krad

so i read through the entirety of pluto last night, staying up way too late at 2am because urasawa's art is that delectable.

(this is not a review of pluto. it is very solid but i don't have the energy for a full on review.)

this all got started because i was charmed at a co-interview urasawa appeared in and very predictably, there was a short segment where they were both talking about the preference/appeal of drawing older men because they're more ripe. x) lingustic cheekiness aside, it's a cute interview, full of the off-the-cuff insights i love. urasawa also has a gigantic youtube channel filled with similar insights, and filmings of him drawing various characters - it's very well done behind-the-scenes work.

but this is about pluto.

so technically, this isn't the first time i read pluto; that would be in college when i brought the cover of one specific volume solely because the dude on the cover was a dead ringer for zihark, lmao.... krad's one brain cell clearly at work.

(strangely, out of a very large manga/anime back catalog, there's only one other character i felt like zihark looked like .... the villain in an old, old manwha called CAT that cellarfcp did. dude even has the scar on the exact freaking place (scroll down to the last page). i wonder if the author did that on purpose...)

honestly it was the best volume to get at random since it was a pretty well contained, startlingly poignant story within the rest of pluto. i didn't quite fall in love with urasawa's art back then even if i saw half of monster's anime as well around the time (tbh his stories were too dense/subtle for krad back then), but i appreciated it on a surface level versus now where i'm actively studying his art style.

.... anyway if you hear krad moaning and wailing about redrawing the feh strip it's 100% because of urasawa, and the strange resemblance to epsilon to zihark is not coincidence, lol.

if i had a personal tumblr still i'd make a shitpost that was something like

trans folk (handshake) frankenstein body havers
having weirdly specific long-term fantasies since kids of being DoD experiments to fuck around with your body until it's something More while you're still acutely aware of the faustian strings of that particular bargain


(having A Day where one eye's seeing double and feeling the confines of this rotting meatbag greatly when all i want to do is drawwwwwwwww)

sorry i'm behind on comments! y'all are so smart and thoughtful that i want to give you the proper brainwidth for an equally thoughtful response back instead of one line replies. <3

if i'm completely honest my brain is still 95% going feral with hornyshitposting about gunter over on the quarantine tumblr and i wish i was the least bit exaggerating. not sure when i'll get these brain cells back but it'll definitely be another month at minimum or whenever i finish this slowburn fic. :'D

(if you asked me if this is what it was like when i first got into zihark fifteen years ago, i honestly think this is worse l m a o )

it's really wild finding prolific fates/gunter posters who have been inactive for years now

cuz on one hand i really, really miss not being able to chat/shitpost with the best of them (we would have gotten along so well lol)

on the other hand that was uhhh, 2014-16?

and i don't know how to say this politely, but even as horny as fates is as a whole, gunter fans (and the everything with the S support) are .... next level pervy/kinky lol. like, you gotta be comfortable with several kinds of dead dove at minimum - you gotta walk in cracking up at viagra jokes.

and i only barely got comfortable drawing kink art in 2018-19, not even in the least bit the same amount of years.

so it's just wild going 'mm, man i would have not been mature enough to even remotely approach this, even probably 3 years ago.'

duality of fen?
i suppose it's the new generations of folks picking up the games that keep the flame alive.

( mini squee )
anyway this week ought to be going to the grandparents, finessing my new work laptop (holy christ M2 apples are TANKS), and a f-load more smut. hopefully a good week!

participating in what was basically an all-night 'twitch plays #pringles thunder run' livechat on a military shitpost server plus drawing a full page of slobbery hot yaoi blowjobs was a hell of a way to spend a friday night

it also feels, imo, exactly like what a great blackout-drunk football mosh pit party would be, cuz let me tell you i woke up this afternoon all 'which fucking decade am i in' levels of disorientation  :D

(it is 5:30pm and only after two coffees do i feel vaguely conscious, hi how are all of you)

been a while since I've talked about creative projects, and what I'll be focusing on for the next 6-9 months:

• FEALTY, hellsing booklet (60-70% done) - as mentioned here on the log, realized yesterday I should convert one of my old abandoned zines into a quick 5 page text/drawing booklet to test out my krita layout/print pipeline (FALKE was my last visual project in photoshop before i switched to linux), as i need to figure out how to print the zihark zine + other doujinshi. This is a quick little two-weekend project, and also a nice little warmup to test this inking style I've been wanting to lean into for WGS as well, so hopefully that one will be aesthetically consistent. 
• [redacted prisoner exchange], drawing & fics (90% done) - I went a little above and beyond on this one with at least 5 different mini scenes both drawn and written lol. Drawings are done, just need to be alone for at least 6+ hours to finish the last two mini drabbles as they're emotionally hard, and I don't think I'll be able to finish them if interrupted halfway through. Think I'll have that chance this upcoming weekend, so that'll be a wrap.
• [redacted semi-comm for a romance author] (40% done) - basically doing character warmups and expressions for a social media campaign. I need to redo my models for one of the characters, but it's nice as a fairly light, quick warm up.
• KILLING EDGE, zihark fanservice doujin (40-50% done) - This one I'm just slowly doing doodles when I actually feel like it in between more intense projects as breaks, and building up the war chest of sexy ziharks on the side lol. Once when I have enough, I'll start focusing on the layout and stitching it together.
• WHAT GREATER SIN, hellsing R18 doujin (30% done) - I've mentioned this sucker before, but since this is apparently the year of cleaning up abandoned projects, and a lot of people have mentioned they want to see it ... I'm excited for this as the next sizeable comic work.
• Artcade (waiting for launch in July) - last exchange of the year I'll do other than Nagamas, but coded up the entry ticket of my meow meows and can't wait to draw for other folks there. :) 
• BRIGHT EYES, game (1-5% done) - "code brain" is very different than "drawing brain" so the next time drawing brain goes into a monthly hibernation, I'll pick back up on the gameplay coding. I need a solid two weeks of focus on Godot to get the physics right so I can go in and start throwing models in functional levels and moving them around. Also want to start working on stand-alone animations like walk, attack, dying, etc. At least I have a fairly detailed/specific strategy blueprint of what I want here.
• NaZine, uniform fetish/naziexploitation anthology with JD as the lead (done with contribution, waiting for submission due date to start layout process) - JD mentioned this nugget here, as I'll be the art director for this anthology. :)
• There's an unnamed femslash kink doujin that I've been cooking in the back of my mind for a better part of a year, that I think I'll be ready to do after the majority of these are out the door. It'd be pretty hard stuff, lots of noncon, transformation, quasi-monsterfuckery, and femslash-kink specific tropes.  Not ready for it yet, in technical skill, and I also want to get a good script / thumbnail process going, but once when that happens ...

That's not including the fact i'm roughly halfway through FE: Fates (Conquest) and hoping that's done before LoZ: Tears arrives at the end of this month and eats my brain :v   (I have high hopes for Tears after watching the first 19 minutes of gameplay as it fixed all of my complaints about BoTW which i'm giving away after I finish that. Legit got chills seeing the start as it gave me very specific "Oh, this feels like one of my favorite 2000's OoT fics..." vibes)

All in all, this summer/fall should be a lot of fun with these projects. :D

it's not *bad*, but i've been in an increasingly weird mood/vibe the last few years where i feel like i'm actively repelled by anything creative by a larger studio and up these days, and have just resigned myself to Making the shit i want to see for the rest of my life, and not expecting it in the wild elsewhere (unless if i dig into pre-2005 media).

(this may be part of the gamedev spree lately. at this point i'm genuinely more confident at actually making stuff i'd enjoy than i would be with other studios creating it.) 

like I had a moment where i saw chainsaw man fanart and went all '...........yeah what happened to that? that was all over my dash about six months ago'.  the way i watch/get into shows and fandom, i gotta .... be convinced into it, for at least a year. i gotta sniff the fandom contents like a red wine and see how it ages. and i didn't think i was picky, but while i liked original trigun, i watched the first episode of stampede and... yea no. nope. :v actively repelled by the body language in there lul. same thing with fire emblem engage.

there's specific story gimmicks, visual tropes, and vibe-y things more popular now that i could comment on that are strong repellants, but i feel like that'd be missing the forest for the trees, and would be bitching for the sake of it.

trying to think the last studio creative work i was actively into for a while (ie making fanart for WHILE the fandom was still red hot) .......... mass effect 3? oh! detroit: become human, that was probably my last Fandom. the slash fanart/fic for that fandom was sublime as hell.  (kotor2 doesn't count since chronologically that was released before. and imo 3Houses doesn't count either since it was more my metaphorical balls being eaten by hubert for all of 6 months, and then abruptly dropped like a hot potato. i was also in a decently bad brain depression episode right around the time 3Houses released, so.)

i feel like i've seen a lot of creators slightly older than me get into this kind of mood in their mid 30's and now i'm wondering if that's just a natural age progression thing. :v  lua's post on Ao3's founders and their culture also kinda sparked this.

/grumpy lady yell at cloud etc.