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DruidPeter

The Mask's name is Deaf::Mute :3
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Hello everyone, DruidPeter here. Hi. How ya doing? :meow:


So, I figure this notice deserves a bit more than just a status update, but honestly, it's not going to be very long itself, either. The long and short of it is that currently my attention is mostly divided between three things.


First, I've got some relatively more steady Website Development work on commission coming in. I'm very grateful for this work, as it's about damned time I started to put my CS degree to use somehow, at least. Granted, when working on commission work like this, it almost always detracts from other creative pursuits, sadly... which brings me to:


I've also started once again on my entries for the Illustrator's of the Future contest submission. Anyone who knows about this contest will appreciate that it is an international competition that attracts hundreds of thousands of submissions from the world over. This will be my 6th attempt entering the contest, and each time I enter my art skills usually jump heads and shoulders above to a next level.


It is... unfortunate... but contest entry submissions aren't permitted to be visible to the public if they are two qualify for winning. Combine that sad fact with the fact that these entries usually required the absolute utmost in terms of skill, dedication, time spent, detail, et al... and you get a situation where it's difficult to continuously produce new artwork for the public while at the same time working on something that takes the very most of your dedication.


Hence, even if I were to continue my regular art, it would still take a big hit in quality... and that's not really all that great. :( So updates are slowed down as well, unfortunately. I expect to be done with my entries by or before the end of this year. Only two more months to go. :D


But finally, there's another big elephant in the room, one which I am quite excited about it. You see, I've made some fairly large recent breakthroughs in the development of my AAA video game project, Duinvoorde. It currently marks a year in development as of the current date, and I am closing in quite nicely upon an actual alpha release that others will actually be able to play. This has been a huge undertaking, and there's still plenty of work to be done, but I'm very excited to share my progress so far!!!


Or so I would, except that there's a small problem. e.g: It's the end of the year and smack dab in the middle of the holiday season, where everybody is at there busiest. I... unfortunately, simply do not think that I would be able to compete with all the other announcements of videogames from other, larger, more well established studios, either...


Hence, this is quite possibly the worst possible time to be uploading content related to my video game.


But this is quite unfortunate, as aside from the video game, the contest submission entries, and my own CS website development work...


well, there's simply not much time left for me to focus on producing OTHER content to be uploaded. :stare:


I thought about nonetheless doing my best to keep up with SOME sort of upload schedule... but in the end, have thought better of it. And hence... my activity on DeviantArt is, uh... likely to slow down quite significantly for the month of November and December... ^^; I wish it were not so.


So, posting this journal to basically tell everyone that I'm not dead, and that things are cooking in the kitchen, and that hopefully I'll be able to resume normal activity levels relatively soon. And nonetheless, I will still do my best to try and comment and otherwise enjoy the amazing artwork of everyone else on here, as well! That's a promise! :D


Well, I guess that's that, then. See you guys around. DP, Out. :D

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I'm not dead, folks, I swear. Just... overwhelmed and tired, and also giving myself a lot more permission to sleep. Like... a lot more permission. So taking a mini vacation this weekend. Will hop back on the horse and barrel... Monday... YyeeeEEeeesSSsss... Monday.


Night. ZzzzzZZZzzzzZZzzzz....

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Hey Everyone. DruidPeter here, and look! A blog post. Haven't seen one of those in a while, eh? So for the past... week, I believe, I actually ended up taking a 4 day vacation because myself, my girlfriend, and my best friend go to the Brick Rodeo convention every year. The location of which rotates from large city to large city each year, and this year it was held in Houston, Texas. :D


So, how did things go? Well, here are a few images from the convention. I have much more than the three I'm posting here, but these three should suffice for the blog post describing as such. I shall work my photo-manipulation magic on these and the remaining images that I took, and then re-upload them as deviations, of course. :3


But enough chatter! Take a look:

Happy Corn
Ronald Mcbrick Doald
Brick Vendor

Huh. Three pictures... they don't really do much good of a job showing how big the entire expanse of the ballroom was, actually. And I'm not really one to take, uh... I suppose you can call them the typical sort of picture formats? Yeah. I'm not really good at those, lol. But it was lots of fun!


Now, then, for a very brief summary of everything that happened: My girlfriend and I participated in a lego roller coaster building competition, as well as a "King Josh" competition. King Josh is when you compete with others to build something that "king Josh" wants, but the king can't make up his mind and changes the requirements every 5 minutes. We lost both competitions! :D Badly. :grump:


Moving on, we played Mobile Frame Zero , which is a lego tactical battle game where you control little robot mechs and stuff. It's very fun. My GF paid for me to take ballroom dancing lessons at a Fred Astaire Dance Studio that was nearby the hotel. I learned the foxtrot, how to Waltz, and a little bit of swing (e.g. I did not learn how to do swing. :(). I will need to continue practicing at home or else I will forget what I learned. I don't want to do that. :(


Let's see here... went to the hotel pool and splashed around and had fun. I participated in the Marines PFT Physical fitness test! :dummy: I... did not pass. :saddummy: We ate some freaking AWESOME Czech Kolaches from the Kolache Factory, which is the freaking BEST PLACE FOR KOLACHES I'VE EVER HAD!!! (Note: It's also the only place I've ever had Kolaches. If you are from the Czech Republic, I apologize in advance, for you likely have experienced much better Kolache. :meow:) My friend splurged approximately $2000.00 in a bidding war between some other woman who wanted an old Lego set! Some creepy guy almost succeeded in convincing my girlfriend to plonk down approx $1200.00 for the taj mahal. (She did not buy it. :stare:) I ALMOST considered purchasing a small leopard tank brick set from BrickShipDesigns . Alas, I did not, as the $40.00 price was unjustifiable given my current, uh... financial condition.


*cries in poor* :cries:


And a whole bunch of other stuff happened. However, I'm not going to discuss it, because reasons. :D


In any case, I look forward to jumping back into work and interacting with all youse guys. Whew! I'm glad I finally got this journal done. Ok. Time to turn my attention to other stuff. Yep, working the backlog, working the backlog... :D

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Surprise, no surprise.


This isn't really about the Duinvoorde video game. Given my own life situation, it probably would be surprising if I *wasn't* overwhelmed. Not about anything in particular. I've fallen through the cracks. Fallen behind. Been left behind. I'm from a lower socioeconomic class. Forced to constantly watch the rest of the world pass me by. Forced to witness all the things I've always wanted, but haven't ever been able to have.


For a long time, this led me to despair.


Then I put in a herculean amount of effort and clawed my way to a point where I I thought I might finally be making progress. A way out of this shit-hole.


But no. Everything came crashing down. And now I'm... not back where I started, thankfully. But I'm still so fucking far behind... everyone else who was my erstwhile peer has got 10 years of experience, 10 years of productivity, 10 years of gathering resources, of slowly getting ahead... and me?


I feel like I've just barely gotten to the point where I can start doing what they were doing in their early 20s. And yet I just feel completely sucked of life. Exhaustion. The only thing waiting for me is endless hours of work. I have to pull off a master-feat. I don't really have any choice. At this point, either I demonstrate that I am a genius, and capable of overcoming all the odds...


or I become a statistic.


I don't know to what extent ANYONE ever saw me as anything other than just a random blip in a sea of other deviants. I don't know if anyone ever actually considered me as a friend, or as someone who was perhaps interesting, or at least worth paying attention to. Even after all this time, I've only got about 100-ish followers, in an ocean of Deviants with thousands.


I think I tried hard to be social. To be friendly. A lot of it I feel has faded away as the site turnover has churned. I feel like to get anywhere in social media, you do have to engage and interact with others. But I wanted to engage more seriously. To communicate with more sincerity and depth. Not just spam people with llamas or likes or simple, "cool artwork, bro" type comments.


What did I get from it?


Well, possibly some people think I'm a weirdo. Some specific others treated me with suspicion, and probably still do. Others straight up told me they believed I was a lost cause because I wasn't "cynical" enough, I guess. And through it all, no matter how much I put forth, it was just this vast sea and ocean. I wonder if I shouldn't have cared at all.


Well, maybe being social and interacting with others is important and necessary to growing one's social media presence, but I can't. Not at the moment, since I'm just absolutely drained of... everything.


I feel like it's hard, really hard, for me to post content on my social media sites. Not because I don't have stuff to produce, but because I feel like I can't just post stuff. I need to be social. I want to be social and engage with others, too. And so I often would put stuff off from uploading, because I would feel like I haven't engaged enough.


And now I haven't posted anything in forever, and I'm exhausted, and tired, and... it doesn't matter, anymore. Even though I want to, I simply can't. I can't operate in the face of the ambiguity anymore.


I hope that, in the future, I will be able to be back to my old bouncy, gregarious, and buoyant/encouraging self.


But for now, if I post content, and I WILL BE POSTING CONTENT... it will simply be the content and not too much more. I... have nothing left. If other people comment and/or engage, I will of course engage in return. But I am saddened to say that... I no longer can proactively engage with others for the time being


... not while my soul feels so sick.

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(NOTE: While this journal deals with some... slightly heavy stuff, please do not take any of this as indicative of where I am in my life right now. I've come along way, and am doing much better. :meow:)


Due to circumstances regarding my early childhood, I didn't learn basic social skills until my 26th birthday. I wasn't a complete invalid. I had learned early on through mimicry to get by mostly. But I wasn't as socially mature as that which I was able to convince others. This helped, but also hurt me in a lot of ways. During the 1st 23 years of my life, then, there were individuals who were very good people for me.


I feel quite sad for how things ended between me and them. I don't expect any of them to read this journal. I'm mostly getting it out as a form of healing. A confession of sorts. And also an apology. As for the specifics...


  1. Arrogance -- I made lots of individuals feel inferior to me. I was as arrogant as one could be. I used extremely sophisticated language as a means to make me feel superior, and put others down. The truth was that my ego was fragile. The world had rejected me. Giving myself a god-complex was the only way a small child could compensate or survive.

  2. Abandonment -- As I grew a little bit older there were cases with some people where I was super eager to accept their requests for help. I put on a front regarding my capacities, and then completely ghosted them almost the next day out of panic. Heh. For those individuals, I'm sorry. I wasn't at the place in my life where I appeared to be.

  3. Condescension -- This one is a little different. I was starting to learn a better path, but still had a lot longer to go than I had thought at the time. I was making friends. But I burned bridges with them. I still had a messiah complex. I wanted to help people. There is nothing wrong with that. But I wanted others to know that I was saving them. That was very foolish. It led to some very painful, broken relationships.

  4. Impropriety -- Ah... impropriety... let me elaborate outside of this list.


Around 2014 was when I started to take DeviantArt more seriously. I had read that Deviants loved comments on their work most of all, and so decided that I would become famous by leaving truly epic comments on other people's work.


I don't actually know how I came off to people back then. I certainly left some very long comments. I originally did so cynically, as a means to an end. But I found that the only way to be prolific in my comments was to find things I could genuinely praise in others and their work, or I would become burned out.


Finding genuinely positive things I could say transformed me in a way I didn't anticipate. I felt myself caring about others more sincerely. The appreciation I had for others, and what they go through as they chase their dreams, left an impression on me unlike what I had experienced before. It grew to a point where I ended up becoming increasingly frustrated and upset.


To see the vast deluge of content. Of skill. Of hopes and dreams. The outpouring of all artists' ambitions on this site... it became too much. Too painful. So much artwork worthy of encouragement. And I couldn't possibly hope to sincerely appreciate all where appreciation was due.


I say, "Impropriety" because at the time I still didn't have my social skills, I feel, truly in order. I think I may have said a lot of things that others deemed unusual. Perhaps they were weirded out by my character. I don't think I was acting in ways that a lot of people would consider "normal" on the internet.


I wanted to genuinely connect and spread positivity. But my heart was so forward with the task that I think I ended up seriously hurting my ability to make stable connections with Deviants on the site. And then, when I had to take a leave of absence due to health and school issues... and then the lockdowns...


I think a lot of the connections that I *had* made on here ended up collapsing to dust. I finally returned to the site, but... DeviantArt, and the world, was no longer what it once was, lol. xD


Me saying all of this is, I guess, a way for me to clear the air and start to try again. By all of this, I want to remove a cloud over my head that has been affecting my ability to participate.


e.g. This notion that every single comment I make, or interaction I have with people on here NEEDS to be above and beyond the fold. I'm done with that. I may still leave short through long comments, but the way I'll leave them will have changed. I'd like to try being more myself and not try to stretch myself out over every interaction.


I don't know where that will lead. But there's only one way to find out. :D


(Edit: Regarding my videogame project, Duinvoorde. While there's a lot to talk about that subject, just know that I'm proceeding well, and the "failures" mentioned in this post don't apply to Duinvoorde. My apologies if I scared any of you guys. ^^;)

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