Okay! so this seems sudden but i've been working on a tabletop deckbuiling game centered around living inflatables, it's being set within TableTop Simulator, and right now I'm looking to prepare some cards for prototyping and would like to gather some images for them.

now, I don't want to just randomly grab artwork off FA as that would likely offend the artists and owners behind those works, so I'm asking if anyone would be willing to volunteer some of their own work for it.

just to clarify, I'm not asking for people to draw me stuff, Just to temporarily use what they've already made for placeholder work during prototyping, once I get things more ironed out and begin developing a more finalized version, I'd be both doing artwork myself and getting commissioned work for the game.

So, i've been rather quiet over the past several months, or at least quiet on here. so what have I been up to since?

well most of that time has been spent on my primary identity, working on a passion project of sorts that has recently taken off! now granted I still draw, and still do trades with  Darcell1291 every now and then, but I haven't really been too active with the community lately.

in truth, it has been on my mind to want to do streams again, the problem however is just a matter of timing. you see, I work at a factory for 12 hours through the night, and as a result I'm now generally more active during the dead of the night. which isn't a convenient time for most folks unfortunately. still it's something I'd like to try out as I enjoyed doing the request streams both as an art excercise and as a way to engage with folks here in the community.

There's also the possibility of trades, as mentioned before, I still do these with  Darcell1291 , typically as quick 1-2 hour art exercises over telegram, admittedly though, long term projects tend to be tough for me, if my ability to keep up with inktobers is any indication, once I lose that initial momentum, I just kinda forget about it as I get wrapped up in other day to day matters, and when I do have free time I'd sooner hop onto my passion project before anything else.

certainly doesn't help that during the work week, I spend literally half the day at work, and the latter half asleep to prepare to do it again the next day. though perhaps new art practices could help with this, such as just working bit by bit rather than wanting to do a complete piece from start to finish in one sitting.

anyways, those are just my general thoughts, as well as what's been going on with me lately.

Okay so here's an honest question for my viewers.

so a lot of the time, I tend to do mostly quick renders and sketches, a lot of them don't make it onto my FA at all and the few that do are usually thrown into scraps because...I dunno, that's what you should do?

I mean, I worry a bit of people might get annoyed with seeing spurts of rough, uncolored images in their watch feed or when they check the inflation category.

so I want to ask, should I still be using scraps? and perhaps just tell people to keep an eye out there? or should I just go ahead and post normally?

Alright, so some might be wondering why I deactivated my main account, well something kinda unfortunate has happened.

so my mother, who works in song production has put up a new song on her website, and tried to test the purchasing part of it but had issue doing it herself, and thus wanted me to test it out for her, unfortunately it seemed to require the use of paypal, and after complying, later I learn that much to my horror, through examining the purchase history, he has discovered my main account,

she found it on deviantart which fortunately doesn't have much on it. but still. this is kind of a big deal.

okay so the thing is, she is aware of my balloon and is aware that I've drawn inflation work in the past out of desperation, what she doesn't know however is that I'm actually into this stuff, and isn't aware of the more sexual side of things. and I want to keep that side of me private. the topic of sexuality was always awkward with her and this would just make things 10 times worse. and may change how she perceives my interactions with my balloon.

now, she claims indifference on the matter, but what I'm paranoid of is her getting bored one day and deciding to dig deeper into what she can find with my name. needless to say, my old account is no longer private anymore, so I've decided to just abandon it, and sever all connections between it and this account.


Edit: Now I'm NOT leaving FA altogether, I just need to assume a new identity more or less, I'm leaving my old account behind and keeping up with this one for the time being.

After 8 months of bumping around hotels, job searching, house searching, and dealing with all manners of misfortune, I'm officially no longer homeless!

now to get back to finishing some overdue trades, Did draw a few images when I had the chance though.

Things are getting a bit tense in life at the moment. going to have to suspend trades temporarily.

So as you guys might have noticed, I do a lot of trades, for me, trades are something I do as a sort of fun, leisure thing, where I create a simple 1-2 hour drawing for someone else in return for the same thing, normally I've mainly done them with  darcell1291 but I'm looking to branch out a bit more.

now the main thing I want to stress is that these aren't like commissions, the aim isn't to make a high fidelity piece to the exact criteria of the person asking for it, it's mostly just about making low intensity drawings for each other, we can do more complicated pieces on both sides but largely, this is meant to be more lose and freeform than anything else.

as a trade partner, what can you expect from me? well the following:

1. I typically like to leave a lot of room for freedom in terms of how my partner can approach what I ask for, and as such I'm not usually super specific on what I ask for, and at times I may even offer a prompt that deliberately calls for some interpretation on my partner's side. it's more engaging to see something that's a product of my partner's creativity rather than something specifically based around my own desires.

2. I'll usually play to my partner's strengths if possible, I'm pretty attentive, and do look through a lot of people's galleries and favorites to get an idea on them as an artist, as such I'll usually stick with subjects or themes that my partner may be most familiar with (I.E: if my partner is big on birds, there's a pretty high chance that what I'll ask for might be bird related). again since these are meant to be kind of simple and leisurely, I won't try to push my partner too far out of their comfort zone. (I on the other hand, am fine does whatever for the most part)

3.Pretty much everything I'll ask for will involve air inflation, there is a chance that something else might come to play.

4. I'm pretty big on the subject of physical contact when it comes to inflation, so that may be a thing when it comes to what I ask for.

5. sometimes I might just ask for something fygar related. often if I'm looking for something based around a specific context or situation, I might default to them as the subject as they're fairly simple to draw, this often overlaps with my previous point, as I may want to place more emphasis on the action or pose involved rather than the character at the center of it.

6. I enjoy an element of surprise, so if I give a fairly open ended prompt, don't worry about disappointing me at all, I'll be happy to see the end result regardless.

if you ever want to do a trade, just send me a note and I'll consider it!

Those that know me well enough are probably aware of my fixation with fygars, or at least my rendition of them. and I'm sure a few find it odd that I would dedicate so much work to them and even default to asking for them in trades. well I'd like to talk about that here, I was going to do a series of illustrations like in my other fetish analysis pieces but this particular subject involved more text than illustrations.

anyways. Fygars as a character are significant to me because they were my first genuine interest in inflation, what really sold me on them was the box art for Return of Arcade https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0.....g?v=1462216229

I remember when I was young and I saw this box at an office max, I carried it around and stared at it while my mother shopped for office supplies. I had an early thing for balloons then but here was a high resolution image of a dragon being inflated all big and round like a balloon. I've always imagined wanting to hug the creatures big belly, even if he looked to be one firm squeeze away from popping. but that introduced me to dig dug and when I first got a computer, I searched for whatever I could of dig dug all in the hopes to see more images of that dragon inflated.

never really did find much sadly, most of the time it was the pooka that got inflated and by the time I started to draw inflation art for myself, the idea of the fygars was long out of my head now I have drawn images of fygars but they didn't really look at all like the cannon version, just generic lizards really. it wasn't till I did the rough of this piece that rekindled that long lost interest. http://www.furaffinity.net/view/24786046/

as for why I draw them so often, well it has a lot to do with the design of them. The design I settled with depicts the fygars as having a simple, bottom heavy reptilian shape with only 3 colors (2 if you exclude white), rounded features and a general lack of intricate details. I prefer characters like this because they are easy to figure out and commit to memory, which allows me to focus more on the form.

you see, I don't settle for spheres with limbs, my goal is to convey the subject as one big air filled volume, this depends a lot on effectively skewing the subject's proportions to get that look. simpler character designs also better sells the idea of that subject being like a balloon, things like pooltoys and parade floats rely on rounded features and color separation to define the character. Lugia is a great example of a design that works well with this. he already looks like a parade float as it is.

when I'm stressed and want to draw some inflation with something easy that I like, the fygar fits the bill perfectly, and allows me to draw with ease, not having to constantly check a ref or focus on small details midway in. and when I want to make a trade request that emphasizes either the shape, pose, or context of the inflated subject more than the subject itself, Fygars are my go to pick because it has a simple design that appeals to me.

lastly, a lot of my work involving them plays on a fantasy scenario I really enjoy. the idea of owning this small, easy to care for critter that you can pump up like a big balloon to do things with. not only do I enjoy the scale difference but it lines up with my habits as a looner.

so yeah, for those of you that took the time to read this. that's why I like drawing them so much and why I will continue to draw them. literally everything about them appeals to me and they satiate a desire of mine that has been unfulfilled for years. Plus they are a perfect fallback for when I want to draw but have nothing in mind to draw.

at this point I might as well make an OC out of them or something.

Hey everyone, so recently I've decided to give tumblr another shot and started one up for the identity of Ultrafirm. here I aim to post at a more regular pace than on FA, as well as share works that I might deem too unusual to even post on my FA, if you'd like to follow the blog then the link is below.

https://thefirmest.tumblr.com/