Digitober 2021: In Closing

Like last year, I wanted to give a proper closing to this year's challenge too.

Digitober Thoughts

I inevitably ended up missing four days this year, sadly. 😅 But like last year, I've decided to draw the line at 27 and not bother catching up to the missed days of Digitober. I'm satisfied ending the art challenge with a very fall-themed piece. Now I can breathe out a sigh of relief at not needing to post something every single day again, or just making something past the due date just to say oh I did the entire challenge ayyyyy 🙄

On the bright side, I managed to post over 25 entries this year, so that's still a huge plus compared to some art challenges I used to do. But looking at all these entries... I feel like this year just turned into another excuse for me to make all these assets for Gator Buddies. 😆 I'm not complaining, though.

I also noticed that a lot of this year's entries were anatomy-centric (though when is it ever not, amirite 😉). After doing Indulgence, I now feel more willing to draw full-body poses, legs, and feet.

I think what definitely got me out of my comfort zone this year was all the .gif sprites I made. I had snippets of various animated sprite tutorials in my head, most I had either gleaned over but constantly put off. When I finally started with 8 Flavors of Slime, I was mostly testing the waters, but I quickly got the hang of it (I have Aseprite's easy-to-understand interface to thank for that).

Improvements

Last year I said I would focus more on perspective drawing and landscapes. That really didn't pan out as well as it should have. 😅 On a related note, I just discovered and bought EasyPose on Steam, and holy crapcakes this app is mind-blowingly insane. So many models, preset poses, and props. 🤯 I'm super excited to play around with this to make all sorts of perspective drawings with it.

If there is anything I really want to improve on the most in my entries, it would be Carpet Sea. The result of this one was really just bad in my opinion. I have an idea of how to make it better, but I'd like to make other perspective drawings first.

All in All...

This year was great. I needed this art challenge, really. A month ago I was going through a rough patch, and doing art has helped me cope with it. Art, and many many hours of sleeping and napping. I'm being an obvious hypocrite saying this, but I wholeheartedly agree when anyone tells me to not take sleep for granted.

I'm not sure right now if I should do a challenge again next October. I think future me might actually take a crack at it again... (No pressure, future me. 😉) For now, I'd like to relax, and take my time making some art and watching videos on Skillshare for the next couple of weeks. 😎