A Mysterious new year.

2023 is already up and running. I have been working very heavily on improving my day to day life as well as overcoming my funk I get into during Christmas time as I worry about presents for my family far more than I should.

I have spent a lot of work on the preproduction of 2 new avatars that I am working on. To the point that I have their entire menus and animators laid out before even working on the animations or blender side of things. One is the complete overhaul of my plague doctor that will be the new look for me. My first avatar that I will try to build from scratch and also an attempt to steer away from using other people’s unpaid work to be able to say, “Yes, I built this avatar from scratch.” The problem… I am very bad at blender- competent, but slow. So, that’s where my second avatar comes in, a pet project for myself that uses a base model, but requires a lot of customization and added vertices. I’m torn, as I am working on this second project very intensely, but know that nobody will ever see it. My work is entirely for myself. Does that make me selfish? Am I wasting my time working on something so trivial? I ponder about these things as I have to fix a messed up weight paint for what feels like the fifth time.

Beyond that, I have completed a major push for a large perler art of a character called Cherubimon. I am too scared to try to tape it and start the iron process as I have had many a project go terribly wrong at this point in time. I have lost at least 2 projects due to the iron portion being done too much or too little.

One day, I would like to make some of my projects available to others… but for now, I keep them close to my chest. I see the polish of other projects and can see all the flaws in my own work plain as day. I do have a tendency to become too ambitious, my avatars and the size of my perler art is definitely indicative of that. It is that feature creep that leads my projects to feel “muddy” by the end of the process.

I do long for the days of old, yet I fear I would be better off looking toward the future. Who knows, I may have a brighter future ahead of me than even I realize.

Sincerely,

Ed.