Hello there! Welcome to my strange little corner of the internet. Please wipe your shoes, preferably using the doormat and not my lovely white carpet.
This month, I'm releasing an unfiction story, I did some sewing, and I started an 8th sketchbook!
What Is Digital Penthouse?
Digital Penthouse is a story I've been working on pretty much exclusively for the past few months. I recommend going in completely blind for the best experience, so please click right here to be taken to the landing page and begin reading!
The project's main inspiration is one of my favourite series of all time, Petscop. There's a lot that inspired me (too much to get into right now) but the biggest one is how the creator took many of their ideas from past projects, making Petscop a culmination of things they'd created up to that point.
I thought that was really cool, and I had a bunch of half-finished stories lying around, so it only made sense to gut them and steal their parts for Digital Penthouse!
While I do want to talk more in the future about the creation of Digital Penthouse, I don't ever plan to talk about story details or anything that's more abstract. I do have a very clear idea of the story, how the world works, and everything else, but I honestly wouldn't feel comfortable going into those details. Call it selfish, but I'd like to see what people make of the media itself rather than looking to me for answers. And if the general consensus is something I didn't anticipate at all, that's awesome!
So, that's it, at least for right now. Please let me know if you check it out, I'd love to hear people's thoughts :)
The Sewing Seamstress
The Sewing Sewer? Eh, sew-mantics.
A few weeks ago I bought a few rolls of felt as an early birthday present. Felt is that sort-of-furry material that plushies are made of, and I thought it could be fun to cut out and stick some down into my sketchbook as an interesting texture!
After showing it to a friend, they remarked on how I'm basically one step away from making a plushie. I thought the notion was hilarious, and we tossed the idea back and forth and then suddenly we were both making plans to order stuffing and watching sewing tutorials on YouTube and getting out knitting needles so we could both make plushies together. It was a little insane.
I wanted to make one of my Hazel Hotel Guy's (because come on, they're awesome), and I eventually settled on Bob because he is a simple shape with simple features. I thought the tail might be tricky, but it was a cakewalk in comparison to the disaster that would come.
My first attempt was, and there's no other way to say this, bad. I forgot to sew the face on so I had to do it with half of Bob's body already sewn. After finishing most of the sewing, I tried to turn the whole thing inside-out so the stitching wouldn't be visible, which took me an actual hour and didn't even work? And then it turned out I didn't anchor the thread correctly so it all started unravelling anyway. And I forgot to do the tail completely!
So, yeah. At least I got all the mistakes out of the way for my second attempt, which went by a lot smoother. All I had to do was start over with a clean cut of felt and get into the zone. The sew zone.
I made sure to do the face details and tail before anything else. Not making that mistake twice!
Overall, I'm really pleased with it! If I were to do it again I'd put a lot more attention into making sure the stitches are as tight as possible, because the stuffing was leaking out a little and I had to cut off a few of the pieces that were hanging out. Aside from that, it was a success!
My friend also made a fish plushie with fancy stitching that I'm very jealous of. Please admire its beauty.
The 8th Approaches
I started my 8th sketchbook this month. There's a lot of these, now!
Drawing has been really fun lately. I'm at the stage where I have such a large cast of characters, that if I were to sit down and draw each of them one-by-one, by the time I got to the end enough time would have passed between drawing the first one that I'd be excited to it again.
Coming up with characters is also great fun. It's a very hit-or-miss process, with a lot more misses than hits, but it's the absolute best feeling when I come up with a design that actually works and is distinctive enough from the other 45+ Guy's.
Speaking of, here's the updated Guy's list for sketchbook 8!
Finally, here's some of my favourite pages from my last sketchbook (#7).
Who would've thought that I'd get better at art with all this drawing! My hands finally feel like they're cooperating with me and it's much easier to draw what I'm envisioning in my head. I know there's art studies and formal techniques I could practice to fast-track the improvement process, but I'd rather just draw what I want and have fun with it.
The End
That's it for this month! Now I'm finally done with Digital Penthouse, I'm going to bask in the feeling of resolution for a little while before setting sail on a new project, whatever that may be.
Thanks for reading!