This years artfight retrospective (kind of)

Now that artfight is pretty much over now I want to make a post reflecting on my thoughts on how this year went, at least how it went for me. While my opinions and thoughts are mostly positive I feel as though there were some things I wish I could approve on or felt disappointed about, mostly in regards to myself and my output.

I think for a positive if there's one thing I’m happy about myself is that I feel like my art has improved tremendously compared to the last two years, for once I feel happy about it, how it looks, but at the same time I also feel like it’s also become more time consuming and that leads me to my first personal problem. I wish I could have done more, I felt like compared to last year my attack rate was way slower compared to last year, though that can be because of multiple factors, longer drawing process, working on other things, my laptop charger being weird on me so whenever it’s plugged in the mouse goes haywire or the screen becomes super laggy, and most importantly, wrist pain, for the past few months I’ve been dealing with alot of wrist pain that’s been causing issues with my productivity, and while I’ve gotten myself wrist braces to help with said pain I don’t think my wrist pain is magically going to go away like that.

So while yes there were some forces out of my control that were causing problems with my productivity and I do acknowledge that, I feel as though I could have done more this year and I feel like in a way I faced the consequences for that, through like the 20th all the way to now my inbox was very much dry with a total of 3 defenses, now thats not to say I appreciate those three defenses and I understand that it usually becomes dry in the halfway mark (and I know the spirit of artfight is about giving art I understand that), but I feel as though the years before that were never really that dry for me. Idk I just feel like I noticed that and I can’t help but feel like I’m some sort of contributing factor to that. But honestly whatever if I want more art of my oc’s I can always just open art trades or participate in art games, pretty sure that will fill the artfight shaped hole in my heart in the meantime (that is if I don’t get ghosted like I have so many times in the past).

Though now onto another positive, I think another thing that made me happy is just seeing how many people like my artstyle and find it lovely, I know that sounds strange but recently I’ve just been feeling discouraged about my artstyle, feeling like it's too “weird” for people's taste or that it’s “undesirable”, so to see people say they actually like it makes me feel more confident about myself, I mean I know I like my artstyle but having that sort of assurance that there’s people out there that do like my artstyle and that I don’t have to change it to “fit in” feels nice in a way.

I’m also just super happy with all of the defenses I’ve received this year, especially for characters of mine that I feel like never receive them, such as Clauws, my number 1 favorite oc that never received anything for the past two years and I just assumed everyone hates him and finds him way too generic, I guess someone heard my cries (in the toyhouse forums) and made a nice little icon for him, I’m super happy about it! Another character is one of my (many) Everhood fancharacters Burgundy Mage who not only received a defense, but something related to the EH universe, I honestly wasn’t expecting Burgundy to receive anything either because I didn’t think there would be enough active Everhood fans to notice this bastard but I’m also glad to say I was wrong.

So my final thoughts, kind of mixed, I feel both happy but I also feel like I wish some things turned out more differently, but it’s not like I can really change that now. Though Artfight is a yearly event so who knows what next year might hold.