[STATIC] YYU

Greetings, traveler. I have a link for you.

Much like the full moon, I've come back for my monthly post. What phase of the moon is it today? I wouldn't know, it's daytime right now. Anyways, I apologize for only posting once a month. I think it's kinda bullshit. I'll delve into this topic later in this post. But first, my usual tomfoolery.

This is Atsuko Urameshi, from the ancient pre-9/11 anime Yu Yu Hakusho. Now, you might think this is the time in the post where I say "I haven't watched it." But you'd be wrong. I HAVE watched this one. I was but a boy when I watched it, on Toonami or something. I can't remember. I can actually talk about it.

Yu-Gi-Oh Hakusho is an anime about a boy, Yusuke Urameshi.

That's him. He wears green and has "the magic touch," which is why his finger is glowing or something. I don't remember. He's like a juvenile delinquent until he gets hit by a car, an event which would go down in infamy for inspiring the isekai genre. But, unlike those anime, Yusuke doesn't get transported to another world that's a video game and every girl loves him. No, he just dies, much like reality. Sorry, spoilers. He dies. He becomes a ghost and then... I dunno, comes back or something, and becomes a "spirit detective," whatever the shit that is, and does a bunch of anime nonsense with his anime friends.

Behold, his anime friends. From left to right, we've got I can't Believe It's Not Vegeta. I'd make a joke about him but I remember fuckall about him. Next, we've got red hair boy. His whole schtick is having roses and having the ability to make young me wonder why I have a crush on another boy. Next is the previously-mentioned Yusuke, but this is later on in the series, where he no longer wears green and has lost "the magic touch," which is why his hand isn't glowing. Next is Kuwabara, or something. The other red hair boy. Cabybara is the real Vegeta of the series. His whole personality is that he's an asshole who wants to beat up Yusuke, but never can. So he's like the rival, or whatever. But he's actually a decent guy, and he gets a fire sword, or something. Which, hey, pretty cool. Good on you, Kuwabuwa. Next up is Girl. She's... a girl. If you've watched any anime, you already know Girl. She's got no personality whatsoever. And last but not least, we have Other Girl. Girl exists to prop up Other Girl, and make her look better. Other Girl is the Grim Reaper, she's annoying and entertaining, and has a fun hair color. I like her, she's cool. There's also Poo:

Poo is an embarrassment. His name also describes his design. My favorite character, however, was Atsuko. She's Yusuke's mom.

The children today might call her a "Cringe Fail Girl," or a "Girlfailure." She's just a fucking trainwreck, it's very funny. She's an alcoholic smoker, blows all her money on host clubs, is a single mother who gets no bitches, and I'm pretty sure she's also unemployed. Normally, anime moms are all sweet and innocent, wearing aprons, being supportive, having those side-ponytail hairstyles and then dramatically dying to give the MC some character development. Not Atsuko though. She's a real deadbeat.

Check out this excerpt from her wiki article. That line's hilarious. If my mom had a wiki page, that'd be in hers, too. I really like her, though. It's kinda refreshing, in anime you don't really see mature women and MILFs be portrayed like-

W...Wait... she's twenty nine? But... But I'm twenty-nine...! You can't be a MILF at 29, you just can't! Oh god, I'm not old, I'm still a spring chicken! I can't believe this. I got tricked into drawing a woman in my age range. I'm going to be fucking sick. Life is cruel. I hate anime so goddamn much, it's insane. I'm old. Used up. My dream of being preyed upon and groomed by an unstable MILF is unattainable now. I'm a fucking dinosaur. I've suffered complete and total twinkdeath.

Anyways, let's keep looking at this chick.

This picture's great. He's like "Grr! You're lucky my mom says I'm not allowed to kick your ass!"

I like this gif, too. That reminds me of my mom. Though, my mom's favorite projectiles are dinner plates.

Anyways, let's get back to the story. Yusuke gets hit by a car, and then becomes a ghost. Other Girl shows up, and tells him that he wasn't supposed to get isekai'd into hell by the car, and has to prove that he's got a good heart and he can go back to the living world. So he uses his ghost powers to help people out. I think. I dunno, I just watched this and I already can't remember anything. It's the dementia. My brain is full of holes. So, he does that, he goes into people's dreams and talks to them that way, and helps them. Like, he goes into Kuwabara's dreams and makes him dream about men kissing, to help Kuwabara get over his homophobia. After a while, his good deeds convince some baby guy named Koenma, who I think is the king of Hell, that Yusuke is a good boy and deserves to return to the land of the living. Oh, and I have to add, this entire time as a ghost, his body comes back to life. He's just in a coma while his spirit runs around and does a couple things. Anyways, Koenma tells him he's good to go and can come back to life, so he can once again enjoy the smooth pull of a Marlboro. But, due to story nonsense, it requires a special ritual that... can only happen once every 50 years...? Something like that. And he has to get someone who loves him to make out with his body in order for it to work. I am not kidding, that's what the fucking baby guy tells him. His options are Girl, Atsuko, and Kuwabara. His first thought, I shit you not, is his mom. "Someone needs to kiss me, so it should probably be mom," his thought process is. Fucking freak. So, the baby man tells him to enter her dreams and tell her to tonguefuck his mouth. The baby man even says, "Hey, you know, tell her to reach down south. Get some fucking action, bro. The ritual requires it." Nah, I'm just kidding about all that. None of that happens. He actually-

Jesus Christ it's real? Wait, no! Come on, I was just kidding! It can't be real! I was just kidding!

Oh dear God! Sweet Christ! No! No no no no no NO!

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With frames like that, the incest jokes just write themselves.

Anyways, that's all the nonsense that I had planned out. Let us talk art. As I said, my work output is bullshit. I've been thinking a lot about it. I've come to some conclusions. This project actually helped me see some of these things. The first thing, I think I hate drawing from reference. Now, I dunno if any of y'all are artists too. I suppose this is for you, if there are any of you. Using reference is pretty essential for an artist. Like, you just about can't learn how to do anything without it. Any artist who's any artist will tell you to use reference. Here's the deal, though. And this is just me. I fucking hate reference so much, it's unreal. Now, I didn't used to use reference at all. It's true. I checked. I use this program called PureRef, and it's a fantastic piece of software. Go check it out if you're an artist. Anyways, I have a PureRef file for every project I do, where I keep all the reference I find. Usually, they're pretty massive, dozens, if not hundreds of pieces of reference. Except for the earliest ones. They were goddamn tiny, like six or seven pictures, only for checking likeness apparently. My first animation didn't even have any reference. I just rawdogged it.

Those earliest animations are goddamn ugly as shit. However, I clearly remember having a ton of fun making them. I mean, I'm kinda at the point right now where I don't even remember making the things that I make. It's like my brain isn't working at all. And, I think it has to do with reference. I love drawing from imagination. To me, it's just magical. Creating anything you want, like Garfield porn. And it's like, a healthy challenge, too. It just feels so satisfying when you finally figure out how to do something. I remember that challenge so well, and it's something that I haven't felt in a while. I like to come up with metaphors for things to help myself understand them better, so I came up with this one. Imagine you're an Honors Student, and your grade is extremely important to you. You have a test coming up, and a bad grade on it will poorly affect your average. So, naturally, you're gonna have to study, right? Here's the thing about this test. It's open-book. So, you don't have to learn shit for this test. Imagine how fucking boring it will feel. You don't need to know anything, you just need to find it in the book. There's no pride. No challenge. No accomplishment. You'll get a 100, sure. But did you really earn it?

To me, that's how using reference feels. It's not wrong, there's just not much of a challenge in it. Now, I know that I'm not a great artist by any means, but using reference has clearly made my art look better. Compare my work now to my earliest stuff. Still... I'm thinking that I'd rather make fun shitty art than boring decent art. I crave the challenge. I crave the pride. I don't get any of that anymore. So, at the cost of the quality of this stuff, whatever quality there is, I'm gonna totally get rid of all reference and have a good time instead. Again, I dunno if any of y'all are artists, and I'm not sure if any of this is good advice. But, if you don't have fun doing something you choose to do, then why do it? Like, I haven't been having fun drawing. It's so plain to see. What good does reference do me, anyways? I'm not one of the best artists. I'm not one of the best animators. The visual quality of my work doesn't matter enough to make sacrificing fun worth it. I dunno. I'm rambling here. I won't use reference anymore. If my work is uglier than usual, that's why. But, it'll warm your heart to know that I'm having more fun.

The next thing I realized from watching this excellent video. I'd recommend listening to it instead of watching it. She has some distracting imagery on in the background. She'd be talking about some great shit, and I'd be sitting there saying, "Heh, what a wacky Japanese movie. What will they think of next?" Anyways, it's all about motivation for creating art. I've talked about "the spark" and how I think my current art is lacking it, and this video talks about that. I don't think it's healthy to just be motivated by successful art. I have friends that have had breakdowns because their art didn't do as well as they hoped. And I'm no different. I definitely get this sick feeling when my work doesn't do too well. To the point where I just ignore all of it now (Sorry! I haven't been checking my DMs, either.) Still, this video has got me thinking about everything that I do. I've been asking myself, "Does this need to exist?" for everything, but I'm basing that on what I believe. With this Atsuko picture... I dunno. I don't feel anything. I don't feel like there's anything special or noteworthy about it. Does it need to exist? My life isn't better for having done it. I mean, towards the end when I stopped using reference, I had fun, but now that it's done? I dunno.

My old work is ass. I can't look at it. It gives me a fight-or-flight response. But I'm proud of it. "Does that first Metal Slug animation need to exist?" You bet it does, I'm glad I did it, even if it's ugly as sin. It's like this feeling that I can't put my finger on. As an artist, that Metal Slug animation needed to exist. This Atsuko static doesn't need to exist. It's like a feeling I get.

Not that there's anything wrong with this picture, or pictures like it. I think, part of what makes me feel this way about it, is how long it took me to make this. For what it is, it's not worth investing so much time into it. This whole line of thinking has got me wondering about something.

Would y'all mind if... wait, hang on. Let me find one of those annoying faces that people use. That annoying submissive bottom picture. Hang on.

Yeah, there we go. Would y'all mind if I stopped doing so many goddamn fucking variants?

I gotta be real with y'all. I gotta be real with myself. I hate the variants. I've hated them for a long time. I noticed that I spend about half the project working on everything to set it up. So, here's something. I actually timed how long it took me to animate a shirt for the next animation, which will be done in a few days. Just the shirt. Everything underneath said shirt was done. It took me four hours to do that shirt. What about every other "variant element," which is what I've been calling them? Yeah, same thing. Like two hours at the least. In total, all that extra little shit I do adds up to around 20 hours of work. If I were to just one-and-done this animation bullshit, I'd get a gif done in like, 20 hours. Tops. Tops. I could make some seriously cool shit if I stopped the variants. Like, that Lenora animation I did, for Halloween. That's like a real animation. That's the most animation that I've animated. It took me 45 hours to do it. Which, hey, that sounds like a lot. But it took me 50 to do that Blackfire animation. Though, don't get me wrong, I like that Blackfire one. I think it's my favorite of the ones I've done. But doesn't that exchange rate kinda suck cock? Here's a several second long animation. It tells a little narrative. But it took less time to do than a goddamn half second loop.

Even these static pieces I've done lately take over 20 hours to do, and it's just... like, what? 20 hours of work? For this? There's an artist I admire, Ryo Agawa. He just does random character art. It's his thing. He just cranks the fuckers out, too. How long does it take him to do one? A day? Two days? I'd like to do something like that. I just feel like I'm not producing enough at all, and it's because all the variants. I got all these ideas. I want to do all these ideas. But there's such a mountain of preparatory work to figure out howto organize all the layers, how to make sure everything meshes well, it's a goddamn nightmare. It's like, I become too intimidated to do any of it because it'll be too complex. And they get complex. Fucking messes, they are. All the while, my non-variant peers are just whipping shit out, having fun, and learning a ton.

The variants are like, a fun little novelty. I mean, I started doing them because I thought it'd be cool. I remember doing a poll here, and everyone said to keep doing them. Two people said to stop, and that they thought it took me too much time. If you two are still here, and are reading this, you were right. I'm sorry I didn't listen. Another thing is, it's a novelty. I don't want it to be my novelty. Like, is this the only reason why people like my art? The variants? Could my art survive on its own, without the variants? It just feels like I'm hiding behind it. It feels cowardly. I'd rather produce shitty art and be at the level of popularity that I deserve. Plus it just isn't really fun to make all that stuff.

What I'm thinking instead, to get that level of variety for an animation or a static, is to instead do sets. Sets have been something I've wanted to do from the beginning. I had started a few, but abandoned them because of the complexity. I think I'd like to do that, now. I'll still do versions of pieces. SFW and NSFW versions. Also cum. I know y'all can't go without the cum. I just... don't like the variants anymore. I don't want it to be my thing. It's a gimmick. I don't want to be a gimmick guy. I want to sink or swim based on my own merit. Plus, this opens the door for making actual shorts, with multiple shots and voice acting. Something I know that all of you, and myself included, will like.

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Anyways, that's a long post. Hooh boy, I love putting together a long post. It's like preaching to a captive audience, I can say whatever I want to say. Stay tuned for the next post, it'll be an animation. It's just about done.

Happy Summer,

-KYDE