Was it the master plan that the end of Alphabeasts would coincide perfectly with the end of UM's winter semester? It's okay, I guess, CHALLENGES MAKE ME STRONG. It's probably well enough that it's ending now. Noting the below, things were bound to start getting pretty disturbing.
The most interesting thing I learned during Alphabeasts is that traditional Japanese belief is that when an object is 100 years old, IT COMES ALIVE. Seriously. Zorigamis are the clock-specific subcategory of that. They're probably not deranged and malicious, I just added that.
I guess maybe I should describe a little of what this 26-week exercise was doing for me, besides forcing me to draw on a more regular basis. Since the first one (which was Chichevache because I started a little late), I've been inking them all exclusively with a Pentel brush pen, which is a tool I've always been kind of terrified and in awe of. Previously I only had the guts to use it for inking panel frames and taking highly abstract notes for terrible English classes.
But I figured it was time for me to suck it up and learn to use it for more varied things. It's a finicky fucking thing and success using it largely depends on confidence and the talent for making lines without resting your palm on the paper anywhere. Because the ink always smears and you have to squeeze the back when the brush starts drying out, inevitably making it way too wet and making all your lines bleed, and if you cough you'll press down too hard and make a big wiggly blob and a thousand other things. Regardless, you can make some really beautiful, elegant lines with it if you're having a good day. It also forces you to make your first attempt at a stroke count, unlike felt-tip liners where you're basically forced to go over the same line multiple times.
At times it reminded me of the agonizing exercise that was NaNoWriMo, but overall Alphabeasts was an enriching and valuable (and much less time-consuming) experience.
