Positives & Goals
So I put a link to this site on my carrd. It makes me kinda nervous, if I'm being honest. I don't talk a lot on social media for a reason. My long-term plan is to replace my carrd and possibly my portfolio site with this site though, so I'll try to push through the nerves!
I finally put a load of Avian August pieces up on inPRNT. Futura's been encouraging me to make a PDF and put it up for download somewhere too, for a couple dollars, and I keep putting it off because I'd like to add additional content. An opposite page with some fun facts/bonus illustrations, maybe, just to feel like a real book. And if I did that I'd feel even more enthusiastic about selling printed copies!
I'd really like to try to put more effort into the print/comic side of things and see if I can't lean more into that for income. While I love seeing my commissioners happy and I do feel rewarded by that type of work, it also doesn't leave a lot of energy for my own work and I feel the income reaches a ceiling pretty quickly.
I have a childhood-related comic very near done but I'm just trying to figure out if/how I want to apply colour, and how I'd like to share it. It's nothing big, but making these shorter comics feel like an important step in gaining my confidence for larger projects in the future, and I want to share them!
Coding Stuff
Taking a break from constantly updating the site. Well, sorta. I got side-tracked wanting to make some illustrated navigation links, downloaded Affinity Designer 2 on my iPad, and then started relearning how to make vector art (it's mostly fresh learning, but I did have a few Illustrator-related college assignments).
Honestly, with how my art style has progressed, transitioning from raster to vector doesn't feel out of the question, but I think I'll always prefer the feel of hand-drawing things. For small site elements tho? I think it could be fun to expand my skillset! Who knows, if I get comfortable enough with it, maybe I'll just make a blend of both types of art in the future. It's exciting thinking about how much easier it would be to use SVG for physical prints and designs and stuff.
For my site, well, I'm starting to think more about web design. Like, what looks good? I can implement a bunch of stuff, but should I? I've been perusing the personal web and seeing what choices are made by people who are more experienced than me. I feel like I may have overcomplicated certain pages, but that's ok. I'm learning! I've learned more than I would have making every page uniform and as simple as possible, and my end goal isn't a totally uniform site anyway. But simplifying is in the back of my mind now.
I think my next website-related goals are: simplify the CSS (I have a lot of very specific classes and I need to make them more modular and flexible), make that resource page, and some more writing areas. I've been opening back up to listening to new music again and it'd be nice to have a place to log my newest finds and some thoughts. I also think it would be fun to catalogue some of the terrible movies and shows I watch with friends.