Art Fight 2024 Journal
Blog/journal detailing my 2024 Art Fight season—including my personal challenge and reflections on the attacks I made!
My History with Art Fight
I joined Art Fight in 2019, but I hadn't gotten around to truly playing until 2022. Even then, I didn't get super into it until the following year (2023). That year, I gave myself a challenge. For context, I had been running a sizable Discord server centered around OCs and worldbuilding for a while at that point. We facilitated Art Fight discussions with special channels for sharing profiles and attacks. So, I gave myself a daunting challenge: attack everyone who went out of their way to send a link in the server's listing channel. That was about 40 different people, give or take a few. 40 quality pieces of gift art in a single month... and I did that, and then some! I ended that year with 69 attacks.
In that year, I did four animated attacks of varying complexity. I had done animated work before, but it was an interesting experience to do it for Art Fight (under a time constraint and for someone else). It wasn't particularly challenging, barring the notorious "Angosplosion" that took me three dedicated days to storyboard and illustrate, but I had so much fun. At the end of the month, I joked about doing an animated attacks run next year, and...well. Here we are.
2024: Year of Animations
I think I'm starting to use Art Fight as a means to challenge myself, facing the event with a similar perspective to game jams—set a goal and complete it because everyone else is also doing it. If last year's self-imposed goal was to attack everyone in my server that I could grab the link for, then this year's is the following:
Submit only animated attacks, with a minimum of 20.
I also gave myself the goal of maintaining multiple revenge chains (which I've silently defined as any string of revenges longer than 4), but... in addition to being quite a bit of work to prioritize, that goal was also dependent on how willing other people are to revenge me. Because of that, it wasn't a very critical goal to me. (And... I eventually abandoned this goal anyway.)
Additionally, I had a mass attack planned for 20 DSA members. More on this later.
In any case, the idea was to get me experimenting with different techniques and improve my workflow. I am using Clip Studio Paint to animate. Some attacks are edited in CapCut, and some are strung into gifs through ezgif (rather than through CSP's gif export tool). "Work time" is taken from CSP's file information, and may not include time taken to plan, storyboard, edit, etc. This journal will serve as my personal "retrospective" on each attack I did. I have organized my thoughts by attack.
And with that out of the way...let's get into it!
Table of Contents:
- Attack 1 - chismosa
- Attack 2 - eternal winter? no problem
- Attack 3 - ITS A RACE TO HELL
- Attack 4 - have you even watched osea??
- Attack 5 - can't sit still
- Attack 6 - now exploring...
- Attack 7 - snapshots
- Attack 8 - then will you bring deliverance to me?
- Attack 9 - surprise!
- Attack 10 - you, me...
- Attack 11 - timid knight
- Attack 12 - chipi chipi chapa chapa
- Attack 13 - had the STRANGEST dream...
- Attack 14 - number one victory royale
- Attack 15 - batter up!
- Attack 16 - just gettin by
- Attack 17 - kinseys enchanted journey
- Attack 18 - the huntress
- Attack 19 - chimera's boys
- Attack 20 - ART TENNIS!!!!
- Post-Mortem
Attack 1 - chismosa
This was my first attack of the year, and it's a revenge! Mandrake drew these splendid date outfits for Raiden and Araceli.
The goal with this attack was to gauge how long it took to make a short animation in the first place. In this attack, I cycled between different poses and expressions and made a strong effort to keep objects the same size throughout the piece. I did this by lining one part at a time—instead of lining entire frames in order, I would line single parts (face, horns, ears, hand, etc.) across all frames to ensure the movement and size consistency was exactly as I wanted it. I'd never done something like that before! It felt very weird, but it was helpful.
Tivrara proved slightly difficult to animate as her design involves some pieces that were difficult to keep consistent (freckles, horns, hair). With this more "assembly line"-like approach to lineart, I was able to make the process much less intimidating. To keep myself from going crazy, I slightly simplified Tivrara's design as well.
Attack 2 - eternal winter? no problem
Once again a revenge, Lewis started the fight with this absolutely breath-taking piece of my main OCs. Of course I had to revenge the best I could.
Julián wasn't originally going to be in this attack. That closeup was going to be Vihaan again, with his eye swirling. However, pretty early on, I learned that my friend Ango was also attacking Lewis with his OC ship Lightmatter...so I promptly shifted my idea lol. For the combo.
I wanted to try animating two pieces at "different" frame rates. In order to make a perfect loop, I had to extend the length of the animation to the least common denominator between these two frame rates. Julián's part of the animation was a four-frame loop, and Vihaan's was six. This meant that the animation would have to be 24 frames long to loop seamlessly. Vihaan's pupil swirls are also animated on a different frame rate (a 12 frame loop, though there are only four unique frames).
Because this animation was relatively simple, I gave myself the liberty to render as I pleased. This style of rendering is not nearly as flashy or detailed as my usual, but it helped bring a nice atmosphere to the finished loop. What helped me keep the position of the shadows and details consistent was rapidly flipping between a complete and incomplete frame, and "dotting out" where everything was. Then, I connected the dots I created and smoothed out the shape appropriately.
Attack 3 - ITS A RACE TO HELL
Another revenge! Ox drew this scampy Raiden as a sort of redraw of the one she drew for me in 2022.
This was my first attack with sound. Art Fight doesn't support video uploads, so I had to upload this to YouTube and link it in the attack description. Which is...fine. I've uploaded things to YouTube before, but it's still a weird and new process for me.
The audio was from SoraMafuUraSaka's RPG, which is a relatively common animation meme. I went along with the meme format and had each of the three protagonists of Ox's story/project "Alchemy's Maw" posing in front of their respective basic stat information. Originally, I was only going to do one per character, but I couldn't decide between Kezo's proud pose or her axe stance, so I decided to let myself indulge in the best of both worlds, resulting in each character having two alternating poses. Additionally, I experimented with text and display elements in the background—text, charts, etc. The chart was hand-drawn, and I wish I had found a better way to do that (i.e. computer/vector graphics or what-have-you).
I definitely thought it wouldn't take me almost eight hours to do this one, but it's fine. I had a lot of fun figuring out poses for these characters. Ox was really happy about this attack and kept telling me how much it pleased her personally as a long-time fan of animation memes. I was really flattered by the praise, and I'm glad she liked it so much. It feels nice to make art that can touch people like that...
Attack 4 - have you even watched osea??
Not a revenge this time! It was squid's birthday, so I wanted to draw them something nice. This clip is from Bleach—it's one that they shared with their server when they were musing about their OC Ichika's voice claim.
My goal was to "recreate" the scene from the clip—I did change some details around (for example: unlike the original where Kon kisses Ichigo, I had Clover use their needles on Hiro). It was fun to use the black borders and subtitle text to create a "fake screenshot" effect.
Some of my friends may know this as the attack that "broke" me. This is a bit of an exaggeration—I'm perfectly fine. It was just that I happened to be in voice chat while doing the lineart for this, so I kept complaining about how taxing that process was. At this point in the month, I felt the blister on my thumb (the one that I've been contending with for some months now) beginning to return. With the lineart done, I didn't really want to do anything else, so I put down some "placeholder" colors and called it a night.
All in all, I am proud with the outcome in that I "finished" it, but I wish I could've done more. I will say that the simple backgrounds added a lot to the scene! They were a last-minute addition and honestly the reason why I feel proud/satisfied with the finished animation.
Attack 5 - can't sit still
Yet another revenge-less attack. This was for my server's group-revenging event, Shark Frenzy. If you don't know, here's how Shark Frenzy works:
- A member of DSA submits the user information of someone not in DSA who attacked them
- Every few days (I think it was five?), someone random is picked from the pool of submitted users
- Whoever wants to participate in the event draws an attack for the selected user
Additionally, whoever scored the most points (without the friendly fire nerf, of course) with Shark Frenzy attacks is selected as the final Shark Frenzy target. It's a real fun time.
I didn't have any focuses/goals with this one, simply to improve my efficiency. Even without a specific goal in mind, I still had a lot of fun crafting this loop! It's relatively simple, but it's seamless and fun to watch. I will say that I definitely wasn't used to drawing characters with duller palettes, though! The nice thing was piryion's character design philosophy and art style otherwise translated well into my own style, so I think the finished piece turned out pretty fine.
In hindsight, I would've liked to shade this, but I had just come out of the attack for squid's birthday, and I really needed something more chill.
Attack 6 - now exploring...
Back to revenges! Ango drew this amazing and lore-potent Lunchtime that absolutely gutted me on impact.
We pretty much play Art Fight all year (and by that I mean we just take turns throwing art at each other), but there's something fun about doing it during The Season(TM). In this attack, I drew the first characters I got to know from Ango's cast: Dorian and Ausra. They grew on me so quickly and to this day they're still my favorite of their cast.
In this attack, I tackled walk (run) cycles! I first drew a base, then personalized it for each character. Dorian has a lower running stance and is pushing forward for speed. His hand is perpetually pointing forward, referencing his grand ambitions and desire to keep pushing ahead. Ausra has a taller, more proper stance. She rises higher than Dorian with each step—though this makes her a little slower, it also makes her appear a little lighter. I really tried to use subtle gestures and adjustments like these to imply pieces of their personalities.
I didn't really know what to do with the background at first, but I think the simple, light backdrop and the "loading bar" works well. I've also been trying to find ways to make my animation process more efficient/faster, but I haven't reached anything substantial yet. I think the only thing that really makes a process "faster" is just doing something simpler, to be honest...
Attack 7 - snapshots
Another revenge, this time for Hk who drew a lovely and soft Lunchtime. I was a bit intimidated to draw Hk's characters, as most of them have wings or hairstyles that I'm just not used to drawing, but I gave it my all!
I had a lot of fun putting together the grid background for this. By this point, I had a solid understanding of Clip Studio's animation folders and how to best organize them (or... how to better organize them, at the very least).
The animation itself is very simple, and the gif compression led to some fun effects (the scarred side of Idraelete's face appearing static-like). I think what stuck out here is my choice of colors. If I were to go back, I would have improved the palette further by filtering the flames somehow. All in all, it's a very visually-pleasing attack, and I'm pretty happy with it. Maybe in the future, I'll experiment with actually animating wings...
Attack 8 - then will you bring deliverance to me?
This is a revenge for the stunning Bolt from the Blue poster that Rads drew. She drew something like this for me last year as well! I'm so honored... It's pretty fun to flip between this and the old one hehe.
Yay! An animatic / animated music video! I have never made something like this before. Well, I guess that's not totally true—I doodled something similar for Ango a while back. Though, it wasn't nearly this long or had this level of polish.
In addition to trying my hand at animatic techniques, I experimented with a sketchier style (rather than my usual clean lineart). The final rendering looked great and I'm happy with how it contributed to the feel of the piece, but it definitely felt different to just clean up a sketch and move on (rather than microsurgery / assembly line my way to perfect lineart). It definitely feels like not having to worry about lineart made this process faster—the work time on this surprised me with how short it was!
One important thing to note is I didn't know very much about these characters. However, I didn't want Rads to be spoiled of my surprise, so I contacted our mutual friend Jani to help me fill in the blanks. I was soon made privy to very fun details that I could include in the animatic! All in all, Rads seemed to really like my work!! So that makes me happy.
Attack 9 - surprise!
Not a revenge, but a birthday gift for my cousin!
My fastest attack by a longshot, and it's not hard to tell why—simple shading, simple movement, a single halfbody (for the most part)... I wasn't trying to achieve anything special with this, but I definitely feel proud of putting out something "finished" in such a short period of time (it gives me hope for a 2/day pace lol).
I really liked doodling the iPhone camera UI. Originally, I was going to format the camera like the focal character was in a video, but I decided to do photo instead because it fit the piece better (a surprise!).
Not much else to say here! It was a nice warm up for my next attack.
Attack 10 - you, me...
This is a revenge, technically, for this amazing and lore-potent Bolt from the Blue cookie (lol). However, it's also "Angosplosion," a newly-cemented tradition where I go out of my comfort zone to animate something spectacular for my dear friend Ango.
This attack was deeply inspired by a Pokemon flipnote animation that I saw when I was like 10 or 11 years old. I literally have not forgotten it since watching it, which is impressive considering my notorious blanks of memory. In recent years, I rememeber thinking to myself "I wish I had some OCs that would fit this..." and as it turned out, my dearest friend Ango has some!
Anyway, I had a lot of fun slipping Ango's OC lore into this one. I had been thinking about this attack for months, but what's interesting is that most of what I was imagining completely changed about 2 weeks before Art Fight began. During that time, Ango started sharing information about specific characters and dynamics that inspired me to totally rework my plans.
I experimented a lot with quick rendering methods and easy ways of making sections stick out from others. Playing with scene elements (such as the glowing/blue eyes) and more stylized backgrounds (like the spotlight over the various iterations of Jasper and Mihne) helped a lot. I did notice that my scenes ran a bit dark/dull, which is definitely a result of me messing with gradients a bit too much.
Additionally, I changed up how I handled layer management a bit. I tried to keep things more condensed so that Clip Studio Paint wouldn't blow up when I tried to play back my WIP. I'm not sure how I feel about that, because it didn't really help my process much, and CSP would blow up on me regardless.
Ango was pretty happy with this years 'splosion, and a lot of DSA people started getting curious about their lore lolll. There are a few things I would change now, but I need to move on from this attack and work on the next. Honestly, I'm proud of myself, I just wish it didn't take this long...!
Attack 11 - timid knight
Not a revenge, not a DSAguy, and not even a Shark Frenzy target. Not even someone I particularly know! Just someone who happened to follow me a bit before the fight started. I really liked his character design philosophy and thought his OCs would make for a good exercise/challenge.
...Boy, was that a workout, lol. I wanted to focus on the cape movement, so I looked at various references of capes blowing in the wind (especially in anime, shoutout to Piccolo DBZ). I ended up just winging most of it because I couldn't wrap my head around the physics and needed to keep things quick. Because I wanted to make the attack "small," I didn't do lineart, and opted for the clean sketch style that I did in a previous attack.
I did, however, think it was a good idea to paint...? Which was such a decision. I think the final result is quite lovely, but I'd never do it again. It added a couple extra hours and I don't think I pulled off thaaaat well (at least not well enough to justify the time sink). Also, I feel like the character was somewhat off-model, and I feel bad about it. I'm strongly considering drawing the character again after the fight is over, without the pressure of my animation challenge looming over me lol.
As it turned out, herb REALLY really liked it. He kept coming back to comment on how much he liked it, actually. This made me feel a lot better about the piece, but I still do want to draw his OCs again lol.
Attack 12 - chipi chipi chapa chapa
Technically a revenge for this really cute Saffron, also sort of an early birthday gift...!
I know I wanted to do a "chipi" loop as an attack for someone at some point, but I didn't know who. When I heard Parker's birthday was just around the corner, the opportunity suddenly opened itself! Later on, Parker actually told me that he was planning on doing a "chipi" for this character at some point himself and was delighted that I did it for him.
Record speed on this attack, just barely beating out my now-second fastest attack! It was a flat-colored bust of a motion I'd already done before, so I wasn't surprised that it went by fast. I've been really getting the hang of using my Bluetooth keyboard to quickly swap between tools and toggle between pairs of frames to check consistency. Overall, I don't think I faced any huge problems in the making of this attack.
I did consider shading it at some point because it was really going by so easily, but I decided against it just to keep it simple (and also I don't think the animation would've benefitted much from rendering).
Attack 13 - had the STRANGEST dream...
My first attack after recovering from COVID (yeah, I got COVID. Ripped me out of the game for like a week), and a revenge to a friend who drew my lovely princess. Includes a couple other buddies as well—OCs from Mandrake and Jani and myself—which was fun!
This attack was based off of the silly adventures in the Roblox game Fishing Simulator that me and my friends would embark on. Our Roblox avatars are dressed up like our OCs (the ones you see here! Yes, in those outfits!), so it was very amusing to imagine how these characters would feel about fishing.
Because I was just getting back into the swing of things after COVID, I wanted to do something on the easier side. So, I chose to do a tweened attack (so...no frame-by-frame animation)! Working on this mostly felt like making a regular drawing and then using the transform tool to move pieces of my "regular drawing" around like little dolls in a dollhouse. I've never done this before! It was a fun learning experience.
I took a lot of references from my friends' Roblox profiles and from Fishing Simulator—I even logged into the game to take pictures of my boat, which is the one that we all ride on when we're catching fish together. It was really fun for me to imagine where everyone would be on the boat. One of my friends called out one of the characters fishing from on the roof...but that's really what we do sometimes! Sometimes when there are a lot of people on the boat, the best point to cast from is right on top! You had to be there... Anyway, I especially enjoy how the character on the roof and the top of the boat were positioned in front of the top text ("Told them I would work on my casting"), I think it was a silly way to add depth to the image.
This is now my fastest attack, beating out the one above! Maybe I should do some more tweened scenes like this? They're pretty easy and silly. I could probably even get to 20 with these... I should probably work on the mass attack.
Attack 14 - number one victory royale
Another revenge! This time it's for ... a lot, actually. Like three (1) different (2) things (3). God.
Let it be known that there is no such thing as a "quick one" when it comes to these attacks. Lineart takes an insanely long time, what definitely could've taken about three hours tops took almost six thanks to lineart. I kept telling myself "wow, this is the fastest I've ever blasted through lineart!" which is... insane. Well, anyhow... I've done this type of attack before. Last year, I made a similar default dance attack for Ox's birthday. I have been wanting to clean up the base for a while, so I used this as an excuse to do so.
I don't think I struggled with too much. I definitely did a bit of idling because I was listening to Vintage Chorus Battle Round 1 entries, but overall it was a smooth ride. The lineart definitely took up the bulk of the work time though, and I wish I had a way to streamline that (note: I definitely do. I just didn't do it. Though, I'm not sure how much it would've helped here anyway). Maybe I have to let myself be more comfortable duplicating frames instead of drawing each one for that juicy, juicy boil? I don't know. It just seems like that's my main time sink with these animations.
I enjoyed grabbing the explosion green screen for the animation lol. Originally, I wasn't going to have an explosion, but then added it in for the funnies. And then I realized the video with the explosion had, well, explosion audio...so instead of just letting it out as a gif, I included a video version with the explosion SFX. Really funny stuff. The Fortnite music was an extra last-minute addition—I added it much later when I was working on the final big reel.
Attack 15 - batter up!
Yet another revenge for this really charming lunchtime loop! Shay also acquired the most points through the aforementioned Shark Frenzy event, so this doubled as a "revenge" for that.
This was also supposed to be a "quick one," and it likely would have been if not for two factors:
- I kept getting distracted. I think at least 2 hours on this were spent idling. Lol.
- I wanted to add more and more things. I wasn't planning on rendering this at all at first, but then I put in the hard shading along the edges. And then I added the gradients. And then I touched up the fire. etc etc.
This was an extremely fun attack. I didn't realize I would enjoy it as much as I did, and honestly I'm pretty happy with the result. I've never animated fire or a baseball swing before, and I think both turned out great for my first time. I didn't look up a reference for the fire, but I did for the swing. Shoutout to baseball, I guess! Also, I went with the more modular ("assembly line") lineart strategy of lining a single section across all frames (instead of lining everything on one frame before going to the next), and it saved my sanity quite a bit. Especially with the details on the bat—that was a meticulous back-and-forth effort.
There are a few things here and there that I definitely could have fixed, but ultimately I'm happy with the result. I think I'm really beginning to enjoy the process. Honestly, I'm not sure if I'll be able to complete my DSA mass attack before the event ends, but I hope to push out some more revenges to make up for that.
Attack 16 - just gettin by
Nothin' new, just revenging some more! Tan drew this absolutely bananas Ilia. Every time I see it, my mind goes blank because...well... I am in love with her...anyway...
Bust-up with no shading or major movements, so it was quick! I wanted to get good icon practice in this month, so this was a good chance for that. The structure for this animation was pretty clean; there were three key expressions, and two in-between frames between each key. These in-betweens were just boils of their nearest key with a little bit of hair movement. Lineart went by a LOT quicker because this structure allowed me to "trace" my own work.
I was tempted to add highlights/shading to this, but I am a bit tired and I wanted to keep a quick attack "quick" for once lol. Not much else to say here! Tan has cool characters that seem simple enough to make schmoove, and I'd really love to animate more of them in the future.
Attack 17 - kinseys enchanted journey
Mandrake has done SO (1) much (2) art for me, I can't even begin to revenge them all...but I've gotta start somewhere!
I've never done a turnaround before, not like this. I didn't really look up a good reference for turnarounds (and I don't know if I'd have any luck finding one for a 6-frame loop... Most people who are normal will make a 4-frame or 8-frame turnaround), but I think I did alright using only my beautiful brain. I struggled a lot with lining things up, and I actually had to scrap my first attempt...The strategy that I found most helpful was sketching a very loose base for the rotation, and cleaning it up / adding Kinsey's design features piece by piece. It wasn't as slow of a process as I thought it would be! In fact, I'm pretty sure it would've taken longer had I not done things this way.
Once again, I totally winged the fire (but I have some more experience thanks to a previous attack lol), and I think it turned out alright! At some point, I'd really like to do some exercises/studies with fire, but I don't really have the time for that during Art Fight. Maybe afterwards...
Anyway, I think it's pretty clear that I'm satisfied with how this turned out. The audio came from a game that Mandrake streamed to me and others in DSA. Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey, if you've ever heard of it. The audio clip for casting magic is the same, so when Mandrake spam-casted it, it was...um...an experience. Buuuut, I think it works for this animation!
Attack 18 - the huntress
Super late revenge for Thal, who drew this really wicked Cole!
Of course, I ended up going a bit harder than I had originally planned. It was just going to be a simple sword-unsheathing with no fancy camera effects...but like with everything, "something happened."
I had a lot of fun with the camera effects here. I was able to pull the camera around to do the heavy lifting on the transitions. Through zooming and panning, I was able to line up Renata's different shots so that it implied smooth movement and inertia without me having to draw many in-betweens and recovery frames.
The shifting black bars have made a return! I hadn't played with those since last year when I did that one TWPS animatic. I like the dynamic composition these borders bring to the animation. I was planning on adding a few other things like hard highlights and some background elements, but ultimately decided against it. Can't take too long on these lol, I have to get to 20 by tomorrow.
Attack 19 - chimera's boys
Revenge! This is for Hooxie, who drew a really lovely and gorgeous lunchtime for me earlier this month.
I had a lot more planned for my revenge against Hooxie... It was really unfortunate, because I caught COVID right after drafting the idea. I no longer had the time to go through with my ambitious vision, but I couldn't let her go without a revenge lols.
Anyway, it's walk cycles! I could always use more practice. This was an exercise in pushing the six-frame "base" that I always default to. I tried to give Mike a bigger stride and bouncier step, because he's a chipper protagonist type. Conversely, I gave Ricky a tighter, more conservative posture to match his more timid nature. This felt a lot like the run cycles I did for Ango, but with a bit more pushing.
I also animated the hair a bit, since the frame rate was so slow that I wanted to highlight some of the "gravity" of the steps. I wish I would've done a bit more, but that's OK. I'm low on time. All in all, this was a quick attack that I didn't have too much trouble with. I was also planning on adding the other two Aegis siblings, but that didn't happen...maybe after the fight... I am SO running low on time.
Attack 20 - ART TENNIS!!!!
This was it. The final attack, and of course it's on my dear friend Ango. And yes, their previous revenge was my excuse to strike.
I came into this final attack with zero plans whatsoever. I had no idea what I wanted to do, just that I wanted to do something fun. I didn't have a lot of time left, so I initially wanted to do something smaller...but of course, well...we know the drill by now—something happened.
In this attack, I experimented a lot with shortcuts. How fast could I reasonably pull this bad boy together? Very fast, evidently. This attack took the same amount of time as my first attack. I used a lot of camera movement for the heavy lifting, similar to what I did for my 18th attack, and that helped a lot with the vibes.
The green screen with my "speedpaint" recording inserted is probably my favorite part. It was actually the most finnicky, because I had to do it in CapCut, and there were some issues with timing/the green screen flashing. I think I got it figured out (on my third render...), so that's cool. I needed more practice with editing my animations in CapCut (or similar software) anyway.
I'm a big fan of just how bizarre and hilarious this turned out. It really encompasses the attitude that Ango and I have towards art trading—we're just killing each other with a tennis ball, really. All in all, it felt like a pretty appropriate closing piece for Art Fight and for this personal challenge.
Post-Mortem
See, it's called a post-mortem because I fucking died. Badly.
I don't even know how to begin describing my experience with Art Fight this year. It was amazing, it was tragic, it was a blur, it was whatever. So many unexpected things came up (and a lot of expected things that I just forgot about lol) and it threw my month into such a chaotic frenzy. But (mostly) everything worked out... Let's talk about it now that it's over!
First off, I will say that I'm really happy to have gotten 20 attacks done! Before Art Fight began, I had my goal set to 25, but I made the (very good) call to reduce it to 20. I think if everything went as it should have (or could have) this month (no family visits, no COVID, no thumb blister flare-ups), I would have cleared 25 pretty easily, but hindsight is 20/20 (lol). Additionally, I'm pretty happy with the quality of what I put out! I don't think any attack was particularly flawless, but given the time crunch and the mindset of trying to learn something new with each attack, I feel proud. Even the simpler attacks were much-needed exercises that ultimately helped me become more efficient with the more complex ones.
Animations take a LONG time to do. This seems like a given, but I severely miscalculated how long a given attack would take (especially when accounting for breaks and interruptions). This reality hit me pretty early on, so I was able to pay more attention to my process and sorta "calculate" with better accuracy moving forward. Because of my re-calculation process, I didn't even really have a "formal" plan until about a week in. Also, I definitely realized that I wouldn't be able to do any of those revenge chains that I was craving. Oh well.
One of the things that I wanted to do in addition to the 20 attacks was a mass attack for the members of my server. I wanted to make this huge Smash Bros-style "choose your fighter" reel (with the humorously fitting title "choose your dent") featuring characters from 20 different server members. It was a really cool and fun idea, and I actually got a lot of progress on it! Unfortunately, I didn't finish it in time due to...a few factors.
During the week of my birthday, my brother and niece both came to visit. I spent a lot of time with both of them, which meant I wasn't able to do much art. This was fine, because it wasn't necessarily unexpected (though I did forget how long they'd be here lol), so I was able to plan my Art Fight game around it. And then I got coronavirus.
COVID hit me pretty hard. I had just finished Angosplosion and was preparing to unleash another big revenge (this time against Hooxie) and grind out the DSA mass attack. Neither of which ever got to see the light of day...sad. I was pretty much stuck in bed for a week and couldn't do much of anything. It took me a pretty long time to grapple with the "grief" of having lost so much time from this event—I was trying to count my losses and see what I could still feasibly do, and I just kept getting frustrated at myself (as if I could control having COVID, lol). Like why couldn't I just get up and work!?... In the end, I decided that I would do what I could with what time and energy I had. Art Fight staff announced a two-day extension, which was a nice little bit of wiggle room. Slowly I was recovering and beginning to put attacks out again, and then...
On August 1st, I felt a sudden burst of energy. I put out two attacks—attack 16 and attack 17—they were both on the simpler side, but I felt good about them. And the next day, I put out three more, bringing me to my goal of 20 attacks. That energy came out of nowhere...I think I just kept thinking about how much everyone seemed to enjoy my attacks, and how much fun I had making them, and that alone fueled me. When I was drawing, my brain kept saying "I can't wait for (recipient) to see this. I really hope they like it." I remembered something a friend told me—animated Art Fight attacks (and animated art in general) are sort of a rare treat, especially the fully-animated stuff that I've been doing. With all of that on my mind, I just kept getting more and more excited after completing each attack, I had so much momentum.
So how do I feel? Great. I got my goal done, I powered through some crazy obstacles, I received beautiful art from friends, acquaintances, and strangers alike! It was an objectively good season for me. I don't think I'll ever do a challenge like this again, though. I don't know what fun gimmicky challenge I'll give myself next year, but I definitely want to be more conscious of my (projected, of course, because hindsight is 20/20) well-being when structuring these challenges. I won't get into it too much, but there were some sour moments with revenge-pressuring from other people that have somewhat made the experience stressful for me. I was a bit more selective with who I was attacking/revenging this year compared to last year, but honestly I think that was good for me. If that upsets people, then so be it. Maybe next year, I'll take it easy...unless "something happens," of course.
I am looking forward to drawing / "catching up" in the off-season, though! The DSA mass attack is something I really want to finish and show off. Also, there are a lot of characters that were so difficult to animate, but I still really want to draw at some point... So I'll be drawing those guys soon, too! For now, though, I'm resting lols. I'm sure everyone is.
...I don't really know how to end these types of things. I had fun, I learned a lot, it was a good time, etc. etc. I've got a full reel of all of my animated attacks as well. Here's the YouTube embed! Yayyyy Art Fight 2024!