With the last Foxtober picture uploaded I figure it was about time to update this space on my page. Things have been going pretty well in the past 3 years since I last uploaded a journal: I've gotten back into art a lot more (though most of my sketches don't make it to the rendering stage), I've picked up VRChat to be able to hang out with any number of cool people, and I've both started and started winding down a dealer's table at Mephit Fur Meet.

My table, Foxfire Casting and Manifestations, was a way of being able to play around with resin printing without having to necessarily keep a lot of minis around that I wouldn't necessarily use. I liked making them, and wanted to have more eyes on Naga Minis- the artist who produced the designs. Since Naga Minis put a pause on their production (and thus also commercial tier even if I was grandfathered in) my choices for the table were to either reprint old minis, find another artist, or start producing more of my own minis. Ultimately producing my own feels like the best option, but I'm not sure I want to put myself on a time constraint to have a full series by convention time this year. I may pick the dealers table up again in the future (if nothing else but to be able to show off/sell some of the custom giant D30s I've designed) but I'll be taking that easy for now.

For art I've started running a custom designed printer test page every week to make sure I get at least 50 good sketches in a year, and have been keeping up with that pretty well. I have previously and plan to in the future been uploading the sketches to BlueSky, but I don't think I'll be clogging my FA gallery with unfinished doodles.

With the end of my 30s fast approaching this next year will almost certainly be one to dial in how I want to arrange my hobbies- whether that be largely art, reading, socializing, or endlessly just doing one more dive "For Super Earth!" :P

Okay, it's been about a month since my last upload but I swear, for real, there's a good reason. It seems that somehow or another I've managed to get a dealer's table at this year's MFM, and for the past couple months I've been rushing to make sure I have everything in place, with this last month in particular focused on administrative tasks such as making cards for each of the unique items I'm selling.

Sadly I'm not confident enough in my art to try taking commissions or anything at the table, however I do have a craft that I've honed over the past few years that I feel rather confident about; 3d printing, specifically resin printing. At this point I have my post-processing pipeline down well enough that I can feel pretty proud of the cleaned up and primed models each batch produces. I also have a custom D20 that I designed in Blender and, after a lot of accidental progress and trial and error, converted into reusable giant dice molds.

Details on that project will be coming soon, probably near the beginning of next month, but for now I think I'm caught up enough on the planning that I can add art back in without worrying that I won't be able to finish everything in time.

Well, it seems that I cannot effectively keep up a schedule when sufficiently distracted by a new expansion. That said, with six months having passed and the game in a between-patch-lull I should be able to start this back up again.

The break did allow me a good amount of time to reset my methodology, so when I started inking again this evening I ended up with much cleaner lines than my previous attempts for some reason. Thought back and realized that before I had been sticking to a methodology that hadn't worked just because of habit.

And there it is! The first page of the storyboard I've been working on for quite some time now just to let it sit idly on my hard drive. At the time of posting I have 72 pages sketched, of which 68 are inked and dialoged, of which 18 are fully colored and shaded. That was probably a bit of overkill of a backlog to produce but I can at least be assured to be able to keep up at least a weekly schedule for a while to come.

Side effect of that large backlog though- these first pages REALLY feel sketchy compared to my most recent work. If I do end up increasing the upload schedule it would probably just be to get though those faster!

For the moment however I’ll try to keep consistent uploading once on Wednesdays or so and uploading my other finished works over the weekend.

With no more raids until WoW’s next expansion drops I should have plenty of time to produce quality content for here.

It's been quite some time since my last upload, and in that time I have had a chance to grow and for my day to day life to change. For one thing I've moved on from GW2 back to WoW and rejoined my old guild, finding that I seem to have a knack for the Holy Priest playstyle. A few years ago I picked up RPing again and joined a site called Origin where I've had a chance to create and flesh out new characters and get the old writing muse flowing again. I've started going to cons again, or at least MFM every year- an activity which further increases my muse.

I've been lurking here pretty consistently, but until this past con haven't really considered becoming active again. My artwork had gotten to a point where I was relatively satisfied but not good enough that I felt like sharing it. This past con changed that as I observed a number of highly talented people and their workflow, realizing that if I put my mind to it over the next year I could probably get to a skill level where I could create a bade for myself and wear it with pride. I may not be practicing as consistently as when I first started drawing but I am doing better than I had been before.

Another major change is that I am taking steps to become more comfortable with myself, to try to be okay with some of the oddities I had previously desired to keep hidden behind one of my masks even from myself. On a logical level I know that my tastes are not nearly as odd as my emotions make them out to be, but it still takes time to undo years of self-imposed programming.

As a part of this my fursona is in the process of changing form once more- relatively minor in appearance- from a silver fox to a three tailed kitsune- but representing a shift in how I allow myself to be seen. The change also allows some more artistic flexibility as some of the specifics of the change make way for interesting scenarios.

For now I'll try to take it slow and not stress myself about any upload schedule. For me, it seems, perfection leads to procrastination leads to paralysis.

You know, looking through my folder of sketches I haven't been quite so unproductive as I had thought and my gallery suggests. I abandoned the weekly upload system a while back as it became a bit much for me to juggle with other things, and the art challenge I started... well after looking a bit further into it there weren't very many interesting prompts past the first week or two (plus holidays came up). Despite these setbacks I haven't given up entirely, and after a recent count I realized I have over 100 pieces of art in my backlog from this year alone. Most of them wont be uploaded for various reasons; things such as practice pieces, rough/simple sketches, or otherwise artwork I don't feel like displaying publicly in my gallery.

That being said I have narrowed down a few sketches that I'd like to finish up and post before the year's end. Part of this is self motivation but honestly a pretty huge amount of it is OCD tendencies. I've changed up how I organize my folder and it seems like it'd be a little cleaner if I clear out the base directory where I keep my works in progress.

Really what I should do is start using my sketches folder more often. What usually blocks me from wanting to upload is the process of having to come up with titles for pictures and descriptions when there isn't any story behind it in the first place. I'm sure that's something that gets better over time though ^_^

Horary, it seems the plan of forcing myself to upload at least once a week has worked out well so far. I had been setting a goal of drawing every day, which went pretty well, but I almost never actually finished any pictures. At the least oftentimes if I finished a picture I didn’t really feel it was worth uploading. Been late a few times but overall hope can keep up the habit.

Throwing around a few ideas of what themes to play around with next. I’ve been playing a lot of GW2, so might consider trying my hand at the charr. I also recognize that might not be a bad idea to work on anatomy and such, so could focus on drawing from photo references. With Valacirca as a newly revived character it is also tempting to work more on him. May not get as much done in the next week, but hopefully will at least be able to post a sketch or two.

Once more, yay! I know it seems a bit silly, but i'm really happy to be at the point where I can upload at least a bit of my own lineart. I still by all means plan to continue coloring Night's work, but she'd been doing a lot of her own coloring lately so that's given me a bit to expand my horizons as well. She's been helping me quite a bit, and I know I have a far while to go, but to be honest I'm not extraordinarily concerned with getting really good. Just want to have stuff halfway presentable and have a fun little extra hobby :D

Been playing a bit of everything lately. In Minecraft I constructed a giant underground chasm made out of netherrack, lined on five sides by glass and lava, and am currently constructing a Styx underneath it for extra underworld effect. Going to start playing around with the adventure update soon, but have a lot of other things been working on.

In TF2 I think I might have started to settle into a class to call my main. For a long while I was running around as a demokight, but could never quite get all the tricks down. Now that I've learned the puff-n-sting technique Pyro is really starting to appeal to me. It provides great offense, opportunity for strategic play (trying to get into an enemy's blind spot), and the ability to juggle an ubered medic makes for great defensive value. Thinking about getting a monocle for (it?), but will probably be a while since I'm going to attempt to trade for it.

Also been giving the danmaku Touhou a try. I must say it's quite a bit of fun, and the music is awesome. Been listening to a bunch of the arranged versions of the songs at work. Just beat "Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil" on easy mode a few days ago, so just have to start actually playing the game and get it on normal :P

Also just started up a few play by post D%D games, including one 4e game that looks like It may be fun. I must say for all the negative stuff I kept hearing about the new version the ability to cast cantrips at will makes for awesome character development :P

So much has changed since the last journal, a good deal due to the fact that I have come clean of WoW once again. Not that I didn't like it, but I found I just wasn't logging on more than once or twice a week due to reaching 85 on my main character and not really being inspired to do much endgame (plus my guild raid roster was on a large wait after the patch hit). Couldn't be happier; found Minecraft, started playing various Steam games, started working on artwork more often, started watching more tv series with my mate- so much nicer :)

RCFM was quite nice this year, I don't think we went to a single panel, but we met tons of cool new people and I had a chance to sit back and watch some dancing. I don't dance, don't enjoy it much to be honest unless it's a very specific kind of music (and most dance music has more beat than ethereal type flow). Also tried an unusual green alcoholic drink, not sure what it was but it was really good. Don't drink much, but apparently it helps me to actually speak without struggling with word choice as much as I usually do. Definitely look forward to going to the con again next year.

Last week  NightWolf and I went on a vacation to Gatlinbug, TN to celebrate being married for three years now. Was a really fun trip, and we did a lot to sightseeing, but man two trips back to back wore us out. Glad to be back home and resting this weekend. I did get a lot of coloring done in the evenings of the trip, so have quite a bit to upload now ^_^;

As a final note I've decided to start taking time to learn to do more than just digital coloring. My lineart is still a bit rough, but I feel I'm starting to get a bit of a feel for the skill. It'll be a while before I reach any kind of great ability, but I'm sure with practice I'll get there eventually- especially since I have myself assigned to one lineart/coloring a day with rollover enforced. Who knows, perhaps sometime in the future I may have some of my own art- start to finish- in my gallery :P

This past year has been quite a contenting one. Finally got into programming as a profession, managed to build my own computer and started raiding in WoW, and managed to find fun in many of the little things.

This year I plan on coloring more often, and by extension updating my FA page more often. I do enjoy it, but with WoW I often forget how fun it actually is. Hopefully by setting aside a time in the evenings to color I will be able to keep more on top of it. In addition to that I plan on exercising more to get back into shape. Alas one of the troubles with a desk job is that you don't run around much, and that is starting to show itself a bit. With any luck I'll be back to being able to do crazy stunts like back in high school in no time :P

Of course the coolest thing about this year is it will mark  NightWolf and I's 3 year anniversary. Here's to many more :)

Life's been good- got a new programming job (where as a side effect i get to help cure cancer, wheee :P); getting into a good rhythm of switching activities, so I'm not burning out on anything in particular; and my lovely mate, wife, and beta  NightWolf has been drawing a little every day to show off her skill and give me stuff to color. Really do need to dedicate more time to coloring, but WoW/Sims 3/FMA/Tales of Symphonia/Dead Like Me call my hobby time.

As it is since I always makes these huge gaps in making journals so much happens that I cant possibly sum up in a couple sentences, so suffice to say that I am alive :)

Alas, I was going to wait until I was fully settled into my career before posting another journal but end of the year seemed a good time to confirm that I am, indeed, still alive.

Wow has, as ever, been a relaxing-at-times addiction in the past months. I have now successfully leveled two druids up to 80, geared their main specs decently, and am in the process of gearing them for all druid roles (Bluekitty shall be PVP Kitty/PVE Moonkin and Bluewillow shall be Tree/Bear). Really would like to start raiding sometime, but unfortunately my poor integrated graphics card would kill me (and as healer the rest of the raid along with me :P)

Been writing a lot more lately. Most of my work has been in Hazel hill, a standard anthropic-inhabited setting that takes place about three thousand years after Kinaru and Med-Night meet. Hazel hill actually refers to a college in said world, where two characters that were originally Nightwolf and my anti-fursonas. She's encouraging me to post the first story here, so It'll probably be in my gallery as soon as the last part is done.

Still working as a waiter, about eight months after graduation. It's a bit discouraging, and makes me worried at times that my degree will become outdated before I even have a chance to get in the field. I just have to remember to be thankful that I do have an income and hopeful for the future. Tennessee's economy was hit unusually hard from what I have heard, and got really bad just about the time I graduated, so what goes down must come up, eh?

On a less somber note- Yay, presents :D Between three video games for the Wii, Scrabble, Snuggies, nice insoles, and funds for WiiFit+ and an external hard drive, I is quite happy with gifts :)

New years resolution- Update journals more :P

School is finally over! Not for the week, not for the holidays, not for the summer, but for EVAR >3

That last semester had me really nervous, with the teacher failing most everyone in the class I considered myself lucky and unfortunate to get one of the highest grades in the class- a 'D'. I had thought that not having at least a C in the class would bar me from officially having my degree, but it seems that the rules are "having a 'C' average in major" not "Having at least a 'C' in every major class"

Nor I officially have a Bachelors Degree in Computer Science... just still working as a waiter at Cracker barrel... I really need to find a new job soon.

Hopefully with all this newly discovered free time I might be able to hone my coloring skills more or finally get back to writing on my stories, which Night keeps telling me I ought to post here. I personally dun imagine FA would be the best medium for showing written work, but i might as well some time or another. I'm just horrid with keeping my own gallery up to date ^_^;

Much love to my mate,  NightWolf (Currently transferring from  Najwa)

OMG, I know I’m not the type to really spaz about much but check out this!

http://www.elsanglin.com/images/?i=.....poles_full.jpg
http://www.elsprofessions.com/news/.....g-roundup.html

Patch 3.1 holds new fishing goodness for obsessed peoples like me! From the looks of it nothing that would particularly increase my effective skill, except having a plethora of non-hat lures again, but look at those poles! Now I usually use an eternium line enchanted arconite fishing pole that gives me a +40 total, but that twig pole is still quite tempting. It’s probably the most awesome model ever for a druid fisherman… though it still isn’t confirmed if it is +30 like the others. If it is though I’d still be able to fish everywhere except the ocean with a hat lure and perfect catches and even in the ocean if I actually did save an eternium line like I thought I did then I’d just go from a 3% miss chance to a 8% miss chance with hat lure.

Is it worth it though? Just bank my old prized contest pole to carry around twig of mighty fishiness? Perhaps just reserve a spot for +100 glowworms for whenever I head out to the ocean. Perhaps I should just wait and see all the information that comes in before jumping to a decision :P

Coming close to halfway though my last semester at college, really amazing how quickly this is going. Classes are easy, just a few loose ends to tie up in my major and yoga to give me that one final extra hour to be able to graduate (seriously, who’s idea was it to make the schedule so you need 12 hours past what general ed and major/minor give you to graduate? 16.5 hours average every semester…)

Just started up serving at Cracker Barrel, not too bad of an environment but I’m still a bit obvious of a newbie to the profession. Hopefully soon I’ll be able to get full time in an actual desk job, but for now it should provide assistance with my social skills and a bit of extra cash. So far I’ve only really ticked off one customer with small novice errors, but he came in grouchy and wanting to stir up trouble anyways so I’m not too worried about it.

Still have so many pictures to color I’m not sure if I’ll ever clear the list. I’m happy about it though, my mate has really come a long way in her line art skills and seems to be getting better all the time. I’m not coloring them in any particular order, so I’ve been able to take care of some of her more awesome recent work lately, which I’ll prolly upload later tonight.

Nothing much more to say here I suppose. Looking forward to having our first all 3 days FWA convention next month and already have hotel booked and everything. Hopefully there shouldn’t be any problem with work schedules there, we’ll be asking the days off plenty early for them to know.

Love to  NightWolf as always :)

It's been a good semester so far: played a little WoW, started my own DnD campaign, attended classes as needed, all that good stuff. Things are coming to a close though with finals over the next couple of weeks and Christmas break afterward. I'm kinda looking forward to the next semester, mostly due to it being my last :D

Been a bit lazy with art and writing over the past few months, but I'm trying to get back into the hobbies. There's no way I have time or prolonged interest to get back into RPing for the most part, so for now I'll keep content with working on stories (though they tend to be too long to post). Just downloaded GIMP 2.6 the other day and I am seriously loving it. No longer does the program take up 4 tabs in the taskbar just for one picture- it is all condensed! I'm not really fond of not being able to minimize my toolboxes, but that is perfectly fine at this point. Also the new option to randomize size/opacity/etc is quite fun to work with.

WoW has really been quite fun. As of this writing my main character, Bluekitty (feral DPS druid), is almost level 80 and I've joined Citadel on the Ysera server. Nice folks they are; raiders but not foaming at the mouth as they step into the instance. Obviously I havent been able to raid with them yet, but that's perfectly fine since the most I've ever really raided before was a failed Zul'Grub and UBRS with my old pre-BC feral druid. I'm also leveling up Bluewillow, who is going to be my restoration druid (for now an experimental survival focused feral/resto), and Happydeath, who is eventually going to be a tanking death knight. I'll have all the bases covered :D

Pretty much all there is for now. I would talk about my DnD campaign but prolly save that for when more has happened.

School is starting off pretty well: Classes are easier than anticipated, work isn’t cutting too much time into my schedule, overall having a good time and getting to hang out with good friends.  Najwa is hanging in as well, even through having physics, organic chemistry, and many other classes that give homework in addition to having a part time job still. I wish there was something I could do to help lighten the load some, but alas I know very little of biochemistry.

Started up DnD again with the group of friends, and I’m in the process of trying to create my own campaign setting. It is a slow process, especially with the scope I put it at, but I think I might be able to get it sooner or later. The setting is very loosely based on Final Fantast XI as it was when I played it for a month four years ago, so basically all that’s really left of the FF aspect is the idea behind the country philosophies and the types of races that are in various places. It’s looking like it’ll be pretty fun once it’s finished but I got other stuffs to do as well.

Speaking of other stuffs to do as well, for the past 40 days I’ve been fanatically reviving my old obsession, World of Warcraft.  frisket17 posted about wanting referrals, and I’d been kinda wanting to get back into it for a while, plus Nightwolf wanted to try it out as well. Got on the Ysera server and created the look for a NE druid (feral of course, been feral since day one first time I played ever) then sat there for an hour trying to think of a powerful and creative name to give him. I finally ended up giving up and typing in Bluekitty… and amazingly it worked! Within the first night I was level 10, dorkish looking as could be, and kept grinding like mad from there. Now after much adventuring goodness and much help from 3x quest exp bonuses I have reaced level 60. Not only that, but because of my profession I had enough to go ahead and get my epic mount as soon as I dinged. The most epic thing though was when I hit 58 and cashed in my free levels for one of Mel’s characters- they went from level 40 to 58 within 2 minutes :D. Needless to say there was much amusement and fanfare for the rest of the night. Got 2 months to get 10 levels, I think I’ll prolly make it :)

Too bad I hear feral is getting downgraded in WotLK. I’ve done the moonkin thing so who knows- I might experiment with the Resto tree just to see how it is.

Not that anyone is really watching me at the moment but ignore the last post in my journal. Finally decided that it'd just be easier to merge my Kardon account with my Norvilion account. Basically I'm going to go through and favorite all the favorites I have on Kardon and look through my watch list to start adding on here. First on the list- Copy my DA journal here so I've got something fairly recent.

Horray for never updating the journal page! I guess it does give me more stuff to write about. I actually am on DA nearly every day, but I rarely actually take time to be active more than checking my watch list.

<DA journal>

First order of business- I'm married! Well, have been married for almost two months now (^-^). I have the lovely  Najwa as my wife now and we are living happily less than fifteen minutes away from school. It's nice to not have to tuck her in every night and then leave, now I get to stay next to her the whole night through :)

Second order of business, I haves a job :D. Well, have had job for three months now :P. I'm working as the intern database engineer for Corrections Corporation of America, energy management division. I went all maniacal and designed for them within a couple months an new system for keeping track of utility bills that doesn't cost them $640,000 a year like the last one did. The other members of the team work on keeping in contact with the facilities and utility companies, but since I'm the computer guy I never have to be social at all if I don't want to :P. Mostly right now I'm just keeping the thing maintained (not many bugs left if any at this point though) and grab data whenever it is needed. I'm having fun, though I kinda miss the maniacal programming I was doing back in May and the beginning of June

Third order of business, we has kitteh now :) Her name is Maggie and she's a little over a year old. We got her from the local cat rescue and she is really really vocal. When she purrs she purrs nonstop, when she meows it's comstant (often in middle of the night and almost always when we open the door in the morning x_x). She's cute though, and amuses us so.

</DA>

The final order of business was that I liked the new Deviantart UI, but that doesn't really apply here so I'll add something new since then.

I'm back on WoW! I quit within a month of meeting my now wife and never looked back until just recently. We decided that we'd create an account to share- her with her NE hunter and me with my NE feral druid. Unfortunately the trial restrictions haven't been lifted so I cant auction yet, but I'm having an awesome time already being level 13 after two days of shared play and getting to converse with awesome artist I knew but who didn't know me (man I sound like such a stalker XP)

In any case. I' m Bluekitty on the Ysera server if anyone ele is there. Feel free to say hi :)

Oh, and go see  frisket17 and get her another mount, she's cool :D

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/426969/


Edit: Okay finished going through my old favorite and all people I watched whose name started with an 'a' or 'b'. Tomorrow I think I shall try to upload some picture and continue to go through the list of names. This may take a while...

Edit 2: Finished uploading all my old stuff and went through 'c' and 'd', I'll just keep track of it down here now.

Current- 'a' - 'f'

It's been a while since I've been in this account. For the past year or so I have been watching FA from the account Kardon. Norvilion however is my main online name. Kardon will still be active, but significantly less so now. I decided to come back to this account as a kind of fresh start. I am marrying my beloved mate, who goes online as Nightwolf714 (Najwa here), on June 7th. While I watched all kinds of artists on Kardon there were still artists with mostly mature content that could be difficult at times to browse for aesthetics reasons. We have no real issue with yiff, but both of us feel it is better to avoid when not with the other.

More updates later perhaps, just trying to make my front page not look so empty.