Why did you choose an african wild hunting dog as a fursona

No grand prophetic reason behind it or anything. I just think they look really cool, and (especially back then) was a species that wasn't hugely represented in the fandom. it appeared like a fun fit and stuck ever since with no real urge from my end to change it. So i guess it was indeed a good fit!

I have one called Wild dog since they are one of my top 10 favourite species, I really like canines, I also like their pattern and colours. There are about 6,600 left in the wild so I have one to tell other people "hay this species exists and they look cool with the patterning". There still not hugely represented now in my opinion so if I have one then when people look at my page then the first piece of artwork they will see is my african wild hunting dog fursona

Yeah they're not super common nowadays, but certainly more likely that some people might recall seeing one of em around since a few artists commonly draw them. :)

I watch some artists who commonly draw them since I like to be informed if there are new african wild hunting dogs in the fandom

can't think of anything, so here's a huggggggggggg....

Vix

Ohno, but that's even warmer now!

*laughs...

Vix

Favorite classical, contemporary, or modern artists?

Oh that's sooooo difficult. I've got a folder with like 100 artists that I like enough to where I basically went and scraped together their entire body of work. So settling on one single artist is sooooo difficult. Especially because it is such a changing landscape as well, with me as a changing person in it, meaning that the answer will be a different one every year. Right now I REALLY love the work Yuming Li is doing. The lighting they manage to capture is just absolutely fantastic. So maybe they are at the top right this moment?

But yes, that's one question that gets asked pretty much every year and every year it's a different answer lmao.

Cool! It's neat to learn where inspirations and influence come from. Thanks for sharing!

saw your answer about why you chose an african wild dog for your fursona- if you had to change it to a non-mammal animal, what would you pick?

A non-mammal...hmmmmmmmm. Maybe revert back to a dragon? I think it'd certainly be something scaley, so either dragon or some type of lizard. Whichever I could think up a cool design for. Do also really like slits, so that's a bonus for scalies as well lmao.

Second favourite month of the year?

oh boy, ermmmm maybe september? Summery but not crazy warm, but not all drab and wintery yet.

As a very experienced artist, would you have any words of advice for artists who are just now beginning to post their work online?

I'm honestly quite bad at that whole "advertising myself online" part. So I'm not sure if I'm the best authority on the subject, but all I ever did was just post my work. And I guess if you keep that up pretty steadily and it's art that people enjoy enough then they'll stick around.
If you want to get fancy it's probably a good idea to actually be active, talk to people, maybe post some fanart or memes or what have you to engage more. But i'm just really bad at all of that and barely ever manage to do it.

Thank you for your answer. c: I think posting steadily is probably the best way to get people interested if I had to guess. c:
If I can squeeze in one more question, about your creative process, (and I'm sorry if this was asked before) how long does each of your pieces take from start to finish, on average? And do you even do line art, or do you just paint right on top of your sketch?

Hey, that's what this is for. You got as many as you want!

Hard to give hour accounts just because of how weirdly split up my work tends to be. But usually I end up with about 2-4 paintings a month. Soooo, can roughly estimate as with art being my full-time job. They do vary a lot though, just depending on how smoothly a painting goes. Some are done within a day or two, and other just draaaaaag on.

I haven't done lineart in years, no. It's either on top of a sketch, or some shapes or whatever i feel like at the time pretty much. Just a case of going with whatever feels right for a certain painting.

That's really interesting, thank you for your answers. C: If you'd have me for one more question, reading your answer made me wonder: was it a purposeful, hard transition from lineart to no lineart, or was it something that happened over time for you, like the lines meaning less and fading away? Or maybe something else entirely?

I mean lines still exist everywhere, it's just a matter of whether you distinctly draw them with a line, or if you let shapes do the work. I don't remember the exact details of how i thought about it back then since it's been such a long time, but since I pretty much always wanted to go for realism keeping around linework in my finished paintings just wasn't really much of an option.
I certainly did work with more obvious lineart when I first started out, and it was all more anime-oriented, but yeah, I just switched to what was required when I made the change to wanting to draw more realistic art.

Makes sense. C: Thanks a lot for answering my questions and I hope you have a good week!

Hi!:) I wonder if there will be another drawing with your sona this year?
I really like the themes with the sea! Looks so melancholy and wonderful😌
Also I just want to say that you are an incredible artist!

There is some as of yet "unreleased" art of him in the game actually. So if you're only following the galleries then that'd be one that you've probably not seen yet. Though it'll sooner or later appear around here as well. And yes, there will be more coming, actually working on a big one currently, and year is still long, so there might be another one or so coming later. We shall see how the plans pan out.

Where do you see yourself art-wise 5 years from now? Are there things you would like to explore or change, like new themes or new characters?

All in all i'm pretty happy with what i'm painting. Naturally things will evolve over time, but it's just kind whatever is going on now with 5 years of added experience and skill. Hopefully ironing out some of the weak points I have. Oh and maybe still being involved in VNs. It's hard to tell how i feel about it long term given that it's only been a few months, but so far it's been really quite fun! So maybe it'll still be fun in 5 years?

Would Nomax (the character) partake in pumpkin spiced coffee?

It's getting to be that season, soon.

Since he is very close to the real me, and I honestly haven't ever really eaten pumpkin, nor do i drink a lot of coffee...i don't think so.
He might try if offered, but wouldn't go for it on his own.

Hehe, fair enough!

It's fun in general to have folks try new flavors for the first time.

Suppose he might be more easily tempted if you appeal to his inner botanist by explaining how different the plants involved in this extract are and how they all come from separate parts of the globe?

Sure, that's one way to do it!

Are there any particular books or other media you consume to help inspire your ideas? Fictional or non-fictional? And is there a type of environment that best inspires whether in real life or for any characters?

Inspiration is so tough to demand. For me it's just a case of looking at whatever is around when i need it. Stuff like digging into history research, playing games, music is also a pretty big one, or hell sometimes just the good ol' lay on the bed and stare at the ceiling. It all can provide just the right spark. But it's rarely something particular, it's just a case of if it happens it happens.

What are your current artistic goals? Anything specific you're working on improving in the way you make art?

Yeah, there's a certain feeling to the lighting that I want to achieve. Hard to really explain it exactly because if i knew all the details of how to do it then i probably wouldn't feel like I'd still need to figure it out. But yeah, that's the area that's been particularly bugging me recently.

Heya, Nomax! Great to see ya' checking in. Always delighted in your experimental paintings and the joy of your world building. Been wonderin' what your favourite ever project was, or one of them, if you felt like sharing.

Conway is the most fun i've had in a good long while. So currently working on it! Really only stress with it is that it is reliant on patreon, so I have to deal with that whole insecurity of paying bills through that and hoping people like it enough to support it etc. But the actual work itself, removed from the capitalist nature of the world is fantastic fun!

What are some of your favorite games to play with your friends?

Right now Baldur's Gate 3 is good fun. And some of the highlights in the past were Divinity: Original Sin 2, Sea of thieves and project zomboid.

Do you do much art besides 'furry' material, lately?

Nope, if anything recently i've switched *more* towards furry. Had some game project earlier in the year to finance the early days of the VN, but yeah. I just quite enjoy the chill atmosphere of furry work, and especially now with the VN. So I hope that'll become a little more sustainable still. It's getting close to breaking even but it's not quite there yet.

What magic powers do those ears hold?

If i'd tell you i'd have to kill you! >:(

What do you use as references for your nautical backgrounds and content in Conway? I've been delighted by some of the detail as an occasional sailor.

Got some picture sets, and now also a 3D model of a ship! So some 3D backgrounds will happen too going forward. (The ship isn't an amazing fit honestly... but it'll do for the angles/views I need for the VN) And in the text it's just me digging through internet sources, trying to figure out what's what. I'm not a sailor, nor a historian, so it's been hard work if you don't quite know what you're even looking for, but it's good fun.

What are three good reasons to have your next VN be an armadillo romance novel?

It would be very compact since they can just roll up.

If they're all little balls all the time it would make it very easy to draw.

Aaaaaand...I can use the word rolly-polly liberally in it!

You forgot that armadillos are innately sexy

*poses*

Do you have a particular concept or species of animal you ever wanted to portray in an artwork but just never found the time or motivation to pull through with it? :o

Not really. Usually these types of pulls are very momentary, so I either end up doing them, or just forget about them a week later.

Not really a question, but I love you sona and I'd love to get something with him one day! ^^

Hah, thank you very very much! At least commissions proooobably aren't going to be too frequent with me working on the game for hopefully a good while longer, but you know, never say never.

What is your quest?
What is your favorite color?
What is the average air speed velocity of an unlaidened swallow?

To find my bed!
Quite like Maroon! Not a too strong one, but somewhat desaturated and dark. Quite nice. Or a british racing green. Both very good.
The african or european kind?

I've always wondered what your art routine is like!

What sort of practice/study do you do? What kind of steps and stages do you go through to arrive at a finished piece?

Usually my practice has to be implemented into my work. So i just try to find some bits and pieces in a picture that i can hopefully learn from and use them to push for that next step.
And my painting process can vary quite a bit, but usually i just try to work out a sketch at the beginning with colours and just getting everything more or less into place. And from there go on and refine said sketch step by step. So maybe working a little bit on a particular piece of clothing, then maybe on the head, after that i feel like maybe the background needs some work.
Just skipping back and forth constantly until I arrive at a point where I'm happy with it.

With commissions there kind of is an extra step with a detailed sketch in the middle to double check with them, but that one may or may not be present in my own private work, depending on how confident i feel with a painting. But yeah, it's basically just a somewhat more refined sketch with the purpose of being readable by other people.

Not really a question but as I know you like historical art thought I'd share something I learned today
collections[dot]royalarmouries[dot]org/#/objects is great for historical armour and weapon references
When you get on to a individual item you can;t right click on a page to save image, not anywhere to open inspect element
But if you use ctrl shift I it opens a pop up that lets you download as long as you agree to use it non commercially, I think using something as visual reference for inspiration easily falls into fair use ad they have some great high res images from many angles of armour both more basic and the armour of kings
Just been sharing the info with the historical liking artists I know of XD

Thank you, yeah never hurts though i don't really draw armor too often, which seems like most of what they have.

Ahh sorry dude I'll have a look and drop an email or two to see if we have anything similar for textiles.

Sorry for the delay, I asked around and found a couple of possible sites that might be good, hope you find something you like ^^
https://ruestkammer.skd.museum/en/a.....che-garderobe/
https://livrustkammaren.se/en/home/.....royal-history/

Thank you very much!

My pleasure ^^

Ich bin ein kartoffelkopf

That's about the only german I know

That's something at least

Charm me, i guess immediate first thought are the Ghibli movies. Perhaps a bit of a basic answer, but what can you ever say against them, really?

Is there any huge personal project you've always wanted to show to the world when you first started your art journey? Is it Conway or is that a stepping stone for something bigger?

Are you concerned about AI at all and if it were ethically trained would you use it for anything?

There are plenty that just never manifested for one reason or another. But yeah, Conway is basically one of them that just ended up being a combination of possible and so it's still going in the hopes that it'll become fully self-sustainable in the near future. (And we're pretty close to it.)
And no, it's not a stepping stone for something bigger, if anything it's probably the other way around, where down the line once it's done it has opened up the opportunity for some smaller things. Maybe some short and sweet VNs about specific moments in a particular character's life or something like that. But that is very much future talk. For now (and hopefully for a long while longer) this one is the priority.

As for concern for AI, yes and no. Conway actually was in part because of AI, and the felt need to do something more than just art. I mean not to say that AI couldn't theoretically do a VN if you glue the parts together. But it just was a moment of that question of what my art is really worth if machines can spit out millions of images each day? Images that perhaps aren't perfect currently, but even after a few years of development are pretty close to being indistinguishable from human-made artwork. And yes naturally there is more nuance to what AI can and can't achieve and what the involvement of a living being in the process of it means etc.
But on a very basic level they are similar, and so I wanted to try to expand my side of the equation in a way that people hopefully will enjoy enough to support.

And the no side of it is that on some level i can't care enough about it. Whatever happens happens.

As for using AI. I've experimented with it here and there in the past, but as mentioned above, for as impressive as it is, it also is equally restrictive. I mean just look at any AI site that has a showroom. 90% of the images are pretty much identical, usually a solo character, the lighting just feels very "AI". Just... idk, There is something to them that makes them appear very samey and stale. So in those experiments it often time was more frustrating than helpful.

Wow that's awesome to hear about Conway... almost sounds like a dream come true. Having a big story and foundation for lore where all your smaller ideas can expand from is something I haven't thought of.

That's very informative take on AI. I just worry how much artists can adapt with how fast AI is developing I wonder where it'd be in a decade. Sounds like your taking the storytelling route to adapting. Hopefully AI cant do storytelling anytime soon... not like they have human experiences to draw off of to make compelling stories.

Oh using AI is restrictive? Hmm I took a look at e6ai to see what you mean and yeah I can see it. Seems like mostly solo pinups, I thought it was just people's taste, but kind of good to know its actually restrictive. I do remember seeing some beautiful landscapes on Instagram made with AI... seems pretty nice to generate references if its pretty restrictive with characters.

Yeah, like you can get there with AI, but it just takes a lot of fiddling to get it to do what you want it to. Again, it'll only get better as time goes on, but at least for now it's just...clumsy in a way that can be very annoying. Especially if you're doing something that doesn't fit the mold of what it is good at.

Did you ever play Sonic 1-3 (Sonic and Knuckles included) if so, what's your favorite songs from each?🤔

I haven't. Playstation and Nintendo were the things around where I lived when I grew up. Outside of one Dreamcast, I honestly haven't ever seen any other Sega console in my life that's how much of not a thing they were.

Alright, follow-up question then: What soundtrack from the PSX collection do you still listen to?

Probably the THPS games are the only ones. But only because it's just regular music. Just don't really listen to soundtracks tbh. They just don't work for me outside of the context of the game.