...For me, anyway.  This semester, I'm finally able to make time for some traditional media again.  We've had a visiting artist, Ron Cheek, hosting a figure drawing/painting workshop for one of my classes, so the last couple of weeks I've been introduced to oil paints and am enjoying that I can push the paint around all day and show it who is boss.  It feels so good to be doing hands-on work again.

Also, I'm rebooting a pet 3D+2D project of mine that suffered from maximum fail last spring (i.e. a literal hard drive crash, where I stupidly dropped the thing and lost all of my recent animation files in the process).  It's going to require a complete workover of the pipeline, and really tightening the cameras and story, as well as changing some of the methods of animation that I was using.  But that's actually a huge relief; there were so many problems with those last time that I was constantly hitting walls and hated working on it!  

If there's one thing that hijacks me when I'm trying to be productive, though, it's the internet...specifically art or animation blogs.  Which I peruse for hours, clicking from one pretty picture or movie to the next in a (depressing, sometimes) cycle of "How do I ever compete with these awesome people?"   Le sigh.  On the upside, it's giving me ideas for how I can become a better artist...not in terms of what to draw, but rather how to draw and learn the processes that other artists use.

Plus, I get giggly when I see things like this, and feel the need to tell someone!  I wonder if any of our local comic shops will have the installment for Free Comic Book Day?  I've forgotten every year, but this would be a definite incentive for remembering.

New Avatar comics from Dark Horse