I love Ping Pong the Animation. The story explores the pursuit of passions, and the personal goals within them which was, unsurprisingly, absolutely fascinating and extremely relevant to me. I usually latch onto (and frankly, project myself onto) a single character within a story if I relate to them enough, but in this unique case, I saw a different little bit of me in several characters over the course of the story. Many of their different attitudes aligned with aspects of my own over the course of my career, which then also shifted over the course of the story.

Given how well things have been going for me lately, including and especially with regards to my art, I believe I discovered the show at just the right time. It encouraged me to actively consider my attitude towards various aspects of what I do, why I do it, and how it reflects upon myself, as well as how that's changed over the years.

It does touch upon some existential themes which were a little harder for me to deal with, but even so, it certainly gave me a lot to think about; some of which I still have to figure out for myself, too.

The opening themesong, Tadahitori, was probably what left the first, biggest impression on me. While some of the lyrics' meaning probably gets lost in translation (there's at least three subtly different takes on it), the intent and message that I could garner from it stuck with me quite strongly either way. By the end of the show, with all the separate plot threads tied up and the repercussions laid out, I knew I couldn't let that feeling of purpose that it gave me fade away without committing it to canvas.

There's more about the creative process below the illustration.

I originally set out to try mimicking the anime's rough, gritty, apparently almost careless style (which I mean in an entirely good way), but it was too far a departure from my usual smooth, clean lines, and ended up being impossible for me to pull off in a single attempt. The brush I chose for the lines frankly does most of the work towards achieving a similar look at all, and even then, I ended up finishing the piece by polishing the linework even more, only diverging further from what I originally meant to do.

That having been said, I'm still very pleased with the result. The whole process effectively served as an exercise in reflecting on my achievements, looking back on a lot of my recent work and celebrating it in my own way. I think it does a good job of conveying the joy that I've felt lately with making and sharing things with you all, even if it can sometimes be a rather lonely and daunting endeavor.

Basically, I'm altogether excited, optimistic, and determined to keep doing more and better in spite of all of that, and the song's lyrics very much spoke to those same feelings I've been grappling with over the years.

Here's the most recent doodle pack finished from the end of last year. Some of these have been posted on social media but here they are in one place for archival and easy access.

Starting with the personal and somewhat emotional stuff, we have one that was inspired by a video that lived in my head rent free for weeks after it was posted and crossed my path. I had to draw myself as that tiny little puppy, cause I felt it.

The other piece was inspired by a predictably difficult time I was having in the midst of a good one, which was equally frustrating as it was upsetting to deal with.

Next we have a couple of pieces of game fanart which are strangely both horror focused and yet the resulting art ended up being completely tonally different. On the left, we have Blocks for Babies, a tetris FPS (you'll see); and on the right, an idle nightmare 2: SABBATH, a clicker game (trust me, it's good).

I will mention that the fanart of IN2 isn't based on any specific scenes from the game, but just something I imagined could have happened in the game.

Next, we have assorted stream gifts and raffle prizes, going in order;

FaerieAlex, Fiona, ShadeTavish, BlazingPelt, James, TrixterCat, and Plushie; Melody, Halley (ft. Arwyn), Dal and Pockets; Trixter's displacer beast; and another bonus Fiona.

Another batch of scribbles; some silly, some sentimental.

Myself, feeling pleased from the praise I was getting; TipTap and Arwyn, during a rather bratty exchange; Me comforting Millie (aka Malachyte) during a heart-to-heart we shared; and a redraw of a classic meme with me in it instead.

And last, but not least, some assorted but more detailed giftart for friends.

Arwyn, being her usual mischievous self; a rendition of a plushie that belongs to my friend Valk; and a drawover with me and Melody using an Animal Crossing screenshot she'd taken for a project of her own.

I've been slowly accumulating random drawings that never made the cut for a bigger post, and some I even forgot I'd even made. Yes, that happens, scary as it sounds, although that shouldn't come as much of a surprise if you know me well at all. I'll be taking steps to remedy it in case it has happened more times than I've realised, but in the meantime, enjoy this smattering of unrelated artwork.

First up is the oldest of the bunch. Earlier last year, my friend Tiff pointed out an upcoming game called Beastieball, which has so much going for it and everyone who has even a passing interest in Pokémon games should absolutely check it out. What looks to be its "mascot" monster, called Goldie, is an absolutely gorgeous design and I had to draw fanart of it. Which I then proceeded to forget about completely.

I later remembered and unearthed the drawing from my pile of files after my friend Ihddn was playing the demo on my Discord server, and following a few touchups I got it exported and queued up. Still quite fond of this one!

Next up is a twofer of unprompted giftart. Someone in another server I frequent was showing off their new bunny plush and so, needing some warmup fodder, I decided to draw it for them.

Later I gave it a quick recolor for my friend Mel, cause he's into plush TF and I could do that.

Last but not least, we've got this beauty.

Don't ask how or why I made the connection from that absurd car sign to it being an Engrish tube-top design that a trashy, extremely pregnant Ruby would wear. But that's what happened and that's what I ended up making. Enjoy! (?)

Here's an assortment of art recently inspired by a variety of events I've enjoyed in my different hangout spots.

My friends Robin and Mishka, who've been active on my Discord server as of late, are really cute and fun and funny too, and I like them very much. Here's a couple of silly drawings they inspired with some similarly silly interactions while hanging out.

This all started with Robin consistently greeting Mishka in such a wistful way ever since she joined, and since I wanted to draw something for both of them anyway, this was perfect for me to tick several boxes all at one go (props to my friend Ihddn for coining "scentpai," it was perfect).

I was hanging out with Robin in voice while working on the above sketch, and she was exceptionally slow on the uptake (sorry sis, but you were) with realizing that I was drawing her as a surprise. At one point I said I was "waiting for the other shoe to drop," anticipating her reaction to the drawing, and when she finally did, she blurted out "Oh, I'm the shoe!"

The way she said it sounded exactly to me like this line from Extinction Party, which then inspired this silly thing the very next day. I love ENA, and drawing myself in that style was such an absolute blast. We couldn't stop laughing about it.

A little while prior, I'd picked up Lethal Company to play with my friends Wolfie, Piter, Mel, and Plushie - the latter pictured in this recreation of an unfortunate but very, very funny and abrupt learning experience that she had while playing together.

Last but by no means least, a couple of cutesy things. One's a doodle of FaerieAlex, my little friend and charge who I often babysit online - looking rather flustered for whatever reason - and my own rendition of the absolutely adorable piece of giftart my friend Robin made me for my birthday.

Here's a boatload of art inspired or brought on by my interactions with folks over on Twitter!

First up, some giftart: Starting with Bubbles who surprised me with this super sassy looking shortstack version of me! I genuinely think I look like a primary school teacher of some kind, which I really love. I decided to draw them looking as excited as they seemed to be while giving out all that fun art to folks.

Later on, I made another thing for Cody Omega as a reward for reaching an important milestone.

Next came the memes.

During the massive FurAffinity content policy update fiasco, my friend Seecret was putting in a lot of time and effort into figuring out just how deep the rabbithole of awful decision-making really went. So I decided to honor his service informing us of the extent of the management's ineptitude throughout the entire process with some giftart based off of an old timey war propaganda poster. It was a fun exercise to get it to match as closely as possible, while updating it to the vibe I was going for.

After I saw the Barbie mugshot drawover trend spreading I knew I had to get a piece of it with my two three bunny menaces. Just look at them; Choco and Choco know they're getting out by lunchtime.

Some direct Twitter references involving yours truly; the first inspired by how I was deliberately ignoring a backlog of notifications that I knew were mostly positive and affirming, to save them for when I needed a vibe boost.

The second was based on a quote I found going around, which I thought was particularly funny in my context. Seems a very appropriate thing for a bunnygirl to say.

And finally some more rough-sketched memes, this time in the form of direct redraws of others.

The first is a furry redraw of a couple of photos of foxes in cars with a similar look.

The second is a redraw of how Pikachu looks while riding your shoulder in one of the recent Pokémon remakes, kinda perched and staring off into the distance. I've unfortunately misplaced the screenshot so you'll have to take my word for it.

I went to watch the new TMNT movie, Mutant Mayhem, on release date with my friend Plushie. It's honestly in my top ten, possibly top five favourite movies of all time, and it left me inspired to draw something related to it, so here it is!

It's my and Plushie's mutantsonas; a rabbit wielding dual extending tonfas, and a red panda with a penchant for tech and hacking. Mine is absolutely allergic to and cursed to destroy any electronics she comes into contact with, while Plushie's couldn't fight her way out of a wet paper bag, but they make a good team together. They're unrelated to our main fursonas, but I just had to include a little signifier to link back to them somehow.

I'm planning on replicating the movie's shading style but I'm very intimidated by that plan given how iconic it is. Either way, this'll be getting a splash of colour before I call it done.

The first quarter of this year wasn't ideal for art, but once I'd clawed my way back out of the depths of my depression, the floodgates effectively opened.

What followed was a massive spate of giftart and assorted sketches to folks who'd been in my periphery or involved in my process of recovery. Here's a few of the smaller, impromptu doodles from my sketchpad that weren't part of any larger illustration projects.

We'll start with the innocent stuff first, getting kinkier as we go down the list.

To start with, an assortment of little gift busts made for some friends who participated in a mini stream I hosted on my Discord server when I first dusted off my tablet and stylus, as well as a friend who'd been supporting me through the rough period and making me the occasional piece of giftart which would always cheer me up tremendously.

In order, we have; Nozomi, Tiff, ScottishRaptor, Serykins, TigerJames, BlazingPelt, Fiona, and Guba.

Continuing with the little bits of character giftart, these two were for a couple of sweet goofballs who happened to find a way into my Telegram group chat before it was even meant to be accessible to the public.

The left was for Yama of a dragon character from one of his game design projects, and the right is of JesseFerret.

Next we have some Twitter related shenanigans.

The left drawing is my rendition of a really cute, minimalist game character made and showcased on Twitter by @SweatersJPG. When I saw the tiny 7x7 bunny sprite zooming about in the dual halfpipe skatepark, I was enamored. I'm still quite pleased with how it turned out, too.

The right is fairly self explanatory, made as a little gift of thanks to Sammy for their kind words of support on a particularly challenging day.

Last but not least; some kinkier hijinks involving June aka Bellwetter getting softly hypnotized with gentle touches on the left, and on the right, Kaycee making a big stink the way she knows best.

After a chance encounter over on Twitter led me to discover the character Bunchu the bunny as part of a new upcoming range of Lego sets (not sponsored), I fell in love with them and had to take the opportunity to put them to paper the best way I knew how.

This was probably the longest I've taken to make a single character drawing in a while, given that the reference material I had was mismatched and somewhat unhelpful (Protip: don't make your refsheet out of Lego). A lot of the time was spent filling in gaps and basically interpolating bricks into fluff, especially with having only one outdated piece of character art to go on. It was an interesting exercise, to be sure!

Then I put them in a diaper, because of course I did.

I found this cute video on Chikn Nuggit's channel and it immediately invoked thoughts of Soul Chocolate doing the same thing.

So I drew it. Comes in friendly, textless, and subtly mind-controlled versions.

A few months back I made this sketch depicting Chocolate and Soul Choco as Nagoriyuki and Eddy from the Guilty Gear universe. Sigma then took the sketch and made the coloured version below as practice.

Redesigning the mask to fit Choco's rabbit features and tweaking Soul's appearance to mimic Eddy's were both fun exercises, and I think Sigma did an excellent job of bringing my rather loose gestural sketch to the next level.

Here's a batch of assorted little drawings from the past several months!

First up, some little gifts for my friends Teake, Kirbu and Fangy.

Next, a bit of bat - a quick character design I did as a warmup, which ended up turning out a little like Winnie from Hotel Transylvania. And something silly involving Max the rabbit, which I put together as a cooldown doodle following a long stream.

Lastly, some silly meme stuff with a tiny spin of my own. I've since turned these into Telegram stickers.

A few months back I discovered a wonderful new world of music that I've been exploring since then, and one track in particular, called DOG BUS, kinda bookended the start of a significant chapter in my life.

Without waxing too poetic, I must have heard the song about a hundred times by now and given the absolutely adorable aesthetic surrounding the track and its remixes, I just had to make some fanart of it.

Since I had the recording, I figured I may as well export the timelapse and upload it to YouTube for your enjoyment.