Yes, it’s the 1st of December, what a shock!
The year’s almost over, when did it begin? But right now I’m too tired to think about it. It’s been some exhausting couple of days, but I wanna unwrap this period in chronological order, so let’s begin!
I’ve grown quite accustomed to the big city life by now, I have felt more at home than I originally expected. I like that there’s so much to do here, there hasn’t been a week when I wasn’t going to a place, meeting people, or browsing for new stuff. It’s especially valuable to have met up with different people from within the media industry. I’ve gotten different perspectives, insights to other fields like the audio sector and I have reconnected with the folks at the festival I keep working with. All in all, I feel I can have a decent future here in Stuttgart, it feels like it can work out. Repeatedly, I also go to art gatherings and exchange creative influences. Through them, I learned about new art supplies and could try out some, that’s how I was inclined to get either water colour or acrylics to continue my traditional art journey. Well, I do have lots of supplies here, bought a bunch of frames as a guidance of inspiration where to go to thematically but as of recent weeks, I haven’t had much time to really sit down and get to work on a project. At the very least, birthdays have been a decent motivation to at least have something to work on:
Working these out always gave me a push to try somethign new, combine different tools or colors and push myself to finihs something. I want to get more divers though, I got into blue ink drawing on some high quality paper and it felt really good. A recent comic that I borrowed from the library helped a lot: ‘Zaroff’ which has beutiful illustrated jungle scenes that I really need to study more. It’d probably help to set me a specific goal: “finish a page of plant studies / a jungle scene by the end of the week” for example. It just doesn’t help how much is going on in December hehe, but more on that later.
Something as well started to help me be more varied: the topic rose up in a discord hangour call, discussing comfort in sexual themes in art and we wanted to get more comfortable with it as a whole. So we established ‘fruity-Friday’ where you can sit down and draw something NSFW, just for the heck of it. So far, I’ve been very squeamish, probably because I tend to be very reserved with the topic around others but that’s what the scheduled event is supposed to counter. And while I wanted to get more into things, time – yet again – was a disturbing factor. Simply not being in my private safe space because I was at an event or moving to my family’s had me a bit frustrated, but that’s okay, I’m not obliged to do something for it just try to when the opportunity arises. I don’t want to force me to prepare outfut for Friday because this would be much more frustrating and that’s the opposite of the goal here.
Despite this, I worked on two commissions, or well, sort of. As my friend Exobiota is having issues with her departure into a new state, she is in dire need to raise funds to cover arising costs, I wanted to help by offering commissions to donors and thankfully, some rose to the need and thus I produced some drawings for them.
I wanted to let this be a start to getting back into more NSFW territory but still be very tame and artistic. I also needed to get back into Digital drawing because that’s still a big sector of my artistic expression.
A longer side-project I also started was the telegram stickers, I mentioned in last month’s reflection.
Sadly, I couldn’t finish nearly as many as I’d planned but considering it was a very busy month, that’s okay. Of my initial 25 sketches, I finished roughly half of them while my little artworks grew increasingly more colourful. I hope I can finish them before my big Christmas break. Working on so many small sketches again definitely helped find different sides to my sona because I have the habit of never doing something the same way twice. I also immediately felt how helpful they are in my expressions when I started using my work in progress images as stand-ins to my conversation stickers. Soyeah, I can’t wait to have them finished.
Throughout November, I started to submit my animation film to several festivals, the work on it never seems to end, I suppose, as I still find myself adding more to it like a subtitled version or additional info. I attended the film’s first official premiere outside my university where I spoke in front of an audience, which was much easier than the fear I had of the film’s audio mixing being horrid in theatres. Luckily, the quality is alright but I definitely know why most studios tend to do any theatre mixing by an outside studio equipped with a proper studio setup. My two sets of speakers and two headphones don’t cover the large variety of cinema sound systems out there, which makes mixing for them so much harder… Ah anyway, I’ll try to continue submitting on a very very limited budget of asking nicely for a fee waiver… luckily most festivals are quite happy to help little student projects a boost.
Then the month was already almost over. What was left was one big weekend starting with comic con preparations. Which was quite nice. I met Mistique arts and I was delighted to help her out, she is very friendly and passionate about her craft, which made me want to help her even more. Getting a glimpse at he largest convention I’ve been so far from an inside perspective, getting in when no visiters are allowed and watching several people setting up their stuff was cool, like Eurofurence but on a much larger scale. On Saturday, I ventured out to help as much as I could before getting back to the city for a Zootopia 2 screening. Which was the most I’ve felt excited about a movie since my first IMAX screening of Dune 2 years ago. The reason this time was less the movie itself, but experiencing it with over 100 furries đ And we had a blast, not only is the movie good, everything about the cinema and it’s guests that day was a delight. I could hang with friends afterward and we all had a nice time. On Sunday, it was all con time. holding a booth there wasn’t as crowded as expected so I had plenty of time to stroll around and check out the other booths, got plenty of merch for myself and to gift for friends and family and I did a little sightseeing of the convention. And what can I say, comic con doesn’t really have that much to offer me. The coolest stuff for me are the fanmade Lego exhibits and the wonderful cosplayers but the vibe cannot reach Furry con standards for me. So all in all it was anice event. I went to bed exhausted and ready to sleep, today I woke up with a hefty charley-horse xP
So, it’s here, December, finally. I must say, I’ve been really looking forward to the festive vibes. I love drinking punch, eating sweets and the nice lights and smells and tastes of the season. I’m looking forward to the many Christmas parties I’m going to attend and a deserved lengthy holiday break for me. Two weeks of nothing but being home at my family’s. I’ll try to get some cool comics or books and games from the library, bring my art supplies and have chill days that I’ll hopefully be able to spend in good company. And I’ll bring my guitar to play… oh I haven’t mentioned it? I borrowed my mom’s guitar to learn a few simple songs to play when I’m with people. No self music making happening there, just some fun stuffs that I always wanted to play myself.
Then the year will be over! Ehhhh. I don’t know if I’m ready for that yet. But well, we’ll go through it, and I’m looking forward to be looking back… at the whole year of 2025 in reflection. That’s gonna be a treat.
So until then, I wish you very pleasant holidays and a nice last round-up of the year. Enjoy yourselves!
~ Souvillaine