Just a reminder, everyone! My contest is ending in FIVE days! It also will be announced Live on my stream at Tigerdile! On April 26th, at 5 Pm PST

Click below for details!

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6656429/

Hope to see you there!

Today was fairly eventful; had the sunken remnants of a molar yanked. Finally able to eat after a day-long pain induced fast. Ow.

I will be streaming at Tigerdile in participation/observance of Homecon!

When: 7pm PST Fri
11am PST Sat & Sun
Where: https://www.tigerdile.com/stream/kazenstream/


Come on down for digital art streaming of upcoming pieces, and where onsite commissions are available! See you there!

Wow! I never expected to have such a positive reaction to the contest! The current prize is already up to a Digital Shading piece!

I'd just like to remind folks that the contest is still on for another 11 days (Until 5 Pm PST on April 26th) at which point, the winners will be selected and announced, LIVE on my Tigerdile stream! Which is HERE!

The entry rules can still be found HERE!

Thank you everyone for your support!

Hey, everyone! I've got awesome news for you all! I'll be running a contest for a FREE, one character piece of artwork! There's a couple of twists, so be sure to read below before putting your name in the hat!

I'll be running this contest until April 26th at 5 PM PDT, so there's plenty of time to enter. Selection will be via random number generator.

Only one entry per account, so please don't use alt accounts. You also MUST be watching me to enter.

Journal posting, bumping the contest isn't necessary, but if you do, and keep the journal up the length of the contest, I'll give you another number and double your chances of winning.

And here's the BIG twist...the type of prize you get is determined by the number of people that newly watch my account after I release the contest. Please no cheating by unwatching, then rewatching. I took screens of my watch list before I started the contest.

Here's how it'll work!

0-10 - Single character sketch like below.
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/15547180/

11-20 - A full page sketch of your character, like this
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/13014825/

21-35 - A digitally shaded picture, like this one here.
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/12267080/

36-50 - A digitally colored picture like this one!
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/12984364/

And if it goes above that, I'll add on a second place prize for one lucky person of a full page sketch!

All pictures will be without background, but if you'd like, I can add a background onto it for an add on fee. The sketches for these, regardless of if they stay a sketch or get all the way up to a digital colored piece are started traditionally. You can elect to have me send you the sketch via snail mail, if you'll cover the shipping.

To show you read all these, please include "Banana Pudding" in your entry.

So, what are you waiting for? Grab a friend, get them in here, get them watching, and good luck!

I remain open for TWO commissions! Fill out the form below and I can get you started!

http://tinyurl.com/KazenComm

Although I've had the account awhile, with a burgeoning audience I ought to expand my domain. So I'm finally getting around to updating my Weasyl account, which is HERE!

Some of my friends know of  skylorforscythe and  nateday's former business partnership, through which the recent glut of coloring jobs arose. Well, following the cessation of said partnership, Skylor approached me to promote and manage my work with commissions, both in real, and digital media.

There's no way I was going to say no to that.

So, it is with great anticipation and excitement that I announce my business partnership with  skylorforscythe! We're ironing out the new Terms of Service and Commission Forms.

My Terms of Service can now be found HERE
My Tigerdile Stream's Rules page, as well as overall commission information can now be found HERE.

I'm so excited I could explode!

I'm looking into getting one to expand my streaming capacity, and I was curious what kinds were available that were good for capturing drawing footage.

Thanks for any help/suggestions!

For anyone that's a fan of mashups (For example, playing Dark Side of the Moon alongside the Wizard of Oz), watching This One while high borders on a 'religious experience'.

"I said vivid orange, not baby shit."
"I want lines with gaps so small, not even a flea's dick could fit between them."
"It's like SAI can read my mind, but is disgusted by what it finds. So gives me difficulty in using it, eventually yielding to my pressure."
"Aw, my poor brain. He's all tuckered out."

Some days you think you know how your life is going to play out. You think everything's cool and smooth sailing. Then suddenly, your cat replicates a set from Saw in your house.

An idea that just came to mind, that's basically as follows: If we could nominate an assortment of Brush settings for digital art programs (SAI, The Gimp, etc) to serve as an expanded set of sorts that would be considered 'Basic Necessities' like hair/tree/water brushes.

This is because, in my experience I'm always having to craft those myself. However, without a more comprehensive example to follow, I always spend more time fumbling about in the digital darkness of unknown potential, than coming upon an ideal combination of settings.

That's generally been a difficult process with digital art, personally.

Got back from FC the other day! Was a pretty good con, roomed with  bahumot as usual, got art from  darknatasha,  caribou and  stevegallacci which I will be shortly posting!

One interesting event that anyone that stayed in the Marriott probably knows, is somebody (accidentally?) pulled the fire alarm at 4 AM Sunday morning. So several floors got evacuated, and all kinds of fire trucks piled around to clear the place.

I admittedly worried that the incident at MFF was happening again. Thankfully that wasn't the case.

This morning, our cat Leandra passed away suddenly, for an as yet unknown reason. She was laying beside me in bed to keep warm, which isn't unusual for this time of year.

When suddenly she stretched out, started spitting up, and was gone within ten seconds.

I'm still in shock.

So, people have asked me if I've ever thought about doing a comic. I would like to, but I've never had an idea for something that I think would both fit the format, and that I would have the chops to carry out.

However, during Rainfurrest, at the Saturday Morning Cartoons event, an episode of Rescue Rangers was shown (specifically the Cola Cult episode, but I digress), I shortly had an idea.

A short comic/graphic novel that can be summed up thusly; a crossover between I Am Legend and Rescue Rangers, starring Gadget and Zipper in particular.

I'm currently doodling character designs, and attempting to adapt/recreate the show's style as opposed to my own. I haven't yet written anything, but this' still a rough idea.

Any thoughts/suggestions are wholly appreciated!

As some who know me particularly well already realize, I'm an atheist. But like most of us, I wasn't always. I was raised Lutheran and for much of my early life, that's how I identified.

Although most of that time I had what you'd call, a 'child's faith', in that I only ever really knew the sugar coated child-friendly narrative you're fed in those days. But as I, and my faith matured, my perception of things naturally skewed, and as a result I didn't really hold the same, at times stringent and literalist views of my peers. The more I read scripture, the more I began picking out holes and inconsistencies in it's narrative.

But one doesn't let go of that way of thinking quickly nor easily.

My mode of thinking had been, history is written by the winners, but as I began realizing, the winners aren't always the good guys. I had been told the Bible was a description of the history of the world from the beginning till after Jesus' death. So I began thinking, how do we know that, since the Bible often refers to battles both physical and spiritual, how would I know if what I was reading, was the account of the party I would have agreed/sided with?

By High school, this eventually molded to a sort of, I guess you could call a 'homebrew Satanism'. Wherein I hypothesized that the whole God/Satan duality thing was actually backwards, that no omnipresent, all powerful being existed, but that the creator of the universe and the entity we were meant to have a spiritual relationship with had lost a battle/been betrayed by some other, similar but malicious and deceitful entity that had supplanted him/her/it and was now taking credit for it's accomplishments.

Thus for a time, I believed that the entities stuffed in Hell were actually the 'good guys' of whatever cosmic struggle no mortal was truly privy to.

Were I to open a livestream dedicated to games in addition to my art stream, would anyone watch it? If so, what titles would people like to see?

Thanks for any feedback!

I swear to Azathoth, if I have to read/hear about This Goddamn Fanfic again, I think I'm going to punch somebody in the mouth.

This pertains to my fellow fans of pony; has anyone ever found/seen a PMV to David Bowie's 'Fashion'? I know a few of Lady Gaga's song of the same name, but that doesn't interest me, hah.

If not, I may have to learn video editing to make it happen, because it needs to.

While Dark Souls' most notorious draw is it's difficulty, for me that actually is only secondary. What gets me is, usually when it comes to fiction, I'd rather a space sci-fi or apocalyptic setting than a sword and sorcery one. I've seen and been privy to so many throughout my life (my mother was a big fan of Tolkien, and regularly played D&D) that they start to blur together.

So why is it I'm drawn to Dark Souls over most other such fantasy titles? Well, it's story (Chiefly the first one, I'm not as familiar with the second's yet) and it's setting play out rather like an old death/black metal album. It spares you the archetypal fantasy garbage with slightly differently proportioned humans (e.g. elves, dwarves, etc) and goes straight into the hellish abominations. It deals with inevitability, none of it's endings are really 'good' in the sense that everything is green fields and chirping birds.

Dark Souls works with a very grim and morose perception of itself, and doesn't bullshit you. A, generally non-spoilery description of the first game's story is, a choice between prolonging an old, once glorious age of light that will inevitably die anyway, or putting it out of it's misery.

Just, for example say the boss Pinwheel from the first game. That thing's backstory is fucking metal.

So yeah.

Can be found https://www.nsfwkazen.tumblr.com

So, I caved at last, and opened a new Tumblr page: http://kazenarts.tumblr.com/

I might update that more often than here, as I'll likely post rough sketches.

Earlier today, I was asked an innocuous, but thought provoking question.

"Why do you draw? Professionally, or for the love of it?"

My response was to the effect of,

"For several things. Certainly the love of course, with the hope that I might make a career of something I adore. Also, as a manner of consoling myself of my personal loneliness. Additionally, so that I may have others share in the constructs of my imagination, and I in theirs."

Then I pondered on a deeper matter, concerning the nature of the subjects of my art specifically. Namely, why I, and other furry artists do what we do. Why it is that, as far as we can tell, imaginary anthropomorphic animal characters fascinate us so.

I then recalled a thought I had on this subject some time ago. Even as a young child, I was fascinated by topics that highlighted mankind's hubris. Particularly the sinking of the Titanic. Of course, the ship had just been rediscovered at the time, so was a major topic of discussion. But I digress.

While it may be due to my religious upbringing (of which I have since emancipated myself) and my social phobias, I have, and continue to hold the view that overall, we humans are very vain, arrogant creatures. We attribute the qualities of compassion, altruism, empathy, self reflection and others, under the coalescent term, 'Humanity'.

As though homo sapiens by nature possessed a monopoly on such things.

Although I do not count myself among them by any stretch of the imagination, I can sympathize with those who wish to believe in current intervention upon Earth by extraterrestrials. Such inter-species contact would force us to discard such childish, and in the long run dangerous views. Not to say many of us would stop holding our anthropocentric view, of course.

Why do I feel that, an anthropocentric view of the universe is dangerous? In my view, it mirrors some of the basal instincts that give rise to tribalism, racism, and other exclusionary ideologies. Which are inherently self destructive.

So, that brought me to this conclusion. I draw anthropomorphic 'furry' art, as an expression of this view. So as to, express what we commonly call 'humanity' in otherwise sentient, non-human entities.

I am however, aware of a common resistance to depictions of this nature. Mainly that, as a visual species, familiarity with face is paramount in being able to relate to those we come in contact with. Of course, this feature is one of many, as Darwin put it, indelible stamps of our lowly origins. Evolutionarily speaking, this is a very effective survival trait for a social animal.

However, even evolved primates as we are, will sooner or later need to shed our primitive paranoia and conceits.

(tl;dr - furfag does furry porn for pretentious quasi-philosophical reasons lawl)

...or how I learned to stop worrying and love Dark Souls.