one thing I'll definitely do before the return of The Clockmaster is I will change the website provider/host/builder. The current one is *decent* but I wanna get weirder and whackier with it. AND! I think all of you deserve arrow key navigation. I think that would definitely improve the reading experience

Hello!! I must ask: what is Asterism and how do I get more ? Thanking you <3

Hi! <3

The full answer on what Asterism is can be found in this ask, but the tl;dr is that it's a 42k story written by my writer best friend, and it's based on my webcomic The Clockmaster. As to how do you get more... well, truth be told, there isn't gonna be more (for now). The story is full of spoilers for The Clockmaster so it can't be published online until the actual story of The Clockmaster catches up; It's pretty late game stuff so it will take not an insignificant amount of time to get there. But once it's safe waters my best friend said they will proudly display it on ao3 haha!

In the meantime I have found this in the vault, it's a sketch from February 2023 when my writer-friend first started writing Asterism. It doesn't reflect the plot of the story anymore, perhaps it never did, but I still like it :)

The Asterism book is coming via post this Wednesday which I'm very excited about! Me and my friend will probably record a little video talking about our little pet project, so if you're curious to see a little bit of the inside of the book you can look forward to it :) I'm super stoked to see all the special formatting styles we useddd yayayay!!!!!

Hi there! I wanted to ask about the shipping dates for the printed version of Ecdysis. Of course I am happy to wait and understand some of the printing issues were outside of your control, but was also just curious about what the timeline was looking like? The PDF is so beautiful and I was very emotional reading it, and I think about these dudes regularly. I hope this ask doesn't make you feel pressured about shipping and stuff. I love this shit and I am happy to wait for it, but I just wanted to check and see if there were any updates. Have a good day!

Hi! Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to post about this on Tumblr! The books are with me and I'm entering the process of shipping them :) there's a large number of orders to fulfill so it might take some time before I get to your order (depending on where it is on the list), but you should receive an email when your package is shipped. I will also announce when all the packages are shipped so if by then something's amiss you'll have a chance to contact me. I hope your package reaches you soon!

Asterism book cover

man i just went back and reread tcm and it still hits. the pacing is very nice, the comedic timing is excellent, and the expressions your characters make are fantastic, cheers

BEAMS

as much as its sad that The Clockmaster has been on hiatus for the past 3-4 years ever since my arm injury... guyssssssss. guYSSSSSsSS. its gonna look so so good i am now a so much better artist than i was 4 years ago, I got so so many ideas on how to represent the themes and emotions and situationsssss i am so excited at the thought of making tcm again aaaaaa

some The Clockmaster character iterations! I've been doodling rough character pages as a reference for myself :)

some The Clockmaster character iterations! I've been doodling rough character pages as a reference for myself :)

(spoilers for today's nyt connections game)

what is an a-rod

this is gonna sound so specific but can anyone link me to that tiktok(?)/video in which a group of 6 guys in 2 teams of 3 play this fake imaginary sport outside, there's a commentator voiceover but the game itself is absolutely nonsensical? But everyone is reacting like the game is super legit? So it will have lines like "Oh it's the rubber duck opening. What will the opposing team d- ITS THE HOTDOG UMBRELLA COUNTER!! WE HAVENT SEEN IT IN AGES-"

please i swear its real

Asterism book cover

(drops an essay of an ask reply) (goes back to my cave)

How long does it take for you to finish drawing?

I'm an artist (beginner) and i unconsciously set unrealistic goals for myself and need a reminder of how long it takes to complete a drawing, Thanks.

Hi! In the context you presented it in, that is a really interesting question, so I'll try to approach it thoroughly. I hope I won't make you roll your eyes too much.

Where to start, where to start... I guess the first thing I should say is that there is a difference between time I spend preforming the action of <drawing>, and the time I spent <working> on a particular piece. The first would be counted in hours, the second one - days. I'm a big believer in slowing things down, and giving things time - going through options, gathering research and references, taking breaks every 1h of sitting and drawing - and seeing things through until I achieve the goal I set at the beginning of the process.

The goals are usually different each time: "quick design", "character exploration", "analysis of an artist's linework and experimenting with the knowledge gained", "creating an aesthetically pleasing image", and so on and so forth. Of course I don't write these down like it's a school assignment, but knowing in the back of my head what I'm actually doing helps me manage my expectations. I also enjoy being conscious of why I create - when I was younger regardless of what I was doing I had the thought "AND IT MUST LOOK GOOD AND PRESENTABLE! BECAUSE PEOPLE WILL LOOK!" ...and I think that obsession is the cancer of creative process.

Since the goals for each picture are different, the time I'll spent on achieving each one will be different as well, because the "satisfactory results" lay in different places. For example, the Marcile sketchpage was created in one afternoon, and took approximately 3 hours. The goal was to play around with a brush that has no opacity forcing my lines to be more decisive. I did that and so it is "finished". There's nothing else I want from it.

On the other hand, the cover of Asterism took about 10 days to create, the goal of which was to make "an aesthetically pleasing cover picture taking colour inspiration from the works of (specific list of artists)". I took my time designing it so that it looks aesthetically pleasing, made sure the anatomy is "correct" (a nebulous statement when it comes to stylised humans), took my time masking, and picking colours, and shading. I wanted it to "look good" to my own eyes so if something was not working I would go back, change it, alter it, move it around... that's the wonderful thing about personal art, you can take as long as you like making something satisfactory.

The funny thing is, with what the Asterism cover actually is (a cellshaded image), it could have been done probably in 4 days by the me 4 years ago. But that person was willing to sit 8-10 hours a day to draw with no breaks, she had little social life, and treated herself as a little circus seal performing tricks so that people clap around her, and the clapping was soooo nice because it meant that people remembered her and she mattered. And it worked for her! For long 10 years! Until her arm gave out, and the reality of never being able to draw again became more tangible than ever, and it's been following her like a fog ever since for the past 4 years. The me today works about 4 hours a day and every hour I take about a 30 minute break. I also don't post half the stuff I draw. There is also another aspect that dictates the speed of creating and that is familiarity with the subject matter. The less you know something, the fast you'll draw it! But as you get to know the intricacies of the process, and see all the building blocks, it will start taking *longer* because you will start accounting for every block. But then you'll eventually get familiar with the blocks and so the time spent on a picture will go down again! The cool yet overwhelming thing about art is that, there are always hundreds of building blocks. Form, composition, ambient occlusion, saturation, hue, light balance, line form...... and those are just the *some* of the generalised *categories*. And each category will have it's own subsection of building blocks! And then those blocks will interact with each other to create completely new area of expertise! This is crazy! Marcille sketch page took me only 3 hours to create because I am already quite familiar with linework - I have drawn 3-4 comicbooks worth of linework. This also means I am familiar with believable anatomy, more or less, which got utilised in the Asterism cover - the main bulk of linework got created during a 3h livestream. So.... what's the answer.... "It's all relative" is so unsatisfactory and probably not what you looked for. But you can draw something in 3 days and kill your body over it. Or you can become an expert in a field and dish the same picture out effortlessly in 8 hours. You can also split that 8h block over multiple days bringing you back up to 3 days. You could even add a whole day of visual research which might make your picture only marginally better. And even if we calculate it in terms of raw working time, pen-to-paper, like a self-inflicted capitalist tumor, that time can fluctuate still due to personal visual library and knowledge base. If I asked Tom Fox how long it takes for him to create his sketch pages his answer would probably be downward of 30 minutes. Yet I need whole 3 hours to create something *less* anatomically correct than him. And so here we are at the end of this perhaps unnecessary essay. And all we learned is this: it depends. Dry, not nuanced tl;dr, my personal timings: single sketch - 30mins; single linework pic 1-2h; Cellshaded illust - 16h; Rendered illust: 20-25h.

Vod published! it will be up for another 5 days (twitch only keeps vods for about a week)

hey, marci

Is there a reason why you let your vod uploaded on your twitch? I saw you made a stream at 1 am and I couldn't watch aa

Heyo! Awh, sorry about that! The reason why the vods are sometimes not there is because during the streams I listen to copyrighted music and twitch reallyyyy doesn't like that lolol

normally I have to go into the settings and post it manually (after twitch mutes all the parts it doesn't like) which I usually remember to do but the stream in question ended around 2 am and it slipped my mind, sorry about that!

I'll see if the vod is still there and publish it if possible 👉👈

hey, marci

Is there a reason why you let your vod uploaded on your twitch? I saw you made a stream at 1 am and I couldn't watch aa

Heyo! Awh, sorry about that! The reason why the vods are sometimes not there is because during the streams I listen to copyrighted music and twitch reallyyyy doesn't like that lolol

normally I have to go into the settings and post it manually (after twitch mutes all the parts it doesn't like) which I usually remember to do but the stream in question ended around 2 am and it slipped my mind, sorry about that!

I'll see if the vod is still there and publish it if possible 👉👈

I feel like I missed something, what is Asterism?

Hi! Aaaaaa I guess I never explained it in an accessible way, I talked about it during livestreams but it's not like these are out there forever

Looooong story short, my best friend is a writer! Additionally they are my confidant and know the plot of The Clockmaster, my webcomic, through and through. So! I commissioned them to write me a Clockmaster fanfic(?) based off of the Superhero Au that we cooked up. My friend is a bit of a perfectionist and very diligent when it comes to their craft and they spent a year writing this story. It ended up being 42k (I comissioned them for 10k)! 42k is literally the length of The Great Gatsby, so I suggested that we should toootally print it and make a book out of it, just for ourselves as a memento. They let me draw the cover for it!

Asterism is the title of the story! :) So tl;dr Asterism is a 42k The Clockmaster fanfic written by my best friend I am so so lucky to have been born just in time to be this person's best friend. Also it feels weird calling it a fanfic? It's a custom made work of art for my eyes only, my golden chalice, my black diamond, the divine balm for my brain and ambrosia for my eyes-

Asterism book cover