Hey folks, this is a public service announcement to inform you that all the cock jokes that you may have encountered on Newgrounds might have been helping you do character design. See appendix A.

Anyway folks, I should hopefully be back to some modicum of "normalcy" in the second week of June. Hopefully.

A few days ago, I posted this entry for the Epic Battle Fantasy 13th anniversary contest on NG:

Seeing as all the progress images will clog up the already long description, and I've not got the energy (physical or mental) for anything else right now as I've received a slew of bad news of late, let me at least cleanse someone's timeline with some WIP screenshots.

There are many missing steps between the images, but to put a long story short: I did the whole artwork as an attempt at a therapeutic exercise. (I'm still feeling abysmal, but at least there's some artwork y'all enjoy.)

I drew individual enemies and coloured them on Sketchbook, and I also did the same with the huge red and white birthday candles. Then, I drew some rays and crumbling stones — also on Sketchbook — before going to PowerPoint and making a XIII stencil by just putting outline only WordArt into an outline only frame. Went back to Sketchbook, filled in the colour of that stencil, then back to PowerPoint and assembled together the basics of what would become the stained glass. Once that was done, I used the Reflection tool on PowerPoint, and cropped accordingly.

In a separate Sketchbook file I sketched, drew, and put flat colour for the various EBF characters and staff. Posture and gestures were very important to me; I wanted there to be some form of movement, life.

I combined that file with the stencil stained glass, and then began adding some light and shadow to the characters. I filled in the shadows first, then proceeded to do the glowing edges. The stained glass light felt brilliant and glorious to me; I wanted to convey that — I brightened the stained glass quite a bit, by adding layers of orange and yellow in front of and behind it, and then adding glow edges to our characters and staff. I also drew two layers of shadows beneath the characters, one completely opaque, and the other fairly translucent.

I don't remember where in the process I did this, but I drew the "lead" in between the glass fragments with the default black pencil tool.

I know that it can be, or it often appears, difficult to do something of the sort if one is only just getting into art. My intention behind this post is to demystify the process as best as I can. Getting an understanding of what went into a piece of work could inform our own thought process, and art (or music, etc.) may not feel like this Big and Scary Thing anymore.

I don't want it to be a big and scary thing. I want it to be accessible, and I recognise that there are many aspects to my two crafts that are simply not accessible to most.

At least let me start here. Hopefully there may be some things in this post that you might like to implement in your drawings, if you haven't thought about them before. I sincerely hope to see more of you being FPed who haven't had that chance for a long time; regardless, I am proud of you for your perseverance.

I'm not able to PM just now due to trauma, but when I'm better, if y'all wanna talk art, especially the finer points of how to draw things that I haven't mentioned in this post, feel free to drop me a line. I'll post again when I'm ready to talk again.

1. Please DON'T recommend art books to those of us who struggle to learn by art books because of megalophobia, the fear of facing big things (even if they are dissected into bite-sized pieces). Bite-sized is bite-sized.

2. When things like this get FPed for their anatomy and character, please DON'T try to mansplain anatomy and character by saying "you should look at anatomical references."

BECAUSE THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I HAVE BEEN DOING.

3. Deplatform the Dutch masters if you think tracing is bad. Go and protest at the art museums, trash their work, show it for what it really is: nothing more than a tracing over camera obscura. But I don't see either of you doing anything comparable, in small ways and in great. I see your hypocrisy.

4. Please DON'T try to say that this is a learning place that doesn't act like art college, when you act like art college. I've followed much of your advice and we've driven people away — I've driven people away — from the joy of drawing by the absolute rigidity of how one "should" learn. "You must learn this way," "You must learn that way."

I get that you need to learn the rules in order to break them. I know, as a musician and an intermediate artist, that this is true — and we get a deep sense of empowerment from being able to break the rules of theory in this position of knowledge. That's good. I'm not denying that.

What I am disputing is that everyone has to learn by a fixed way. There are many roads, etc.

5. Only some of our resources are available for free. Not all of us can pirate things due to strict laws, and not all of us can afford them. Please check your privilege.

I couldn't access the internet very well in the country of my birth, and some websites were blocked, AND my school focused on STEM subjects, as did my parents. Learning art was so low on the priority list and I was in an abusive household, in an abusive country. As a child, I got so desperate to learn, I wound up tracing Kingdom Hearts artwork. I don't trace for any of my stuff for NG or elsewhere; I draw from memory or by reference these days, but there was once a time where this was impossible.

I wouldn't recommend tracing, but God help me if I throw the bell, book, and candle at someone in my situation who needed to do this to learn. That would be absolutely privileged and hypocritical of me to do. Not everyone who wants to draw can use the same means. Me getting a hold of Andrew Loomis's books back in the day was exceedingly difficult and I needed to find uploads of it somewhere, being very strictly nonprofit and all back then (asylum seeker and all).

REVEAL TIME for a soundtrack I wrote in December, which will be out in January! Enjoy, and look forward to it!

First off, apologies for my newspost silence. Most of my writings are on my blog, but I really should update here now and then.

I am an asylum seeker no longer!

Good grief, how long has this fight taken me... eight years? Eight years of being forbidden from taking employment on pain of deportation, just for the crime of being born in an oppressive foreign country? And in these eight years, I was mostly careful with where and with whom I shared this information.

So, in the meantime, there were absolute saints like @EvilRaccoon, @ChazDude, @etherealwinds, @BBank, and @LD-W, among many others, who stood up for people like myself, and I am eternally grateful for every single last bit of support and kindness. So many people have pulled me back from the brink of despair.

Those around me knew this day would come; as for myself, I harboured many doubts. Being used to being held back while seeing other people my age have the right to work and prosper gives a different sort of pain and hopelessness, with people outside looking in also feeling helpless, because they didn't know how to help my situation, and didn't have control over it -- I didn't, they didn't. The lingering hopelessness was dispelled when I was granted leave to remain in mid-November.

Consequently, my life can finally start to move forward:

Marriage

Seven and a half years ago, I mentioned that I became engaged. Now that I am finally free, we can finally get married, and we are making our preparations towards that. We are hoping to marry in May of 2022.

I remember back then, we were naively expecting to marry in 2016, believing that the Home Office would keep to its projected decision times. Soon after, those timeframes were abandoned.

Being free also opens up another possibility for me:

Work and commissions!

Yes, that's right -- I am taking music commissions, in the form of composition, vocal, or keyboard or drum session work! Send me a private message or e-mail me at mail@troisnyx.co.uk for inquiries!

As it stands right now, I have already gained one music commission; may it be the first of many. I am also looking at setting myself up as a professional organist for weddings, baptisms, funerals etc. I'm also taking gigs as a drummer, as a pianist, and as a singer.

I mean, it's been three weeks, but transitioning from not being able to work, to setting myself up as self-employed, is an all-consuming task.

Final remarks

Honestly, given the time of year at which I am posting this, I am treating this as my end-of-year post. The changes I've mentioned above far overshadow anything that I've ever done, especially within this year.

This will be my first Christmas truly free to speak my mind without fear of being plucked away, truly free to write the songs I love, truly free to earn my keep, to show exactly how productive I can be to society without being treated as an "other" to be discriminated against.

I don't know what the new year will bring, but one thing's for sure: regardless of how afraid I feel, how frustrated, how lost, I fully intend to grasp my future with both hands.

Here's to keeping things real, musically and otherwise.

I've placed every single last credit and special thanks into the description of the track above, which I did together with friends to celebrate ten years on this site.

But in case I forgot:

Cheers @TomFulp, you're an absolute star.

Also, my friends and I are more than musically capable. Time you folks started listening to the Audio Portal more. We musicians on here are capable of so much, as some of us demonstrated above. And we will continue fighting to be heard.

I'm done being nice.

Whoever thinks that people like myself didn't work hard for our craft can fuck right off to the Sun.

I'mma say it louder for the people at the back: whoever thinks that people like myself didn't work hard for our craft can fuck right off to the Sun.

My anniversary approaches in a month and a bit. There will be hell to pay on that day — not just for people who disparaged me, but for people who disparaged my friends and most of the Audio Portal. None of us ever needed their permission to be seen and heard, and none of us ever will.

I love NG. You'd think, that as an audio mod having to deal with widespread audio theft and other kinds of fuckery, I'd be sick and want to leave. But my friends make Newgrounds. People make Newgrounds. Their songs, their camaraderie, and their candour, make it worthwhile. Whether the action happens directly on the site, or on related servers, I am often surrounded by friends from here.

And of course, anyone who bothers to listen in will know that we have gone from strength to strength as far as our music is concerned.

If defending that, and insisting on more love for the Audio Portal as a whole, makes me a piece of shit, well, have at me then. Actually have the courage to come and face me, and my struggling musician friends.

Many of us have argued that the Audio Portal, by nature of the craft itself, gets the least love. You have to invest time and energy into something that you can't see, and so there's a greater risk involved. In many cases the reviews on pieces of music come precisely from other musicians — because we all know what that shit feels like.

I am deeply aware of many of their struggles, being privy to a venting channel on my server. I don't want to hear the excuse that "X musician struggled, but made it, so all the other struggling ones don't matter."

I have zero respect for anyone who talks bullshit about us, our struggles, the Audio Portal, and our craft. That includes some big names on here, one of whom I have called out on Twitter. If you think you can fight someone who has persevered with her music for TEN YEARS despite not having the right to work due to being an asylum seeker, then by all means, come fight me. I'm waiting.

If you think you can fight people who are persevering with their music despite struggling to afford medicine or food, come at us. We're waiting. Our music is waiting.

But you won't, because you're a bunch of fucking losers.

Not long after the start of quarantine, I released a song called hallowed silence. I am pleased to finally share with you its video.

Seeing as hallowed silence was a "quarantune," I decided to give the video the same treatment, that loose production feel typical of a quarantine video. I hope you all enjoy.

"Who do I believe? (The judges), or Aivi and Surasshu?"

That is all, and I think that should sum up what I felt about how apparently industry ready any of my pieces are.

I'm looking at a particular few of you, you damn fucking well know who you are.

Say what you will about them two; their music is critically acclaimed, and they have been active in encouraging even newer, smaller musicians through the Maj7 digital fusion server. That's more than can be said for what I endured last year.

Whose word do I take — people who have tired in one subsection of the industry trying to spill some tea, or people who are slogging in another subsection of the industry whose mission it is to tell us that music is meant to be a whole lot more?

Aside from the fact that I finished a marathon composition run lasting 40 days, one for each day of Lent, I'm not exactly sure what to write. My mind hasn't been good.

I guess I can start off with this, I suppose: the last couple full drawings (as opposed to sketches) that I've posted on here have been FPed one after the other, and it feels very meep. This was the stuff of my dreams when I joined NG but didn't know how to draw to save my life.

And if anything, maybe I've finally begun to blossom on here, who knows?

It leaves me to thank the people who have deemed my music and artwork worthy of being broadcast to thousands on the front page; I am grateful for, and pleasantly surprised by, every instance of it.

I wish I had some nice words of advice to give, or generally meepy things to say besides what I've already said, but lately, and today especially, I have been drawing blanks. My Easter so far has been... eh, and we're tentatively opening some public places round here in the UK today (and I am waiting for crowds to thin before even attempting to go out).

To put it bluntly, I've long felt like I've been beaten by the proverbial waves. That's a feeling that isn't going to go anytime soon.