Hello again. By the time this blog releases, Artfight would have already ended. I decided to summarize my experience with this year's Artfight in this blog!

The good and the bad

As always, this event ended up consuming my life for not only the whole month of July, but also for a little bit of late June because I was working on refs.

It's crazy, really. Every year I tell myself "I'm going to take things easy this time", but I never do. Since 2021, when I first joined Artfight, every July I get into this daily routine of wake up, eat, watch Youtube for an hour, boot up CSP, and draw for Artfight until evening.

At one point I was reminded that instead of drawing every day, I could have been doing something else. Like playing a new game, or learning a new skill. I was able to spend some time in July working on other things, but I didn't dedicate myself to them fully, you know? So in that moment, I felt sick and miserable. Was I really spending a whole month of my summer vacation on this? How ironic that participating in a cool event made me feel like I was missing out!

Artfight always fucks at least a little bit with my summer plans. It sucks up so much of my time, but I can't do anything about that! I just get into the flow of drawing daily because I'm a person who really likes routine, the feeling of knowing exactly what I'm going to do today. This is not the healthiest habit, in fact I'd call this a BAD habit. I end up burned out because of how much I draw, but I also feel guilty for taking breaks.

And this is exactly what happened this year. I drew every day for 29 days straight, working way harder than in the previous years. I was feeling pretty great at first, enthusiastic even, and made a lot of legitimately great art with experimentation here and there. But towards the end, when all of my friends had been attacked and only revenges for strangers remained, I literally ran out of ideas for drawings!

You see, I don't like to undercook the art I make for other people. I want to give the characters I draw justice, to draw them in an interesting pose or situation. So I wanted to draw, but I just didn't know what to draw. And I hated that! If you felt like my art started to look more boring in the last stretch of the event, this is why. And if you didn't notice, great! It means that, akin to a magician, I am able to hide the inner workings of my craft.

After 29 days of drawing I finally took a break to focus on other stuff. I planned to rest for only a day or two, but I ended up losing my Artfight flow completely and not wanting to go back to drawing again. So in the end I only did one piece after this break.

A questions plagued my head: was it worth it? Was spending an entire month on just drawing for other people worth it? But the one asking is the workaholic part of me. The chill part of me, if it's still there, has to step in and proclaim that of course it was! But more importantly, I should learn to stop judging my experiences from the perspective of "worth". Every experience should already be valuable because it's an experience.

Despite everything, I still like participating in Artfight. I like drawing other people's characters, experimenting with my style, and making myself and others happy.

My total drawings count for this year is... 35! Not bad at all. Somehow I've managed to draw more every year, but I hope I won't strain myself to draw even more next time, because this was HELL. I need to write myself some kind of a note to re-read this blog before the start of Artfight 2025.

Art highlights

Among the 35 drawings I made, these are my favorites:

A silly piece of mine and my friends' Terraria OCs. I am very happy with the way I stylized my friends' characters here... They look like characters from a real cartoon!

I was so possessed by my love for FSS that I went all out on this attack. I actually really like the drawing in the top left, it was the original idea until I decided to make this a collage.

To anyone who attacked me this year...

Thank you all so much! I was actually surprised at the amount of art I got - nearly double the previous year. I didn't expect to be attacked so much, but all of your art was amazing, and I made sure to comment on the things I liked the most. It's heartwarming to realize that, among hundreds of thousands of characters, so many artists decided to draw mine. I hope that they had fun drawing them.

You know what I really like? Character interactions. I live for that shit! Drawing multiple characters on one canvas can be tough, especially during a timed event where you try to draw as much as possible, so it's nice to know that some people went out of their way to do that.

This year I've received a lot of super cool art with my characters together, and I'd like to highlight my ultimate faves. Click to see the full thing.

by mangolord	by SadColor	by Bughead
by bugstabü	by bugstabü

So many people decided to feed into my Scare x Rage hyperfixation... I shall feast upon the spoils of this battle.

And with this, I'm signing off. Until next blog!