SD Trypticon

 Ok... so I managed to finish this SD Trypticon but in all honesty I am not happy with it... feels kinda meh for me. Let's see what will happen once we slap on some colors but truth be told I'm kinda disappointed with how it looks. I really do not like how I added the blacks.

Anyway... moving along...

Trypticon update!

So after I ran this morning and cleaned the house a bit I was able to squeeze in 30 minutes to work on this guy. I figured it might be a good idea to blog again about what I'm drawing right now and what is currently occupying my head. I'll try to keep stuff short as I'm actually writing this while I'm in bed already so I hope that this is a habit that I can do daily.

Saying "No" / Beast Wars!

Finally! Some time to finally paint!

I just declined an unpaid project that was asked of me from someone that was very close to me. Needless to say, that person got hurt. I understand how important the project was to her but I simply do not have the time right now to work on her project, even if it meant a lot to her.

It's sad, really, but I know that I just had to turn it down. My goals for my family are very important right now and any spare time that I have I would rather spend working on projects that would benefit me and my family.

Monkey!

My wife gave me this Optimal Primal as a gift and man I really love it! I've always wanted Primal and this version of him just makes me so happy!

Claws!

Again, another gift from my wife. To me this is the best iteration of Dinobot and I'd say that this looks better than the MP version... plus its more playable!

Beast Wars has been a very important part of my love for Transformers. I rarely pay retail price for figures but for the ones from this line I think I'm willing to spend a bit. I love them and I can still remember the feeling of seeing them on shelves in the 90's and not being able to buy them so getting better versions of those toys is really hitting me hard right now.

Back to Personal Art / Raising Baby Ri

It really feels good to be back to drawing robots again! The past few months have been hectic, what with the move to QC and the book that I just finished editing and laying out. Now that things have settled and that book is done its time to start working on some of my personal projects that I've placed on the back burner.

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I thank the Lord everyday for giving me my son. My wife told me yesterday that ever since my son was born she has never seen me depressed and that she feels that there is a happiness inside of me that was never there before. 

That's true, to be honest. I'm not as prone to getting sad as before, there's just so much to do around the house and having a little boy following you around just makes things more fun. I'm really happy with my wife, she's literally my best friend and it caught me by surprise just how much happier I've become when Ri was born.

Raising a boy scares me a lot. I feel that sometimes I'm not setting up a good example for him or that I haven't been able to give him the best of what I can do. However, I also believe that he needs to see me enjoy the process of raising him so I promised myself that I'll do my best to enjoy raising him with my wife as much as I can.

Change of He(art)

I've stopped looking for clients, and by that I mean that I'm no longer actively pursuing freelance work. The decision wasn't an easy one for me, as I have always imagined myself working from home on dream projects that mainly involve drawing robots. Sadly, while I have been blessed to work on some of my dream projects specially in the last four years, the reality is that the dream gigs are far and few in between and the hours are very long. My wife has taught me that there are better ways to earn and thrive as an artist and one of them is to seek customers instead of clients by making digital products.

I've been very late at this game, I know. I also know a few artist friends who are thriving because they followed this path. Heck, my wife has been doing this for a long time and she's teaching me the ropes and so far I think I'm beginning to understand how this works.

Still, I feel like a total noob, sometimes I even feel lost. What I do know however is that this feels very liberating and this has allowed us to work while taking care of our son. I've actually managed to get back to working on model kits again and once I've wrapped up editing a book for my mom I'd have time to draw mechs again on a regular basis, I think.

So I'm not drawing robots for clients at the moment but I still do so for myself and for the other mecha themed shop that I plan to pursue later this year. Robots are still my first love and I'll get around to pursuing that a lot again once this new shop starts gaining momentum, God willing😁🙏

Baby Ri’s 5 months old!

Yesterday we celebrated my son’s 5th month. His name’s Matthias Orion, his second name of course after Orion Pax, Optimus Prime’s real name hehe :) 

In my previous post I shared that my son wasn’t breathing when he was born. He was actually blue already and could not breath even when they tried manually pumping air so they had to intubate him, meaning they had to hook him up to a machine that would pump him with air so he could breath. The doctor told me that she wasn’t sure why this happened, it could be because my wife had an extended labor, or because my son had already swallowed a lot of amniotic fluid, we weren’t sure. He also acquired pneumonia, again, while the doctor’s cannot pinpoint the cause they say it could probably be because he has already swallowed some amniotic fluid or it is a side effect of being intubated. Almost always, once a tube is placed inside an infant, it will almost always result in an infection which basically meant that the procedure to save my son caused him to get sick as well.

 I knew my son would live, even though there were times when I felt really hopeless because of the endless tests and procedures they had to do to make sure that he was ok. I knew that he would live because he was big, and also because even though he was sick he was very active there. Of course at that time I did not know what would really happen to him but I have resigned myself to accept what God would give me and I was really hoping that what my heart knew, that Ri would live, would be what God would give me. I was in a state of complete surrender to the Lord and even though it was tiring and painful, knowing that deep in my heart I knew that God would take care of us placed me in a position where I could do what I needed to do without breaking down. 

The hardest part was telling my wife who just came out of the operating room that our son was in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. That almost broke my heart... but my wife is strong and she was able to take it. We stood together in prayer and asked God to give us what we wanted.

I almost cried when I visited Ri on my birthday and he was still there at the NICU. I did not celebrate my birthday then, it didn’t matter but I was happy to see my boy that evening.

Needless to say, after two weeks we were able to bring our baby home. The whole hospital stay was expensive and thank God we actually were a bit prepared financially on top of some help we got from our relatives so the whole thing wasn’t as stressful as it could have been.

I never really had the time to process everything that happened until today. What I do know is that I cried so much during the 3rd night that my boy was home while I was carrying him so he could sleep. My wife was sleeping and I sort of allowed myself to cry. At that time I remembered how hard the past two weeks were, how worried I was and how I wanted to panic, scream and just shout at everything because not only was I worried about my boy I was also worried for my wife. I was exhausted, frustrated and angry and all I just thank God that He allowed me to hold everything in during those two weeks because I needed to be strong for my family.

I finally allowed myself to cry because I knew that the whole ordeal was over and we can start to finally take care of our boy ourselves. It hurt so much to see the nurse cleaning him when all I wanted to do was to be able to change his diapers and I was not allowed to touch him. It felt really good to cry... specially when I promised myself that I would once everything’s over. I’m not crazy, I do not intend to bottle everything inside of me and that’s my secret to keeping things together... I make sure I cry when I need to and I rest when I have to.

So Ri is sleeping soundly, but its already 3 amand around this time he starts feeding. My wife takes care of that but sometimes I’m able to wake up and I try to assist her. When I look at them I feel happy, its the kind of happiness that’s different from everything else that I’ve felt and I’m just thankful to the Lord for keeping my boy alive and giving us the chance to have him in our lives. 

 

Working at Home with a Baby 01

Its about 2:15 am and I’m supposed to be sleeping but I have decided to take an hour and a bit more for myself by drawing this Cyclops for my Etsy Store. Having a baby is really tiring, I really did not expect this to be this hard. They weren’t joking when they told us that moving forward sleep would be so scarce we’d count it as a commodity.

Don’t get me wrong though, I have no regrets. I love my Baby Ri to bits and I would do anything and everything for him and his mom. I guess I just did not expect to not have as much time to work anymore.

I used to be a workaholic, like working from 9am to 11pm is not a problem for me and I even welcome it. These days I’d be lucky if I’m able to draw for 3 hours. Most of our waking hours are spent taking care of our baby: playing with him, cleaning him up (he does drool a lot!) and doing all of the household chores that having a baby brings. It’s really tiring, sometimes a bit depressing specially when you think that you don’t have time for yourself anymore and I often wonder when I can go back to working full time again.

However nothing beats the high of seeing your kid wake up smiling. That’s something I get to see on a daily basis. I enjoy changing his diapers because I promised myself that I’d do that for him when I saw the nurse cleaning him up when he was in intensive care (he wasn’t breathing when he was born and had pneumonia, more on that some other time). He enjoys waking up to me and Kris around him and his laughter is infectious. He’s very talkative and I like how he loves playing rough with me and his mom. I see a lot of my wife in him but at the same time, I see a mini version of myself that I can hang out with.

I guess these are the reasons why I’m not that sad, tired or depressed. I guess the proper state would be tired but fulfilled and happy. I’ve politely declined an offer to work again on my dream job as a comic book artist, have decided to stop working with a client that I’ve been working with since 2012 and am not as active at looking for client work as I used to. I haven’t been doing a lot of personal art save for the ones that I do for our Etsy Stores and I barely get to touch my model kits and Transformers but I know that I’m happy. One day we’ll get help so that we can work a bit more for our son’s future but this season, no matter how tiring and taxing trying to work and take care of a baby is, I’ll make sure to enjoy it because one day I know he’ll grow up and I’ll cherish everything from this season.