Magnation year in review

hello, its me magbo

its time for that yearly post when i ramble about things and you share your thoughts on how the contents been going: which parts of it you like, which parts of it you dislike, what youd like to see more or less of, what do you think of the current content distribution system, what do you think of the community engagement polls, suggestions, commissions, doodles so many doodles. you get the idea, share your thoughts if you feel like, ill give em all a read.

ill try not to drag on too much, no one reads these anyway lol

so i found this year interesting, switching from doing art on the side to doing it full time.  started doing commissions again, its alright, i dont hate it yet. overall enjoyed my time so far.

for the first time i tried looking up some tutorials to try and learn more about art and get better at it. main focus has been lighting and shadows, still fighting old habits but i think i made progress. i got some helpful input from >Akkusky<, shoutout i guess. got new brushes too to help with rendering. been interested in getting more texture on my pictures as well.

tried doing the league VN collaboration project with Monsinne. it was an interesting experience even if it didnt lead to anything and the project got scrapped after the demo. it may have had potential but with a very slow start it wouldve taken a lot of time to get off the ground and that wasnt great for motivation to keep working on it. ive also gotten pretty bored of drawing the usual league characters anyway.

doodles have been a new addition to the content pool. i have way too many things id like to draw so they help get ideas on paper as a proof of concept and with some colors i think theyre alright as filler content to sift through. i have fun doing them tho they are piling up rather fast, maybe ill need to start polishing them more often in the future.

i feel like the polls have been a bit of a hit and miss, on paper they seem like a fun idea and then you realize people tend to come out and vote for one of few specific things every time, i guess id prefer them to have more unexpected results. i guess theyre alright, will see if id want to change them up in the future.

sponsorship program is a neat feature i think. i got more people asking for it these last few months than i expected, i was anticipating maybe 1 a month. it also offers an alternative route of getting a discount pic without having to wait forever in the commission queue (the downside being you get much less input into the process). since i still do my own stuff i dont think theres any downside to it being a thing.

the monthly pic randomizer has definitely been a thing, there have been some bangers and there have been some duds. ngl kinda happy sorakas and ahris are in the minority of suggestions now. its alright i think, personally the worst one i got out of it i think was the very first suggestion for neeko, really disliked working on that one. shrek donkey and dragon was definitely the funniest.

i may have forgotten something but thats ok, just writing this as i go.

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next year im hoping to keep working more on getting better at art overall, theres a lot of room to improve. ive done about 10 finished pics a month this year + sketches and some 250+ doodles (a third of which are of porsha lol) but i still feel like i couldve done more, so many sketches to finish. would also like to try and work on some mini comics or small pic series like the occasional triptychs that show up.

i also need to work on reaching out and expanding my audience. i dont interact with almost any other artist, maybe if i reached out a bit it would be good. who knows.

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there you go, those are my thoughts. let me know what are yours.

thanks for all the support, youre peak goats and biggest chads in the world and im glad i can do what i do because of you all. keep being based