Yearly post time! I’ve things I guess to talk about, but click through the read more to get a closer look at each piece, my reflection on the piece (long or short) as well as my thoughts for the year, otherwise here’s the summary image:
Like previous posts I’ll put personal thoughts and feelings under the art!
Click in to each image to find out more and view the full art but be aware that images with a 🔞 contain NSFW art!
January
DarkOverord’s 2023 CFz Badges
February
The Blinding One
March
[COM] 2023 CFz badges
April
[COM] More 2023 CFz badges
May
[COM] Even more 2023 CFz badges
June
Character Wheel
July
Summer Toys
August
[COM-ST-2023] Well that’s unexpected
September
[COM-ST-2023] Chill at the Beach
October
Ferris BruBat – Base Form Reference🔞
November
DarkOverord Occassus – 2023 Reference🔞
December
Hedgedrone’d🔞
Was 2023 better than 2022? I guess. Looking at what text was here when I cloned the post (‘cus why wouldn’t I when I have a post already set up?) and, yeah? It is unclear.
Physically I’ve had ups and downs but we are not talking the downs I had last year, we’re back to usual “DO’s body is bad and feel bad” levels. Don’t worry I’m not dying beyond the slow heat death of the universe, but that’s a while off so we’re good.
Mentally it’s kind of a repeat of last year, so mostly “ha ha, I’m in danger”. Though I had more Gender Things and turns out oops that’s dysphoria. OOPS. Well I’m glad we’ve wrestled with that as 3/4 fursonae are now “it/its”. And then also oops I got that ΘΔ thing going. I also stepped a little more out of my comfort zone, even socially, in positive ways so hopefully I can continue with that! I think it’s also helped, even if I’ve forgotten to keep it updated most of Oct/Nov/Dec, to start having a little journal going in Obsidian (it’s Keliff‘s fault) to write things down in, as well as adding things on the site here like better con recaps and game reviews (I hazard to call them that but, they are).
And now for ART. Aaaaaaaaaaart. AAAAAAAAAAART.
First off, my site now has a decent backlog of my art on it. Not all my art but I want to say choice pieces from 2017 onwards. That was a LOT of work, but I should’ve been doing that from the start. It shouldn’t have been an imbecile buying a website as a joke they thought wouldn’t happen and then proceeding to destroy that site to do it, but here we are. It now means all my art at least gets posted here as well as links to other places.
Also on…
This used to only be 5 icons before that project… But hey, here we are. I even added the little links under the yearly summaries so you can click through and see previous year’s thoughts!
What other things of note… OH YEAH I had a hard drive failure. THAT’S RIGHT. The hard drive with my art on… 🙃 Thankfully after a panic, I managed to get back in to the drive and successfully got everything with minimal to none data loss.
Do your back ups now. Yes you. Reading this.
Yes even you DarkOverord, proofreading this before you make it live. Do it.
I don’t make resolutions but I fucking am now. I don’t care if Marcus’ ref sheet is next on the docket as it’s five years old in 2024 and I have, internally, updated his design, no personal references. I fell behind on art in 2023 ‘cus I started attempting update DarkOverord’s ref sheet repeatedly this year until I finally managed it in November. Ferris’ ref sheet only exists because I felt I had to do a ref sheet after all the effort I put in all year. Am I glad I did it, yeah! It looks great, and then I finally finished DO’s as well! But that took so much effort and energy that come December I burned out! I managed something literally in the last few days of the month, which, isn’t good!
But this is a two part issue, as we also have: Stop doing projects that are too big. The character wheel was a neat idea but I overcomplicated what would’ve been a simple doodle in to this large scale project that took me far too long. The summer toys commission project was great, but I spent a lot of time on it, especially when I realised that half of my time was redundant. I think I’ve spotted what in my process I can scale back and make things manageable again while keeping the same quality. 2024 will tell on that, but I hope it’s good ‘cus the burnout I felt this year was bad. Like, 2019 bad. (I appreciate the irony here that somehow my burnout was better during the pandemic but I had other issues that affected my mental health lol). I openly admit that a lot of these month choices are all I had to pick.
I appreciate it’s never nice reading an artist talk about their woes, it could even put off potential clients, but this is a reflection post in the end. Bad things will always come with the good things in these types of matters in the end. So we move on to the good things, I think some of my best work was this year, even if I felt slightly stagnant, but I think that was more the burnout than lack of improvement and learning! As much as those references mentally taxed me, I’m incredibly happy with them and I think they’ll serve Ferris and DarkOverord more than a few years worth of service. Well Ferris never had one before, it’s more DarkOverord having a 7 year old reference that needed updating.
At least the CFz badges were simple and fun to do! Still haven’t thought of anything for CFz ’24 yet… peaking of CFz ’24, I’ll be there! Woo! Looking forward to it as last year made me realised how much I missed that social space, maybe this year I’ll go to the Manchester meets again? I said I would all last year but didn’t so ???. I do hope I can start to push myself socially again, I became quite hermitted even before the pandemic and boy howdy that didn’t help! I was always a shy and anxious 200cm bean and I still am, just more weary now lol.
All I can end this on here is the same as last year really: “Who knows, lets see how this year goes”.
January – DarkOverord’s 2023 CFz Badges
Also on… These didn’t get individually posted so… nope!
Confuzzled ’23’s theme was themes, y’know like
Joking aside it was “Brok in the Multiverse” which meant it was focusing on alternate versions of chracters, such as Mel the Honey Badger! And Dylan, the non-binary gator that a lot of furries want to smooch (it’s true). With that I decided to run with it as a badge format looking like a comic panel! I thought this was very fun and I still do. It also gave an opportunity to have a brief interaction of normal scaly DO and inflatable toy DO! There’s a lot of mental hurdles in my brain about this kind of thing so it’s nice to have an excuse to
Looking back on this I’m not as happy with the Simon side though. The arm is a little janky, the eyes should’ve been looking a but further up too, it looks like its just looking down at people’s crotches. Which is potentially in character but it’s not me. The Chaos Emerald joke I still like though.
Normally here I’d stick in the “original description” here but there’s so many of these badges they all ended up on one post here.
February – The Blinding One
Also on…
I got really inspired by a track and it wouldn’t get out of my head so I did a doodle. It didn’t remain a doodle. There isn’t much extra to say about this piece other than I think I did a good job of making Ultra Necrozmas “blinding” as its title is.
Normally here I’d stick in the “original description” here but there’s so many of these badges they all ended up on one post here.
The one I picked as an example for the sheet is Toshi’s, who I’m so happy embraced the two sides/two panels interacting idea ‘cus I love doing silly things like that.
April – [COM] More 2023 CFz badges
Also on… Look there’s a lot of these to link
Normally here I’d stick in the “original description” here but there’s so many of these badges they all ended up on one post here.
I picked a hedgehog to be the example image because I’m biased but also because Orona is lovely and also one of the few portrait examples haha
Original Description
May – [COM] Even more 2023 CFz badges
Also on… Look there’s a lot of these to link
Normally here I’d stick in the “original description” here but there’s so many of these badges they all ended up on one post here.
Like with Toshi in March, I picked Yunas because of the two panel interacting deal, and I really like that!
June – Character Wheel
Oops I never recorded the links on this >_>;
I was late to this meme but I really wanted to do it, which is why I had to make this way more complicated than I needed to be. All characters are height accurate (actually I think Lucernaz is probably a little on the short side now with changes I made to DO last month.
Normally I’d stick the description and stuff here again but the original post I have here contains a LOT of information and is worth a look.
Ah this mega project. Partly to push me to do a background, which I like! I’m not sure what I based it on? The islands in the background make me think I was channelling Emerald Hill? I don’t know, I thought they added a nice amount to the horizon line to break it up.
But what I did realise with this image is that I was both making my source files too large and with that realisation that I was having to do a lotmore work in shading because big canvas means more work even with a bigger brush. I also started to realise while doing these themed commissions that with my shading process I was doing double the work for no additional discernable results. I’ve since experimented by dropping one shading layer up and down (I used to do two highlights and two shades) and… it looked identical to my usual shading process 🙃
Hopefully this streamlines my process in 2024!
Original Description
It’s summer and you know what the best way to beat the heat is: (Honestly just be inflatable) be at the beach! (Or a pool, I guess)
The aim was to get this done sooner but I maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe overestimated how much work it’d take XD
August – [COM-ST-2023] Well that’s unexpected
Also on…
I was a lot slower on these than I’d like, again a side of “I’m doing a lot of work for no discernable result”. This isn’t to say I don’t enjoy what I did! I love this piece it got picked for a reason, I really like how the creases in the arm came out! Plus I felt I kept the overall style a Dracthyr and WoW character would look without looking too busy for a puffy toy!
Also this is partly the reason why I started playing WoW again, dang rad Dracthyr
Original Description
It’s one thing to be in a world you’re not familiar with but then also suddenly you’re shiny and hollow? Well I’m sure this dracthyr will get used to it, on the upside you’re waterproof now!
Commission for Veladynee of their dracthyr (they/them) suddenly now an inflatable toy and taking that in!
September – [COM-ST-2023] Chill at the Beach
Also on…
Another of the Summer Toys commissions! I love how relaxed this came out, they looks so chill 😀
Original Description
Commission for Chalur of their bird lounging on the beach! They got a good spot tbh!
October – Ferris BruBat – Base Form Reference
Normally you’d see links here but there’s multiple versions of this
HOO it begins. I mention in my thoughts later in the post that this reference came from a point of frustration. I had been attempting all to do DarkOverord’s ref sheet but repeatedly nothing seemed to work out. I’d spend forever touching up a paw, or the chest, or the legs, or weeks on the hands. My partner can attest to how angry I got about it all.
So on a whim I pivoted, do a character I use often but don’t actually have a reference for. So Ferris finally gets one. It went a lot better! I then randomly had the idea to do “Ferris’ Bat Facts!” with the lil Ferris icons like a kids encyclopedia. This is because I have said that, A: Ferris doesn’t know for sure if or if not they are a bat, B: I’ve joked that Ferris has a little notebook entitled “Ferris’ book of me facts” where he writes down all the bat facts he founds out.
So I got to put on silly ABSOLUTELY TRUE facts about bats.
I needed that levity really, it honestly refilled my reserves that had depleted ‘cus of balancing comms with DO’s repeatedly failed ref sheet. Plus this finally meant The Main Six as it were (Simon, DarkOverord, Marcus, Annai, Rigel, and now Ferris) all have reference sheets, regardless of how old they were.
Ferris is also a much simpler character compared to DO. Only four colours, no markings and uncomplicated fur highlights, simple!
Fun fact: This was originally intended to be DarkOverord Occassus’ reference! But I was struggling so I just went “Screw it, bat time” so you get BAT FACTS!
This image is bigger than it needed to be ‘cus Wing Big.
🔞 Full Image, Links and Original Description - NSFW Reference
Extra notes ‘cus I’m not going to add NSFW notes when I haven’t indicated the entire post is NSFW: Cocks, a lot of them. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to keep the humanoid one. And then I went “…he’s a shapeshifter, he can have what he wants” so that’s why Ferris now has a cock menagerie and is probably my only character to have one! Just always keep in mind the important bat fact:
Anyway back to the original description and image.
Also on…
I normally joke “And then I added a dick” but uh, there’s multiple on here.
November – DarkOverord Occassus – 2023 Reference
Normally you’d see links here but there’s multiple versions of this
We finally got here… Following Ferris’ ref sheet, and some Gender Thoughts, I finally managed to get somewhere where I’m happy with what I sketched out.
And then I inked it, and I still liked it. But that inking took a LOT of time, DO does unfortunately have a lot of extra details like all those underbelly scales, the scutes, the inner leg scales, the mess of hair… it doesn’t end!
I’m not happy about the amount of empty space on these though. But… there’s nothing I could do about that. I needed to show the wing size without hiding too much, so you get what you get.
But this time, I was happy with it. I still am. Almost a year or maybe even more, I think redoing DO’s sheet started in 2022 actually, later I’m still happy with it…
…But it DID burn me out further why did I do two big refs sheet in a row GDI DO.
Full Image, Links and Original Description, SFW
Also on…
So DO’s old reference is from 2018. My artistic ability has improved, and also I Gender’d (well technically, I ungender’d) so here we are, new reference.
That I’ve been trying to do since March. I may or may not have mentioned that the Ferris reference was meant to be DO’s so… we’re here finally.
I don’t plan on doing another reference for a while now but I’m glad it’s done, it needed that update.
🔞 Full Image, Links and Original Description - NSFW Reference
Also on…
And a dick 🙂
🔞 Full Image, Links and Original Description - Rubber Dragon, SFWish Reference
Extra notes ‘cus I can’t really comment on this in the SFW bit: I’m really happy with how this came out. Look how fucking cocky it is. I love it.
Also on…
Fun fact: Back in the late 00s/early 10s I genuinely considered actually being a rubber dragon but lets just say I got creeped on and went “NOPE”
Well I’m a decade older now and who gives a fuck? Not me anymore, I draw squeaky things with dicks for a living sometimes now :B
🔞 Full Image, Links and Original Description - Rubber Dragon, NSFW Reference
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
