Over at my dA. It's a design contest, anyone can join. Art, design, and money prizes.

You can find all info here!

For all of you illiterate gits out there who can't read cm and kg master race

Now the three people who read my profiles can understand how tall and how fat my children are, and I just spent hours doing this while half distracted by Youtube. It could help that I wanted that long-ass bulletin off of my frontpage.

Long title is long
Long overdue journal is long overdue

I've wanted to write this up for some time now, but I've never had the time of the effort to do so. Since I am in the mood for typing now after I finally cleared my inbox completely, this might as well be the time where I write it down and post it to you lots.


Those of you who've known me for a bit or who've looked around my character profiles will probably know that I want to do something bigger with my characters, like write a book, draw a comic, or even make an animation that runs for a long time. Ever since I started taking characters more seriously and I began to build the world, this has been my ultimate endgame. The reason for my characters to be made, to grow, and to be perfected in their personality, flaws, and entire character. Add some more cliché explanation to this entire paragraph, that entire reason has been my biggest motivator to keep on creating, by a landslide.

And it's kinda gone now.

Don't know where it went, but I kinda... don't wanna make something big anymore? I mean, if I had the resources and skills, maybe I would. But I don't. I barely read any books and I'm not interested in doing so. My English is basic and I can't make my words sound as complex and satisfying as a writer would, and writing in Flemish is just... no. My art skills are average at most, and the biggest thing I've ever animated was a small little pixel. I gotta face it, I don't have the resources and the knowledge to make my dream true, and I'm not willing to work towards getting it.


And even if I got it, what then? What if I succeeded? I'd probably be crushed under the pressure of creating more good stuff not to disappoint any fans, something I already experience when writing character profiles two people at most will ever read. What would having thousands of people look up to me do? I wouldn't dare show my face, I'd be scared of being called a plagiariser even though I know my hands are clean, and I already feel so much secondhand embarrassment for current creators over what people do to their popular characters, what'd it be if people were to sodomise MY characters in fanon? It's just... It would be too stressful for me.

Plus, you can't really deny that I'm just one in a billion. How many stories were never told, how many people were so ambitious about that extensive complex exciting story they had written in their head, only to die without ever having had the chance to write it down and have other people enjoy it? We only know a couple of million of fictional stories, out of the billions that people ever came up with in their head that were never heard. The next Star Wars has been told a million times in other people's fantasy, but has never been put onto paper and was therefor never heard and enjoyed. And I'm starting to realise that my story is the same. No, not the next Star Wars, but just an ambition that will have been completely forgotten by all but me in twenty years.

I don't think I'd be capable of bringing others joy with my words and my ideas. Criticism would tear me apart, and although I love to be critiqued, it's just different. You can't retcon something as official as a book anymore, once it's out there, it's out there. There's a few people who like what I do, but I'll never be capable of changing people's life, of being memorable. I just don't see my dumb ideas change anything, and I'm far from the genius the people who put good stories out there are or were. You just can't deny that part of the joy of creating is seeing people's reaction, seeing what it did to them and if they'll remember it or not.

And then there's jealousy. Oh god, the jealousy. I don't know if this is something specific to being a creator, but thanks to this type of thinking where I want to make something original and of my own, it immediately devalues everything I consume. I can hardly watch, play, read, listen to anything anymore without thinking "how would I have tackled this type of story", "could I ever be as creative as this, no I couldn't", "what elements contribute to this story", "why haven't I thought of this type of idea before, I'm an incompetent buffoon". Consuming other media just isn't as fun anymore, and I feel like until I permanently establish that I have NOTHING to do with that market, that competitive spirit won't ever go away. I have to withdraw, or I'll have so much trouble enjoying even the shows and games I love the most.


Maybe a part of growing up is accepting the fact that my story was meant to be unheard, and that an unheard story is far more common than a popular one. Letting my big and unrealistic dreams die out and let them be replaced by regular human ones. Take that story to my grave, or have it bring joy to only me. Let that stress of having to be good just... go. I've had a lot of struggles with it, but now that my main motivator is gone, it feels sort of useless to keep creating, and I want to feel joy in my hobby again. Maybe I will write a story someday, and it will be cheesy and shit, but it won't be with the endgame to grow big and be the best and most original story out there, rather to please myself and write down this silly little story I should have in my head but am too busy conceptualising based on what I think people will like instead of what I'd enjoy.


What does that mean for my characters?

Eh, good question. I don't draw them as much as I used to anymore, but I want to draw them again. Maybe now that this stress of having to put down a good performance is off of my shoulders, I may be able to actually develop them. Maybe I'll never develop them again and eventually I will forget them just like the rest. The biggest thing I do with 'em is RP now, and while that's a lot of fun, it's also the pinnacle of having something purely for personal enjoyment.

There may be bigger changes to who they are. It feels less like I have to justify the changes I bring to them and more like I can do anything to them I want. It's why I felt bold enough to introduce Mirrors recently. No one really knows the story's canon and nothing's been officially established, nothing ever will, so anything can change, and I didn't feel like I acted on that enough before. I can retcon anything, and that makes me feel like a god in my own story, something I haven't felt since 2010.


So that's about what I wanted to say here. Maybe in a couple of years, you will still be around and you'll be one of the few to read the hypothetical story once I decide to write it down, thinking "wow, this is shit, but at least Eli made a far more realistic dream true like I read in that journal she once posted". Or maybe by then I'll be completely grounded and live a regular life. Who knows.

I certainly don't.

Since I'm joining OC Art Trade this month, I decided that instead of just linking to my gallery I'd type up a list here on TH! That, and because I tend to lose my journals on dA. Like this I can change the list each round without having to change my tags on characters. 

I'll be listing my characters in no particular order per category they're in, so whoever gets me can choose the one they think looks coolest to draw or just one from a category they can draw. Click on the character icon to go to their profile, there's a lot more info on them there!

Quick note: if you read the 'Quickstats' section, the section that's usually included under the basic stats on a profile, there are a few tips of things people often overlook and what type of person they are. If you need any inspiration on how to draw them you can always look at the quickstats, the personality, the backstory if there is one, or the likes and dislikes.

Humanoid female

Magali	Tina	Chiara	Pride Mom (NSFW)

Humanoid male

A	The Botanist	Florence	Etisi
Damon's Mirror	Henry	Seranet	Quentin
Bernard	Chris	Lyre	Sevas
Nelor

Humanoid other

Luca

I enjoy using tags for classification, but do you think a large amount of tags near the sidebar makes the profile look bad and cluttered? I'd like to add more like alive and dead status, but I already have thousands of tags lD

A large amount of tags looks like this, by the way, in case you can't imagine what it looks like when there's more than a single line of tags. 

So... Thoughts? There'd be roughly 5-7 lines of tags like that in a profile then.

Drastic gallery changes happened over the course of today.


First off, my individual busts were starting to bother me with how inconsistent their exact dimensions were, and lately a lot of galleries have popped up where all character icons were neatly wrapped up in a box, all with the same dimensions. I decided it was time to get with the times and updated my entire gallery's icons, even colour coding them to show where they belong! You can check 'em out here. Bunch happier with them this way c: Hopefully they're still easy to navigate, I know I'm gonna have to get used to the heavy boxes.

Also found out the only characters I haven't really drawn to far is Neola, because of which I couldn't make an icon for her. I also want the chibi and unshaded icons to be replaced by properly shaded ones in the future, but that's something for later too.


Second big change, I've been unhappy with the formatting of my profiles, so I tried out something new and liked it. Soon all profiles will look like Florence's does, give or take a few changes. It's really to my liking so far, so it's likely the rest will follow!

Firstly because I didn't like the old one that much anymore and secondly because now I can make a new bulletin to get that huge-ass previous importance list one off of my frontpage. It's surprising how well derpy chibi Gar works as an icon.

I've been thinking of adding a few paragraphs of information to my characters' profiles. Oftentime it feels like summing up their stats doesn't explain them enough, so I wanna have a few paragraphs that explain what the character is about and where they are right now to make them more interesting to read about. 

So they'd basically look like the blurbs from The Expedition and Kari at the moment. Like this I'm also hoping to have at least some text in empty profiles, text that's easier to type out than a full profile.


So, thoughts? Sound good?

Anyone wanna do some art or design trades? Specifics are here