#development journal

On the bright side, since I’ve spent so much time sitting in traffic, I’ve had a lot of time to think about future drawings, specifically in the Moratoria Alphabet series, but unfortunately they’ve been put on the back burner for now because my tablet is broken and I have no money. My hope is that I’ll be able to buy a new one sometime this summer, but until then, updates are going to be a bit slower.

Anyway, here’s a sketch of a possible future drawing in the series!

I’m thinking this one would be “R is for Retrospect,” or something similar. You can’t tell from the drawing, but the idea is that Enrique on the right would be cut off on that vertical line, and the colors would be smudged across the left side of the image like the broken screen of an old monitor, with the sketch of young Enrique and his aunt messily drawn on top of it. I’m not sure if this is actually what I’m going to go with, but it’s an idea!

Although my tablet is broken, I’ve still been trying to find workarounds to keep drawing. I’ve been doing stuff with just my finger on my laptop trackpad, which has been an interesting experiment but unfortunately far, far too unsustainable for me to want to do it any more than I have to. So here’s a little drawing of Miriam that served as an experiment.

I like how it turned out! I’m happy with it. Especially her hands. Usually when drawing hands, I start by taking pictures of my own hands in whatever pose they need to be in, and then I insert that photo into the Clip Studio file and trace over it. I remember when I first started taking art seriously this kind of thing was very frowned upon, but now it seems to be more of an accepted practice as long as the artist has permission to trace the photo. I don’t personally see a problem with it, because they’re my own pictures taken by me of my own hands, and hey, photography is an art form too, right?

There are so many little details in this design for Miriam that I had so much fun including. One advantage of a messier, looser rendering style like this is that I don’t have to be as precise when adding all the smaller lines and shapes! I do wish I had the opportunity to draw more of her tattoos, but since she dresses more modest and most of them are on her back, they aren’t visible in everyday life except for the one.

Technically her pose was taken from Orthodox iconography, not Catholic. But shhhhh.

I’ve been listening to lots of new music on my long drives. Currently on repeat are “Perfect Celebrity” from Lady Gaga’s new album, which I first saw in a Twitter edit using footage from the movie The Substance, and “One Day Robots Will Cry” by Cobra Starship, a song which I only began to like after listening to it about ten times. Side note, I hate how Spotify always recommends me a “Punk Mix” every day and then when I open it it’s just Cobra Starship and Fall Out Boy. Neither of them are punk! And besides, I only like one or two Cobra Starship songs! Please don’t build a playlist for me around that…

I’m in the process of working on the “E” drawing for my Moratoria Alphabet series— I decided on a word and composition, sketched out the general shape of everything, etc. But I just haven’t had as much time to sit down and give it my full attention. I have my internship two or three times a week, college classes once a week, and work every weekend… I probably should’ve anticipated that I’d be busier. There’s a reason everybody talks about how hectic grad school is.

This is what exists of the “E” drawing so far— 

It’s Bree! The idea for it is that the Bree on the bottom-right is going to be her “artist’s persona,” for lack of a better term; how she understands herself and presents to the world. And the top-left is the more accurate representation of who she really is. In the final version, she’ll have a different expression, too, with her eyes open.

So, there’s that, but I’ve also been thinking about Max quite a bit. From what I’ve shown to friends and art communities on Discord, Max is generally seen as one of the least interesting members of the cast. Which I completely understand, but I don’t agree. He’s interesting to me… this is going to get a little rant-y, so bear with me for a moment.

When I was in high school, I had this idea for a story where a young woman made a deal with an otherworldly something-or-other geometric-themed entity. The entity provided her with the ability to relive her childhood and hang out with her childhood friends in her dreams, but in return, it gradually chipped away at the lives those friends were living in the present and erased them from reality the more she used it. The justification for that in-story was something about the first law of thermodynamics; how the imaginary constructs of her old friends need energy to exist, and that energy needs to come from somewhere. And since in the present, all those people hate her now, the protagonist didn’t feel too bad about making the deal.

Here’s a quick sketch I just did of the designs:

So it was that kind of thing. I still like the concept of a demon-like creature who grants wishes based on the first law of thermodynamics, though. Now I’m wondering what that would look like for the other laws… probably not much different, since they’re all generally about systems in equilibrium.

There was also the fact that around that same time when I was in high school, more concept art for OMORI started coming out. I still stand by the opinion I held back then, which is that the art is absolutely beautiful and far, far more interesting than the game itself. I remember one night when I couldn’t sleep and I was scrolling on my phone through all of the different colorful concept art, thinking “this is so cool! If I ever made a game, I’d want it to look something like this!” I tried to guess the plot and themes of the game from all the teasers, and I’d say I got it ninety percent right.

Now that OMORI’s actually released and I’ve checked it out, I think the main reason it doesn’t click for me is that there’s supposed to be a contrast between this colorful, imaginative fantasy world and the more mundane, often bleak real world, but the real world is still all quirky and Earthbound-inspired. The “reality” parts are far more exaggerated and cartoonish than actual reality, so the core of the story rings false.

Max’s story is a similar to OMORI in that it’s about nostalgia and escaping into fantasy to cope with the fact that your childhood friends have all grown up and don’t like you that much anymore. It’s also similar to my geometric first law of thermodynamics story, since there’s an element of how clinging on to previous versions of someone and insisting they stay the same hurts all parties involved.