A sincere thanks to everyone who sent me lovely messages congratulating me on getting married this week in Hawaii. I was away for two weeks, but I'm back and ready to go back to the ol' routine.
I will be posting the rest of the prize art this month for sure, and the chibi art will be posted as well. I've also got to get at least three more pics for my art book finished before the end of the month -- started sketching a massive group picture of FaLLEN girls + Sam and Vox enjoying the beach while I was ON the beach, so I will probably work on that in between my commission and gift art. So bikini art, yay. Cel-shading, because I'm lazy.
I will be posting a few choice pics from my wedding that the photographer took (is it wrong I thought my Korean former model photographer was hot while he took pictures of me at my wedding with husband? I don't even know anymore), and probably post a link to some of the goofier family photos and such for anyone who cares enough to know how many Tropical Itches it takes before I'm totally blitzed (the answer: two). And I actually got a tiny tan-- I went from being pasty white to semi-normal people white.
It was a great wedding, and things went better than I feared/expected they would. But you can't take a family of rednecks and a family of conservative Japanese, throw them on a tropical island, and get anything but a party every night, so I had a raspy voice and bags under my eyes 24/7. And now I'm married for realsies... craziness.
I didn't respond to everyone's thank you messages individually because when I got back I had over 200 messages on DA alone, but I responded to all the notes and messages elsewhere. And I'll be sure to only post like three photos max to my account, because my radiant paleness would blind you guys otherwise. And I'm half-Iranian, so go figure. You'd think I would be a little better at tanning, but the sun just kind of bounces off my skin. Like snow, or laminated paper.
And I am extremely suspicious of my poll results for watchers. Every time I get a new watcher, I click on their page, look at their age/sex/location, and give them a llama, and I am pretty sure the majority of my watchers lately have been male. I guess what my poll really proves is that female deviants are more socially active online!
(now to catch up on the South Park I missed... yes, I still think that show is funny even if this season has been slow)
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Mood:
Joy -
Watching: South Park
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Playing: Silent Hill - Homecoming
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Eating: Potekaru low-cal tomato chips and Belcube cheese
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Drinking: maccha latte
On a side note, I don't go for watcher polls too often since so many people use them as popularity ego boost barometers rather than hoping for any real information. If I saw 'watch' in the title, I prolly deleted it on instinct before I had time to think. Rest assured that anyone who can come up with a bowling shonen manga is definitely appreciated.
I tend to answer most polls, simply because I know I get a little frustrated when I post a poll trying to figure out what my main demographic is, or what characters of mine are popular and only 1/6 of my watchers respond... not that I'm requiring people who watch me to be active or anything, it's just stuff I'd really like to know so I can keep that in mind when coming up with new stories or art ideas. But polls like "Will you look at my friend's page plz?" or "Do I look cuter in this pic or this pic?" or whatever... those polls bug me. Or nothing polls, like "choose a fruit that best represents you!" or whatever. I've noticed a lot of artists who don't post very often do that as a way to keep their fans hanging around....
And I still post a response to all those annoying polls -_-;;;;
I'm a shameless fan of the silly question polls though and your position on them confuses me. I have to admit that I'm guilty of posting a few recent polls just to stay active while art isn't happening though. I like to think of my polls as a really lame form of participatory satire though so I don't care. :3
Polls aren't a big deal though. When I say something annoys me, it's a really really mild annoyance at best, not something I'd feel like talking about (well, outside of this conversation). But when someone posts more polls than actual art or even blog entries, it's kind of like "Do you realize I'm not watching you for your polls?" Or sometimes I wonder if really popular artists who do post regularly and post a new poll every few days are just doing it to stroke their ego a bit. Like you mentioned earlier, they can do a poll and see how popular they are because even though it's a nothing poll that asks what their favorite toothpaste brand is, people still comment. It's gotta feel good in some weird way to see over 2,000 have responded to your pointless poll.
But like I said, mild irritation at best. An actual irritation would be artists who post more updates on their ID photo than actually update, and then write big journal posts about how special it makes them feel that everyone said they were cute in their ID picture. Sometimes it's cool to see what artists look like, but if there is a new ID photo every few days... then I think it's just fishing for compliments.
Sorry, I have the gift of gab in a bad way. Didn't mean to deconstruct stupid polls to that extent. :3
But yeah, I think the worst thing about ID photos is how they invite creepy weirdo comments that make me want to bleach my eyes out.
People who are really popular on DA seem to have all sorts of problems that I just don't understand. I read some thing about a guy who was really popular and now he doesn't post to DA anymore because he couldn't deal with all the comments he got. Or how some popular artists got torn to bits by Encyclopedia Dramatica and they lost all their fans or don't post anymore, etc etc. I'd like to be popular because people liked my work, but I don't want to be popular if it means I draw stuff I think is popular but don't want to draw, or going around begging people to watch me, or lying about my age to attract viewers, and so on and so forth. Internet fanbases can be a scary thing, but I think a lot of times the people who get the scary viewers bring it on themselves with either the content of what they post (naked anime girls = creepy fanboy pervs... apparently this was the problem for that guy I mentioned who no longer posts to DA) or with their attitudes. I know of a few people who think they are popular and will say "I hate this person, you should hate them too!" and I've seen their popularity diminish because people thought they were crazy or obsessed or on a power trip-- and they were of course right. That's just nuts.
Gabbing is fun
That's about it, I see people get exactly the sort of popularity that they shoot for and they aren't always happy with it. I have a buddy here that does a bunch of nudey cartoon girls all the time and a lot of it has to do with her feeling like her so-called fans expect it. For a while she was doing them with giant boobs because she goes through these short obsessive phases and collected a bunch of "hyper-busty" fans who she pandered to with a few weeks of nothing but cartoon girls with enormous breasts in the attrocity sense of enormity. It wasn't long before she got sick of the hyper-busty guys, posted a huge rant and refused to draw giant breasts. She still kept getting messages from them, whining and trying to rationalize why she should keep doing what they like and a couple got pretty aggressive about it. You could blame the fans to some extent, but she's always pretty realistic about how she brings those sorts of people on herself.
It's not that I don't dig a lot of pervy stuff, but I need to see some amount of style, awareness and storytelling going on there or it's just pandering depravity. I think a lot of people have figured, I'm already a pervert, I've already crossed the line, so I may as well be a depraved maniac about it. People think they're already messed up enough for wanting to depict or see their favorite characters boning each other, so doujinshi and fanfics end up full of characters raping each other with as many fetishes as they can pack into lifeless depictions of depravity between human-shaped objects. Aside from the messed up gender politics going on there, it's still just lazy storytelling with no understanding of the characters. If more people would just think about what they're doing a little bit and try to put their heart into the work some more, maybe not so much of it would be soulless offensive garbage. Hell, when I draw sexy women, that's a role I'm taking on, not just a paper doll I'm attaching clothes to and I think they end up more lively and vivid for it.
Blah, I almost went on about westerners and manga style from here too, but I think I've babbled enough for today. :3
There are a few artists I watch who are clearly popular because they are great artists and what they want to draw is consistently good and interesting, and those are popular artists I can really get behind. But some artists are one-pattern artists and can only/will only draw the same thing over and over. Like
Tangents are great fun.
I am SO looking forward to your picture. It is always amusing to see your spunky characters interact with each other, and I vote YES for Vox hula-dancing atop a sand castle. XD
Hawaii was chosen mostly because people in Honolulu speak both Japanese and English, and it's in between where my family is from and where my husband's family is from. If it weren't for Hawaii I'm not sure a family wedding would have been possible!