I'm alive.

A couple of weeks ago, I was going up to Phoenix to sell some video games. I was panicking as a passenger in my friends car due to minor anxiety. I decided to write and distract myself, it didn't work. I got a great basis for the story I want to tell involving Oliver & Monster Butt. 
Been reading about comics and story boarding. Reading about how to tell a better story. Found a good 3 act structure to help get my ideas in line and follow an arc that makes sense.
Been looking for a job too. It's not going too hot but there are a lot of prospects.
Trying my best to just get by. It's silly how things work out when you just focus on the positive stuff.
I've been really depressed and off emotionally this holiday season. I guess the lack of friends and family are getting to me.
I have spent a lot of time with Jon (muh best bud) and his little family so I haven't been exactly alone.
Started a note bank of good things that have happened so far this year. It's actually really awesome to find the things that make you smile or just make you feel good and writing them down to save for later, like a little reminder.
I can't wait to see how it will look by next year. I have mostly got one good thing a day so far.
I'm working on stuff for the stream. Got some emotes done and will tweak them to be the best eventually.

Here's the basis of Oliver & Monster Butt

Act 1
Oliver has to go through a path where he has to choose. And he makes the right choice a kid would make. The visuals need to represent a trial, but one he was meant to fail. Cause he's just a kid with a big imagination. We introduce a kid, who's in a big yard with big trees, leaves blowing around. He is raking up leaves, when he discovers an old Action figure. He starts to play with it, gets a bit side tracked . lost in his mind, we see him in our reality, but he's clearly somewhere else in his mind, and his step dad catches him, startling him, causing him to shatter his imagination / reality. He wants to play and have fun, but he can't. His stepdad has an angry look in his eyes as he looks over at the leaves and piles that need to be cleaned up.

Act 2
Realizing he has work to do, he gets back to it. Distracted by his best bud monster butt, a silly looking monster, he seamlessly transitions from reality to imagination. Following a white butterfly that brings life into that old figure. They play in the leaves and run through this immense forest of magic and wonder. His imagination is vibrant and alive. They play hide and seek, which causes a huge mess in the yard. not realizing he had undone all of his hard work Oliver realizes that an ominous figure is watching over him. he gets chased by a big black monster, through the woods. He's crying and hiding but he gets grabbed by this monster hurts him while monster butt tries to protect him. Monster Butt and this monster fight for a few moments when Monster Butt is flung away and knocked out.

Act 3
 Oliver is grabbed and hurt, forced to the ground he balls up. Monster Butt fights this monster, exchanging blows, but eventually overpowers it and gets it to leave. Monster Butt finds Oliver, Oliver is on the ground with mb as a pillow as he's crying, with marks on him / bruises and the figure is destroyed. He gets up and starts raking up the leaves again.



Here are those emotes I did.

They don't register too well in the small format so I have to edit them to have bolder lines. They look great like this though. =)
The bulbasaur laughing is a take on a popular twitch emote called LUL
It's of Total Biscuit laughing- But Witwix did a Blastoise version of it and I kind of riffed on it with Bulbasaur

Working on a design that's been kicking around in my head for a while involving Legend of Zelda Items.

So there was my rough idea, just kind of thinking about what I really waned, moving items around wanting something that would be repeated well, but I didn't like any of the comps I did so I put this together and was satisfied.

Got a good feeling for the line I wanted. I'm digging this thick line and not too serious about linework feel. I guess it's kind of becoming my style.

Added the base colors I wanted to use.
Then started thinking about texture.

Then adding some finishing touches.

I finished it, but when placing it on products I just felt like it's falling short.
I need to work on my core elements of design and figure things out when I'm in the rough stage to avoid doing a lot of work for something that doesn't look good.
Not saying that the piece is bad, it's just not working for what I wanted to put it on.
I just kind of made something hoping it would work out.
I need to be more critical in the rough stages of design and focus on what it's going on, with colors and shapes in mind.
I might be able to avoid issues in the future with going back and editing it or changing things all the way.
I think what I can do to solve some issues is instead of having a circle, just use a rectangle and see how that works out.
I essentially wanted this to be a phone case.
To me now it's pretty obvious a circle doesn't work too well with rectangular objects!!

Anyways, keep an eye out for more work. Just kind of floating along all right!