Saturday Ramble #13

Yes, it is a Saturday Ramble, on Saturday! The last Saturday Ramble was posted on January 29th, more than 3 months ago. Wow this weekly tradition surely is a hit!

What has happened since then?

Why were no Saturday Ramble posts during all this time?

Why even post this three months after?

You only know me as my internet persona, which is fair, I usually don't share too much of my personal life here, what has happened is mostly related to my insecurities about my own art, and anxiety about number (Which I have talked about before but I'll explain again because I don't remember how much of it I explained).

So, I know my art is good but I don't quite know how to make numbers, as of likes on twitter and get followers, I get that most of the viral art there is depicts relatable or cute very eye candy art, like YES I know what I have to do to be viral but that type of art is not MY type of art, what I don't know is how to be viral with my own art, my own expression. (This is topic relates a lot with Pixeas and Henry which I'll talk later on this ramble.)

What I'm going with this is that for a long period of time, I felt that my art was barely consumed by people, and that most of my effort was very close to pointless in regards of Rewards to Effort Ratio, Including Saturday Ramble. Like obviously since it's a Patreon exclusive blog, I just stopped because I felt like I'd communicate enough on Patreon's Discord and that writing these were pointless.

That affected me a lot not only on doing these posts but on doing any type of art this includes Pixeas and Henry's on webtoons, streams, commissions, spreading out to all my internet persona.

I'll point out that these are things that I used to think and no longer for what has happened during these three months.

Trip to the USA

During April 14th to 18th I went to San Jose, California , to a Smash tournament event called GENESIS 8, it is the biggest Smash Tournament there is and I had planned that trip one year prior, if this sounds a little bit unrelated, trust me it has impacted me in a very significant way.

As of many of you may already know, I compete semi-professionally in Smash Tournaments under the tag Ripka so I juggle these two activites: drawing and competing in smash during my free time.

I stayed with Chag Maister and Skyjay (those are not their real names, they're just tags) during this whole event, for context, these three people are top players and all of them  make a living from playing Smash Bros. 

Cool picture of the event (chag in the center) ^

I talked with Chag of the three the most, he's a very good friend of mine and he asked mostly on what I was planning on doing regarding competitive smash, and I'm not gonna lie, I was eager to travel to more of this types of events to compete in smash, Chag would tell me about his day to day competing and traveling to tournaments, looking for sponsors, a very nomadic, non-stationary life style, something I'd only see on movies, he'd travel at least once a week to a different state in USA just to stay at a friend's house or hotel and dedicate the weekend to play smash and tryhard to be the best of the world. And in Genesis being the biggest smash tournament in the world, the event just was full of these type of individuals.

Now this is where everything relates, I can find a parallel of this lifestyle to art, as if chasing the dream of becoming the best of the best is a matter of being in the right place at the right time, maybe it is not tournaments like for Smash Bros. but there sure are conventions.

Chag told me and those words will stick with me forever:

"Smash is not a game against your oponent, it is a game against yourself."

Ain't that apply for anything you do? wether you decide to be a professional Smash Bros. Player, a Soccer Player, a Film Maker... an Artist?.. a Storyteller?

To be the best or die trying

I've heard plenty of philanthropist say this phrase but I've almost never took it seriously, now after my trip to the USA i'm embracing it, and It'll be my manthra.

My current artstation ft. Jacato's cute art. ^

I was saving for a CINTIQ 22 Wacom tablet, if you guys remember I hinted this before, and said that I'd already feel a bottleneck on my art with my previous tablet, after the trip I decided I'd wait no longer and dumped my savings into buying this tablet. I'm all-in.

Pixeas and Henry

As you may have noticed, uploads on the comic are becoming more frequent, I really want to finish telling this story before I move on with other projects I have, so 90% of my focus is now on the comic, no commissions, no prints, only 'Poss and Yeen comic.

Now the tricky thing with PAH is that this is THE asset that gives me less interactions out of anything I post, so yeah, it is hard to keep it consistently and even more with the mentality I had three months ago.

I've thought of some tweaks I could do on the Web Comic's marketing to make it a little more worth my time, most of them involve multiplatform posting, including the infamous forever hated by me Webt**ns

Fortunately for me, Kir (aka Upom) has contacted me offering to help me with the Webtoons editing (god bless them) so Webtoons posting is far more easy for me and I can focus my time on actually making the comic.

also talking about comic marketing...

Public Discord Launch

I made a poll weeks ago asking about you patreons willing on let me use the Patrons Server as a public discord and separate the channels for Patrons and for non-Patrons or making a completely separated discord, and the majority voted on splitting the original Discord, so I'm going to do that and the official launch date of it will be Tuesday May 10th.

The reason for this is to allow me to build a community around my comic and encourage discussion within the readers.

Notchprown Comic

I have hinted about other comic in the making as a colab with other artists, and that they let me post it on patreon as soon as the pages were finished, an update on that: I don't know when will this happen since it's not only up to me, I also need these people to give plenty of their spare time to do the comic... But for now the idea is to fund it through patreon and pay them part of the patreon money to be able to make this comic a thing and formally publish it eventually.

Ideas in the shelf

Some of you may recall that I was doing a diary of my DnD campaign months ago... well. That Idea is now on a shelf and It'll probably stay there for eternity, I have plenty of more art ideas to diversify my portfolio but mostly I'll be focusing on Pixeas and Henry rather than anything else.

Nekeith Minecraft Server!

Launching next Sunday May the 14th at 12pm CST ;) Stay tunned, bring friends maybe, and be on voice chat. 

Link to discord:
https://discord.gg/SEsTEmjF