Merry Christmas 2022!

It's here! The jolliest time of the year! Christmas has arrived!

No matter how many years go by, you're never too old to take a photo with Santa!

This year's Christmas art marks the end of "The Year of Class of 2422." I always find myself being obsessed over my own characters and story ideas over lengths of time, and seeing that the year 2022 makes us exactly 400 years away from the year 2422, it justified me to marinate my thoughts over Robert, Marilyn, and their friends over this past year.

Of course, this won't be the last time we'll see our friends from the future, but I've got to make room to showcase characters from other story ideas I've been working on. Lately I've been developing a new story project and designing out a new set of characters that I can't wait to post about here very soon.

But enough reading about my silly stuff. Go on and enjoy the holidays with family!

Merry Christmas!

Blog Update: More Labeled Posts and Removed Posts

A long time ago (like two years to be exact), I mentioned that I went through and added labels to all my posts for easy categorizing and organization...except for some.

Those unlabeled posts were mostly just blog updates, life updates, and silly posts that I didn't want to label at the time since the main focus was to label posts that relate to my art, animation, and story ideas.

As of right now, I just finished going in adding labels to those miscellaneous posts. They have been tagged with labels such as "blog updates," "life happenings," and "silly nonsense." These posts can be found in the label listings on the right.

And because I went through my old posts again, I took the liberty of removing posts that were rants, thought dumps, just links to videos and articles, and older works that no longer have a place for this blog.

They haven't been deleted though! I simply reverted them back to drafts, so they still exist; they're just hidden from the blog. A few of them lost their original date/time published info because Blogger is stupid, but the post links at least still remembered the month and year of when they were published.

I removed these posts because frankly, they were posts I made when I was younger. I don't want these posts to surface if anyone decides to dig deep into my blog; not that I have anything to hide, but they were kinda cringe and don't hold up. Also, I've noticed that sometimes they'll still get views for some reason and I wanted to put a stop to that.

That's all for now!

Happy Halloweens 2022! - Day 3

You already know the deal. The future celebrates Halloween over a period of three days!

And since this year is all about "Class of 2422," we're gonna celebrate Halloween like the future: over a period of three days with three illustrations!

For the final day of Halloweens, Marilyn had to do a lot of convincing to Robert for the two to go trick-or-treating together. Robert used the excuse of not having a costume, which Mary was more than prepared for.

Needless to say, Robert ended up having a lot of fun with Mary this Halloweens night!

Originally, the idea of this drawing was supposed to be the sole art for this year's Halloween drawing, but about a month ago, I was thinking about world-building elements I could implement for the culture/society of the year 2422, and a three-day Halloween celebration was one of those elements.

And plus, Halloween is my favorite holiday so there might be a tiny hint of bias in there somewhere. Maybe.

Before I go on, here's the roughs for this drawing

Once I decided on the three day Halloween theme, I originally thought of doing a three panel comic (one panel for each day) of Marilyn convincing Robert to go out trick-or-treating with her with this drawing serving the final panel.

The first two panels didn't really stick to me as very interesting since I couldn't figure out how to make that story fit into just three panels, so instead I went with using other characters to create like a multi-day progression (the 29th-31st) of different characters in different scenarios played out in the course of a single day, as evident of the progressing shift into the night as seen in the backgrounds of these drawings.

I didn't want to just make three different drawings with all of them taking place in the same time of night, so the progression of sunset to night over three drawings was more interesting to create.

I guess in a way, there kind of is a story that's played out in these three drawings, like an A-plot, B-plot, and C-plot going on at the same time.

Either way, this was a fun challenge to do three different Halloween illustrations instead of the usual one. Hope you enjoyed them!

Happy Halloweens 2022! - Day 2

In case you forgot, in the far off future, Halloween is celebrated over a span of three days! From the 29th to the 31st! It's a lot of fun, I assure you.

And since I themed the year to "Class of 2422," I've created three illustrations to observe how to celebrate the future's Halloweens!

October 30th sets us up with a little debate between Aika and Ted about whether or not a scary costume is a necessity for Halloweens.

I do all my drawing at night, so you can imagine that when I had to pull up image references for Aika's costume, which is Kayako from the Ju-On movies (The Grudge), it was uhhhhhh kinda spooky for me to say the least; I'm not much of a horror movie kind of guy.

Not sure if I said anything about this, but I went back in and redesigned Ted's hoverchair. I was absolutely not satisfied with the design I put out before, but I think I figured out a design that's sleek, futuristic, and easy to draw.

It's funny that his pirate ship costume covers up the newer design completely. Good thing I'm here with early roughs for this drawing where it's visible!

Aika's kind of harsh with her words in general, but I felt it was a bit too harsh for Ted, especially since I hardly picture these two interacting with each other much anyways.

See you tomorrow for the third and final drawing!

Happy Halloweens 2022! - Day 1

Did you know that Halloween is a three-day long holiday in the far-off future? For those living in the year 2422, it's a very true fact!

Of course, since this year is "The Year of Class of 2422," we must observe how Halloween will be celebrated in the future: not with one, but with THREE illustrations for Halloweens!

Starting off the first day of Halloweens, October 29th brings us a curious scene of farm girl Nelly teaching our Earth-visiting alien Nevadri a thing or two about carving pumpkins for the spooky season.

Something about that organic pumpkin really spooks out Nevadri. Let's hope we don't bring the extinction of pumpkins into our timeline.

The background art was originally a bit more elaborate, but I felt the need to tone down certain details in order to match the simpler backgrounds for Day 2 and 3's artwork. You'll see what I mean during the next two days.

Here's the process for the art:

The concept was pretty much nailed from the get-go, so it was a matter of refining the drawing. You'll soon see this is the case for the next two drawings.

National Cinnamon Roll Day 2022

Normally, I don't make any drawings or illustrations for any of these silly non-holidays like "Talk Like A Pirate Day" or "National HVAC Tech Day," but a few days ago I caught wind that October 4th is "National Cinnamon Roll Day."

Considering that 2022 is basically the year of "Class of 2422" for me AND that I have a certain musically talented blonde in that story that has a weakness for cinnamon rolls, I figured that it'd only be appropriate that I come up with something to mark today's occasion!

How could I not celebrate "National Cinnamon Roll Day" with Marilyn? It's her all-time favorite dessert in the Solar System! Yum yum!

Where did I get the idea that Marilyn's favorite dessert should be a cinnamon roll? I created my characters as Mii characters on my 3DS so I can import them into my Tomodachi Island game, and the game made the cinnamon roll as Marilyn Mii's all-time favorite dish. I felt like that fact is really fitting for her character and it made sense to me so I ran with that as fact for her character ever since.

I still haven't renewed my expired Adobe subscription so this drawing is the first time ever I used Clip Studio Paint to create a finished drawing!

Of course, I'll be back later this month with this year's Halloween drawing. Or drawings, with an "s?" Stay tuned!

Autumn Sketch Page (Introducing Ali!)

Hey! Ya, you!

Lately I've been pretty occupied with a ton of stuff such as work, working on a comic (proper announcement on that later), and learning Blender. Especially with work; I am completely fed up with these silly minimum wage type of jobs at this point in my life, but I digress.

In the little pockets of free time in between at that, I've been filling up a whole page of sketches of Autumn and, for the first time, her feline companion Ali.

The idea for Ali the cat being Autumn's companion has existed right from the very start of the story's conception but I never really got around to drawing or designing them (unless you count this animation that was posted awhile ago, then sure, that was Ali's first appearance; the cat wasn't even named Ali at that time.)

I don't have much confidence with drawing animals at all, which is why I've been pushing off fleshing out Ali's design. Better late than never, right? Ali's design is currently a work in progress.

Oh, and that's right! Bottom left corner. First time we're seeing Autumn's witchy mother!

Once I finalize the design for Autumn, her mother, and Ali, I'll be sure to get started on a character line up for them. I feel like a character line-up page for the "Witched Away"  and "Mr. Ridiculous" story projects are kind of overdue, but I think it feels like that because I've been doing a lot of sketches for those characters behind the scenes and their designs seem to have stuck.

And as I mentioned earlier, surprise! I'm working on a comic! A proper announcement will be made later on (probably way later.)

See you guys in probably a month!

A Happy Birthday from the Future!

Oh hey! It's my birthday! Again! On this day during this month! How predictable!

I mentioned earlier this year that since it's the year 2022, I've basically unofficially made this year the year of "Class of 2422." Themed drawings for this year will exclusively feature characters from this story project, and this year's birthday art is no exception!

Another year to add to my year count. Did we do good with shaping ourselves in the shape of the number 26? Judge for yourself!

I know that the yellow background color is too bright and loud, but I couldn't find any other good color to use. I hope it isn't too annoying to the eye.

It'd be super cool if I could see how our world advances in 400 years. Now THAT would be a killer birthday wish to be fulfilled.

Congrats Grads of 2422

With so many 2022 graduation cards on store shelves this year, I couldn't help but claim one for the graduating class of 2422.

Updated Propinquity Character Line-Up 2

Hey hey! It's been awhile!

Back in January, I tweeted under the @dojipocket account that I ought to do a second redraw of the Propinquity character line-up. The last time I redrew the line-up was back in 2018. Since then, the little quirks, measurements, and landmarks in the designs, as well as the cartoon style itself have improved over the last four years for this set of characters, so I saw fit that they needed to be updated.

I completed the redraw in late January 2022, but didn't post it at the time since during the process, I redesigned Kevin's outfit and didn't like the end result at the time. It was only just now that I finally figured out a redesign I like for Kevin.

And here it is!

Here's the last redraw as reference:

With the success of this redraw, I'm thinking that the Class of 2422 character line-up could use a similar update, although that particular line-up (and the Photoshop file itself) has a lot of moving parts to it. So we'll see!

AND speaking of character line-ups! I'm currently updating the Austin & Jennifer character line-up! It's not just a redraw; I'll be adding new characters to it as well! About time!

I've been recording the design process for these characters so I'll definitely be sure to post those one of these days.

Until next time!

Happy New Year 2022!

Smell ya later 2021! Wouldn't wanna be ya!

Last year, I mentioned that I have a silly rule when it comes to making the Happy New Year artwork, which is that I avoid using characters from the Class of 2422 story since it would be silly for them to celebrate the New Years for a previous year because they live in the future. I broke this rule last year because I was on a time crunch.

However, this time I broke the rule on purpose since it makes sense. It was the perfect time to feature these characters for this year's New Year artwork. Why? Which set of characters were perfect for ushering in 2022? The ones from 2422 of course! Duh! Prime opportunity!

Speaking of which, any artwork for certain occasions during this year only (such as my birthday, Halloween, Christmas, etc.) are going to exclusively feature Class of 2422 characters; we are, after all, exactly 400 years away from 2422.

With all that out there, I wish everyone a Happy New Year! Let's hope this year's a better one than the last!