Im alive! and I dug up some doodles for u
Combination art block/back hurty put me into a haitus. But Ive been writinggggggg. I have a basic storyboard down for a comic now and the plot is SO JUICY. I know its not very interesting to tell yall about this without sharing any art but Im just very excited to have made another jump of progress towards realizing the story thats been knocking around the inside of my skull for nearly a decade. Ill share some OC designs next time :^)
Centurion. (oc design)
Did you know that earwigs have cute little birdy angel wings??? I thought they had roundish wings but look at this theyre like cherub bugs.
Of course i gotta draw Ross like this at least once.
AAAA What!!?? They Fold?? They smol??! They fly???? Take all the best of both wing types and BAM! it’s this. Holy shit.
i have done some diligent hw, and will now present you with the best phone rendition i can muster
behold, beauty:
the end product actually looks like a little seed, it’s great
Hello! I saw your wonderful alien centaur designs, and I thought I’d let you know that there’s a sci-fi book series (Animorphs) with very similar aliens called andalites. It’s got quite a large active fandom despite the series ending 20 years ago, especially on tumblr, so you’d probably enjoy taking a look at the andalite fan works! :)
Huh I had no idea animorphs ever had a fandom much less one thats so poppin. But I just searched it and oooo yea! fun alien centaurs!
I gave her some scifi armor. It ended up very bram stoker dracula insp (my absolute favorite fictional armor design).
Hi i just stumbled upon your cardiovascular system angel and it’s absolutely incredible! I really love it on so many different levels, I especially like making the lungs the wings. Would you ever be willing to sell prints of it? I’d love to hang a picture of that on my walls!
Aw thanks so much!
I have that on my list of potentials for prints! But I need to do some research abt print quality before I can set up a shop for em.
At the moment I cant really give a time frame for when they would be available…
I spent ten years building up a following on Tumblr. I had 30k+ followers, great engagement, it helped my career thrive like nothing else. I could quit my day job and live off the fan base I’d accrued.
Then, their policies changed. Half my work was no longer allowed. People left the site in droves. I left too, for awhile. I came back to a ghost town. I still have 25k followers, but I don’t think more than 10% are active anymore. I’m followed by ghosts. Same with DeviantArt, although I was never quite as big there, and I’ve been gone so much longer.
This disallowed half of my work was never allowed on Facebook in the first place, or Instagram, but their algorithms are such that my stuff rarely makes it to anyone’s feeds, and if I post a link to where people could actually pay me for my content, it’s hidden unless I pay for it. Patreon swept my work away to a dark corner where no one could see it unless I personally guided them there. Twitch is so strict you can’t even show bare feet. The death of Google Reader means nobody follows RSS feeds anymore, so I can’t direct people to my own site.
So there’s Twitter I guess, where I can post whatever I want, but again, algorithms. But more than that, I don’t have the energy to build up a following once again on a site I don’t own that can delete my career on a whim. The thought of spending time jumping around through hoops for attention just to have it taken away again has stripped any motivation I had to try.
The internet has been gentrified. All the small cute houses and mom & pop shops have been shut down and replaced by big corporations that control everything. I’ve been making webcomics for twenty years, and at the start, the internet was a beautiful wild place. Everyone had a home page. It was like having a house and people came to visit you and you would visit other people in their houses. Now, we don’t visit each other in personal spaces anymore. It’s like we have to visit each other in the aisles of a megamart. Everything is clean and sanitized and the weirdos who made the internet what it was are no longer welcome. No space for freaks anymore.
People still ask me for advice on how to break into comics, and I don’t have any wisdom because I don’t recognize the internet anymore. I don’t feel comfortable working within its boundaries which seems to be getting smaller and smaller and smaller. None of the tools I used when I started exist anymore. They’ve been replaced by things I don’t know how to use. I don’t think I could break into comics today. 2002 had so few barriers compared to now. You might have started on Keenspace, but you could reach a point where you could break away to your own site and people would go to it. Now, you start on Webtoon or Patreon and I guess you just stay there? It feels so much like owning a hardware store for years and then having to go work as a cashier at the Home Depot that put you out of business. I’m looking at my career trajectory and it all points to being a Wal-Mart greeter with uncontrolled arthritis.
I don’t want to make “content,” I want to make comics, I want to make art, and I want to do it in a space that is mine. I’m not sure there’s a place for that anymore.
I don’t have the energy to build up a following once again on a site I don’t own that can delete my career on a whim.
It feels so much like owning a hardware store for years and then having to go work as a cashier at the Home Depot that put you out of business.
This post hits SO hard.
△△△EPILOGUE: THE DAFT ZINE IS HERE△△△
PREORDERS ARE NOW OPEN FOR ROUND THREE UNTIL APRIL 23RD AT 11:59PM EST
△The Daft Zine△ is a non-profit fanzine celebrating the French electronic duo, Daft Punk, and highlights their contributions to music over the past 20 years! The artwork covers six eras of Daft Punk’s history: Homework (1993-99), Discovery (1999-2004), Human After All (2004-2008), Tron (2008-2011), Random Access Memories (2011-2016), and Starboy (2016-2017).
All proceeds after printing and shipping will be donated to Music Unites, a national non-profit organization with “the mission to raise academic and lifetime achievement for at-risk public school students through the support and creation of unique music education partnerships and programs.”
△ ZINE SPECS △ 6x9 Inches △ Perfect Bound △ Full Color △ 110 Pages △ 73 Participating Artists △ 70+ Comics/Illustrations
△ FEATURED ARTISTS △
▲ 4mi_T ▲ Abelle Hayford ▲ Agroshka ▲ Ale Carrasco ▲ Alex P Perkins ▲ Alexia Khodanian ▲ Alisa ▲ Alyssa Leandra Dalangin ▲ Alyssa Rodriguez ▲ Angel ▲ Audrey Mok ▲ Aya K ▲ Babel ▲ Baru ▲ Bioatomic ▲ Bri ▲ Bridget Gibson ▲ Cherri ▲ Colleen Durant ▲ Comaco ▲ Crazy Cray ▲ Crow ▲ Dell Linney ▲ Dot Lee ▲ Dunesand ▲ Elena “Leo” Redmond ▲ Ellie Rumsey ▲ Emmie ▲ Erica ▲ Eunice Ng ▲ Gaulll ▲ Greyson ▲ Haley Kasof ▲ Ix ▲ Jackie ▲ Jamie Loughran ▲ Jannelle ▲ Jena ▲ Jotman ▲ Julshii ▲ Lauren Franklin ▲ Lizbeth Rojas Becerra ▲ Luc ▲ Lucas Peverill ▲ Machaila Gray ▲ Marty ▲ Mary Rooney ▲ Matthew McGuigan ▲ Mel Tow ▲ Moru ▲ Olivia F ▲ Omurizer ▲ Paige McIntosh ▲ Pelcron ▲ Perseus ▲ Pompadere ▲ Puffoon ▲ Rose Mayer ▲ Saleha Chowdhury ▲ Sam ▲ Sancho G ▲ Sara ▲ Silver C ▲ Slumberfish ▲ Tanami Manaeva ▲ Tora ▲ Ty ▲ Vincy G ▲ Virginia Drummond ▲ Yugo Limbo ▲ Zi Xu ▲
Font Design ▲ Sholoteule ▲
Pixel Design ▲ Alice Lo ▲
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△ LAST LAST CHANCE △
After Round Three of preorders is completed, the zine will NOT be available again online. Please do not miss out on the chance to own a copy of the Daft Zine! Your unwavering passion for this project has been such a great joy over the years. Thank you all so so much for your support, you guys Robot Rock!
Last week to preorder!
The Earth Shaker. The Horse Lord. Warden of the Water. Ocean King Neptune.
Of all the Gods, none despise humanity as much as Neptune. In the time of the Titans, he was a God of the land, rupturing the ground beneath his feet, causer of droughts and keeper of springs, slayer of men for being hunters of his horses.
When the Titans were overthrown and Jupiter took over as leader of the gods, he saw the danger that his own brother was on his future followers. To keep him out of the human realm he designated Neptune to be the King of the Sea, ruler of a humanless realm.
Bound to the sea, he could do nothing but watch as humanity upheaved his land into fields of crops, break his wild horses and turned them into beasts of burden, drank and polluted his hidden springs. worst of all, humans couldn’t even stay out of his realm, no matter how many storms he stirred, humans learned to master his waters, riding it just like how they ride his horses.
Despite his misanthropy, he is the god most interested in monsters, seeing them as a means of control and revenge against both mortals and fellow gods . He feels entitled to their servitude, for letting them live in his domain when shunned away from everywhere else.
Shout out to @hrtwyrm for inspiring that barnacle head on him, check her work out!
The Goddess of wisdom, strategy, and crafts, olives, Miss Minerva herself.
Starting life as but a humble heavenly maggot growing in the brains of Jupiter, Minerva is perhaps the god most loyal to her father’s authority. While her relatives seem ready to betray him at any sign of weakness, the goddess insists to remain obedient to father even during his current decade long absence from the throne. She claims that it’s because she’s the only one with a sense of honour, her family sees her as nothing but a parasite trying to keep her source of power in control.
She is frequently deeply invested in the affairs of mortals, and perhaps more then any other god preoccupied by how mortals perceive her. Minerva is obsessed with keeping a good public image as an aloof thoughtful lady of rationality, and not the uh…petty god she more often acts like.
While having no offspring of her own, Minerva takes a notably keen interest in her half-human siblings, lately invested in her “Favorite sister” Pierce and spent years trying to guide her to be a proper half-god.
She prefers to keep her true form a mystery to the public, and chose the owl, her favourite snack, as her main symbol.
Are you familiar with dimetrodrawn? You might like their work, if you’re not! They seem to work in the same genre of unsettling monsters.
Yes I love dime’s art!
Super inspiring surreal creature design and such an iconic art style… all the recent eldritch/old world god characters are so fun and I keep being surprised by the originality of their designs.
Check em out: @dimetrodone or @dimetrodrawn
She lost a fight.
The alien centaur has really become my go-to draw subject and she has no backstory besides like…
wouldnt it be sick if an orca was in space and had a sword?