#summs-thoughts

[summmeister-art]

2025: Art in Review

Another year, another art review! 2025 has laid its greasy palms to rest and I REALLY need a shower. It had good art though! Pretty happy with my art style progression this year. I know I say this EVERY year and this one is likely no different but I think I’ve finally found an art style I want to continue with permanently. Now let’s see what Summ one year from now has to say about that. You know the drill, month by month, commentary for each one.

January

Pretty uninteresting month to start with. Unfortunate! A Skweeb piece and gift art for a friend that I can’t show. I was likely busy around this time. I was also starting to feel a little discontent with my current art style at this time too, so there’s that. Not much to mention, things get more interesting later.

February

Okay! An interesting month! I can work with this. Firstly, art style exploration. A lot of it. Some of it I’m happy with, some of it I’m not happy with. I’m by far most happy with the Birdhouse In Your Soul art I made this month. It's a very experimental piece, but I’m quite fond of it. I don’t typically do experimental art, even now, but I felt like I wanted to do something and the end result was beautiful. Lastly, I contributed to the Crazy Clown Collab on Newgrounds this month! I am really happy with the Lucy drawing I made for it and I hope I’m able to contribute to more collabs in the future.

March

Some nice new art of Chao, and I made a social media banner as well, finally… A NEW RHYTHM HEAVEN GOT ANNOUNCED? Well colour me surprised, I just had to make a drawing for it! These fellers were shown in the trailer and they spoke to me… in a figurative sense, I didn’t hear their voices or anything. The ONE Nintendo Direct I couldn’t see live and they pulled this on me. The audacity. In all seriousness, I’m quite excited for Groove and hope it lives up to the quality of previous Rhythm Heaven games considering how long it’s been!

April

Starting off April: Yet more art style exploration! A funny little Jevil, a Kirby that, while I didn’t initially care for, I’ve grown to love over the course of the year and finally, oh hey, another collab! Past Summ did not disappoint. This pesky Waddle Doo was for the Kirby’s Return to Dreamland Collab! It was great fun to participate in and I thank the mods for hosting it. One thing I noticed while drawing this was that the colours were quite pleasing. The shading looks really nice and I’d like to do more of it. Surely that doesn’t mean anything!

May

I took a little bit of a break from drawing… for like two weeks. I could have sworn it was longer. But when I came back, I tried doing something a little different: Some high contrast shading. It didn’t look too good at first, but hey, I got better. Next up was a Meta Knight using some PHOTO reference! Not that I hadn’t done that before, but it’s still really cool to use a picture I took myself as pose reference. I think this drawing came out pretty damn good too.

What’s this? Art Fight’s comin’ up!... In like two months, but still. I need to get some reference ready! And hoo boy did I. I’ll only be showing a single piece of reference for this month, but the high contrast shading? The layout of the reference? The fun little character logos I made? Pure catharsis.

June

More reference art! But first, Deltarune Chapter 3 & 4 just dropped. I gotta draw a Jevil for the occasion! Not too happy with this one honestly, things just didn’t come together as I wanted them to. But that’s no reason to be upset, because I got right to work on the rest of my character references, including some for characters I hadn’t yet properly established! Spooks received a complete redesign that turned him from a fairly generic pumpkin guy into a pumpkin vampire! I really enjoyed designing the clothes for him. I took inspiration from characters like Alucard, from Casltevania. Also, both Mint and Gravi have been established as proper Summ characters and now have reference art! Cool!

July

Art Fight mooonth! Last year, I wanted to do a drawing every day, but I couldn’t quite achieve it. This year, I passed with flying colours! One drawing every day for 30 days… Art Fight is 31 days but 30 is a nice round number so I didn’t do one on the final day. Does it mean I didn’t do one EVERY day? Yes. Do I care? No.

If you'd like to browse all the art I did for Art Fight this year, you can do so here.

Unlike last year, no personal pieces this month. Sorry! Doing one piece of Art Fight art every day tends to not leave a lot of time for other things. Who’da guessed?

Well that is, except for one thing…

August

Ah yes, August, the wind down month, and this year was no different… or was it? Actually it was 4 days of almost CONSTANT work to complete Floop, my submission for the GMTK Game Jam 2025. This was my first game jam and I learned a lot during it… mostly to manage my time better. In Floop, you play as Gravi as he navigates an unfamiliar place with some… interesting geometry. I drew sprites, programmed everything, and got it all working for the deadline on the 3rd of August! Two of my friends worked on some original music for it too! You can play Floop here. Only one piece of art this month, A cute little Hornet as we finally got a release date for Silksong. Funnily enough, this piece is oddly reminiscent of something IN Silksong, but that’s spoiler territory. I predicted the future! I should go buy a lottery ticket.

September

I just LOVE drawing things I’ll regret. Do YOU like drawing things you’ll regret? Anyway, here’s Skweeb as Monokuma. Skwonokuma. I’m sorry.

Hey hey, Silksong was good! Silksong was REALLY good! I like that Trobbio fella, so I drew him! What a diva. The colours on this one are really nice, and I REALLY like the pose! Still holds up even after a few months. My art doesn’t usually do this. I have perfectionism problems.

October

Halloween, Halloween! The spooky month, with lots of spooky art to compliment it: Pumpskwin is back for another year! Really really happy with the shading on this one. It’s getting ever so closer to how I shade now! Just a little further to go… and a little further I got! A new profile picture for myself despite having made one earlier in the year. Remember what I said about not liking a lot of my previous work? Either way, it’s so, SO close to how I draw now. Next month, I swear.

But that’s not all! I got a new assignment at University this month, a real big one, making a detailed 3D model of anything I wanted! And like a complete buffoon I chose a character model. I needed to choose a character to model and like an UTTER buffoon I chose to create one from the ground up. But it led to one of the most unique characters I’ve ever created. The art speaks for itself here, I am blown away with what I managed to accomplish on it. Now for that model…

November

Only two pieces this month, but these are two real stand-out pieces! Firstly, something a little bit different. I felt like drawing Troupe Master Grimm from Hollow Knight. But personally, I don’t think he lends well to high contrast shading on account of the fact he’s not a very bright character. So I went with something a little different, and I think I made the right choice here! Lots of detail, lots of grain, lots of space taken up on my computer from how large the project file for this is.

Next up, a new drawing of Chao, and it’s in the art style I use now! I told you we’d get there. I cannot understate just how happy I am with this piece. Even now, I’m still blown away by how lively the style is for this. THIS is what I’ve wanted to do for the entire year, and I finally achieved it. This is why I was so sure about this style. It hasn’t gotten even slightly old for me in the past month, and no other style has done that for me. Expect a lot more art like this.

December

Chriiiistmas is calling! Did somebody ask for a new seasonal Skweeb design? I wanted to do for Skweeb what I did for him during Halloween: Give him a unique look for the occasion! This time, he looks like a snowman and has candy cane horns! He’s on the nice list this year, I swear.

I also participated in two Secret Santa events this year, but I can't show those here. Depending on the platform you’re reading this on, you can see one of them posted on my profile! So go do that. I will admit, taking on two separate secret santas while also having strict deadlines for University assignments seemed like a really bad idea, and it kinda was! But despite that, I produced two fantastic pieces of art for those events, it just sucks you can’t see them. Oh well…

Of course, I also had the Christmas piece this year, but this one WAS rushed. Not very Christmas-y aside from the presents in the background.

Phew! That’s all 12 months covered! To tell you the truth, this was written in about 2 hours while VERY sleep deprived. I think retrospectives are at their most insightful when you can barely remember what happened 5 minutes ago. I really do hope I can keep this momentum going into the new year, especially as work clears up and I have more time to spend doing whatever it is I want to work on! Going into 2026, I want to work on a lot more video games. As it is currently, I like making them but I don’t do it a lot. But now I have TONS of ideas swishing around in my brain that I want to make reality, so expect to see a lot more games from me in the new year.

Of course, you all know what comes at the end of one of these, I hope. Is this your first one? Either way, the yearly redraw of my first ever art piece, Jack Frost sitting. Not to toot my own horn, but I think this is the BIGGEST improvement I’ve ever had between years. I can’t name a single bad thing about this piece. Just IMAGINE what next year’s could look like!

Thanks for reading. 2026 is creepin’ right up on us!

[summmeister]

A Look Over the Art I Made in 2023

2023 has come and gone, with a sizeable improvement on my art skills. Once again, I am VERY proud of the work I managed to accomplish this year. I'll be going over some of the highlights month by month in this post, being sure to point out anything of note.

JANUARY

Starting off the year, I made some new artwork of Skweeb! I consider this fairly outdated now, but it did start a few trends with the character, mainly how I draw shine on him. His eyes bulge outwards, they're not holes! I also drew @akfamilyhome's character, Leddy.

FEBRUARY

This was a BIG month for me! I tried a lot of new things, and most of them worked out! This month also contains what I consider to be one of my best drawings this year, a celebration of Hollow Knight's 6th anniversary. Other highlights include a dashing tribute to Dangeresque and an entirely new reference sheet for Skweeb!

MARCH

March was not a particularly noteworthy month. These are the only two drawings from it! That said, I am quite happy getting any drawings out this month at all! As you'll see later on, this wasn't actually my most dry month.

APRIL

A VERY full month! I can't even fit everything I wanted to! Lots of Skweeb here, some Lucy too! Also a fitting send-off to Courtney (very sad Dead End got cancelled). Tried some big things here, like with the parody Album art, but for the most part I was just doing what I was good at: simple character full-bodies.

MAY

VERY dry month for art. This is the only piece from May! I participated in @some-fool-fp's aRtPG collab this month. Skweeb joins the party!!!!! Made my own custom logo for him, too.

I had a LOT of college work this month. I was working on a game!!! I got the highest grade possible on it, very proud of that. If you would like to play it, you can do so here. Just a warning though, it's very short and VERY jank at times.

JUNE

Another big month!! Some proper reference of Winslow, another Jevil drawing, and my FAVORITE piece of Skweeb art to date!!! The pose and the shading is just so good on it, I love it.

JULY

...Well this is awkward.

Art Fight was this month, and with all of my effort going towards that, I kinda... didn't draw any of my own art this month. Whoops.

Let's press fast forward, shall we?

AUGUST

A NEW OC WAS CREATED THIS MONTH!!!! Meet Chao. He helps out at the circus. He babby. I put a TON of effort into getting his design just right and ensuring he had the proper referencing before working on anything else. I love this 'lil guy.

Also some of my favorite art from this year!!! Inspired by Lemon Demon's "One Weird Tip", I made some art that takes place on a ficticous desktop! Getting the shapes and text right was hard, but I am so glad I put the time and effort in.

SEPTEMBER

Always Watching.

WOW, I am so so proud of what I accomplished with this CoTL piece. Everything from the pose to the composition and the use of colour is just PERFECT. This is up there in my favourite pieces of art from this year.

Skweeb and Jack Frost are here too... wait, it's not December yet!

OCTOBER

A certain someone turned 2 this month! My baby boy, now 2 years old... how time flies...

It was halloween this month too... but Skweeb isn't dressing up this year. It's Lucy in his place! Got some nice Jax art here too, I love that asshole.

NOVEMBER

I was never the most content with my previous Jevil artwork. I never felt like I was giving it my all, which is why I'm happy to say that this month, I did!

I also took a second shot at drawing Jax; this time, featuring Pomni! I used thinner lines and taught myself how to draw hands a whole lot better, I think it helped, haha.

Lastly, (part of) my piece for @hillelart's 10th Anniversary FNAF collab! The full thing is staying secret for now. Keep an eye out for January 15th!

DECEMBER

Finally, we arrive at December.

Funnily enough, I didn't actually draw for half the month. But when I got back into it, I got BACK in. I'm very proud of both of these pieces, and the shading and blending I used in them! This certainly feels like a new era of my art, and I'm looking forward to continuing it!

And that's it. You made it to the end! Most people just together a simple image for their art recap, and while that certainly works just fine, I like to go into the nitty gritty, write down my entire year in art, y'know?

I'm not sure if this year contains as much progress as 2022, but it certainly contains a BOATLOAD of progress! Look back at the start of the post and compare it to the end of the post, the difference is insane!

Lastly, I've got just one more thing to show, once again, redrawing my first ever piece to mark off yet another year. I hope you like it, you'll only have to wait another 365 days for the next one!

Bring on 2024!

[summmeister]

A look over the art I made in 2022

Once again, a year has flown by, and I’m none the wiser to the sheer amount of progress I’ve made with my art over the past 12 months. It’s astonishing now to look over all the drawings I’ve created, comparing the earlier ones to the later ones, and seeing clear as day how I’ve gained a clearer eye for detail, style, and consistency.

In this post I’ll be going over the past 12 months of my art and briefly explaining any pieces that stand out, showing how they made an impact on how I approach the hobby of illustration.

JANUARY

To kick off the year, I participated in HillelArt’s Rhythm Heaven art collab! I both contributed an art piece and helped with the project itself, creating the grid and frame that artists would use to draw their pieces around. I also created a much more in-depth reference sheet for Skweeb, a major upgrade from the previous, more lore heavy sheet I had made in November of 2021.

FEBURARY

February was an… interesting month, shall we say. There was a trend involving, well, I mean I feel like the images explain themselves. I feel oddly compelled to do this again, and I have no idea why.

MARCH

March was a depressing month for me. I was having an odd crisis around my art style and where I should go with it. Some of these pieces look very different than anything else I had put out this year! I ended the month with a drawing of Jevil. My second attempt at drawing the character, in fact. I hate this drawing. To be quite honest, I think it’s the worst thing I put out this year. I hated it so much I immediately went in for a second attempt. It would be finished the next month.

APRIL

On the 1st of April, I finished my newest Jevil drawing. I’m quite proud of this one, I think it’s one of the best things I had put out up to that point. A lot of my friends agreed with that as well. It’s put together fantastically. This drawing also marked me switching my pen that I use in Clip Studio Paint to Real G-Pen. The less blurry lines allowed my art to stick out more, I feel.

This month, I also created the main artwork for Skweeb that I continue to use, even now. I think I’ll update it soon, but it’s lasted for longer than any of the previous “Renders” I’ve made.

MAY

May was generally uninteresting. I was busy with college work, so I didn’t experiment too much. I continued to improve this month, experimenting a little with smooth shading. I also made a piece I will only show and not talk about whatsoever.

JUNE

June was, again, generally uninteresting, But I did create 4 new original characters this month! It had been a while since I last create new OCs, and I felt a drive to create new ones. I do quite like them, although I admit I haven’t given any attention to them since, and I should create new follow-up art for them.

JULY

During July I participated in 2022’s Art Fight! Because of this, there’s only a couple drawings from this month that aren’t related to the event. However, these couple pieces I feel are important. They’re both Don’t Starve drawings, predominantly featuring the character Wortox. These are an extremely large bump in quality to what I had been making previously that it actually scared me a little. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to follow up to the first drawing, but I luckily proved myself wrong and proceeded to make a new piece of art I’d consider even higher quality than the previous. Quite happy with how July ended up!

AUGUST

August was a very dead month for art. I was VERY burnt out from making so many pieces for Art Fight, so there’s only one drawing from this month, however, it’s no small drawing! It’s a large collection of my favorite demons and imps from media that inspire me.

SEPTEMBER

September marked the first month I’d try to experiment with art more, and actually being successful! I started off the month with remaking emotes I had made earlier in the year, under a new style which would stick out much more. I like how these emotes turned out, and the style works well for both Dark Mode and Light Mode users! Next up, I created the character Lucy, which you’ve likely seen me post about recently as I redesigned her only a few days ago! (As of this post.) I also created this moody and atmospheric drawing of a plague doctor, where I tweaked around with colours to show warm lighting.

OCTOBER

Skweeb turned one year old! I made a fan art collage to celebrate, but that’s not really original art. This month, I was also given access to a drawing tablet with a screen and used it to create a drawing for Klei’s yearly Halloween fan art event for Don’t Starve Together. Once again, I’d experiment with smooth shading here, coming out to very interesting results indeed! While I’m firmly sticking to flat shading for now, I can definitely see myself to returning to smooth shading in the near future as I attempt to get better at it. I think some surfaces look much better when shaded smoothly!

NOVEMBER

November was another month that doesn’t have much of note except… Courtney… I don’t have much to say. No, not at all.

DECEMBER

And finally, we arrive at December! THIS MONTH!!! I experimented with editing colors on drawings to match the atmosphere, with blues for colder environments. As you could likely guess, I tried this out with a Christmas profile picture. I think it came out quite well! As well as this, I (VERY recently) Decided to switch to a community CSP pen for my drawings, as I’ve grown a little tired of the rougher pen look. As of right now, I’m quite happy with the change, although feelings can always alter down the line!

Once again, we arrive at the end of the art recap. While most people simply just put together a simple image, I like to go into detail how I was feeling throughout the year and anything that might have changed how I approach illustration. 2022, suffice to say, contains maybe even more progress than 2021!

Last, but certainly not least, I, once again, have redrawn my first ever piece of art I made when first delving into this hobby. I hope you like it!

Bring on 2023!

[summmeister]

Who is Skweeb?

While I have told bits of pieces of the story when people have asked, I've never put together the full story into an easily accessible post like this. This should give people an idea of exactly who and what Skweeb is, for those who might not have stuck around with me for long enough to know through experience.

Skweeb is the character I often use the represent myself online. He's a short, plump red demon/imp with spikes on the side of his head, ears on top, and two large black eyes connecting to his mouth, which has two prominent fangs. He has mitten hands, stumpy, boot-like feet and a black tail.

Skweeb is an interesting character. Dating back to his origins around the first half of October 2021, I created him with no intention to become a proper character. He had no name, looked very primitive, and featured alongside two other demons, that I'd also later redraw and expand with proper names. His creation was an accident!

The drawing initially didn't gain much traction. I went on to work on my next drawing unaware that he'd very quickly become who I use to represent myself with online. If the drawing didn't do well, why would I pivot back towards the character?

The reason is that this unnamed, throwaway character got me my first ever piece of fan art, from one of my good friends!

Seeing this, I worked towards making Skweeb into a full character, starting with the name. Where does the name come from? quite frankly, I'm not sure myself. It's simply something I thought of randomly while looking at the character. It could have possibly come from the game Bugsnax, as one of the characters often calls the main character a "Squeeb" during the earlier parts of gameplay, although I admit that's a random guess. I'm really not sure!

Other runner up names included Prud, Mal and Fom.

After the inital outburst of love for the character, I quickly started on developing him out more. Over the next few months, Skweeb's legs would be made longer, he'd gain a much more pronounced belly, and an overall more "rounded" design. By april of the next year, most of these changes has been made, and Skweeb looks a lot more like what he looks like now!

It's only been just over a year since the character's creation, but I am so, so happy that I managed to settle on someone to represent myself with online. In 2021 I was going through an odd "Identity crisis" regarding how I presented myself online. Up to this point, I had been using Jack Frost from Shin Megami Tensei as my "sona" of sorts, but considering he wasn't something original I came up with, it always bothered me. Skweeb changed that.

While I do use Skweeb as the character to represent me online, there is one thing I want to specify. He's not me. He's a character I made, and use to represent myself, but he's not a personified version of myself. He's different in key aspects, such as various parts of his personality. I like the 'lil guy I've created, but he's not a representation of myself in an OC.

And thus concludes the story of how this duder went from a throwaway halloween imp to demon at the forefront. I hope you enjoyed! I'd been putting off telling this story for so long because, really, I'm just lazy. With the addition of this to my Tumblr posts, I hope to get these out a lot more quickly, I still have ideas.

Bada bing bada fuckyou bai

[summmeister]

Social Media and Negativity

It's late here while I'm writing this, I should have went to bed an hour ago! Although I've been thinking of making this post for months now, and I suppose now is the time I finally will.

Over the past few months, I've noticed how a lot of people tend to carry themselves on social media. People say it's good advice to leave sites like Twitter because they're often, for lack of a better term, complete hellholes. People, when given the power of anonymity, can do great things, but that also comes with negativies, like many other advantages and disadvantages the internet brings.

But that's not what this post is about, rather, it's that I feel a lot of the people I see on social media focus far, far too much on the negatives of life rather than the positives. Life can be shitty! I'd know; but I often don't see these people sharing things that make them happy, or things that they're interested in. Rather, they tend to get caught up in drama, focussing on a person that's done wrong more than I'd consider healthy so that they can "own" them, or exclusively posting about how everything is getting worse and there's no reason to do anything. As much as it sounds harsh and rude, I do find people like this, that focus far too hard on spreading negativity can often get annoying after a while. I understand some people may not feel the best, or need someone to vent their emotions to. We all feel like that sometimes, just please don't spout it all publicly. A lot of folk don't like seeing that sort of thing, and oftentimes, I'm part of that crowd.

I've considered leaving twitter for a while now, but I realise it wouldn't take away the problem of taking myself away from the negativity. It's everywhere. I'm not saying you can't be negative. If you see something you don't like or don't approve of, it's entirely your choice to tell others about it. Just please be aware that overdulging in negativity will make you and those around you less happy simply because you're trying not to focus on the positives of life.

Life is a wonderful thing. You have the power to do anything, go anwhere, indulge in any hobby. If you see something you enjoy, enjoy it! Go crazy about it! I love indulging in the things I enjoy. It's an unparelled feeling.

Sorry for the more negative post, but as I've said, I've been thinking of writing this for months now. If there's any spelling or grammar mistakes, I apologise haha, I've completely rushed this before heading to bed, but I needed to get these thoughts out.

And one last thing. Please don't take this post as a targetted post if you think it's about you, but if you're strong enough to identify you have an issue gripping onto negativity, I implore you to try and find something you enjoy talking about, rather than talking about the same negative topics.

It's okay to talk about something you feel strongly about, even if it's negative, but it's not to overindulge in negativity to the point it starts driving people away.

[summmeister]

COD Zombies

Lately, I've really been getting back into playing Call of Duty: Zombies. I was never much of a COD multiplayer guy, mainly because I'm terrible at it. But zombies is different. A co-op mode, wave based, two things I thoroughly enjoy.

For those who don't know, COD zombies is a bonus mode in Treyarch's Call of Duty games in which up to 4 players survive against endless waves of zombies while gaining points from kills that can be used to buy weapons, open new parts of the map and buy perks, which give you upgrades such as faster reloading, more health, or allow you to carry up to 3 weapons. It's got a story, too, but it's far too complicated for me to try and get into here.

Its origins are fairly interesting, too. It was originally developed by Treyarch employees during their free time, not yet being approved by Activision. Although after everyone was allowed to test it out, it was come to the conclusion that it should be added to the game as a bonus mode unlocked after beating the campaign. While many people say that it wasn't advertised before launch, this is actually false. There was a trailer before the game came out, but it wasn't advertised nearly as much as the other modes.

In its later years, zombies became known for its easter eggs, complicated processes which can give you powerful weapons, unlock the ability to upgrade your gun via the pack-a-punch machine (although those aren't usually part of the egg) or even end the game entirely, allowing you to complete some of the maps without dying.

It's weird to think I got into it for the first time with Black Ops 3, considering it's now considered one of the best games for zombies in the entire series. Shadows of Evil particularly is one of my favourite maps, and it seems that's the general consensus among the community, which is great considering it was my first map! I do see people complain about it being a little complicated for a first map, although I don't have much issue with it now.

Zombies chronicles really added a ton to zombies. 8 Maps, remastered. It brings the total map count in BO3 to 14 zombies maps, such a wide selection.

I'm hoping to snag BO3 on PC during the upcoming steam sale, I'm much better at aiming with a mouse and keyboard rather than a controller.

I understand I didn't go too much into the maps here. I apologise! I feel like I've run on a bit already, but I will say if you're looking for a fun co-op waved survival experience, COD zombies may be for you. Or you'll like Killing Floor 2 more but, ah, I'll get into that another time.