Beach Buddies (+ alt)

Hey everyone

Let's talk about the pic itself real quick, there's some other stuff I wanted to talk about here

It's been a while since I've made something this complex (and even managed to make alt versions for the first time in a long while!), so it's actually really refreshing to have worked on. I think I'm liking this approach to rendering stuff for now, so I'll continue exploring it for a while (although I've been really itching to do some pixel animating soon too)

Now for the other stuff...

Bleh

I've really not been ok lately

There really are some days where it's hard to get motivation to get up and walk around the house for a while

I don't want you guys to get too worried tho, nothing in specific has happened to me or to my loved ones. It's more that my mental health has been slowly chipped away for the last 4 years or so, so I'm starting to show some signs of wear

I don't believe I've ever discussed this with you guys, but I've been dealing with anxiety ever since I started on my master's degree. Like, actually being taken to the hospital due to heart stuff for the 2nd time in my life during that time. Luckly, after a couple months of running several exams we discovered that my heart was perfectly healthy and all my problems were being caused by anxiety (the clinical kind, not the "I'm feeling a bit anxious about a trip" kind like I initially thought)

Skipping two and a half years in the future, once I finished my master's, I was feeling a huge sense of relief because I thought that everything would calm down then. I was ready to take the year off and really dedicate myself to being a full time artist. It was gonna be the year where I was gonna take it easy and finally be able to take things at my own pace, to finally relax and recharge my batteries after spending 8 straight years on university, getting both my bachelors and masters degrees

That year was 2020

Yeah, to say that things didn't go as planned would be a massive understatement hahahahaha

And that's roughly what leads to how I am nowadays. I think the best way to describe how I feel is when in a fighting game you're taking small hits that only drop your health to the red bit of the bar where you could still recover it over time. But then you take a bigger hit that takes away all of that bar at once

It's not all 100% bleak though. I have been learning how to work through it, how to pace myself properly and keep some more healthy habits to recover. Doing consistent work every single day has actually been lifting me up surprisingly. Being able to get in a good rhythm of constant progress can do a lot for your mental state (although managing to actually start and maintain it can be incredibly hard)

Actually coming out with everything like this and talking about it also helps I feel. This is not something that should be bottled up inside of you and let alone to fester. It's important to be open about how you're feeling and reaching out to others for help

So yeah, I apologize for taking this long to complete another pic. You guys definitely do not deserve to be kept in the dark while I'm just laying in bed for days. I promise that I'm doing the best I can right now to improve my situation, and that I'll be back on my feet and even stronger than before in no time at all

Thank you for coming to my ted talk, you may now continue enjoying your tanuki bums

I'll see you guys next time with something that has been sitting in the backburner for quite some time