Whoever these “Hardheads” are, Lasc obviously does not want to be around them. But he managed to scare the woman’s assailants, right? One can hope, anyway.

I think every webcomic artist has pages in his career where he feels frustrated, depressed, despondent, and just all around ready to quit at life! It fills an artist with hatred for his craft and makes him just want to scream or kick a puppy or steal candy from a baby. I guess we all have our moments of doubt, our crises of self-worth, and our strong desires to cut our hands off so we can never draw again. It’s something anyone of us who draw has to face sooner or later. The dreaded monster lurking in all our minds who clouds your mind so much that you forget to draw a lot of things (I should run a contest for what I missed in this page). Sometimes the picture just feels like it’s not coming out right, no matter how many different ways you try.

This was one of those pages for me. It was HARD. I threatened to cut my wrists, stab my eyes out, and otherwise maim myself so nobody would have to see the finished product! Well, okay, that’s more extreme than what really happened. But I wanted to just quit so many times during the course of the lineart. Once I got the lines done I felt less upset about it. Looking back at the page now, after it’s finished, I feel it’s “not bad.” It’s not exactly how I wanted it to be, and sure there are plenty of technical errors, proportion errors, and all that crap. But it’s a hell of a lot better than I was giving myself credit for while I was drawing. And ultimately I’m glad I did it. Even if I had a hard time with a lot of parts of the picture, I’m still learning new things every time I put out a page that has aspects I’ve never really worked on before.

So I guess I have a new years resolution after all. I’m usually too lazy and apathetic with life to really bother But now I think I’m going to work on improving the really hard spots I’m identifying while I do this comic. Action, perspective, foreshortening. I know most artists struggle with these things — They’re not always easy! I can do some kinds of foreshortening pretty reliably but other kinds just confound me. So how does one solve that? Practice!

One further thing before I go! This is really long-overdue!

My good friend KiwiValkyrie over at DreamingSoda made me some awesome and adorable little peg dolls of my Metamorphosis characters for my birthday in November! We have Lasc, K’zink, Qul, Ianthe, and Justinian! The character on the far-left is actually a little Yosakoi dancer! They are just SO amazing and thoughtful! I have them set up on a little divider wall between the kitchen and the living room in my apartment. I’ll try to remember to take a picture of it to post with Thursday’s page. She also made me a little felt plushie of Qul that I also need to take a picture of and post. Stay tuned and remind me as the week goes on that I need to do these pictures!