How reffy sheets get formed???? (Patreon)

In my broken state, when I get an idea, I get ONE shot at it. If I stop to think or plan, I might furrow my brow, and once I do that I’ve set off nasty spasms and it’s over for me. I’ve gotta pray I get it right, or a passable-if-others-offer-forgiveness state, while impulse carries me. That’s the thing that derailed so many plans of the last three years. By the time I do warmup sketching, I’m worn out, and nothing has been accomplished, since I’ll be ice cold the next time I get even the smallest burst of energy. Sketches have to be perfect on the first try, while I’m at maximum rust. That ruined almost everything I’ve done during this dark period - even “just make a sketch” projects get thwarted!

This time, I was thinking how upset I am that I’m THREE YEARS OVERDUE in my plans to make ref sheets for my Momentum OCs - Oh, to one day get fan art or commissions of them! - and the Meret sketch I did in reaction to that thought was… good enough, I guess??? I pushed on, inked it, and scanned it in for coloring. Then I tweaked it to make it more presentable, which quickly wore me out, cuz the original was rougher than what you see, so the brow furrowed. (It took three days to get this post together, cuz I’m a weak baby!) I haphazardly wrote down thoughts that came to me, to try and cover needed notes for artists. And if artists didn’t need a bit, at least I got it down SOMEWHERE. No adequate planning happened. Just impulse, and hoping the result is close enough to a basic ref sheet that I can use it until I make something more refined. FYI: I have no fashion design skills. Figuring out clothing is traumatic! I did the best I could, knowing I didn’t have it in me to go for details or accessories. Again: Pausing to fret over details would have ended in me burning out before I had something to share, so plowing ahead with what’s here was clearly the superior option.

BTW, the over-the-top protagonist thing is based on one of the many half-written posts sitting in my files from the last few years, which I still fully intend to finish when I can. A summary: I am NOT really a fantasy person. It's not my genre, and I don't read it. Sometimes I catch myself getting annoyed with the fantasy-ness of the Momentumverse ("Magic makes everything so unbalanced!") and de-funning it. But that’s dumb! People like fantasy BECAUSE IT'S FANTASY. They love the flashiness and clichés! It's comfort food! And so I went back through the 25 years of Momentum ideas in my head and chose the flashiest, most indulgent versions of everyone's protagonist stories. Nate gets her crazy long name! Tijo gets to go full “brooding tortured criminal looking for redemption.” Kimban’s RIDICULOUS family situation is back in play! And, fine, the library Meret works at can be a front for criminals abusing the Town Child orphan care program. I’M GOING ALL IN! Parts of my brain still yell at me, as maxing out EVERYONE tests the limits of even fantasy gluttons, but it's not a real story anyway, so it's fine to let it be super-sweet candy! (Also, the Momentum concept is that it’s a RPG video game that plays out differently depending on whose Amiibo-analog you bought and scanned into the game system, so ALL NINE gotta have the oomph in their backstory to be the MAIN protagonist!)

Anyway, all that matters is having a character sheet and getting across enough personality that better artists than I can illustrate the stuff I can't! This is a breakthrough, because I’ve been MIA for months/years depending on the venue, as I can’t get myself together to accomplish the minimum requirement for many needed tasks. It took me three years of planning and plotting just for one shaky color drawing without many confirmed details. Yikes.

And it's the best you'll get from me for now. After the darkest of dark periods, when a doctor’s selfishness and foolishness perfect storm’d into brutalizing me and keeping me on red alert for an entire three-month Botox cycle, I'm less than a week away from learning what my NEW normal is on this new Botox cycle... and the paranoia is ON! This one carries even more weight than all the others, because things got so bad, and I need things to finally go right. I’m in the best position to improve I’ve had in... over two years? Thus, extreme paranoia and panic until I confirm that the struggles I’ve been going through are indeed the same bruising struggles I have every time I get Botox, which hurt me for 12 days and then dissipate on day 13. One of these days my hope and optimism needs to pay off!