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Patreon Dreams and Directions
🕑 Added 2023-04-26 14:54:36 +0000 UTCTLDR note: If you’re just here for the art, you can safely skip this blog post, but if you’re curious about where I’ve been the past several years and my goals for the future, read on…
The Past - A Reckoning with Fate
Welcome art appreciator. It's Ecchi. My full name is Ecchistar, but since we're friends you can call me Ecchi.
Self portrait of the artist - 90% accurate.
"Ecchi," you ask, "Why you almost no post for three years? No more Smash Beach?"
If you've followed my career over the last few years, you may have wondered about me at one time or another. How does this person stay alive? They never make anything anymore. Do people die when they're not online? Is he dead? He only posts like one picture a year. How does he feed himself and keep himself sheltered? Did he quit art or find another job? Should I unfollow? How does he keep buying games, anime, and high-end computer equipment when he doesn't work? Fuck this guy, I want that lifestyle!!
Well, I have answers, but it's complicated. For one, I've been able to survive the last few years by coasting on the success from my past life. It's a little like Karma. I worked hard over the last 20 years and built a buffer with pictures and published work, and that’s made the last three years bearable, despite their difficulty. The artist life may look like play to the outsider, and in some ways it is, but in my particular Aesop’s fable, I've never embraced the roll of the carefree grasshopper. I've always related to the ants, steadily building a surplus to survive the winter, which always comes. It's not a masochist grind mindset, just some inner drive and desire to create images and see ideas come to some type of tangible form that I can share with others. Fortunately, since my artistic toil takes place in an air conditioned environment with people I love, snacks, and drink refills, there's nothing to complain about. Though art always produces challenges and frustrations, I love the work I do. It's a pretty ideal life. We should all be so privileged. Maybe we will be someday.
We all know that the last few years have been difficult for many people. Covid, etc. Even so, If you want to know all of the character specific reasons why Ecchi's last three years have been difficult (spoilers), you can read the blog post from about a year ago, or this convenient Quick Summary:
- 8 hours of daily homeschool for a kid with respiratory problems during the pandemic
- Birth of second child (yay!) conceived before all the pandemic shit happened
- Dying parent relying on family (me) for full time care during pandemic
- In (my) home hospice, death, and aftermath
- Unexpected 2nd dying parent relying on family (me) for care during pandemic
- 2nd hospice, death, and aftermath
- Dealing with the estate affairs and legal issues for both parents. (ongoing)
- Personal health issues (minor, but aggravating, expensive and difficult to live with or deal with)
- Mostly suppressed emotional turmoil, somewhat helped by journaling when possible, though mostly solved through overeating delicious garbage. Goodbye ability to fit into my clothes.
- Daily grind of being a loving parent
Those were my last three years: life, death, and darkness with plenty of toil and turmoil. I've dealt with screaming babies and dying adults, both of whom have required love, patience, and around the clock care. I've dealt with dismantling and repairing a hoarder house filled with mystery objects. I've dug through, sorted, and dispatched a mountain of Dollar Tree objects all to unearth the few heirlooms of family historical importance hidden among the trash. I've read and checked over a goddamn garbage truck full of paperwork featuring every sort of record from grocery receipts, to mail circulars, to personal journals, to critical legal documents and everything in between. All of this had to be sorted through, shredded, saved or filed away to various authorities.
DS IRL
In short, the last few years have been difficult and mostly miserable for Ecchi. Maybe they've sucked for you too? I imagine that's been the case for most people. As the Buddha said, "Life is suffering. Here's more suffering. Embrace it."
Needless to say, during all of this, there was no time for art. I tried, but it was hopeless. Attempting to draw anything only led to horrible frustration. Other needs were always more pressing, and press, they did.
It has been a very difficult and painful process.
However, amidst it all there was always a light, a holy presence that was there helping me and protecting me. But what is it? What is this light? Ah! Yes! I can see it. I can see… My savior. And this savior has a name, Mina. Thank you, thank you Lady Mina!
Over the last three years, Mina has always been here for me. She has given me the space to deal with these horrific train wrecks, and the time to pick up the pieces and clear away the debris. She's struggled alongside me and always made sure that all the basics of home, health, comfort, and compassion were covered. All the while, she'd sneak away and dutifully jot out cute girl after cute girl whenever opportunity availed. Without Mina's art and effort, buddy, we'd all be in real trouble here at the former Studio Cutepet offices. As it stands though, we're going to be okay.
Thank you to everyone who has supported Mina all this time. Did you know that you were keeping several other people alive too… even Ecchi? What a bonus!! Likewise, thank you to everyone who's hung around here waiting for my Re-emergence Day, or the continuation of the Smash Beach prints, or more futanari art, or whatever it is you like about my art. The debris has mostly been cleared away. It's time for Ecchi to rebuild his life. It's time to draw; it’s time to share what I can with the world. For that, I appreciate any support you can provide. I've learned over the last few years that life is a process of giving and receiving help from others. I will give all of my art to you. Any help you can provide is appreciated.
The Future
As I gaze out into the infinite possible future timelines, I ask myself, "What are the plans for this Patreon? Where do I take things? What's the next picture? What do I present to these beautiful, amazing, intelligent, people of distinguished taste who support my career?"
I don't have a concrete agenda.
Instead, what I have is dreams. I know that sounds a little abstract, but hear me out. As Freud knew, dreams are a portal into our unspoken and unconscious desires; and as Lovecraft knew, dreams are also a realm where cosmic forces pry into our reality and commune with our minds in order to bring about their will. So if you're looking for a place to inform your future actions, dreams are a good place to start.
Dream #1: I'd like to make a tome, an encyclopedia of girls from a world like our own, but different in a couple of key ways.
Let's call this place World X for now. I want to create an index of girls from this world, a pseudo-Wiki, a hentai archetype character reference guide similar to the Monster Girl Encyclopedia, the D&D Monster Manual, or a DK visual reference book. This would include some favorite designs from the Cutepet days, but mostly present a fresh catalogue of girls who specialize in various everyday professions or passions, but do so with an over-sexualized twist, presenting their desirable traits, abilities, and myriad sexual dysfunctions. This "book", and the information held within would enumerate, explain, narrativize, and visualize the perverse vital data about these girls, their contours, and the contours of their similar-but-different reality. I envisage a wonderland of delights for any connoisseur of the feminine form. The ultrafit weightlifter from the recent poll falls under this category.
These guides with their characters, creatures, archetypes, professions, world building info, and stats, this stuff has as always excited me for some reason. Let's build another world, but instead of filling it with monsters to slay, why not beautiful women to... lay? Anyway...
A concept layout I've been sitting on for a long time. There were other pages with adult images but I'm making this a public post so they'll have to wait.
Dream #2: Beauty and the Beach - Smash Beach and other Pinups of characters I genuinely adore.
There are times when I simply want to gaze out at all the beautiful garden of characters created and tended by others. I want to pick from the low hanging fruit of media franchises, pluck the cute girls and marvel at their sweetness. As wise soul Hideo Kojima knows, sometimes the thing that brings about the most happiness to the most people is simply being a Mario, and finding a Princess Peach on a princess beach. (Death Stranding, 2019) Support this dream and we don't have to wake up. Smash Beach continues, beauty, sweetness, scantily clad beloved anime and game girls await.
Early version of Smash Beach pic for "A Green Haired Goddess" (3/22/2020 file date). She's looking pretty complete and ready to refine and finish. I've since revised the sketch and feel the composition is even stronger. I'll get to her soon. Thanks for the patience over these 3 years.
Dream #3: Priscylla in Cutepetland/Sexland? More art, more stories. Comics? Maybe eventually a game?
An artist rendition of what Priscylla currently looks like based on her last known picture in 2018.
Dream #4: Contribute to the overall knowledge of humanity by making art tutorial content on everything from basic drawing topics like how to draw the head and body, etc., all the way down to the weird hentai anatomy related stuff that you’d never find in a book, like drawing beautiful dicks, pussies, and asses, how to hand paint ribbons of gorgeous gloopy ejaculate, and concepts like doubled expressions for making intoxicatingly weird faces.
Dream #5: Sharing the 47 SECRETS to hentai art through process videos
I love watching artist process videos. There is something magical about seeing an image materialize from the white infinity of the canvas. So much is revealed when you watch these videos. You see the messes, the mistakes, the reference materials used. You see the artist spend hours making countless stabs at "perfecting" faces, drawing and revising the features over and over and over again until they arrive at some arbitrary endpoint where their brain is either satisfied or exhausted. I'd hate to watch this process in real time, but sped up and encapsulated into a 5 to 10 minute dance of lines, I love it.
There's almost always something to be learned from watching another artist plying their craft. Sometimes I pick up new techniques or new approaches towards the workflow, and other times the video simply confirms that the struggles I've been dealing with are actually universals that most every artist suffers through.
I think it's my turn to share my knowledge and my suffering with anyone who is interested in watching. Over the last several years, I’ve been working towards making screen recordings a part of my process. My goal is to share these videos in some form on some platform. I've been vexed by the fact that 95% of everything I make either has exposed nipples, huge dicks, or some carnal act taking place. This isn't the type of material you can post on YouTube, and posting art process videos on a place like PornHub seems equally ill fitting. So what to do? My plan is to cover the naughty bits for publically sharing the work on places like YouTube. Then for the explicit material, post directly to Patreon, using links to Dropbox or Mega stashes if need be.
Fantasmatic Dreams
Dream #α: The creation of a set of figure design bases with interchangeable parts. I'm currently referring to these as PNKPXL Design Bases. This ties in with Dream #1.
Dream #β: The Archive. As the name suggests, an easy to access, download, and view archive of all my works from the last decade or so.
Dream #γ: Prints - I want to keep making them.
Dream #δ: Comics and collaboration with Mina. (Up to Mina. I'll do whatever I can to contribute.)
Dream #?: PNKPXL - A community hub for hentai art.
The Now of 4/12/2023
At this moment, the thing I want to do most is tie up loose ends, such as my recent Tribute to Queen Mina.
Like most fanart, it's meant as a token of appreciation for a beloved "character". Based on my statements in the paragraphs above, you can see why I've chosen Mina and her (somewhat based on real life) art-queen persona as my subject for a sexy girl drawing.
Life undulates on waves. Sometimes everything is chaos, and other times we drift on smooth stretches that enable us to organize and accomplish meaningful tasks. In the case of the Queen Mina picture, I started this pic in early 2022, while waiting on client notes from the Fruitanari Punch Kickstarter project. While wrapping up the Fruitanari Punch set in March, life became a maelstrom and I had to abandon art once again. Because of this, my incomplete tribute sat dormant in a directory.
Been a whole year. People have drunk your juice, but has anyone even seen your dick?
It's a year later, and the waves of life are smoothing out again, allowing me to finally return to the rough drawing. It wasn't easy, but within about a week, I was able to figure out the character and costume and let a little illustration form in the canvas's negative space. Like most every character I've drawn in the last 10 years, the clothes are cast off, revealing the pink bits beneath the magisterial attire. (These "bits" have been approved by Mina, heh).
While my brain was churning the character illustration, it came up with a slightly different version of the character in sexy attire. That's done… but now there’s another illustration of Mina in the raw that I'd love to get to at some point.
Planting One's Seed in the Ground to see what Sticks
Excuse the mixed metaphor, but I think it aptly describes where I am. I have a bunch of small projects that were started and abandoned because of extenuating circumstances. I'd love to get back to these and finish them, or declare them abandoned, clean up the files, and move on.
Among these projects are:
Fruitanari Punch: After finishing the Fruitanari Punch project, I had to “punch-out” and disappear for reasons discussed above. I submitted the necessary files to the client, but never had a chance to clean up or distribute all the naughty big-dicked pics of Kajitsu. I'd like to correct that and put together a bundle with all associated art.
Priscylla Prizzel: Retouch and update for her appearance.
Cosplayer studies: Portraits of different cosplayers with a wide divergence of facial proportions and expressions. I've drawn maybe 20 pages of study sheets. I'd like to clean them up and present them, tagging the subjects used for the portraits. It's something I started in late 2021 to sharpen my abilities after a long break. Unfortunately after about a month, everything started becoming difficult again, so I had to abandon these studies. I'd like to clean up what I have and make cosplayer character sheets with them. This, along with the Priscylla picture mentioned above, connect to the next topic...
PNKPXL™ Design Bases™: Inspired by animation character sheets, KSS dolls, character bases, and 3d/Vtuber/VR/Online avatar design sheets, these files feauring full body turns of characters in multiple states of undress, would be meant for use as artistic aids and general reference material. If you're a pervert (and if you're not, why are you even here reading this), the aesthetic appeal of simply gazing at these beautiful bodies with all revealed should be obvious. If you're an artist, you can use these bases to build overtop of and design outfits or new characters, with the convenience of having the proportions and general design pre-developed. Think of it like a starter meal kit that you can customize to create the perfect flavor you desire.
Reawakening
I've shared my many dreams with you. While I hope to accomplish all of them, getting to a couple will suffice. Dream #1 (the index of original characters) and #2 (pervy pinups of popular characters) are the my priorities going forward. Thanks for supporting my Patreon and joining me on this journey.
-Ecchi
Comments
Ecchi-Star
Liru, I don't know what to say man. You've been amazing to me over the years. Please forgive any neglectful abuse or pressure I've put on you or your finances. Hopefully it's not an issue. We're all having fun here, right...right?? Prizzel or Prizzell? Hmmm… I had to dig up my archived Cutepet HTML pages to double check her "official" stats. [From the Holy Scriptures] Name: Priscylla Pizzell Age: 18 (Really? I thought she was a bit older, like 21 or 22.) Measurements Height: 5ft. 5in. Weight: 128lbs. Bust: 40 inches Waist: 25 inches Hips: 36 inches Cup size: G Hair Color: Platinum Blonde Eyes: Teal w/ Pink pupils For what it's worth, according to God, it's two l's. Anytime any person with a bit of time and an ounce of creativity starts to daydream they can come up with dozens of fun ideas, a few of which are actually good or could be made good eventually. (What even is the metric for good: personal satisfaction, audience interest, the betterment of a sizeable group, happiness, earnings, problem solving, advancement of an art? IDK, maybe a bit of any of those things.) But you know, all of which will take time and effort to see to fruition. I'm tempted with ideas. I sit around and draw things. Drawing and painting are these largely mechanical labor processes that eat up hours every day. I'll get into a flow state and time dissolves while I listen to lectures and essays and music on YouTube and think about a million other projects I want to get to. My MS OneNote overflowiths with half-baked half-executed plans frantically typed before the idea twinkles out of existence. It's definitely a problem for me. It's the old cliché. Ideas are cheap, building anything is expensive. I think at some point, I had a decently formed concept for a Priscylla game. I play a lot of games. Like any avid thing-doer, you start to get ideas, and see potential avenues for novelty. If I can get this whole, "one to two updates a month" thing under control, then maybe I can start putting resource points into the Priscylla Game Project. Until then, I don't want to get sidetracked or waste anyone else's time or effort. The only thing I know how to do is make images, write text, and develop ideas. When it comes to writing code or game development, I'm as green as a well watered lawn. If you'd be down with helping (read: "making", because I don't know what I'm doing,) we can give that a shot. I place all my trust in your great wisdom. "Thus a man is destined to remain the plaything of passions; To reach for the heavens with his mind; and to disappear into earthly irrelevance." As for the other dream goals like an archived web space, those seem more attainable. I mean, an archive could be as simple as a couple .zips hosted somewhere, so maybe we'll get to that too. :) --Ecchi
Ecchi-Star
M. Shirow magazine vibes? I was an avid Shirow reader during my kid and teen years. I have all the old Appleseed, Dominion, and GiTS books, and a couple of his art books. What's the magazine you're talking about? I'm not familiar with it. Was this one of his adult publications? As for the design bases, I hope people can put them to use. Update: As I'm writing this, I see there's a guy on Twitter sending me draw-overs of those Samus character turns I posted last week. Maybe it's you??? Probably not. Anyway, that was unexpected, but that's basically the spirit of the design bases. The idea is that the elements are all easy to isolate, alter, mix and match. Since I'm a Photoshop dude, I'm only thinking in terms of layers, copy, paste, free transform and overdrawing on PSD files. How good any of this will work, time will tell. I'll finish one up and get it posted soon. From my standpoint the effort of making these is good practice and prelim work for other images. If they're useful for other people, all the better. ;) Priscylla lives in our hearts.
Liru
Life is indeed suffering. The best we can do is to hang in there. I would definitely support the Priscylla game effort (Is it Pizzell or Prizzel? I've seen the first one more often, but now I'm doubting myself since you mentioned it in the post) and would probably be willing to actually help out with it. Same with PNKPXL Hub, The Archive, and the process art stash; I definitely feel like there should be a proper place for videos like those, and relying on those other sites seems like a stopgap answer at best.
CarameLatte
Encyclopaedia of Girls sound like a lot of fun, that page layout gives a lot of old Masamune Shirow magazine vibes, also poor Priscylla hope she's found eventually. PNKPXL™ Design Bases™ also neat, looking forward to trying them out for practising outfits and the like.
