artfight 2021 in review

Artfight’s over! (Artfight ending on August 1, what even is this)

This year, I had notably less output than normal: 11 attacks, plus a pic for Blix’s art telephone game (unrelated to Artfight but still part of my art haul for the month). It’s tempting to attribute this to circumstances. First, this year’s Artfight was only four weeks instead of the usual five, and second, I got booted from my home due to the fire. But honestly an equally big factor was that I ran out of motivation mid-month. There was a sizable chunk of time where I was doing a perfunctory daily doodle and not working on Artfight stuff. I picked things back up at the end, but by then it was about over.

I think the novelty of Artfight is wearing off, which is not shocking after four years. But I did have more fun than last year. I was more spontaneous and spent less time stressing about doing Serious Art. So that’s one goal accomplished.

I made three pieces this month that I liked a lot:

• Alleyway Vultures: These guys are attracted to rot and corpses; they sometimes follow the living, which is considered a sign of bad health. So I drew three of them creepily hanging around a dude in his office. I love this pic for a couple reasons:
• The perspective is super cool. (Also intimidating. A lot of my mid-month art slump was due to procrastinating on this pic.) The viewer is positioned above and behind the worker, looking down at his desk. It’s two-point perspective with a vertical horizon line. I got this by reverse engineering a stock photo I found. Before doing this pic I had no idea you could even have a vertical horizon line. Blew my mind.
• It’s a nicely cluttered space. It feels real. I like it.
• Goat-kun: A goatboy playing on his Switch. This is my only proper fullbody pose (i.e., someone doing something instead of just standing there) and it turned out well. I took a couple liberties with the character design after studying refs of actual goats. (Made the hooves cloven, put the horns inside + the ears outside)
• (redacted for now because art telephone game is still in progress)

Going forward, I don’t have any new roster plans for next year; I’m finally satisfied with my current set. Three humans, two wolves, a fox, and some variety picks (shark, kangaroo, mouse, worm) is plenty. I’m a bit surprised I didn’t get any art of my humans this year, but I didn’t draw many humans either so I guess it makes sense.

Character credits: Alleyway Vultures belong to wonderblunderTm on twitter, Goat-kun belongs to SadCatJrPaw on artfight/toyhouse