Hazel Hotel: Full Cast?

Hello there, my sometimes slippery and occasionally slimy friends! Congratulations to anyone in the middle of that Venn diagram. My sincere condolences to anyone who isn't.

This month, I have some closing remarks on Digital Penthouse, I made full-body ref sheets for ALL the Hazel Hotel Guy's, and I've started a new creative writing project... Read on!

Wrapping Up Digital Penthouse

The actual Digital Penthouse website has remained exactly the same since I published it, barring like, three spelling mistakes. But since then, a few other things related to the project have been released, and I'd like to showcase them all in one place!

Here's the technically-official Companion Album I made for the story. It was kind of an accident. I've linked the YouTube video containing the whole album, but you can also listen to the songs individually on YouTube or Soundcloud.
Here's my write-up about how I made the dang thing! It's pretty long so feel free to bookmark it and save it for later.
Here's an awesome song (with cool visuals and lyrics???) inspired by the story, made by my amazing friend Icely. They put a ton of effort into it and I think it's absolutely fantastic. Please give it a listen! (The password is the name of the epilogue, in correct case, seperated by an underscore.)

Semi-relatedly, Digital Penthouse was also recently added to the Night Mind Unfiction Index! This is UBER exciting, and I'm hoping it'll help get a few more eyeballs on it :>

Every Single "Hazel Hotel" Character In One Drawing

I started my 9th sketchbook fairly recently! (Well, this was true when I first drafted this page... it's now a month and a half later and I've nearly completed it! Oops!)

My new sketchbook is half the size of the normal one I buy, so I have to draw much smaller than I'm used to. A side effect of this meant I couldn't fit all of the Hazel Hotel characters onto the first page like I'd done previously.

While this seemed like a bad thing, it was actually the perfect opportunity for me to draw full-body references for all of the characters! Because if they were going to be split up on different pages anyway, I might as well go the full mile and draw more than just their head. Behold, the first spread I've ever drawn featuring all my characters!*

*Technically, they're drawn on seperate pages and edited together for the sake of being on the same image. But who even cares.

I am super-duper chuffed with how it turned out! The backgrounds especially were something I was worried I'd struggle with making unique (after all, there's 46...) but I think they're distinctive enough!

I am conscious of the fact that, the bigger this cast grows, the less and less likely it is I'll be able to fit them all into a single project. And that's okay, I think! Even if I only end up using three or four of these designs in something, I'll be happy. After all, I'm designing characters because I enjoy the creative process, not because of some end-goal.

Anyway, here's some of my favourite pages from my last sketchbook (#8).

Dreaming Of A New Universe

So, when I originally drafted this update, this section was called "Creative Bankruptcy And Wallowing In Apathy" (I am actually not kidding).

Essentially, since finishing Digital Penthouse in September, I hadn't been able to stay focused on a project for more than a few weeks at a time. I think it was a pretty neat insight into how creative endeavours can sometimes feel a little hopeless, and that even though it sucks to scrap projects, it's all part of the artistic process. The segment basically ended with me talking about how I know I'll be fine because it's happened a hundred times before and I've always managed to find a new thing to work on eventually.

Well... I've now deleted that section, because in the month-and-a-half since I first drafted it, I've started working on a new thing! Crazy how that works out, huh?

In loose terms, this new project is related to dreaming. It's mostly written text in a slightly interactive format, and I'm hoping to pair it with visual polish and musical elements to make it feel one-of-a-kind. It's probably not going to be that long - it'll take maybe an hour to read, maximum - but I am really super duper excited about it!

My Website Should Be Better Probably

Finally - there's still a bunch of things I want to add/change/fix with this website, but I'm not sure when I'll get around to them! Unless I'm hyperfixating on something, I struggle to put any effort towards it at all... and unfortunately this website is one of those things I haven't really been thinking about much recently. As such, it'll probably stay exactly as it is for a while.

Which is a shame! I want to do so much here; I'd like a dedicated "Projects" tab, a sortable gallery for my sketchbook, a cleaner looking homepage, a more organised navbar, better mobile compatibility... The list is pretty endless.