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.

Inktober 11 to 30 - Yeah, I've gone really really late with posting this :)

Day 11: Terrorsaur

Day 12: Megatron

Day 13: Dinobot

Day 14: Nightscream

Day 15: Airazor

Day 16: Rattrap

Day 17: Black Arachnia

Day 18: Torca

Day 19: Depth Charge

Day 20: Optimus Minor

21: Ramulus

22: Terragator

23: Inferno

24: Silverbolt

25: Cohrada

26: Noctorro

27: Tigertron

28: Waspinator

29: Snapper

30: Scarem

31: Optimus Primal

I know... its really really late hehe and I have no excuses, other than the usual, which is work, which is also a good thing hehe.

Anyway, I would like to thank the Lord for the year that was and for all the opportunities He has allowed us to have. It was truly a good year and I am hoping for bigger and better things this 2018.

To God be the glory!

Inktober #4 to #10 / When Clients Are Delayed

05: Rhinox

06: Spittor

07: Cheetor

08: Rampage

09: Magnaboss

10: Optimus Primal

Ei guys! So I did not realize that it has been almost a month since I last posted. Inktober was very fun and this is the first time that I have been able to finish Inktober and I'm really glad that Jake Parker started this. It sort of gave me the motivation to try my best to finish my work in the fastest way that I can so that I can draw for myself and since Inktober has ended I have been working on some other projects for myself apart from work.

So lately I have been encountering some problems with my projects, largely because 3 of my clients have been delayed in one way or another. Once has been so busy that I haven't been able to get any feedback for close to 3 weeks now, the other one has delays from another member of the production team and as such we cannot move forward with the finishing touches for what we are working on. The last one has, well, been in a financial bind I think, so payment has been delayed. I have always been working with at least 3 clients at any given time to make sure that I do not have gaps in terms of cashflow that is directly tied to my projects but the situation right now is unavoidable, in my experience. This is not the first time that I have experienced this and thank God that I have a fourth client that has been giving me steady work for the past 3 or 4 years.  This is a reality that we freelancers experience, clients will sometimes get delayed because of reasons beyond their control and unless we have a good enough buffer of money to tide us over until they are ready to push forward, it will really be a problem.

I don't have a lot of time right now to explain everything but my strategy for this is to work on at least 3 or 4 projects at the same time. This way whenever there are gaps you can always work on your other active clients. From my experience it almost always takes at least 2 days for a client to give good feedback so if you schedule well you will be able to really plan out the work so that you're always working on something while waiting for feedback and in effect cash flow is more or less consistent... unless all clients encounter problems then it becomes our problem as well hehe...

So what do we do? I've been freelancing for more than 5 years and this is not the first time, like I said earlier, but I just realized that it is a situation that can be avoided if we as artists are open to other forms of earning. Recently I have been trying my hand at other means of earning through my art, with the ultimate goal of being able to earn on my own without the need of clients. I am trying to figure out other means of earning and as such have dived into operating a store through Red Bubble and by vlogging and blogging. I really do not know a lot right now about all of this, and I'm trying to figure out how all of this works but one of the end goals is to be able to draw what I want to do where I want to and when I want to without having to worry about my clients. I'm hoping my business model will change by next year and hopefully I'll be able to share some of what I find out with you guys.

Here's a link to my Red Bubble store:
My Red Bubble Store

Here's a link to my Youtube Channel:
BryanSevillaDraws YouTube Channel

So yeah, thanks guys and please do visit my channel and check out my store. Until then, keep safe and God bless!

- Bryan

Inktober 2017!

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03

04

So yeah, I'm going to try to make it to complete Inktober this year! It's something that I've been looking forward to do and I've actually dedicated my personal art time for the whole month of October for this. Right now I'm going for a Transformers Beast Wars theme and I'm enjoying it so far. Hope I get to complete the challenge this time :)

Anyhow, I have been contemplating about something that is loosely thrown in conversations here in the Philippines:

"Kung gusto may paraan, kung ayaw may dahilan"  (If you want to do it there is a way, if you don't want to, there is a reason)

This is something that almost immediately irks me because it is often said by someone who is trying to convince someone else to do something for him. I've been told this twice, once by a former employer who was asking me to do something for him even though I was no longer working for him and just recently by someone who was presenting a business proposal to us to whom I declined  because I just wasn't interested in the business that he was selling.

I think that in both instances the use of the saying is wrong. Well, for starters, they were both asking something from me that I did not want to do because it wasn't beneficial to me. By saying that I'm only giving reasons because I do not want to do what they are asking me to do implies that  I can't say no to them, which is kinda stupid. And to say that I have reasons that's why I'm saying no is, well, kinda  true. I have reasons, everybody does. It's not like I have to justify my reasons to them both before I can say no, I don't really have to because I'm not contractually obliged, nor are they my spouse or my parents.

You see, the slogan isn't really negative in and of itself, it's just that people often use it to coerce, or to bully other people, into doing what they want. No, it shouldn't work that way. The saying simply says that people have their reasons for doing stuff and for not doing them. Don't use it to convince people because it's lame, and you lose out on the essence of a rather profound filipino saying.

So there, cheers guys and God bless! Keep on inking! 

Long Day

My dad just got off the hospital this evening. He was confined for almost 4 days because of an eye infection and had he not been admitted he might have gone blind. I dread the day when I’d lose my parents, I really do. I’m just thankful to the Lord that he gave me a job that allows me to be with them when they need me. It’s been a long and tiring day😅

Got these last Friday, thanks a lot to MAAS toys for sending me a complete set as well a cool shirt! I worked on the packaging design for Skiff and Gold while Bobby Skullface did the illustrations. What a nice way to cap a rather stressful week :)

The Last Knight: Bumblebee

Hi guys! Sharing something I had to put on hold for more than 2 months since we had our place renovated 😃 Please do visit my shops:

Red Bubble

https://www.redbubble.com/people/bryansevilla/works/28137889-bumblebee-transformers-the-last-knight?asc=u&c=714560-robots

Society 6:

https://society6.com/product/bumblebee-transformers-the-last-knight_t-shirt#s6-7692385p15a4v104a5v18a11v49

Design By Human:

https://www.designbyhumans.com/shop/t-shirt/men/bumblebee-transformers-the-last-knight-edit/761868/

Larger image here:

http://fav.me/dbo3mvx

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It feels good to be blogging again. It's nice to find a small place on the internet where you can write and only be noticed by people who really like to see what you are up to. It feels more intimate I suppose.

Anyway, it really feels good to have a partner that understands and supports you. I know that a lot of people see Kris and I just goofing around when we are together and that's why they think we weren't on any level serious about settling down but that's so not true. Kris has been the most fun I've ever had and she's literally my best friend for the past 7 years and counting and it feels weird to look at the date and realize that next month we'll be celebrating our wedding anniversary. Time flies fast :)

So I blew off someone today...

I got angry at a close friend today, something that rarely happens. I know that I don't get angered easily and when I do I tend to handle situations in a calm manner but this morning I felt that I needed to say something and I needed to be a bit more forceful because my friend stepped on some core principles that I have regarding my responsibilities in life and the manner in which I try to fill them in.

I think its wrong to say that I don't have responsibilities because my wife and I, we do have them, and its a lot and it's something we gladly do for our families. We believe that God gave these responsibilities for us to help us grow and so far we have been able to fulfill them because we studied and worked really hard to get to where we are today. By no stretch am I claiming that we are "successful" financially but I can say that we are in a generally good place at the moment and we are happy. To label me as a "textbook entrepreneur" just because I said no to a business proposal because I'm not a big fan of brick and mortar businesses these days is an insult not only to my efforts but also to my wife's work ethic. We've studied really hard and tested all that we know because that was all we had then, we were not funded by our parents so we had to trust on our efforts and to belittle all of that hard work is disrespectful, specially when you say it in front of other friends.

So yeah, I'm just  putting it here because I'm sympathetic to the plight of all of us online art entrepreneurs.  We are in a good place. Here,  effort and time is a good enough substitute for money if you want to start a business for yourself. Be open to the possibilities that the global art market opens for you and don't get distracted by the naysayers. I just blew someone off so it feel hypocritical to say this right now but mind you, I did say so in a respectful but direct manner because that is what he needed from me, and I tried really hard to state my case before I did so. So do your research and work hard and smart, and God willing everything will pay off eventually.

I'm on Youtube!

Yeah, I know, it's kind of old news by now but I haven't been able to make new videos since we've started renovating our Grandma's house two months ago and we've only moved in last week so I guess it is high time to get back into the groove of things and as such I'd like to announce, a very late announcement here on the blog, that I'm on Youtube. Yup, all things considered, just starting out, so yeah, please do share your love and subscribe to the channel below:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXbsb_fB5LjAYHQ51YA37GQ?view_as=subscriber

Ok, so a bit of art for you guys and some thoughts:

There are people who will question the path that you take, well meaning ones and others who just want to prove that what they are doing is better than what you are doing or have basically messed up assumptions of what you do with your life. Sometimes the best way to handle this is to just let it go. I'm quite guilty about this because I tend to explain myself a lot to people because I want them to understand what I do but recently I have grown tired of this, of this need to explain myself to the point that they are satisfied with my explanation, like there is always a need to justify what I do. I'm not angry, I'm just irritated I guess.

But life goes on, so as long as I know that what I'm doing is right, I guess my course of action moving forward is to just tell what I need to tell them and move on. As much as I love a healthy debate I know that there are far more things of consequence in my life that I need and want to take care of. So there, cheers and God bless!

It's Been A While!

It's been a while since my last update, and have been very busy with work and adjusting to married life (yay!). Here's Huffer, something that I worked on during breaks.

Gears

Finished something, yay!