Studytober 2024 | ～こそ

Oh, dear god. It's that time of the year again. 😱 Between all my personal projects, busy schedule IRL, and my Japanese language studies, it's quite obvious from the get go that I actually don't have a lot of time for much else in between. And yet here I am, making an attempt this year anyway:

Studytober 2024 is me making practical use of my yearly art challenge by using it as a means to study for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test this coming December. I am aiming for N2 level this year, and I've been trying my best to expand my vocabulary and learn as much as I can before test day arrives.

Here, I've prepared my very own daily lesson plan. Each day will focus on a singular grammar element for N2, and these are taken directly from my N2 Japanese grammar book, as well as from the advanced Japanese lessons I attend to every week online. The goal is to make a sentence out of each grammar element everyday, and create a related image out of it.

Now, because the main focus of this challenge is to study Japanese, I'm not going to go ham on each piece like I normally would (colored pieces, detailed content, etc.). With my schedule, trying to attempt something like it would be simply unrealistic, so I'm going to ease the pressure off my shoulders by limiting my images to mere rough sketches. It'll be better off for me and my sanity.

That said, here's my first entry:

If you can't read Japanese, that's okay. What I'm trying to say here is, "I'm studying Japanese especially because I want to read my favorite visual novel games without needing to use a translator." 💀

As I do every year, I'll be tagging all my Studytober 2024 posts accordingly, and you'll even be able to access all the posts using the Crossover Map to the right.

Here's to studying for my exam, and making sure I finish the challenge on time this year! 🧃

Summer Day Trip (夏日帰り)

Dear lord. Just in time before summer ended!

I also recognize that a major reason why I hadn't really finished this sooner than I would have wanted is I've been having a lot of ideas for several things that just aren't... Housamo-related. I had been playing Pokémon Scarlet some time in July, and Guild Wars 2 again in August. My creative juices in my brain keep making me want to just paint something related to these games, but it was difficult because I had already locked into creating this landscape Housamo summer piece. I've also been having several ideas related to the Aether and Radisrol that I want to turn concrete, and I really want to dabble in worldbuilding my favorite fantasy world again.

That said, I decided that this would be my last Housamo piece in a while. I gotta say, I had a really good run of a year or so doing nothing but exclusively Housamo content, and it was in many ways beneficial to me in terms of improving my art skills (with anatomy in particular). I still love Arc, Melusine, and Q'ursha, as well as all the other Housamo characters I have an interest in, but it's high time I decided to move on to what's currently gripped my interest.

I had hoped to make more art pieces this summer, but my schedule has made it terribly difficult to stay focused on this piece... In addition to Janthir Wilds coming out for Guild Wars 2, which has admittedly taken up a lot of my free time (as much as I don't want to admit it). 😅

At the very least, I managed to dish out this one summer piece. This is mainly inspired from the trip my partner and I took to the Okanagan back in late June this year. I unfortunately never went fishing on the trip, though. It would be great if I could in the future. 🎣

Anyway, hope you all had a great summer this year! 🌅

Edit: I just did a quick change on the background after realizing how the lighting was so incredibly off with the placement of the sun. Instead of making immense changes on the shading of the characters, I simply removed the sun from the sky.

Research Break (研究休憩)

Oh god, my paintings are taking soooooo much longer to finish these days... 😰

Anyway, here's a very delayed gift for a friend of mine in the r/Housamo Discord server. I started a poll asking what character I should paint for him, and the community wanted me to make Pazuzu over Oguchi Magami, two of his favorites (I already painted Horkeu for him last year).

I actually had another WIP of Pazuzu from last year, but that one never came to fruition. I just lost the feel to continue that one, but I figured it was for the best since I wasn't too fond of it looking back. This one feels more like I really did him justice.

I decided to also drop some lighting effects I initially wanted the model to have, which was just the light peering in from the blinds behind the monitor. At this point I just wanted to hurry up with this because oh my god it's been one month since I last posted anything 💀

Anyway. Here's your long-awaited Pazuzu content from me, Kaiser. Cheers! 🥂