Reverie reflections

A reverie Sketch of expressionism, it's not going to pay off. That's the point.

Before i started, i tested for abstract expressionism. It's something that's like poetry, free from categorization. Playing with marks as a means of anti representation.

Some dwindling relief or tingling sensation passes. A process of representation may be discovered and put into the workflow with this style test.

Curious exercise that can be done daily, for about 15 minutes, then left once a sunk cost.

This is the technique test pad. Which can lead to style testing for one to weave into something consistent later on.
 

2021. That's where I had the Gregor Murphy name initially. This attempt to rebel against representation was a conceptual monkey gym.

Does it matter that I give these marks meaning through contextualization. Or shall your interpretation carry the story? Best to leave what is said unsaid.

Play before industrial category can commence.

Anti-reresentation was the nuturer to take back the path.

Illustrator's Summery

Comparing to the end of the year, the artistic exploration past the twenties have been wondrous.

Now that I have it, I'm obsessed. I'm not gonna care if I'm going to get traction for doing what I love. I'll do the artless hackneyed work for the twitch advertisers if they want there traction for there core gamer demographic.

This commitment is here now, needing to be sated.
 

500 streaming bonaza.

500?? Why? Why. The tired must be there.

Another victory lap, this time it's with streaming. It's been sustainable since I've managed to do it with subjects I enjoy. The tension to perform to twitch algorithms designed to please the masses for advertisements was too much.

It did not feel as much as an overcommitment, rather as a low-effort thing that I was able to do. There was not much traffic though.

Funny how gamified twitch has become, with our own self-appointed brands the with the commercialism. All the lures it needs with the lottery winners on the front page. Another lottery, what a way to go.

Streaming more have made me more of a user than a product. This has to be treated as a business opportunity rather than a medium.

Won't count it as a lost day if I miss a day, though. This is more exhausting to raise the response rates.

Collapsed fence

Rough 10 min Trace from my smartphone.

The winds were fierce last week, causing something to make a fence collapse on my way to the gym.

Collapsed, meaningless walls, such as this with many forgotten details, there were so many cans of people who threw them over as this got over. It was a junkyard of mess, and there's a fence and crew now. The construction was saying that I was in the way.

It makes me wonder how I got back up from burnout and shouldn't put myself down despite other temptations, Them cans symbolizing the wreck and brought of many of the breaks that were taken at many of a night.

Everbody is too busy to see what an impact that has on ones own quality of life that burnout can do, and that's okay.

There's this self-deprecating bingo card that I noted with its ways for humor. Yet I can't blame myself fully now, it's all the wind with the market forces having its way with its hustle culture. That's merely what it means to make a comic.

Not worth it, with the market one could only make guesses and see what works as a business. Not my problem as the weather and the thing without autonomy does the act the way, only way is to jump back. It's all better now.

The Monomyth Joseph Campbell

A look it as a face, to a way of a hero's journey.

Some meanings are glossed over, I managed to get through it though.

It's a book, one diving into what is seen as cosmological yearnings, diving into the subconscious and making it all weaves together with tales of going out.

This mythopoetic take on what it means to tell a story. With a nuclear unit, that passes to the teleology of genre storytelling. Surpassing all literature and commercial endeavours, to the big unknowing and the beyond. It's been, what is to say, spiritual. Codified into a praxis for other writers and storytellers.

It's got mythological, mythical literature up the wazoo. Am I consciously hitting these cosmic keys. The key to unlock all storytelling greats yet not so.

Directly and at the moment, no, our in-the-moment minds are taken aback. Making bold claims to our specie's intent and desire to write and create.

It's something that's been constantly recommended by editors and entertainment storytellers, I now get it. In a basic, rudimentary sense, as a means of motivation.

Many an artist have not followed it tough, and still became successful. It's a got anthropological samples of stories all around the world. Particularly the chapters on sex could be questioned.

Of Odysseus from Aristotle, it reflects ultimately from the western view of storytelling.

Not so sure if I'd recommend this on storytelling, as much as I do on the story grid. It's one of those backlog books which has its information/cheat sheets provided online. Useful if you want it to be.

For a less euro-centric-male centric perspective, check out 1001 Heroine with a thousand faces.

Hoisin duck fries and birthday sketch

Hoisin duck fries, Cappuccino and a caramel biscuit.

 

Did another birthday sketch, for DA. Out of lurking for several years and coming out.

Good enough, I hope. Did it within a 2 days.

When I'll stop doing this, according to Steven Pressfields standard, (cussing link) when it stops being fun.

Maybe I'll never be asked to do another birthday, deep in my soul, did I really do it for a direct advertising return? No, I did at a whim of a bara artist that I lurked within my twenties and kept at it, this is my thanks that I managed, A little messy yet it's out there. The message of a horned couch went through.

Lantern parade reflections

It certainly was an event, I must confess. My obsessiveness of a professional schedule to build my body of work had me wrapped up. I lied last time and did not come, yet family here comes first. All this streaming and social media work really is a crap shoot of a competitive attention environment compared to the memories I could have made.

Luckily, I rescheduled for the irl fun, it meant something this time.

There was a cold, sneezing as I was working on a small scene, formatted within a two-page comic format. It was a journey to make me experience time differently from this professional pursuit of my ideas.

Is this what has come of me, all this time now, with my pursuit. We didn't have the pursuit back in the Stone Age, since industrialization we've been pushed, continuously, to create and compete.

These moments are where we contemplate time all forevermore.

This is the lantern i carried, premade.

There was a walk on a football field and rive behind the pubs, with plenty of old projects behind the trees.

Buttered potatoes, three in a small cartoon. Bringing this  event to a close.

 

Marciy Marie, Cush Monty, revision

 The only AFAB design.

Am i designing a token supporter? I better not, unless I'm designing an MLM gay flick.

The barest minimum of what is takes for a character sheet, two three fourths of a view with only small standardization. This design can be 'off-model' for continuity purposes, with the theme.

Now for the style, meant for intermediates and advanced folks.

High rendered frisket, experience being; great for a one-off illustration, for a freelance storytelling project? Not so much.

Imagine the time making every panel an oil painting without being reductionistic. It all makes me respect cartooning more due to this. Love them colours.

Characters and style experiments

WOW! THE FIRST ART POST WITHOUT THAT SKETCHY THUMBNAIL! 

A moment in history.

I'm still working on the odd couple dynamic with Danny and George.

Could have added more detail to add immersion into the background, yet that's the dilemma of the cartoonist, to control the articulation of the detail.

Once named Vixona, with my own affinity of xs as the writer. Then I picked Vere, I picked through the name generator Locke. The name database and its names has its ways.

"Very Lucky?" Nah.

First my art post

Time to announce a new tag, a my art tag. Minimal words, reposts of my work and current work.

The character is a collection of all the gender dysmorphia I had, yet another snipped that I had worked with at the time.

2022 - 2023 to this current day.

With revisions to his current image and name.

Streamin marathon thoughts

That's one thing off my bucket list.

I started streaming last month 2022-07-30-29-16-22

Before I had become a Couch-Sona, thrown into the Internet, with all these free platforms.

I streamed till I broke the algorithm, till I wanted to charge for on live, in demand appearances like Mark Twain and Seth Godin did for they're speeches. Of course I can't because a multi-national corporation like twitch owns the ip, I'm merely a freelance hobbyist who decided to pursue this professionally without getting paid.

Reasons for leaving a full time schedule on twitch.

• A creative physical toll on my resources. The downward spiral of me feeling more like content and lack of creativity.
• A share cropping relationship to what I gave. Not the collaboration building. I refuse to produce a nebulous 'content maker' to feed its algorithm.
• An ego check, I don't want to be tethered to on social media platform, social media grooming it instead of doing meaningful projects. The number felt like they were approaching me.
• Wanting to go adult/nsfw how can I explore the gay romance genre, including the bara genre if I have to keep hiding it from twitch? Do I have to couch cover all the explicit bits?

The strongest is number 2.

They don't share dignity to those who burn the candle at both ends, the cheapening of the work they encourage here is not in favour of any meaningful curation. It sucks away all time due to one appeal of being present, and doing it now rather than doing it asyncriousnously, even live in the chatrooms. It almost ain't never efficient.

Discovery, as if there's a Hollywood agent looking to find and promote my story for a high sum of money. As if it's calculable. It's all artifice out of one's control.

As if producing content allows it. Too much a conflict of interest.

As if we are Hollywood agents with that publicity to make stars with a snap of the fingers, It's not favourable to treat each other like that.

Unless one is on the frontier of this platform, able to capitalize it and retention. There are a lot of dreary steps and gatekeeping hoops that the creative will have to jump through that's the best for the platform, not for the creative. Twitch is made to captivate its audience with a lot of stuff.

Along with the sharecropping, yeah, unlike this blogger. I'm not sure how long Twitch will last, along with other platforms.

This was me trying to find a balance, I'm not sure that it's within a full-time streaming schedule on here.

So I streamed my art, the most sustainable thing for myself, not the most optimal path for the algorithm. Such a statistic could have done rear-view mirror behaviour. Even making my best streams, I felt at mercy to this mindless mechanization with the incentives I put in place.

It's okay.

I thank the connections and value I added with the networking I was able to do, yet the constraints of this are too much. I'm not sure the search engine optimization (seo) for twitch, with tricks to get on its first page. It is not the way I can make work that had pride in it.

This ain't even burnout, this was a lack of compensation of all the hard work by the platform, not any one in particular.

This is a dilemma I'm experimenting on.

Either play videogames/commentary (content) on twitch to maximize Seo and viewer per average. (This entirely compromises my creative mission). Or leave, with this hoop left behind.

Going to switch to twitch weekend streaming now. Picarto streaming for the rest. It has less of an audience base, yet the mathematical "gotta appeal to the masses" mindset is getting to me. Need to focus on learning.

Picarto and my weekend twitch strum

Is this the path one should follow? Influencer track documentary, 2 hours.

ZachBussay doing to math.

Social media fame, urghth.

Reflection of cozy.

This wordpress article got me thinking. Things are erupting on twitter again, maybe I need to be on it less. Along with some interesting responses. Ursula Leguin, hm.

As a rise of that response to that original article on the cozy genre, along with that, please don't throw shade to the writer.

Genre is a useful social construct of sorting, via the audience uses to market their expectations. It's useful for the creator to consider this useful fiction used to help sort a taxonomy.

It's as real as a psychological desire, if I was to pin it with a conceptual distinction.

Is the cozyification a reflection of dumbing down? Staying safe? Depends.

It's out there now, in the public space, forming tribes, what's the problem is more children/adult genre not being clear with its commercial or literary intentions.

This happened with superhero movies with their 13. (Content warning, gore) The same argument was used in reverse with superhero movies. When there were marketed to adults.

This kerfuffle is simply the confusion of genre, its relation to the marketing. All related towards what type of age audience the creator does. Confusing the other when the other is done. This applies less to self-publishing, so whatever comes and goes. It's all good.

All this has made me think about interpassivity within storytelling, of course, with my own ending given within the romance. The interpassivity and mass-cult appeal, the real enemy to the creative.

That's my attempt at the discourse.

After notes, there's this cussy long article on the origins of cozy horror, 30 min-ish read.

Production values, worth it for the comic/idea?

This thumbnail had minimal polishing.

This twitter thread got me thinking.

What is this polish, or lack of for? To sell to a gatekeeper? Or to spread our ideas?

To impress a big publisher or to help resonate with a tribe?

What will sell an idea of a story? The idea or the production values in of itself? Many these comic makers from manga got me thinking. Is the labour in the polished illustrations or the idea?

Look at these time-consuming illustrational how-tos online. There's no how to when it comes to creativity. It's all polishing in hopes to make a hit.

Yet there's no reliable metric on what makes a hit. Persistent, sustainable consistency and luck.

Have to judge if these techniques add or detract from the experience of the idea, along with the time.

Be in the idea business first, not the polishing business. A convenient way to display the ideas, even a style overhaul if the time constraints are considered. Especially with cartooning.

It's an immense privilege to draw so detailed in the first place, yet it's a pleasure if there is such an opportunity if one so chooses. Yet the reductionistic cartoons can also make a point. If one can.

This may be making an 'animalistic' point, yet the starting idea of what to draw comes before the how-to, the starting idea for a big project matters more. The intuitive is always something to be learned. That's not what an instruction manual teaches.

Or the baroque detailed way, understand time considered, dressing it up as a convenient like raw meal prep in cooking presented as better. It's merely different compared to taking a meal out of the freezer and putting it into the microwave.

They are plenty of comics that have been successful without needing the polish.

What is interaction debt for?

Feet voting and exploitive industry avoidance detecting, that's the only tools this positive side of this algorithm has.

Reflecting on why people respond and don't charge. Along with the time when they don't.

At a certain point, during one social media career. There's a point, the user can't interact with the infinity of the internet.

Why don't they respond, respecting the status role one is taught in high school?

Well, status roles of the tribes, of the informal groups online, along with the narrative it makes into people's head. The qualitative, sociological aspect matters more.

Since high school ain't mattering now. Also, the social tools may be not enough to handle the online wild west.

Networking to the smallest viable audience matters more than nebulous encouragements about improving social skills to give a positive grade on a test. There is no intentional learning and enrolment on the latter. So there is no direction.

It's better to post to an algorithm that is social media and build an audience rather than have their IP taken away by big publishers and other unaccountable corporations who cover their bad behaviour with standard legalese. Waiting in line for that is untenable. The surplus labour for that task impossible.

No other choice.

Forgot Zhangku's Tail, of milk and tails.

 Oh no, where did I leave it?

Left the tail in the sketches!

The gotta ship-it-on-schedule-syndrome got to me. Shipped the creative milk labour.

Yet now I posted it, posted it all over within today, it's sunk into the quicksand. All them posts on all those media platforms. With the question of should or should I not revise it dangling into the winds. Ephemeral in my imaginations eye, flickering in and out.

It's gift art, nothing in, nothing out. Work for free where you set the standard, oh. Yet, a birthday gift is all the tastier if you put a littler supererogatory effort in it. More juicy for the thirsty.

More humanity, more couchmanity, more my llamanity, mor-

Deattachable tails?? Well, I can reattach my chest- nevermind.

It's time to bring it, did a discussion regarding milk. Oh no, it was so messy that there was almost a schism over taste preferences. Milk Everywhere! 

Goats cheese, or llamas cheese. Don't ask why I crave it. I tried to by diplomatic on where it came from. Including the full fat variety. We equal lines at the nut milks, oh maybe- before the guns of milk could be fired! Phew.

No heads knocked off.

I must give the milk. Don't ask the milk, have the milk. Tasty milk. milk. Along with a squiggle. The milk couch bring his gifts, and then some. Good enough!

Cleaned the mess before birthday. At 12 pm.