Happy New Year 2017-reflections, plans, & sketches

Happy New Year it is finally 2017. Goodbye 2016.

2016 was a crazy year, a hard year, but albeit a productive year for me.
So here are some highlights of 2016 (cuz I don't want to think of how many musicians and good actors/actresses died)

• I finally finished the Pixel Brains animated short for L4D2
• I launched my webcomic "Blue Fire"
• I finished my storyboard portfolio (which I kept holding off for a few years)
• Started making comics for a local newspaper
• Dusted out my youtube channel
• Actually took on commissions
• Set up a Patreon

Now for my resolutions:

• Create a concept art portfolio centered on game development
• Make Youtube an actual job as an artist/animator
• try to finish some animated short projects
• continue working on "Blue Fire" & upload it on Webtoons along side other platforms
• Be more patient & willing to trust God & stop trying to control every facet of my life, because the universe bows to no one & I'm a sinle speck of dust in this cosmic ocean
• If Youtube doesn't work out, look into enrolling into technical college to gain skills that will get me a normal job
• And if I'm unable to afford college, actually search for a job after the summer.

I'm happy to say that I found it pretty fun to work on commissions, no matter how small they were. Really thankful to some of the people who commissioned me. Here are samples:  

The last comic of 2016 for the "Korean Baptist Press of the USA" 침례신문

A piece of fanart for Riana Dorsey, cuz it was her birthday. If you can, check out her webcomic "Suihira." It's great ^^

And some art for Blue Fire

To spruce up my youtube page, I made myself a whole new channel art, which is now one of my wallpapers:

I'm now a fan of "Yuri!! On ice" anime. So good. And because of constantly listening to the song "On love: Agape," I sketched some of my characters as figure skaters. There's Ji-Hyun from that scrapped "Phantom of the Opera" fancomic. Her outfit is based on a Korean doll. Ethelmay from Eruti, her design is fairy-based. Creon is a simple one piece that shows off the markings on her skin (just didn't color them here since it was all charcoal). And Valentine in a stylized outfit based on a swallowtail tuxedo.

And that's about it. Happy new year, and best of luck to you all. God bless you all and take care.

Inktober wrap-up, & more sketches.

First off, I didn't finish Inktober, because I had no time to deal to play catch-up, it was sucking up time, and my hand was cramping. So here's the remaining Inktober for this year.

Entire batch of gesture sketches are for Inktober day 16
	The rest of the 3 below are Days 17-19

Blue Fire is still updating at snail pace.

In the mean \while, I finally got around to finishing that Patreon Promo video. Took a few weeks to draw, compile, record, and edit.

Now some sketches I did today while my family & I visited Tallulah Gorge. That place is one of my favorite parks and nature spots, next to Helen, Georgia.

Image Optimization test and End of Beeswhacks

I'm looking at using an image optimizer, since I won't have Photoshop anymore (budget issues coming soon).
The one on the left is optimized with Photoshop's "save for web" feature. One on the right was optimized with a plug-in for Gimp.

So far, Gimp is doing its job. That's more than enough. Also, I've quit Beeswhacks.

Honestly I've cared very little for that comic and it eats away at whatever free time I have. It's become a chore that I don't look forward to. When I started uploading bits of Blue Fire on Tapastic, it gained almost half of the views Beeswhacks got in its entirety, in just a matter of a week. That says a lot. This is the current viewer count as of now:

That's nearly half of what Beeswhacks made in an entire year, and this has been nearly 2 weeks! So basically, I'm putting more energy into Blue Fire.

Also, still working on that Pixel Brains short. But sadly, I've run into a really bad technical block. A small portion of the short is going to look horrendous, due to Flash having a weird brush jitter, when you draw something at a tiny scale. In the old version, I've rarely had that problem. Now it's noticeable in the newest update.
Anyway, I'll see you all later.

Blue Fire officially on Tapastic

First off, really sorry for the lack of updates.
Second, I've finally decided to upload the comic "Blue Fire" on Tapastic.

I plan on uploading a page from Monday to Friday of this week. That means 5 pages will be up and loaded. And I'm going to see how my update schedule works. I still find myself at a painstaking snail pace when it comes to making comics. I'm aiming for every 2 weeks for now. Maybe I can urge myself to create a page every week, once I leave my job. Otherwise, the updates would be sporadic. And that's not what I want.

In the mean time, I haven't updated with a whole lot of sketches or drawings. Most of the time I find really little to draw. And when I do, it's mainly fanart.
So I'll go ahead and upload what I have so far.

At one point there was a massive nation-wide internet blackout for Charter customers. Us included. So for a solid hour, me and my brother were perplexed, until we found that we weren't the only ones. Lots of upset baseball fans were unable to file complaints, since Charter's phone line was non-responsive. Using our phone data, we amused ourselves by reading all tweets related to Charter's blackout. Someone commented that Charter forgot to feed their hamsters. And that's how this doodle manifested.

And then there was mother's day.

My attempt of practicing the drawing of very detailed objects. My brother suggested drawing a simple Dreadnaught.

A card for Father's day.

Until then, I will do my best to update Blue Fire as much as possible.
Also, I finished animating part 1 of the Pixel Brains animated short. Still need 2 more parts.

Lack of Update and slow progress on Blue Fire

It's been a really long time. I haven't been uploading any sketches or content, because all of my time has been devoted to the first pages of the first chapter of "Blue Fire".

I'm going through some personal conflict of wondering if comic/manhwa/manga making is something I'll stick with, or suited for. I've been so used to making fan-comics, that I wonder if I can really do this for the rest of my life. I'm thinking of trying some other small projects.

Beeswhacks still updating bi-weekly (every other week). Still working on that Pixel Brains short. Now I feel that I need to try and make at least one original sketch or drawing every week. At least something to put on my blog. It's been 2 months of inactivity, yet I post gratuitous fanart and sketches on my tumblr and occasionally my tumblr. In fact, I've been posting work-in-progress images of the "Blue Fire" pages on my instagram.

Also, a little update on why the Pixel Brains short is STILL taking too dang long.

Here's to hopefully more updates for the rest of this year.

Blue Fire: Cover Test 2

I'm quite confident that "Blue Fire" will STAY as "Blue Fire."

As promised from the last post, I made another spread of cover/logo tests.

This time I made designs that include Hangul (Korean) text. 

However, after seeing feedback on my deviantart, I had to ask "what's the point of having a Korean-based title logo?"

There seemed to be no use, since my main audience understands English, and my Korean is abominable. Unless there are Korean viewers who want to take a stab at reading an English Manhwa, to brush up on their English skills.

I was surprised with one design, and loved it. 

So here it is. Again, feedback is appreciated. You can leave it here, my deviantart, or my tumblr.

Blue Fire Cover Test and Really considering Title name change

First off, This is a cover test AND trying to figure out which title/logo looks best on the cover.
But now, I just thought of another design that I want to try: using a Korean title/logo, but integrating the smaller English title as part.
Sort of like this:

Ok this is the opposite of what I'm aiming for, but this is the idea. Just reverse.

And of course, I saw how in some covers, the volume or chapter# is in a corner, or the title is at the bottom or on the side. Sometimes the author/artist name is in the corner or below the title. I don't know. That's how I ended up making a spread of covers for Blue Fire

It's quite frustrating when I can't choose my mind. I'm almost aiming for the first one, but I really liked the logos where the words were stacked.
But then again, I really need to make another design test for the Korean title logo.

And BIG BIG thanks to my parents for giving me feedback and making sense of my broken Konglish.
Expect another Cover/logo title test sometime next week.
^^