Looks like we are live again. So I'm bracing for the flood.

Hello and happy springtime FA, I know it really started a few days ago, but the cold weather finally broke here and it's also the start of the unambiguously springtime month. And I can tell it started by the quality of the new banner. FA team is getting the year off to a good start.

And starting the new cycle by thanking the 173 new watchers since last time. Up almost 25 watchers from last year so I must be doing something right.

Last year had a more uneven posting pace because I had finally gotten through so many of the things I had half done along with working on new projects. So I was left with a blank slate and a stumbling motivation. Then, when the motivation did return I had a near non existent focus and just hopped from one doodle to the next regardless of how complete it was. Completely disregarding the careful production schedule I had created last summer. I think I'm just now close to completing item two on that list. Got a bunch of new ideas but not completing the old ones doesn't help me any because now I'm divided on what I should be doing.

Last month was especially distracting as there were lots of offline things dragging me away from both the art tablet and the internet as a whole. Now that that is over I shall try to see if I can get my attention properly focused again. I was able to pull it together enough to give my friend  amethystine a restored birthday party, and finally expanded the celebration from a cozy couple to a full on festival with presents and everything. No need to refave or anything but you can see what and who was added here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/60133489/

I'm still searching for that middle speed between long, detailed drawings that take days, and scrappy sketches that I think are amusing, but don't really show any thing all that well.

So wishing us all well and a good new year. (Year of the snake, I must do something for it) and now I can clear some more of my notifications.

I haz none!

I must have something like 50 projects open and I can not seem to stick with one for more than a few hours before doodling a new one.

Well, here it is tomorrow, Milton has passed, and I don't have an expensive repair bill or insurance claim. So that's the TLDR.

I've rode out a few hurricanes now and this was a strange one. First, props to whoever plots at the NHC, they predicted the Florida part of this path almost exactly. I kept thinking (hoping) it would start turning a little early and miss me far enough. Nope. It kept zigzagging right towards me all night. Just as the path said, almost on the original timeline. Just a few hours early.

Got a ton of rain early on, before it even made landfall, then it was only a light drizzle all through the night. They had reverted back to the original timeline where it'd be overhead right about at sunrise, so after it made landfall I napped for a couple of hours.

When I got up the wind was howling, and when I checked the updates it had slipped closer by a couple of hours. So by about 4am. Big scary concentric circles of intensifying windfields are steadily progressing towards me. Nothing more to do by wait and see and chat with some friends while I'm looking at every weather blog I can find. Wind sounds stronger and stronger, just as expected, and then starts to die down. Milton is degrading, not fast enough, and sometimes the wind fields get weird. I've seen that happen before, but once you get to the center it does consistently get pretty strong. But, as the center steadily approaches it doesn't. It's picking up a little, but not like you'd expect, and nothing nearly like it was around 1am.

Eventually I'm bracing for what's left of the eyewall because it's coming. The wind shifts about 180 degrees like you'd expect but with almost no intensity change. It turns out the plotted center passed within five miles of my house around 0330. So I'm wondering "Ok, so where is the wind?" Not that I mind that it's not there, it's just really weird. It picks up a little on what I expect the backside to be, and I begin to think. I guess that's it. Must have deintensified even faster than they predicted. Oh well, lucky day!

I decide to wait until around 6am to do a full walk around check just to be sure it's gone. Not much disturbed except my mailbox was knocked off the post apparently because the screws must had been rusted through for a while now. Then I zone out for a bit since I had been up all night, and consider when to make this post. You know, because you don't want to jinx things.

Well. My gosh! Around 0630 I get pulled out of my semislumber by the sound of a freight train outside. It's like heavy winds. Heavier sounding winds than at 1am. That was just kind of like strong wind sound with howling. These were like heavy, intense gusts that feel like the house is leaning from them. Thirty seconds of that, then about twenty second pause, then back up again for almost a minute. I'm getting serious power flicking for the first time the whole night. Oh yeah, props to FPL too. Grid here was like a rock. So I didn't quite loose power but where were a bunch of 1 second dips, and my UPSs are randomly clicking for the next 30 minutes. So where the heck did all this come from?

Turns out there is a giant squall line two hours on the backside of the eye, and I guess that's where all the wind of the eyewall was kept. I think it legit did more damage in that 20 minutes than anything the entire night before. At 7am it finally dies down, and now there is nothing but overcast, so I think this weird thing is finally gone.

Milton did a ton of damage to the west coast. They've a tough month ahead to start fixing that. This one just reinforced to me not to underestimate these things. They'll surprise and getcha.


Oh, one quick edit and addendum. Yes, the frogs and toads were out there doing the nasty. I haven't looked for any eggs yet.

I don't expect to get any frogs this time since it's later in the year, but it's time to hunker down again.

Just like last time except this storm is a lot closer, and a lot scarier than the last ones. Actually filled the generator for this one. About to go under the first real squall line, so the next 30 hours are going to be a ride.

Well that was an exciting few days to watch. FA seems back to normal though. Everything in my account checks out so far. Now we'll all crash it by simultaneously uploading a bazillion gigabits of of art.

Oh, and I almost forgot to add. Great job Devs!

I have just learned that the VCL, as a functional website, is no more. Last October vclart.net was no longer reachable.

I can't say that I'm shocked, I only go to it about once every other year at best to try to track down some old-old image I half remembered, or to peruse an artist that is no longer around and I didn't feel like digging into my box of CDs of archived stuff from that era to see. But it was always a little comforting to know it was still out there.

I don't remember how I discovered it, but I was downloading stuff from it when it was just an FTP site through my college's T1 connection. Had to click on the file, wait to see it load to decide if I wanted to save it, go back, write the filename down, then go onto the next until those most recent uploads were gone through, then then click to save them all. Super cumbersome but this was back when all the other sites were either for a specific artist which were limited in what they had, or the Squeaky Clean Furry Archive.

VCL had.....adult furry art. >..>
<..<
>..>

Which was kinda unique to have in one place. Couple years later they restructured it so that you could actually see a preview and the artist could put in a nifty description. Just like SCFA, but larger. For the era it was pretty dynamic. Got updated every day, and there wasn't any approval method you had to go through once you got an account. That was becoming an issue over at the SCFA, soon to become YERF. With that it became a regular bookmark tour every few days to see what was uploaded. Simple and clean, no comments, no faves, no drama. At least not right there. You had to go to the forum for that. We were still furries after all.

That was probably only about six years overall before FA finally got it's legs going and took over, for me, to be the regular go to art site. By comparison FA has been chugging along for almost 20 years now. But my memory wants to trick me to thinking it was around for like decades. It was that noteworthy.

And now it's gone, and I wonder not for the first time about all the work that artists that have moved on or passed away is gonna vanish.

There still is an archive of the art, which ironically enough I find easier to navigate, over at https://vixencontrolled.net/. It's just a simple file structure and shows the pictures themselves with no descriptions. And I guess it's fitting that it both started and ended quietly as a simple folder based, image sharing site.

Hey FurAffinity. It is the springtime and thus my annualish thanking for all those that have been watching these many years, and the 150 new furs that started or rewatched over the past year. So now I can start cleaning up all those nasty large numbers in my inbox.

This also is doubling as my 'not dead yet' post, which I will probably elaborate on in a soon to follow journal entry.

Just wanted to make this a nice, clean appreciation that you like what I've created. Thank you.

Been meaning to do an update about this for a while and my god it's already mid November. At this rate the little guy would be in a retirement home by the time I update.

Long story short; he's fine.

So that first day I've got the little guy and learning how to feed him through the eyedropper, which once he figures out what it is that's being jammed into his mouth he takes it pretty easily. Not knowing what else to do beyond this point I start scouring the internet looking for tips. Here is some good news, if you want to learn how to raise a baby squirrel there are AMPLE resources online that will tell you everything you want to know. I found four webpages, and two long videos that tell you in complete detail what to do with them from pinkies on to releasing them. And they were all very consistent, which is very reassuring. It's not very hard, but you do have to be aware of some things.

Like I have to manually induce him to pee at every feeding, about every third hour, or else there is a chance his bladder could rupture. Things I never thought I would do over my bathroom sink.

So my overall goal is to raise this guy through the helpless stage and give him his best chance to make it in the wild. I'm not intending to keep him as a pet. No matter how much he wraps around my thumb to sleep again after I've hydrated him. I know he's been without fluids for about a day, and without knowing anything else the water/pedialyte is the best thing for him right now, but that's going to change in about a day or two. All the websites recommend this kind of puppy formula and not to use other types because that'll make him sick. I'm fairly confident 'Big Puppy Formula' has not infiltrated all these websites to shill their product, and him getting sick at this age, which was a little younger than I initial estimated, could be very dangerous for him. The stuff is a bit pricey, and only comes in a pretty good sized can that he isn't going to even use 20% of. It makes sense, they're selling it for a dog that is going to be like that for around six months instead of a squirrel for like two. Ironically it would have been easier to decide what to do with him if I had had more of them because it would have justified the food. Plus calling around to the few vet places near here they didn't have any to sell, and that formula was not at the supermarket I checked. So I have to make a decision in the next 24hrs.

Secondly, it's best for him to be around other squirrels growing up so he has less chance of imprinting on the human handling him, and develops, I dunno, proper squirrel etiquette. I guess so he doesn't end up as the weirdo adult squirrel spending all his time drawing furry porn or something. So I know me, and I'm a soft heart, and I'm gonna be holding him in my lap after feeding, and playing with him when he becomes more active and I'm gonna tell myself I'm gonna let him go, and I will, but it may not be the best start for him. It's better if he's raised amongst other squirrels.

Reminding myself of my initial goal of giving him his best chance at starting out, I find a local animal rehab place and take him there. So about 48hrs after that original post, that's the last I've seen of him. I'm sure he's fine, it looked very legit and they had like 30 squirrels already. I'm guessing he's just about adulting by now.

Additionally, I learn a little bit after the fact that this was the right decision for a second reason. One of the first things I checked when I got him is 'are you allowed to have a squirrel in my state?' And the answer was yes, this one is apparently one of the few that you can. So I'm thinking good-to-go, right? But no, this is THE LAW, so of course it can't be that simple. One of the ladies at the shelter said something that made me dig a little deeper. Yes you can own a squirrel, BUT, only if you have gotten it from another set of legally recognized pet squirrels. I guess there is a database somewhere. You are not allowed to go out into the wild and capture one to habituate, and you are not allowed to rehab one on your own and raise it. I have no idea why anyone felt the need to make these restrictions, but they are there. Now, I don't expect Fish and Wildlife to beat down my door because I'm harboring an infant tree rat but if anything did happen to him and I had to bring him to the vet, and things were discovered afterwards, I more than likely would have been facing a large fine. So moral is, if you're gonna do this, check your laws.

So that's the baby squirrel saga. He was fun for the 36hrs I had him.

So, remember last year when I raised those tadpoles through their mutation stage?

Well, now I've got a baby squirrel.

Neighbor of a friend is going off on vacation for a week and my friend is feeding their chickens. On the way out they tell her, Oh, by the way we found this this morning while mowing the lawn. And they show her a box with a baby squirrel they've nailed to a post because they were worried the chickens would get at it. Which they probably would. They are little T-rexs after all.

So no way the mama is going to find him there, we don't know where the nest is so we can't put him back, and since chickens, and lots of cats in the neighborhood, we can't just leave him in a shallow box in the yard for her to find. Sooooo, now I've got him.

He looks to be about 4-6 weeks old. He's got a nice, soft coat of fur, but his tail isn't fluffy yet. Eyes are still closed, but he does move around when bothered and is pretty active and nosy at moments. Little short of 3 inches long if I were to spread him out. Seems to have a fair bit of energy especially since he hadn't had any fluids all day. Thankfully he is big enough to take Pedialyte from the eyedropper.

So I'm estimating it's about a month before he's grown to be a 'little squirrel' and hopefully much more easy to take care of. And then maybe by the end of November he'll be able to make it on his own.

Well, a little bit.

I am spreading into my third website, and the first really new account in like a decade. I've registered onto Itaku now.

https://itaku.ee/profile/menagerie

Oh, and I am still on Weasyl too.

https://www.weasyl.com/~menagerie

So for those of you who have left, are going to leave, or are still here and want to see me repost there, go ahead and follow. I'm beginning to wonder, as far as comments and interaction goes, which website to do things on now. Because I know we artists, after money, live on attention and I'm curious if they want all the same faving/starring and comments done on all the websites, or a particular one? Or am I just overthinking again.

I decided to jump on the Itaku bandwagon because it seemed to have the new sweet spot of a lot of these furry/furry friendly websites created during the past ten years.

Content restrictions seem to be straightforward, reasonable, and pretty open. It does have the kind of feed/endless scrolling update system that's become popular for a while and I don't think is going away so I had best get used to it. And, most importantly to me, it still has an actual gallery system with what looks like a pretty good folder sorting structure. So I'm giving it a go.

Hey FA. I'm hear to announced that I'm 'apologizing' in advance for making a 100 image art dump over the next 24 hrs. Then I'm gonna start every other day six hour streams where I'll take requests and try to turn them around during the stream.

Ok, now that the April Fools bit is done for the year, and believe me I wish that it wasn't a joke. :S I'm putting up my annual journal thanking all the latest watchers I've accumulated over the past year, along with all those that stuck around from before.

I should be posting again more regularly starting next week. For a while I was shooting to put at least something up every week. And I kinda kept to that for a while. Even when I wasn't quite posting every week I did put together some multiple image pics that, had I posted them separately, woulda pulled that off. At least I lie to myself that way. This month I was a little tied up with life so the free arting time was a little diminished, but I should be back to it again next Sat.

I keep thinking about streaming and Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday are the only nights I could reliably do it. So if I do start it's gonna be on one of them. Probably Monday which is probably the worst day for anyone who wants to watch to show up. Streaming does keep me a little focused at least so I either intend to be cleaning up linework, doing base colorings, or free doodling. Not sure which it's best for.

I probably said the same thing last year but I am a bit interested in doing some animation loops. Just to get back into the swing and to use a few more of these nifty CSP functions I just renewed my license for.

Hope everyone is doing well and hope to see you again next year. Or during the next journal post. Whichever comes first.

Hey FA. Been a while and a half since I made one of these, so expect a little rambling. It's been so long I had to look around to find where the 'Create a Journal' tab for FA was. But since I don't have a twitter, or a tiktok, or instagram, or Facebook ( I refuse to call it Meta), or whatever else exists, this is it. I suppose I'll probably have to get something in the future if I'm gonna remain partially active, but the ones that got popular I never liked, and the ones I did end up signing up for faded away for the most part. So I bet wrong I guess. :S

As some watchers have noticed my output has trailed off over the past few months. Had a nice spurt of activity over the past few years which made a decent pace of production and created a bit of a backlog and half done projects that I could quickly cleanup and post while working on grander things. A lot of that's up now so that's a big reason I slowed updating over the summer. In addition my drawing processes while being much easier to jumpstart now than it was five years ago, now has the focus span of a squirrel. I'll make a lot of warmup sketch doodles, because I'm slowing down on an existing project stream, and suddenly be invested in them, until the next set of sketchdoodles fascinate me. This is why I don't do commissions, because I'm pretty confident I would fail at it. And while I actually was drawing a lot this summer, I fell back into my little taur obsession so there is actually a bunch of those done, (and even more started), but I don't want to spam them. I have, however, gotten a lot of that outta my system for the moment so other stuff should be showing up again. I do have an itch to get back into doing some TF and shapeshifting sequences. So hopefully, that will be the trend for a while. In fact some of the later taur ones I did work up were focusing on their first meetings and fusions. So that focus was even starting to manifest there.

Non FA life has been a little slow. Probably a little to slow as I've essentially stagnated on a lot of the RL things, which I need to start addressing again and cleaning up. Putting off way to much stuff in the real world, and the real world has a nasty habit of reminding you very suddenly that it exists and matters quite a bit.

On upscale notes, just by drastically reducing the sugars and carbs in my diet I have not only stopped the rapid onset fat syndrome I seem to have come down with in 2021, but I've lost 15lbs since July. Since I can't RL taur this saves me a bit of money since the pants that were getting very tight on me last year are now loose again. I was gonna have to cloths shop.

And for my last unrelated life note, I've been the surrogate parent for about 500ish frogs and toads since mid Sep. I get this very large puddle in my front yard during excessive rains, and I was getting a couple of weeks of it in mid Sep. The frogs use it as a nursery for their eggs sometimes, but it never lasts long. One day, before I was headed to work, I saw the half inch deep puddle was wriggling and I realized it was filled with tadpoles again. I scooped up a bunch of them and put them in a bucket to see if I could let them develop. I tried this once before in a much smaller jug with about 20 of them, but I think the oxygen level dropped suddenly and most of them suddenly died. So this time bigger bucket, and more water changing and circulating. Which seemed to be working. Then Ian rolled through and dumped a crapton more rain. I'm on the East side of the state so no serious damage here, but lots and lots of rain. So the puddle was back, and the frogs and toads were out all chirping and 'active' all night, and the next morning I look around where I saw a bunch of them being 'active' and I found lots and lots of eggs all over the grass. I felt a little bad because I knew that wouldn't make it through the weekend, so I took a bunch of clippings and got out a bunch more buckets. And ever since then I've been watching the steady metamorphosis of a whole lot of Spade Footed Toads, and Cuban Tree Frogs. I'm happy to report there were no mass die offs like last time, but there was one midnight massacre. Tadpoles eat like piranhas and turn on each other in the right circumstances, so there was one bucket that had the cannibalizing crowd. Or maybe they just ate all the tree frog tadpoles. I dunno, but there was noticeably less of them the next day, and when I stirred up the bucket, a lot of leftovers. For about the last two weeks I've been steadily releasing about 20-40 at a time as they mature, and the last slowpokes are about a day or two out.

Hope you all are doing well, and I need to get back to things.

It's beginning to look like this is going to be the time of year I just mass thank everyone for still watching me, and reading these journal entries. So thanks to the 204 new watchers over the past year, I appreciate your interest.

Looking at last year's post, because I might as well use this as a benchmark, I did manage to post 42 new images. A little cheating maybe because some of them were about half to 2/3rds done at this time last year so not as much work, but they still needed a fair bit of cleanup, and a few of them were comics or multiple images together which is a lot more artistry so I guess it balances out. Reasonably art productive year.

I managed to finally finish that Conga Line which I'm still proud of when I glance over it. I think I still needed to draw all the insects out at this time last year.

I appreciate the patience with theme that appeared this summer. Most of those backed up images are posted, and now some of the newer stuff is mixing in more regularly.

This fall I was actually doing a lot of arting, to a bit of excess, and I have yet again a bunch of 2/3rds done stuff along with what I posted :S, but the gallery is starting to balance out again which I like. However, I don't think I can keep that pace up. I'm a slow artist and I was drawing at the exclusion of a lot of RL stuff, which was backing up, and it's not wise to ignore life for to long. So I don't have the time to poke at multiple projects for hours on end, and watch lots of YouTube videos about techniques to try. Gotta clean up life issues a bit.

But then, I'm weak so maybe I'll end up doing it anyway.

Didn't get to the livestreaming, but I did talk about it with someone just a week ago. Hopefully OBS still works. I did poke a bit at some animations but my mind clearly wasn't in the right space for it at the time because nothing was gelling in there.

So in short, thanks again for watching, and now I can clear out a few more of my notices.

Happy New Year everyone. Some of you have already passed into it while we in North America are still bringing up the end of this last one. Hope you all had good holidays overall.

Hope you all had a good year. Mine had a little more rocky second half so I am trying to take this moment to reset for a bit. Caught the 'Rona in the late summer. Pretty mild experience overall so if I'm gonna get it that's the way to go.

Artwise not really any complaints. I have pushed out most of the 'just sitting on the drive' pictures, and some of the newer stuff that I did in the fall was mostly two weeks from idea to completion and that's pretty good for me. Still on the hunt for the eternal perfect sketching pencil tip, But overall kinda happy with the improvement of speed and quality. It's said that artists oscillate between how good their skill is relative to how they perceive how good it is. I guess you could say it's how well you either see all the mistakes in your work or how comfortable you are with them. I feel like I'm on the positive end of that equation for now. Which is kinda nice.

About 40 uploads for the year, which is pretty good, with some of them being the culmination of a bunch of long term images leaves me feeling a little more free going into this year.

Always the forever goal of starting if not regular livestreaming an occasional session every month or so. Getting a little more varied with the subject matter I post. I appreciate the patience with the volume of two headed taur stuff. That won't stop, but it won't be as constant as this summer was. And adding in a little more actual TF and vore bits along with what I find as humorous antics involving some of the other chars I've come up with. Now that I'm getting a little more comfortable with mid sized comic stuff I'm getting a bit of an itch to tackle simple animations again. We'll see how that goes.

Hope everyone is having a fun night, and staying safe if you're out and about. Hopefully this new year won't be one we're just waiting for it to end.

I thought I had poked about this once already, but I'm a little curious since I'm paying more attention to layouts and composition. Is there a preference, or a problem I'm not aware of, for a layout of a comic or even single image? I'm used to doing most everything on a monitor, and a wide one at that, which clearly favors the horizontal. But I know a lot of people use their phones and that's good for more vertical ones with endless scrolling. But they can auto orient if you turn them on their side so maybe it doesn't matter.

My own little bit of experimenting is I don't think it matters anymore, but it helps to know if it does because I'm trying to structure that much earlier when I get an idea than I used to. I used to just doodle/sketch lots of poses and then 'Ah, I'll squeeze them in somehow'.

So what do you all think? Thanks for any responses.

Good evening FA. Been a little bit since I’ve posted. Hope you’re all doing well since summer has started. Winter for all of you on the bottom side of the planet :P. I’m just sorta opening up talking a bit and giving a little preemptive heads up on what I’m looking at this summer.

Outside of some working trips I’ve had a pretty static eight months or so without any serious external issues dumping out of the ether on me. So that’s nice. Hopefully that continues and no hurricanes in my near future.

Over the next couple of months I’m going to start putting more attention to RL existence than I have been lately, and relegating arts to some practice stuff for maybe then next month or two. Plus, I’ll have a couple of weeks dead time where I know I won’t be able to draw at all. So, some basic skills practice that I might maybe dust off my steaming software to broadcast. Not sure yet. Made those promises before and nothing came of them. However, one thing I am going to do is start trickling out an image or two a week and I should be able to do that into the fall since I do have a backlog of at least decent enough scraps to share. I would like to keep a steady flow of engagement here, instead of just dropping a whole bunch and remaining quiet for another six months.

That's great Menagerie, but why are you telling me all this instead of posting when you can like normal?

Well, because when I look at what I’ve got a lot of it is those conjoined, belly faced taurs. Which, checking my stats page are clearly not the most popular creations I’ve made up. So, what’s going to happen is this summer is it’s going to appear like I’m suddenly fixated on these guys at the exclusion of a lot else, which isn’t actually the case. I’ve just posted everything else as I completed it over the past year, while a pic involving them went straight to the storage directories, and I’ve been poking at ideas for them over the past 18 months. I’ve seen artists I’ve followed dive into something they’ve become fascinated with at the exclusion of all else, and it’s frequently something pretty niche or not what the bulk of the audience is there for. I just wanted to let you all know I’m still drawing all the ‘other stuff’ I just don’t have much that’s good looking to post right about now. Those kinds of images should pick up again as I get them done.

So why did you draw all these things and not some of the more, clearly popular characters or ideas that you’ve made?

Heh, I’ve got no good answer for this other than the muse goes where it goes. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I have indulged in a lot of world building with the taurs which has actually been enjoyable to the exclusion of other ideas. There’s like 23ish paired characters I came up with and working out character dynamics, and story threads, and scenarios they could go through has been a fun, low level exercise while I’m driving, walking, or whatever else to engage in that I haven’t done, on this scale, in quite some time. While worldbuilding I think is an important part to writing a story, it’s like the fun part that doesn’t require nearly as much work as writing an actual story where I need to develop narrative, plot, chop down which characters I’m focusing on, the point of the whole thing, etc. And it’s a story I’m not really gonna do. They’re also easy for me to doodle and I don’t build the expectations I have for myself with my other work, and thus not as much pressure so I can just say ‘stop’ on an image more easily whenever it stops being fun, and not bother with how they all look together. So, I’ve also used them to see how some comic layouts look, practice some composition techniques, pencil settings, and other ideas. More than I have with someone like Jack.

So, I hope everyone else has a good summer ahead of them, and I’ll see you all around.

It's been about a year since I last thanked everyone for watching. I used to go to everyone's page and leave a thanks individually, but I've noticed over the years that that's kinda dropped out of common practice on this and other gallery sites. But I do still appreciate everyone that keeps up with my scribbles, and chances are I may have at least taken a peek at what you've done as well. Also, it's time to clean out my notifications a bit, so thanks to all before, and the 280 or so that have watched me since the last time I thanked you all.

At about 40 images this has been one of my more productive years posting. Granted it helps that it was at the culmination of a couple of large projects which went up all in one burst, but still it's a lot of stuff for my gallery. Plus, I've drawn a bunch more of those conjoined taurs that I just haven't widely posted yet. So, productive year.

Now, I'm getting near the end of a few large things again, and I'm starting to pull up a lot of slightly older images I started and for whatever reason didn't stick with. Sometimes I'm getting my completion time pretty quick. That upsidedown TF was only really a few days work overall, with a week break inbetween. That's reasonably fast for me, and I managed to do one not so complicated pic, in about three hours which is blindingly fast. I'm experimenting again with some pencil brushes to find something I like so I can make a sketchy lineart pic super fast. If I ever find this mythical pencil setting I may actually let a bunch of things stay at the sketch stage and put up a bunch more silly things more frequently. I keep finding brushes that are about 85% of what I want.

As for content type I think I'm gonna try to post at least a bit more vore. Considering it's one of my top tier interests I've drawn surprisingly little of it.

I don't know if I'll match 40 again next year, but I'm intending to keep the production train going. And again. Thanks for watching.

Friend of mine,  Forth is having a raffle to get some art with one of yours and his many chars together.

Check it out if you're interested here.

https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/9607245/

Lately I've pulling up a lot of stuff that's been sitting undone, and finally posting it to scraps like I said I would. It's been helping me to not go crazy with stuff. But I'm starting to run into a dilemma. With any of them I've been trying to work on a weak area or new technique. Pose practice, or linework, try out a new brush setting, or some color theory/techniques. I'm even starting to pay attention to composition and layouts now. Rule of thirds, Golden ratios, and all of that, and I sorta pick something to focus on. While some of them are not 'completed' or my best work, they aren't really all that bad either. Before it was easy, as sketchwork just went into scraps and anything with any real attempt at coloring or decent linework went into the gallery. Now I think it's going to be less distinct for anyone who's looking through either, because I may have stuff that I'm happy with, but isn't up to the general quality I've got going now.

I dunno. I guess this is my 4am rambling. :T

So I'm thinking about streaming tonight around 8pm EST for a few hours. Assuming my OBS software still works, and my tablet update doesn't break anything. Mostly just hanging out, maybe doing some practice faces and whatever. Might pull up a pic that's been sitting to poke at it a little. I've been working on some basics again over the past couple of days because lately I've been working on a lot of finishing work and I need to brush up the other skills again so this'll be mostly sketch and light linework. I'll have the mic on and the radio in the background if anyone wants to come. I'll post the link when I have it setup.

Sooooooo, it looks like everyone has got to stay home for a while. I guess I lucked out, as I was already going to be on a kind of home staycation during this time anyway so my plans aren't as impacted as most everyone else's are.

I'm gonna make one short PSA about it all. I realize a lot of people who read this are fairly young and healthy, so if you catch this the vast bulk of you all will probably have a period of feeling miserable, and then get over it when it runs it's course and move on reasonably unscathed. But one of the things about this thing, compared to flu and other bugs, is that it seems really easy to catch, and easy to spread. So while you may not be much of a victim, it's very likely you'll be a new vector, and this thing is looking to be a serious threat for a couple of different population groups. So maybe you just kinda ask yourself when you're thinking of going somewhere. "Is this trip really necessary?"

Hopefully we can bend the curve down in a couple of weeks, and get more back to normal afterwards. Because I don't know how long you can put a country on a prolonged pause like we're trying to do.

My guess is that there will be a dramatic uptick in video game playing, and movie watching.

And for us shut in artist types life is.....probably completely unaffected. :P

So, since we're all isolated, but virtually connected. I'm thinking of seeing if my streaming software still works sometime next week. Any particular time anyone's available, or unavailable, or anything particular you want to see?

I meant to include this in the 2020 post, but I lost my little reminder postit and was winging what I wanted to say.

I used to be really good at thanking anyone who decided to watch or follow me here, unless they specifically didn't want it. A big reason I started to learn to draw and to post was to try to increase some interactivity, so I super appreciate that and any comments.

I'm sorta in one of those transition period of events in the life where you've got the opportunity to go through a lot of things and clean up and reset. Throwing out old clothes, fixing little chores, restructuring computers, moving files around, cleaning out backlogs, etc.

Right now, I'm looking at almost 300 watchers I haven't thanked. Chances are I've actually been to your page and rummaged through your galleries or faves, but was just skimming quickly and not typing anything out. So I'm making a mass thanking that you're all watching me, like what you see, and hopefully will like more what's coming.

I am thinking of adding a little more variety. Little more vore and regular TFing. Some more regular pinups or poses. And some comics or sequences with some attempts at action or humor (Hopefully). Because. while I'm happy with everything I've put up looking at recent posts I have kinda become the 'conjoinment guy' and am sorta rapidly trending towards the 'genital conjoinment guy'. :P

But while I do love it, I do wanna mix some other things back in.

So I thank you all, and once I post this I'm Nuking out the watchlist.

.....maybe through Friday.

Never tried one of these before, so lets see how it goes. So if you put a question in here before midnight Friday 6 March (Friday going into Saturday EST), I'll do what I can to answer it.

Hey FA it’s been a while since I’ve used this thing to talk to anyone. That raccoon is probably pretty old by now.
I’m trying to be back a little more than before, but I’m honestly not sure what to talk about in the journals nowadays. Life demands are shifting a little bit, so not sure how free I’ll be to make anything for the journals. However, I have been drawing in the free spaces I’ve had, and while it’s not a flood, I do have a bit of a backlog I’m polishing up to start posting soon. I let myself get drawn into a bunch of larger projects and ideas that took way, way more time than I estimated, but most of them are getting near the end point.

I always say I’m gonna put more in scraps, but I’ve only followed through a couple of times on that. I am trying to be better on saying what I am and am not going to take towards a more detailed conclusion, and just throw up what I’ve done and move onto the next thing. A bunch of art journals I poke at keep saying to just keep drawing and don’t get tied down with everything. Something about 90% of the time being spent on 10% of the work. :P If I can’t do that, what I am trying to do at the very least is to shake my kinda rigid process a little looser. I’ve found a few brush settings I like using as an alternate to my regular inking techniques. They’re a little faster, and let me be a little sloppier, which sometimes is an effect I’m satisfied with. Not sure if I want to organize them into my main gallery, or my scraps. Probably a little less focused stuff in the scraps. Probably be a fair bit of those conjoined pony taur critters I made up. They’re kinda easy for me to doodle and get the juices flowing with, so I’ve got a bunch of layers filled up with them.

I just realized the other day that it’s been ages since I’ve even looked at the animation toolbar, so, not quite sure when I’m gonna touch that again.

So, overall, I’m hoping this’ll be a more productive spring.