maniraptorans

Keen-eyed readers will notice there wasn’t a mid-month blog post last month, because there wasn’t. I was busy as hell. I continue to be busy as hell. Will this change, ever? We may never know.

I spent September cramming to get work finished before I started university, and have since started university & am still finishing some stuff up! It’s been kind of crazy but also great.

Site Updates:

:P none.

Art Updates:

I mentioned my new badge press last blog, and I’ve since been working steadily away on creating badges that strike a good balance between marketable and enjoyable to me. I used a local print shop, which was chaotic and cheap but did have the downside of sometimes just absolutely destroying whatever turquoise colours in my prints? I know CMYK can play badly with certain teal shades, but it looked fine on my laptop. Now I’m in uni, I’ll have access to uni printers and be able to control the outcomes a little more.

I also used plastic-back and metal-back badges, since I somehow went through the starter set of 200 badges in a month. The metal-back ones are objectively better quality, but they have a flatter look and tend to dent if I press down too hard with the press. The holographic overlays I also got for my birthday held up super well and added some sparkles to them. I wanted to make stickers, originally, but just didn’t have the time with everyone else going on and I wanted to get the update out for my shop ASAP since I set myself the deadline of ‘the end of September’, and guess what, I made the deadline on the first of October!

You can buy everything in my online shop HERE. All orders I’ve received so far have been so appreciated and will be shipped as soon as possible! The support has been awesome. Also, I’m very proud of the product photography I did.

A photo of holographic badges against a yellow background. The badges have a design of a rainbow covered infinity sign shaped shooting star against a dark blue background, with text that says 'autistic joy' A photograph of four holographic badges against a blue background. There are four badges, each with a different variant of the same design, a cat surrounded by wings, crowns and rays of light.

Speaking of deadlines, MOONSAULT, the pro wrestling art fanzine finally has a release date! 1st of November, baby! 19 awesome pieces of art from awesome people, all in one handy digital PDF. We’re going to be doing promo posts later in the month, so keep up with our Tumblr & Twitter!

Making Moonsault has been stressful but also super rewarding. It’s mostly been a lot of wrangling people and getting things together on time, something I kind of enjoy. Mostly also spreadsheets. We’ve talked about running another one next year, and I am absolutely down, whether it’s another edition with the same theme, or a whole new theme (a fashion magazine idea has been thrown around!) I’m also now way more comfortable with possibly running zines in other fandoms, and hope to do that soon.

When I wasn’t working on badges or my zine, I’ve been participating in other people’s zines! Expect some cool teasers soon. I’ve also been filling out my new, fancy sketchbook. I like keeping a sketchbook, but I find I just tend to draw fun and lighthearted things in it a lot of the time, which is good, but I’m trying to strike a balance with learning and studying in this sketchbook. I’ve been doing perspective and anatomy studies in this, and trying out new materials. That also includes making that kind of routine studying fun, so I’ve mostly been doing that by drawing characters I like in cool poses or in environments. I brought some coloured mechanical pencils (Pilot Eno and Uni NanoDia brands) and have been trying those out—I really liked having a lot of colour and different mediums in my sketchbook after doing Artfight, so I want to carry that forward in a less intensive way.

A photo of a sketchbook with two sketches of a woman in red and blue mechanical pencil, and one is coloured with copic markers with a blue swirling background.
A photo of two pages in a sketchbook, one with cut out coloured paper taped into the page that contains badge sketches and roughly coloured bust drawings, and the other page has a landscape drawing of the Golden Lovers, two wrestlers, with a decorative frame around the edge, in blue pencil.
A photo of a sketchbook page, with a drawing of an alien figure in light pink pencil, and below it, a headshot of a man with heavy shading in blue ink, with a small border. A photo of a sketchbook page of sketches of human bodies in perspective in graphite and red mechanical pencil.

Now time for the big news: at the end of September, I started University! I’m officially a full-time illustration student again. The start was kind of crazy, but I thankfully didn’t find it actually too overwhelming—I think I’ve been desensitised by the start of Foundation. It’s also a slower course than Foundation, so less crazy and easier to adjust. Having access to all of the resources we have here is really stirring my mind, even though so many of the inductions are booked up :P

Our first brief is a group project, where we’re in small groups making double spreads for a magazine, including an essay and an image, about a topic related to illustration. I was nervous at first about group work, but I got put into a group where we’re all on similar wavelengths and good at communicating with each other. I know in groups I’m organised and like to coordinate things, but I can be a little overbearing sometimes and speak over other people, so that’s something I’m trying to take conscious note of, to sit back a little bit and just chill out in general.

Our topic is about the immersive qualities of Illustration and how it creates and allows us to access other worlds. I’m personally focusing on science fiction and illustration, their similarities, and how they allow us to explore the unreal and think about the world differently, and how this plays into encouraging social change. I’m trying to do something with cutting and layering paper (inspired by Sarah Capon, but with very different vibes) and inspired by the works of Moebius and Kilian Eng (featured below) to create science fiction landscapes, but I haven’t got to that stage yet, just been playing around with thumbnails and compositions, as well as reading long essays about science fiction and marxism. It’s going great!

Digital studies and notes of Moebius's work Digital art studies of Kilian Eng
A series of greyscale thumbnails of sci-fi landscapes, each including a small human figure. Four similar thumbnails of sci-fi landscapes involving a massive robot structure with an eye. The first two are greyscale experiments, the second two are practising colourways
An earlier thumbnail of a sci-fi landscape with a massive human-looking robot lying across it, first in grayscale, then two colour variations.

I also went to the London Anarchist Bookfair, which was a really joyful experience, seeing and chatting to people who are doing incredible things and working together to make a better world. I also read some wonderful zines & collected some awesome postcards and posters :D

What I Love

Reading!

I finished Babel by R. F. Kuang. It’s a book I’ve seen a lot of criticism as well as a lot of hype, and my feelings are sort of a smooth middle between those. It’s a good book, it’s well-written and matches the style it’s trying to emulate very well, and the characters are interesting. The magic system is a cool concept, and I hear people criticising it saying that despite having all this magic, history ends up exactly the same: I get the crit but it kind of didn’t bother me. The one criticism I think is baseless and annoying is people saying the book ‘hates white people’, I think it’s just a bit silly to say that about a book where the main focus is complicity in the crimes of the British Empire? It feels like a flat reading of it, and I found Letty, the only White main character, to have an interesting arc that made sense in the context of the rest of the story.
‘Enjoyable’ doesn’t feel like the right word for Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. It was a rough read, but an immersive and thought-provoking one. I knew this book was coming out at some point from a Jacob Geller video where he mentions getting an advanced reader copy (thank u for all of my taste in media jacob), and then I saw it had actually come out and rushed to take it out of the library. I don’t know if the sheer amount of different POVs, sometimes one-off POV chapters, works in its favour in terms of structure, but it definitely helps create a fleshed-out world and the characters are great. It’s a thoughtful and thorough book. I wish I’d had more time to think over and reread the ending (I tend to reread the endings of books at least twice to sort of, process it and say goodbye), but I did have to return the book to the library the next day. The ending is shocking and abrupt, but it feels like the only one that makes sense, and I felt like that was in keeping with the rest of the book. A lot of books about rebellion and protest and hope tend to end on this ambiguous note—Babel did too—and I see why it’s done, because something like ‘the revolution’ and actually making meaningful change feels very difficult and almost impossible to imagine right now. However, I’d like to see more books tackle that, because as much as I like critiques and explorations of society in the past and the present, I think being guided into the future is just as important.
The Seep by Chana Porter was a weird one, in good and bad ways. It felt slightly like a first draft or something that had significant parts chopped out. There was clearly a lot going on, so I imagine the author was aiming for ‘immersive in a confusing way,’ but with how I felt like character development and big emotional beats happened very quickly and elements seemed to disappear and appear, it was just a weird and slightly flattened experience. This is a shame, because I think it’s full of good ideas under the surface, and definitely got me thinking, I just wish it had more time and space to stretch out and bring me into that world more.
After how much I enjoyed Embassytown, I started Kraken by China Mieville, and although I’m only a bit in, it’s just so rich stylistically that I’m liking it a lot. Mieville changes his prose between books to create a really individual and immersive experience for each one, and also it’s about giant squids and niche cults which is very up my alley. It helps that it’s also set in the Natural History Museum, somewhere I’ve spent a lot of time.
I’m also, ostensibly for uni but also for fun, reading Ghost in the Shell by Shirow Matsume. I’m having a weird time with it. I’m not sure if the copy I have is badly translated, missing sections, it’s just hard to follow, or I’m missing something, because I’m finding it weirdly hard to follow? I’m not quite following how the elements intersect and why anyone is doing anything, really. Apart from that, I am enjoying it: the characters are great (especially Kusanagi, her dialogue is very fun) and I love the Fuchikoma robot-suit-things and their designs, and the visual style.

Watching!

I’ve been really into, uh, documentaries about competitive Smash Bros Melee recently? Documentaries covering competitive video games is always something I’ve liked, but it’s mostly been speedrunning before this (SummoningSalt’s videos are classic) but recently a bunch of documentaries about competitive Melee have come up on my youtube page, and they’re weirdly good. I’ve always kind of loved stuff about the evolution of strategies and metagaming, and also, I don’t know, there’s something really engaging about all these weird strategies and stories of success! The first one I watched was a more popular one, There will Never Ever be another Melee player like HungryBox, but I watched that a couple of months ago, and then aMSa: The Only Yoshi (who could do it) also got shown to me, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It has some great explanations and recreations for stuff people not might know if you’re not into Melee, which I am not. The Donkey Kong Renaissance is another one that’s a bit more technical but also great background listening.
Ro Ramdin makes video essays that are ostensibly about current events on social media but also very well written and composed and always bring in something philosophical that sticks with me. Her video on Dream, niche fandoms and allegations against creators is something that really stuck with me: all her work manages to be topical as well as detailed and fascinating.
Sometimes what you kind of need from youtube is silly drama videos. emma in the moment is a new channel doing exactly this for crafting communities on social media, and it’s very just, grab the popcorn and good background noise kind of video.
Oh god I don’t really watch much TV at all. The new Taskmaster is good because all of the contestants are completely insane. Bake Off is… good now? Again? The vibes feel way less mean and I like the bakers. Glow Up is a view into a world I have never had much affection for (makeup) and is sort of fascinating for it. I watch Strictly Come Dancing like I’m observing some kind of insect except the insect is ‘the British psyche.’
You thought you missed the Minecraft Youtube Minute? No you didn’t. I finished Last Life: verdict is… good but didn’t play to what I liked most about the series. Because people’s alliances kept imploding due to the rule change about people not being able to stay together on one remaining life, I felt like there was less of a narrative throughline and the ending segments felt more chaotic than impactful. I started Double Life. Verdict is: I know this is going to make me feel craaazy and I can’t wait. Partially because I have spoilers but it also already is and I’ve only just started. It’s just so drama-filled and delightful and also everyone is awful and hilarious. I love it.

Listening

Once Around the Block by Badly Drawn Boy is probably one of my favourite songs ever, but I’ve been listening to some more of their discography recently. I like You Were Right and Silent Sigh—their music has lots of interesting rhythms, and as someone who’s tone deaf I like that a lot.
Matt and Kim are a band similar to Badly Drawn Boy, however with every song I’ve listened to of theirs, there’s always part of the song I like and part of the song I don’t? I dislike the chorus in Daylight but the verse is really good.
Doctor Worm by They Might Be Giants certified banger. i’m not a real doctor but i AM a real worm!!

September will probably be uni work & continuing personal projects—I’ve been doing a lot of zine stuff, I’m not sure what I’m feeling like doing next! I have some risograph poster fanart ideas, designing my OCs… but honestly, I’ve been working a lot and I might just sit back and play more Caves of Qud and eat chocolate covered rice cakes. I’m going into winter mode like a sort of mid bear.

Ellis xoxo