With the new updates to Patreon fucking people over, I lost half of my patrons because they can't afford the new changes.

Because of this, I've disabled my Patreon because I'd rather save my friends money than have them pay extra just to support me.

That being the case, if you still want to support me, consider buying me a coffee! It's super appreciated and won't fuck you over like pledging to my Patreon would have!

https://ko-fi.com/kraest
https://ko-fi.com/kraest
https://ko-fi.com/kraest
https://ko-fi.com/kraest

Hey y’all! My bull character adopt auction is almost over! These boys need good homes! All information is at the link!

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/25533485/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/25533485/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/25533485/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/25533485/

So I’ve been enjoying my new mic quite a lot. Here’s a masterpost of all of my newest videos! 8D

Yeah, I totally still do them. In the newest one, I used my new mic and mic stand and pop filter! 8D

Three cups of cold brew coffee is two cups too many.

_{a friend of mine who is the biggest coffee snob I know is constantly warning people about the dangers of cold brew but do i listen no of course not because im a god damned idiot}

So we woke up at around noon yesterday to hear the toilet gurgling and saw that the water level was down almost all the way and that there was backflow in the tub. Again. So we called the plumber, who came out, got angry at the last plumber for not actually fixing the problem before leaving, and then promptly left. Then the bathrooms actually flooded and we started bucketing water outside while constantly calling the emergency apartment helpline (our flatmate refused to get off the phone with them until our plumber arrived). When he got here, he started snaking every pipe he could, but nothing was working. He finally called some heavy duty plumbers because he didn't have good enough equipment to take care of it. We were dumping bucket after bucket after bucket for a good five hours before we could stop.

Now, two things here: firstly, the bucket we were using was our 2-3 gallon mop bucket, and we were using a long handled dustbin to scoop up the water from the toilet before it could overflow and hit the floor (we still had an inch or two on the floor), and like I said, this went on for five hours, so that was somewhere in the neighbourhood of 450 gallons that we bucketed outside. Secondly, this was late as hell by the time the plumbers got here and finally got to work on the blockage in the pipes, so someone above us actually called the fucking police because of the noise. I wanted to tell them to get their fucking waders on and come bucket this literal shit out of our place.

So, the plumbers finally cleared up the clog (we hope it's actually clear this time, because this is the fourth time our system has backed up, the second time it actually overflowed this badly), and it was...dryer sheets, baby wipes, cigarette butts, condoms...basically all the shit you're told NOT to put down the toilets. Every plumber who's come in so far has started the job by saying it was our fault and ended the job saying that it absolutely was not our fault because there's no way we could have made a clog that huge in the time we've been here, which I'll remind you has been only EIGHT MONTHS.

And they're damned right that it's not our fault. Not just that we couldn't have done that in that amount of time, but we don't do our laundry here, we don't have a baby, we smoke outside and have a receptacle for our butts, and we don't use condoms. If we have to, we will walk the landlady through the apartment nook by nook, cranny by cranny and ask her if she sees anything here that was found in the drains.

After everything was said and done, though, the first plumber who came out yesterday, who was actually just a maintenance guy here in our building, said he'd send a cleaner over to finish what he started, since he actually mopped up after the professionals finished.

So I believe I mentioned on Twitter that the reason I relaunched my Patreon was my school has once again gutted student worker hours and I'm now at only half the number of hours I had when I started working there. As a student worker, I also make only minimum wage for whatever reason. So, only ten hours a week at $8.05 an hour doesn't add up to much and I need to make sure I can reliably pay rent.

On top of that bullshit with my schedule, our apartment is rebelling against us more and more at every turn.

Our AC unit has been busted for six of the seven months we've been living here and the building repair company is doing fuck all to fix it. We've had a portable unit in our room for that six months, and those things are not nice to your power bill.

Our plumbing is completely fucked and we're apparently at the end of the drainage for the entire building because we've have the plumbing snaked three times now and theyve pulled up more and more garbage every time. Yesterday the plumber filled a huge garbage bag of, like, papers and baby wipes and a bunch of things that don't break down when flushed, and today I woke up to the toilet gurgling and went in to see water backing up into the tub.

So we can't shower, we can't use the bathroom at all, using the sink is dangerous because yesterday when we trie using the sink, all of the water that was draining was coming up and out from under the toilet...this is the third time this shit has happened since we moved in only eight months ago and we're only a hair's breadth away from taking our landlady to court over it. We signed a contract to live here and pay rent, sure, but she also signed a contract to provide a certain level of comfortable living. Sweating our asses off and being unable to shower or relieve ourselves because our bathroom smells like a sewage treatment facility does not meet the standard she signed for.

Oh yeah, and tomorrow is the first day of next term, so being clean is, you know, super important.

So, I've decided to relaunch my Patreon. I made a few mistakes the last time and quickly got overburdened, but I've analysed everything over and over again for more than a year and have found where I went wrong.

That being the case, MY PATREON IS ALIVE AGAIN!

What does this mean for you in terms of getting to see my art? Nothing! I have an immense hatred for paywalls when I wouldn't be where I am without the support of everyone who looks at, faves, and comments on my art, and especially with the help of people who commission me. What I intend to do when I graduate will be free for anyone who buys the products anyways, so yeah. The only things I won't post anywhere else are the thank you sketches I do for patrons because those are 100% personalised to them. Everything else I do will still be posted on every site I'm on, just at a...minor delay.

BUT KRAEST I hear you cry out WHAT CAN I GET FROM THIS?

Excellent question! Firstly, since I know where a lot of you are coming from, I'm no longer bound by PayPal and can offer NSFW material! Secondly, for anyone who joins in under the $20 tier or higher, you get prints! Things in the mail! Lots of stuff! If you need it, I also have the Aspiring Artist tier, which gets you everything in the $50 tier and below as well as private consultations with me and lessons on improving your art!

On top of all of that, once or twice a month, or whenever I have the time, I'll even do something extra for someone, no matter the tier you're on!

When it comes to my art alone, you have exclusive access to it before anyone else! Teasers will be posted there prior to being posted anywhere else, as will finished pieces! For higher tiers, there will also be the PSD or SAI files available at your disposal, so you get to see in depth how I've set up each piece!

https://www.patreon.com/KraestIllustrations
https://www.patreon.com/KraestIllustrations
https://www.patreon.com/KraestIllustrations
https://www.patreon.com/KraestIllustrations

Seriously, just…fuck MtGO. I’ve been on it for a week and I’ve had nothing but trolls. I don’t have the cards to build anything more than a shitty standard pauper deck and when I try to go into a standard game, I can’t do anything but lose, and if I go into a pauper game, I get people with meticulously crafted pauper decks with old cards that I still can’t beat, and I can’t fucking set it to standard AND pauper, so I get people who are playing one or the other, not both. And this is still in the “just starting out” area because I don’t have any fucking cards that can actually win any games anywhere else, but that entire play area is full of fucking trolls with their fucking turn 4 Ulamog and turn 5 Liliana or Scarab God.

Like, if I could import the cards I actually physically own that I’ve already bought and paid for, I could ostensibly have fun, but NO. Gotta buy boosters and toolkit boxes and hope for the fucking best.

So, yeah. I’ve asked for a refund. I’m gonna go back to fucking Cockatrice and Untap.in because even though those communities are cancer, they’re *reliably* cancer, not just fucking pricks gatekeeping because they can’t handle having world record setting tiny dicks.

Congrats, assholes. You’re taking money out of WotC’s pockets because you can’t handle other people having fun.

If anyone wants to play over Cockatrice, my username is also Kraest there.

Okay, so remember the "some fuckass robbed our bank account" streams I was doing? Yeah, the bank hasn't reimbursed us for that yet.

THAT BEING THE CASE I'm opening for TWO ref sheet commissions!

These are $80-100~ depending on what you'd like, but the base ref is three flat colour body shots, front, back, and side, and includes one to two fully shaded head shots and a colour swatch palette for your character. The background is also a textured colour. These will have to be paid up front so I can actually make rent this month and continue living! 8D

EXAMPLES:
SFW $100 EXAMPLE
NSFW $80 EXAMPLE

Obviously these are older examples, but hey, they get the job done. Lol

SO FOR ANYONE WHO WANTS ONE go ahead and either comment below or send a note!

So today in the stream, my computer was MAJORLY chugging, so I told it to restart. Upon restarting, it immediately froze once I logged in. I restarted again. It froze again. I'm now doing a backup of all of my documents and programs, but because developers are FUCKING MORONS there's no progress bar, so I have no idea how long it's going to take to back up a fucking terabyte of shit. Once that's done, I'm reformatting and reinstalling shit, and hopefully I'll be able to get this shit moving again, because I'd like to be able to make some money over the break that doesn't involve making minimum wage at the library. I'd like to be able to actually pay rent this month.

...anyone want to buy me a new computer?

The end of the term is approaching, as is my three week break, which means commission season is opening again so I can still pay rent! 8D

During the breaks at work, we don't need all of the library workers on hand, so the hours are given to those who don't have the most hectic schedules during the terms and thus need less of a break than those with super hectic schedules. That being the case, I'm not working over the break and I have three weeks off with which to do more art for all of you! So, on Saturday, June 17th, sketch commissions will officially open once again!

THE IMPORTANT INFORMATION:

As always with my sketch commissions, they'll all be done on stream, and prices will be determined by the length of time it takes to do it! However, since I've been in so many classes that force me to draw exceedingly quickly, the $20 per hour rate has become less financially optimal each time I've opened for these commissions. The last time I opened for sketch commissions, I was barely passing the $5 minimum time in each one, which meant not much help in putting food in my belly. That being the case, I'm changing the price to $30 per hour, but I'm still keeping the $5 minimum.

MORE EXPLANATION

So, my regular, non-streamed, non-timed sketch commissions are already $20, and drawing as quickly as I do, churning out multiple sketches per hour means that I'm putting in a hell of a lot more than what I used to and not making much in return. My growth as an artist has shifted the balance of price/time/quality in y'all's favour and out of mine and I'm losing out. I'm just rebalancing the seesaw back to mutual benefit.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR YOU?

Nothing much, really. You'll still be paying the same price as when I did sketch commissions a year ago at the $20 per hour rate since I draw MUCH faster than I did then. The last time I opened for sketch commissions, I was finishing sketches and each commissioner was paying around $7 on average. With the new rate of $30 per hour, that $7 is now only $9.25~, which is still a screaming deal for a piece like this, right?

THE RULES OF THE STREAM

Same as they ever were, this is FIRST COME, FIRST SERVE!
Each piece is $30 per hour (minimum of $5), but I can almost 100% guarantee that it will not take an hour to do any of these sketches.
If I need to restart at any time, the timer will also be reset so you’re not paying for my mistakes!

THERE IS A WILL NOT DRAW LIST! It’s the same that I have for my commissions, and is as follows:
Straight NSFW pieces
Fat Furs
Inflation
Hypnosis
Baby Furs
Scat
Watersports
Vore (of any kind)
Anything involving foot/paw worship
Anything drug related
Copyrighted characters (your Arcanine character is fine, but not if he’s giving Bugs Bunny a face full of dick, ya dig?)

SO MARK YOUR CALENDARS FOR A GOOD TIME AND SOME GOOD THINGS COMING YOUR WAY! 8D

I got a lot of comments from people saying they'd buy my designs if they were on shirts, but I've made literally only one sale, so here's my shop link again: https://www.redbubble.com/people/kraest/shop

I've got wolves, lions, tigers, sergals, charr, and a new "don't talk to me" design, so come on by and help feed me since the school cut all student worker hours and I've got $20 until my next paycheck.

Just posting this as a casual reminder that my Redbubble shop is open! There are currently five designs that you can get on shirts, phone cases, laptop skins, and many more other things!

The current designs are charr, sergal, tiger, lion, and wolf! Don't want to show off your furry side in public because people are assholes? That's fine! They're very graphic designs that aren't necessarily furry as much as they're just stylised animal faces!

So come check it out and perhaps purchase a thing for yourself and/or loved ones!

http://redbubble.com/people/kraest/shop

I've gotten a few people asking about their availability for purchase. The ones I've done already were specifically for myself and my boyfriends, and are of our characters, so those ones won't be available for purchase as that's kind of weird for us.

HOWEVER, I would be more than happy, if enough interest is shown, to do a series of generic species base designs in the same style on Teespring or something. So, if you had a wolf character, the shirt design wouldn't be your wolf character, it would just be a wolf design, ya dig?

So, if I were to run a series like that, would anyone be interested? The shirts on Teespring run around $20-25, if I remember correctly, which isn't that bad, it's kind of just the average shirt price anyway.

The species bases I'd be running, just off the top of my head would be:
Canine
- Wolf
- Fox
Feline
- Tiger
- Lion
- Sabretooth
- Mountain Lion
Sergal
- The fluffy one (I don't pay much attention to sergals tbh)
Bovid
- Goat
- Bull
Hyena
- Spotted Hyena

Any other suggestions are welcome, but remember, this would be a series of generic species bases, so nothing spectacularly detailed or particular to your character.

So I just told my boss that I’ll probably be working here in the library for only a couple more months.

There’s a place where a friend of mine works where he teaches drunk people how to paint simple paintings, and if you’re only assisting the artist, you make $13 per hour, and if you’re the artist, you make $15. Obviously this is more than I’m making, or else I wouldn’t even go for the job because HEY social anxiety. It’s actually a hell of a lot more than I’m making, and if I were to work the same hours there that I’m working here in the library, I’m making about double what I currently do. On top of that, this job could serve as my internship, which would be a HUGE worry off my shoulders because everyone in my school needs to have a 90 hour minimum internship to graduate. ON TOP OF THAT, I’d be doing a huge number of paintings that could go into my portfolio. The location is even perfect, as it’s literally right down the road from where I live, once it actually opens in a couple of months.

The downside of all of it, though, is that I’d have to resign from the library. I legit start feeling weepy when I think of leaving this job because it’s amazing. I feel important here, like I make a difference, because I know for a fact that I’m one of three people that people go to for information around here. On top of that, my boss right now is the best boss I’ve ever had. She goes so far out of her way, taking on extra work, extra hours, extra everything to make sure that her employees are happy and healthy. I’ve never had a better boss. Every other job I’ve had, when I left, I was so fucking happy to leave. With this one? I know I’m going to cry.

So on one hand, I have this list of upsides about doing this painting job, but then I have this one MASSIVE downside that I’ll be leaving the best job I’ve ever had.

When I told my boss about it, she just got really sad and said that today was the Mondayest Tuesday she’s had in a long time and I wanted to fucking cry because I really felt like I’d hurt her. But, she did say that she understood how good it would be for me, and that she’d be more than happy if I used her as a reference.

THE WINNER OF THE COMMUNITY CHARACTER DESIGN is actually fucking adorable

He's a kind and gentle athletic sabretooth with piercings who works as a bodyguard, :3

I'm gonna sketch up a few variations and put that up for a vote to see what people like best!

COME DROP YOUR VOTES! 8D

http://tinyurl.com/CommCharDesign

I want to see how well I can build a character through community input and have it be 100% crowd sourced with zero input from my end beyond the final step of drawing him and giving him life! You ARE allowed to choose multiples, so you don't need to worry about that, and I have included an "Other" option if you don't see your favourites included. I did condense a few similar ideas in the body type/personality/job sections, so if you see something you didn't submit on the original journal, pick the closest thing on the list. If there's nothing close to it, go ahead and add it in the "Other" section!

Once this voting round is over, I'll take the most popular options and create a new voting form out of those, and from there, I'll start sketching and then do a final voting round of the designs there!

Let's have some fun with this! 8D

http://tinyurl.com/CommCharDesign
http://tinyurl.com/CommCharDesign
http://tinyurl.com/CommCharDesign
http://tinyurl.com/CommCharDesign

Okay, for some reason, editing a journal multiple times locks the comments? So I'm just reposting this and trying again. Also, people were still creating characters when literally all I'm asking is for y'all to just list your favourites in these categories. This is literally the same thing I got the first time I tried this last year so I guess it's my fault for expecting that people would read GIANT BOLD RED LETTERS but whatever.

SO LETS TRY THIS AGAIN

WHAT I WANT
Character traits. By this I mean give me NOTHING MORE than a list of your favourites of these categories, and please give multiples! I want to know ALL of your favourites! Don't worry about posting a species/personality/job someone else has already posted, because I'll be compiling all of this at the end!
- Species (no hybrids)
- Body type
- Personality (please no MBTI abbreviations, I don't want to have to read Psychology Today just for a character bio)
- Piercings/tattoos, yes or no and NOTHING ELSE, JUST YES OR NO
- Job
GIVE ME YOUR RESPONSE IN A BULLETED LIST FORMAT.

Example:
Species: goat, tiger, hyena
Body type: muscular, swimmers build
Personality: shy, sarcastic
Piercings/tattoos: yes/yes
Job: barista, librarian

WHAT I DO NOT WANT
Example 1: A full character description, i.e., "A sarcastic bull who works as a barista and lifts weights in his spare time".

Example 2: a bulleted full character description, i.e.,
- bull
- muscular because he loves to work out
- sarcastic and loves to sass customers
- barista, but wants to be a teacher
- no piercings because his boss sucks, but has an anchor on his shoulder that he hides with his sleeve

DO NOT GIVE ME THAT. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT

IF YOU GIVE ME A FULL CHARACTER DESCRIPTION LIKE THIS, YOUR COMMENT WILL BE HIDDEN AND YOUR IDEA IGNORED. DO NOT GIVE ME A BULLETED FULL CHARACTER DESCRIPTION OR SO HELP ME.

FINAL REMINDER - JUST GIVE ME LISTS. I SEE A LOT OF CHARACTER BIOS AND I SPECIFICALLY STATED MULTIPLE TIMES EXPLICITLY THAT I DO NOT WANT THAT. I'M COMPILING ALL OF THIS IN A GOOGLE DOC AFTERWARD SO KEEP IT SIMPLE AND JUST LIST YOUR FAVOURITES.

I literally cannot be clearer about just asking y'all to just list your favourites. Just list. Do not design, just list. In the case of piercings or tattoos, just yes or no. That's it. It's that easy. I tried this a year ago and not a single person listed shit they liked and had to abandon the project because everyone forgot how to fucking read. Don't make me abandon it again, please.

My boss is amazing and one of my coworkers is great to work with. The vast majority of people who come into the library are absolutely wonderful.

But then there's the guy I work with on Wednesdays who doesn't do shit and sits on his phone all day. Last week, when eight o'clock came around and the doors locked, he left and I looked around to see that he had done fuck all for the closing procedures. I'm very sure the only reason he'd done the gate count was because I told him to, because we had an event and I wanted to see how many more people had come in. So I ended up having to stay for an additional half hour. So I told my boss about how he'd been doing this every Wednesday since the beginning of the term. During the next event on Saturday night, he was supposed to work for the library, but he spent the entire night out in the courtyard socialising. We'd gotten an email from the boss with explicit directions, and his job was to shelve the books that were on the return cart as well as all of the books we had on display. He came into the library, spent five minutes shelving the books on the cart, but left all 30 books on display on the tables. I had done all of my work, which was checking the book drop and doing all of the closing procedures, and especially since I'd already told my boss about his performance when he and I work together, I decided that I wasn't going to touch the books so she could see how much work he'd done, or the lack thereof. I spoke to my boss about Saturday night on Monday, and she told me that I'd done the right thing.

Which leads to my other coworker. She wasn't on shift at the end of the event and was there to represent the gardening club. She got pissed off at me for deciding to not clean up after my coworker's laziness and started saying that I was being "shady as fuck". Since then, she's had a major bug up her ass and has been saying that I don't do my job and that I just sit around all day. Last night, she and I were closing the library together and I did all of the closing procedures myself, yet again, because much like the other guy, she was just on her phone and drawing all day and only got up to help the library patrons if literally no one else was available. When I finished the closing procedures, I told her everything I'd done and she even verbally acknowledged that I'd finished with time to spare. Like, yeah, I was playing MtG yesterday while I was on the clock, but that was because I'd done everything I needed to do, but you can bet your ass that if anyone needed help, I got up from the game to help them. One match wherein I completely stomped my opponent without taking any damage went on for over an hour just because of how often I was getting up to help people. I've designed every event flyer except for one since I started working there, and that one was so bad that I redisigned it after my coworker sent it to me. I've decorated for every holiday with help from the other coworker who is awesome to work with and little to no help from her or the Wednesday guy.

I was telling a couple of girls who come into the library every day about her last night, and they both told me that I'm the only reason they come into the library at all, and that they're both scared to approach my coworker because she presents herself as a major bitch, and they don't come in when the other guy is working because they know they won't get any help from him. AND I GET COMMENTS LIKE THIS LITERALLY EVERY DAY. Every single day, I get people telling me that I'm the reason they come into the library. That I'm the one who will go out of my way to help. That I'm the one who goes above and beyond to help. That if I weren't there, no one would come in at all.

So today, when I go in, I'll be going in a little early so that I can speak to my boss before class and tell her what's been going on and that I'm dropping out of the gardening club because my coworker is the president of said club and because I'm just done with her being a hardcore bitch to me for no fucking reason.

"If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you'll abort it if you do. Be patient and you'll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait."
-Robert Heinlein "Time Enough For Love"

My old boss added me to an artist group on Facebook and this is something she posted this morning.

Firstly, this is bullshit. I've talked extensively about this in the past, but I feel it's worth talking about further now and again. Force your ideas. If they don't work out, then stop and put it on the shelf until later. If you follow the advice of this quote, you'll never create anything because you'll be waiting for inspiration and motivation. Every successful artist will tell you that waiting for inspiration and motivation WILL kill your art. I stopped drawing for two years because I waited for them. If you're going to be a reliably creative person, you need to create and create and create until inspiration and motivation and words that amateurs use and no longer apply to you. I'm sure you've heard or read the phrase, "creativity is a muscle"? Well, it is. You need to flex that muscle and use it constantly if you're going to make it work for you, otherwise it's going to atrophy and you're going to lose it the same way Arnold Schwarzenegger lost his muscles when he became the governor of California and stopped working out. Ever notice how the best and most popular artists seem to post stuff every day, whether it's a finished piece to their gallery or sketches on twitter or tumblr? Yeah. So keep flexing, and keep creating, and even if you end up being one of those artists who draws the same thing over and over again, you'll still be a step above those people who are waiting for motivation and inspiration to kick in, because at least you'll be creating.

Secondly, my old boss is a dumbass because she spent the last 12 years working for a fucking ART SCHOOL.

IM FUCKIN MOVIN YALL

WERE FINALLY GETTING OUT OF THIS FUCKIN HELLHOLE OMG

I'm fuckin vibrating y'all. I'm so excited that I don't even need to walk, I just think about the place and start vibrating so much I just glide from place to place.

That being said, we won't have internet for a couple days probably, so I'll be away during that time.

Hope y'all keep this place afloat without me! :P

I'm super sick again, but here we go! 8D

So, on top of doing sketch commission streams, I've also done a couple of game streams! I've been play the top down horror game, Darkwood!

I've been posting them up to YouTube as well, for those who missed them live!

Check them out here!

Part 1


Part 2

DIS MAH GOOD FRANG

GO WATCH FRANG