Backstory Blog: New Year's 2022

It's the new year, and with it comes new year's resolutions. I finished my animation that expresses my inescapable need for artistic expression and can now put my old construction life behind me for good. I've shown the animation to my family and explained my situation. They are supportive but maintain a realistic amount of optimism toward my goals; they are happy for me and believe I can do it, but ultimately they'll believe it when they see it and cannot pretend to be completely certain until I've shown progress. Which is perfect! I want to impress my family, so their attitude is exactly what I need to be motivated to succeed!

I want to establish my identity as an artist this year. That means attending art meetup groups to meet local artists and making new friends, it means trying new mediums like acrylic and learning clarinet, and it means organizing my income-work and "school" work to be consistent and habitual. Most of all it just means drawing and studying and learning every day.

I'm also gonna have to bite the bullet and invest in a new computer and animation software. I'm already pushing my old Macintosh to its video card limits and CSP really wasn't made for animation. That means I'll have to learn to use Windows, research and buy and learn to use another piece of animation software, and struggling for perhaps months with settings and key bindings and tutorials. All necessary. Only question is, do I wait and see if video card prices will drop first?

I've got to upgrade my Discord, Picarto, and Patreon so they're pretty and professional, with banners and emojis and little animations. I've got to decide on a consistent type of work, like short animations, that I can post weekly or monthly. People love consistency.

One more thing that's troubling me is I want two fronts: a SFW and a NSFW. The naughty side's Animancer with Twitter, FA, and Inkbunny and the clean side's Oyster Snack Studios on Youtube and Ko-Fi, with silly animations and videos that I can share with my family. It's hard to keep the two separate since I want to show off clean animations to all my naughty friends, but if I want to avoid embarrassment in the future (and maybe get a job in animation five years from now) I'll want to work to keep those identities split. Tricky, somewhat discouraging, but kinda necessary.

I'm not gonna do a really big animation project again for a little while. I'll stick to short and sexy stuff until I either get that new computer or think of something simple enough that my current hardware can handle. Short and sexy are good though.