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.