Character design & illustration / Ernestine from Bowl of Mystery + LeonieUpdate! π
In this little LeonieUpdate:
- Process for Ernestine from Bowl of Mystery
- social media reflection & I’m burnt out on Animal Crossing
- changing up my blog posts

Here’s Ernestine, my serious personality character! π
She’s super literal, anxious and serious about things and jokes go over her head ;D Haven’t fully developed deep backstories for these characters because as aforementioned, I’m just treating this as a fun character design and illustration project :0
Maybe I’ll use these characters for other purposes one day but we’ll see!

Initial sketch! Yes she originally had elf ears and a fluffy tail to play on her anxious, rabbit nature.

2nd sketch: playing with her shapes, costume and hair

3rd sketch: another test

4th sketch: finalising the sketch!

Lineart: I was half asleep when doing this and the colours yesterday :’)

Final illustration: finally finished this yesterday! Oof it was tight :’)
Leonie rambles time!
Reflecting on social media
- since the last MondayLeonieUpdate and now that I’m blocking myself from being logged into social media at my desktop, I think I’m more conscious with how I use my time!
- whenever I’m on social media, I feel like I’m still vying for validation and reassurance in what I post through the likes and stats :< Whoops I’m getting distracted and addicted on the unimportant things!!
- I need to focus on doing my own thing and more important things like my life, work, my few friends, art and my blog here ;D
- again I’ll still check social media at my out of reach ipad so I can still check on replies sometimes :0 I’m an independent, homebody freelancer after all. I cannot quit social media ;P
- stressing that I still appreciate the views, likes, replies and will still thank shares because it means that people are wonderfully supporting the things I do and it all helps me reach more people! Thank you! <3
- all the same, I need to emotionally detach myself so that I don’t depend my whole self worth, work and insecurities upon such numbers. This will take time.
- Oh the good and bad sides of social media and being a hermit :’)
Hey I’m Leonie and I burnt out on Animal Crossing
- the past week was the first time I haven’t played Animal Crossing for so many days!! GASP!! Is this really it???
- to give you context, apparently I have around 465 hours of playtime so that is quite a lot of my life gone already :’)
- as much as I want to collect snow recipes, gift villagers, get all the hybrid flowers and pay off my debt – I’m super burnt out now.
- I’m too scared to go back into this huge timesink again. There’s always things to do every time I do dailies and then 3-4 hours of my life disappear D:
- I even missed out on the fishing tourney last Saturday (because I didn’t know) :<
- I don’t really feel motivated by the mermaid and pirate things either because I’m feeling more wary with my time now and I don’t know where to put these items (running out of room, no thanks to my flower hybrid breeding efforts)
- I’m sad I didn’t bother decorating inside my house and I have yet to fully decorate my island (that’s too overgrown with flowers). Guess I just don’t feel like it right now :<
- goodness this guilt I feel for not tending to the game everyday! But I’m also relieved that I’m finally letting go somewhat! I’m feeling so mixed!! :0
- I think I’ll play only on Saturday nights (for K.K. songs) and villager birthdays from now on. We’ll see π
No more weekly recap blog posts after this!
Thinking of focusing more on art and less on journaling about what I’ve been learning, reading and watching about every week. I tend to get carried away rambling to a tiny handful of kind readers and documenting things. As a result I end up sacrificing sleep and spending all Sunday night and into the morning trying to recap the past week (like I am still kind of doing with this post) when I could be spending the time on sleep, life, art and whatnot at my own slower pace :’)
I really enjoy rambling away at this little blog of mine (it’s my online home and outlet after all) but I need to put some constraints upon myself. It’s going to be hard for me to stick to since time and time again I end up rambling too much every time I attempt to keep things short! And then too many hours are gone :’) Trying to manage my time better!
Consequently I’m going to have a go at:
- recapping some of what I’ve watched, read, experienced and learned and do a dedicated art & blog post for it (about bigger, interesting topics and only if I want to of course)
- to be done at my own slower pace
- this will make me more selective with what I talk about
- I don’t have to stress and talk about things as it happens each week on the night before and morning when I publish the post
- I can take my time, create art or a study for it, take back a bit more privacy and not have to update what I’ve been up to every week.
- I can choose how often to update about myself at any post instead (:
- since I’m not doing weekly recap posts, I’m making each art + blog post count more with (arguably) more focused rambles
- if it happens, maybe I’ll share and link interesting finds along the way in my blog posts! I just won’t really go into depth about it if I have nothing to add.
- now that I can’t ramble and vent through my weekly recap posts anymore (I do feel a bit sad), this means I’ll be bringing back random SuperLeonieMode personal comics as my little outlet!
- thanks to my super long break away from doing them I’m not burnt out on SLM comics right now! But to keep it that way, it won’t be a super regular thing. I don’t want to burn out on the one project again!
As you can see from this post, I’ve cut out the gaming shenanigans section and I’m still rambling and reflecting about art & 3 topics. I’ve only just started to change things up so it’ll take a while to figure out specifics with my constraints. Perhaps each post will be limited to art + maybe 1 additional and optional topic of interest? I will play it by ear :0
Hopefully this will make things less intense every time Sunday and Monday comes along because I’ve been losing too much sleep in general! Weekly recaps became too intense and time sensitive and I’m still not buffered with posts either! Yes I still need better sleep as of current :’)
Maybe it’ll spread the attention around my posts more equally. Maybe people will actually read blog posts more. Or perhaps even less people will read them since a given post may only focus on the art. Maybe I’ll be able to save some time since I’m now posting *all* posts at my own pace. Maybe it’ll make things easier for readers too!
Yes this is why I’m calling these little LeonieUpdate posts so that it’s not just associated with Mondays anymore :0!!
Anyhoo, who knows if this will work for me and everyone but I gotta try! I just hope it doesn’t take me longer to make posts in general; I’m trying to manage the rambly blogging side of things so I can make more art after all :’)
Let me know what you think!
And good Monday morning to you! Thanks for reading & understanding! (:
Yes I’ll try to get more sleep tonight. Please take care and safe!! Hope to catch you next time!
β₯ Support my art & learning journey on Patreon or Ko-fi! β₯
Thanks so much for your support & for reading! You help me keep going! Κ βΏΛ΅β’α΄₯β’Λ΅ Κ β‘
If you want to stay up to date with me, sign up for my weekly blog updates!
Missed the post the other day due to a rough week and being super busy, but your new characters are so cute! I think Ernestine would look really good with a poofy bunny tail haha.
I’ll miss the weekly updates and posts, but If it’s eating up too much of your time that’s no good!
On the other hand i’m excited to see more Super Leonie Mode comics! They’re super wonderful.
Hopefully you don’t feel obligated to keep a schedule. This is all about you after all.
Hey I hope things are getting better and less stressful on your end :< Also happy to see you here! π
Thank you so much!! Haha I decided to tone down the animal features this time with Ernestine :’)
Yeah I’ll miss weekly recap updates too since it’s more freeform but indeed it’s eating too much time and stressful to finish it on the night before and the morning of publishing. I think I end up with more messy writing and formatting too because of that :<
Yay! Thanks for the kind, much appreciated support on my little personal comic!! :0
Oh I do feel obligated as I’m still sticking to posting every Monday with something (at least) and hopefully one or two more posts per week if I’m able to manage it :0 Don’t worry, I do need some structure to stick to!
Anyhoo thank you for reading as always (:
Thank you for sharing! π
Keep up the amazing work!