September Updates

Well... September was sure eventful here in the States, wasn't it? Maybe September just isn't our month. Anyways, hello, welcome back. I hope you're well. I wasn't doing very well earlier in the month, mentally anyways, but everything clamed down and while I haven't had as productive of a month as I felt I did for August, I've certainly been busy. I finally have a job! Hooray! I will not say where. Not because I've signed an NDA or whatever, just because it's boring and nobody cares. I'm finally going to have a semi-steady income, and not a bad one at that, so I'm very happy. Unfortunately due to family emergencies and gatherings, I've been stunted in the art department. So most of what I have to share are WIPs and a little bit of lore on those WIPs. So, without further ado, here is what I've accomplished for September of 2025:

• One YouTube video

• A mostly done Character Design sheet

• A mostly(?) done 3D model

• Half of a video script written

A lot of stuff done considering how busy I've been during the month. I'm thinking instead of piling on projects for the month, I should focus on one or two monthly projects and consider the rest as second place for importance. Considering I'm kind of a Youtuber now, I should focus on the three videos each month, and one main art project.

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Plans for October

Man, would I love to finally participate in Inktober, but unfortunately I'll be too busy and unprepared for it to participate. Maybe next year. As stated above I'm planning to prioritize three YouTube videos and one art project, while the others remain as lower priority. So, here's a vague list of what I have planned.

• Finishing my current character sheet

• Starting another character sheet

• Starting character headshots

• Upload 3 YouTube videos (Oct. 2, 12, and 22)

• Maybe finish the 3D model

Maybe it's a bit ambitious considering I now have a job that will take up a lot of my time, but I don't want to not keep myself busy because that's how we get depression. I just don't want to feel like I'm doing nothing for my future art career by cutting back the creative workload. I have ADHD and I think my biggest problem is time management and staying focused. I am, in fact, unmedicated. Hopefully that will change soon and I can get some kind of medication, but until then, I need to stay on top of my mindset. To combat my brain's unpredictability, I write literally everything down. Like, my entire day. If I didn't do this then I would have never graduated college, let alone with two degrees. Anyways...

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September's Projects

If you're new to my monthly blog, this is the part where I go into detail about the projects I did during the month.

The Video

This is the second video I uploaded and it was not supposed to be the only video uploaded in September, but unfortunately it was. The original plan was to go depth about Vinland Saga entirely, talking about the plot, my favorite and least favorite characters, my favorite scenes, and even the story in the manga which the anime hasn't gotten to yet. Unfortunately, that kind of video would have been way too long, so I cut it all up, and in this video I focus on my favorite characters of the anime only. Hannah did a great job on this thumbnail, so give her website a visit. It's linked below this segment. Also linked below this segment is the video itself. Because it's like, 30 minutes shorter than my first video (which now has over 1,000 views) it didn't take nearly as long to edit, and neither will the second video to be honest since it's even shorter.

While making this video I realized how much I truly have to talk about with this series, and it's only the characters so far. I could talk about them for days. If you're unfamiliar with Vinland Saga, it's a manga from 2005-2025 by Makoto Yukimura and it follows the story of Icelandic explorer Thorfinn Karlsefni before and during his quest to create the first European colony in North America, which he named, Vinland. There are many historical names such as Leif Erikson, Canute the Great, Thorkell the Tall and of course Thorfinn himself, and it takes place mostly in northern Europe. It's a seinen manga which means its demographic is mostly adult men (although a lot of women like it too) and is often compared to fellow seinen series Berserk and shonen series Attack on Titan. It's really interesting and fairly historically accurate (at least more accurate than Vikings: Valhalla) and takes a lot of interesting and not too far fetched creative liberties. It's a great show if you're a history nerd like my family is. I recommend it a lot.

Hannah's Website

YouTube Video

Character Sheet WIP

In my defense, it's very nearly done. I need to finish coloring it, viewing it from my laptop makes me think I should lighten the dark colors a little bit, draw him in his school uniform, color that, and then I should be done. I say that, but it's actually a little more complicated than that.

You see, it takes me longer than most would expect to create one of these character sheets, because while my canvas may only capture the amount of time I spend on the canvas itself, it doesn't account for the research I put into the fashion of the characters. Now, some outfits are put together faster than others from a reference perspective, take one of my other characters Chin-Sun, for example. For her I already had the basic idea for her outfit, a loose-fitting oversized sweater with a simple design, a simple pleated skirt, socks, and simple chunky sneakers. I wanted to give her more casual clothing than another character, Annie, because the two are friends and I wanted their styles to represent their personalities and how much they contrast, but also the subtle similarities you can find in them. I find that a person's fashion sense says a lot about their personality because, well, it is their personality that they wear for everyone to see.

So, with this character, whose name is Rudy by the way, I wanted to tell a story with him. His appearance is rather androgynous, and because of my Kpop obsession, the one idol I knew wouldn't let me down when it came to androgynous fashion, was Lee Felix of Stray Kids. Felix is well-known for his very feminine appearance, while also having a very deep voice that contrasts with the higher range of other idols. He's very open about how feminine he looks, and incorporates that into his fashion, sometimes even wearing skirts along with baggy clothing. So the key here, is androgyny. I knew I wanted a fairly masculine look while also making Rudy appear as if he may also be mistaken for a female. Judging by my own mother's reaction, I'm pretty confident I did it right. Maybe I'll make a video or a blog post entirely dedicated to my characters and their fashion, because I have a lot to share but here isn't exactly the right place to do it.

More about my process; It took me quite a while to understand where I wanted to go with Rudy's character design. So while the canvas I drew everything on may say I spent 10 hours on it, the real time is actually more like... 75+ hours. Unfortunately, I'm a perfectionist, so if I don't like what I create, I'm not satisfied until I'm happy again. This meant sketching, then erasing, then sketching, over and over again until I got somewhere I was happy with. I knew the basic design of how I wanted Rudy to look, since I've had most of these characters thought up for a while. The key was figuring out his clothing and the style I wanted for him. I searched Pinterest for hours with very specific searches until I finally remembered Felix and went with him as inspiration. I also knew I wanted Rudy to have more detailed shoes than the ones that are normally worn by men. Something, to give a nod to his background as the son of a wealthy man, so I used Sylus from Love and Deepspace as an example. Sylus has very detailed and ornate shoes, so I pulled up a couple of his outfits on Pinterest, and that lead me to some real life, less Sylus-y examples.

So I sketched out what I wanted for Rudy's favorite outfit. I was extremely satisfied, until I remembered that I wanted him decked out in lot of jewelry. I settled on an ornate belt buckle. Not much luck there. Nothing I found came even close to what I wanted. So I searched up "Dawson", which is Rudy's surname, on google and found out there was a Dawson family crest. I loaded it into my canvas, sketched over it, added a little bling, and voila! A fancy belt buckle unique to Rudy Dawson! Maybe it's cringey, I haven't decided yet, but that's what it's going to be for now. I'm sure I'll get better at it as I go.

3D Model WIP

Front View

Side View

3/4 View

I was making very good progress on my 3D model, so I decided to take a break to focus on Rudy. I'm glad I did, because otherwise he never wouldn't been worked on this month. When it comes to 3D modeling inspiration, I turn to Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir, but only the earlier seasons. I always liked what the character models looked like. I loved how detailed they were and how cartoonish they looked. But, they also looked more realistic than other cartoons since the creator, Thomas Astruc, was a big fan of anime and wanted to incorporate that into the show. This gave Miraculous a very unique look that I've admired since I was 13.

I start with the face. I create a sphere and move it and reshape it until I have the vague shape of a head, then I straighten out the front of the "head" to create a palette for the face. I add large holes for the eyes. The size depends on if the model is supposed to be an adult or a child. Then I model the face around the holes. After I'm satisfied with that, I move to making eyelids, then a nose, then the mouth. The eyelids are just more spheres cut to the shape I want the eyes to be. The nose and the mouth are combinations of building up clay, and using the chisel and inflate tools until I get the shapes I want. Then I move onto the neck, which takes the least amount of time since it's basically just adding another sphere and pushing and pulling the clay to form the neck. Then the body, which doesn't take long on child models considering they'll most likely never be viewed without clothing covering most of their bodies. The comes the legs, which are a bit more difficult but simple enough that they take just a little longer than the body. Then the feet, then the arms which take a surprising amount of time to reshape. Finally, I do the hands. They're my worst nightmare.

Let me tell you. As hard as it is for you to draw or model hands, imagine modeling hands when yours are deformed. And imagine not realizing the extent of your deformity until you almost get a much lower grade on one of your college art assignments than you should get. My hands are deformed, but not to a noticeable degree unless you look closely. So I tend to underestimate the size and position of the thumbs, and the size of the pinky fingers. My feet are much more noticeably deformed, so I usually don't even try to draw or model feet unless it's absolutely necessary. I've definitely gotten better at it since I started college, but I'll be damned if it wasn't hard to unlearn and relearn how to draw hands. For that and for his patience, I thank the sculpting professor at my alma mater. Bless you Dr. Tran, you really helped a girl out.

Anyways, I mesh everything together and refine the details of each part of the model. I don't know why I decided to color it. I just wanted to see if it made the thing look less creepy. It does not. Eventually when I get the money to upgrade the app, I'm going to finish it fully then import it into Maya to start rigging and test animating it. For that, I'll probably add more categories to my portfolio.

Next Video

My next video is pretty much done. It's shorter than the other two since it's talking about my least favorite characters in Vinland Saga, but it's only focusing on the characters we see in the anime, not the manga. So, it's a lot shorter than it would be if I decided to add manga characters as well. It's scheduled to be posted the 2nd of October. The video after... I have an idea, but I'm not exactly sure what I want it to be. It could be me comparing stories in the Dollenganger series by V.C. Andrews and Caleb and the Main Character in Love and Deepspace... Don't ask, just trust me. Or, it could be me talking about the Sopranos which I recently just finished binge watching, much to my mother's delight. Stay tuned for both of those subject though, because the videos will be posted on the 2nd, 12th, and 22nd of October. I love spooky month. October makes me so legitimately happy. See you next month and Happy Halloween!