Geez, I Completley Forgot I Did This Some Time Ago ... How Did I Even Do This?

I was looking through my devianart and found this picture I did about a year ago. Didn't post this here yet.

I still remember how proud I was as I finished that ...

Dream and Nightmare by @jokublog

Looking back, I stressed myself out too much in the beginning of ArtFight. One full rendered drawing a day is much. It worked for the first couple days, as you can see, but overall I lost motivation. If I ad spend some more time on these, they would have been even better.

Or it's just me being a perfectionist again. Whatever. I had fun and that's what matters.

YEEEAS!!! I was just wondering, haven't skeched a sans for a longer time... Could I apply the methods I've learned so far to a sans-face?

And it works somehow 😁 I just need to keep in mind that his head is much shorter than a usual head, but my method still works 😃 And finally I managed to do this messy art style which I really like but I was never able to draw like that, thanks to perfectionism.

I am so excited right now about how this will continue 🤩

Ink sans belongs to @comyet

Next artfight attack!

This time it's Koda Milimus by PsuedoVillainz @secretgaygenttomura

Was fun to draw 😁

Ookay, lineart is done. Color will have to wait until tomorrow.

And yes, I didn't outline his scar but this time I didn't forget about it! I'll draw it as I color it.

(And is it just me or do the cogwheels look weird? It kind of looks worse in the picture...)

Okay, I stopped working on the previous sketch since something about it was not right. I'm not sure what but it felt weird and I didn't like it.

Instead I moved on to the next one. Sadly, I forgot to make a picture of the sketch before slightly erasing but I wanted to show it nethertheless. So, here's Eijiro in his hero costume

Can't wait to line and color it 😀

More training faces 😁 Finally, I managed to draw extreme up and down angles. Next up will be left and right 😃

I am also playing around with light and shadow and still need to figure out how I can make the eye area. I know it's somehow bent inwards but I couldn't quite get it yet. I guess there will be no way around as I draw left and right.

(so exited to see if I could make some crazy animation stuff with that knowlege 🤩)

Just drew this dude. I think studying the mha artstyle really improved my artstyle. I love him ❤️ and it didn't really take that long to draw that.

Also, take some sketches I did beforehand:

I don't know his name yet, but I think his quirk would be something with superspeed. (Might call it slowmotion or reverse slowmotion, depends on how I'll make it work.)

I really like the idea that he has always a pair of sunglasses with him, to avoid dust getring into his eyes while in superspeed. And also to be the coolest kid around 😎

Also his quirk shows in his personality. He's mostly impatient since everything is going too slow for him.

His hero idol is Hawks. He definetly aims to become quicker than him to claim the title as fastest hero.

Tips for writing

I already had another story which I never got to post, since I kept rewriting it into eternity. After forcing myself to take a break from it, I think I finally figured out a way to keep consistently writing a story. So, I thought maybe this post might stumble across a reader who struggles with similar things as I did and I could provide a possible solution without them needing to go through a year and over 10 different versions of a first chapter ending in a failed project. (and admitting that I needed to stop was what hurt the most since I really love the idea I had and maybe I might even try to restart that story, but that's a topic for another post in maybe 2 to 3 years.)

Also Disclaimer: This is only my opinion on the matter and what I figured to be helpful. In the end, it's up to you how you want to write your story and to decide what works for you. I'm just sharing my experiences.

I had a couple of problems which mixed up together until I needed to give up.

First off, I lacked structure. With my first bigger story, I had an idea, a beginning and I knew some major plot points that needed to happen. But what I never knew was when or how the story ended. I just wanted to tell an endless story or figure out an ending on the way. That didn't work for me.

With my current story (which you can check out here, if you're interested) I researched a couple of ways how to structure a story properly. (It was just for fun honestly, but so helpful in the end) I already had, like before a vague idea, and some plot points I wanted to happen. What I did: See if my story would fit into any of these structures and what would happen at which point until the end. And then I found a structure that fit my story (almost) perfectly. After that, I wrote down the plot in bullet points creating my outline for the story.

(Note: Of course, you can take any story structure you find and bend it a little. For example, I decided to go for a three act-structure and decided to skip the introduction part, since I wanted to plunge the reader into the story without heavily explaining what was going on. They would figure it out on the way … )

This means I knew what happened at which moment. And most importantly, I had an ending. Now I had to face my next challenge, fighting my constant urge to rewrite everything. After proceeding with my used-to-way of just writing what comes to my head, I quickly figured out that this wouldn't work. It didn't work earlier and it didn't work now. So, I needed to figure out what was wrong with my approach.

For that, there are multiple options to do so. Either you can ask others for their opinion of what is wrong with your text or try proofreading yourself. I recorded how I read my texts and heard afterwards to the footage while I was reading along (and yes, it sucks hearing your own voice on record, but if you imagine it's another person, it's not that painful anymore, after a while)

Then I had another important realization. I still had no structure in my chapters. The story was now well structured and I knew what I wanted to write the chapter about, but my thoughts were jumping from one thought to another and then back again. To solve this problem, I came up with an approach that still works for me.

Before writing the chapter, I think about what I want to happen in this chapter. For example, in my current story, I needed to introduce the two main characters and they needed to meet. I also wanted to hide some hints on backstory and needed to write about the event that starts the entire story. With that in mind, I just start loosely writing down what comes to my mind. It doesn't matter if it's good or not, since I'm going to rewrite it later on. Once I come to a point, where I completed all of my goals for that chapter, I take what I wrote down and structure the plot into bullet points. Then I take these and write a second version along with the bullet points. This makes sure that my thoughts are structured in the end and that I have a clear storyline to follow.

After that, the last step is proofreading. As already said before, you can ask others to give you feedback or record yourself. Maybe use a grammar program to fix obvious mistakes you've overseen (helps a lot. especially if you're writing in a language that you don't use everyday) In this stage I mostly find some sentences that are hard to read / speak or just some wordings that repeat or don't quite sound right. So I go ahead, mark them and fix them.

And after that, I was by now always satisfied with what I wrote. This method might be a little overkill but it works for me and the most important thing you need to keep in mind: If you'd like to write something, it's supposed to be fun. No matter the way you do it. The process of creating an own story and slowly watching it come alive, that's the feeling that makes me happy and why I keep writing.

Hope you had fun reading and maybe I was able to give you one or another idea on how to write a story. If you want more tips, you can send me an ask or just comment on this post.

I'm currently about my OCs like, scrap what I have and try something new. And I think it woks well :D

Name: Zero

Age: 19

Gender: human - male

Ability: code sight

Backstory

After Zero fell to the underground, he gained his strange power to see the world around him in code. Over time he befriended Monsterkind and even found a monster he fell in love with. He developed a technique to change the code of objects he is seeing. One day, his love dies due to an unknown disease. In all his grief, Zero deletes his worlds and discovers that other Aus exist. Then he creates the place he calls 'backdoors'  to have a place to stay between worlds. After some time has passed and he watched several AUs, he saw Ike accidentally destroying his own AU and being the only survivor. First, he didn't plan on interacting, but in the end, his humanity got the better of him and since then, he's taking care of Ike and acting as his older brother.

Abilities

Zero sees the world differently than others. He can see the code of objects. He can also summon a holographic keyboard and screens. He developed a technique where he would add changes to code into a window and then attach that window to a certain object to change it.

Appearance

He is wearing an armless grey cloak, which is glowing cyan from the inside. The light blue stripes on his cloak and boots glow a little in the dark. He has fingerless dark grey gloves and shoulder plates attached to his right arm. These shoulder plates are for him to defend himself in case of close combat. Below his cloak, he is wearing his training outfit. He has a cyan streak in his hair and his left eye is only a blue ring. That eye is directly connected with his powers.

Personality

Before his love died, Zero promised her to not change. Due to that and his soul trait being integrity, he kept his distance from all Aus and decided to not interact. After taking care of Ike, the boy almost forced him with his cherish mood to open up and from time to time interact with other Aus to get Ike out of trouble. By now, Ike grew like a little brother to him and Zero is more than happy to be his cool big bro.