This was a piece that my biggest big bo bee bo bee brother commissioned me for...YEARS ago. Two Wacom tablets ago.

Like you wanna talk about burnout? The first rough draft for this thing was from my Windows XP archival folder, dated 2013. (A DECADE AGO, JFC)

This rough was whipped up in a couple of minutes with him over my shoulder.

I was so burned out, dude. So much was going on in 2013, and he said "Hey, y'know what, take your time."

Big Big Mistake! Hell yeah, I took my time! Jesus- I went through several career changes, caretook for two different family members (so did he, he helped, he was there), but holy sheez.

After I got hired by Explosm Entertainment, he was like "Ohhh badass! I'm proud of you, bee-bo! Hey by the way, WHERE THE HELL IS THAT COMMISSION I ALREADY PAID YOU FOR"

Shamefully, I dragged my feet to eek out a NEW rough draft. Redesigns. Revisions. Then I kept putting it off. Depression and imposter syndrome kicked in. I changed my name. That didn't work. I changed over softwares from Photoshop to Clip Studio Pro. A slight learning curve later, and then I realized I'm not happy with anything happening with this file, so I slept on it.

Until, it became clear that the wife and I were about to move to another state. That meant tying up loose ends and finishing the unfinished here.

I had to complete Big Big before we moved. Then my brother told me, "You have to finish Big Big before you move-" and I said, I know, I know, I get it.

He laid it on thick. And then my wife did too. And then I realized why I wasn't happy with it, or anything else I was putting out on Clip Studio Pro.

I have a new XP Pen tablet, which works just fine in Adobe Animate (where I spend the bulk of my creating), but the driver was never properly installed, so some of the lines came out looking like pixelated shit. I was spending way too much time and energy trying to finesse the inkwork to look clean instead of janky.

You can see it REALLY clearly in this piece here- that driver was shitting the bed hard. That's why I opted for a synthwavy style (holding down shift and drawing a bunch of straight lines everywhere) because I hated how the brushstrokes were turning out. I hated how ass everything was looking.

And that's why I had an overall dryspell in art for years. Driver issues. It took like 30 seconds to resolve.

Some of the black ink on this piece still have a little bit of that bad driver jank, but I didn't want to waste another day being late on this thing, so I cranked it out. I'm giving him multiple exports that he can use for a wide range on his businesses as a big ol apology gesture.

Gonna take a massive break on commissions (maybe indefinitely) and focus on drawing shit that I really like for a while. Maybe practice on some things that I'm not so good at. Experiment. Who knows! After the wife and I move, I'll have a lot of time to do that!