Special Anniversary Post: A Year In Review, and Other Sensual Wonders

The title is kind of bonkers, but whatever. 

Anyway, a year ago today I posted on this blog for the very first time with the goal of improvement. I think it may have happened ever so slightly, but I don't exactly have a way to measure and compare. Some days I did good, some days I did puke. The days I pushed myself to do new things are the days I had interesting things to post and the days I moved forward. Also, the formatting with images and texts improved. There was an awful lot of nasty going on at the beginning format-wise. To commemorate this most wonderful of days, I went back through time and picked some posts that illustrated the growth that took place. That's what I'd like to say, but in reality I just started picking stuff that I thought was cool. I'm typing this at 9:14 on the 27th (which when you read this will be the past! It's a beautiful thing) and so I'm tired and want to go to bed but I won't have time to put this together tomorrow so I'm doing it now. Also, any time I link to something I think it's funny. You might hate it, but some of the links are funny. To me. Maybe not to you. This blog is all about me anyway (selfish!?!?)! I shouldn't have to justify what I'm doing here!?

Thanks to everyone who stops by. I appreciate the support (even from those of you who just stop by regularly and never comment), and I hope that there's something worthwhile you find when you get here. 

So yeah. Some quick statistics:

Total posts: 286
Total pageviews: 11724
Total comments: 484
Total followers: 24
Total coolness improvement: 1234567.890 cubic inches

Happy Anniversary, from me to you. May you have a year full of joy.

...That's kind of a stupid thing to say.

January

This was my first post. Honestly, as I was going back through the year I was hoping there would be tons of stuff I hate, so I could see obvious growth from then to now. And I do hate everything here. Except the hands and the bracelet. 

I come back to this post all the time and try to look for things to despise but those darn hands and that cool bracelet! You guys, look at them! If you can, I also give you permission to check out the dude's head to see how messed up it is. Compare it to heads later. Also, the placement of the head in relation to the shoulders. Not so nice. But the hands. And the bracelet. 

February

Look at those hands! Not anything like January's post. This post is interesting because I get an entire character down on paper, rather than a bust. It's also quite hideous, which I was really hoping I'd see more of earlier in the blog. But again, I had some really good days where some of the stuff I did rivals some of the later stuff I did. Beginner's Luck? I don't know. But this post does make me slightly nauseous due to the immense lack of skill on display.

March

Oh! That sword guy. His hand is lovely, even if it's slightly incorrect. I think as an artist (I might say "We as artists," but I don't know if everybody else feels this way) I have this obsession with drawing hands and showing hands off. So much that I hardly render them accurately. I forget (read: I don't care) that when fingers are wrapped around something you can't see tons of finger. You just get to see the tips. But I just wanna show more than that. So I do! It's inaccurate and wretched but since I'm in charge I can do whatever I want and you just deal with it. The guy directly to the sword guy's right, the hair guy? He has an incredibly ugly face. I think I learned a thing or two there. I still draw ugly faces, but it's more intentional now (maybe). Also, the alien fetus thing is pretty cool. I want to raise one, like Sea Monkeys?

April

You guys, it's 9:30 P.M. now on the 27th and I'm really super tired. Someone put me to bed.

This one has more bad faces/heads, but I also picked it because that flaming guy in the center right has a freaking sweet pistol. While I was looking through posts for things I liked I was trying to come up with a use for the curvy part under the barrel. The use is cosmetic. It just looks cool. It could be a balance thing or have a spot for attachments like laser sights but I HIGHLY DOUBT IT.

May

Ha. This one was chosen because of the guy saying "IT'S AUTOMATIC." His gun is cool, and the ejected bullet casings are casting shadows. Ummm, that's about it... Although the guy with the weird talking sword in the bottom right is cool, too. You should go back to that day and look at it, I think I had more on the sword thing in the post.

Junes

Thanks to Persona 4, any time I see the word "June," I think of "Junes," and I sing the dang jingle! The month of Junes. Junes. Junes. This picture is a symbol of how I've never finished a single piece of art, really. A year later and I have no posts that I could use for a portfolio. I'd love to finish something this year, something I can be proud of. I was trying to push myself to have a little project and finish it, but it never happened. This happened all the time last year, as you might recall. So here's to laziness! Or weakness! Or lack of skill! Who cares.

July

This one was picked only because I think it's funny: A nearly completely naked creature strutting around only wearing his shoes while saying "YES!" enthusiastically. It's funny ;) Looking at it now I wish I had added some hair on his arms and legs and chest, though. It would be much funnier.

August

This one was cool because it was almost a finished product. It turned out well, except for all the errors with light and shadow and everything else. Can't win 'em all.

September

I chose this one because I love that rad machine pistol! Remember, I didn't use reference or anything (that's something else I'd like to work on this year... Using some reference!), and the gun looks sweet! Even without reference, I have a basic understanding of firearms and their components and I always try to make the weapons believable. I know on this one the slide should be moving the opposite direction, but it was ink on paper and I couldn't undo it. But I talked about all that in the original blog post.

October

I chose this one because the gun was cool! Wait, were most of these images chosen simply because the weapons were cool? Oh my. It's totally true. This post is basically a post about cool weapons and not really about artistic growth. What a twist :(

...Yeah, what more can I say?

NOVEMBER

I picked this image because I didn't remember drawing it. I think it's pretty cool! That guy on the bottom smoking? His face is pretty different from most o f the faces I draw. It's cool! I was almost redeemed from my weapon obsession but there's a dude with a gun up there in the upper right hand corner. Whoops

December

This one I picked because I think the composition is nice, and the character at the top is doing a totally atypical pose. I must have used reference (Thanks, Dave R. I don't know if I credited you in the original post). I never show faces from the bottom, it's way too hard! The gradient is nice, too. And the floating skull.

January

(I was going to add some text here and an image for January, but I thought that the final image would suffice since the image on the right is from January. So I'm putting text in here that doesn't matter.)

So there you have it. One year gone. I'm professional now! Nope, not at all. I'm ready for another year, ready to grow. Always grow. Always moving forward. But in the interest of showing growth:

Let's be honest. There was definite improvement this year, even if the entire post outside of this last image didn't show it.