http://FinnishFox.deviantart.com/ar.....Armor-17613572
I found this drawing from when I was 14. In it, you can see that it is very close to my current character layout. The colors are roughly the same (The pale taupe is still there, but hard to see due to scanner/colored pencil issues). However, the nose is a different color. Since the suit's first iteration in 2005, it's been an emerald green color, but on Finnish v5, it will return to its original hue.

I always forget to update my journals. Anyways, my winter break is over, and it seemed short because I spent a quarter of it recovering from an appendectomy. Back in the summer, my appendix exploded, but I got lucky and it walled itself off. I spent a few days in the hospital, but didn't get surgery. Instead, we waited until I had completely healed, that is to say, till now, and then it was removed laproscopically. The reason for this choice was because it's much easier and safer to go in laproscopically instead of the normal way, which uses a much larger incision and takes much longer to recover from. That being said, it still hurt like hell. For example, they inflated my abdominal cavity to be able to move the tools around, and having been inflated, I can say, I'm not a fan. It hurt like hell for the three days following the surgery. It agitates a nerve that runs to the right shoulder, and it was the worst shoulder pain I ever had, and now amount of massaging would help.
Since then, I have pretty much made a full recovery. I'm back at school, and though I don't have the energy I used to, I'm getting better every day.

that on this site, if you are an unknown artist and you don't draw porn, you will continue to be an unknown artist.

On the morning after July 4th, I got food poisoning, or at least, I thought I did. When it was a week later, and the abdominal pain was still there, and I noticed it was concentrated on the lower right side, I decided it was time to see a doctor. Long story short, he poked me for about 30 seconds, and sent me down to the ER.
After bloodwork and a CT scan, they discovered I had a ruptured appendix. The odd thing is, though, that I was talkative and it almost no pain. Everything I've heard about ruptured appendices is that the person is on the ground writing in pain and possibly vomiting. I had minor stomach discomfort. They decided that because of my strange symptoms, that they didn't need to operate, and instead they pumped me full of antibiotics and watched me for a few days.
So thats it, I spent two and a half very long and boring days in the hospital for a ruptured appendix, and now I'm back home, without any surgery or anything. They may need to remove my appendix in the future, but for now I'm pretty good.

I've got about 4 weeks before I leave for anthrocon, so that begs the question: how long is my list of projects this year? The answer may surprise you, it's fairly short:

Bastion Fursuit: 40%
Kojac's bandana: 10%
Kofu Fursuit: 25%

It feels soooo good to be back home after a rather hard and incredibly stressful school year. I took about a week or so break between the 10 hour non-stop drive home in the poring rain to sit on my ass and recover, as well as catch up on tv shows on my parents new 50 inch plasma set. Usually I feel odd doing nothing but watching TV, but for those days, there was nothing I'd rather do. Now, I'm back and as of Monday, I've been working on fursuits again. I've made some great progress on my current project, and with any luck, will be able to get most of it, and another one, done by AC.

On a side note:
WHO'S GOING TO FA U?

What is going on with these ponies? Everywhere ponies! I do not understand...

Overall, this year of school so far has been incredibly mehhhhhh.
It's really getting on my nerves.

If all goes to plan, I'll be posting pictures of my awesome new jacket tomorrow.

It's hard to believe that I've been in the fandom for six years today. I joined Furtopia on Jan 4, 2005, and what a crazy ride it has been since then. I figured I'd mark the occasion by having an art dump, but as usual, I'm rather far behind, and didn't have everything I wanted to post. In those past few years, I've seen my art grow by leaps and bounds, yet I also see others whom I knew back then whose drawing skills have gone far beyond what I can do on paper. In working on large, 3D projects like fursuits and armor, I have neglected my drawing ability. My hope is in the coming years, I will be able to draw more, and grow by leaps and bounds not only in 3D, but 2D as well. May the next six years be just as crazy as the last!

expect a possible art dump on the 4th. Got some stuff to upload.

I'm looking forwards to this new yeah, and you should too!

This is my first post in months. Since then, a lot has happened. Right now, I'm back at home on winter break looking back on the recent quarter year. To say the least, this past semester has been some of the most stressful in my life. I had a shitty roommate (more like pissy, actually), I had several deaths with friends and family, and throughout it all, a workload bigger than anything I'd seen in years, more so that I'd had in AP art.

The semester started when I drove to the college parking lot and began unloading my things into my new room. I got my key to the room from the RA, and she said to me, "and it looks like Nick is already moved in!" Who's Nick? It turns out that my roommate from last year (the one who missed the last month of classes) didn't return. The administration paired me with a freshmen. Ok, I was expecting something like this to happen. To make a long story short, it didn't work out. Oh boy, did it not work out. At first, I couldn't open my closet door without rearranging my furniture. That I could live with, but then there was the roommate himself. It started getting really bad when he brought some bimbo back to the room who made Snooki look like a cultured member of society. That was the first time I've ever been sexiled. It only went downhill from there. He started bringing her back earlier and earlier, and they kept waiting till they though I was asleep to start having sex. One day, he left for classes and left her in the room asleep while I had to get ready for class. He came back about ten minute before I had to leave, and they started making out really really loudly. When I came back after class, there was a used condom on the window sill. On top of this, he would leave gatorade bottles around his area that were half filled with piss or tobacco spit. Yes, it was fucking piss. He didn't even bother to close them, they were all open. Luckily, one of my friend's friend was looking for a roommate. I toured the room; he had Alan Lee paintings, van Gogh posters relating to Dr. Who, and newspaper clippings from Obama's senate run. Yeah, it was a pretty damn good match. The only problem is since then, we're so alike we keep distracting each other.

A few weeks after this, I went to West PA furry Weekend. It was very fun, but it meant a weekend of work I'd have to make up. The week leading up, I was very busy preparing, but I though I'd gotten most of the work out of the way. I was still really busy, and really stressed. I had lab that wednesday, and my lab partner didn't show up, so I was stuck doing a lab by myself that was really really long, and I was pretty drained by the end of it. The next day, I was in metals class when I heard that a student's body had been found back campus. I learned later that night that it was my lab partner, he had committed suicide.

I left the next day for WPAFW. When I got back, I got a call from my dad, my grandfather had passed away the first night of the con. It wasn't unexpected, but it was still rather sudden. I had no idea it was so imminent. About a week later, I got another call, my grandmother had passed away. I had seen her over the summer, and I knew that that was the last time I'd get to see her. My parents had told me that so often, but that time was the time. Her death was a lot more expected, but still, one never likes to hear that two close family members have passed away.

When I got back from WPAFW, I was also hit with more and more work. I had no time to myself at all. I was spending all my time working on reading or essays. Pretty much, I spent all of october and the first half of november doing work. Nothing else. Every time I though I had reached the downhill, I found I had even more work. At this point, my grades in chemistry took a huge hit, and really disappointed me, because I like to think of myself as a scientist and it's really disheartening to get a 65% on the midterm. I just didn't have time to study for chemistry when I had a 12 page research paper due, or 75 pages of reading to do. As it turned out, while most classes peak at around the start of December, many of my classes peaked in the middle of November, so at least I sorta got a chance to unwind after thanksgiving, right in time for FINALS! I think I did well for myself on most of them, and I'm hoping my chemistry grade will be drastically improved by it.

So, here I am now, finally with nothing ahead of me for weeks. I really need this break. Finally, a little time to myself. Hopefully the future will be better.

I feel like I need a fresh start. I've got an ok gallery here, but looking back on it, much of it is full of crap, yet there are some really nice things buried far back with only 12 pageviews on it. I need to do some kind of gallery cleaning, but I don't know what or how. Sometimes I think the most efficient way would be a completely clean slate; delete everything, than reupload the good things, but I know that's a really dick move. I could just delete or scrap most of the crappy stuff, but that still wouldn't draw any new viewers to the older stuff. Of corse, I could just upload completely new art, but at the rate I've been able to do art while at college, that's quite a long shot. I don't know what to do, but I feel like I have to do something.

I need ideas for what I'll call my new fursuit commission website. I'm trying to fit it into a metalworking theme if I can.

What is a good, inexpensive camera that has good low light, high zoom, and quick response time? I'm currently thinking of the Coolpix S8000, but I'm not sure yet.

My roommate and I have the tendency to spontaneously break out into songs from Les Mis. I'm usually Jean Valjean, and he's Javert.
Appart from that, things may actually be getting easier now.

For the past few weeks, I've felt, if I can just get through this week, I can relax. I keep thinking that, and by the next week I've got even more work. I've got a presentation to give in a class on thursday, and I haven't had time to work on it because I had am unrelated paper due for the class today. On top of that, I've got a giant frakking metals project due thursday morning. I cant push back the deadline because thats when my project is supposed to go to a market. I spent six straight hours in the metals shop and I'm still far from completing. It doesn't help that my metals instructor didn't get me the supplies I needed.
For those that remember my senior year of high school, that was one of the most stressful times of my life. This semester has probably been harder. It's not as bad as years ago, but really damn hard. After I'm done the presentation for my class, I don't have any other assignments for that class until the end of the semester. It is my hope that after thursday, my workload will drastically decrease, but judging on past experiences, that wont be true.

Hokay, stuff has been busy as hell. Every time I think I'm in the clear, another project rises out of nowhere and demands days or weeks of time. That being said, I think I'm started to get into the clear... maybe. Last week I finished my 12 page politics paper, which was probably the biggest project I had of the semester. I've got a group project for conflict res which is due in a week, a paper for it, but six pages is nothing now, and a group project for geo due in two weeks. I've also got a lot of reading for chem and Geo, but it's not too bad.
Anyways, my hope is that sometime soon I'll be able to work on some fun furry stuff, but I really cant tell yet. I've got some suits that I *really* want to work on, but I just never have the time. Hopefully soon I'll be able to. Also, maybe next semester I'll have more time.

So, I've been back at college for over a month now. I was hoping I could work on fursuits, but a lot of things have been getting in the way.
For starters, when I go here, I found I had a new roommate. This didn't come as a shock, as my old roommate skipped about a month of classes last year. For some reason, they decided to pair me with a freshman, but not any of the cool freshmen I have met, they paired me with a jock. I had a bad feeling when I first got to the room, and saw that it already was a mess. Not only where there dirty clothes all over the floor, but there were half empty gatorade bottles full of foul smelling yellow liquid (later confrmed to be piss), and a few bottles with tobacco spit in the bottom. On top of that, the room was incredibly poorly arranged, and there wasn't much I could do about it. I had very little space, no shelves, and I had to rearrange my furniture each time I wanted to get into my closet. I thought I could deal with things, but boy was I wrong. About a week after I got back, I was asking a friend to see if he could help me arrange stuff so I could get into my closet at will. When we entered the room, my roommate was there with some bimbo who looked like she belonged on the Jersey Shore, and both were incredibly drunk. Long story short, I spent most of the night at my friends dorm, until I was able to return to my room. I could have dealt with it if it was just that, but no. Each night, she came back, and I swear could hear them having sex while they though I was asleep. One day, he went to class in the morning and just left her in the room with me, which was very awkward for me. Then when I got back from my classes, I saw a used condom on the window sill. I got my ass out of there as soon as housing opened up. I'm now in an awesome room with an awesome roommate. I toured his room, and saw the Lord of the Rings and Doctor Who posters, as well as newspapers from Obama's career from senate to president, and was like, "this is my room." The only thing I don't like about the room is that it looks out on the parking where lots of drunk people make a lot of noise.

Being a sophomore year, my workload has drastically increased over last year. I've only been able to do small projects that take a few minutes between classes, but nothing big like fursuits. My workload seems to have gone down over the past 5 days, so hopefully soon I'll be able to get to work on bigger projects. I'm also heading home for a few days next week, but all my fursuit stuff will be here still.
So, that's what I've been up to over the past few weeks.

I got my wisdom teeth out yesterday. I learned that I do not respond well to laughing gas. Yesterday I spent most of my time in bed watching movies, and will probably do the same today, but today I'm actually feeling well enough to do things like type the computer, through my typing's still a little off.

I'll be away for the next week, so I won't be able to check emails or anything. See you all in a week.

Hey, artist friends! I got a request for you! I want to be atop a wave of otters, riding on a surfboard, or boogie board, or shark, or another otter, or something epic like that, and I want to be holding a sword or laser gun or epic battleflag/spear thing, and I want it to be AWESOME!
Can anyone do that please?

I'm starting to think there will be a wave of new otter suits, and I'll be at it's vanguard!

Does anyone know what it's like to put a lot of time and effort into crafting this: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/4103496/

Then wearing it to a convention and seeing this?:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/4087116/

EDIT: to understand the joke, you need to be familiar with Crusader Cat's history.