Blog Update: Topics and Labels

Hey! Here's a neat update regarding the blog.

After almost eight years and over 500 posts later, I've made the very late decision to add labels on almost every single post! They sort of act like hashtags; you can click on a label at the bottom of a post and it takes you to a page with all other posts that are linked/related to the same topic.

One reason I decided to do this is for the ease of finding old drawings, concepts, ideas, and whatnot relating to my current story projects. Who knows? Maybe one day one of these ideas will finally turn into a popular show or something and one can go back in and literally see the progression and development of said show/idea.

It's also nice for me to go back in and find older content whenever I feel like seeing my own growth/change for myself and these ideas, sort of like a time capsule.

Now notice I said almost every single post has been labeled. A lot of older posts (especially between 2013-2015/16) are more on school assignments, personal life updates, small rants and ramblings, and sharing outside content. Those posts have not been categorized, but I'm planning on going back and creating labels for those particular posts; for now, I mainly wanted to focus on posts relating to drawings, sketches, animation, and story ideas that I'm actively working on.

I'm glad I decided to do it now so I can label old posts that were about Propinquity and Class of 2422 before they became the more developed version of Propinquity and Class of 2422 that they are today!

On desktop (and mobile I think) you can find the list of topics and labels under "The Blogthor" bit on the right side of the home page. Hope this'll keep posts more organized for the future!

August Animation Practice - August Heat

I know, I know, I finished this one really late. I hated the fact that this one took waaaaaay too long than normal to finish, but it went through a lot of revisions to get the movements right.

I hope it paid off.

(Be sure to right click on the video and set it to loop since it's, well, a looping animation)

Normally I take a break for about a week or two and then start on the next animation, however this might be a back-to-back kind of situation. September's animation will definitely be a more simpler one to do (I hope.)

Do I like the end result for this one? Kinda, yeah. I tried to rush it in the process just to finally finish this one. I especially like how the melting animation turned out at least.

In case you don't live in California, things have been really hot these past few weeks. We're in mid September currently and the weather has kinda gotten better? I say kinda because we're currently going through our 23,572,357,264,848,234,681,786,908,135th forest fire right now.

Originally I was gonna use Danielle for this animation, but since the whole melting thing is very silly and Mr. Ridiculous is a silly character, it just seemed like a better match.

Stay cool everyone!

July Animation Practice - Biking Witch

Glad you all are comfortable with Autumn from the last post because she's the center point for July's animation!

(Be sure to right click on the video and set it to loop after playing the video.)

I wanted to do a simple loop for July, but didn't know of what at the time. Luckily, this character's creation came at the right time to give me a good idea for a loop. I thought animating a character riding a bike on loop would be pretty easy, but of course from someone who hasn't animated a bike rider before, it was more complicated than I thought.

I like the end result though! I had to do a minor edit before posting because the background scroll in the first version of the animation was too fast so I had to slow it down so it looked a bit more natural.

Overall, good to see this new character get the animation treatment so quickly after creation!

New Character/Style Sketches - Autumn the Witch

For the longest time, I've wanted to expand the kinds of styles I draw in. Some of those experimentation in style have been kind of apparent in some one-off drawings I've posted before, like some of the birthday drawings I've posted for the last few years.

Keep in mind that the way I draw my characters for "Propinquity" and "Class of 2422" is the way that I have always been drawing my cartoons for many, many years; it also doesn't help that I've only been drawing those specific set of characters for the longest time as well.

Of course, I do have some characters outside of those sets that I've created that are visually different, like with the "Mr. Ridiculous" story project, but I'm still hungry to expand my horizon in my personal projects when it comes to character design, visual style, or storytelling.

It might be too early to reveal this one, but I wanted to share what I've been working on lately since this character is featured in July's animation practice (which will be posted tomorrow.)

Meet Autumn the witch!

Here's some progress sketches I've done of the character. Initially I explored different styles that I like from different artists until I reverted to a simpler style that has more of a resemblance to how I used to draw when I was younger; this style is almost like a throwback.

Of course, since this is pretty early in this new story project's development, some things might change or evolve the more I work on this, but I really enjoy the direction this is going in so far.