April Fools 2023 + April update (Patreon)

Surprise surprise! Without much of a plan going into this month, I decided on a spur-of-the-moment sequel to last year's April Fools adventure, and it turned into an extended scenario over on Twitter (and Instagram and DeviantArt, though Twitter's the main location for it all). I'm starting to wrap it up now, so have a compilation of the silly renders I did so far!

For something unplanned, it turned into more than I expected and I'm actually pleasantly surprised with how well it's worked. I'm no VFX or collage artist, inserting rendered figures into real-life photos like this isn't my forté. But it worked better than I expected, and the week has proven to be some great practice on setting up lighting and adjusting colors for rendering specific scenes. Definitely some little tricks I can try to apply more to my regular work, lighting has been the biggest struggle for me and I guess I just needed to actually practice like this.

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As for an update for the month... I'm pushing ahead with one other project (a revival of the "squishy showoffs" series I've done), and while it's a series that takes a lot more postwork than most, I've already finished the renders and can chip away at that this week! Which is good, because I still don't know how productive I can be during the rest of the month; my wisdom teeth surgery is scheduled for just a week from now, and while I'm hopeful that recovery won't be too bad, I want to be sure I'm not leaving myself a workload I might not be able to handle while that's happening.

To be honest, I've not been doing so well this past month already, the weather has been a constant up and down and my mood was already struggling without that. Again I'm hopeful; jaw pain has been fairly constant and after the surgery that should improve, at the very least it'll let me focus a bit more on my overall health without having to worry about my teeth on top of that.

This April Fools adventure was a breath of fresh air I didn't know I needed, but it's still been a bit difficult, so I just want folks to know that if I'm quiet, I'm not ignoring you all; I've just been low on energy and trying to keep from getting burnt out on top of everything else. As the weather improves, my mental state's likewise been going up, so fingers crossed! I'm really looking forward to getting back into longer bike rides once it's back to being warm outside, and while I'd be lying if I didn't say I'm a little scared of the surgery, I'm also looking forward to having that done and over with.