Someone has been generous enough to offer a ride while they're on their way to Bewhiskered over in Durham, NC. I won't have a table... but I'll have a sketchbook? ^^>
I'll be wondering around only during Sunday after 10 AM.
Very very wonderfully nervous...

For anyone who follows intently, you may have noticed this silly racc has been skipping around and skipping various stones without seeming much thought as to a foundation or direction.

For those intrepid explorers, explore and find grand new things and bring back any piece that preserves the original whence it came and in a frame for others at home.
For those enterprising builders, build until it touches whatever rosy height you want it to, and it'll be rosy and grand enough for those who appreciate what you put in.

I'm not sure if I neatly fit into either category, or can make myself. What I can do is be more mindful of what to do when. But mindfulness without regular input from other people, friends, well-wishers, even enemies, isn't worth much.

So I'll be updating my Internet plan for this decade, a modem to go with, and once having achieved that milestone in bandwidth and data, I'll be testing the waters for a solo or group draw stream in Picarto. If anyone knows someone or is someone who is looking for a new fur to show around there, lemme know in DM in the coming weeks.

So I've not been that present on this site for a couple months, which I hope to change. Largely it's had to do with getting acquainted with a new PC I had to replace my rickety old laptop from '12. The majority of this process, from planning to the implementation has been thanks to multiple users, namely  Vultsky,  Yoshigamer, and  Drigil, giving several hints and tips and helpful links to tutorials to this very silly and disorganized raccoon. Without their help, I would not have gotten this far and to stop now would put all that effort to waste. I can only keep going forward, even though it's a little embarrassing to admit to this period of inaction.

As a small compensation I've been looking into Blender, now that I have the processing power to handle it. As such it is likely that I'll soon be playing around with prices for 3D rigs and models, so stay tuned for that.

 70Jack90 Just had his hometown of Nashville blown through by a tornado, while luckily he's living in L.A. and his house in Brentwood wasn't hit, a lot of people were. As of now, the mortality from this disaster has added up to about 25 and a state of emergency has been declared.

If fate had played a different hand,  70Jack90 might not be with us, today. There are two dozen who definitely are not with us, and while they might not have been in or even heard of this fandom, we ought to consider their passing just as much of a blow as if we had lost one of our own.

Because I'm beginning to earn money thanks to this community, I'm going to put forth a portion of it toward a cause I know we can all agree with. Backing those who work tirelessly to restore food, water, clothes, shelter, electricity, all the things families need to live normal lives again. I am giving to Salvation Army.

I would be humbled if at least one person reads this and is lit by the same spark that has me. Please visit  70Jack90 and give him your support, and if you are able, consider supporting Salvation Army, Goodwill, Habitat for Humanity, or any other organizations that improve the lives of others.

I had zero interest shown in regards to the previous journal, so here's what I'm going to do...

Nothing, at least not a whole lot's going to change on this site. The asking prices and the first-request-free policy stated in Sampling Leading Up to Monetization will remain the same except for one thing:

ANIMATIONS Rates have been decided. Price will be 9.00 USD per second of sketched animation or 7.00 USD per work-hour, whichever is cheapest; 13.00 USD per second of clean line animation or 10.00 USD per work-hour, whichever is cheapest; or 16.00 USD per second of colored and shaded animation or 12.50 USD per work-hour, whichever is cheapest.

I will also be leaving a link for a Patreon, here. https://www.patreon.com/Proteon
It is my sincerest hope that I can create for you guys and not just myself, so please, join me.

So I'm thinking about prices concerning comics, singles, and eventually animations. Problem is, I feel I need to update more to prove I'm more reliable as an artist.
So what I think I'm going to do is this: for the next three or four months, I'll try a cycle where each person on FA can make a request. A request being one, singular, so they'd have to make it count and so would I. It'll give a chance for the two of us to work together the first time and hopefully ensure the next project is that much better.
That said, any subsequent project with a person on FA, I will begin asking that it be done in the form of commission. I'll be starting out in the ballpark of:
COMICS 40.00 USD per page sketched, 55.00 USD per page final lineart, 75.00 USD per page colored, (10.00 USD per character after more than 3 characters).
SINGLES 10.00 USD sketched, 17.00 USD final lineart, 35.00 USD colored with simple shading, and 50.00 USD colored with full textures.
ANIMATIONS rates pending...

I fully expect to have a lot of one-timers with this. That's probably how it ought to be until I get more proficient at what I want to do for a living. So what do you guys think? Are these prices reasonable? Any tips?

Have you ever been asked by someone, 'Who lit that one's butt on fire?'

Self-motivation is sometimes hard to come by, at least at first glance. Sometimes it really does seem like people are busy working at nothing or hopelessly spinning their wheels but one thing I've been slow to realize for the last five years and especially the last two months or so is that everything that everyone does is building toward something.

Sure the planning is no Hagia Sophia, but eventually everyone gets those moments when they look at the pillars they've been making and decide, 'You know what, now's a good time for a roof' or they've been carrying their cornerstone for miles and decide, 'Here's as good a place as any'. From there comes the painful part: deciding what you have in the forefront that needs to switch places with the necessaries left on the back-burner. Taking stock and giving things an order is a task all on its own, one that demands attention at the start of every day. Ignoring that is part of what makes the actual doing of things so nerve-racking as they come up, and the eventual dropping bit by bit of responsibilities.

In the end we'll all have a few pet projects that might never even make it out of your head, but how many make it into the world largely depends on how much control you want to apply to your own life.

I'm still finding that out...

Dear little Sally, how do you do it?
Like so many others before you, having to put up with a creative family member's 'artistic mood'. You could just leave it up to a professional... but of course they would ceaselessly typify the condition, ignoring all the little quirks of the subject.
So then it's up to you. But then again, are you sure you, yourself, aware of all the strangeitudes within your Wolf-father's mind? The labyrinth between his perkish ears? Do you hear the difference between a bad composition and a chortled howl?
Oh dear, oh dear, Sally... how will you solve him... whilst you love his night song so?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMI11s9Hey0

Minus the informal contraction, of course, this was an actual prompt my class was given in grade school. Let me tell you how I wasted it!
I'd stomped last year's official writing test, and along with a handful of other sufficiently bookish classmates, attained the legendary 4.0.
Now if I remember right, 4.0 implied perfection. The teacher looking over our papers had to check that both sides were full to the brim with words, legibly written with no. 2s, correctly spelled, and assembled into a comprehensible story with at least one simile. And God help us all if that teacher spied the deadly 'said'. While I made sure to obey these guidelines, I was still very surprised at my perfect score. My plot wasn't very good and I took several BIG liberties with the sciences. One especially, was entertaining the idea of an 8-year-old outrunning a polar bear. Don't ask.
Anyway, so now I have this new prompt on my desk and it's right up my alley.
'The next morning before school, you wake up to discover you have a tail. Describe what you would do next?'
Even by this point, I'd spent years contemplating transformation and animality. I'd already had dreams of becoming an animal, living as an animal, even dying--breathing my final breaths--as an animal. This prompt should have been a cinch! So guess what I do...
I get really, really giddy. I notice my fingers are twitching horribly and, what's more, they've reverted to the apish grip I'd thought the tutor had eradicated from my list of impulses. When the time runs out I hand in a half paper, a total play-by-play from a cartoon I had just watched the other day, only instead of a bratty sister with super-strength demanding her doll named Polly Poo Poo from her tall jaundice brother, it depicts a bratty fox with super-strength demanding his tail named...[gulp]...Tailey Wailee Woo.
Yes. I wrote that down.
Then he pulls my/his tail off ('like a shark' I wrote wizendly), offering no explanation to how the brush found its way onto me in the first place, and I black out. Then I wake up and, seeing no fox, chalk it up as 'just one of those things' before running to the bus that I'm conveniently still on time for.
And that's the story.

...then vote like one.

...

End of public service announcement that nobody asked for.