I haven't made a journal since my birthday last year. Damn, guess the year has just been that uninteresting.

Anyway, yes, it's my birthday today, so I hope you all have a good day today!

Another year older! The last year was pretty uneventful but here's to a new one!

Wait, where did that last journal come from?

Oh well. In other news, my birthday is coming up on the 11th so I've got that to look forward to!

Charizard's pretty mid, actually.

Yep, it's my birthday! Can't think of anything else to add so yeah

Figured I should make a new journal as it's been a while since my last one. I want to try and get some special pictures this year since there's a fair few big events going on.

Firstly, it'll be year of the dragon so you bet I want to get some themed pics to commemorate my favourite dragon! Then it'll be the yearly tradition of Macro March, which I want to do something extra special for - perhaps another growth drive, but with some competition against some other fellow Zards? Let me know what you think.

Then after my birthday in April, it will be 5 years since my first commission in May. It's weird to think that I've been in the furry/macro community for this long, but I've enjoyed my interactions with all the artists I've commissioned along the way, and I can't wait to see what the future will bring!

Which leads me onto my question - would you be interested in collaborating for a special picture, whether you're an artist or a commissioner? My goal for this year is to get either a mega group picture or a full-blown comic of at least 5 pages, and I want to find out if people that want to see it happen would like to chip in, and/or if any artist mutuals would be willing to help make this goal come true. Please feel free to reach out to me and give me your thoughts/ideas! This will probably be the biggest project yet if we can make it happen, so I want to get as many people onboard!

Hey everyone, I have safely arrived back home from my holiday! I had a wonderful time in Canada, going around the great lakes and visiting the lodges and resorts! Hope I didn't miss too much during my semi-absence!

And yes this means my excessive macro Charizard simping can now resume.

Hey, just to let you all know that I'll be away on holiday from Tuesday for a couple of weeks and may not be available for chats and updates and such!

Hard to believe it, but here we are - I've turned 30 years old! Thanks for being around for it, and for all the awesome gifts I've been given so far!

Basically I want to do another Chari-gal growth drive for this upcoming Macro March - it'll be similar to last year's, with all proceeds going towards the artist, so if you're interested and are a mutual, let me know (preferably on Discord) and we can discuss further!

From today until Friday, I and several others will be celebrating/participating in Charizard Tri-Day! It's a fun few days where we get to appreciate and enjoy all things Charizard (and Charmander and Charmeleon too) so keep an eye out on FA/Twitter/wherever else for some hot new content featuring our beloved fire starters!

If you want more info on what it's about and how to join in, read  flamecoil's journal here: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10338526

As you can guess, I'm celebrating my birthday today, thank you to those who have already sent me birthday wishes! The day's pretty much just started for me so I'm pretty much just still waking up haha.

Also I never followed up on my driving test which happened back in March, but I'm pleased to say that I passed and am still very happy about it! It's one less thing that I have to worry about now, which is great!

Hadn't made a journal for several months. I've still been alive and well, as you may have gathered from my new posts and Twitter feed, but life has just been slow and uneventful really. Though I do finally have a driving test confirmed for March; it's a fair bit of time away, but it's better than nothing. I know I was hoping to have passed and been able to drive by the end of the year, but the pandemic's taken a much worse toll on everything than I anticipated. Maybe I'll just have to wait a little longer for everything to return to normality.

Also Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl should be coming out shortly, though I feel as though I've heard more about Legends: Arceus than the remakes at this point. I'm still looking forward to both games and hope that some of you are eager to try them out too!

Thanks everyone for your kind words yesterday, it was lovely to see all your kind birthday wishes, as well as some really nice gift art from some of you too! I got some nice games as presents for my birthday too which I've been enjoying already, and a very nice birthday meal from home.

Now, though, it's somewhat back to everyday life. My driving lessons are resuming from tomorrow, which I've been eagerly awaiting for several months now. Fingers crossed it all goes well! Still unsure on what I'll be pursuing once/if I pass, but once I feel confident that the world is back to some form of normality, I'll try exploring potential areas of work that might interest me. Until then, stay safe, and I'll catch up with you all later!

Pretty much what the title says, gonna be celebrating my 28th today! Thank you all for the kind words I've already received on Discord and Twitter, it really means a lot to me to see so much encouragement!

I recently decided I wanted to try out SFM and see what it's like seeing as I'm loving other people's renders of Chari-gal and wanted to do some of my own. I've made some already and shared them in some Discord servers that I'm in, but I'm still unsure about posting them here, seeing as I want to use my FA gallery to showcase the artwork that I get from other amazing artists out there rather than flood it with my own, plus I'm not entirely confident in the quality of my own creations. Of course I can always upload my own stuff to my scraps/make a new folder dedicated to my personal renders. What do you think?

And also, it's almost that time of the year again where I become one year older: April 11th is the date to remember! I'll just say right now, this year has been exceptionally difficult to cope with, thanks to the pandemic and a lack of jobs available near me kind of eating away at my mental health. I'm staying strong, though, financially and mentally, and my driving lessons will be resuming once more just a couple of days meaning I'll be back to doing stuff I'm enjoying a lot. With any luck, I'll land myself a position somewhere I'd be truly happy to work at. Until then, let's stay positive!

Happy Macro March, everyone! In case you were wondering how I'm celebrating this month of good ol' fashioned bigness, I'm doing a growth drive of sorts over at my Twitter! You can see all the details of the growth drive over here at: https://twitter.com/knoem3/status/1.....94490097979395 - happy growing!

Hope you all have a wonderful day today! I know that this year hasn't been kind to most of us, and that some of us will have to spend Christmas a lot different to how we wanted (including me and my family), but fingers crossed it's still a great day to get in touch with our loved ones and send them Christmas cheer to see them through the rest of the year. Let's all wish for a better and brighter 2021 too!

So yeah, we're back in a second national lockdown now. Totally didn't see that coming. (/s)

Things for me haven't really changed much, however my driving lessons have unfortunately been suspended as a result until the lockdown is lifted. If I'm lucky this can be as early as December, but I very seriously doubt things will actually be better by then.

I trust most of you are doing this already, but please keep wearing your masks and yourself - and others - safe.

It's been a while since I posted my last journal so I wanted to give a quick heads up on what's been going on. Firstly, I had my first driving lesson the other day, which was exciting! I've still got a long ways to go before I'm ready for the test, but I felt like I picked it up quicker than I had expected.

I've also been quite busy listing my excess amount of Pokémon cards to sell online. I've been collecting Pokémon cards for a long time now, and I've amassed a whole load of duplicate cards over the years, mainly since generation 6. So once a friend of mine mentioned a good website dedicated to selling & buying Pokémon cards (along with some other card games), I decided to register and give it a shot, and I've already had some success selling some of my cards! It's on a website called Carkmarket, so if you're interested in viewing what I have on offer, send me a PM and I'll link you to my account! Do bear in mind that I can only ship to European countries, so apologies to any non-European watchers that would have been interested.

That's pretty much all the important stuff I have to talk about for now, but I'll be sure to keep you updated with any future developments!

So not long after returning to work I realised that I was no longer enjoying it. We were being overworked and understaffed, and it was only going to get worse as the weeks went on. Which is why I made the difficult decision to hand in my notice a couple of weeks ago. Last Sunday was my last shift.

So what does this mean now?

As of right now I don't exactly have any career goals in mind, however I feel that I need to get away from the service industry, at least for some time. I will most likely use the time and money I've saved up to learn to drive, as that might help to open up certain areas of work I'd be interested in, such as working with animals. Until then, art may not slow down as much, as I do have some commissions still in waiting, but I'll do my best to keep you posted on what happens in the future.

Firstly, let's talk Discord. I am aware that I have it publicly on my page for anyone to add me, that is fine. You are more than welcome to add me should you wish to talk properly about our characters and common interests. However, I am not okay with the following:

Person: Hi.
Me: Hey.
Person: How are you?
Me: Fine.
Person: That's good

...and then radio silence. Each time you message me, I get pinged with a notification at my PC. More often than not I am playing games either with friends or by myself, and I have to check what the notification is for. Every. Single. Time. Please bear in mind that I tend to use Discord to receive updates for commissions that I'm waiting on, so getting false notifications gets mildly annoying. So I'm clamping down on this. If you want to chat, you better have a topic ready for us to talk about - and please no sharing random images without context, I honestly have no idea how I'm expected to react to these whenever you send them. Messages like that or those that just say 'Hi' will be ignored. This goes for Twitter DMs and FA notes too. Oh, and as an extra note, I do not RP so don't bother asking.

Secondly, I will be returning to work tomorrow, albeit quite reluctantly. The number of active Covid-19 cases in our country is still very high and I'm worried that our area will be badly affected very soon. Certain parts of the UK have already gone back into lockdown, and there's the potential for other places to follow suit. I take this pandemic very seriously, and I urge that you do too. Please, wear your face mask when you go out, and be considerate of crowded areas. We can all do our part to overcome this.

Welp, I just watched the Pokémon Presents, so if you haven't watched it yet, I highly advise that you do so here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEVctuQTeaI (it's only 10 minutes long)

Gotta say, I honestly couldn't care less for Pokémon Smile or Pokémon Café Mix. I have a feeling this was a demand from a very niche market (parents, almost certainly) and were just there to give them something to be happy with. The main thing though was New Pokémon Snap and it's everything I ever wanted! I loved the original Pokémon Snap so much, and my main complaint about it is that it was far too short. This game is going to be a lot of fun to play, I can tell already! Hopefully they'll give more Pokémon more screen-time and make the game much longer in general.
We also got a mini trailer on the Isle or Armor update for Sword/Shield. I haven't bought the DLC yet, but I'm waiting to see what people's general consensus is on it, though based on what was shown in the DLC it honestly looks very promising!

One last thing, I've been seeing people around on FA with the trusted-commissioner badge and wanted to get the opinions from artists I've commissioned before. I sometimes worry about whether I'm doing certain things wrong when commissioning artists, whether it be asking for updates too frequently, not giving enough feedback for WIPs that artists show me, or not giving enough information when asking for a commission. What do you think? I tend to prefer giving artists complete liberty with Chari-gal, though I am aware that some artists prefer to be given a set idea for the piece. Anyway, let me hear your thoughts, even as a non-artist watching me commission these pieces!

And the 10 questions have been selected! Thank you everyone for your wonderful questions, all of the chosen responses will be uploaded soon in the coming days so keep your eyes peeled for them! Sorry that I couldn't pick every question, but hopefully these other responses will be just as fun for you to see! My thanks go out again to King Coyote for agreeing to help me with this, this has been such an exciting project and I hope you look forward to the responses!

So yeah, it's kinda surreal to think that I commissioned my first piece all that time ago. Back then, I was practically new to commissioning. I didn't have a ref sheet, and I was using a model pose from Sizebox to describe the pose and setting I wanted. Some of you might be able to tell how long I was commissioning for without a ref sheet based on the look of the Charizard in the earlier pictures, haha. I feel as though I've come a long way since then; I now have a proper ref sheet, and more often than not I'm more than happy to give artists the complete freedom to draw Chari-gal in whatever scenario they want.

Anyway, looking back, it's been... an interesting year. It basically marks my first year of properly being in the fandom, and I've interacted with a lot of great artists along the way, both seasoned veterans and those who are new to the art scene. To all of you; thank you. Thank you for your commitment to the craft, I always love seeing your newest updates, as well as watching the piece being made live by those who stream their art. Thank you for your interest in Chari-gal, I can't tell you how much it means to me whenever you express love for my character. And thank you to all the people who watch me and these artists, supporting them in this zany world we're living in. It always puts a smile on my face reading your comments on the artists' pieces.

Moving forward, I've still got plenty of ideas and plans for Chari-gal, and I want to meet new people that would be willing to paint her. I've got a fun little idea for a "Q&A" session where people can submit questions for Chari-gal to answer, and her responses get drawn out by an artist that I commission, though I've yet to find/decide on someone who has the time/is willing to do this. Also I do plan on reopening collaborations at some point, however these may be different to what I did last time; instead of you approaching me with your idea, I'll instead pitch my own idea and if you want your character to be involved in the piece, then you can claim your character's position in the piece. I'll have to think about how to go about this but for now, I hope you'll enjoy the ideas I've got in the works, and there'll be more giant Chari-gal shenanigans to come, I can assure you!