- Art will be resuming next week.
- I will start looking into shipping originals soon.
- I am still on track to reopen for commissions in November.

We're like 75% percent moved as of last night, and we should be grabbing the last of the large furniture today. Shout out to and an even bigger shout out to for helping us move a lot of the heavy shop equipment. My art room is partially set up (at least enough to start on commissions again once we get my table in there).

Also graduation went well, I'm glad I went even if I felt a bit tired and under prepared. My honours year ended up being a lower grade than I would have preferred (B- or 2.7GPA), but given how sick I was, both me and my supervisor were happy with that Edit: I lied and the system is stupid, it's a 3.3-3.7 which is a B+ to A-, which is kinda great all things considered. In retrospect I probably should have just done a regular masters, but also I didn't know I was going to get that sick again so c'est la vie (I just wanted undergrad done, so shoot me).

I will consider whether I want to start the masters next year, I can only really do one paper at a time while working, but I do still want to do a few of the psych 500lvl papers regardless. I'm actually really missing having lecture content, so if you have suggestions for interesting Youtube lectures or other podcasts, feel free to drop some links (any topic is fine honestly), otherwise I will report back if I find anything interesting. Can be any STEM or interesting arts, philosophy, business, I don't really care as long as you think it's neat. I love Ninja Nerd, but I can only listen to so many medical lectures in a row when I'm not even studying medicine.

In other news, dentists are expensive, I might sell off some older characters or originals to help recover from that (TL;DR, school dentist messed up a molar filling as a kid, got a root canal as a teen, and now the tooth is cracking so I need to get it repaired again). I'll let ya'll know once I've gotten all that organized.

Kia ora koutou,

Main points:
- Funeral for my grandmother went well.
- Attending FurcoNZ Hotel 2025 in Auckland, New Zealand.
- is coming to visit!
- Graduating next month, and probably moving too (no set date, it may or may not interfere with commissions).

In detail:
The funeral went well, but I'm glad it's done, and it was nice seeing family again despite the circumstances.

I will be attending FurcoNZ Hotel 2025, and I'm dragging and along with me! It'll be the first con since whatever Denfur I was in Colorado for (I should probably remember, but I don't so uh, I'll check at some point). If you are going to be around, and want to grab a coffee or something let me know! I'm a little shy starting conversations but I'm pretty chatty and friendly once I get over the initial anxiety. I'm not going to be dealing at this con, but I might do some pre-order badges for pick-up if I can track down a laminator before then. I then get to keep for a wee bit after the con before he's gallivanting over to Oz, I haven't seen him since FC so I'm looking forward to it again.

I will be graduating next month, and have a few other misc life things, including moving to be back closer to my parents so I can help them out a bit more now that I have finished studying. I don't know the exact date of the move yet, but I kinda hope it will be before the con because that makes getting to the con just a bit easier. It shouldn't interfere with the current commission round but I will keep people posted if it does get a bit much combined with the health stuff and other stressors recently. I've started packing in the evenings already because I hate rushing box tetris.

A bit of a sombre update today, my remaining grandparent passed away this week.

Grandma had a stroke some years ago and had lost the ability to talk, eat and move her body for the most part. She is free now finally, and can go hang out with Grandad again in whatever place that is. She was a musician, a dancer, and one of the integral reasons I love animals as much as I do (and why I had so many pet birds growing up).

It's sad but also relieving for us, as her quality of life was not high (though she was well cared for in a hospice place). I'm hanging out with my parents and helping them arrange the funeral service. We got the bulk of it done yesterday thankfully. Today is sifting through photos and finding music, and organising flying a few family members up for the funeral.

I will still likely get some commission work done this week (the sense of normalcy is nice) but it will all be the digital work. I'm a little behind schedule because of the Crohn's flare anyway, my commission opening might be further delayed (for this and a few other reasons I'll detail in a later post).

If you feel like sharing condolences or a story of a loved one, I'll make sure to relay them to my mother. She will probably be quite touched, and I would enjoy getting to learn more about you (and your loved ones).

Hey ya'll,

TL;DR
- Commissions are under way, mostly sketching right now.
- I'm working on getting my socials and the like up to date.
- I also have plans for Patreon that should hopefully be better than my old one set-up wise.
- If you like vote in my poll. It's only three questions and you have a chance at a spot prize, and it would really help me out to know what projects you guys want to see first.

Commissions are going pretty well, though I'm still in the sketching phase. I picked up a Huion Inspiroy H1611 (it's a Wacom Intuos equivalent for a fraction of the price). It's actually really good and I can recommend it if you're looking for a normal tablet. So on the plus side, I can work at my desktop again. The downside is I'm having to relearn how to use a tablet a screen for art, and how to use Clip Studio again. Both of these are slowing me down a bit, but I should be back to my normal speed relatively soon.

The socials, I'm working on getting a Telegram channel set up. I'm still working out a few kinks with Postybirb for the cross platform posting on FA, Bluesky and Telegram, it's really good for scheduling and not having to post things at silly NZT times.

Patreon is coming, it's going to be a little more basic than the prior set-up. It's more aimed at being a tip jar rather than anything else, but there will be some perks at higher tiers that are not strictly pay-walling content. I still can't really find a shop solution for adult content, so I might end up needing to incorporate that into Patreon somehow (there are work a rounds but they seem kinda terrible compared to just having the content included at certain tiers).

As for the poll, I want some ideas of what you might like to see me working on. I need to be working on side projects anyway for my own sanity, so if you could help me know what to prioritize that would be fab. It's only three questions, and I'll be doing 3-5 sketchy headshot spot prizes. Vote in my poll.

I think that's really it for now, how've ya'll been going?

TL;DR:
- Invoicing is done for Sept, should re-open mid October.
- Health is good and ADHD meds make me able to work consistently.

Invoicing should be finished and sent out, so if you haven't heard from me, just send me a note here and I can try and track down what happened to your submission.

The goal is to have all of this batch finished by the end of September, but it might also be a little optimistic so my actual estimate would be mid-October is around when I will re-open, so we'll see how I do. I think the quarterly opening will work pretty well, so I'm looking forward to that (just being able to spend an hour / time block at a time on it is so much easier that whatever I was doing before).

Health wise I seem to be doing alright, I accidentally ate a few mouthfuls of something with jalapeno in it and recovered in about a week (and was still able to do art for some of that time), which is just amazing given that 6-10mo ago that probably would have taken me out for at least two weeks. The ADHD medication has made a huge difference for just being able to work through brain-fog and haze (even if it's just from my personal list some days because I'm not quite up to snuff). It makes me feel like a normal person that can work normally and I kinda like that. I have some minor things I need to adjust, like actually needing to set timers for my time blocks / pomodoro or having to actually stop and think if something I'm doing is actually productive or urgent right now (hint: Toyhou.se is not very urgent).

I am tentatively getting back into my dissertation project now that the bulk of my art business is reinstated. I have been absolutely spooking myself by thinking I need to jump straight back into the research side of it. Instead, I'm poking around at philosophy of writing both fiction and non-fiction, and I think this is what I need to start filling some of the contextual gaps I need. If not I still have some novels that need writing / re-writing so either way I think tackling writing from both perspectives will be useful.

- I finally got through that first round of commissions.
- I should send out the next lot of invoicing either this week or next week.
- I will be closing the commission form soon, so grab a spot if you want it before I adjust prices if you want something in the current styles, or wait to see what I add when I re-open.

I have adjusted to the new ADHD medication well it looks like. I'm still crashing out kinda early in the evening, but I'll take that over being checked out for the entire day. I'm running into some other gastric issues (as per usual) but I can mostly resolve those in a day or two. It turns out you can have Crohn's and IBS so that's exciting.

I'm really enjoying getting back into art again. I don't really know how to express that more, and having work actually be accessible on all but the worst days is just such a relief after University, which was just a struggle all the time due to the brain fog. Art, I can task switch depending on cognitive functioning on any given day. Translating shapes and abstract visual ideas into physical form is still much easier for me than translating similar levels of concept into written theory, for my (current) normal level of functioning.

I do have a gazillion art ideas and things I want to do or get started but I'm just having to be patient until my body can catch up. Current task is basically invoicing and getting Toyhou.se updated. I will almost certainly take a day or two before starting the next batch to do a little personal art and some R&D. I really want to get back into art in a sustainable way, and feeling like I could never take breaks from commissioned work was really not sustainable.

Sup ya'll,

I did in fact get the ADHD diagnosis. I don't think I talked about it much on here, but I tried to get diagnosed, I dunno, 6 years or so ago. The place I went to was uhhh questionable at best. Particularly looking back with the new information I have from doing the BSc in Psychology, so much of the original procedure is a bit questionable both from a research standpoint and clinically. So when a sibling got diagnosed, I basically just flat out asked his psychiatrist if it was worth getting reassessed and he said yes. So I basically booked a referral to the same guy and he basically diagnosed me on the spot, so I guess it was pretty obvious >__>

ANYWAY, this update is mostly to just be like, this is what happened this week, I am finally over my cold(s) but I am starting ADHD medication that takes uh, 2-3 weeks to adjust to I think. It's already pretty obviously helping and I'm not even on a proper dose (what do you mean I can listen to conversations without spacing out and losing what's happening). Though perhaps predictably, I just fell asleep the first day (the joke here is every medication I try or try to come off makes me sleepy).

I still have another health issue I need to sort out with my regular GP that is impacting my ability to work as such I have not sent out more invoices yet, just be aware you are there and I see you I just don't feel great taking more money when I'm not actively working (I'm almost there today, I think, so hopefully by next week I will be recovered enough). The TL;DR for the other health issue is I'm getting a tonne of fatigue that doesn't seem to be related to the autoimmune issue. It might be complex or really simple but currently it's pretty debilitating. Luckily I can draw laying down, and cleaning the house can be done in small bursts, but I'm quite frankly just over being fatigued constantly. It's like all the life gets sucked out of your very bones.

I hope you are all doing well, despite the rough physical side of things, my mood is staying pretty high. As an added bonus I think I have converted a friend into a furry (he wants a pitbull fursona) so that's been fun :D

Ka kite,
Zambuka

Commission form here!

Alright ladies, gentlemen and distinguished enbies,

We have reached that time where I can take commissions... two weeks later than I would have liked, so this round will be for July and August.

I'm offering limited commission types, at a slightly discounted rate. These will be selected by artists choice, not first come first served. I will be quite honest and say I am looking for simple ideas this time around to get back into the swing of things, so if you want a gazillion wings or complex architecture, maybe just wait till next round (you can shoot your shot though, if you're feeling lucky).

You are welcome to submit old ideas. Once I have accepted payment, you'll land on my queue.

Commission form here!

Hey ya'll,

I finally finished my damn psychology honours, took an extra semester but I got it done finally. I will probably be more alive again now, at least until I decide if I'm doing other postgrad or not (I do like research). I don't regret doing a bachelors but between COVID, the Crohn's dx, and a bunch of other world changes, it has kinda been a lot in the last five years.

I'm struggling less health wise, the Crohn's and migraines have settled out and are reasonably controlled. I am getting an ADHD assessment because I just cannot function like a normal human being even when my stress / work load is lower. I'm hoping that settling back into art again will help though, not having to keep to university deadlines is extremely relieving. I'm having a bit of an identity crisis about what to do with myself in terms of future study, but I'm basically just going to wait until I get the yay or nay on the ADHD to see what might be possible (or not). I may just settle back into art / commission work regardless, and let it shake out a bit (especially with other exciting things happening in the world right now).

I will hopefully have some backlogged art to upload, and I'll probably take some more commissions once I know how I want to handle that. I may just need to offer some cheaper stuff to get back into the swing of doing art consistently again (plus I need to go work out how the tariff situation works on my end). I am really really looking forward to getting into art again. I am very happy to be back and being a dumb animal on the internet.

How have all ya'll been holding up?

Hi, hello, I'm still alive I promise.
I technically finished undergrad last year, so I'm officially an educated in psychology. I'm doing a post-grad honours this year (think of it like a compressed masters) and it is *ruining* any spare time I might have had this year.

The crohn's decided it wanted to flare after I almost had it completely in remission, so that fatigue and food sensitivity isn't really helping at all. I might be looking at a medication change which I'm not super excited about (I have minimal side effects on my current meds, which is unusual when we're talking immunodrugs). I'll probably find out when I see my specialist again at the end of the year.

I've had zero time or energy to spare for art or hobbies other than some gaming (FFXIV DT and some local Pathfinder). I am missing just being a dumb animal on the internet. Hopefully honours year is my last of the constant crunch periods. From what I understand if I continue into postgrad further it's more of a marathon than a sprint even if the expectations are higher.

A reminder that you can find me over on  ocelot most of the time at the moment. I will likely be active on here eventually to, if nothing else, post some older art I never got posted.

Second year of university went well! I haven't got all my results back, but I'm pretty sure I will have handily passed all my papers (including the 3rd year papers). Just two more years of undergrad to go! I'm feeling a little more confident about actually pursuing clinical psychology, rather than only doing a counselling masters, so I'll see how it goes!

Update on the Crohn's situation: I did eventually get moved to an orally taken immune suppressing drug (imuran). On the plus side it seems to be working really well and I've had minimal side effects. I already have more energy again finally, so I've been going on walks again. My diet is currently still a bit restricted (I tried to add some vegetables back in, it didn't work) so I'll just need to let everything heal a bit more. I do have a review in the new year with my Gastrointestinal doctor, so I assume they'll change the dose and take me off the anti-inflammatories that were not working. I'm still masking and doing all of that, and so far have still managed to avoid any covid.

I'm still working on finishing up the last of the commissions, they're big ones but hopefully in a few weeks I'll at least have *something* to update with. I've been doing other small things that I'll attempt to get up over on  ocelot as I get around to it!

TL;DR I have Crohn's and I'm not sure when I'll get back to art or be able to take new commissions.

So I finally finally got a diagnosis of Crohn's disease, which is an autoimmune disease of the gut*. I've been struggling with my health with it getting worse and worse over the last 4 years or so (I've been presenting symptoms since I was a kid in hindsight). I don't know all the details yet, though I'm considered mild and don't (and hopefully won't) need any invasive treatments like immune suppressants or surgery. I have a pretty high chance of getting everything into remission over the next 5 years or so.

However, between the more acute flare-ups and university, I have not had much time or emotional resources to work on art. All of my current backlog commissions are for friends and I've been keeping them updated, but some of them are hitting well over a year in wait time at this stage to give you an idea (my usual turnover is 3-6mo at most). As such I genuinely don't know when I'll be able to take commission work again, it could legitimately be another year before I start seeing a decent improvement. I have been unable to work this whole summer which is about as exciting as it sounds**.

I really appreciate you guys sticking with me and all the support over the years, my reduced art output has not been intentional to this extreme, I had wanted to keep working the whole time I was in Uni on commission work so this has not gone remotely to plan. I'm a little anxious about doing such a personal update on main but I feel like it's fair to let ya'll know what's going on and gives me a chance to start learning to talk about it.

*Basically in Crohn's the immune system starts attacking the gut and creates ulcers*** in the intestinal wall, creating issues with not being able to absorb nutrients and calories. It also causes a lot of inflammation of the gut, and potentially other soft tissue (my wrist and ankles hurt during a flare from the inflammation). The practical side for me is I am in pain often, tired most of the time, have a lot of brain fog and focusing issues, and cannot eat a lot of foods at all (tuna, pasta, chicken and potato baby). Now that I have a diagnosis, I can get on a treatment plan, I should slowly start improving and having less acute attacks, and widening my diet again over time. It's a relief to know what's going on, but it's also still an adjustment having a label to actually talk about what's happening to my body.

**Spoiler: It's not very exciting. Hello pillow my old friend, I've come to talk to you again.

***The ulcers are different than in Ulcerative Colitis (which only effects part of the colon), though both fall into the Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) category.

If you want to help out some Ukrainian artists, PistachioHorror is maintaining a journal with links to a bunch of artists and info on how to help them.

You can find it and help out here:
https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10138995/

Just as an FYI I'll be starting to use my personal account again  ocelot. There isn't much new content just yet , but if you didn't find the account earlier there is a bunch of stuff in scraps you may not have seen!

I'll still be using this one for commissions, but after burning out (for like the third time?) I really need to acknowledge that freelance is not working for me as a full-time gig and am starting to re-arrange my life accordingly, which includes taking a day job again, and going to university and respeccing into another field next year. I plan to keep taking commissions for the foreseeable future, and I'm in the process of closing my Patreon so I'll be handling commissions differently as of next year.

On the plus side I will actually have good enough internet once I move to stream again, so I'm actually pretty excited about that xD

I wanted to be clear with my support towards my Black and POC fam.
I'm actively retweeting resources on Twitter, both protest information and Black artists that I can recommend supporting, so that's where you'll find it.

History is happening on more than one front now, stay safe, stay sane, look out for each other.

I should resume posting like normal next week for those of you wanting more art.

Um, I filled all my June commission slots through Patreon already, so I'm not going to be opening publicly for next month completion.

IF you want to get early dibs on commissions slots, you can do so for as little as $1. The higher tiers will get you discounts!
https://www.patreon.com/zambuka

(Also psst there is a Patreon Discord and it's good uwu)

Goes to check my notes for commission info and suddenly can't navigate anything?!?!

What do'yall think? Is it good? I've gotta work on commissions and won't be able to do a full poke around till later.

Edit: Oh god, the light setting is so light.

I think you guy probably know the drill by now.

Less spaces than normal for my regular commissions, as my Patreons snaffled a lot up, I have 7 spaces. Email me with what you'd like, and you can check out styles and prices here: https://trello.com/b/YYnqbP8E/commissions

Sketch commission info is here, just fill the form out. I'll take 10 of these again: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1.....csLaA/viewform

Hope you'll are having a fantastic day 8)

Edit: There are so many typos, please forgive. I'm fixing them as I see them.

You might have seen on Twitter if you follow me there, that I had a family emergency (grandmother had a stroke) and I had to interrupt my plans in Europe (including missing EF, which is a bit of a blow business wise) to fly halfway across the world back to NZ. The good news is my grandmother didn't die, the bad news is she is hospitalized at this stage, with still not much idea of how much, if any, she'll recover. All I can say is thank god for socialized medicine.

The fallout of that is I had to get her house ready to rent to cover the sustained hospital bills (mostly packing her stuff up and storing it). Needless to say between that and the unnecessary family drama on my mother's side, I hadn't have much time to work on art. I did get some done, but I'm still about a month behind on commissions.

I'm now back in CO with my boyfriend, so now that my jetlag seems to have passed, I'm back in the groove and working to up my normal output a little to make up the discrepancy.

Another thing is I found out I probably have ADHD, undiagnosed my whole life :'D I'm going to be getting an evaluation and see what other help/resourcing/etc I can get. I've already been researching and applying a few methods to my work flow that should help work with rather than against the tendencies, while working on finding a set of habits that work. I do need to pay for the eval though, along with normal living expenses, so I will be opening for commissions publicly here soon (if you are a follower on Patreon, the next queue has been open to them for a few weeks).
(Also if you don't believe it exists or isn't a real issue for functioning in the current world, kindly keep your mouth shut, I've had enough of it already).

I guess that's all for now. I'm relieved to be back in CO (everything is so pretty!) And I'm really happy to just be able to work on art again, instead of being the worlds grumpiest handyman/packer/cleaner person. I'm really looking forward to catching up on all the arts and getting a more substantial savings in place after this so that an emergency like this doesn't knock me back so hard financially.

September and October are going to be pretty nuts, I'm staffing a couple of events late Sept and first half of Oct (which is why I came to CO when I did), and I'll just be plugging art in as much as I can until then.

I'm accepting another 10 of these!

I'm bumping the price on these up just a touch, now that I'm happy the quality has solidified. Also characters with more limbs or complex markings will turn out a lot more refined if you add a tip.

Go check it out!
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1e_.....4QySQDHMWck9OQ

Thank ya'll for the support with these, it's super appreciated.
Updates will be on my Trello: https://trello.com/b/YYnqbP8E/commissions

Comment here or flick me and email or a PM if you have any questions!

I'll get invoices out soon!

My large commissions are open again!

You can find all the info over in Trello: https://trello.com/b/YYnqbP8E/commissions

(If you're still waiting on a sketch commission, don't fret! They get used a warm up, variation and time fillers between the larger commissions, you can also see how they're going on Trello!)