Well, August 1st would normally mean the end of the annual art trading extravaganza Art Fight (here's my profile—note that all Art Fight links require a login), but they extended it to the 3rd this year! Turns out deploying features mid-event causes people to not be able to submit attacks. Still, I'm bowing out at the normal time because I've accomplished everything I want to, and I really had to upend a lot of my routine to make it happen. It was intense, sometimes rewarding, and sometimes really deflating! Wasn't bad though, definitely a nice first year with a lot of positives.

I've been intending to participate in Art Fight since I took up drawing in 2022, but I really wasn't in any shape to, in terms of my confidence or my abilities. Really the hardest part was that I didn't have the characters I wanted to have on my profile, and "June Rushed Reference Syndrome" is hard enough when you're an established artist, let alone six months into your art career. It definitely led to a lot of stress between me and Caby, promising things and then not being in any position to deliver (even if rightfully so), and I swore this year I'd give her a good showing until the end. Thankfully, I was able to get Maldwyn, Cammy, Colton, and Nicholas up for people to pick from. Really plenty of choice for how few defenses I wound up getting, and all ones I'd be pleased getting art of!

Then came the actual fight. I'm not a particularly quick artist, but Art Fight really sped me up. I was getting an attack done every two days at my quickest, nine attacks in total over the whole fight, while working 30-36 hours a week! I never want to half-ass a drawing for anyone, because there is no feeling worse than knowing your character was only picked to give that person points during the fight and up their battle ratio. I couldn't give a fuck about my ratio. I want every attack I do to potentially be someone's favorite of the whole fight, or at least one of them, and I want pieces I'm proud of, ones that expand what I can do as an artist. To that end, I only do fullbodies, and they were all full-color and shaded and most involved props of some kind.

And sometimes I just had fun with these drawovers! This is from a real photo dcb took on Lake Michigan with the DSi Camera app running on a 3DS. Super adventurepilled.

On the artistic end, Art Fight 2024 definitely grew me. I learned how to draw digitigrade legs finally. I finally got into a shading and highlighting style I like. I've drawn amps, I've drawn easels, I've drawn Pokemon attacks! I'm so much more willing to dive in and draw designs I've never attempted before, even species I've never attempted before, like Umbreons and Azumarills and African wild dogs. It's a really phenomenal feeling. The artistic growth this year has been strong, and I owe it to my participation this year. I also just think the attacks I came out with are really cute, and I've definitely gone out of my way to show people them after they're done, where before, I was a lot less willing to. Part of it's confidence, and part of it is just that I think I'm at a skill level where it's not just art Caby likes because she's supportive of me, it's genuinely appealing stuff.

And the mutuals! Outside of Somnolescent, of course, it was really nice to see both Olaxis and a fellow named Nasiloo actually attacked me first, right at the very start of the fight. I was at the tops of their lists! That was really cool, and I made sure to work extra hard on their revenges in return. (Actually, Olaxis got me into a little chain with him, and that was really fun. Plus I got an extra Cammy when he drew Wren for Caby, with a nice note about how much of an inspiration we've been attached. Very glad; you've been really cool to have in our little orbit.)

Admittedly, though, to produce at this rate has eaten up my normal routine. Most of the month, I didn't emerge from my room until two hours before it was time to leave for work, and it was to eat and get ready for work. I stopped doing my album reviews, and I haven't even touched the books I got for my birthday, or the audiobooks and DVDs and albums I picked up at the library sale, or most of the review requests from a week ago. I haven't played a game in weeks. There were many days where I'd get up, do art until it was time to go to work, go do my shift, come home at 10, and do more art until I was too tired to stay awake at 2 or 3 in the morning. Some attacks took literally days on end of that, and you have to ask to what end it was for, and sometimes, it was lovely, and sometimes it was crushing.

I don't draw solely to get people's approval—in fact, there's been a lot of times where I'm happy just sharing it with the group and nobody else—but Art Fight bakes the socialization into the process. You're there to draw for other people, and especially when it's someone I look up to and would like to make friends or mutuals with, that's a lot of pressure. Easily the attack I spent the most time on was for a guy named Goldie who frankly got me into the whole furry thing when I was a kid, someone I never met but whose work and whose designs I really loved, someone who's knows a lot of people and has introduced me to a lot of great artists through their many many drawing of his sona, and someone who Caby became mutuals with back in 2022 after she added onto that pile. It seemed like such a surefire thing! I worked for four days, referencing his own guitars, trying to get everything super detailed and accurate but still cute, drawing and warping way too many fucking straight lines to fit not-straight lines, losing sleep over the whole thing, hoping I could make a mutual out of him too, told him a bit about how much his stuff meant to me in the private attack description, and—

He politely thanked me at the end of it. No mention of any of the detail I put into it, basically just an acknowledgement that he saw it and didn't find it repulsive. No revenge like he did for Caby's drawing, no mutuals. I've seen this guy be excited about art before, and my drawing just didn't do it for him. It's honestly still hard to look at my drawing. Super deflating, not fun, I almost quit the event over it, and I'm certainly not going back to his comment to get a screenshot.

I dunno. I don't hate him or anything, and I get that I'm not owed a thing from strangers just because I like their work, but man, that's a lot of time to invest in gift art only for it to be very lukewarmly received. Caby can weather that because she just draws anyway, and she can do four attacks in a day, but it takes a lot more of my time and energy to get a single one out, and especially when it was someone who was a big inspiration to me like that, it sucks. (There is a happy ending here: I drew another out of nowhere attack for a girl with a kitty character I've loved since Caby drew him, and while it took a bit for her to see it, she not only gushed about it in a comment, she followed me back and drew the most adorable and amusingly prettiest fantasy Cammy you've ever seen in revenge. It definitely helped to bring some of the magic back to the event, to make me feel like people actually appreciate my hard work when they eat up days of my time.)

So yeah, I think my expectations were set a little too high this year on the social end of things, and paired with it being so disruptive on my life and schedule, it's definitely been a really interesting, emotionally intense, and not uniformly positive experience. I am happy to have partaken, though, proud of myself for what I got done, and I will be back next year. I'd rather draw big things and be disappointed when they aren't taken how I want them to than not draw for others or outright half-ass an attack and sabotage what could be. It's the way I live life. I want to aim high and succeed some of the time instead of aiming low and succeeding none of the time. None of what I do, none of my plans, none of the trips overseas, none of my aims for my work and my skills and who I want to be as a person, would be possible if I were mousy about it. If that means getting hurt or looking ridiculous sometimes, I'm okay with it.

The other drawover I did, and definitely one of my favorites of the whole year. I really oughta do more of my backgrounds in level editors.

I will definitely aim to be less maladaptive with it next year, though. The good news about the Art Fight refs I was doing is that they double as toyhou.se profile fullbody fodder, meaning each one I get up on one site, I can bring back (or bring for the first time) to my toyhou.se! That's the one I really care about still, and the artsy profile I'm the most proud of, so in working on that, I'm also preparing for next year's event. I'm aiming to have a better and more easily discoverable batch of characters for people to draw, and I'd like to start exploring a bit beyond the circles of artists I recognize and maybe make some more friends at my art level (and age—Goldie is at least twice my age, which probably didn't help). Beyond that, I'll start brainstorming some ways to reduce the amount of work I've gotta do, style things where I can maybe bake shading into the lineart and skip a step or two. Plus I'll be a year older and better practiced, so I might just outright be faster anyway. The goal though is to not have it eat up all of my free time so I can still get in races in Gran Turismo 2 and not feel like I'm losing precious drawing time doing so.

My first Art Fight really was a fight sometimes, but I'm also happy folks drew for me and liked what they did from me, and that I grew as much as I did as an artist. It helped me remember why I started drawing in the first place, to illustrate my sites and stories and get the ideas for characters and designs out of my head and into yours. Gotta keep ahold of that. Anything that isn't fun, I won't be repeating. Anything that is fun, or furthers that goal, you can expect me back at it next July.

I'll have my plans for August up in a subsequent post, this one's gone on long enough. Be on the lookout for all my attacks this year on my various art sites!