It’s been a while… and the reasons are plenty…
Still alive and kicking
It’s been a while…
since I posted a quick video and even longer since I worked on a proper tutorial. The reasons have been plentiful and range from simply being ‘too busy with life’ to serious health issues and a major health threat that too a long time to be checked out and finally was ruled out. When the doctor told me that it might be cancer and had to be checked out the initial response was ‘sh**, why me?’. I lost close family members to cancer in the past. It felt wrong, I am too young, watch my diet and lifestyle, keep as fit as my muscular condition allows it – and bit more – and haven’t had any of the symptoms normally associated with it. Yet the blood tests confirmed higher numbers, an ultrasound, and an MRI showed ‘a zone of interest’ and the doctors had to take a biopsy. It dragged on for months and even though I tried to not let it get to me, read up on it or let it screw with my head, it did paralyze me. Two weeks ago I got the all clear. It was a major relief.
Oddly the immediate reaction of joy and the loss of the burden let to a loss of tension and drive. I felt sorry for myself when I should have been the happiest. It’s taken a while [with too much coffee and chocolate] to get back into a mindset to open up the blog, look at the declining viewer numbers and realize that I miss the post, the tutorials, and the pains of putting together a video to pass on some of the knowledge I acquired. The intentions are there, the plans and ideas for new posts sit in corners of my hard drives waiting to be released, and I will try and find the time and energy to make them happen.
Thanks for your patience and I hope to see you around for more entertaining and helpful posts in the near future.
Under construction – working out the issues
New Website
Update
So… I changed over from Blogger to WordPress a short while ago. A lot of things have improved since. It should be easier to navigate through the site, the index should work and most of all it’s a lot easier for me to post.
There are still issues though. I am aware of some, while others probably still hide in dark corner just waiting to jump at me. After an avalanche of 404 errors relating to feedburner, I fixed the RSS feeds today. I also added subscription options at the footer of the site.
It will take a little while before all the older tutorials will be updated to the new format. . As a result, they should be a lot more mobile friendly and easier to edit. Which in turn will remove a lot of mistakes, spelling errors, and typos but also allow the translations to finally go online. It’s been a task I had planned to tackle a long time ago but wasn’t able to implement without major problems in Blogger.
At the moment there might be issues with the quality of some of the art (please let me know if you come across those and I will try and fix them right away).
In short
The website is still undergoing construction but it’s improving slowly. Bare with me while I fix them… and find time to post new tutorials. Hopefully, the next video tutorial will be up soon as well.
Monster Builder Kit – some initial design ideas
Modular Monster Builder
Design Ideas
One of the requests from a reader has been a tutorial/ video/ art pack on monsters. The initial idea I have is something along the lines of the ‘Modular buildings’ or the ‘Spaceship constructions kit’. I am thinking of writing a step-by-step tutorial on creating some of the parts – e.g. eyes, body, extremities, and decor elements. Following it up with the kit as a free download and a video tutorial on the how to easily create, alter and add to it.
These are the first designs I came up with. I am not sure I will keep it this bright, shaded and saturated though. A plainer, more muted, darker version with the focus on shapes could be another option.
Let me know what you think.
Under construction – reworking the blog
It’s been a while…
and I put it off for way too long…
but eventually, there was no way around it. The 2dgameartguru.com website/ blog had become a proper mess. Consequently, it stopped me from posting – among other things. There was no easy way to fix it in blogger.com and I made the switch to WordPress last August. It took a while to find enough time and motivation to learn it. The approach is similar yet different – but with a lot more possibilities. I finally worked out how to format the tutorials in ways that will make it easier to read them on mobile devices. I at least I hope so.
Pushing myself to become active again
Daily routines and unforeseen events put the project on the backburner again. It took months before I finally revisited the WordPress tests. I had not posted anything new for a long time. It was supposed to go into the “shiny, brand new” design. The unfinished new design leads to no new tutorials and eventually made me cranky. I was stopping myself from having some fun with the blog.
Eventually, I made the switch. Unfinished, rough and lacking a lot of the features I was hoping to include – for now. The blog is out there in its new look and there is no excuse anymore.
Going back and reworking the blog
At the moment I am still going through the old tutorials. I am reworking the newest and most important ones. Exporting the images again, adding information and fixing a lot of spelling mistakes. 🙁 There is a lot of optimization needed and it is time-consuming. It’s not much fun for a creative person like me either. Nevertheless, I plan to work my way through it and start posting new content as soon as possible. Bare with me and I hope I can reward your patience with new tutorials on Inkscape, Affinity Designer, Adobe Illustrator and CorelDraw as well as integrating some of the translations into Spanish, French and German.
The blog is still alive!
Real life and the joys of moving…
It’s been a while since the last post and a lot has happened. I made the move back to Australia. After 6 years abroad, the cold, grey and wet just got to me. I was missing the sun and the warmth too much. In January I headed back to Tropical North Queensland.
It took a little longer to set things up. It might not be much of a surprise when you start pretty much from square one. The phone and internet turned out to be a major problem as the wires got crossed between the provider and the independent service guy. Sadly that happened a few times and it took way longer to get an internet connection up and running.
Just as things started to work, I did my back in. One silly move while helping friends with their garden. A week of half-assed rest and I was feeling ok. Only to do it in again when picking up the trash to take it out. A week of proper rest, a massage, heat packs and some moderate exercise (mainly laps in the pool) and I am finally ok to sit at the computer again. Yes, I will look at a standing option as well… 😉
Now that I am settled in, I plan on posting again (regularly). The goal is to post once a week (preferably on Mondays) and again mid-week on the Affinity side of the blog, where I will post the tutorials done for Inkscape using Affinity Designer. As the tool does have some added features those tutorials will vary a little bit.
Starting today with a step-by-step tutorial on small buildings for town or map scenes… let’s see if I can stick to it… 😉