Wowww my Photoshop brushes were featured today as a DD in the Stock & Resources category! Thank you so much to ^KasumiCR for suggesting and ^Elandria for featuring them!!!

In the time since I uploaded those brushes, I've been astonished and overwhelmed by the response on both tumblr and DA! I've never shared a resource before so it's been an interesting experience. At first, I expected everyone to behave themselves and credit me properly, but I've since discovered that that... doesn't happen very often. When I first started seeing my brushes used without any credit, it was pretty upsetting!! I've mellowed out a bit since then, but I still find myself squinting at the monitor whenever I see something on tumblr that looks like it might have possibly been made with my brushes. These days I just ask that if you use them regularly, you better have a note about it in your faq or something!

Anyway, I've made some new brushes since then, but nothing as good as these! I'm still using the spongy shading brush to color practically everything I do, and these days I use a smaller, more scattery version of scritchy line for sketching. Sometimes I'll just be sitting there painting and I'll be like "man, I love these brushes SO MUCH" so it's cool that others love them too!

I guess my conclusion is that I'm glad I uploaded that set, it's been fun and exciting, but it's also been weirdly stressful in ways I didn't expect at all, so I don't think I will most likely be doing it again.

Thanks again to everyone who has faved or commented today, and BIG thanks to everyone who has posted proper credit when they make something using them.

After spending a month and a half alternately working 12 hour days at Disney and lying around at home being a complete lump, I'm finally ready to open up a bunch of commissions for the summer!

I've listed all the prices and details on my blog at [link] - I like having everything there since I can't post example pictures here.

If you are interested in a spot please e-mail me at kecky415(at)sbcglobal.net instead of sending a note here, I'm trying to keep all my communications to e-mail this time.

I hope everybody is having the best summer ever!!!

It's online HERE: [link]

And I also posted it on tumblr here: [link]

Hope you enjoy it / understand why I haven't been posting much original art lately!!!

I'm always very careful to sign out of my e-mail, tumblr and pandora at school (since that one time somebody was nice enough to create a bunch of new death metal stations on pandora for me) but I guess I missed one this time.

thank you mysterious student for not filling my gallery with porn i guess???!

Log out off the SVA computers! someone could ruin your account D:


awesome art btw!

My film is basically done!!! I'm REALLY happy with it, so I'll be posting it online as soon as I've added a few more sound effects and fixed some little things.

So now I've finally got time to finish up my commissions! I've roughly sketched out most of them; I just need to sit down and add all the important details now. And then scan and color. But they should be done pretty soon!

Also, I just got done registering for classes and I am pretty excited for next year! I'm taking a whole bunch of illustration electives and it's gonna be freakin sweet.

yay!

Edit: Slots are full! I was away from the computer for a few hours and didn't keep my list updated - I'm sorry to those who were deceived! If you didn't get a spot, please remember I'll be reopening full-time for commissions in May, including fully colored and shaded pieces and backgrounds, and might even open up another small round before then.
----

Hey guys, I have a lot going on with school right now, but I really need to buy my ticket to Florida for spring break, so I'm going to take a few commissions if anyone is interested. The simple ones I did before Christmas worked pretty well for me, so I'm going to offer the same style again: pencil lineart with flat coloring and a limited palette.

Examples: [link], [link], [link]

If you want something a little more fancy, I'll be opening up commissions again this summer with an option for full color and shading, but I need to keep things simple for now! I'm only going to open up 3 slots and may even reduce it to 2 if one of those is for several characters. I'm aiming to have these done by spring break, which for me is the first full week of March, but in case I don't I'll be able to work on them on my trip too.

Price:
$30 per full-body character
$20 per bust
+$10 for me to make an actual print and mail it to you, in addition to e-mailing you the digital file! ($15 if you live outside the US or Canada)

Slots:
1. I.O. - 2 full-body characters - paid
2. S. - 1 full-body character - paid
3. T. - 2 busts

Rules:
-A slot is for one picture but can include up to 3 figures.
-I don't draw above a PG rating.
-Send me a note on DA, or e-mail me at kecky415 at sbcglobal dot net to claim a slot. (I'd prefer not to rely on tumblr asks, they tend to vanish!)
-Full payment via Paypal is required before I start drawing.
-If you aren't satisfied with the final, each revision will be $5. Just to keep things from getting out of hand!
-After you have approved the final version, I will send you the 300dpi version so you can print it out for yourself. This does not give you the rights to mass-reproduce or sell my art.
-Please let me know if your commission is a gift for someone so I can avoid posting it online until they have received it from you!

Thank you so much!!!

My final film for the fall semester is online now, you can see it here!!! [link]

I was totally terrified when I read the syllabus this semester and found out that we were supposed to do a 2-minute film in a month. I'd never even done more than 15 seconds of animation in a month, which I didn't even finish!

But guess what, I did it!!! Okay, it's technically only a minute and 37 seconds, and it's not completely in-betweened or cleaned up at all, but I'm really proud of what I did get done. I have learned so much this year, especially about loosening up and getting a lot more animation done in a short amount of time! I would always get so caught up in little details and agonizing over a single keyframe that it would take me forever just to do a couple seconds and my motions would always be sort of stiff. In fact, I'd sort of been thinking that maybe I wasn't really destined to be an animator and that maybe character design or visual development would be where I would end up. And I still might! But learning to keep my drawings rough and intuitive, by being forced to do tons of animation very quickly, has made animating complete scenes so, so much less intimidating. And everybody else in my class made huge improvements too! Watching our films on the last day just made me really excited about how much I can accomplish, and about my future career, and it was just... heartwarming!

Anyway, my film. It got really washed out when I uploaded it, so it doesn't look as good as it should, but I think you can still see what's going on! There's no sound or color, we get to use those in two films next semester, yayyyy!

I hope everyone is having a super wonderful winter break!!!

All right, I'm going to open up some commissions for the holidays. I want to keep things simple, so I'll only be offering one style - pencil lineart with flat, limited colors and no background.

Examples:
[link] [link]

Prices:
$30 per full-body figure
$20 per bust (head, shoulders, possibly hands too)
+$10 for me to make an actual print and mail it to you, in addition to e-mailing you the digital file! ($15 if you live outside the US or Canada)

Details:
-I will be opening 4 slots at a time and finishing all 4 before I open up a new batch. My goal is a batch each week, but at the very least I know I'll be able to finish the first batch before Christmas.
-A slot is for one picture but can include multiple figures.
-I don't draw above a PG rating.
-Send me a note on DA, or e-mail me at kecky415 at sbcglobal dot net to claim a slot. (I'd prefer not to rely on tumblr asks, they tend to vanish!)
-Full payment via Paypal is required before I start drawing.
-If you aren't satisfied with the final, each revision will be $5. Just to keep things from getting out of hand!
-After you have approved the final version, I will send you the 300dpi version so you can print it out for yourself. This does not give you the rights to mass-reproduce or sell my art.
-Please let me know if your commission is a gift for someone so I can avoid posting it online until they have received it from you!

Slots:
1. M. R. - 2 full-body characters - paid
2. J. M. - 2 (?) characters
3. K. - 3 full-body characters - paid
4. V. S. - 2 full-body characters
+5. S. P. - 2 full-body characters

Let me know if you have any questions; I'll probably be updating this as I think of more details!
Thank you!!!

Hey guys, I've been thinking about taking a small number of pencil sketch commissions this month so I can buy presents for other people. I want to keep things simple, so I'd color them digitally with the flat, limited palette sort of style I've been using lately for most of my fanarty doodles, which seems to be working out pretty well!

I was thinking around $30 per full body character and $20 for a bust. So I'd just like to know, would anybody be interested??

I feel like my journals here have devolved over the past couple years into one every few months saying "School is out. I moved to Florida. Now I moved back to school. Now it's the middle of the year. Blah blah." I haven't really been very active here all around, other than posting my art and running, and maybe answering a question or two when I get around to it. And that's sad because I've been a part of this community for nearly 7 years and I've met a lot of awesome people!!! In fact I just checked my watchers and realized that I hit 3000 sometime in the past month, which is a lot, and I feel like sometimes I don't properly express my appreciation of the fact that you guys all take the time to look at my doodles and actually like some of them. So... thank you all so much!!! I will be around a little more from now on so please don't hesitate to say hello!

I just checked my messages and was wondering for a minute why Siren Song had a bunch of new comments and group requests and stuff. Turns out (duh) it's a daily deviation today! WHEEEEE!!! This is my 3rd DD ever, but the last one was The Wood Between the Worlds in 2007. So it's just as exciting as the first time.

Thank you so much to =Natalia-Luz for suggesting and `Mollinda for featuring! And thanks to everyone who has faved or commented or watched me today. I appreciate it so much and you are all awesome!!!

Commissions are closed now! Sorry I left misleading information up for so long. I need to focus on schoolwork now, and also this ~*big project*~ that I'm going to be all mysterious about until I'm more sure that it's really truly happening.

But yeah, school! I had a tougher time getting into things this year - I didn't exactly have the most relaxing summer, and then leaving Florida was hard, and then leaving Missouri was hard a week after that, and ~jerseygrl422 was supposed to be my roommate but she defected to the University of the Arts which was sad. But I ended up with a lovely quiet roommate, so that's all good, even if we didn't get to wallpaper our entire room with Disney pencil test sketches like we'd planned. It's a beautiful rainy day today so I feel extra like everything is right with the world.

My classes are good! I only have 4 of them this semester which is extra good!!! I'm loving my animation class - it's already helping me a ton. My teacher worked at the Disney studio in Florida (god rest its soul) for several years, and, and, and HE ANIMATED JIM HAWKINS but the point is, he's been where I want to go and he knows, man. His class is also really tough and he has very high expectations of his students, which I think is great. I'm not paying zillions of dollars to go to this school just to be told I'm special just the way I am.

EDIT: I finally got around to making an animation demo reel! It was thrown together pretty quickly, and some clips are pretty bad quality since I had to download them from youtube, but I hope you will enjoy it anyway. And I promise to make a much better one at the end of this school year!!!

I'm also taking life drawing, always super helpful and good to work on; layout and design which I'm less enthusiastic about at the moment but is something I know I need to work on (it's also from 3-6 pm, which is the time of day when my ability to focus basically goes ppppbpbbbtt. I don't know what I was thinking when I made my schedule) and I think I will get more into it as the semester goes on. And my other class is sound design, another one of those I'm not like crazy passionate about but I'm getting more into it as I learn a little bit more about it.

I was taking a 5th class, but I dropped it because it was adding a small amount of stress to my already angst-filled life and I wasn't sure if it was even my thing at all, and I didn't need the credit at all, (I have like seventeen thousand hours on my transcript and could theoretically graduate this year if my required classes didn't require being spaced out over a full four years, which I try not to think about too much, and besides, it gives me lots of room to take lots of interesting electives.) so anyway, I dropkicked that class out the window and now I'm like WHOOO TWELVE CREDIT HOURS!!! basically.

the end.

Welp, I think it's time for a happier journal. Summer is well underway! I made it through my second year at SVA alive! A lot of the time I didn't think I was going to!!!

I laid around at home in Missouri for almost a month and drew a lot. I dug out my old box of Prang watercolors that has served me faithfully since high school, bought a whole slew of new colored pencils and markers, and have been having a great time playing around with traditional media again.

Anyway, I'm in Florida now, and I'm only working 2-3 days a week at the movie ride, which gives me plenty of time to focus on my art. I'm working on a lot of personal stuff, but I'm also opening up COMMISSIONS!!!

Prices:
Pencil sketch with optional digital tint or texture - examples [link], [link], [link]
Bust (head & shoulders) - $10
Full body - $20
2 characters - $35

Full color digital or traditional portrait with simple pattern background - examples [link], [link], [link]
Bust - $50
Full body - $80
2 characters - $130

Full color illustration with 1 or more characters and complex background - examples [link], [link], [link], [link]
Starting at $150 - please contact me for a final quote

Custom lettering for logo, blog header, etc. like the "signature" I use on my recent artwork - [link]
$50 and up, per word, depending on length
Final product is a high-res .png file with transparent background.
(I've never done any commissions like this but I've been getting very interested in hand lettering and would really like to try, which is why the price is rather low for a logo. If you need to see other examples, please let me know.)

Commission slots (to be done more or less in order):
1. B.W. - full body, color, 2 characters - 1st half paid, sketching
2. A.N. - full body, color, 2 characters - 1st half paid, sketching
3. S.W. - original illustration #1 - sketching
4. S.W. - original illustration #2
5. S.W. - original illustration #3

Finished & paid pieces:
1. W.S. - misc. illustration

Notes: (please read all before claiming a slot)
-I'll be opening up five slots at a time and will complete at least 3 or 4 commissions before I open up new spots.

-Please send me a note, comment here, or e-mail me at kecky415(at)sbcglobal.net to claim a spot.

-I accept Paypal, and ask for half payment before beginning on a commission and the other half when I have completed it.

-Please give me several photo references for any portraits of real people, and please keep in mind that I draw stylized characters, not reproductions of photos.

-I will send you a sketch for approval before adding color and shading.

-If you are not satisfied with the final version, I will gladly fix any small issues with it; however, for each revision after one I will add a $5 charge to the fee to be paid upon completion. To clarify, this applies to changing hair/skin/background/clothing color, accessories, etc, because you have changed your mind, not because of a mistake on my part.

-I will send you the full-resolution file by e-mail upon completion so you can print out as many copies as you desire for yourself. If you don't have a way to print it yourself, I can have prints made and sent to you if you just pay shipping and the print base price.

-I still retain the rights to any artwork created and may sell prints of any commissions I do. These prices are for commissions meant for personal use and do not include commercial use, like selling copies yourself or using the prints for business-related purposes. However, if you do want to use my artwork for a commercial purpose, like a poster or logo, please let me know beforehand and I can give you a special price. I usually just add 50% for advertising items that are not going to be directly sold.

-I may increase prices for future rounds of commissions, but anyone who has already claimed a spot will keep the price they were given.

-If I don't receive payment within 3 days of a slot being claimed, I may take you off the list if anyone else wants your spot.

I know that sounds like a lot of rules, but please don't be alarmed; I've never had problems with anyone on DA but I wanted to be clear in case any issues arise. I had a pretty bad experience the last time I did commissions (it was nobody on here) and don't want to be stuck slightly changing colors and facial expressions over and over and over again for months after I thought I was finished. But that's in the past! So let's get commissioning!!!

If you hadn't already heard, Diana Wynne Jones passed away last night at the age of 76.

I've been spending the day moping around, dredging up all my old fanart and spamming tumblr with it, and trying not to cry whenever I think about the fact that one of my greatest heroes is gone.

I'd like to make some attempt to put into words what this woman has meant to my life, and how her stories have inspired me, so I hope you'll bear with me.

I don't remember which of her books I read first - I think it might have been Year of the Griffin in 7th or 8th grade. I do recall that my love for her writing didn't arrive all at once, but I liked whatever book it was enough to check out another of hers, and then another and another as I discovered that every single one was just as brilliant as the next, and there were dozens of them. I'd say Witch Week (weirdly, the first of the Chrestomanci books that I read- I went all out of order) was really the one that cemented my fervent admiration, and it's still tied with The Lives of Christopher Chant and A Tale of Time City for my very very favorite. It contained so many of my favorite things - secret powers, parallel universes, British accents - but somehow it was completely different from anything I'd read before. For one thing, it was so smart. Like so many DWJ books, I had to read it a few times before I really comprehended the whole plot, and every time I reread it, it surprises me.

And the characters - oh, the characters! I've doodled Charles, Nan, Estelle, Theresa, Nirupam, Simon, all of them, so many times - they just beg to be visualized, because they are absolutely alive. They are not vague suggestions of schoolchildren, with gratuitous flaws tacked on to their interchangeable personalities to make them "interesting." DWJ's heroes (all of them) are so wonderful because she let them be nasty, selfish, sulky, awkward real people. What I mean is, she gave her characters flaws not in a way that's supposed to make them endearing, like, oh I don't know, if somebody wrote about a completely bland character who is somehow supposed to be likeable and relatable because we are told in every. single. paragraph. about how clumsy this theoretical character is.

On the contrary, Charles Morgan is quite a repellant little bugger. But by the end of the book, we are surprised to discover that we love him in spite of it. Aren't our little siblings such repellant little buggers too? And if we do end up loving Charles' sociopathic tendencies, or Chrestomanci's vanity, or Nan's insecurity, anyway, it isn't because their faults somehow make those characters cute, but because they make them who they are.

Going deeper, I've only recently begun to understand the way that DWJ always let her characters understand each other's faults, in ways that most children's and young adult literature glosses over. Conrad and Millie rag on Christopher behind his back, but haven't we all done that? And don't we all understand that it doesn't mean we love our best friends any less? Think about Moril and his siblings, in Cart and Cwidder, coming to realize that their mother never really loved their father the way they always thought. It's extremely upsetting, of course, but it's not the center of the story. It's only the beginning of a much wider tale, and somehow, I find that reassuring. The illusions we hold in regards to the people we love get torn down, and though it may seem devastating at first, it doesn't have to destroy our love for them.

Well, I'm getting into paper-writing mode, and I haven't even gotten to the most important part: the magic.

I don't even know if I can put this point into words with precise little examples. It's just this: Diana Wynne Jones has kept me believing in magic until age 24, and that feeling is refreshed every time I reread one of my favorites. (Of course she's had some help from C.S. Lewis and Patricia McKillip and J.K. Rowling along the way.) Maybe it's more accurate to say that she has showed me glimpses of real magic, allowed me to believe that it can exist in the real world, and inspired me to capture a little bit of that magic through writing and drawing, so I can make it real for myself.

There's just something about the silly, petty everydayness of her worlds, which, when mixed up with the soaring, unexpected fantasticality of what happens in them, creates a sense of magic and wonder more wonderful than any self-serious sword-and-sorcery epic.

Which is just my opinion, of course. But I just wanted to try and explain the shape of one woman's tremendous influence in my life, and I wanted to honor her memory, and simply say - you will be very, very missed by this particular rabid fangirl. Rest in peace.

Like for real: [link]

Oh dear, oh dear, as always, I'm completely torn. If only I had something to reassure me that it was going to be GOOD, then I could get properly excited, but I'm too terrified they'll ruin everything all over again.

I still haven't seen Dawn Treader yet. I'm too scared.

aaauuughghhhhh why can't i accept that other people like things i like

I'm finally getting around to posting stuff from my sketchbook!!! Get it? I had a big scanning party today. Most of them will end up in scraps sooner or later.

I'm also posting sketches and things on this newfangled tumblr thing I have??? kecky415.tumblr.com - I can't decide yet if it is something I am really going to get into, but I like the idea of tumblr a lot.

Mmmaybe I should quit starting so many new blogs and draw instead!!! What a concept.

2010 was a good year for me, artistically. I finally started selling enough prints on Etsy to actually pay for my groceries and school supplies, which has pretty much been a life-long dream of mine. I'm hoping that in 2011, I can maybe earn enough to put some money in my savings too, or at least take an extra trip or two to Florida!

I've made sort of an informal resolution to fill up at least one page of my sketchbook every single day, and I've been sticking to that pretty well for a whole week! So, hopefully if I'm sketching more, a few more of those sketches will make it onto my computer to share with all of you.

Oh, and my new computer is amazing! My parents got a good deal and surprised me with an even bigger one than I thought I was getting. It's super shiny and it doesn't take 20 minutes to open up Photoshop! Wow!!!

Anyway, I hope you all have a super wonderful 2011!

Thanks for the suggestions everyone!!! I have a shiny almost-new 17" iMac, freshly loaded up with all the memory and whatnot it could ask for, waiting for me at home in Missouri, where I will be in less than 48 hours. WHOOOOOOOOOO

So, pretty much what I already had in mind, but your comments were very helpful and reassuring! Anyway, this takes care of my Christmas present, and my birthday present, and some other money that my parents owed me already. But it's mine!!!

Two more days of school left. My brain has been convinced for about a week that since I finished three of my big final projects, and took a few days to recover, that must mean I'm done with everything and am free to start packing. Well, that's NOT TRUE, I still have this whole animation thing to do, and some storyboards, but my brain won't believe it. It's all like, "whatevs, merry Christmas."

So... Merry Christmas, brain. Thanks for the work you did earlier. And Merry Christmas everyone else!!!

What should I get??

My poor baby iBook has served me beautifully for 6 years. He still works just fine, most of the time, as long as you're very patient. I usually have to go off and do something else for about 10 minutes every time I hit Save in Photoshop. And his battery is 100% kaput, so he dies if you so much as bump the power cord the wrong way. These two factors have combined to cause quite a few calamities over time. But I still love him, and he's at least getting a new battery during winter break.

The problem is that this year, I'm taking classes that deal pretty much exclusively with Maya and CS5. I'm getting by with just working in the school labs between classes, but it doesn't give me the time to just mess around with the programs on my own and really learn them and put the most effort into my assignments.

So basically, I need something that can deal with Maya and AfterEffects CS5 (I currently have 6.5, lol) and not go into convulsions. I'm not gonna be rendering any Pixar movies, just some badly modeled blobs that sort of look like dinosaurs and stuff. I think I want a desktop with a nice big monitor! Maybe?? What are your experiences/suggestions?

p.s. mac or gtfo
p.p.s. something a little older/used is just fine though!
p.p.p.s. maybe I shouldn't express such a strong preference in the same post in which I'm admitting my relative computer ignorance. But pc's are just so unattractive. And annoying. And my dad would disinherit me anyway.
p.p.p.p.s. I've realized that sometimes I probably sound really stupid when I type. don't believe it.
p.p.p.p.p.s. it's been a long week. just a few more very, very long weeks to go!