Tag: digital art

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2023 – What A Year!

two cats look up sleepily at the viewer. One is a gray older cat, the other is a younger tabby kitten. The tabby is blanketed by a purple crochet blanket

What a year 2023 has been! But I’m glad it’s over.

A lot happened this year, so let’s get into what we made happen together. That’s right, your support helped make these things possible…

4 Successful Crowdfunding Campaigns!

In 2023, we raised funding for Vanita and the Demon King; The Legend of Jamie Roberts, volume 2; BE NOT APURRED Keychains; and Mr. Dino and Friends Keychains! We also had a Holiday Pop-Up Shop that raised $493 in support of Ohio-based indie creators.

I’m also including Ko-fi and Fan Club memberships here. While membership did shrink a bit, we still held together and made a lot of exclusive rewards.

Journey of the Mystery Won 3rd Place in the 24-Hour Comics Challenge!

This happened in January of 2023 but is still worth mentioning. The 24-Hour Comics Challenge, hosted by The Comic Book Jamboree, was INTENSE and had over 15 artists from around the world participate! And my comic, Journey of the Mystery, won 3rd place!

(By the way, you can download the coloring book version of this comic by checking it out on Ko-fi).

I Got A Short Story in an Iron Circus Comic Anthology!

I got accepted in Failure to Launch, a comics anthology from Iron Circus Comix. The anthology is all about ideas of the future that never panned out. 

The short story I made is called Ninit’i, or The End, and is a story told in two lines: one line follows my class trip into Navajo Nation, the other follows the Christian extremist panic around the Harold Camping Doomsday Proclamation.

The release of the anthology did get a bit delayed but should come out in print in spring of 2024. More details are on the Iron Circus website.

I Quit My 9 to 5 Job!

(Technically it was a 7 to 3:30 job but it still sucked).

Thanks to support from readers like you, I was able to leave a toxic office job. 

It took several months to unpack a lot of the crap from there, and it made me realize that my neurodivergent, genderqueer butt is too radical for “traditional” work. Also, half of my wages were taken by the temp agency that put me there and they wouldn’t let me leave because they “had no other work openings.”

Hot tip: don’t work with a temp agency.

Excuse me, I’m still very salty about this experience. On a more positive note…

I Moved To A New Apartment, Sold My Car, and Paid Off My Debts!

I sold my car for a lot of reasons – for one, I’m fortunate enough that my roommate and I moved to a new neighborhood that’s got a LOT within comfortable walking and biking distance from our home. We also sit on a major bus route in the city of Toledo, (and the bus is amenable to bikes like mine), so I can get wherever I want to throughout the city. We also have an Amtrak and bus station that I can get to in 30 minutes by city bus, so I can connect to a LOT of major cities across the US by those means. (Like, during SPX weekend I went by train and Metro everywhere).

Also, I was REALLY FREAKING TIRED of spending money that I didn’t have to repair a hunk of metal on wheels that already lost a large chunk of its value when I drove it off the lot back in 2019. And I was tired of my money being sent off to car companies and oil companies that don’t have the people’s best interest at heart.

So I sold my car and used that money to pay off debt, including my remaining student loans and the debt I accrued on car repairs.

In the end, I traveled further AFTER selling my car. Seriously, after the car sale, I went to DC (for work) AND Florida (for visiting family. It’s fine, I can pass as a woman. No one in Florida but mom knew, wink wink).

The Legend of Jamie Roberts, Volume 2 Came to Print!

It got mentioned up top, but I’m SO happy that y’all love this genderqueer pirate adventure so hecking much. Not to get too into the numbers, but The Legend of Jamie Roberts has now raised more in crowdfunding support than Validation did. And The Legend is still ongoing!

2023 was a VERY packed year for Fantasyville Productions, yo. For 2024, I want to keep building on what’s working and keep making comics, especially The Legend of Jamie Roberts. That story has a LOT to share in 2024 and I can’t wait to get into it with you.

Also in 2024, I want to do new things, like offer free downloads for my newsletter peeps. The first downloads are available this Friday, so sign up for free to get it when it’s ready.

Keep an eye on that newsletter, too, because I’m announcing more crowdfunding campaigns for 2024 – including one coming soon for CATS: A Sketchbook!

That’s all for now. Thank you for your support! You helped make all of this happen.

You. Are. Awesome.

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LIVESTREAM: Clip Studio Paint Tips and Tricks

In this archived live stream, I show you some Clip Studio Paint tips and tricks!

Clip Studio Paint is my preferred drawing program. I’ve been using this for years, yet it feels like I learn something new every day. And here, I wanted to share with you some Clip Studio Paint tips and tricks I’ve recently learned!

I streamed this back on May 29 on YouTube. Now it can be archived here for your reference.

Here are some timestamps for easy reference:

BASICS:

  • 3:00 for opening and setting up a new document. (Includes how to change canvas color)
  • 4:00 recording timelapses
  • 4:45 hand-lettered effects
  • 7:00 coloring entire layers
  • 8:17 how to change colors of specific elements in a layer using “lock transparent pixels”

INTERMEDIATE:

  • 10:30 a nifty trick erasing bordered lines
  • 13:00 add outlines to objects already drawn
  • 13:45 add shoelaces and other costume details
  • 25:03 my old method of adding symmetry
  • 26:00 make rulers visible
  • 27:20 add guidelines
  • 28:20 group layers together
  • 31:20 how to make custom brushes

Did I forget something in the live stream? Leave a comment below and let me know!

Do you have questions? Let me know, too. I plan on doing another live stream like this one, showing even more tips and tricks.

I hope this helps you. Thank you for watching.

You. Are. Awesome.

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I Got A New Laptop

Their name is Loki and you will show them respect.

Yes, I finally have a new laptop to replace my 7-year-old laptop, Odysseus. (Yes, I do name my devices after legendary figures, thank you).

I also replaced my dinky Wacom Bamboo with a Wacom Intuos Pro.

Full disclosure – I was able to replace these thanks to help from family. While I was able to save back some money of my own, they helped to chip in towards a new set-up. I wanted to point this out because:

  • the idea of a self-made entrepreneur is bogus and we need to stop promoting this idea. (For more context, look up the Amanda Palmer story “take the goddamn donuts.”)
  • and that’s it.

But now that I have this new set-up, it’s taking a little while for the arts-related work to fall into place.

For one thing, my program of choice, Clip Studio Paint, needs to be reconfigured all over again. So that’s taking a little extra time.

Long story short: The Legend of Jamie Roberts is being delayed. I’ll try to have an update up by tomorrow, but it may take longer than that. We’ll see how it goes.

Blog posts and KickStarter updates will continue as normal. (In fact, there’s only about 24 hours left on the Dragons: A Sketchbook KickStarter, wink wink).

Otherwise? That’s all I’ve got at the moment. Technical configurations are just going to take a hot day or two.

That’s all for now. Thank you for reading!

You. Are. Awesome.

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Notre Dame Cathedral, Chaco Canyon, and Historical Preservation

Notre Dame cathedral in France caught on fire. And that got me thinking.

Specifically, it got me thinking about the importance of cultural preservation, how we got to caring about Notre Dame cathedral so much, and how we can carry that attitude moving forward.

We as an American/European culture got to caring about Notre Dame cathedral mostly because of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame – or, in the original French, “Notre Dame de Paris.”

Believe it or not, that book has nothing to do with the love “triangle” of Quasimodo, Esmerelda, and Frollo. That dynamic was more due to later interpretations and adaptations of the novel to the movie screen. (For more on that, check out this video by Lindsay Ellis if you haven’t already.)

No, the original book is a lengthy essay about the importance of architecture to a culture and how architecture outlives and outlasts the people who live around it.

So, if you ever read the book and wondered, like teenage-me did, why the characters are so unlikeable and why there are entire pages devoted to the flying buttresses… well, now you know.

In short, Victor Hugo’s book was written in an attempt to preserve Notre Dame cathedral at a point in time and history when cultural preservation wasn’t even a concept. Keep in mind, too, that when Hugo wrote the book, Notre Dame cathedral was practically a shell, having been looted and torn apart multiple times until he wrote “Notre Dame de Paris.” This book was written with the intent of telling people why this cultural edifice was so important, and urging people to restore it and preserve it.

I’m glad we now live in a world where historical and cultural preservation is a thing. And I’m glad to live in a world where the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral is considered a tragic event because of the historic significance of the landmark.

That said, don’t worry too much about Notre Dame Cathedral. Now, I’m saying this as an American Pagan and not a French Catholic. I’ve never seen the cathedral in person, and my only visual memory of it is the Disney adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. However, Notre Dame Cathedral has the Catholic Church and the support of millions of Catholics around the world to restore it. Notre Dame cathedral will be fine.

My hope is that we remember the significance of cultural landmarks like Notre Dame Cathedral, and we carry that attitude with us towards monuments and landmarks that are at risk.

Like, here in the United States, we have a lot of cultural parks at risk at the hands of our current government administration, who are more focused on resource extraction than on cultural or historic preservation.

As an example, let’s take a look at Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico. This site is not only a culturally significant site to MANY Native American tribes. It’s also the home of the oldest Pueblo ruins in the United States.

And the problem? The largest of those ruins, Pueblo Bonito, was excavated, but nearly half of it was buried again under a landslide. All of that work, and all of the artifacts left to excavate, was lost.

And my concern? Right now there are fossil fuel companies looking to build mines, or god forbid, go fracking, in the lands in and around Chaco Canyon. The earthquakes that those operations cause could bury more ruins and make us lose more history.

My hope? I hope we remember the example of Notre Dame Cathedral and we carry that momentum forward, to protect the cultural landmarks that contain our history.

Chaco Canyon and Notre Dame Cathedral mean different things, depending on your religious outlook. But they are both significant landmarks that have outlasted and outlived the peoples who originally built them. My hope is that we remember the significance of places like Chaco Canyon and we treat it with the same care and respect as we do Notre Dame.

Thank you for reading.

You. Are. Awesome.

P.S. If you would like to find out more about Chaco Canyon, here’s their official website (if you have the means to, they also accept donations). And be sure to check out (and if you can, support) The National Park Service, the organization that protects sites like Chaco Canyon nationwide.

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Chaos Goddess

chaos goddess illustration

I’ve been on a kick lately – I’ve been drawing creepy creatures and masked figures.

Thanks/shout out to Chloe Rose and Alex Peterson for the feedback.