So there's this new thing called Furry Network? And I've joined it. So if you're on FN too, you'll find me here http://furrynetwork.com/mamath

I'm also pretty active on
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mamathzilla
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mamathzilla/
Tumblr: http://mamath.tumblr.com

Just figured I'd mention, since people are moving around a lot after the FA problems... I'm in a lot of places!

Whups, missed doing these updates for a couple months... I've been busy with all that stuff I talked about I guess. :U Back to it!

Starrytellers happened! We made our funding goal, printed everything and mailed out over about 250 books! :D Woo! It was a big learning experience but it went real smooth for a first time. :) Starrytellers is on the long lists for the Aurealis and Ledger Awards now - It'd be cool to win something but there's plenty of tough competition so I won't hold my breath. PRETTY COOL THOUGH.

Oh! And Starrytellers can now be purchased in my store if you missed it. :D http://shop.mamath.net/category/books

November Supanova happened and was lots of fun. Christmas happened! Sold lots of Boxfoxes @_@

Aaaand then New Years. Welcome to 2016, eyyyyy. Got lots of plans for 2016. New anthology to start organising, new products to design, new things to try. I'd like to start offering nice tote bags with my designs on this year. :3c And of course I've got plans for new plush. >:3c

Oops, a few weeks overdue on this monthly journal thing...

I've been super busy!

The busiest thing has been the Starrytellers Kickstarter. I'm Kickstarting an anthology of comics about stars! 10 Australian artists, 10 stories about stars + 1 more artist for the cover art. :) All the work in this book is great quality and I'm very excited for it all to come together. Hopefully picking up the print proof tomorrow - we just need the funds to pay for the print run. Please consider backing if you're into comics, and especially Australian comics!

It's been a big project with a bit of a learning curve for me, since I'd never designed a book before, or used Kickstarter, or organised so many people with a pretty tight deadline. But it's come together well in the end. :)

Boxfox news! We're getting ready for the holiday season - restocking everything that was running low and getting some new colours happening! Already have Orange, Grey, Yellow, Pink, and Purple. In two weeks I should have Red, Blue and Green too! Pretty much the whole rainbow. :D

I've got an appointment with a tax accountant tomorrow so kinda stressing about that tbh. ;_; Ugh. I don't mind paying the tax at all, it's just working out how much I have to pay that sucks. :/

PAX Aus is this weekend! I'm not able to look forward to it just because I'm so busy right up until the flight out on Thursday morning. @_@ But I'll pack my bags tonight so that'll be one less thing and I'll get to be excited on Thursday (orrr....just tired maybe).

I'm really looking forward to November! The Kickstarter will reach its conclusion and however that falls, at least it'll be off my plate. Hopefully we get our funding and will be shipping books! I have a lot of plush stuff to work on. And comics!! I'm so keen to work on my own art for a while omg... I've got three conventions in November though so it'll still be busy. ^^

Anyway - onwards!
And hey
Back Starrytellers and spread the word! :D We're almost half way!

Okay, trying to keep up with the monthly journal thing. :D

August went okay! It was either, like, wildly excellent (SMASH! was great!!) or wildly terrible (I'm on three different pain killers atm!). My relatives came and went and I think they enjoyed their visit okay so whew! Good to see them but glad that I've got personal space back. :U

So SMASH! was great. I sold out of Boxfoxes by like 3pm on Day 1, which is crazy, frankly. But I made a good return to turn around and put into a plush restock and paying the Starrytellers artists. :D Boxfox stock is running low online too (Purple is out, Pink and Yellow are close behind) but we should be restocked in a couple of months. I'm starting the ball rolling on Green, Red and Blue Boxfoxes too! Just about to send the fabric samples over to the factory this week, just looking for the right pale blue. :D It looks like I'll be able to get it all done without a Kickstarter but we'll...see........... I really don't want to Kickstart but I guess I could do a small one if I absolutely have to.

The only convention to worry about this month (September) is Oz Comicon in three weeks! I feel pretty prepared for it already so I'm not going to stress too much about getting new stuff ready - maybe a couple of new posters? And then October is also really quiet. So I'm putting all my energy into longer-term projects! Sewing projects and book projects. :D And of course fixing up all my borked as hell skeleton (aahhh medical bills ;_;).

Starrytellers, the comic anthology about stars, is going well thus far - there's now a FB page for people to keep track of! Submissions have really started to roll in and I'm compiling it all right now so I have easy access while I pull the book together for proof printing. We printed flyers and started handing them out at conventions and we'll look for comic book stores/libraries/etcetc to take some as well. If anyone has any ideas for generating publicity for the project, I'm all ears! Soon we'll try to get radio/podcast time happening... After that, I'm not sure. The Kickstarter will run in October so I think we should do some sort of share competition during that month, too.

So yeah. Just really busy between art and health things! It'll take some time to get through all of this but the results will be graaannd (I hope!).

I never update this thing but I think I should, a bit. ^^ So here I am!

Boxfox has been going pretty well! Going to try to make blue and green ones before Christmas but it's tough getting things done between wrangling a manufacturer and financing other projects!

I'm also working on a couple (or...thruple? Three??) more plush projects - apart from Boxfox, Squarebear, or Paralleloram. Totally different from those! I'm excited for those too. :) The new embroidery machine I'm buying will be a huge help! I went to see the embroidery unit itself today to, you know, make sure it's all in order. It's a big 'un! 15 needles! And it stitches like a dream. It'll be such a relief to be able to sew and embroider at the same time, and not have to baby sit my tiny home unit constantly. I'm so accustomed to having threads break ever 1-5 minutes...

In other news, I'm helping to organise (and fund) an anthology about stars called Starrytellers! All lady Australian artists, all extremely talented! And with a really diverse range of visual styles and storytelling talent! Part of our goal with it is to not only produce a lovely anthology but also pay the artists fairly with an upfront page rate and a bonus if we can get extra money through crowdfunding. :D I'm very excited for it (and hope we'll set an example for other projects in Australia...?) but of course it's a big investment too! But I think it'll turn out great and be totally worth it. We made a Tumblr for the project so if you're on Tumblr you can follow along there: http://starrytellers.tumblr.com/

Also I just sent off a lot of art to be printed as stickers and charms. A big investment actually... I hope it all a) arrives in time for my next convention (SMASH! in less than 2 weeks!) and b) sells well so I can make that money back quickly (or indeed....at all). I got stuff printed by three different sticker printers and 2 different charm printers and I fully intend to write up a big comparison post about it all. The experience, final quality and a price analysis. And then I've got a few other printers to try so it'll be something I keep adding to I guess! If nothing else, I'll be able to create a useful resource for others.

Finally, I'm putting together a book that compiles all my 24 Hour comics (2012 - 2015)! I'm hoping to finish up with that next month but maybe that's optimistic... We'll see! A lot of the work on that is already done but sometimes polishing the final product takes a long long time and I want it to be gooooood.

So yes, I'm really busy! Time and resources are tight with so much going on but I think the pay off will be well worth it. August will be a crazy month! I have family suddenly visiting from overseas as well as three conventions and taxes to file and trying to stay on top of all this. :U I'd really like to find a studio job soon, too. It feels good to write it all down though. A little less overwhelming. :)

Thanks for listening if you got this far and I hope you're looking forward to things too. :)

So y'all've probably already noticed from the submissions slowly going up that I made a plush toy! Boxfox!

I've been working on it on and off for a while - I was hand making them for conventions for about a year but I couldn't really keep up with demand, and because I was making everything myself I had to charge a lot (Well, $35-40. Which isn't THAT much but still). Every con, I would end up disappointing a lot of people... Even though Boxfox was designed to be fairly quick to make and cheap (unlike, say, a MLPFiM pony, which would run hundreds of $$), it was still too much for many people...

So earlier this year I went to visit my family in Bangkok and we set out on a mission to find a plush manufacturer who could bring Boxfox to the masses! I visited their premises to make sure they checked out, see samples of their work and discuss materials and numbers... I paid them to start on the production prototype, based on the specs I gave them (including a sample Boxfox that I'd brought over with me).

Getting the protoype to the right place was a looong process. Months. I think they got pretty sick of me tbh as I was pretty exacting. :D;; We got there in the end though! I don't regret being exacting either because if I hadn't been, Boxfox would look very very different. It was tremendously frustrating to repeatedly send off images showing /exactly/ how I wanted the embroidery to look and get something completely different back. I still don't understand how that kind of variation was happening. But...we got there. /breathes

So I paid them for the full run and we were underway. Production took longer than anyone thought it would but that was okay. As long as it was done RIGHT.

A few days ago the first lot of Boxfoxes arrived! I got a friend to come over and we took some fun product photos. :D That night I basically stayed up all night editing photos, setting up store info and costing everything. By morning I had unleashed my Boxfoxes on the internet! :DDD I was too tired to be nervous though so I collapsed into bed for a few hours.

Then I went to the dentist haha.

And I fielded a lot of questions and made some tentative promotional posts. And Storenvy's DNS crashed so a lot of people couldn't get to the store. @_@ Storenvy!! A good lesson though! By next year I hope to have a store set up on my own website so I can deal with that kind of thing myself.

In a lot of ways, Boxfox is a testing ground for more complex projects in the future. :) I can't wait to show you all what I have planned for next year! And if Boxfox does well, I want to make them in lots more variations. Different sizes and colours, for sure. And plenty of other ideas. :D But I don't want to get ahead of myself.

Anyway. Wish me luck!
And if you'd like to buy a Boxfox of your own, they can be purchased here: http://mamath.storenvy.com/products.....xfox-plush-toy
Every dollar is a dollar closer to me being able to try the next thing!

Hey-ooooo to any new watchers from Confurgence (I don't think so but...you never know. Hi!).

I'm back from Confurgence! Actually I've been back and recovering for a couple days now. :) It was really fun! Although...I didn't explore the con at all, just spent the entire time painting haha. I like painting so it's easy for me to say I had fun. :P

I got ten commissions over the weekend (gradually uploading the ones I remembered to photograph!) and they kept me VERY busy. I sat at my table painting all day and then went back to my hotel and painted into the wee hours of the morning. I definitely spent more time on some of those commissions than I should have but...it was good to finish them to my standards, I guess. I think every commissioner was happy!

My NEXT convention is PONYCON in Melbourne, Feb 1st! I'll be bringing more pony related things and advertising ponysona painting commissions but if anyone brings me refs for a non-pony character I'll happily paint that too! In the meantime, I've got a lot of plush to make and screenprinting to get my head around.

So. Were any of my watchers at Confurgence? I get the feeling most of you are Americans though...

Yooooo I totally forgot I have an account here BUT I'M BACK. FYI y'all I'm more active on Twitter (mamathzilla) and Tumblr (mamath.tumblr.com). I upload a lot of WIPs and random stuff to Tumblr and Twitter gets all my random musings while waiting for the bus.

I'll be uploading a couple things a day for the next week or two until I'm all caught up on the art backlog. :) THERE'S A LOT OF ART BACKED UP, OOPS.

ALSO I'll be at Confurgence in Melbourne, January 2014! It'll be my first furry con and I'm very excited! I'll have a dealer table with comics, stickers and plush. I'll post about it more after Christmas / when I have more info. :D EXCITED.

Talk to me!

I just realised: I really wanna spend more time on FA stalking through the "favorites" piles of people with good taste. x) There's so much amazing stuff on this site and I have barely scratched the surface!

Might seem like an odd question, but do you have a go to person/s for ferreting out awesome work? I've never really...thought about it before but yeah...when I was younger I used to look at what the artists I liked on art sites like this one had in their "favorites" galleries. It kind of taught me to appreciate stuff that I wouldn't have considered on first glance (the "omg if they like it then it must be good, better look harder??" attitude of youth exists for a reason I guess haha).

I'm going to a convention in Sydney in July! It's called SMASH! and it's going to be fantastic! I'll be tabling under the name "Fudogs Gonna Fu" x) Is anyway else going?

I'm keeping a convention preparation progress blog at arghpirates.com (my personal site for random crap...) if anyone's interested. It's a lot of work. I'm planning to bring a pile of different stuff to the convention. :3 I'm finally working up the courage to try moulding and casting aaah.

Right now I'm working on putting together a sketchbook of some of my better / more interesting work from the past few years. Once this first one is done I plan to do a new sketchbook every year. It's really cool to think of having a collection of my work in print and it's great motivation to do more and better work in the future - and to finish things! I'm a big fan of self publishing. :3

Thanks to everyone who's added me in the last couple days - you really took me by surprise! I thought there'd been some sort of message center glitch, haha. This is actually more watchers than I've ever had on any site. :D;;

So uh. I'm an Australian, hence my tendency to upload things at odd times. I'm more of a traditional artist (brushes, ink and watercolours yes plz) but increasingly I dabble in digital too. I'm studying to be an animator but there's not much along the lines of animation work in Australia so it's probably a terrible idea. x) I love animation and comics and hopefully one day I'll have a profession that lets me claim my comic book purchases on taxes! xD I would love to be an independent creator. Aside from art related stuff I also collect stamps and Kaiyodo pokemon figurines.

I don't go in for fursonas myself but I have original characters that I like to draw all over the place~

Nice to meet you!

...and I guess this is all info I should put on my frontpage too. >_>

Alright, I think I've settled in now. :D;; Thankyou to all the new watchers for putting up with my "new person" gallery spam. I'll slow down now!

I'm finding the comments system a bit odd but I'm sure I'll get used to it. Replying to things seems a lot more difficult than on other sites I frequent so I'm not going to be replying to all comments/favs/etc. Apologies.

If anyone sees me breaking FA etiquette please let me know! It's possible I didn't know that replying was even an option (like page shouts? What am I supposed to do with those?)

Yuuuuuuup.

Welp, enough people have asked if I have an FA site at this point that I thought I should make one. Here it is.

I'm mamath. I like to draw! Drawing is fun. idk I have nothing else to say.

Just gonna go through my old art and upload the most furry related stuff from the last few years I guess... I'd better read up on the rules around here too. x)