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Here's something a bit different. Often online we only see artists (particularly professionals) put their best foot forward, and so all we see is godliness and none of the long and arduous journey they took to get there, which can be rather disheartening no matter who you are, because there are always those who have been at it longer or are just better/more diligent/whatever. PC isn't a huge art community, but there are certainly some great folks here who I'm sure have been on rather insightful journeys to get to where they are now, and it is my hope with this thread that they might come forth to share them with the community and help foster openness and growth in this section as well as inspire the newer artists who are just beginning their own journeys.
I've sorted my journey by year but you may sort yours like this or in whatever way makes most sense to you. You can include as much or as little as you want - put in whatever best illustrates your journey and growth as an artist. There're certain things I left out, mainly physically crafted things and old drawings that hadn't been scanned or the scan had been lost, mostly because I don't feel like scanning, and just the fact that there are already way too many pictures in this already; I had to draw the line somewhere.
Each year is prefaced with a short description, and further writings for clarification of some bits will also accompany pieces or subsections as needed. You certainly don't have to be as wordy as I am if you don't want to. Tell your story however you wish, just make sure the images are prominent (and in spoilers) and the words support them, as this is not the writing section.
I tended to revisit old characters or drew from old ideas as years went on so I tried to include those instances as best I could. If you do that, too, "then and now" comparisons of characters or other subjects drawn at different times really illustrates change over time. I hope you can learn from my journey and have fun sharing your own and getting to know your fellow artists through our histories.
Forewarning - my post is incredibly long since I included a whole decade of time, but you can make yours however long or short you need, depending on how you want to walk us through your own journey. Just try to make sure it's all relevant and preferably in keeping with the idea of change over time, be it improvement or change in media/style/etc. And most of all, learn from each other, get to know other artists, follow the forum rules, and have fun!
I thought I'd start with the year before I joined PC. As you'll see with most of the earlier years in this, there isn't much I actually have left, as entire life stages have occurred since then and things become lost between eleventy computer migrations/crashes/that one theft or get left at mom's house or whatever. In any case, what remains is some of the earliest pixel-by-pixel undertakings done in MS Paint and a couple of drawings, all being of a hilariously dumb fanfic/crossover nonsense idea I had (humans got turned to Pokemon and also Link and Kenshin for some reason, I dunno, I was 14-15), and a couple of acrylic paintings (though I think the blue dragon was from 2002).
DRAWING
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PAINTING
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PIXEL ART
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2004
This, of course was the year I joined my first forum, namely PC. I was 16 and an insufferable fangirl but man the people here were a lot more patient and kind to me than you'd expect from the internet. Anyway, what remains of my art of that year is rather formulaic in that it all used the same technique. I had purchased my first actual art program, Paint Shop Pro 8, and so began the beginnings of my journey into digital art, which at the time was "do a drawing with felt tip pen, scan it, and use the paint bucket and pattern fill tools."
Spoiler:
The image on the left was actually my first PC avatar (under the name ShadowCharizard)
These last two are fan-concepts of a dragonized Vegeta and a Mary Sue-per Saiyan I drew a lot at the time
2005
For some reason this year's stuff was harder to dig up or maybe there just wasn't as much to begin with, I honestly don't remember too well. I probably doodled a lot in my school notebooks more than I did other things. High school was dreadful so art was just how I dealt with worldly frustrations and unexpressable (or unrequited) feelings for as long as I can recall. You'll see a lot more evidence of that later in college, as it was the major driver of my art before "being professional" was, and still it plays a role to this day. This was the year I got (and lost) my first boyfriend so it definitely came into play, as it started the pattern of using pairs of creatures to symbolize myself and whatever fella I fancied as an outlet. That blue dragon from way back was turned into the first "me" in this regard.
This was apparently also the first year I tried to actually draw straight on the computer with a mouse, because I found a couple of drawings which were presumably done at Mew's Hangout Oekaki (yeah, remember those things?).
DIGITAL ART
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TRADITIONAL ART
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2006
I spent a lot of that year shaking off the breakup from the previous year (and it also got more complicated since we "secretly" got back together on and off and eww high school drama bs), so the "moon" and "sun" dragons showed up a lot as a way of channeling out all the feels.
From a technical standpoint, this year saw a lot of beginnings in terms of digital media. I was still using Paint Shop Pro (albeit a newer version) at home, but at school (a tech school I took morning classes in, not my awful high school), I got my first tastes of Illustrator and Photoshop. And thanks to PC and its then-bustling pixel art section, I really started getting into actual pixel art and entered a couple contests.
Also of note (but I'm not putting the stuff in the thread because laziness I guess), I started using my newfound digital skills to texture models for products on the then-still-in-beta 3D messenger, IMVU, which was one of many things my best friend dragged me into during high school. Later it would prove to be the first taste of working with 3D that would become an important influence much later.
TRADITIONAL ART
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MISC. DIGITAL ART
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PIXEL ART
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2007
I wasn't actually on PC during this year at all, but that certainly didn't make it uneventful. This was the year I graduated high school and moved out to college, and while I did some revisits, this was also when I first attempted to move away from fanart and life-driven things, though I certainly did start out with a pair of kitsune which served the same role as the moon and sun dragons from 2006.
Going back to the technical aspect, this was the year I bought my first copies of Photoshop and Illustrator as well as an Intuos3 tablet, and so began really trying to do more with digital art, though it was still frustrating and looked like a whole lot of smudgy garbage until right at the very end of the year.
PIXEL ART
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EVERYTHING ELSE
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2008
This was the year I rejoined PC under this account (then called Kinarii), as well as my first full year in college and in a new state by myself, which was certainly rife with uncertainty, and thus spawned a lot more nostalgic revisits because comfort zones, I dunno. In terms of media I took both vectors and digital painting at least one stage up, as the former I had classes to broaden my skills, and the latter I found some tutorials online for lineart and blending and whatnot.
Apart from revisits of old dragon characters for practice doodles, I toyed with the idea of re-imagining the Pokemon fanfic thingy from 2003, keeping the idea of "dystopian world where people were turned to Pokemon by mad scientists and the heroes must journey to fix it" but replacing all the Mary Sue and crossover garbage with new, original characters (Kin, a brotherly and wise Arcanine, Kuro, the obligatory aloof anti-hero type, and Rina and Luna, two naive young Eevee sisters). I had even made a logo featuring the pair of Absol who were to be the antagonists.
POKÉTOPIA
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MISC. TRADITIONAL ART
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MISC. DIGITAL ART
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Remember this logo for later!
2009
Off the web, in meatspace, this was one of the most infamous years to date, because unrequited feelings + a perfect storm of awful timing and cartoonishly bad social blunders + recently lost IRL friends = all of the crazy. On PC, however (in part thanks to needing an escape from real life), this was the first year I really started making a mark (and friends!). In a rather desperate attempt to hold onto something or channel feelings or whatever, I took quite a liking to Roark (and if we're being honest, I would totally like to find an attractive guy who likes fossils that much IRL) as I became really good pals with Lily and Maddy, who kept my insanity on the enjoyable and silly side. Lily in particular had just a massive influence on me artistically because damn that girl has a way with everything, it's still overwhelming to me even now.
Subject-wise, the first 2/3 of the year was spent channeling unfulfillable feelings for a man into drawings of a gold dragon being all majestic or whatever or the self-metaphor-of-the-year, Kinarii, a wingless dragon. Later on in the year, the crazytown situation got buried, and I patched things up with those lost friends (including one I had a crush on before that other crazy situation. He is represented as a purple sea dragon in my art), so things looked up and subjects changed. Towards the end of the year I drifted off PC for a while but got a boyfriend. I redesigned my dragon and we came up with one for him, too, and it was really fun! I also reignited my love of colored pencil which would continue for a few years.
On the technical front, largely thanks to PC, I underwent a renaissance of sorts with pixel art. This was also the year that began my eternal infatuation with putting paper textures on everything, though some of my other stuff was definitely still of the "scanned ink drawing colored digitally" variety. Also, hot damn, actual backgrounds! They were garbage, but for the first time I really actually tried to put things in a more complete environment.
PIXEL ART
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The above ones were entries in PC pixel art contests
VAGUELY PC-RELATED ESCAPISM
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This one was never finished, but shows part of my typical process at the time which was color flatting under lineart.
The above two are collaborative shenanigans on iScribble with Lily and Maddy which is a thing that happened a lot at the time.
This is here because it was from a dream I had where I was looking for Roark so it's still a bit relevant, whatevs. 20-year-old me couldn't draw water for beans, good lord.
Lily and Dream were trying to get me into Brawl and I was playing as Pokémon Trainer. Charizard's taunt sounded like it was saying "Roark" so of course this happened.
EVERYTHING ELSE
Spoiler:
Remember that logo? In '09 it became the design for that year's feelings-venting self-avatar, a wingless dragon called Kinarii. And so began the descent into madness that at least led to a lot of art and led me back to PC.
This one and the one above it were environment concepts for a story that never happened called Second Sun, featuring the two dragons and some other races of creatures.
And these final two are Kinarii's redesign and the one I did for the boyfriend I got at the end of the year.
2010
This year was also one of beginnings, as it was then that I changed majors in college from Graphic Design to Media Arts & Animation. If you still recall from the 2006 synopsis, I had an interest in working with 3D which had been shelved for years until I finally got to learn Maya in school beginning in 2010. Plus, what had been "hobby" art for my whole life finally had some relevance to my studies, so I did a lot outside of class working with characters. I also came back to PC for a while and did a bit more pixel art (even winning a couple contests).
In the summer, my boyfriend and I broke up (but we're still good pals, no worries!), and later the beast that was early 2009's feelings clawed back up from where I buried them because the man whom the feelings were for was now ever-present at school (my new major was one that was intertwined with his, and he also had become a tutor in the new Cintiq lab, which was actually where I got my first taste of ZBrush, albeit briefly because I was simply petrified of being in a room with him, and couldn't focus for beans).
Media-wise, I got into a lot of stuff, particularly at the end of the year, after the man I love(d) graduated, and I was inspired to start a series of images of the gold dragon with each being in a different medium. Originally it was planned for there to be one for each letter of the alphabet but I never ended up getting around to all of them, so there are only five. Also of note, in a class just before I changed majors, I was assigned to do a handmade book containing 100 images, which I used to do a retrospective of my own characters through the years, beginning with then-current-style redoodlings of all characters that I had before 2009, followed by Kinarii's evolution up to that point. If you want to see it, both the physical book and a Flash version of all the pages are on my deviantART.
PIXEL ART
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EVERYTHING ELSE
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This was a gift for my best friend's birthday (that's her character on the left)
A concept sketch of Kinarii's makeshift living quarters
I think we were covering Art Nouveau in an art history class at the time and so this happened.
A watermark from when I very briefly tried taking deviantART commissions
Halfway through my first Maya class I started on what was meant to be a papercraft of an N64-esque low-poly version of Kinarii. This was my first model that wasn't a school exercise. Having prior experience with textures certainly helped.
This was actually inspired by a calculus test my boyfriend was dreading at the time (he was a Computer Science major at another school)
This was me lamenting my lack of amazingness compared to the "art gods" via a dragon, a castle, and an obscure Winnie The Pooh reference.
I thought it'd be neat to put all the boy-metaphor dragons together, each associated with an element
This is an allegory for my jelly-legged nervousness of being in a room with that certain someone. Probably the only piece where he is represented with a generic dragon rather than the usual bearded gold one.
This was a spread of characters from yet another story concept that never was. It was callled Psyche, and the characters each represented aspects of the mind (wisdom, ambition, confidence, intelligence, creativity, emotion, and apathy) and their interactions, sort of like that new movie Pixar's doing but without there being an outer character that they're all part of (or at least I hadn't established whether there was one). Also they're all cartoon dragons.
These last 5 are the aforementioned series of different-media gold dragons:
Aurora - Colored Pencil on black illustration board
Creation - Digitally composited watercolor (dragon was one piece, and the galaxy was done by using some watercolor strokes as a mask for a space-like background done with watercolor and salt)
Joy - Watercolor
Kindness - Coffee and sepia pens on acrylic paper. Fun fact: the paper texture you see me use most often (like in this thread and on my website) was made when I made this, using the same coffee on another piece of paper
Quintessence - Gouache on black illustration board. This was done by cutting a silhouette out of cardstock and using it as a mask while I flung and brushed gouache over the board.
2011
Honestly 2011 feels a lot like "2012: The Prequel" because it was the start of the stretch leading to the light at the end of college, but nonetheless it does have some of its own distinctions. As it was the year immediately following the graduation of the man I love(d) the previous December, I was drawing the everloving **** out of the gold dragon and variants thereof (and even kicked off the year with a little papercraft project I did in a day because I was snowed in and bored) as a means of dealing with all the damn feels, and began representing myself not as a dragon but a maiden offering light or other gestures of simple kindness to the gold dragon. I also conceived of a story/world called Kingdom of the Sun, which involved a creature called the Dawnbringer (which was a spinoff of the gold dragon) and the conditionally immortal Dawn Phoenix.
Like the previous two years I kept on my momentum of experimenting with and occasionally mixing different traditional and digital media, and generally just practicing stuff in general. I became particularly fond of oil pencils. It was also notably the year I first got a chance to legitimately do something with ZBrush.
KINGDOM OF THE SUN
Spoiler:
For these creatures, I did a substantial amount of research and studies of the animals I wanted to draw upon for their designs. The Dawnbringer is based on several big cats and gliding mammals and the Dawn Phoenix was based on cranes, egrets, and the kagu. The Dawnbringer is a creature that calls the dawn with its roar. They do this in succession and so guide the sun around the world. The Dawn Phoenix came into being when a lone Dawnbringer brought light to a land cursed with darkness, intertwining their fates.
When coming up with creatures or characters it is good exercise to envision what it would look like as a baby
These were models that I had originally planned for my college portfolio but ended up being cut and were never finished
The Dawn Phoenix
This was the earliest stage of the Dawn Phoenix's model, which did get finished and you'll see that in the next section
EVERYTHING ELSE
Spoiler:
This was the papercraft I did during that snow day.
These next four are sides of a box I built out of illustration board.
As you can see I had quite a fondness for the red/black oil pencils I'd bought that year, and doodled with them constantly. They're quite smooth feeling and great for soft, fluid lines
This one was actually a black and white felt pen/marker sketch inverted and colorized digitally
This is the first thing I ever sculpted in ZBrush (though the lantern I modeled in Maya)
2012
This was the year I graduated from college (in early September), so most of the year up to that point was preparing pieces for my portfolio, some of which went unused or unfinished. I continued fleshing out Kingdom of the Sun (two of my portfolio pieces were related to it), but it eventually got shelved. Apart from all that, really the most significant things I did were two series at the end of the year. One was some gift art for a few friends for Christmas, and the other was some concepts of malevolent beings that embodied aspects of winter because I really hate winter.
Media-wise, I obviously honed 3D stuff a lot in school, and also experimented with using models/sculpts as a basis for paintings. I also really tried to push my digital painting to look more loose and painterly and not so digital. I also tried getting into Corel Painter, but while it has some advantages, it's rather unstable and prone to lagging and crashing so later I ended up mostly abandoning it.
KINGDOM OF THE SUN
Spoiler:
This was another species conceived of and studied for in 2012, but I had no versions of the model from that year. It is a Tidebearer, a gentle, whale-sized animal that guides the tides and communicates with the moon goddess via photophores on its back.
As I fleshed out the world, a pair of human protagonists emerged. Arlet, a runaway with a conflicted background and a bad reputation, and Cecil, a mage who was raised by a colony of sun magi after his parents were killed.
This is Aeon, the god of time from whom the three goddesses were born
And these are unfinished paintings of each of the goddesses - Lunaea, creation goddess of the moon and sea, Ourana, creation goddess of the sun and land, and Vexia, the goddess of destruction, who was sealed in the earth and causes tectonic and volcanic activity in her efforts to escape
MISC. 2D
Spoiler:
This was my first experiment with Painter, an Earth Dragon in honor of someone's birthday
This one (at least stylistically) was inspired a bit by Lily and her incredible background-mancy powers
This one and the next were the paintings in which I used 3D to start. For this I modeled the creature, the island, and posed a rigged human character, then painted over the resulting render. The other I used a ZBrush sculpt for a base, then added scales/hair/etc. and a background by painting.
Reference drawings for one of the models you'll see in the Misc. 3D section
The next three are the "Demons of the Dark Season" series
The last four are the Christmas gifts for friends
You've seen this character before back in the 2010 section - it's my best friend's character
This is the protagonist from my writer friend's main story
These are characters from a friend's comic
And this is a friend and her then-new husband in the style of Mary Blair (this friend is a Disney nerd to the core)
MISC. 3D
Spoiler:
The result of the cartoon lizard drawings in the 2D section. He was made for a lip-sync project, which can be seen by itself here
The book from the intro to my demo reel
One of several unused sculpts
2013
Technically a lot of what's in my gallery thread was made in 2013, but there's some earlier and/or not as good stuff that warrants being put here. There was also a helluva lot of quickie stuff and a few big things that, as usual, got shelved or put on hiatus. Also I got a job after being out of college for only 4 months so lucky me!
One of these was something called The Oculus, which was a group blog a friend, myself, and one of his friends started at the beginning of the year to help all of us hone our speed at art with 2-hour pieces based on topics we'd take turns coming up with, though it eventually was put on hold because life happens. Another was a story and world that was actually first dreamed up at the end of 2012 but I'm putting it here because most of the concepting was done in 2013. It was called Starslayer, and is actually where Amaruuk, the dinosaur-like goddess in my avatar (and of course my namesake online) comes from. Like all stories/worlds I envision, it never really made it past a few conceptual pieces and text documents outlining aspects of the world and a general plot synopsis and whatnot. I like to draw snapshots of stories more than actually writing them, it seems. Hard to imagine considering how wordy this post is, sheesh
Also, all of the sculptures currently in my gallery thread were done in 2013 (except the moon, which was actually from 2012). There was also another one, which I will show WIPs of, but it has remained unfinished for at least a year now, though I do fully intend to get back to it, as it is a companion piece to the painting Guard of the East Tower, also in the gallery thread.
THE OCULUS
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You might recognize this because I based one of the sculptures in my gallery thread on it
STARSLAYER
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The Starslayer itself, which eats stars, creating stellar shades that the heroes must defeat to reincarnate the stars.
Some concepts for the stellar shades
Silhouettes for two of what would be four main heroes, one of each of the world's races
The absolute earliest concept of Amaruuk, based on Microraptor and imagined in a sort of mesoamerican textile pattern, as she was the chief deity of a race inspired by the Inca as well as some Tibetan stuff (the character on the right in the previous image is of this race)
This is the main city of the aforementioned race. The egg on the mountain is Amaruuk's, and the origin of all life
The other character in the silhouettes is of a jerboa-like people with an ancient Egyptian-inspired culture revolving around death and the afterlife. Here, a great crypt called the Tower of the Dead has been corrupted by the stellar shades and must be returned to order
GUARD OF THE WEST TOWER
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This was how far I'd gotten into the painting before deciding something just wasn't clicking, then later decided it should be a sculpture
This is a point last year that I had some screenshots of it, though it is a bit further along than this, as it's been a VERY on and off piece, more so than most.
This last one is actually from this year but I figured I'd show how drawing on a screenshot can be good for planning detail
EVERYTHING ELSE
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T'was the Year of the Snake so I started the year with a snake
This was what it felt like to be running out of money and trying to find work (and therefore freedom)
The next four are selected drawings from Sketchuary that year which I then colored
I did a lot of quick grayscale speedpaints and doodles that year
This is currently how I draw digitally. Start with a gray background, sketch in white, clean up with black
Here's about as in-depth as I get with a species before getting lazy and shelving it. This is a large, fruit-eating deer-like animal. I forgot to put in the human size thing I had in there but a person would come to just above the shoulder.
And finally, to bring this to a close, here's a sketch I did in 2013 based on a drawing I did all the way back in the late 90s, something like 15 years earlier before some of you guys were probably even born. I don't think anything illustrates change over time quite as well as this!
Guys, just so you know, this is not my gallery thread, it's an open thread for anyone to post their own histories as artists. Read the details at the top of the first post for guidelines and stuff. Y'all can totally comment like you have, too, but I feel like something has gotten lost in translation, perhaps. But if/when you do post yours, I will put it in the index of the first post. Thank you, though! :3
The elegance of this post will not mirror that of Amaruuk, as I do not possess the same knowledge of css. And content wise, I only showcase one media/type of art, as that is all I am capable of. Nevertheless, I thought I'd be the second to contribute.
Spoiler:
Preface
I entered the world of art in 2008, using the program GIMP. Since then, I've stuck to my roots (and with GIMP), staying within the realm of graphic design (strictly signatures/tags, although I've dabbled lightly into simple animation and sprite recolor, splicing, etc.). This breed of graphic design is not scratch work, but I do believe the possibilities are as limitless as more traditional forms, as combining and manipulating resources to form new art is the art itself. Thusly I've included quite a few examples, hoping to showcase the different ideas I've had over the years, regardless of how well they were executed haha. This is not all of what I've done, but actually quite a significant portion, so especially with my gallery, there's a bit of overlap.
And as I have mentioned in my gallery, I learned the art of graphic design mainly on a different website than PC, thus if you recognize these pieces, you should be able to identify me.
2008
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These were my first two pieces. As you can see, the render of the first piece still has a logo and was not even pasted in correctly lol. I did learn to render on my own however, and the second piece actually showcases that, despite it being quite crude.
2009
Spoiler:
My first full year, looking back, I noticed the most significant gap in improvement. The earlier part of the year started off with mainly brush spam. As my mentors would press continuously though, I was lacking what where affectionately known as "the basics". Not only did I learn of the existence of different types of effects (cinema 4d images, fractals, etc.), but I had to learn to incorporate these effects in accordance with "the basics" of flow, depth, blending, etc.
2010
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This year was more of honing what I had learned the previous year. Just glancing at some of the pieces, it seems like depth was a major factor, focusing on c4d placement and integration in a way that provided a better viewing perspective.
2011
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This was a year for moving away from standard c4d usage and branching out into other types of effects. I began to integrate textures and other stocks, and started to refine the colors a bit more. I do have a penchant for really zesty yet unsaturated color schemes, and I think that starts to show at the tail end of this year.
2012
Spoiler:
I had taken several breaks (would proclaim that I had "quit") from graphic design as a whole, which, looking back, was more dramatic and foolish than I care to admit. But regardless, I don't seem to have as many pieces from 2011-12 onward as compared to 2009-10. Mainly more experimentation with colors and textures. The transition to using mainly stock bases as opposed to renders began.
2013
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This year was like a reinvigoration. The site I belonged to was going through a prosperous graphic era, lead by a series of competitions that encouraged you to make new stuff. By this time, realistically speaking, I think the exponential growth curve hit the lagging phase for me. There's always room for improvement, but I think for a hobby that I've loved over the years, I'd hit the natural wall. Thus for this, and the following year you may see a couple trends in style, color development, etc, as my techniques and processes were largely the same (although there's one large outlier, the 3D tag, that was fun for awhile, but overall not a huge success lol).
2014
Spoiler:
The current year. The site I had grown up on graphically, has since succumbed to inactivity, but I have since joined a new graphic community in PC. To put it bluntly, I think both sites could use a bolster in activity. And regardless of what medium and regardless of whether my impact is noticeable, if it gets me to keep pursuing art, then it's all good. The pieces may not change drastically, or even come as frequently as I'd hoped, but it's still something, and I hope to continue for a long time down the road.
Oh, how wonderful! This is exactly what I'm looking for. It was a great walkthrough and I quite enjoyed the evolving styles. You've been added to the index :3
