Summer News
05 Jul 2022It’s been quite a while since last post, so I thought it’d be nice to post a general update.
As it turns out, this summer is gonna be quite different from the past ones: I have broken out of the old habit of not drawing anything during this season. In other words, I can benefit from 2-3 more months worth of practice this year and speed up the (already relatively fast) recent improvements I’ve noticed in my work. I also feel like the quality of my recent works is starting to get pretty consistent, which brings me some extra confidence.
I am finally leaving my comfort zone comprised of mostly head shots, and venturing into full body drawings including proper backgrounds. I think this sketch I’ve been working on for a couple nights now is the perfect example of that (well, it’s what I was referring to after all).
I regret not having properly practiced drawing backgrounds until now, but I guess late is better than never.
Overall, I have the strong feeling that the remainder of this year and the next year are gonna be pretty wild, art-wise - I am really excited.
Considering the pace at which I’m improving, I am giving some thought about beginning to take commissions around this autumn, so to get more drawing ideas, bring in more variety, improve, and obviously make a little profit from something I am passionate about.
Moving onto a different topic, I wanna talk a bit about my newfound passion for j-pop.
It all started by coming across Electric Angel in an old stream on atlaszoidac’s Twitch channel, probably around January or December. I particularly liked the song, so I looked it up on YouTube to listen to it a couple more times.
A week or so later, I get back on YouTube only to see a handful of meme videos about some “Lagtrain” thing, which I soon find out to be a song and give it a listen.
I do like the song and grab a bunch of Inabakumori (the artist) albums from Soulseek - I quickly start loving some tracks in particular, like the aforementioned Lagtrain, but also the single Rainy Boots and some tracks from the 2019 album Anticyclone, such as Pascal Beats and Cooler Girl.
So, here my expectations of Vocaloid, a genre I have never really liked (and still don’t, outside of Inabakumori’s music and Electric Angel), had already been subverted.
But the real bombshell wouldn’t drop until my friend Aikoyori began introducing me to a few j-pop artists such as Sangatsu no Phantasia, Zutomayo and Tuyu.
I got pretty much brainwashed immediately and got hooked to Sangatsu no Phantasia’s music at first, listening to all their albums first (and falling in love with Bitter Sweet in particular), then the two recent singles Ivy Dance and Shikaku Unmei (real banger).
As for Zutomayo, I don’t remember what album I started with, but I do remember the first song I’ve listened coming from them was Neko Reset. A few days ago, I’ve decided to relisten to their albums and grew quite the addiction to Gusare from 2021, of which I love Can’t Be Right and Hunch Gray, among a few other tracks. As far as singles go, I find Mirror Tune to be really damn great, although it took me a few listens to realize how much I liked the song.
I have listened to a couple albums of Tuyu’s, plus the new single Would be nice if you grow up one day. I do really like the latter, together with a couple songs from the their 2020 album: particularly Under the summer breeze.
I am still having trouble moving away from these last four artists as I can’t really find anyone else I really like, guess I’ll need some advice on that.
Unrelated to the rest, I’ll also get my driving license in a few days from now and I’ve started thinking about going to some tech/art/whatever conventions or events on my own sometime, just to spend some time having fun while bringing along a friend or two and possibly getting to know some cool people whom I share interests with.
Well, here we are at the end of this post. Long one, huh? I just felt like sharing some news, but this quickly turned into massive textwall, especially with the j-pop section. See you on the next post, I guess.