Published: December 4th 2024, 7:13:30 pm
Time for another monthly summary again.
Well, November was a strange month as much as October. I don't know what got on me but this euphoria of both discovering new interesting ways to express myself through different kinds of retro graphics in pixel art and playing with my own characters undoubtedly has its biggest toll on me recently and I didn't expect it to go that far. Hard to to believe that I haven't been doing R34 art for entire TWO MONTHS. Yeah, it's been two months since I did smoke inflated Dirty Rat artwork for Spooktober! For an artist known to be so obsessed with cartoon characters that's quite odd. The only other artworks I did since then up to this day are commissions with my and my friend's human selves and my friend's Esher fursona. Obviously I still have all that love and passion for cartoon characters, horny fantasies I'm projecting on my crushes and want to let out on a paper but these two months were the times when my other cravings overshadowed it.
And thus none of the things I actually promised to myself and all of you to try do in November weren't done, I didn't catch up on unfinished planned Halloween stuff at all, being busy with nothing but my OCs and pixel art.
I really need to snap out of it for a while since Christmas is coming very close and I can't miss my chance to draw some thematic stuff with hot deer and wolves, things like that should be prepared beforehand while it's already December 4 with me jerking around with pixel art and unfinished commission.
Also I'm feeling thirsty for public attention. Surely, even though pixel art is not everyone's cup of tea compared to my pencil works, I was pretty productive with it recently and shared a lot of good content here but I got my attention spread between multiple projects so most of my recent works are either unfinished and can't be shared publicly yet or finished but require to be Patreon-exclusive for at least one month as an early-access benefit. This way, I had nothing to share publicly for a whole month. But at least January is gonna be very ripe for posts in a contrast, really can't wait for it.
But let's get to summing up the good things.
As I already said in one of my recent posts, November was a month of discoveries, I spent a lot of time reading stuff, searching stuff, making dithering pattern maps for NEC PC-88 styled pixel art and mastered two new systems for my pixel art purposes, PC-88 and Apple II, the last one was a big burden for my mind and couldn't leave it at peace, so, now, with this problem finally resolved, I feel very relieved. Thankfully it's all over and I guess I'm not gonna spend so much time on learning instead of actually drawing for a long time now.
As my knowledge about different retro systems and retro graphics grows more complete, not to mention that I became the first 18+ artist to ever master the Apple II graphics, it feels more and more inspiring and significant. So many different things can be done with it and it feels like it HAS to be done. I was always giving something new to the world, giving artistic attention to new characters nobody cares about, giving a proper effortful rendition to niche fetishes that rarely get drawn really well, inventing new exotic fetishes of my own and getting people into it, nailing certain aesthetics that most people have no motivation and skill to nail properly and authentically and now it feels like I have the power to make a no less important contribution to the world of pixel art as well which is a significant part of the artistically active part of furry fandom. Furry fandom surely has an impressively big and active sub-community (if it's the right word) of pixel artists but there's a very big lack of authentic retro pixel art like the one I'm doing. Some gems shine through occasionally but it's very rare. And I don't think it's just because most furry artists who do pixel art are young and simply didn't grow up with really old systems so there's no way for them to be interested in really primitive 8-bit aesthetics. Practice shows that it's probably not the reason. Modern 8-bit indie games done by young developers are loved by thousands of young gamers and pixel artists just like any artists love to challenge themselves, love to experiment, try different ways of testing their skills with harder to use tools or certain limits they set to themselves like less colors or less resolution. This way retro graphics sound like a great deal to test yourself and could become more popular, I have to say.
So, what I think is the real problem is the lack of knowledge. Some artists are simply unaware of all these retro systems with inspiring graphics actually existing and even those who know something can still get stuck on the first step of "getting started", not knowing where to read about all these systems and what tools to use to make working with it easier. Like, Multipaint is a godsend tool you don't need a big brain to work with to make a 100% authentic stuff, maybe I'd be even unable to make Commodore 64 art without it, but it's just not known enough. And Apple II? Gosh, this is one big nightmare I wasted so much time on but downloading an emulator and an old drawing software doesn't sound like something really complicated and cryptic in the end, if only I knew it from the beginning! If only EVERYBODY knew it! But no, try google "Apple II pixel art" and you find only a small portion of content done by just a couple of enthusiasts, mainly a guy named "deater" who seems to be the only really artistic Apple II enthusiast. This is simply wrong, especially considering Apple II iconic status and unique art style, the word should be spread for those people who want but can't and it feels like my duty now.
So far, if you count all systems I managed to master and make a decent pixel art with, the list will include:
-IBM PC with both EGA and CGA graphics
-Commodore 64 in both multicolor and hi-res modes
-Amstrad CPC
-ZX Spectrum
-NEC PC-88
-Apple II with 6 color hi-res mode
Also kinda nailed early Arcade style long time ago and 90s Windows style with Vincent Frame works.
There's still a room to grow. It would be interesting to try Game Boy Color, MSX, VIC-20, Tandy CoCo or BK-0010 styles, I'm just not feeling very inspired for now, I simply know nothing about MSX and VIC-20, Game Boy graphics are already overused and well-known even without my efforts added on top of it but at least it's all easy to do. I have GB Studio which is actually a tool for making GB/GBC games but it's good for understanding graphics for art and it's not very complicated. As for Japanese MSX and American VIC-20, I guess I just need to get deeper into it to get myself interested, MSX has an iconic status with tons of modern indie games made for it, VIC-20 was mentioned by AVGN in one of his reviews and it's a predecessor to the iconic Commodore 64 done by the same company and both systems are included in Multipaint so I don't need to waste hours searching for a convenient way to emulate these graphics like I had to with Apple II. Tandy CoCo is a funny little computer released along with Apple II in 1977 and has graphics easy to comprehend so I shouldn't have much problems with it as well. And Russian BK-0010 from 1987 is so awful there's nothing much to learn, all I need is a 256x256 screen to draw freely with nothing but red, green, blue and black pixels, a palette so bad it's good in a guilty pleasure way and the fact it's Russian gives me some prideful motivation boost. So much to do! I guess it will take me a long time to finally get to learning 3D modeling. Also not sure if I get really deep into 16-bit graphics, it doesn't feel challenging enough for me, but as long as people will keep commissioning me complex animations I'll keep making complex free-style 16/32-bit looking animations, for sure.
So, I can't wait to share my stuff with the world and hope for it to have an impact on the artist community! Surely it's not gonna be big since I'm still a very small and less known artist with 70% of the stuff I'm doing being very niche but if some people are already getting inspired to draw certain characters thanks to me then maybe my efforts will have some influence.
Oh, and congratulations! Patreon reviewed my NEC PC-88 art post that was hidden by a silly mistake on my side so now it's available again! Check it out if you missed it. I'll be more careful with what stuff I'm typing in description from now on.
In a conclusion, I hope that all the drastic recent changes in my art-making routine are not feeling annoying or anything like that, judging by the number of my followers here staying almost the same without big decrease it's alright, I hope it's not just people having a big patience while thinking to themselves "Oh jeez not another pixel art again." Anyway, thank you all for your support and I hope you enjoy the recent content. I can't promise what I'm gonna do this month, it's hard to plan stuff recently as it's all very unpredictable and never goes as planned, all I can promise is to work as much as I can.