Of course, before we start lemme just say, HOLY SHIT IT'S BEEN THREE YEARS HOW??? I mean, my god, time looks so much shorter in retrospect doesn't it? Feels like it's been two weeks but, I digress.

In honor of this celebration, I decided to do something beyond making a simple post declaring my love for y'all (which stays by the way, you guys are fantastic) I decided to show off some stuff I've worked and have been working on, both new and old. Very old!

For starters, I dug up a buncha of old digital drawings I made back when I was about 10-13 (before my Scratch days!) and still kinda.. figuring things out? While duh, it's kinda cringy to look back at these old drawings, it's also so charming and fun to see what were the grassroots of my style that you can still see today! Now sadly, I don't have EVERYTHING since that old thing was formatted in 2023 (shame) and was barely working even when I still frequently used it, but you guys get a nice little highlight reel of the stuff that was in there! Though, quick aside, the image quality will leave a lot to be desired as these were taken hastily on my phone through a tablet screen. Alright? Alright, here's the drawings:

(Believe it or, probably still believe it, this was my FIRST ever digital drawing made when I was about 10 or maybe even younger!)

(Now THIS drawing was made when I was 11-12 I wanna say, I think it's a STAGGERING improvement isn't it?)

(Oh dearie me, is that Erica's first ever design? Yup! It is, complete with... oh damn, and I worried the modern design was shameless. Remember only RECENTLY I actually started to sketch out my drawings before... going ham. Also, peep the abandoned character traits, possibly inspired by Knuckle Nadine? I was a big fan of Punch-Out!!, Boxing Fever, and any other boxing games at the time so, Erica's passion of boxing was a no-brainer at the time I guess.)

(My first ever peep of fanart! I'm actually pretty proud of this drawing, especially for it being done by a 12-13 year old on his little finger. The rocker launcher looks nice and the proportions are... decent!)

(Hey look it's the HL1 security guard! This one actually looks pretty good and was a solid translation of a blocky model.)

(This is definetly my favorite of them all, it geniunely just looks good with the shading and background and all that! Good work 13-year-old me! Of course, this look would get simplified and vectorized in my first ever game Inanimate Insanity Boxing, which huh, also got a sequel and a cancelled remake. I remember making a newer version with a style heavily 'inspired' by UltimateAnimations but that's sadly been lost to time as far as I know...)

Okay! Well, now that that's over with, guess I should give you guys an update on how I (and my projects) are doing. I'm still kind of suffering from my early days of starting a dozen projects and working on them at the same time, thankfully now I'm trying to space things out more and experiment with smaller things:

(For example here's a small drawing of Denji from CSM that @Revkie asked me to make the beginning of this month)

(Me testing out filters and the like in some sort of proto album cover)

(The high-quality version of the new Nick_The_Trick pfp that I made just for this)

(Designs for the Jockstrap and Warrior respectively, but now, True Madness is long gone. Sorry guys. More original ideas will replace it though for sure!)

(Draft of a voicemail)

But anyways, that's all the stuff I'll be sharing for y'all. I'll post more art while I try to get back motivation for coding while I get distracted by making music and maybe even making my first YouTube video over on my channel, so, keep those eyes peeled! Or at least, open them for the semi-weekly post... please.

In conclusion, love you guys to death, shoutout to my friends y'all are the reasons I haven't gone crazy in these challenging seconds. And here's to another year (and hopefully more) of trying to fulfill my (and our) creative desires!

- Nicola 'Ludicrous Leafy'