... this page was originally always meant from the beginning for my own works.

I applaud the care with which these artists drew my characters, or characters for them to interact with, and I mean no disrespect at all as I take the commissions down.

Ever since I've been aware of furry, I've been drawing my character of the otter, and those of close friends and loved ones. In fact I've been at least sketching random things like video game characters and space shuttle tributes since I was old enough to hold a pen or pencil.

Then around 2006 I got the longest running, and most emotionally exhausting job of my life.

I honestly hated that work with a burning ire, but I never looked for better in all the 12 years I pissed away there, because I had no idea retail work could ever get any better - and I haven't been trained to qualify for anything else yet.

In this time my mind was on wallowing and surviving, and my art suffered over a decade of lapse.

The commission works I bought were part of my jobless freewheeling when my father passed and a modest inheritance arrived, allowing me to walk out that horrid job and never look back. And I wanted my characters to have *some* presence outside of me talking about them, or making avs on Second Life, so I was left with little confidence and a lot of money. You can guess the rest.

Then during summer of 2024, I had a nervous breakdown after having worked a new job for 2 years. It was the best job I'd had yet during the first year, then immediately the worst when management turned over for my second year. The resulting stress enhanced my bad behaviors and I got fired.

In the meantime, searching for meaning outside my work, I remembered;
I make my art because there are ideas I have for characters and things to do with them, and when you get down to it, I feel best when I produce them myself, however flawed.

So with that lengthy vent out of the way, I must add, and it's sharp, but that's the way I can be:

if you only watched me for my commissions, I appreciate the attention, but that's not my art. You may follow and support those artists with my encouragement. However, simply put, if you are here for that art by others, and not the characters I had put in them, I feel that's a disservice to me and my characters. Go with my blessing, and you're free to come back if you wish.

Again, many thanks to these artists, and what they have done for me. Some have been role models, a couple have been mentors, even. I stand proudly behind you, and hope you'll applaud as I catch up, but this race is really against myself. I see you not as rivals but as fellow travelers on the road.

It's a VERY hard time to love video games right now.

In a time where people around the world seem to be watching a lifetime of systems and beliefs around them and in them be challenged and strained, and seem to be falling apart all at once, this seems to be a long-overlooked casualty of world events. While I do care about the larger more important things, I want to address the mouse in the room... goodness knows I'm sick of the elephants....

Be that as it may.

Art was always a close second to video games, I'm not gonna lie.

From the first day I plunked a quarter into the sit-down version of Spy Hunter because it's side panel art reminded me of Knight Rider (my favorite non-cartoon TV show in my day), I've been an avid fan of the media of video games.

This was made difficult by my parents, who were leery of me losing further touch with reality if they shold buy me a home game system. I can hardly blame them. The words "Attention deficit & hyperactivity disorder" were not well known to the layman back then, but they didn't need to be well read to see how flaky I child I was, and how little self-discipline I could muster when I was six (though, to be honest, how many that age can).

They finally bought an Atari 5200 from my brother-in-law's yard sale in spring of 1989, if I remember right, to test the idea. It ended with me only being allowed to play games one hour per school day, and two on weekend days, save for if I had a second player. This lead to them finally caving and buying my NES that Christmas.

All this long-winded nostalgia to say, I've been passionate about video games the proverbial "long-ass time" (and could it not be thick-tailed furries like otters indeed have a long ass? I jest).



Which brings me to one facet of my point: It's difficult to be a fan of video games right now.

The "games-as-a-service" tail the major studios have been chasing was and always will be unsustainable as a main business mechanic for a company; when the servers go dark, whether temporarily from outages, or permanently at end-of-term, the gamers are left with nothing but their memories, without options to open private servers, which many games lack. We saw this in the 2000s with Auto Assault, an early casualty of server games (and one I never got to play but my roomie Zarphus did), which is "what if Mad Max, but the cars are more like the snazzy tanks from Blaster Master NES?"

Fortnite was an anomaly, an exception that many companies have been banking on as the rule, and all suffer for it. What started as a novel idea with a quirky identity of it's own has become a blender of media-tie-ins to maintain the huge momentum the idea it got, launching as it did next to PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds. To be honest I never played it, but I thought the idea was neat. I didn't avoid it to be hipster / contarian / outsider, whatever you want to call it, it just... it looked novel to me, but novelty doesn't get my gaming money alone.

Sony's PlayStation lineage has been a longstanding part of my story from their first one, and I own or have owned one of each of the 5 home systems, and a PSP, in my time. I still have a 5 today. I barely touched it for all the games I had on my Switch, though. My husband and I were late adopters of the PS5, and early of the Switch, given how many RPGs we played on our 3DS systems.

MicroSoft always reeked of cashgrabs to me since I learned to be critical (or cynical, or both), from the day the Xbox was released. That IS a case where I turned a blind eye out of contrarianism, but I caved for the 360 when Mass Effect appeared.

It may be apparent Nintendo usually got my money first, from year to year, since the NES, and I won't deny that system left a good early impression. The marketing magic (and licensing and software rights sorcery) they used to revive the United States' video game market is still potent today in how many, self included, still adore the NES to this day, a full 40 years after it's creation, and more than 30 since it had become fully obsolete.

However all this long-winded ranting to say, I put my money where I want to. I offer no brand loyalty, my tastes are my compass (god, listen to me and my pretentious purple prose).

At last, I directly present the things I see as points towards my thesis statement.

So... NINTENDO.... I say with ominous disdain.

Your beloved place among Gen-Xers like myself for the NES, and your even more devoted Zoomer and whatever's next fans via Switch 1 and 2 is rivalled - and now surpassed - by a history of cutthroat and borderline, or sometimes actually, illegal practices to secure your market share.

For your heavy handed "five games a year" and exclusive hold on manufacturing practices in the NES launch, I have always given you a pass. I'm not an "ends justify means" person on general principle, but it can be true sometimes in moderation: the 1980s US market collapsed because there was no order to the gaming development pipeline. Call it what you will otherwise, Nintendo's rule on the NES was absolute, and it was order we needed to get the hobby back.

So now, 40 years later, when diversity in moderation was just starting to benefit gaming as a whole, and the Nintendo Switch was so popular, even with me, that the release of the Switch 2 had anticipation to rival the Second Coming, in wrestling terms, they now do a full face-heel turn.

Suing pirate sites, especially those carrying games from live systems, or even aggressively trying (and grossly failing) to prevent leaked pirate copies of impending launches, fair play. Thieves shouldn't steal, at least where it will be noticed and missed. that does hurt everyone.

Now, fiercely and transparently trying to twist the letter of the patent law to defeat it's spirit, to shoot an indie studio in the foot for daring to make a game that so closely resembles their most beloved franchise, that is immoral and unethical, in my opinion. Unethical because obviously the "patents" they are trying to claim are just "we own parts of video gaming that make our games work, so you can't make one that works at something better than ours", nothing more. I could point out a dozen game site articles that show this, but this journal is already beyond long enough. Immoral because we all know they're trying to steal more pasture for their cash cow, the biggest golden calf in multimedia since the Simpsons, almost as old, and to be honest, almost as worn thin by the original makers. Nintendo, if nobody was allowed to make the also-ran "same but different" in media and / or art, we'd never grow.

If Robin Hood had been locked down as immutable and inimitable, we'd never have The Court Jester (hes these movies predate me, but still) or Heaven FORBID we'd have had no Disney version with gorgeous floof. If DC "owned" the idea of costumed heroes (which I think they might have tried), we'd have no Marvel, no Image, no anything else. Strength grows in competition, Nintendo. I'm not always into "growth by conflict" but in business it's a must.

Sony... you used to be the cutting edge in gaming, now you're holding a blade to our throats and trying to tell us what we want, intent on taking our money with Concord, a clear case of Incredibles quote meme "if everybody's special, no one will be", a market bullet-point designed game so transparent in it's lack of ingenuity and integrity, it immediately went from transparent to non-existent almost before it was born. I've seen way way more deserving and novel games become vaporware by trying to do too much, and come out too slow, than this which was trying too hard to make you money, rushed to market in a development studio that makes a puppy mill look ethical.

Speaking of which, EA, you used to be so nice... back in the 80s and 90s when you were the young fresh punk upstart. Like many a music idol, once you went mainstream, you sold out so quickly, then proceeded to buy up studios and souls of talented developers like a dictator; annexing any rival state to take what you need, and killing that which you believe has no value. Your current majority shareholders should be no big surprise then, but even so, I'm am truly appalled. If I spent any money on you in my life it would surely stop this year.

Young fresh punk upstarts like Larian, Starfall, and to a lesser degree Inti Creates and Yacht Club seem to be the meek that shall inherit the digital Earth after the strong get done fucking it up, but that's only if we have a place to find them. Which leads me to Valve and Good Old Games, besieged by banks, corralled by card holders, because a small angry collective of conservative mothers in Australia have a whole eucalyptus tree up their ass about content in games.

I love Australia, and a select few Australians in particular, and just discovered the joy of Bluey, but these daffy cunts, to borrow their vernacular, managed to find the lever that moved the entire finanacial world, making the credit card holders try to tell the digital stores what they can and cannot sell worldwide. If that's not making the world parent for you, I don't know what is. Shame on them and shame on the companies for going with it. Haven't they got more bills than they can count already? Do they really need to block the sales of stuff they have no business blocking?

I don't care much for erotic games necessarily, they either fail as a game by being too poor, or fail as porn by being too tame. Please, people, I'm a furry; I've had saturday nights would make Caligula cringe. I respect their right to exist though, unlike those angry mothers in Collective Shout. Someone heard you, and a lot more of us are shouting back "piss off, ya bludgers, we're tryin' to play our games here!" (apologies if any Australian readers find my borrowed slang offensive or inaccurate).

I can't believe I woke up this morning and came to my PC to chill casually on gaming sites, only to launch into this old man typing at clouds rant. If you made it all the way through, I thank you. Time to get on with my day. I think my copy of Megaman 2 still works fine.

I'm alive and well, but given that I work retail jobs, as I have my whole life, and Mariah is defrosting as Billie Ray Armstrong wakes up after September ended (LOL), I might be slowing my almost-weekly output. Things may get too busy for me to have enough energy to draw enough to put up a new piece every week or so.

Rest assured I'm doing the best I can in everything, and with the new year I hope I get some rest and some new ideas to show you all!

Thank you, all of you, for watching me here, and anywhere else you see me!

I'm just happy someone's looking at my stuff, now that I'm finally consistently making stuff to show!

This is not a deeply researched industry insider article. This is not even a reasearched undergrad thesis for a collge media literacy class, or anything like that. This is just the somewhat thought out diatribe of a forty-something man in New England who has lived through much of the roots of the pop culture which is practically worshipped today, when these very same hobbies and the stories in them made me a "nerd" and a social outcast. The after the fact validation feels pretty good, but that's not what I'm here for.

I'm here to offer a frank series of thoughts about where I see gaming headed. Mostly this will include complaining about Nintendo, especially the frivolous and dangerous patent suits filed by them, some of which have actually passed at time of writing this. If later in pop history this goes down as some kind of Neumeier-level quote of uncanny foresight, that's for later. I just want to vent regardless. I'll start making my points first, and leave why I think they should be listened to at the end.

At time of writing Nintendo has been fighting PocketPal studios under the guise of patent law, to prevent them from running where Nintendo has walked. PocketPal studios developed the game PalWorld for PC and other platforms, where it is found is not relevant. What is relevant is it features varied creatures not unlike Nintendo's most famous media juggernaut licensing cash cow. Some critics of PalWorld accuse them of outright "ripping them off", and infact, that "copyright infringement" was Ninty's first attempt to destroy them.
I can see some of the cause for these complaints. So many of these characters are so reminescent of their more famous counterparts they could be mistaken for fan characters ( and in the internet circles I travel I have seen many video game fan characters). The game feels rather middling to me, it feels like someone's April Fools' Day joke brought to life, but I believe it deserves to exist. Unfortunately, however, Nintendo seems intent on starting with them to make PocketPal the first case for being allowed to poison the hay for anyone who could attempt to make anything which could take food from any of their prized cash cows, even long after they eventually get chopped up into someone's leftovers like StarFox or Dillon (havent heard of him? Look at the 3DS game library and scratch your head about that later).

The next elephant (with armor that makes Hannibal's march through the Alps look like an amateur act) is Digimon Story Time Stranger. This franchise - a spinoff of Tamagochi which was active long before Pikachu was even a spark in Satoshi Tajiri's head - has had the gall to make a game in it's franchise where a player can climb aboard one of their virtual creatures as a mount (which PalWorld also allows; you can scamper through the fields on a frost elemental ferret, if memory serves), and now at date of writing, Nintendo has filed and won a patent case for riding living creature-based non-player characters on land or air. Nevermind the fact that horses existed in history and were used widely in the famous Red Dead franchise, as well as a forgotten video game western flatly titled Gun, and let's not forget Agro, Wander's loyal steed in Sony's auteur work Shadow Of The Colossus, AND it's followup The Last Guardian with it's dumb flying puppy (I say with loving teasing; Trico is adorable).

I don't recall Nintendo suing against Rockstar for Red Dead Redemption, nor Sony for Agro in Shadow Of Colossus, or barring Konami from launching the NES game of The Lone Ranger (yes, that exists). They didn't complain when SquareSoft in it's heyday put flightless birds in the game to carry their angsty Final Fantasy cast into glory, even when they defected to Sony in 1996. It seems oddly timely that they only care about being able to have a living creature carry you into battle when the creature resembles a ferret but is blue instead of brown, or is a dinosaur, some 30 years after Yoshi protected Mario twice in his lifetime. No this only happened when riding an ice ferret or a yellow fox looked better than Scarlet or Violet's motorcycle lizards.

this falls under the categoryof selective patent enforcement, so my friends say. Neither of us are lawyers, but I have a few friends in tech industry (yes, I am a "furry" and nerds like us have been vital in technical fields since the 1970s), and violation of anti-trust laws in the United States, a blatant attempt to use the law to tie the hands of competitors.

Not the first time in history either. That same friend reminded me that Apple Computers sued Samsung corporation over the shape of the now-ubiquitous smart phones, to stop their products from interfereing with their iPhone empire. Both survive today, because Samsung agreed to pay Apple for the license to the design.

Larger studios could pay such outrageous fees to Nintendo similarly, which is great if you only like games from the large developers. The same large developers who are building annual sports franchises that charge full price year after year for iterative game tweaks and roster updates which could easily be patches or DLC respectively, instead of rebuilding year after year until the used game market is flooded with hundreds of used copies of the game from two years ago, now bought and sold for 1/10 the value (and I spent two years working at a used game store I shall not name, I have personally seen the angry customers being paid $5 for a game they spent $50 on a year ago, so we can sell it for $8 and this is hardly an exaggeration).

My favorite games though? They don't necessarily never come from the big names. I have bought nearly every Final Fantasy mainline game near lanuch, I am as enthusiastic about a new Zelda title as the next gamer, maybe more, and I pounced immediately on every modern Fire Emblem and Paper Mario installment. Metroid, Mario all of them.

The games I stick to the most though? They tend to be the more esoteric experiences. This includes indie darling staples like Shovel Knight and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and yes, PalWorld ( which is middling execution on a fever dream idea I wasn't sure should ever exist but am amused it does). This also extends to the deeper reaches of Steam lately, and small titles even made by one person plus a few contributing artists for flavor. Chained Echoes for one, and other bonkers stuff virtually no one would have heard of, like Elohim Eternal (a bizarre game that looks like it's made in RPG Maker, but has the lofty and maybe pretentious writing of a Xenosaga game, complete with sci-fi retelling of bible lore), or the cyberpunk indie Memoirs of a Battle Brothel (which is not always as raunchy as it sounds, nor as the store page looks; there's some truly clever Firefly-like subversive fiction writing present).

Where is Matthias Linda of Chained Echoes, or George Alexandros of Elohim Eternal supposed to get the cash to support the claim if SquEnix decides they invented turn-based robot armors (they did not, TecnoSoft could boast that with Herzog Zwei, but I digress), or Nintendo patents button cues for extra damage or defense in RPGs, to undercut competitor's profit margins, or make them useless?

There is clear and present danger when a company abuses the law or finance to remove competition. We knew this in the 1920s with FDR's New Deal, which also included the Trust Buster acts that form Anti-trust laws which are supposed to prevent these things. There have been numerous cases in history, not just in entertainment, but all across industrial history. I'll stick to a pop culture touchstone for my example, but both childhood staples of my toy-buying life, Kay-Bee Toy Stores and Toys 'R Us were bought by the same retail management firm to later be foreclosed on. Now the only place to buy your toys is a barely existant shelf space in Target or God forbid Wal-mart, and Lego's stores and direct-to-market approach puts the cost of their licensing fees directly on to the hobbyists who just want a blocky Ornithopter from Dune to sit on a shelf.

As I said, I will explain who I am and why you should listen to me now. I'm just a forty-something nerd who grew up rather sheltered in New England, with a memory so clear I can recite entire films chapter-and-verse with very little warmup (I might actually record my one-man shows someday as proof).

I am not a political analyst, nor an investment broker, nor even a college accredited historian with a salary the length of my arm for information that's 75% accurate (my English professor cited Alanis Morissette for a defintion of irony in my Lit 101, the hack). When you spend as much time as I did watching the world, you begin to see what you should be looking for in the things you see. When you spend as many hours as I have reading, you really learn to read between the lines.

I have spent many years on Earth soaking in pop culture, and during the last 20 have seen all my childhood institutions die or become villains (Electronic Arts was an underground indie before it became the evil sports empire of EA Games). Nintendo is doing what in TV wrestling is called a face-heel turn, a good guy becoming a bad guy. Hulk Hogan did it, Sgt. Slaughter did it, and Nintendo is now coming hard off the turnbuckle whacking anyone with a monster that fits in a tool you carry in your pocket with a folding chair.

What you do about it is up to you. Frankly it's utterly disgraceful that despite the enormous fun and innovation of the Nintendo Switch and it's game, when the long-awaited Switch 2 was announced, the price of it's games, the poor launch practices, the Game Key Cards instead of actual viable physical game releases, and eventually the fact that the most famous games that would be impossible to play on a Switch original, the biggest case for an improved Switch 2, cannot even port comfortably to the new expensive juggernaut without compromise (Cyberpunk 2077 was a mess at first anyway, but it's had years to be made right, and on Switch 2 it is broken all over again). The entire gaming industry has wished for the Nintendo Switch 2 for the better part of 3 years with bated breath, and the wish was granted on a Monkey Paw, with devastating consequences, and it STILL OUTSOLD the original at launch by a staggering amount.

I will not buy an Switch 2, or in fact by anything more in the present day Nintendo ecosystem, until Nintendo has been free of horrible decisions like this for a good long while, and I do not believe this will happen under current management. I have heard fellow longtime game fans say this never would have happened during Satoru Iwata's day, and now that he's gone, Shuntaro Furukawa's "the development leader's way of thinking", is steering all that clout the Switch 1 earned over the last 8 years into a spiral of heavy-handed manipultive practices that have earned the company my disapproval, for what little that matters.

I know I'm only one man, and even if I got all my friends and found-family in gaming to turn their backs on Switch 2, it would not even cause a rounding error in the company's profit margins, but take this information as you will. If you have read this in it's entirety, I congratulate and thank you, provided you take this to heart and encourage others to follow suit. Maybe enough of us can stop the flow of cash to these bad actors to make them blink and turn back within our lifetime.

I started officially on Monster Hunter with Rise on Switch. Me and my Ferdinand Ferret were really excited to co-op together and... he hated the controls, and the learning curve that goes with using them. He fell off the wagon immediately. but I stuck with it for a change.

You see, I tried the franchise with 3 on Wii, and it failed to catch my interest. The loading times between pieces of map were awful, the beginning grind all Monster Hunters remember was tedious, and I was not sold on the tribal aesthetic of that setting. I gave it a pass.

I tried again with Monster Hunter 4, and again with Generations, both on 3DS. I wasn't expecting miracles of it this time, but the Charge Blade and Insect Glaive new additions of this entry were appealing enough. But once again the slow walk up to gather early materials and learn the controls, plus map loading times... I once again bounced off like Hammer off a Konchu's carapace.

So the fact that I can make references to Konchu - a large ladybug-like brown shelled insect that pelts you with it's swarm like bowling balls made of ill will, and durable enough to withstand a freight train - should tell you Rise made me a late-adopter enthusiast. I believe "Fifth Fleet", after the characters in the adjacent Monster Hunter World, is the fandom term?

Speaking of World, I did try to go back to it, and it is a GORGEOUS game, amazing, but the HD scenery was too cluttered and busy for me to properly see what I was doing, making that initial mat grind now dizzying with foliage, and it lacked the panache I was used to in the Japanesque setting of Rise's Kamura region or the coastal vibe of later Sunbreak content in the Kingdom colony Elgado.

Which brings us to Wilds.

HOLY FUCK THE STEAM PORT SUCKS

I bought that first, I figured my Steam friends list would give me an edge in finding friends to co-op with, should I wish to, but a lot of my friends fell off in the early going 'cause of RL drawing them off, and my favorite MH streamer chose *now* to burnout on MH games and change their content. I was kinda banking on at least hunting with her community, but it sadly was not to be. I wish them well.

So I started over on the PS5, and I will update / edit this journal later, so watch this space if you want to hunt with Chloe Callisti!

Getting out of work last night I was greeted with some sad news from pop culture.

Voice actor and all around good guy James Cathcart passed away yesterday.

I'm seeing dozens of shout-outs about his extensive work in anime, especially in Pokémon as Professor Oak, Gary, and James, and other incidental voices.

However, my anime Telegram chat for furries who like anime posted a tribute image and I saw a face in his body of work banner behind him I did not expect.

Children of the 80s, stand in reverse rank and prepare to give Captain O.G. Readmore his disposition at sea.

I did not know this man's career spanned THAT FAR BACK.
I thrive on nostalgia for 80s cartoons I grew up with, and these charming and corny but earnest PSAs with that cat encouraging children to read really were a fond, if goofy, memory for me.

I'm often surprised when characters I remember fondly from way back have actors who have still been active ever since.
We always hear about Peter Cullen, Frank Welker, Jim Cummings, Rob Paulsen and Cree Summer.

Where were our convention appearance lines for Susan Blu? Morgan Lofting? Pat Fraley? Michael Bell? Neil Ross?
I feel bad when I remember that there were many more stars in the star-studded 1980s Saturday Morning lineup than any of us, me included, give credit for. Especially when I learn they are - or WERE - still going up until a certain point, largely unnoticed, until ... they're not.

Just feeling maudlin and mourning for James Carter Cathcart, and all the voices of fun in our childhoods, from the 1980s through the 1990s to today, and the fact that we can't remember them all, and nobody lives forever.

Smell ya later, Gary
Blast off forever, James
Prof. Oak, thanks for the Pokédex
Three volleys for Capt. Readmore

...and what a disgusting trip up that river.

Pittsburgh water - not even once.

My beloved Ferdinand Ferret and trusty friends Zarphus are here with me, at the Doubletree Hilton (what a hole, by the way, sorry but... overpriced and underwhelming)

I might have a nice couple of art works to show off, I found some time to do nice work at a table or two!

Tried to coordinate some shopping with my husband, but reception is ass (not the good kind) and we've never been able to get notifications to buzz consistently on our phones.

Hope I see some more nice people here! I met some good friendos here already!

So yeah! I haven't been to one of these since the first year we got Pittsburgh!

My first Anthrocons were 2003 and 2004, the last two years we had Adams' Mark in Philly.

... but I'm still going with the man who took me there! <3

I was Iffy Jottere back then, and only Iffy Jottere.

Then Flax came along for the ride, and Allie the gay squirrel.

Now Chloe Callisti is one of my beloved art characters and personal brands in what I like to think of as a modest and admirable presence in the fandom.

My staffing the game room at ANE and volunteering at the shop at Furpocalypse has always been about me "giving back", but with family giving us some generous vacation funds, we finally get to go back to one of the things that tied my Ferdinand Ferret and I together for life!

The 7 hour car trips going there and coming home... I could honestly do without lol but it's SO gonna be WORTH IT!!!

Don't you love opening FA, spotting a spam/scam account with a human lingerie photo and links to a plethora of (likely bogus) male enhancement options?

The admins were already pulling the fucker before I could even post my ticket suggesting they do so.

Your average day on FA I suppose. this was like *the one in a million time* I'm awake enough to notice it in the browse page while checking my watches, tried to ticket it for the sake of civic duty. That fact it was already being actioned while I was doing so is amusing and encouraging.

GFY spammers / scammers
I venture a guess many people who scam-pimp male enhancement products are standing on a deserted corner of the world musing that they are "guiding others to a treasure I may not possess" lol

First off, thanks to anyone who's still admiring my stuff!

Secondly, thank you for waiting to see me return.

I'll be rescanning the older pieces I'd only posted with crappy cell phone camera because my scanner wasn't working yet when I resumed my art last summer.

Also, if anyone watching has BlueSky, I got this:

https://bsky.app/profile/owenthenes...../3lkqxkji5i226

I'll make another journal once I start reposting my old stuff with new scans.

Maybe I'll make a new account with my recent rebrand and migrate. If you have any tips on that, feel free to advise!

I know I haven't put a lot of pieces up in a while, it's because I was working on some rather ambitious action pose drawings and then a lot of real life crap happened!

I'm still plugging away, and producing, I'll have things to show for my efforts very soon, my loyal fans!

Owen and Chloe and Ferdi and all my other menagerie will be back before you know it!

Hi! Thank you for coming!

Whether you began watching me for my commissioned works bought from other artists who'd been practicing more consistently than I when I was struggling through bad jobs, or you just joined because you like my pencil works I've been up to since last fall, thank you so much.

These commission works will always be available here, but I will put more emphasis on posting my work here from now on.

If I should so choose to make a fresh account under my updated name of Owen Otter, I will post here as well, and will leave the commissions here, but the new page will be for my works.

Over the past year I've decided it's high time I render my beloved characters and ideas with my own hand, even if those hands are aging and haven't been trained up as long as I could have all this time until now.

Again, thank you all for paying attention. I love seeing view counts go up as much as anyone.

Like any good artist or good person would want to say, I don't do it for the numbers, but the numbers still feel good - I'm a JRPG player, of COURSE I like to see statistics rise! For fuck's sake, I play Disgaea, I LOVE watching stats rise!

Speaking of things rising, thank you if you also choose to ogle my mature and adult rated works as well.

I promise more male nudes and male/male content is coming very soon, if you're into that.

I am, after all, married to a male. The best hob in all ferretdom, Ferdinand Ferret!
(Hob is the name for a non-neutered male ferret, btw )
(( BTW, under the same rules of taxonomy or w/e, otter males and females are boars and sows - how unflattering!! ))

Thank you all, again! Hope you continue to enjoy!

ANE 2025 was fantastic!

I was at the City Pop Coffee Shop on Saturday morning, the Bnnuy Meet Saturday afternoon (for Chloe), the Mustelid Meet-and-greet Saturday evening (with my husband, Ferdinand Ferret in suit as "Inspector Ferdi")!

I was also in the "When Worlds Collide - sci-fi and furrydom" or somesuch, Sunday night, and made a few rounds in the video game room.

Maybe someone saw me scrapping away in Megaman 3, or shearing the flock of foes in Zelda 2, the Adventure Of Link, which has has gathered a post-release reputation as Zelda's black sheep game, but I always loved it!

I also got to see Rick Fox, a retro games fur enthusiast, playing Vice: Project Doom on the NES with a couple friends close to hand, which raises the number of people I know who know that game, counting myself... to FOUR LOL

I'd like to thank any and all friends who saw and chatted with me, and all the attendees for bringing our furry legions to scatter hairballs all around the Hub!

I'll be back to my art in a day or two, stick around!!

I want to thank you all, regular watchers and curious onlookers alike, for seeing my stuff lately!

I've been really passionate about my art these past few months, and I love what I do here.

For those who want to see the originals, displayed in my own hands in a snappy green binder, I and my husband are going to Anthro New England in Boston this weekend!

We are mainstays at this convention, and served two or three years together as staff there.
This year we are on hiatus from staff responsibility, but we're still there this time!

My husband will be in his fantastic ferret fursuit further dolled up as "Inspector Ferdi", hot on the case of our missing Copley Caribou!

For those who got used to seeing weekly output from me and may have been concerned why it stopped, I have only two words: root canal.

The two most feared words in the world of dental hygiene (or lack thereof) LOL

It took a dreadful toll on my physical and emotional energy, and I'm limping my way back into my consistent art practice on the creative equivalent of a sprained ankle, but as per my last Chloe drawing, you can't say I'm down for the count yet!

Thank you all!

...and I helped record it and would like to proudly send it around, and hope it gets all around the world to all who care for others as much as he does.

https://youtu.be/Ve7c97FXNYs?si=38GfrhsV0NDVMRY5

Just wanted to update, during an idle moment while helping Furpocalypse in Stamford, Connecticut set up for the weekend!
Am I ever glad I got ahead of schedule by doing my horror movie themed Chloe piece earlier!
I should be back at consistently contributing after the con, say hi if you're here!
I'll be wear an Owen and a Chloe badge on my lanyard, or just look for the surprisingly witty and flamboyant sassy middle age guy in the video games area 😉

Thanks for watching!

I'm proud to be back at to my art!

As soon as I have some good pens in the proper ink consistency and line thickness, I'll be using my Ohuhu alcohol-ink markers (Hawaiian Copic equivalents) and adding some inked and colored art in the months to come!

Watch this space, people, I'm just getting started!!

I, Iffy Jottere, being of not so sound mind and VERY sound body... ;)

...have participated in a Simpsons gag meme with my first published Youtube video.

Also, realizing this is the ONLY place where people will see my stuff, I'll likely bring my art back here soon.

Enjoy the video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt3vPJWiaDk