This one happened to land in my lap after reading more of the book "The Creative Act" by Rick Rubin, and a concept mentioned in one of the chapters on self-doubt resonated perfectly with another that had crossed my mind when I saw these two, while browsing the tweegeemee bot's backlog.

In Buddhism, the concept of "Papancha," or "conceptual proliferation," can be summed up - rather inadequately, I should note - as a "preponderance of thoughts and feelings." I would urge you to read up about it if this art resonates at all; but considering how being full of such things almost at all times, to where regulating is so very hard for me, is pretty much my baseline, this felt worth expressing in this strange, collaborative medium I've found for myself.

The spark hit during one particularly, positively overwhelming moment while streaming, and I had to follow through on it.

This feels to me like a reprise from 07. Bathed in Shade, but I knew what it would look like the moment I saw the original generated image, and the vibe was different and striking enough to be worth its own spot.

The tab has been open ever since, and I had to follow up on it when the appropriate mood struck me; just today.

I've always felt like my art style is predominantly very flat, cartoonish, and not all that technically advanced at the face of it. I covet the work and skills of my peers that employ a more adept handling of textures, shading and forms than I feel I am capable of even if I tried to emulate them, but haven't had much success teaching myself over the years of passively developing my craft. It therefore feels somewhat ironically satisfying - and satisfyingly ironic - that the techniques I used to make this and 07. go so hard in the complete opposite direction in order to appropriately convey the intent behind them, and achieve it exactly as I'd intended.

This has been - and I know I say this for a lot of things, but it applies more than ever here - a long time coming.

This is the piece that first inspired Art is Poison. You can actually read more about my struggles with this comic's inception within that post, which I would encourage you to do. The four and a half months between then and now that I worked on this intermittently were fairly protracted; marked with self-doubt, questioning, and uncertainty about whether it was worth seeing through to the end.

The last six pages were the hardest to get done. I think that by the time I got that far, I'd ran out of mileage that "doing it for myself" could grant me, which gave way to questioning whether I did it right, and if anybody would even understand what it was I tried to say with this comic, never mind relating to or appreciating it.

In any case; I did do it, and it's the biggest project I've taken on in many years now, which is quite the achievement. It feels good to bring it to a close, rather than giving up as I've felt tempted to do from the moment I had the idea.

I'm proud of this piece.

I hope you like it; but if not, no worries. Thank you for giving it a look either way.

Ihddn asked me to split their reward slot in two, dedicating each half (~40 minutes) to making something based on a song they gave me. 

The first painting, inspired by Chevelle's "Jars," has a very grim feel to it, and tries to capture the lyrics in their entirety - somewhat literally in some cases. It resonated with me on the theme of the current state of our environment, though because the concept I had in mind was a bit too ambitious, I had to scale it back to finish in time.

The second, inspired by Starset's "Halo," was more simplistic and symbolic in its concept, look and feel. The music video also played a considerable part overall. I may have been too subtle with the contrast, but the colours play the greatest part in this piece.

(12/01/22 Edit & Reupload: This is a backdated post I found listed as private and while I think I recall why I'd set it as such, at this point I think it's fine to just post it again; especially given what I've been going through lately and the message behind the game being more significant to me than ever before. I hope you'll enjoy it)

About a month ago, I participated in a game jam by myself to challenge myself a little. I hadn't done much game design in a long time, and I figured it would be a great way to broaden the scope of my work to share with you all.

Where I Belong is a simple puzzle platformer that tries to tell a story using only visual elements. The abstract aesthetic was a conscious decision I made, primarily because of the limited time and resources I had available. However, it had the added benefit of letting players interpret the story how they like, especially since I'm not experienced with writing for games.

Most of the work was done during the 48 hours of the Game Jam, but I tweaked the code a little afterwards to improve its playability. This way, it's not as frustrating or confusing to play alone.

In any case, I hope you like it. This is my attempt at getting rid of the rust that's accumulated since I graduated, in hopes that I can start doing this a little more often alongside my artwork in future. I made everything in this project aside from the music, which I predictably got from incompetech.com.

PS: Although the instructions don't mention it, spacebar also jumps if you prefer to play it that way.