Grid and paid art update!
Finally finished my current list of grid designs that I owed (If I've missed anyone please send me a message! My list has been long and sometimes one or two fall through the cracks), so I thought I'd post a quick update on my plans moving forward regarding paid art and such for the future. I've been getting a few messages about it, so it's best I post it here for everyone to see.
Regarding the grid moving foward: I'm debating on whether or not to open the grid again. I'm feeling really, really burned out from it after doing so many designs the past year and a half. Admittedly I regret doing a grid that size (121 slots!) and I think if I ever do one again it most definitely will be a LOT smaller. I never realised how popular it would be (thank you all so much!!) and I definitely bit off more than I could chew. Despite the workload however I'm eternally grateful to everyone who bought a slot and had patience with me while I worked through my (gargantuan) list.
I know that the grid still has some slots left unclaimed after I closed it during my wrist injury, but I think I'd like to leave it closed for the forseeable future. I might open it again to sell off those last designs at some point, or maybe I'll just sell them as adoptables, I'm not sure yet, but I'm definitely taking a break from that particular grid for now.
I'm thinking of working on adoptables to sell next I think, as it's low pressure and I can complete and post them in my own time. It also allows me a bit more freedom since I'm very, very bored of only using the canon character designs (turns out there's only so much unique variation you can give each design when everyone is related and sometimes looks a lot like each other) especially when the grid consisted of 121 designs.
I have definitey learned a LOT from my experience with the design grid, and I'm definitely going to apply that to anything I decide to do in the future either way. I will probably open another grid at a later point, but for now I'm going to enjoy a break from it. Aside from adoptables I'm planning on selling some old characters and designs I no longer use, so there's that to look forward to as well at least.
For now, I'm going to focus on drawing stuff for fun. I haven't really been able to relax and work on personal art for myself, and I haven't really worked on a full piece since I opened the grid over a year ago. I've definitely felt my art slipping because of it. I got my Ipad pro, fell into the owed art hole, and I haven't had much chance to experiment with it outside of character designs. I definitely want to work on full pieces again.
Either way, thank you all for your support and patience while I've been working through the grid designs! I hope I've given some of you something to look forward to in the future!
TLDR; Taking a break from owed art, most likely not going to open grid again, and going to sell some adoptables and old designs sometime in the near future.
Regarding my comic All That Remains
I've been getting a lot of messages and notes about my comic "All That Remains" recently, asking when the next page is or if I'm going to finish it. I normally ignore these sorts of messages, but since it's been 4 years since my last page I thought I should probably address things for people interested in the comic, and what's going to happen to it moving forward.
I never intended to stop working on my comic originally, but I honestly just lost motivation for it. I got stuck on the next page (which has actually been sitting half finished forever now), and before I knew it had been months and then years since I had uploaded. I already spoke about my lack of motivation for my art in the last art piece I uploaded, and that definitely contributed to why I stopped working on it. 2020 was just a year where a lot of things were going wrong for me that it shot any motivation I had left to work on it. I stopped drawing much in general around that time, which was when the last page was uploaded.
But that's only half the reason, or the original reason really. Honestly I'm... not 100% satisfied with it anymore. Shocker coming from me right, who literally edits my character sheets constantly because I'm never happy with those either haha.
Unfortunately any time I've gone back to try and work on it I find I'm not really happy with the direction I've taken the story. The writing isn't great in places, and there's a few story beats I'd love to change but I've forced myself into a corner with the pages I've already finished and uploaded. I wrote the script of the comic in 2016, 8 years ago, but I came up with the original idea and plot back in 2014 when I was 17. There are things that have been written badly or just don't work anymore, and things that I don't really like and want to change. I feel like I jumped to Tama giving birth way too soon, and there's many circumstances surrounding Scar's adoption of Kovu I'd love to change as well among many other things. But I've established these story beats already and it's not something I can walk back now that I'm 20 pages deep, so I've been stuck in a limbo figuring out what to do.
Do I work on the comic as usual and change what I can going forward? Do I go back and edit pages? Start from scratch?
Honestly I'm not sure. As of right now the comic is on hiatus, but everyone has probably guessed that already haha. I'm currently thinking of going back and editing dialogue on some pages and editing art and characters on others (my problems having nothing to do with quality of art however, I am happy in that regard). And then once fixing a few things that bug me then I might possibly continue on with it and get some motivation back. I haven't 100% decided yet, but that is the route I'm looking at currently.
Either way, the comic is on hold for now. Apologies for those who were enjoying it, I greatly appreciate the love and support you've all given me! Hopefully by addressing the issues I have with the comic it'll give me the kick up the backside I need to get working on it again, but we'll have to see haha. I plan on uploading many character sheets in the meantime at the very least!
You may see some edits on my character sheets that will contradict events in the comic, and that is because I've decided to make the current events of the comic Non-Canon to my story for now. Not everything will be changing, and the changes might not even be a lot, but if you see anything in my character sheets that doesn't align with the comic, ignore the comic's version of events.
Emergency commissions for a friend!
One of my good friends :iconstrayhowl: has fallen on hard times, and has opened up her commissions to pay for her bills! I've been close friends with her for almost 10 years now and she is one of the nicest and most amazing people I've ever met, and honestly any and all help would be greatly appreciated!
Here is her commission info:
She also has some adoptables available as well! She has a massive amount of range (from humans to multiple different animals) and her art is great, so I highly recommend giving her a look!
If you're unable to that's perfectly fine! but even a share would be very helpful!
FAQ - Important please read
Please note if you ask me a question that is already listed here, either through note or comment, I'm afraid I won't answer. Thank you for understanding!
I'm getting a lot of comments and notes recently asking questions, and since Eclipse ate my old FAQ I decided to make a new one. If you have any questions not answered here, please comment below and I'll answer the best I can.
Q: What do you use for drawing?
A: I use a wacom pen and touch tablet. For programs I use Medibang.
Q: Are your commissions open? If not, when?
A: My commissions are currently not open, and won't be until sometime in 2021 depending on my schedule. I don't have a pricing sheet either.
Q: Do you do requests
A: A very firm no unfortunately.
Q: Do you have a Patreon?
A: I do not. There were plans, but I decided my uploads are too sporadic for me to feel comfortable taking people's money monthly. This might change, but for now I've decided to not have one.
Q: When are you uploading more adoptables? And can I reserve one from the next batch?
A: Currently I have no schedule for adoptables, so I can't say. I am also not holding or reserving adoptables for people under any circumstances, it's first come first served. There's a great amount of demand for my designs, and if I started reserving for batches that don't even exist yet, the list would be a mile long.
Q: Do you have a ping list for your adoptables?
A: I do not and have no plans to. Again, my adopts are in high demand and the list of people would be incredibly long, and it would be time consuming to notify multiple people every time I was about to post them.
Q: When are you uploading the next comic page?
A: I have no idea, when the mood strikes. Unfortunately they take a lot of work, so I've only been working on pages when I'm motivated.
Q: Are you going to make a ref for any of the more obscure TLK characters from books or comics, or characters from the Lion Guard?
A: It depends on the character, and whether they serve a purpose in my TLK Universe. I try and fit as many characters as I can, but if I don't see a purpose for them chances are they won't get a character ref. As for TLG characters, the same goes really. I don't consider the events of TLG "Canon" in my stories, so I'm cherry picking who and what to use. An example is Askari, who wasn't revealed until after I'd already decided on an origin story for the guard. For now he has no place in my stories, but this may change depending on if I find a place for him. Overall the answer for both is: we'll see.
Q: Why haven't you answered my note or comment?
A: I get a lot of comments and notes each day, and honestly to answer them all would take a while. I also tend to ignore questions I get asked over and over, because I get asked them so often it hurts my brain haha. On top of that I struggle to use Eclipse, and I have been neglecting my inbox for the most part because of this. Another reason is because I suffer from severe social anxiety, and so I struggle with answering people because it makes me incredibly anxious. If I don't answer you I promise it's not because I'm trying to be ignorant, I appreciate every comment I get, but replying to people is something I do struggle with and I'm really trying to overcome. Thank you for understanding!
Q: How do you come up with character names?
A: I mostly use baby name websites, such as this one: http://www.babynology.com/african_babynames.html
Q: Can I design a character for you?
A: Of course! I appreciate any designs people gift me! I will say though that I may not use them in my TLK universe however, like I said earlier I only use characters who I feel I can use in my stories. I may wind up using them eventually! But it's no guarentee.
Q: Can you design a character for me?
A: Unfortunately no. If you would like a character that I've designed, you may buy one of my adoptables when I post them.
The Lion King 2019: Thoughts and Opinions
Obviously I'm not some great and mighty critic and this shouldn't change your opinion on the movie. This is just my opinion, and you guys should totally see this yourselves and draw your own conclusions. Because faults aside, this movie is still a good watch.
Also, SPOILERS.
First of all: THE BAD
The character's expressions and body language. Man oh man were they hit and miss. I know there's people who don't mind the expressionless lions and there's people who do, but it was distracting to me at times. I have to agree with the latter; watching Simba's expressionless face while his VA is making him sound like he is supposed to be crying during Mufasa's death scene was painful. As someone who enjoyed the BBC film PRIDE from 2004, the expressions weren't a dealbreaker for me. But man they could have put more effort in with them. I just find it really hard to take the characters seriously when their voices are emoting but their faces are not. Considering they didn't have cartoony expressions to use, you'd think they'd fall back on body language more. The amount of times I spotted where they could have done something like flick the ears back, move the tails or adjust the posture, but it was very very rare they did that. And man as someone who does comics and has animated now and again it just bothered me. It's just the little things that would have aided them GREATLY. I know you can argue that it's 'realistic' and 'lions don't have expressions', but I'm not asking for grins and eyebrows and blah blah blah, I'm just asking for the little things. You would actually be able to see the effort they put into making sure you could SEE and FEEL how these animals are feeling rather than bored indifference. And even if it is supposed to be 'realistic', it doesn't stop the lions from feeling soulless.
It's hard to care about these characters and what they do and say when they THEMSELVES look like they barely care about what they do or say. And that's just not good cinema. Is it a deal breaker? No of course not. Is it hard to empathise with Simba when he doesn't even look phased by a huge stampede hurdling towards him, or being told by his uncle that he's killed his dad and he has to run away? Yes because he pulls the exact same look throughout that whole segment. Again not talking about tears or eyebrows or anything outlandish (although tears might have helped) but a head bow, closing his eyes tight, flattening his ears back, tucking his tail, arching his back when afraid, etc could have REALLY REALLY helped.
Another con: Stale acting. I've heard that they told the actors to tone it down for a more 'real performance', but jesus christ does James Earl Jones (Mufasa) sound bored as hell throughout this whole movie. Every time he talks it sounds like they dug out the 'bad' takes from the first recording session in 1994. With the whole new cast it was a lot harder to detect, but when you have the original to compare against, Mufasa just sounds bad in this. The other's are forgiveable, but man Mufasa's lines were hard to get through. I enjoyed the new Scar's voice, but Jeremy Iron's still blows this performance out of the water.
The film's pacing during conversations on the other hand was way way too fast. The characters kind of just parrot back and forth at each other with barely a moment for you or the characters to digest what's being said. It was odd to me because there were so many dragged out scenes, such as the mouse in the beginning, or the scene of Simba's hair making its way to Rafiki. Those scenes take their time, and yet for some reason a lot of the other scenes barely have enough time to breath. I know many people have discussed the scene with Simba and Nala meeting again, but it's not just that scene. It's a lot of scenes. It would have helped a lot if the movie slowed down a little and gave the characters time to breathe between firing off lines back and forth.
The songs bothered me a little. Be Prepared (the best song of the original) was cut down, which was such a disappointment. (To make matters worse, this version sounds a lot like The Great Mighty Poo Song from Conker's Bad Fur Day, but whether thats a pro or a con is up to you). I actually enjoyed this version as well, but it was short as hell (hopefully they release an extended version). Can't Wait To Be King was somewhat painful to sit through, especially since they seem dead set on this being the 'serious version' that once they start singing and letting loose in a lighter tone it's almost jarring. I liked Spirit I guess??? It was okay, but I feel orchestral would have been a lot better for that scene in particular. I would rather have had Beyonce sing ShadowLand as it would have been MUCH more powerful in my opinion. Can you Feel the Love Tonight was actually pretty good, I really enjoyed it. But man, I wish they'd actually have them sing it AT NIGHT rather than during the day... y'know... like it says in the title? and the lyrics??
Random negative tidbit, but I laughed out loud in the cinema when Mufasa died. I'm sorry, but the way he gets falcon punched in the face and he falls, and then the way Simba opens his mouth and yells just GETS ME. AND THEN THEY SHOWED IT AGAIN AS A FLASHBACK and I legit nearly died. Could not take that scene seriously at all man, but i still enjoyed it because it made me laugh I guess? Either that or I've watched TLK on repeat as a child so much that I'm legit numb to that scene now. I feel bad for the people sitting behind me to be fair.
And now: THE GOOD
I know I said this is the good part, but I didn't enjoy the first half of the movie too much. It felt like they were going through the motions and ticking off boxes in a lot of scenes. Once Simba runs away? It was a lot better. They experiment a little bit more, add more scenes, and make it more of their own thing. It's like, when they're trying to mimic the original they just fall short, but when they start playing with character motivations and scenes and aaaaaaa I loved it! This section will probably be a lot more jumbled because blerggh I have a lot of good feelings.
MUSIC gave me chills. I guess this is more of a compliment to original than this version, but there were so many moments I got teary. THE FEELS MAN. Nothing like hearing those instrumental songs on the big screen. And this is gonna surprise people, and it still surprises me but... I prefer this version of Hakuna Matatta. Like, it still makes me want to die inside, but I just enjoyed it A LOT MORE.