๐ŸŒธ Kirby Anniversary Month x PleinAirpril studies days 19 to 22 and I burnt out ๐Ÿ˜ญ

Youtube compilation timelapse for all the plein airpril studies

Kirby anniversary Month x Plein Airpril Day 19

“Welcome in!! Make yourself at home!”
mixing pen and digital painting over it

โ€ฆI’m burning out on having two challenge months March and April in a row
Also considering not doing challenges anymore this year
and I’m just tired of environments it’s really not for meโ€ฆ

Will eventually not check certain active servers for now as well because it’s too distracting
including that plein air daily server when April is over..I don’t know if I’ll do it again next year

And a lot of concerning health unknowns with stressful family situation right now

Kirby anniversary Month x Plein Airpril Day 20

managed to squeeze this in

Had an emergency family situation at 3am onwards so I’m running super low on sleep but gratefully help came

Kirby anniversary Month x Plein Airpril Day 21

Streak broken at the plein air daily server so I won’t get the discord role but I actually finished this before the time cutoff but forgot to post – ah well. I had a family emergency situation and running on over 3 hours sleep :’D

I refuse to let the streak break on my endโ€ฆ.!!

Kirby anniversary Month x Plein Airpril Day 22

the work/life things I was juggling plus the family emergency I had earlier in the week pushed me over the edge and made me forget to post and break my pleinair server streak – which can’t be helped.

So after a lot of deliberation and acceptance I figured I should do one last piece and I’m done now.

As much as it’s great to do 30 dailies, seeing great references shared, having some collected references lined up (thinking I would still do it) and seeing everyone’s inspiring work, I ended up just crashing, sleep deprived, burnt out and lost all motivation and drive to continue with environments with joy and interest.

I managed to push through this one that I already started but it was a struggle to finish.

I shall take a break to recover and I do appreciate that I did this for 22 days and that plein air dailies isn’t for me :’D

Thank you so much for the lovely words on my work
– I don’t even consider myself great at environments!! ; __;
Yeahhh all the Kirby!! Yeah adding Kirbys bring me joy too (because environments are really not my interest haha) :’)

Nah, no thanks I’m done with plein airpril :’D
But yeah the joy is the improvement and friends along the way ๐Ÿ’•

Yeah I had to quit plein airpril a week and a half early because aside from my ongoing stressful and uncertain family situation – I was severely burnt out from environments and didn’t have time to keep it up. I’m not keen on doing plein airpril dailies anymore. So if I ever do it, it’ll be random pieces and NOT dailies.

I cannot pump out an environment study everyday – I was struggling to keep up my waning interest after 20 something days :’) I had to add Kirby shenanigans to keep me interested haha

Currently I’m just learning stuff when I feel able to. Figuring something regular out and juggling as I try to recover from dailies.

No more art community daily challenges this year for me!!

Leonie rambles about…

Kirby Air Riders (spoiler talk)

  • All the charming Kirby characters and animation and environments!
  • finished Road Trip mode (spoiler talk)
  • I am mostly playing for Road Trip and for the story/lore that comes out of it
    • the most robo gorey, horrific and gruesome with the Zorah and spiders
    • the fact that Galactic Nova is an evil, cruel “destroy Popstar” prankster with granting wishes
    • there are so many plot holes the more I think about it – ultimately it’s more about what’s cool with the sequences and it succeeds in doing that
    • why is a mini boss Leo here as a mount?? Huh??
    • what is the point of choosing between the Dragoon and the other machine to ride on at the end??
    • the end song got stuck in my head for a few days
    • had to process the sorta story I watched after a while
    • played road trip less than 2 times with some kind help
      • I thought I had to play it 3 runs to get all the machines for the true end
    • I’m depending on this mode because I’m all alone with no friends to play with :’)
  • certain machines are really fun to play as! I got ones that I rotate between
  • City Trial is not my thing
    • I don’t find it fun/satisfying and it’s too random
    • I know a lot fans for it exist and lot of effort went into City Trial though
    • But it is too random/RNG, meandering and frustrating to find things to level up and optimise the best stats while guessing what mini games you’ll end up with after the 5 minutes of abilities and machine searching
    • and hoping you got a good setup and machine
    • I guess that’s the fun for other people :’)
    • I’m not technically minded for this
  • The fact that there’s not much/no online players to play with when you’re alone
    • Especially for events – I have no one to play with online so I couldn’t play the events ๐Ÿ™
  • Why did I get “please change your setting from local to anyone” with online mode when I’m already on “play with anyone online” setting already?!!
    • It made me feel like I got the wrong setting when I didn’t.
    • It’s just that there’s no one playing it right now anymore ๐Ÿ™
    • I wish there were CPU players for online eventsโ€ฆ
  • seems like you have to go to other people’s paddocks / online lobbies to actually find people…..
    • and most people wanted to play city trail AGH
  • Wished all the Kirby animal friends are available to play as Riders
    • not just Rick
    • but I know it won’t happen because the devs are done with this game ;P
  • In road trip: why can’t I restart the choice I picked if I wanted to pick differently rather than going back to the last checkpoint and having to replay some things I already did?
    • Especially when I find “land/hit on the target” mini games and fighting airborne bosses not fun when long range abilities aren’t spawning
    • Or when I realise I picked the wrong choice of machine…
    • Can you change your machine when you pick a choice to suit the mode/mini game/race/challenge? It’s not made clear/obvious at all if you can. I tried and nope
  • Thank you all the same to the devs for making this wonderful game for fans of Kirby Air Ride!
    • I am not a super fan of the first game though
    • so I had doubts whether Kirby Air Riders was for me
    • but having Road Trip there for solo players like me allowed me to play and have some fun and frustration with the game too :’)
    • I’m not great at this game
  • Thank you for the whole team for making this charming, incredible game!
    • Game dev is terribly hard work, tense and stressful
    • I know and experienced this – plus the crunching and burn out kinds :’)

Personal update

  • work continues to be intense and feeling bummed/sad for a while
    • gotta roll with it because things are out of my control and everyone is busy
    • I just hope things go well and get better (always things that need improving)
    • all I can control is what I can control and improve
      • beyond that I can’t change things alone
    • I say intense and under pressure because I have to decompress a long time after work….
      • it’s draining and I can’t keep it up for long periods of time whenever I intend to
        • and when there’s interruptions
      • I don’t like being under pressure with rushed and tight deadlines for looooong periods of time in general
        • at the moment it’s not extreme but it’s still tight
    • I tend to be the “take a reasonable amount with the creative process and iterations” and go through each creative stage as a whole (ie research, concepting, creating, etc for everything)
      • not go through every creative stage for every output
      • as it’s too much context/mode switching :/
    • just juggling the best we can!!
      • just taking things in stride!!
    • I have to make sure I take longer brunch breaks too this week and the next week
      • because when I finally get into the zone with a time block, I worked longer hours to get some good progress :0
    • I need more sleep wah
  • posted to patreon as a test with post and quips and I don’t know if I should keep trying
    • quips is patreon’s version of twitter/bluesky
    • I just get a little impressions and it doesn’t really go anywhere because I’m just sharing art and my last blog post as a patreon post
    • I’ll try posting quips for a month but not sure about posting patreon posts – I feel undecided
      • especially when I’m a nobody
  • updated my inactive instagram art account so my profile shows my link
    • (link gets cut off when you’re not logged in???)
    • kept/switched my account back to private because I don’t want to encourage people to follow it and I don’t want to encourage any corporation/person to scrape it
      • I still had 11 follow requests though
    • I thought maybe I should make it public so that people can be directed to where I am actually active but then I backtracked on that decision
    • I see some people are still active on instagram but yeah I found myself doing the unhealthy self comparison thing again so I had to get out of there
    • I hate having to log in just to see more public instagram posts :/
  • cleaning a heavy 4L water flask was exhausting….
  • I learned that I’ve been using expired dish washing detergent thanks to a hoarder…..that was ‘fun’ to know
    • when you have a hoarder in your life…you have to clean up their mess and expired stuff
      • can’t convince/educate them and end up frustrated
    • I don’t want to think about this iceberg and dreadful amount of festering stuff
    • I’m afraid to face it…
    • anyhoo had to clean out a lot of expired detergent UGH
  • got some chores done but there’s always more – slow progress !!
  • decompressing, meditation, “head empty”, “zone out” time before sleep
    • really helped me not be so tense and stressed when I go sleep
    • didn’t get clenching pain as much when I wake up :’D
    • I just have to be strict and I MUST meditate before bed so I don’t hurt myself when I sleep
      • at the expense of less sleep….
  • family stressful situation
    • still no answers and they’re evasive about their medical investigation
    • I guess they still don’t know?? :/
    • it’s not super stressful for now…..because things are in limbo, uneasy, uncertain
    • just a lot of life and work juggling instead
    • hope to find out more…..and then things may get more stressful again – I don’t know :<
  • have someone else I follow who is playing Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream yay :’D
    • the two streamers I watched earlier on stopped streaming it :<
  • I hope to spend more time doing 1 to 1 chats with good peeps/friends when able
    • just hard with stressful and intense things happening
    • sometimes it doesn’t work out with some people ๐Ÿ™
  • once again I wonder if I should do my own no mic streams
    • because I am a low social energy hermit trying to bond with others :’)
  • I’m trying out Self Care Vampire again (Alpha version) since they updated just for a few days
    • seems promising!
    • They were asking if people wanted poly relationships and I’m happy for the option
      • not sure if it’s for me though when one person is already a lot (in real life that is)
      • I think friendship, relationship or poly or relationship between other characters are potential possibilities
    • hard to know when most characters are still WIP with the art
    • I’m there for the habit task checker and fictional bonding/romantic story moments ;P

So this blog post is a day or so early than normal because I don’t know if I can post this tomorrow (intense work). Apparently my blog is most popular on Sunday nights by 5% whatever that really means??? I don’t know. I usually post it after a workday to protect my other days but it takes much longer for me to write up the blog because my drained mushy brain can’t function well after work. I’ll see how I go with Sunday??? Just winging this as usual…

Like a broken record, I’m most active – sharing random stuff at my tiny discord server ;P

Thanks for reading! Catch you around there or in my next blog post later this month! I’m taking a longer break!

Been posting about plein airpril for 4 weeks and I will need a break :<


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