There’s no real good intro for this. At time of writing, I’m angry as hell, mostly at myself for letting this sort of thing happen. I didn’t think I was good enough for me for a very long time, which resulted in me making the mistakes I was warned of time and time again. Copycatting, half-assed executions, half-baked ideas - sometimes you don’t know you’re making mistakes until you catch yourself.

So instead, I’m putting this anger to some good use. I’m putting my foot down against the only person I can right now - myself.

The most important thing on the docket: I’ve been refining my OCs, or improving them, in order to make drawing them more fun, more smooth, and less pain-in-the-ass. Here’s the changelog:

• The big one: Zaaru, Yurrok, and Xandi are no longer shapeshifters. Not only am I unimaginative with shapeshifting (tentacles are about it for me personally), it’s also a pain in the ass to draw well. They still have their red, pink, and brown skin as normal, though. And Xandi still likes eldritch horror stuff. But she’s not gonna change into the Thing anymore.
• Iynael Sanuerto is now just Iggy, and he’s in the process of a redesign. I already have a smug asshole character in Yurrok, and I do need to work on making him something more than “big booty twink OC #45,203”. People can have big hips, but I shouldn’t leave him as ONLY a horny character when he’s with someone like Leyla.
• Chestnut is no longer a mage. I feel like that defeats the purpose of his growth from dweeb to someone respectable. He could just cast a spell of “no more shyness” and then he instantly becomes better. To which I say, no, you don’t get to do that because that’s cheap.
• The idea of Morcofitzia is not going to be a theme with my OCs going forward. Morgan Morcofitz and the other fancy “M” labeled things I’ve drawn won’t show up anymore, mainly because the whole setting was just me screwing around and throwing whatever wacky OC idea I had in a blender. I cannot have everything I want.
• Oh, and no more Bunnyman or Satan Rat from me. I don’t really need to ID myself online with a fursona, and my fursona looks more like a weird dog anyways. I blame and thank @stupidvampire for this revelation. He opened my eyes in a way only he could do.

I hope that with this post, you guys have got a better understanding of what I’ve been doing in the background behind the scenes. Don’t be like me. Don’t get so high and mighty off of your own supply. And don’t feel as though you’re enslaved to a character you made. I did, and it made the rest of my art significantly worse because of that. Stay strong, but stay self-aware. Smug out.

Hey, all. Smugeth A. Rugeth here. It’s been boiling hot over here to the point where I can’t even really draw or think straight. As if my forays into Cookie Clicker couldn’t have been timed worse.

But the heat (and too much free time because of said heat) has led me to reflect on what it is that I’ve been doing wrong. And maybe it’s a lot less dire than I had anticipated.

The last of these updates was on June 29th, which was about a week and a few days ago at time of writing (July 8th). And while this is all embarrassing to admit publicly, these are problems I feel like I have to confront myself about. And maybe problems other people may have, too. And it has to start with how I create art.

This is more a focused dive rather than the brief blanket statement about my plans I made in my last blog entry. I’ve got a lot of weight on my mind and I have to drop it somehow. May as well start here.

When it came to my creative process, a lot of the time I’d be very impressionable. I’d see something cool, think “How could I put a twist on it?” and then try to parody it - without understanding its themes and the message it sends.

Sometimes I’d obey the Law of the Crotch, which states what whatever the fuck makes me horny must be drawn and turned into a “character”. Personal recommendation: don’t do this. Just don’t. Post-nut clarity is real and suddenly you’re stuck with a twink with an ass the size of Mars.

And then some of them were “whatever the fuck I felt like” characters. Characters that just existed because wacky ideas kept emerging out of creative bursts while listening to music. Which by the way, makes me unleash my creativity outside of a canvas, which is a bad thing.

If you’re reading this and you have characters made as parodies, under the Law of the Crotch, or as “whatever the fuck” from listening to music, then that’s fine. I’m not out here calling you out for doing that. You just gotta make it work. You need to have the passion for it.

I didn’t.

I’d come up with a good idea on the spot, and then I’d rush it out and fumble a bit. I would have a decent idea, but my lack of patience meant little time to bake in that proverbial oven. I would lose interest in the product I made, I got burned and burnt out. And now…it’s time for me to accept that I’m not as talented as I made myself out to be. None of it was…fun.

Oooh, damn. Ellipses. For that imagined emphasis on the pause! Ooh! What a fuckin’ badass!

That’s the keyword that I’ve been missing. Was I having fun? No. I was not. I was feeling lost and confused. My ideas would soon fall flat on their faces because I had dropped the dough altogether. I didn’t want to take risks because I didn’t want to fail. Fail under my own high standards. That’s why I felt like I stagnated for so long, why the last few years have felt like grinding through layers of rock and granite. But now that I’ve finally dug myself out, the fresh air is both amazing to take in and terrifying to behold.

I’ve made a lot of mistakes creatively. Thinking I could draw something “once”. Thinking a “sketch” was just one concentrated piece that you could easily render. Thinking a “character” was just a “role”. The hubris of man is the greatest punchline that nobody will ever laugh at. Or in this case, the hubris of a stupid bunnyman.

You can’t stop stories from happening. You can’t force them to happen, either. My best characters, the ones I feel real passion and interest for, don't feel like I’m telling them what they should be. They’re their own individual sociopaths carving a path through crowds because they want something THAT badly. They make their own stories. They create their own punchlines. They ruin their own worlds.

So what’s next for the Smugarugian future? What is it I want to do next? Aside from trying my damndest not to melt into a fine paste, I mean.

Well, more fanart. Of what? Not sure. Whatever I fancy and whatever idea’s been floating around in my head for the last few years. A lot of potential has been lost because of my shoddy workmanship - but sometimes it’s better that way.

I won’t let the idea that I need to have a dedicated OC roster plague me anymore. That didn’t work at all and trying again isn’t an option. I can’t let my past mistakes and ideas chain me down. I have to have faith in myself and my art that both of us can improve and grow.

This heat wave melts away a lot of things. My patience for bullshit, especially my own, is one of those things. These last few weeks have been me delving deeper into my own psyche as a creative person than ever before, and I’m finding out more about myself than I thought.

I wanted to say, for the record, that I’m sick of how I treated myself. How I thought of myself as nothing more than a tool for other people’s happiness. How I felt like everything I did was for other people. How I turned it into a job with how much I stressed about if others would like what I made. I’m sorry for myself. And I also hate myself. 

That’s not going to be the same anymore. I want to get better. I want my art to be better. I want to dump this negative attitude for good and learn what it means to be better than what I was. And that means I need to learn what having…fun means.

Man, that’s just genuinely sad when I write it out. 

This is Smugarug, signing off. Stay cool out there, everyone. Have fun with your art. Don’t be like me and make yourself your own worst enemy.

Hey, everyone. It's me, Smugarug, AKA Smugeth A. Rugeth, AKA Smugerry A. Rugerry, the A stands for A.

Been going through a lot of changes with my art and I figured I'd document what's been going on. I'll separate them into sections, starting with the most important bits:

THE PSYCHIC WAR ENDS...

Midway through June, I went through a bit of an OC revamp, drawing OC ref sheets of five of my best OCs. Some of you might be wondering why just five and not everyone. Well.

A lot of you may have noticed my idea for a fictional city called Morcofitzia, with the Black Empress and the MWC and whatnot. The really attentive of you will see that it's been an on and off thing since...2022? Man, time flies by when you have a name that you can't drop. Around 2023 is when I began reading the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett (Rest in Peace, Sir Pratchett), and that's when the spark ignited.

I began scribbling and doodling insane and wacky shit to put in one world, just like Ankh-Morpork. I was, initially, not having fun, but getting caught up in the hype and speculation of a giant city with different species of aliens and monsters.

Because some people really just like riding nuclear missiles.

As I found out, but refused to admit, the ambition became a monumental burden and burned me out hard. I was firing the ideas so fast out of my head that my hands couldn't keep up. And so Morcofitzia in my head became this unfathomably messy, large, and poorly-made piñata of fiction that fell apart at one poke.

I still have tried to make this work, even up until recently. Even yesterday at time of writing I had ideas in how I could take a good name like "Morcofitzia" and make it work. And I couldn't. And for a very long time I was ashamed and frustrated of myself, which I shouldn't have been to begin with.

But we're humans, and people don't have infinite limbs or time. If we had everything we wanted, and could do everything we dreamed of, we'd cease to exist. And I'm not like Terry Pratchett. Nobody can be. I shouldn't even try to be like him. I should be more like myself. That's what art is. It's about you being yourself, and genuine to your interests. And that shows through your work.

That was the hardest pill for me to swallow. The thought that there were people out there that liked me for who I was, and not who I could be. You live a life of trying to make others happy, and eventually you find out that you didn't satisfy anybody.

THE FANTASTIC FIVE (Not Four, I CAN Count, You Know)

So, I drew those five characters, scaled back my ambitions, and am now actively fighting the urge to try to expand my roster beyond those five. Because life has taught me that less is really more, that talking about one thing in depth is much easier than trying to talk about a thousand things briefly.

And I have passion and interest in drawing those characters, mainly because they're interesting for me to talk about and joke with. Look at Klash and you'll see what I mean:

hehe funnee gremblin

It's been an incredible relief to finally grasp the concept that people like me for who I am, and not the potential I could be later. The present is a gift, after all. And the fact that I've been surrounded by people who like Klash and Xandi as they are is...well, amazing. It's so validating to know that I'm not doing something wrong. And I look forward to trying new things now that I have a cast of main anchor characters I can always come back to.

THE CANVAS CHANGES

The last major change is only a fairly recent one. I picked up Krita at the start of this week and I am loving its default brushes more than Clip Studio Paint's by a country mile.

Don't get me wrong, I think Clip Studio's a fine program, I used it for literal years, but in terms of raw paint power, Krita for me is much more focused on the brushes, which I needed to spice up my drawing process. Clip Studio is great for lineart and comics, but coloring and painting are, in my usage, kind of basic. I'd often need to rely on layer effects and filters to make more ambitious art, and let me tell you, there's nothing I hate mote than going to menus on menus on menus after menus.

Or maybe I'm just using the program wrong, I dunno, the damn thing is called Clip Studio PAINT; you'd think it'd be for bein' like Leonardo The Big Cheese or somethin'.

MOVING FORWARD

Some of you guys may have already seen the latest pieces I've posted at time of writing, both of those being porn pieces. One of a vampire OC I have (yet another one potentially being vaulted and never drawn again because I find him boring), and the other one being a pulp sci-fi cover depicting an accurate depiction of 1950s American racial tensions*. Star Trek is for NEEEEEEEEEEEERDZ.**

What's next in the future? More fanart, that's for sure. I'm tired of making OCs in my head and then trying to render them all out. I'm not even getting paid for it and then letting other writers try to clean up the mess. It's just me shitting in my own pants and...you know what? You get it.

More paintings, too, now that I have better software and ideas of how to render things better. I've always been a fan of using digital art to emulate physical art. No need for mixing or exposing myself to paint thinner! I don't need to strain my arms or lose more braincells!

YOUR FEEDBACK, PLEASE

As much as I'd like to critique my own art, I can't. You know why they say you're your own worst critic? It's because you suck at judging your own metrics. So, I'm asking YOU, yes, YOU, to help me. If you'd like, leave comments on my art or in this post to let me know about things such as what you like or dislike about my art. Do you see glaring imperfections and errors in something? Feel free to comment on them and I'll respond in kind when I can.

CONCLUSION

If you've made it this far, you either skipped ahead or you read the whole thing. If you're of the former, hi there, I'm not TL;DR'ing this, why did you click on this if you weren't going to read it through. If you're of the latter, thank you for taking the time to read this behind-the scenes breakdown. If enough people enjoy this, I may do more in the future.

Please take care of yourselves, and take it easy. This is Smugarug signing off.

*This is a joke. I made it in an attempt to satirize and make fun of racist and sexual stereotypes. Please do not take it as genuine.

**I've never watched Star Trek, please don't come to my house and break my legs, Captain Picard, it's just a joke.

Well. Here we are. A nice one hundred followers. It's kind of funny how 100 is so much greater in value than 1, despite 100 having two more zeros.

But honestly speaking, thank you all for enjoying my art. It's a reminder to myself that I can't get comfortable with who I am right now, that I need to expand my art beyond what it was. And honestly, given how recent events have turned out, it's become more apparent that that time is now.

Hope you all stick around for the future. I've got more exciting things that I want to try and draw before it's too late. This is Smugarug, signing off. Hope you all have a good day, and don't let those bastards grind you down.

Still genuinely nuts how this happened. 80 followers in the span of a week. Guess goin' to Pico Day was a good idea after all. Thank you all for following me, for the...fifth time. Jeez, I should probably stop posting these cuz it's gettin' old. Hope you guys all stick around for more art from yours truly.

nice

I'm such a happy camper right now. Waking up to see this has made my day, and it's not even 9 AM.

Thank you to whoever put this on the front page. And thanks to everyone who followed me over the course of a weekend! Jeez, I still can't believe how many people just happened to follow me!

I don't know what else to say other than I'm floored. I'm blown away. I'm...astounded. Thank you all so much. I'd say I have no words, but clearly I have quite a few.

Holy hell. See the previous post. And thank you all for sticking around!

Holy shit.

To everyone who came to Pico Day and followed me on the spot after meeting me: Thank you. Yesterday was one of the best, if not the most tiring, days of my life. I'd do it again - maybe not immediately but in another day or something. Genuinely insane to meet artists I've followed online for so long in the flesh.

This entire event has reminded me to not rest on my laurels and stay comfy. If you guys want to ever hit me up, let me know your Discord tag and I'll shoot a request your way. This has been Smug, you've been my following audience, and I hope you stick around for more to come.

Wow, 20 fans! That's 1 more than 19! That's a heck of a milestone. Didn't think I'd get this far making original art, but here we are. I don't really know what to say other than "Thanks!" or "Hope you all have a good day!" So thanks, hope you all have a good day!

Edit: I hope you all stick around to see what else I cook up. This is going to be a big year for me, and I don't plan on stopping my momentum any time soon.