So I've spent pretty much all day doing art. Got a new piece up on  ICQ, nothing here, and this weekend's comic page is up on the I.C.Q. site. I was hoping for two pages this week but I've got to be up butt early tomorrow so... Not this week. Maybe next week.

Also if you wanted to hang out with Toni it is now too late. I'll be changing my journal headers/footers/whatever when I get home tomorrow because I'm DEAD right now and really need a shower. Oh please god let me get netting on my bedroom window soon so I can get some air in here without losing my cats.

But it's been a productive day, all things told. More or less.

This post on Websnark reminded me of one of the reasons I don't like how transparent watch/fav mechanics are on the furry art sites that use them. Or rather, the cake metaphor being discussed there seemed apt to describe why favorites is a pretty useless metric. (Do I appreciate getting faves and watches? I guess. But I'm not going to lose any sleep over it either way.)

So, every FA user gets a favcake (it's chocolate!). One user only faves pieces zie really digs; zie may fave somewhere around 10 pieces a month, if that. If we say zir cake gets divided up among those pieces, they all get a decently big slice of cake, right?

Another user faves pretty much every piece they full-view. That may be 10 pieces a day. But somehow zir cake slices aren't smaller, because favcake only comes in distinct units: A favcake has infinity slices all of a set size.

Since the slices, unlike Flattr-cake slices, don't convert into money, this shouldn't matter, right?

Not quite. That's where my second objection comes in. Artist A may have gotten an average of one fav apiece for zir submitted art. They're all "big slice" favs, but there's no way for zir to see that. Artists B and C have a lot more favs, say... five per submission. They'd all be tiny slices, if favs were like Flattrs, but again, there's no way to see that.

So even though A, in Flattr terms, would get a bigger mushed-together cake slice, zie is left sitting there wondering what zie did wrong since B and C get so much more attention. Which likely leads to zir striving for more of those thin little cake slices. And maybe, some day in the future, finding that the users who gave zir those big slices, back then, have lost interest in zir art as it became more like B and C's.

By which I mean to say two things, I guess:
1. Watches and favs are reader tools, not popularity contests. I really wish sites wouldn't put so much weight on informing artists who faved or watched them since last time they were on.
2. Everyone has different ideas for how to use these tools; I'm pretty stingy with my favs, and I've seen people who hand out 10+ favs in a matter of minutes. Neither is wrong, but it further devalues such tools as means of gauging popularity.

By the way, if I could ask for one feature to be included in an art gallery? It'd be for the artist to not be informed who faved a piece, but for aggregate information to be available to viewers, sort of like Amazon's "people who bought this also bought these items" or Belfry's "readers of this comic also read these comics". That way the tool is returned to where it should be. To the consumers.

Only one page, unfortunately, due to family aggro I could not successfully deflect (where's my FD button when I need it? >.<) and various Photoshop shenanigans. Note to self: when Photoshop stops talking nice with the tablet, unplug the tablet and plug it back in.

Anyway.

I.C.Q.

Now available in browsers across the world! Enjoy!
Hopefully another page and some other fun stuff will show over the course of the day as I can finish it, provided there aren't yet more familial mishaps.

(For more I.C.Q.-related art and journals and whatnot, go watch  ICQ, where all that will be getting posted. There's a fat bunny there, too.)

Anyone have a link to a good tutorial about inking in Flash (CS2 package if it makes a difference)? I've played with Flash a little before, and it does tend to help my shaky hands make less shaky lines (if you look closely at this submission, especially Sarah's right arm and Toni's dress, you can see how shaky my lines easily get when inking in Photoshop), but I want to make sure I can make files that I can then lift into Photoshop to slap colors onto.

There is now just over three weeks left until launch day. I'm mostly done with the website design (sneak peek coming on the LJ community on Sunday, along with some other goodies), we're ironing out some details about the early story, and everything's going great.

So great, in fact, I thought "hey, why not?", and next thing we know, there's  ICQ to house all the I.C.Q.-related material. It's got the full ACEOs I've been cropping icons from, all the full-size art I've been posting here, and should be getting more material over the next few weeks as I get more of it done. When the comic starts, it'll be updating weekends on the website with 1-3 pages, and on FA the following Tuesday (+Thursday, +Saturday, as applicable), most likely.

I won't be posting much I.C.Q.-related art on this account anymore due to this. Probably something once in a while, but not nearly so much. The next couple of pieces posted on this account will be Pokémon fan art and gift art for  veritas. Hopefully (because they're on my to-do list and I'm trying to get through it) that'll be Sunday at the latest.

Crossposted from Vixenscratch Meta; I'll likely not make a habit of it. Not using full academic sourcing, but when I've looked information up I list the source for full disclosure and shit.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about this, on and off, over the last couple of months. Furry fandom is, really, unique among fandoms, at least in western culture. I get the impression the doujinshi culture in Japan may in some ways be closer than most other examples, but I lack the deeper experience to really say one way or the other. I’m not going to get into definition of furry, as it’s not terribly relevant to what I’m trying to say here. There is an affinity for anthropomorphic animals, and it’s a respectably large fandom, with one of its best-known gallery sites reporting an active userbase of over 200,000 at the turn of the year [1] and its largest convention reaching a final attendant count of 4,238 in 2010 [2]. That’s a lot of people. And that’s kind of what I’m talking about. Furry fandom as fandom, rather than as what they’re fans of.

One difference lies in that the fans and the content creators are to such a large degree the same. This is distinct from the creators-as-readers dynamic in, for instance, a writing circle, because of scale as well as lack of exclusivity. Zaush, the most popular artist on FurAffinity according to the site FA Rank, is still watching 745 other users, getting notified of their submissions [3]. The separation between content creators and fans that is inherent in most fandoms is simply largely inexistant; there is a lot less “us” (the creators) versus “them” (the unwashed mob that argues about whether Han Solo shot first).

Another difference, which further greys the boundary between fans and the object of their appreciation, is that fans are, in fact, in one way or another, the source for a lot of the content brought to the furry fandom. Fans pay for the content other fans appreciate. Not in the indirect sense of wandering down to the comic book shop and picking up the latest copy of Spider-Man or whatever it is you kids read these days, but directly, through requests and commissions. The fans’ thoughts fuel the creators, which is a pretty neat concept. If you want a picture of a hedgehog girl walking through a field with a wreath of flowers on her head, you can simply find an artist taking commissions, send them a few tenners through PayPal, and they will draw your hedgehog girl, because that’s what they do.

Thus, I would argue that furry fandom is, largely, a very self-appreciating sort of place. Anyone has something to bring to the party, and it doesn’t have to be just a common appreciation for Sailor Moon’s ability to kick a whole lot of ass in between bouts of crying. I have met very few furries who don’t eventually invest some of their imagination into the fandom. It could be drawing, writing, role-playing on forums, MU*s or IMs, commissioning artists to create content others will enjoy alongside the commissioner, or just something as simple as, in their own minds, creating the furry character they use to represent themselves.

Sources:
1. http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/1123385/, retrieved Jun 29 2010
2. http://twitter.com/anthrocon/statuses/17195986201, retrieved Jun 29 2010
3. http://superwailingbonus.com/farank/?page=1, retrieved Jun 29 2010

I saw something the other day which I found quite hurtful. A number of clean artists were heaping vitriol on porn artists, and doing so in rather offensive ways. The only reason I could see for their behavior was frustration over (in their perception) being passed over for inferior pornography, and taking that frustration out on the people who they perceive to be responsible, ie the providers of said smut. To believe these people, someone who chooses to draw adult art has sold out, being no better than an actress who sleeps with a director to get a role over more talented, more moral candidates.

Not only are these people perpetuating the idea that women should be ashamed of their sexuality (no mention of the fans of these artists being no better than the director who picks the actress who slept with him), which is an issue I'm not really interested in discussing any further than noting that it's touched on by the choice of similie. They are making a very offensive moral judgement on any artist who ever showed off an adult piece online. Sex does sell, but that does not mean that the only reason ever to draw sex is to sell, or even to get attention.

If you're one of the people inclined to make that kind of judgement about people you don't know, please remember that you don't know the motivation behind this stranger's work. I started drawing adult art because I enjoyed the artistic challenge of making two (or more) bodies interact that way. I just went over the adult and mature submissions in my gallery here. Most of it fell under "because I thought it was funny" and/or "gift art". The only pieces that were actually done in any kind of attempt to draw attention is the I.C.Q. promotional stuff. And I readily admit the I.C.Q. promotion is, well... promotion.

Now, I have no problem with clean artists. I don't feel morally superior to them because I sometimes enjoy drawing smut and they don't. But neither do I feel morally superior to MoodyFerret because she draws fetish stuff (ie "worse" porn) and I don't. I certainly wouldn't call her names over it or lord this supposed moral superiority over her. That'd be silly. I'm friends with clean artists and I'm friends with people who have kinks that are REALLY not my thing. I'm a big girl and I can handle that. The clean artists I'm friends with are big boys and girls and can handle that even if they'd rather not draw (or see, as the case may be) sex, other people can and will and that doesn't make them horrible people, whores, or sell-outs. That's not even getting into the issue of how unfair it is to black-and-white label any artist who does porn as part of their regular fare a "porn artist". That's a sliding scale, not an on-off button.

I also get the impression that people who don't do porn have a vastly inflated notion of how much of a response it draws. I'm not getting hundreds of new watchers (or necessarily any) every time a picture of mine has a red border on the main page. It doesn't work like that. The problem is that the people they're comparing their own success to are the people they see. People who are prolific posters or who network a lot (shouts and comments on others' stuff). Does my porn get more views than the clean stuff? Yes, it does. But interestingly, the gulf between comments and favorites between porn and clean art (and even photography) is a lot more narrow.

Based on my own browsing habits, a few things that all artists can do:
* Make sure your art thumbnails well. Resize it to a max dimension of 120 pixels, and if it doesn't look captivating that way, consider cropping and resizing your own custom thumbnail.
* Corollary to the above: people like thumbnails which give an idea of what's going on in the image. If you have any useful, short keywords that you think will help, put them on the thumbnail. By useful, I mean something which gives a better idea of the content than a blank thumbnail with "Clean art" or "Mature 18+" written on it.
* As ironic as it may seem, considering the perceived low status of stories in the fandom, viewers are attracted to art that tells a story. Comic pages and Ruby Quest-esque visual interactive stories are a good way to attract attention, even in thumbnail form.

I've seen stunning art that thumbnailed so badly I would've passed over it if I hadn't been linked to it, and I've seen abysmal art that thumbnailed well, so I clicked it thinking I'd found a gem. To me, it doesn't matter if an image has a black, blue, red or rainbow border; I just want to see interesting art.

I don't think everyone should draw porn. In fact, I think a lot of the people who do draw porn should stop, study some anatomy, and get back to it when they have a better understanding of the human body. But this is not a moral judgement. This is a "I don't like badly-drawn porn" judgement. I just... hope I won't have to see someone say (paraphrased from memory) "I bet if I draw a dog cock I'll get 100+ faves in an hour" ever again.

The question of piracy has a tendency to be greatly polarizing in any online community. Furry fandom is no exception, and may in fact be among the worse offenders, because the content producers are part of the fandom. It can never become "Us vs. Them" to the same extent as it can when the content producer is a multimillion dollar corporation. And really, that's understandable. To some small extent, it's even appropriate. Denying Adobe or Sony or Ubisoft some of their income is after all a piss in the Atlantic, especially when compared to denying the same dollar amount to a furry artist.

Personally, I have an attitude towards piracy that kind of goes hand-in-hand with my attitude towards fanart (don't earn money off someone else's work, essentially). I find downloading something that's available, especially if it's still available first-hand (I'd prefer buying preowned but let's face it: it hurts Sony just as much if you choose to buy that CD album from the guy down the street who got tired of it, as if you just went and torrented the damn album in the first place), utterly skeevy. If it's something that's been out of print for five or ten years (especially if spokespeople have confirmed that there's no intent of re-publishing), the industry may bitch, but they're losing nothing.

When it comes to art/writing/whatever software, I'm even more in line with my stance on fanart. I don't believe it matters in the grand scheme of things if you use that pirated version of Photoshop to resize that photo you took of your dog, or to scan that doodle you want to show off to your friends, but if you intend to make money off your art you should damn well pay your dues. I had a classmate who decided it was morally/ethically okay for her to use a pirated version of Photoshop to make money, because she'd gotten it through her German boytoy and the hassle of using a German-language copy made up for the money Adobe never got from her. She was doing something wrong. And yes, for the record, I've put my money where my mouth is, and legally own more art software than I really know what to do with. Yes, it sucks that Photoshop costs approximately a bazillion dollars, but if you're not willing to pay, you ought to go for one of the free alternatives out there, whatever they are right now.

So. Whenever an artist speaks up and is (justifiably) upset about people redistributing their material, they tend to get a lot of flak. Now, I'll be the first to admit, some artists can sound incredibly whiny when they say this. I'm not targeting anyone in particular with this statement, just a general observation. Kicking up a huge fuss does tend to make people look bad, even when they're right to do so. If some asshole hit-and-runs your dog and you write letters to all the papers in the area doing everything short of cursing him out (and maybe that, too) and in general kick up a massive fuss, you're going to look bad, too, and I don't think anyone would say you aren't justified in being upset if someone killed your dog.

As artists, we have to accept that people will pirate our stuff. It's perfectly fine to make a calm, rational request for fans not to do so, along the lines of "I put X hours into the material on this portfolio CD, and production costs are Y. If I'm going to make even minimum wage on them, I need to earn a total of $Z. I would like it if you, out of respect for me, consider paying for the material rather than torrenting it somewhere." Calm, rational, and up-front. But there is a flip side to that.

If you make the request for people to respect your wishes and pay for the material, you need to make it available to them. I have friends who've gotten hosed by this; an item is not freely available online, and the publisher won't ship it to their location. As soon as you pull that, you're asking people to pirate. Work with your fans. Someone can't send money from their part of the world? Let them know you'll accept someone else paying on their behalf, or (if applicable) find a way for them to pay in barter. Anything.

As watchers, fans, whatever, we have to accept that artists may want to make money off of their work, at least enough to cover expenses associated with creating it. I will admit, I've voiced my fair share of frustration over the misleading ads for blotch's Dog Days of Summer, which implied that the full story was now available online. But it was their decision to make the ending pay-only. I can voice disappointment, but it gives me no right to disrespect them by obtaining the material without compensating them. It may be a luxury of few to live off of one's furry artwork, but that doesn't mean all artists need to accept working at a loss.

It is never okay to ridicule people because they're trying to make money. Especially not in their space. (If you pass the link to my commission prices around to your friends and you guys privately snicker about it, that's your business. If you comment on my prices in my journal, you're being a disrespectful jerk.) Pirating will happen, and yes, artists need to be aware of that reality, but ripping them a new one over finding it upsetting that, for instance, people are already talking about torrenting their material before it is even published? That is low. I don't have words for how low it is, and I still consider myself pretty fluent in both English and profanity.

Don't call people names. That goes for both sides. Don't call the artist who wants to be able to keep doing art without starving a thin-skinned, greedy cunt. Don't call the people who rag on you for letting people know that you are not Adobe or Microsoft or Apple and actually feel the loss of a single sale a thieving syphilic asswipe. Take a step back. Breathe.

Remember that neither of you would exist without the other.

And for fuck's sake stop gloating to artists about obtaining the fruit of their hard labors in underhanded ways.

So... if for some reason you've been putting off signing up for the I.C.Q. free porn raffle, you should probably stop procrastinating now. If your friend has been putting off signing up, he or she should probably stop procrastinating now.

In fact, drop the 'probably'. You snooze, you lose, and I've got the next winning piece for  loboroo finished and ready to be posted. You should definitely be signing up now, and telling all your friends to sign up as well.

The art will go up on Tuesday. If you've signed up by the time I post it, you'll be in on the draw. If not, you miss out on the last guaranteed round. 66 raffle tickets have currently been awarded, meaning another 134 are needed before there's a round 4.

...

Seriously, though. If you like porn, just go sign up. The art is totally worth it. Trust me. The piece I'll be posting Tuesday kicks ass.

I need more samples, and I'd like to work with characters that I don't draw all the fucking time. So I'm going to do two free 15-minute sketches.

Basically I set an egg timer for 15 minutes, get sketching, and if I get done sketching I move on to inking. If I get done with the inks as well, I can also move on to color, with the reservation that I normally wait until the ink is dry to color, and won't be doing that with these (so the pencil lines will still be there under the marker, and the Copic markers have a tendency to fix the pencil to the paper to some extent).

Samples:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3215430/

If you want in on the action, I will need the following from you:
* Comprehensive character description (listing species, distinguishing characteristics, theme ideas)
* Reference pictures - if it's not a horse or a generic canid, don't assume I can draw it accurately off the top of my head. My idea of a capybara, for instance, is "box-headed giant guinea pig type thing", which may not be entirely accurate.
* A link in your journal to this journal entry or to my user info page.

Note that the reference pictures need to be links to specific pictures. If I get a link to your gallery and you tell me to browse around for pictures of the character or whatever, I'm just going to ignore those references.

I'll read through your description and look at your references and such before setting the timer, so that doesn't count into your sketch time unless you make your description really obnoxiously long.

One character per sketch; one sketch per person. Your own characters or characters belonging to me only. If you want me to draw a character belonging to a friend of yours, you need to provide me with some kind of proof that this is okay with your friend.

Slots:
1.  brown_wantholf (FINISHED)
2.  irinae (FINISHED)

First come, first serve. Comment to get in on the action. If you miss the free slots, I will do more of these at $6.25 apiece. (Yes, lowered price since last time I offered these. It makes things more convenient on my end.)

First of all, thank you to everyone who's left me welcomes and kind words so far. I see your comments/shouts and appreciate them, but am not going to get into the habit of responding to every single comment just to say "thank you"; if you want that kind of response, comment on my art dumps on LJ instead. ^_~

Secondly, I have now most likely finished uploading old art. There are two or three commission pieces I might decide to upload as well, I've not decided yet, but for the most part, after this point I'll probably be sticking to uploading when I've amassed some new work. Like my main info thingy says, this is not, nor will it most likely ever be, my main gallery, for various reasons I've gone into enough times elsewhere. Anyway, sorry for the minor flood to people's watchlists. Won't happen again for quite some time now.

Thirdly... I forgot what was third. Pretend you read it and that it was all eloquent and shit. More art may be turning up... in December, at the earliest. Not counting on having time before then. (And don't really have time then, either, most likely, but I might be more able to make time.)