in one sitting in a day so I can move on with other things the next day with my unpredictable schedule, with another day mostly cooking the idea and finalizing the sketch first.
I feel my approach has changed somewhat to focus making singular artwork that can be shown on its own and I hope can suit into printed medium too, hoping it’ll also train me to improve my rendering skill, coloring experiments and drawing speed. I do miss drawing some silly comics too but I’ll probably get back to it when I do get struck by the idea. It’s a little bit hard to explain in words but I feel there’s something changing in my recent art posts compared to other fanarts I did in previous years.
For Nikke, mostly I feel engaged with the world and story lore, and some characters just look interesting for me that I am curious to try drawing them (the game may look very gooner or fanservicey but I greatly enjoy reading the story and worldbuilding there that I stuck playing from the launch days).
For the Laplace one it was part of a Nikke tarot project to promote the Arcana character, while the other one was an interaction inspired from the Stellar Blade and Nikke collab story which is heartwarming. I’m looking forward to see the future stories and do have some other characters I want to draw hopefully one day! I’m also happy to see Dorothy, my favorite Nikke character got a new outfit!
Lately I got dragged around with work and family trips which I guess shifted priorities for me for the past few months. Things got me thinking about ‘I think there are more important things for the future I should start focusing to take care of’ and ‘is it okay for me to spend this much time drawing and joining conventions and stuff? Is it just too carefree, like maybe I should learn to draw faster so I can spend less time on it and be more efficient with my time to do other useful things!’ and stuff like that.
Watching different series that engaged me also kinda swayed me to be more, hmm, kind of more passive to enjoy other art that already existed instead of wanting to make my own kind of feeling. I know I’ll end up in the same decision in the end though – I’d keep on drawing anyway, just a matter of how often, what to make and how far I can go with it. Life can be stressful so I wanted drawing to be something I can treat as a comfort – as I had my fair share of stress when trying to grind for commissions back then and caused extreme burnout that backfired on me.
I also realized I drifted away from some things like streaming as I now felt more comfortable to hang out with others in more closer circle setting (partly also because work often drained my socializing energy lmao) – but I do still want to try going back to streams again sometime just less often and I gave up with set schedules hahaha.
There are ideas I want to draw, like some daily slice of life comics and original content with Kokoba & Ayayam – but these past few months not gonna lie I got distracted by all the cool games and series I watched haha – I hope I can squeeze it in to do something like that consistently sometime!
My brain kept telling me ‘why don’t draw something more spontaneous to churn out the ideas, no need to be so cleaned up?’ but I feel I had a bad habit to end up being too perfectionist to keep wanting to render the drawing more properly before posting. I hope I can learn to let myself go more freely and make more loose, self-expression kind of art more. It’s been that kind of dilemma of wanting to go somewhere more productive with the art stuff that I do, but I also want it to be something I can keep enjoying.
While as usual writing a post felt like all over the place, I feel I just gotta put it out somewhere out there in writing and a heads up update of things might be slowing down or taking different direction for those who are interested in more of what I do. Thank you for reading and uh, stay tuned for future updates where hopefully I get to figure out more of what I’m doing!
