This was a year of challenges. I would've liked to post this at the end of 2022 but that didn't quite pan out! ^^;
Episodes published: 9 (episodes 23-31)
The update schedule for Anathema to Commonsense was slow again with only 9 episodes being published, but there was a lot of ongoing development behind the scenes for most of the year until November. In November and part of December I was caught up in Huevember and that took up most of my time drawing.
Since the episodes took weeks to make even with daily progress, I wrote WIP posts throughout most of the year. They're in The Production Room of 90's Resort and the Behind the Scenes category on Record Compendium.
Episode 23 wrapped up the battle that Renegade Liberty and Renegade Eminence Danger fought and warded off the Minions of Nemesis' attack, which led into a celebratory banquet hosted by King Gareth and Queen Etheldreda!
However it takes a turn as Renegade Liberty solemnly returns to the Magical Renegades' headquarters alone. Renegade Liberty returns to her normal form as Susana to talk with her other teammates, and they hear of the banquet on the radio. Susana calls her mother about if she's doing the right thing by staying with the work she's doing; her family doesn't specifically know that Susana was working with the Magical Renegades.
This reveals more about their family's history. Episode 27 returns to the group of stranded people; they were released from the courtroom in episode 19 and episode 27 shows where they went!
They arrived in the middle of a town plaza and needed help finding where they'd stay when a tour guide led them to the Stranded Inn Time hotel! Episodes 27 and 28 introduce two characters from Extra! Chronicles into Anathema to Commonsense! Myra is introduced in 27 and Paige in 28.
Episodes 28-30 cover the their first night at the hotel. Episode 28 shows the visitors to their rooms, and a lot of vaporwave aesthetics! Several characters use the phone booths in episode 29 to call their friends, family or employers across time and space to tell them of their situation. This reveals more about some characters' backstories and whether they're just trying to survive in the new timeline or want to become mages and join the battles ahead!
Ella just wants to survive and make sure that all of her students survive. Fiorina still has to work for her employers. Melody, Katt and Kayla want to join the battles!
The group arrive at the auditorium in the hotel for an open mic night at the end of episode 29 and through episode 30. They watch a performance starring a pair of ghostly stand-up comedians that gave lessons of survival advice in between gags!
Episode 31 wraps up the first night at the hotel, shows the morning of the next day and gives the guests their first major objective; to report to the Time Travel office! I was unsure if I'd be able to publish this episode before the end of the year but I'm glad I could wrap up the year with showing the next morning!
Production of episode 32 started a few days before episode 31 was published. It'll ramp up the action and lead into the next major arc!
Chapters published: 4 (10 - 13)
There were only a few new chapters of Extra! Chronicles this year, but they covered a major event and introduced more characters! They covered the celebratory banquet between episode 24 and 25.
I gave up on Twitter again some time last year because I lost interest and couldn't keep up, but missed using a short post format to complement my long-form blog posts so I needed a replacement. In January I looked into Mastodon and looked for a server that focused on art when I found Mastodon.art! That stint didn't last long since I got too busy and felt daunted, but I returned to posting regularly since July!
Before I joined I observed that communities on the Fediverse (which Mastodon is one part of) are a lot less "corporate" and that what I learned about "building a brand" may fly on platforms such as twitter, but not here. It felt a little daunting for me to have a Mastodon account that isn't just about Magical Renegades and without the expectation of "building a brand", but it was also freeing; the instance I joined encourages users to post not just about their projects. Sketches, WIPs, art challenge drawings are all encouraged!
Production of episodes slowed down a lot since some episodes were completely new, and I began using Blender frequently to model interior backgrounds. These were trade-offs. New scenes expanded on character and lore details. Blender helped me immensely with designing interior backgrounds, architecture and getting accurate perspectives with the backgrounds. Using Blender helped further my interests in architecture design, but there was a high upfront cost of time while I learned how to model them and blend them in with the art style more efficiently. I designed rooms one at a time before I started rendering backgrounds for panels since I needed the room to be ready for any angle.
The first major things I modeled were the steampunk arcade machine that appeared in episode 25 and the front room of the Magical Renegades headquarters!
The upstairs hallway and stairs of the headquarters in episode 25:
One of the bedrooms in episode 26.
The lounge room of the headquarters in episode 26:
The front lobby of the Stranded Inn Time hotel in episode 27 and 28:
A hallway to the hotel rooms in episode 28.
The phone booth in episode 29:
The auditorium in episode 30.
After a year without participating in any art challenges, I tried again this year! I took a different approach when I joined Mastodon.art and didn't create my account just for Magical Renegades material.
This is the first art challenge I posted about on Mastodon.art. I made several drawings that followed daily prompts. Some of them were about Magical Renegades, and a few of those had stories written with them to be posted on The Scattered Archives. Other drawings were practice for other ideas, and a few were also related to Ferris the Donut Thief, who started as a one-off joke character that I created in 2021. I saw the potential for videogame ideas so I imagined ideas for a hypothetical videogame!
Experimental idea for a factory level:
This is the first challenge I also wrote about on my main site. I followed the same posting format I did on Mastodon and compiled those posts into a page for my main site with additional commentary.
Although I already met the challenge of working on Magical Renegades for at least 30 minutes each day, it was a good challenge to write about that progress! This challenge was done in place of the weekly WIPs I had been doing.
I wrote about this challenge in the same format as the previous month's, but this one also has a summary on Record Compendium for the Magical Renegades drawings and stories. It goes into more detail about which timeline each story is written for and when. Keeping track of all of this is important since writing across timelines can be tricky!
The article about this challenge on my main site covers all of the drawings for the challenge and can be found here: Huevember 2022.
Magical Renegades 90's Resort launched last year and most of the pages launched with it. As this year went on, there were more refinements to the site design and the largest set of refinements were made in February. Adding animated GIFs for bullet points and dividers really adds to that 90's web flair!
I frequently updated the site and this blog with WIP posts about my progress with an episode since they take weeks to make. These WIP posts showed various things I learned about using Blender and some tips I learned to be more efficient.
This site underwent a major redesign in February, though it wasn't deployed until May. The redesign is inspired by sites from the 2000's but with modern HTML and CSS. The first try at this redesign had some display issues that I'd try to fix with later updates. It began to be updated more frequently with art challenge updates.
It underwent an expansion, finally being more than an afterthought I needed to throw together to have an index page after I added the Projects page!
I'd add pages about 2 of the 3 art challenges I did for 2022.
Production for episode 32 has started and I started several panels for it. WIPs will be back soon! I also kept putting off writing a character page, but I should get to it sooner than later. It's already challenging to start but will be more so the longer I wait and the more characters are introduced!