Aka: Hey did Mad-Revolution die?
As shown by this journal, nope I did not.
For all 5 people that still pay attention to this space, I shall tell you a tale and answer some questions of where I've been, what I've been doing and what I'm gonna do next. (TL;DR at the bottom)
Where I've been?
So 2018 has been my most stagnant year I've lived through yet. Just before it started, I had finished my University degree in Contemporary Art and Professional Studies and thus stopped being a student for the first time in my life which was a bit of a sobering experience. Furthermore, the part time job I had since starting 4 years before university very briefly gave me more hours before making me redundant. So basically ended up going into 2018 with nothing going for me in terms of employment or otherwise something practical to do with my free time.
And then the majority of my 2018 was spent looking for full time work, ended up settling for a zero-hour, part time job at a Coffee shop that (long story short) slowly devolved into being functionally unemployed again and just generally working in an unprofessional environment. It was only in the last month I finally got full-time job at McDonalds which, in a surprising turn around from whats expected, has only gone well so far with decent pay, decent hours and working with decent people.
What I've been doing?
As I've kind of only just realised I semi covered above, most of my time was spent looking for full time work, playing Dungeons and Dragons and otherwise just wasting time. Which will probably lead people to realise and ask
"Hey Mad. You studied Art, you're an artist and you have free time. The fuck is the art at?"
Well during July of 2018 I had to move back to my dads with my girlfriend and are currently living in a small room on a 10 year old sofa bed and pretty much no free room outside of that so basically said bed is also the only place we can sit and do stuff. Needless to say, trying to draw in a cramped room lying down on a bed ye have to share with another person is not exactly good for ones motivation on top of the previous factors.
So yeah to answer the question above, I've been doing fuck all. However...
What I'm going to do next?
Between being motivated again due to being employed and now having a steady income, I feel like I actually deserve my free time and thus am motivated to pick up drawing again! Which leads me to a point I know most peeps who follow me will get on my case for
All Nuzlocke comics I have worked on are 100% officially and irreversibly cancelled
This is for a two reasons...
- I've basically fallen out of the Pokemon Fanbase. Once I got past the initial WOW factor of the Gen 3 remakes, I realised how little ORAS impressed me as a remake when compared to FR/LG and HG/SS to their respective games. Gen 7 and Let's Go also just didn't impress me at all. I found Alola to be pretty boring to slog through on my first playthrough and the lack of a post game past the UB sidequest gave me very little reason to go back to playing it. US/UM I also found to be probably the most disappointing "Third Version" games yet as well. And while I understand that Lets Go was meant to be a sort of entry point for beginner players, I find that to be a bit of a hollow argument. Maybe they might draw me back in with Pokemon Switch 2019 but for the time being, Pokemon just doesnt offer enough for me to still be invested.
- I want to work on Original ideas. While I was worldbuilding for my OR nuzlocke I realised something. "Why am I devoting so much time and effort into something that will never 100% be mine?". I felt like I was practicing my drawing, writing, scripting and worldbuilding skills to something that will only ever be seen as "That one fanfiction comic for that one sub-genre of a fandom". Unfortunately I felt that I was limiting myself by making comics related to pokemon as I either had to maintain story beats/worldbuilding similarities to the game I'm basing the comic on or running with so many differences that its related to Pokemon in name only and that Im only making it a nuzlocke just to get extra views. Don't misunderstand me though, its perfectly fine to put all that effort into a nuzlocke comic, especially if thats what you love doing. There is nothing wrong with putting in as much effort into honing your talents through that. For me it's simply a case of me having different wants and needs towards what I want to draw now compared to what I wanted to do 6 years ago.
Because of these reasons for cancelling my nuzlocke, instead I will be finishing planning and finally start drawing my original comic idea I've been mulling over for quite a few years now
Thus for the forseeable future, I will be spending most of my drawing time either drawing whatever the flavour of the month is for me both fandom wise and original as well as drawing characters and other things related to the original comic I want to start this year.
TL;DR: 2018 sucked for motivation, got a job and hated it, got a better job and loving it and entered 2019 in a better and more motivated mood. Nuzlockes cancelled due to creative difference in what I want to do now. Working on original story that I hope to inform you all about soon.
For the few of you that took the time to read this, I sincerely thank you.
Hope to see you guys around more often.