Ryu-Kage: A Return from the Shadows

 

"How's it going, folks?  This is Ryu-Kage!"

Wow, it has been a long time since I posted anything here.  What happened?  Well, how can I put this?

I "fell asleep" for a year. Not literally, of course, but that is basically how it felt.
 
Without going into too much detail, at some point since I last posted on the blog, I became rather depressed overall about my life as it is and where it would go.  However, I did have occasional glimmers of hope by briefly reconnecting with a few old friends from college, which started to change one of the reasons I was feeling so bummed.  I would like to reconnect with them some more, and since I made many of my friends through my favorite video game series - Pokemon, this year (the 20th anniversary of Pokemon) would be an excellent opportunity to reconnect.

I did still draw during the past year, but I was not sure if many of the pictures I made were good enough to show (oh hi, confidence problems), and even if I did make something worthwhile, I just could not bring myself to upload it here for some reason. Thus, many of my pictures have basically been in limbo.

Well, I cannot say I am completely past the negativity, but I am sick of moping so much, and I want to shine through the darkness again.  After the jump, I have a few things I would like to do in the near future.







- I will return to posting my pictures here. I doubt I will achieve the old "once a week" routine I had back in 2013, since I was running on stockpiled stuff from my college days. However, I do have pictures I would like to show. Not all may be finished, exactly, but many should give you an idea of what I was doing in 2015 (and possibly a little before then).  This is probably the least I can do to build my confidence (and portfolio).

- Make more artwork. This should go without saying due to the previous bullet.  Specifically, I would like to reinvent my logo and possibly start branding myself.  I also have an idea to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Pokemon and am working on part of it now.

- Learn more applications. Specifically, work more in either Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape (both vector applications), and access to Adobe Premiere might be cool, too.

- Stream on Twitch!  This is probably the saddest part about not updating the blog in so long.  I never told my readers I have a Twitch channel now!  twitch.tv/ryukagechroma!  Since April, I have been streaming Pokemon Yellow casually.  I even have some of the highlights on display on the channel (such as glitches I showed or certain segments which stood out like my rant about the Pokemon Moltres). I am almost done with that game now (still have not visited the Unknown Dungeon), but I do have other games I want to play; my next big thing will probably be Super Mario RPG, but I want to finish some graphics for that game before I show it. I may also start doing some Pokemon challenge runs: Pokemon Red Solo-Clefable, Pokemon Blue Solo-Charizard, and I still have a Nuzlocke file I have not finished on Emerald. Maybe I'll even try doing Crystal in the future.

- Reconnection! I would love to reach out to some of my old college friends and hang out with them, and maybe some high-school people. Even if we cannot hang out in person, I would love to host streams where I can talk with them through Skype, or even play a game with them like the Versus channel on YouTube. Racing each other through a Pokemon game would be ideal.

- Get a new job! I would love to flex my creative or intellectual muscles professionally. Even if I just got some gigs doing grunt work for small groups (making textures for some devs, for example), that would be a huge step forward. If all else fails, maybe I can also sell some of my artwork as posters.


Again, I most likely will not return to posting every week, but I would like to aim for maybe twice a month, maybe three times if I can motivate myself that much.  There is so much I would like to do with my life and little time to do it.  With that in mind, the next drawing I will discuss is a recent picture, and I will talk about that one in my next post.

...which will be tomorrow!

Look out, Internet.  This dragon will soon rise from the shadows!

 My current insignia.  I plan to redraw this as a vector graphic in the near future.