Fanart February Postmortem

EDIT: It looks like some of you didn't know what I was doing. For the month of February I was drawing Fanart (hence "Fanart February"). This was something I decided to do on my own. It was first mentioned here

Well, I'm done with Fanart February. That was a pretty hectic period, where I felt like every moment of my spare time had to be spent making fanart (which I will now shorten to "F'art" for convenience), but all in all it was an enjoyable activity. Unfortunately I was unable to make tributes to as many things as I would have liked to, but I suppose there's always the opportunity to do it next February. Or whenever, which is probably closer than a year from now.

So what were the reasons behind Fanart February? Well, as I might have stated somewhere before (I say a lot of words and I don't know where they are. Sorry), I've been feeling a little burned out from designing original characters - I can only go so far with so much material before the creations start becoming cliche and uninspired. A month of F'arting has been a bit refreshing for me and allowed me to experience a wider variety of...things...to draw. Like drawing Ace Attornies taught me how to draw the collar on a suit, and drawing Fuko Star taught me subtle new ways of drawing hair. It's these small things that are valuable to me as an artist that I'm grateful for.

A lot of my childhood drawings were actually F'arts. I started off copying cartoons and games, and that formed the basis for my technique today (though I've built a lot of other things on top of it so it's hardly visible). Pretty much every component of my technique is something I mimicked from another artist, which then mutated into something of my own flavor over the years as I played with it. It's for this reason that I'd encourage artist newbs and veterans alike to find something they like and copy it (But don't plagiarize! That is illegal and not cool).

But back to Fanart February. It was short but fun, and probably the most active I've been in like 2 years. I don't think I can keep up this kind of pace, though, since it meant I couldn't do a lot of other things I liked to do, like making games and never finishing them. I love doing that. It's fun.

Another thing I was trying to do with Fanart February was to compare how well my F'arts and Original creations fare relative to each other. Number-wise it was pretty much the same, though I feel the comments I've received on original works were more personal, and I know a number of you felt left out of the inside jokes. Haha. "Felt" and "left" are anagrams.

Conclusion? I think I will continue to primarily generate my own content, though still occasionally submitting a F'art as a means to treat a portion of you and to introduce everyone else to neat things I've found. Also I like making fun of things.

Alright, gonna stop here. Too long already.

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