*whew* reducing my art and site to just content? god that would be awful. In other words, Happy (post) April fools! The index should be back to normal (and if it's stuck, hard refresh the page). I made a recap with some extra thoughts on this year's joke over on my website, since that's where I ran it this year:

https://jadeeverstone.com/everlog/posts/2024-04-02-contentsite-recap

We at Jade Everstone are proud to announce that we've improved our website! In order to follow modern trends, Jade Everstone has updated it's look and feel to match the look and feel of the many other familiar sites across the web!

https://jadeeverstone.com/

This post is a mirror of a post on my website (here)

It’s a few days into the new year. While the feelings of uncertainty from 2023 still lingers, I set myself a handful of goals going forward to give myself some sense of direction, 8 in fact, though I’ll mostly be focusing on my art-related goals here.

Technical improvement isn’t a major focus this year (I mean, I just did 4+ years of that lol). I think it’s time to focus on more external factors of art, like gaining some stability, pouring more focus into doing it part-time while maintaining the personal side. As well as strengthening skills not directly related to illustration. It’s something that’s fell to the wayside until senior year of college, and now that I’m out of school I think at least for this year I can let these factors overtake direct art improvement.

Finish PC-Mania!

My short webseries! This was launched as part of my senior thesis, but has had multiple hiccups in terms of production. This year I want to smooth out those bumps & be able to wrap it up by the end of this year. The reason I say by the end of this year? My drafts are roughly 40 pages, and even with my other plans for this year I’ll have more time on my hands to focus on comics. So I’m pretty confident I can wrap it up regardless of how it happens.

Launch Support Streams related to my art

This one was inevitable. Even if it’s a goal of part time vs. full time, I want to be able to do art as a career. Meaning I have to have some form of income to be able to continue doing it comfortably. This one will need time to sort-out though since there are hurtles; Notably my overall lack of reach, as well as inflation times.

Lack of reach is likely due to struggling with consistent posting (even reposts & WIPs slip by me), not wanting to completely bend my practices to algorithms, and migrating between platforms. So that one may be harder to sort-out while keeping it fair to my self & my limits. Inflation is tricky. Art is a luxury afterall, and when the cost of living has skyrocketed across the board I don’t blame people for choosing food and rent over art. I’m likely going to keep it to one-time payments & tip jars indefinitely since I don’t want to launch subscriptions in a time where people looking to cancel them to make ends meet. Plus, with my issues with consistent posting, I’m not in a position to be doing subscription-based works & would also like to better sort out my boundaries before even considering (ie: I don’t want anything that could potentially lead to people feeling entitled to my attention).

I still want to try pushing for commissions & freelance, even with a lack of success over the past few years. Though I also want to look more into online shops & tabling since last year, all of the money I made from art was from IRL sales. So it’s a matter finding those events that are original-art & zine friendly (I’m uninterested in monetizing fanart beyond commissions. Fanart to me = Personal art & I’d like to keep it that way). As well as researching more into online shops as a means to get things out there outside of the convention space.

Better-establish OC Lore & Worlds

This one is likely gonna be harder than it sounds. Because on one hand I am excited about these project, but I’ve always struggled with getting ideas-to-paper. While I don’t want to claim much since I don’t have an official diagnosis as of writing, I’m very sure I have ADHD meaning getting down schedules, and getting projects done before I jump to another interest has been a long-term struggle. It’s part of what hampered PC-Mania & reach, and hampers my ability to put more info about the projects I’m working on & are excited about (hell last year, I think I ended up drawing Io way more than art for said projects…).

I don’t know if there’s any “ADHD-friendly guides to maintaining projects before you forget them” out there (I’d argue most project guides & tips I’ve seen don’t consider it), so I’m pretty sure I’m on my own in this department. Currently I’m thinking about leveraging my website for this since it’s meant to be a work archive as is, and even if progress is inconsistent it’ll at least give me a central hub to link back to.

If you are curious, the main one I want to establish is Doverhill! It’s where a PC-Mania takes place for reference, and it’s set in modern times in the fictional town of Doverhill MA. Perfectly normal, except for the occasional paranormal encounter. The main cast that has to deal with them are a group of friends & neighbors who live in an apartment complex together. Story-wise it’s an episodic comedy about the sheer absurdity that is life. Even if it’s not a hard world-building project, it deserves a central hub to link back to.

The other one I’m debating on is Fang and Iron, a dark-sci-fantasy world building project about demon-hunting androids. But I think it needs more time in the oven, and I don’t plan on making it a main focus for a long time.

Learn Blender for making assets & Blocking

I’ve thought about the other skills I’d like to strengthen & learn for future projects, notably writing skills, drawing mecha, desktop publishing software, and 3D. But I picked learning 3D, since I feel like this one will have a ton of versatility in terms of making references for myself. If you’re wondering using 3D assets for references is extremely common, especially within the world of comics where you need to re-draw backgrounds and props. So having knowledge on how to block out scenes in blender will help massively in the long run, especially when my schedule starts filling up again.

(now I just need to finish that donut)

Shorter Comic Project?

I’m considering this one optional, but if I can squeeze in another smaller 8-16pg comic or zine along the lines of 9:15 Slushie I’d like to. I have an Idea I want to do for it (an idea that existed before 9:15 slushie did!) so the next step is carving out time to make it happen

Those are my main art goals of 2024. For the other 3 main resolutions of mine, I’ll list a short summary of those instead:

• Get a job alongside art (I’ll need it. Bills be upon me + even with help from family members, I’d like to transition into being self-sustaining & be able to front the costs for my supplies & projects going forward)
• Get my Drivers License (Also needed, especially if I want to continue tabling & other hobbies, and for getting to whatever job I end up at)
• Get better at IIDX (and by extension BMS) so I can say I suck at normal 7’s vs normal 4’s lol (my only “hobby” goal of this year. I’ve wanted to get into IIDX for a long time too, so since I’m planning on getting my license & income anyways, I’ll see if I can squeeze this one in)

The end of the year be upon us. And my 2023 commissions will be closing on December 25th & won't re-open until next year. so if you're at any point considering getting some art from me this year, best to act soon!

TOS, Full Info, Examples: https://jadeeverstone.com/commissions/personal

Trello, Slot availability: https://trello.com/b/9MKSh5jY/commissions-progress

Toyhouse thread (Bumps appreciated!): https://toyhou.se/~forums/71.art-marketplace/439272.opencommissions-fullbodies-full-illust

Now on my website

Spines - an unfinished story. & A major extension to my 2020, 2021, and 2022 galleries!

Spines - An Unfinished Story

Spines was a project made in late 2020 during a rough patch in my life (hence why it took a while to archive). It would've followed two friends as a mystery growth threatens to keep them apart, but I only made it halfway.

https://jadeeverstone.com/art/comic/spines/ 

Also on this page: a summary of what would've happened (since I don't  want to continue it) plus some extra thoughts on why I feel it failed

2020, 2021, 2022 gallery extension

ICYMI: I've recently decided to stop posting to DeviantArt again and with 2020-2022 already nearly having parity with the DA galleries, I finally sat down, compressed and added the pics that weren't already here (+ a few I never posted on DA). And as such I've removed the "extended DA gallery" links for those pages. 

There are a few pics I haven't backed up (notably: pics with gore since I don't have an onsite filtering system yet, vent art, & two pics that weren't on my external hard drive) But outside of that for 2020 onward this site's a far more comprehensive archive than what I had on DA. So as a wider archive of things I've made in the 2020's, my website's the place to go

2020 // 2021 // 2022

Now on my website

A mini world building project from 2022, based around chess-themed robots: Chessbots! ♟️

https://jadeeverstone.com/art/2022/chessbots/

the reason I didn't publish it earlier was because I needed to do some final tweaks, but somehow that ended up getting pushed back with other projects I wanted to do. But I finally reformatted it for web viewing this year. Better late than never i guess

crossposted from my code account, but with some tweaks to make it make sence here...

Within the next few months or so, I'll need to do some maintenance on my OC's pages to swap hosting for some of the images

For refrence, Discord is changing the way links work so that hotlinking (aka hosting an image on discord to embed elsewhere) won't work & any links to said images will break. The files themselves will remain up, but any links to them going forward won't last more than a day AKA. not long enough for long-term page decor
(post with more info + some alternatives)

There's a lot of images I need to catch here (mostly non-oc images) and since Ik i'm terrible at catching mistakes or details i've missed if you see an image that's broken by next year that's probably the reason why

edit: also adding a character tag: code update needed - if you see this it's for my personal use to note any characters that need an update to their codes be it they have a lot of images that need a new host, or I want to redo them later

Been a hot second since I made an update post. But for those of you who keep up with my stuff here, I'm here to announce my Commissions are open!

With my college years wrapped up, it's about time I reopened them while I get settled into 'adulthood'.
You can find info on that over on my website (here!) and on my forum post on it (here!)

As for other updates, I've been slowly making updates to this account. I didn't notice how outdated some folders were (in terms of info) until recently. Lots of them were due for a fresh coat of paint. For a few notable changes between August and now:

• Updated folder HTML to a newer code + expanded on the folder descriptions themselves.
  
• Swapped out the main profile's coding to a different layout (using Modular User by StormyStarlight) & theming loosely based off my website's theming
  
• Renamed Retired to Archive. I just think it fits slightly more? if that makes sense (Going forward I want to keep some retired characters out of that folder if they have finished project or anything significant attached to them, so 'archive' will fit better for scrapped projects or ones I don't use much)
  
• The Biggest update: moved more characters into the Archive folder & removed some subfolders.  Specifically the Fan Character & My Worlds folders. A lot of OCs were sitting outside since I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep using them or reworking them. But with a lot of them not having been worked on for years at this point, I just think it's better to retire them. The removal of subfolders is because none of my fandoms or original projects have enough characters in them to warrant their own folder at the moment. Some of them have been stored in a private folder for now, but the more notable ones (have elements I still like, might revive) are still public
  

Due to ongoing issues with the site I'm going to make this my last artfight. A tl:dr, tons of site mis-management has come to light over the past year or so and even if the event somehow runs next year It's finally driven me off.

This thread on toyhouse has documented the issues the longest afaik: https://toyhou.se/~forums/11.general-off-topic/329219.artfight-negligence-and-worse

I was giving it the benefit of the doubt bc I am in it for gifting art (hence why i was hesitant/unsure about participating & didn't make an effort to decorate this year) but the recent news of a mass mod exodus + Takaia pocketing funds / not paying the site's staff doesn't really sit well with me (especially because the currently appointed mods haven't been the greatest with the community

I am going to finish up my revenges though, but after this I'm gonna look for art trades & gifting games elsewhere…

I'll end this with a reminder to save the attacks you've recieved on artfight if you wish to keep them.
If anything does happen to the site post-event & you lost any art I made for you, feel free to contact me and I'll send over the file

It's around that time, while I'm not sure whether or not I'm doing it this year, here's my AF page:

https://artfight.net/~Jade-Everstone

Mind the cobwebs, still haven't updated my characters & their refs

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On being unsure. I just graduated college 🎉! & while I'm so far avoiding the post-college-crash I might want to use the summer for life things, like working on my license, job hunting, commissions (which running during AF is against community etiquette). That could also mean limiting or not doing Artfight this year to make sure I have time for that.

I also think it's important to acknowledge some information that's come out about AF itself (Notably, mod negligence & favoritism issues). While it hasn't completely deterred me yet (for reasons below), it's left a bad taste in my mouth & is part of why I'm a bit wary this time. (thread with more info)

I'm still considering as for me it's been one of the highlights of my summers & a great excuse to keep me motivated/not completely crash and test the skills I've picked up over the year (casual art trades are also a big plus). So while there's things i'm wary of, I still would like to participate (regular art trades/comms/etc. are hard to come by during July afterall). I'm basing whether or not I'll join on how many people I know are joining, as well as any other issues with AF that might pop-up

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That being said, here's a few notes for this year

• Participating or not, Keep in mind I might be slower with my attacks! I have a lot to pull together in terms of life things & other projects. So I don't want to stretch myself too thin.
• This year I'm still looking out for Megaman FCs (& megaman-esque characters)