Happy New Year!

Another trip around the Sun.

This year is gonna be a good year. I'm going to post more of my work here for patrons and for free members first as opposed to social media first. Some resolutions for myself as an artist and a person:

•Follow through on monthly poll drawings

•Just draw more! Tap into that drawing fervor I had as a teen.

•Get more organized with my time and money

•Paint and better understand light

•Run more and compete in a half marathon

•Communicate and reach out to my friends more

•Finish Vance Subprime! I know i said this last year but, I think this is the year it finally comes out.

To get the sad bit out first...

I don't like to get too personal and I've debated mentioning this at all but, I woke up under the weather this morning before my 5:30am opening shift and I began to get upset. I've became bitter about my workplace and felt like there wasn't an end in sight. I love art so much, it's what I truly want to do. I can't help but feel inadequate, or like I wasted time or screwed up.

This year will be different. I'm not expecting to be able to sustain myself on my work right off the bat but I do realize I have set things in place already to help me get there. Thank you to all my lovely patrons, and anyone who has ever supported through kind words or a commission or from my store, for w/o you, this would not be possible! It has really motivated me to keep working hard and in a way has made me realize, I already have freedom and I am doing what I want. It's now a matter of getting myself to the capacity to make it full time.

An inspiring short about Surya Bonaly, a competive figure skater successfully performing an illegal move, a back flip. Skating jumps typically land on one foot and was banned due to it being considered dangerous and impossible. After falling during her routine, Surya knew she lost the gold medal and decided to do something she knew only she could do.

For this year I want to focus on making more work with absolutely no fear, fail faster, and always trust the process.

Just some standards setting for myself going forward this year continuing down my path of independent artist with the freedom to make what I want. I am also going to keep the HL fan art to a minimum to just the comic, animatics, and mods. I have plans for a painting or two for prints and want to get all that out of my system but I want to branch out and do other fan art and explore my original ideas and world building projects, snpr//gal. And if HLX or HL3 comes out this year, well, you'll know what I'll be doing.

Speaking of animatics, my first one I started a few months back, (Exchange), is mostly there with the drawings, there's just one sequence left that I have to rough out and then to clean/ink. I have so many ideas for these short music video animatics. It's something I've always wanted to do but felt discouraged but my animation skills as I was never a great animator even in school but animatics help me scratch that itch.

+18 spicy news:

I realeased nsfw Half-Life zine this past month, Smut-Life. It's a collection of my spicy hl art from the past as well as a few new never before seen drawings. It's available in my Patreon store as well as itch.io

Looking forward to continue bringing the exclusive spice to my patreon!

Thanks for reading and see you next month

-Francesca