I reckon this journal will probably occupy this space for a good while, so it's the right message to leave up.

I've had a few people asking me about using particular pictures or character designs, etc., and here's my answer to that:

"You are free to use any of my art and stories in any way you wish, without compensation or notice to me, provided that it does not impinge on the intellectual property of others."

In other words:
* If it is a commission or a gift, you need to ask the person/people whose characters are included in the work. You don't need my permission. You DO need theirs.
* When in doubt, if it's a 30 Days of Monster-Boys/Girls or the description lists someone as a commissioner or who it's for, it's their decision. If you still can't tell, err on the safe side.

For those works that are solely mine (or where you've received the permission of other people involved) you may:
* redistribute them
* remove my signature and/or apply your own
* change them/color/re-color them
* copy/trace them
* use them for your personal characters, with the understanding that you have no exclusive rights
* just about whatever you can imagine

What you cannot do:
* Exclusively claim them as your own and try to limit how other people use/don't use them.

Of course I would love to be credited and see traffic driven back to this gallery, but it's not that worth making a fuss over. So enjoy them as you see fit!

Sorry much for my long absence here! I've actually been posting on and off elsewhere, but lately it seems like nothing is even tangentially related to furs/anthros/monster-girls, etc. Compound that with the kiddo bringing home some new bug from school every week (or so it seems), and I've been a poop here.

However! I have a story lined up to post later in the week, and a coloring project to follow behind that, and then ANOTHER story to post after that! I think Patreon is working out in that regard - it's just the right balance of accountability and pressure to keep me working, and it helps me to strike a middle ground between writing for myself, and writing what I think other people will want to read. Much of what I've done recently (that hasn't been posted here) was for myself, but the next two stories are straight from the last round of Patreon voting.

Speaking of which, as much as I feel skeezy self-promoting, the Patreon is here! The idea here is not so much to get raffle art (sorry!), but to steer the ship that is my creativity. I've posted skads of story ideas and other projects I've either started working on or at least sketched out, and I'm asking people to vote on what I should work on next. But I also encourage interaction (like, tell me what you're not seeing enough of, or how could I make this idea better, or what do you like that I'm not covering here), and you can get access to works in progress, etc, as well as earlier access to completed work. I've tried to balance it to give both meaningful input at the lowest level of participation ($1/slightly more than a month) and benefits to those who want to support at a higher level. If you like what I do in general but wished I'd work on certain types of projects more, this is the way to have that influence. (For example, Patreon is currently steering me toward more furry content, which is good, right?)

In other news, I'm now on Skype, as of today. For too long I was complacent, and satisfied with my old google and yahoo IM accounts, while the future passed me by. I'm still not on KIK (nor do I plan to be) and I leave Steam turned off, so I guess I haven't really caught up with the present, but if you've chatted at me in one of those old venues but have moved on to Skype (or, hey, just feel like chatting), note me. Even if you can figure out my super-secret account name, you should let me know before you add me, because I'm an old curmudgeon who is likely just to dismiss unexpected attempts to be friendly as overly-clever chatbots. :)

Well, I've gone and set it up. There's a fair bit of backend work left to be done, but it's all administrative stuff that will be helpful for me anyway.

For those who don't yet know, Patreon is a venue where artists who make a living from their commissions (and artists, writers, musicians, etc. in general) increasingly go to generate a more steady stream of income while working on larger projects. Instead of commissions as usual, 'patrons' pledge a certain amount per month or per project (as in my case) to the artist so they'll continue to produce the work that they want to produce. It's very much like an ongoing kickstarter, especially in that there are often stretch goals, and the patrons are buying into an artist's vision, usually, instead of commissioning their skills to realize their own vision.

My Patreon is a bit different, in that I'm not looking to make a living from my art or writing. I have a steady job, and could not ever hope to replace that income with creative work. However, I very much enjoy commissions, because having that little bit of money change hands (even if it usually works out to around a dollar an hour, as slow as I go) gives me the incentive I need to work toward finish, and not just procrastinate or abandon things halfway through. I've been looking for a way to apply that same principle to work of my own devising, and several people have suggested Patreon. So here we are.

My Patreon page is here: https://www.patreon.com/4ofSwords

I've kept the minimum buy-in as small as I could, because what I have to offer is mostly what you would have gotten anyway - the stories and art I would post here anyway. You -do- get the ability to help choose what I work on (including suggestions and requests which I generally don't take any more), and, as the per-project pledge goes up, a bit more in the way of access to my works-in-progress. But unless you essentially commission me to complete my own work, there are no direct, personalized rewards - no raffles, etc. I do still intend to take commissions occasionally, but they are out of the scope of and secondary to this Patreon project, depending on how well it goes.

Please let me know if you have any questions! Please let me know if you have any suggestions. I've tried to offer what benefits I could without getting in the way of the goal of this thing, which is to accomplish a bit more writing and drawing from my now VERY lengthy to-do list. Hopefully, if you enjoy what I do (and I'm not sure why else you'd be reading this journal if you didn't), more productivity will seem like a pretty decent return on a dollar.

2014 was good, and when I look back, I got a decent amount done! There were plenty of new stories, and plenty of new art, and I feel like I made a decent contribution to the community's content archives. A lot of that was through commissioning, which, frankly, I love. It doesn't pay that well (or, rather, I'm dreadfully slow), so drawing comes out to about $2/hour, and writing about $.50/hour, but fortunately I don't have to do either for a living! It makes for a bit of spending money for gifts I wouldn't be able to afford for the family otherwise, but most importantly, it lets me create something I *know* somebody is really interested in and will (hopefully) love. Having a guaranteed audience of one fan is often more rewarding than a wider, but very uncertain audience - especially since I sometimes like to experiment when I write for myself. That, combined with the fact that someone has paid, encourages me to actually write and draw in a timely, productive fashion; I feel a sense of responsibility to the commissioner I can't seem to generate for myself.

The only problem with commissions is that the whole time I'm doing it, I'm looking at my to-do list of my own projects continuing to pile up. Enter the world's tiniest record player, I know, but creatively it can be frustrating. Based on some past comments, I'm seriously considering creating a Patreon in the next month to try to bridge that gap. A Patreon will not replace commissioning, and I don't even intend it to be a significant source of spending money, but what I'd like to do is somehow trigger that same motivation that commissioning gives me - to produce, and on a decent timeline - but focus some of that on my own project list. I'm thinking of something minimal - a $1 per project buy-in to vote on which project I should work on next from a specified list, $2 buy-in to be copied on the drafting process, a higher buy-in to be able to suggest your own idea to be added to the voting list?

Admittedly, though I've spent quite a few hours skimming through Patreon trying to figure it out, I don't think I have, and I have a hard time believing something like this would attract more than one or two people at most, so... this blog! For those of you familiar with Patreon, what ideas can you suggest? How do you think I could craft this to focus on my own to-do list, but still appeal to others? What kind of benefits and bonuses could I offer that wouldn't end up taking up more time that I can't spend on the big projects? Are people interested in being beta readers, getting early drafts and concept stages, maybe getting to select scenes for illustrations?

Lay your opinions on me!

Phew! November is over, 60k words have been written, and if I stick to my script at all, I've got at least another 120k to write just to finish the first draft of the novel I was writing. Yikes! Needless to say, it's not going to be ready any time soon.

Since the writing commitment is complete, I'm reopening for commissions now. However, as I suggested might be the case, the price has gone up: The price for basic pencils and flat colors (example: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/13116628/) is $15 per character, and the price for inks and rendered colors (example: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/14834547/) is $25 per character. Simple backgrounds are included for free at my discretion; specific background requests start at the price of a character. Very complicated markings, wings, or tentacles may also raise the price of that character.

I'm also considering taking ONE writing commission again just for fun. Pricing on that is $20/1000 words, and you set a minimum (say, $80 for 4000 words). I will at least, and probably exceed that word count, for the price you set (so for that $80, I might end up writing 4,020 words, or I might end up writing 10,000, but your price would remain the same). Generally I estimate about 1k words for each concept explored; talk to me about your price range and what you'd like included, and we can figure something out.

Send me a Note if you're interested!

Commissions as such will only be open for a limited time; in early 2015 I'm starting on those sphinxes come hell or high water!

It's Whatever Wednesday again, my lazy/late version of TMI Tuesday. So ask me anything. Or tell me anything. About my characters, about me, about you, about the state of the world, about the fact that Anathem by Neal Stephenson is the best book in the world. I'll reply. Or I won't. (I will.)

Apparently, I can't be trusted to remember TMI Tuesday until 9pm at night when I notice other people have done it. So here's the lazyman's out: Whatever Wednesday.

Feel free to mosey on over to this place to ask any question you'd like, whether it's about me, one of my characters or stories, or obscure esoterica that has nothing to do with me.

I realized today, while watching the latest Muppets movie with my son, how much Miss Piggy has informed Alexis.

No, Alexis doesn't have Frank Oz's voice, and I don't think I've ever really thought in Miss Piggy in a vorish way, but I definitely was fascinated with her when I was younger. When I was watching the movie there was a moment where my eyes just kind of opened wide and I said, "Oh." Thank goodness the kiddo still takes "Nothing!" for an answer. I think Miss Piggy sort of became a category unto herself in my head. The obsession with appearance and glamor, her being larger than her partner in every dimension and physically overpowering (even violent), her half-unconscious narcissism verging on sociopathy... It was hard for me not to see the origin of the echo that's in Alexis. How strange!

On an only slightly related note, I've often moaned at people who will listen about how I keep coming up with story ideas that I'll never get a chance to write, because in the time it takes me to write a story, I've thought of three or four new ideas. Even if I manage to combine two ideas in one story, I still end up having my 'story seed bank' growing faster than it's getting emptied. But just this weekend I realized that most of my ideas (and really, many of the stories I've written) aren't really stories. They're character studies, maybe, or setting studies. They're the perfect elements for an RP idea, in other words.

So I've started the process of scraping out my story seed bank and putting the scrapings into my RP ideas folder instead. I feel guilty about not writing stories, but I've never felt guilty - maybe just a little bummed - about not RPing an idea I've had. So, yay! And since I'm starting to toy with the idea of maybe RPing a little bit again now, maybe some of them will actually get written. :)

I'm sure of the small number of people who read this blog, the number of people who do so because they're interested when I wax philosophical on the ethics of false scarcity and art are even more more minimal. Still, I like this soapbox.

And I'm going to use it, I think, to retract my opinion. Well, not my opinion, but my stance. I still think art wants to be free. But I no longer things this is an issue worth drawing my line in the sand on. The fact of the matter is, people like to pay for art. Obviously many also don't, but people tend to value that which they paid for more than they do that which they haven't. I want people to read what I write, and I think I want that enough that I'd want to go through at least semi-traditional routes to put my things where they'll see them. So, I guess I'm going to try a bit more self-publishing, and perhaps kick off again on a novel I can send to agents.

I came to this conclusion a couple of weeks ago, but this last Saturday, I got my first check from Amazon. I'd put up a short story collection for $.99 two years ago, and mostly forgot about it since, especially since it hasn't gotten any reviews or ratings. However, in the last two years it has apparently accumulated enough purchases to meet Amazon's minimum cut-off to write a check. The check is for $4.39. That is awesome. I'm going to hang it on my wall. And maybe post another short story collection or two.

Hello, all!

For those interested, I'm opening for a handful of drawing-only commissions. I'm aiming to hit a certain moderate dollar amount, so the amount of commissions will depend on the size of what comes in.

My prices, for now, are as before: $10 per character for pencils and flat shading like: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/12844116/, and $20 per character for 'inked' lines and rendered colors, like this: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/13565883/. I'm really excited about reference sheets and character design, but I'm open to whatever feel free to note me with questions.

After this round, I expect to be raising prices just a little bit.

- - -

Special deal: Include Alexis! (If you need a reference of her, let me refer you to any page in my gallery)

If you have prey characters in need of a pred, I'll draw Alexis in as a half-price character. I'm pretty picky about her prey in her natural environment, so if you're looking for standard steampunk Alexis, the options are a little more limited. (In particular, prey are limited to natural animal types and fur colors, and to animals about half her size. Anything larger than a raccoon might end up not completely intact - she's not super-stretchy. Anything larger than half her size will *definitely* not be intact, and probably not even entirely eaten.) However, I'm open to putting Alexis into other, more open settings (Fantasy Alexis, Supervillain Alexis, Spaceranger Alexis, etc.) Note me with questions!

I'll probably only be taking a couple of these requests, though, at most, and it won't necessarily be first-come, first-served.

Taking a breather was nice! I didn't get nearly as much done as I'd hoped (my to-do list is only one item shorter!), but I did get a chance to think about things a bit.

[[Note: The rest of the journal is typical myopic soul-searching. Not believing in souls as I do, that means it's really pretty vacuous.]]

As I've mentioned a few times before, I've been on-and-off a very sad panda for the last few years. That hardly makes me unusual, I realize - especially on the internet - but just like when you've hurt yourself, it's hard to concentrate on anything but the pain when it's going on. Usually when it's at its worst, I don't actually want to be happy. It's not that I lack motivation, or have discovered some exciting new moral value for sadness, or that I don't think I deserve to be happy, or even that I think that the world is a terrible place and being sad is the proper, rational response. Even at my saddest, I'm still pretty optimistic about the world and humanity as a whole (current politics notwithstanding), and excited for people who love life and want to live it. But if there's anything that qualifies as a religious alliance in my life, it's a belief in (and being a fan of) the long-term status of life, and intelligent life in particular. Natural selection and the existence of evolved behavioral memes are critical secondary corollaries. Scroll way down through tertiary and quartiary lemmas and you find underlined and highlighted in my head that the significance of my life is on the same order of magnitude as an ant's, and that depression is a natural culling mechanism. (I'm not going to claim that I suffer from depression in any kind of clinical sense, but I don't think there's a better term for what I put myself through.) The end result is that life, and the resources needed to sustain it, are best left to those who *want* them, and as fickle as emotions are, they can be seen as the warning lights on our life. Unless there's some reason you need to *need* to keep sinking thousands of dollars into a car that's worth less, usually the best thing to do is retire the car. Combine that with the fact that one of the facets in my vorish leanings is a death fascination in general, and I just end up stuck in a positive feedback cycle of sadness.

Anyway, when I'm not so wallowy, I tend to try to try to self-analyze to see if I can isolate what's making me so sad, because most of the time I *do* want to be happy. It's easy to cling onto various ideas and get obsessed with that as a root cause: It's my relationship with my wife! No, my relationship with my son! No, sexuality in general, and I should cultivate asexuality. No, a lack of religion, and I should put away reason and follow what feels good. Or, hey - maybe my vore fetish is messing me up and I need to step away from it. When I get to the point that I'm ready to take a break, I'm usually so melodramatic that I feel like filling out posts with subtext like 'And maybe I'm never coming back!'. And who knows - maybe that will happen some day.

Staying away from Eka's/Fur-Affinity/Tumblr/etc. for a month (and it was far from a complete separation, but at least I didn't participate) didn't miraculously make me happy, but at least it gave some distance to question if maybe I am spending too much time in the community. I love this community. I can't imagine leaving it entirely. The vast majority of my current friends and casual acquaintances come from the community. There are a lot of you I'd love to get to know better outside of fetishes and screen names, as unlikely as that is to happen. And I really, really enjoy doing commissions, both for the pocket money it lets me spend on my son, and because it's always great knowing someone really wants and likes something you've done. It scratches an itch I have in a fundamentally satisfying way. But I do think I've pushed my head too deep into the community. It has come to take up almost ALL my free time. I LOVE RPing. I love it so much that even though I think it might be a good idea to give it a break for a month or two, I don't think I could countenance it. But I don't think I'll start any new ones, and the ones that are sliding, I'll just let them go. The bummer is that RP is the way I started talking to most of the people that I do, and I'm terrible about just up and chatting with interesting people, but I think it's a risk I'll have to run, at least for now. In exchange, I'll have to try make better conversation, and feel free to chat me up if you'd like.

One of the things I realized this time around, though, is that the beginning of this climate change toward melancholy (as opposed to the daily weather of emotions or monthly seasons of sadness) coincides with deciding to drop the dream of publishing novels. I'm not too sure what to do about that - after all, none of my rationale for it has changed: I'm not so absurdly skilled as to force a career out of it; none of the things I want to write *need* to be written; and I'm philosophically opposed to the way art is monetized in our culture. But the fact remains that I'm going to write something, obviously, and right now I'm writing a lot of stuff that I can't thrust into my wife's hands, or my parents' or sisters' or coworkers', etc. - and even more to the point, I'm not writing things I'll eventually give to my son to read. No matter how liberal my views on sexuality, I don't think that's going to fly.

So, I still plan on taking commissions here and there. And I still plan on a -little- bit of RP, if only to finish out what's already going, and maybe do one thing at a time after that, and slow ones at that. And I'll still write stories now and again, because I really can't help it. But I think I need to at least make an attempt to turn my main focus back on writing other things, and see if that restores some of the order in my head. I'm not sure if it will. I feel like the problem is more like the lack of personal meaning that gets tied up in long-term planning for one's life, but I've essentially got writer's block when it comes to writing meaning into my life. My imagination isn't that good yet. So I'll just try. :)

And maybe I just need to get more exercise outside.

Things will likely be quiet around here for a while.

Hey, it's some random Tuesday and I'm ready to answer personal and invasive questions, even though nobody will actually do that, and will instead ask questions about characters or the most random things they can think of to see if I'm on my my toes. Go ahead. I'm ready. Ask me ANYTHING*.

*batteries not included. Anything does not include intellectual property classified Secret, Top Secret, or Top Top Secret. Pop Secret is fine. You may actually ask me questions about characters. That's totally cool, man. Frigid. Green. Supergreen.

For anybody keeping track, I tend to draw back a bit after a big project while I catch my breath, but I'm not completely fallow. Here's what's going on with me between now and the next big thing:

Personal work:
Mostly stories I've had kicking around in my head for awhile. There's actually around 40 stories on my to-do list, but they always get pushed back behind commissions and projects, so I try to make room for a few to slip through now and again and release some pressure:

* Sphingoi (Story - Sphinxes! Some sex, some lion-pride-style hard vore). It's not going to be for everyone, and not indicative of the style of the big sphinx project, but it's full of images I really want to get out of my head.
* Giant Sphinx (Drawing - More Sphinx! This time with extra sphinx! Nothing much else - just some paw-capture of a normal-sized person). I started this almost six moths ago, never quite was happy with the lines, so I'm going to tackle it again.
* Light-bearer (Story - Goo-girl, Futa(? maybe?), sex, engulfment/absorption, end of the world silliness)
* That's not How Magic Works! / The Republic of Michael (Title not decided, shrunken people hijinks including vore)
* Once We Were Not Starships (Novella, sci-fi, not likely to be anything particularly vorish in it)

If I can get those five things knocked out in the next three months or so, I'll be a happy camper!

Commissions:
I guess I'm going to officially reopen to commissions - with caveats. I'll only be taking one at a time, and no waiting list. Not that I think I'll have a long line waiting, but I'll likely take my time with this, slotting it between other things, and I don't want the pressure to rush from a waiting list. Consider this notice if you're interested, but it's not really first-come, first served this time around. There are some things I'm more interested in than others...

What I'd most like to do: A character sheet. I don't have much experience with this, and don't really have samples to show. I'm thinking that since this is sort of a gamble on both of our parts, I'll do something like $30 minimum for full-color front and back, additional costs based on how much else you want included? (Clothes, alternate poses, expressions, sides, etc.)?

I may also be willing to take a story commission. I'm at $15 for the first thousand, $10 for each additional thousand words. You set the minimum, I exceed it by whatever I want. Whether or not I take a story commission depends on how much the idea appeals to me, I'm afraid. But don't be afraid to ask! Even if I say no, I'm pretty nice about it! And what appeals to me is not necessarily the kind of thing I'd write for myself. What's likely NOT to appeal to me is something I'd need to do a lot of research for (writing in a canon setting, including characters with a lot of history/complications to consider).

Role-Playing:
I've had a lot of role-play either wind up, come to a significant lull, or just disappear lately. That would have made me antsy any time the last two years, but at the moment... I don't know. I might be okay with it. There's enough out there that may pick back up again from a lull that I don't want to over-commit, but at the same time I feel like I've had enough basic vore RP for awhile, and other kinds of stories are appealing to me more. I've always like a heavy dose of story and conflict and world-building and characterization in my RP regardless, but the vorish aspect is starting to take more of a backseat. Maybe that will change a bit in the future.

I feel bad - I advertise myself as a switch, but in the last half a year or so, I haven't really done anything preddish. I've had ideas, but even though any good RP should be a lot of work, RPs where I play pred usually require a lot more investment and I am a lot more picky about what kind of character I play with. I've thought numerous times about opening up an RP with Alexis (the gaslamp alligator monopolist of the unmentionables market), but I think I'd have to say 'no' to so many people it would just become unpleasant. And I LIKE playing prey. Me and 75% of the people RPing vore, right? I feel especially bad because I've been trying to nurture a dominant male pred side in myself for M/* RP, but except for with a very particular partner, I just can't make it stick. For now I guess I'm just tired of fighting against what I like, so you probably won't see me play or write or draw many more male preds for myself in the near future.

In any case, I'm thinking about posting a very specific RP request that is semi-vorish, and if I get takers, great! If not, I'll focus on that stuff on my to-do list. I don't think there's anyone beating down my door for an opportunity to RP with me (hah!) but if you are such a person, let me know!

Long-term:
The Sphinx project *is* still on the horizon, I hope, but I might be modifying it considerably from what I'd originally planned in order to allow for a little more involvement.

In the past few months I've had more questions than usual (that is to say, I've actually had a few questions) about reusing my ideas or reposting my my work. Just so it's very clear, I'm very easy-peasy about it all. Here are some rules of thumb:

* When it comes to my characters/stories/artwork completely attributable to me, you are welcome to reproduce or use them in whatever way you see fit. That means you can repost them wherever you like without, you can sell them on posters or t-shirts, you can remove my signature, you can claim it as your own. I don't mind, and you don't need to ask my permission. I would love to see where it ends up to see how it gets used and/or what people say, but it's not a requirement. By doing so you agree that you also have no exclusive claim to the characters/stories/artwork, etc. etc. It's public domain/creative commons licensing.

* If you've commissioned something from me, you are free to repost it as you'd like and where you'd like, with or without attribution. You are free to modify or change it, and free to have other artists redraw characters I've created for you. I assume that if you've had other characters that don't belong to you included in your artwork, you've asked their permission as well; I can't grant that.

* If you want to reuse/repost/etc. a commission, request, or depiction of another person's character that I've made, you need their permission, but not mine. If you are unsure who that other person is, or unsure if a particular work of art is a commission, ask me. I'm happy to answer. I'm nice.

I think that covers 90% of the cases. Basically, I'm very copyleft, and happy to share!

* * *

Along those lines, I have some thoughts on the way art 'should' work that put me at odds with the majority of the artistic community, I think. I am against false scarcity. I'm against scarcity at all, really - I thing working toward a post-scarcity world is an unambiguously good thing (in the classical, philosophical, ethical mandate sense of good, not just something that would be nice, dear) - but at least for the time being, scarcity is undeniable real. There is hard limit to the available real estate on earth. There is only so much aluminum accessible within our crust. A person has a non-infinite number of seconds to work with in their life. Trading for scarcity, as long as it exists, is reasonable and sensible. I have no complaints there.

What I don't like is *creating* scarcity. Once I've drawn something or written something, it can be reproduced indefinitely without diluting the original. Someone else could repost it at a thousand other sites, and it would still be available wherever I posted it. In a real sense, the artistic community is one of the few places (along with education), where post-scarcity can currently exist. I can post a story digitally that can be reproduced indefinitely, and you can repay me with a non-scarce currency: favorites, or comments, or upvotes, or whatever medium the particular site uses.

But scarcity is inextricably tied to economy. It's not a direct relationship - some people may give me scarce economic currency (real money) as incentive or reward for my time. But it's really not reliable; record companies are shooting themselves in the foot for prosecuting downloaders, but they'd be out of business if the stopped trying sell things. Is that so bad? Do we owe the record companies a living? Do we owe artists a living? Indubitably the quality of art out there is significantly higher because it's been monetized, but I don't know that it's a sufficient argument. There are a lot of artists out there who I really admire, who make a living off creating and selling their work. I mean them no disrespect, and I'm glad they're able to do what they love for a living. But, ethically, creating false scarcity to support a business model is something I have a difficult time with.

I am not, and I would never argue taking a vigilante approach and just defying laws (or even artists' wishes) about reproduction of their artwork. I'm not trying to or expecting to change anyone's mind about creating scarcity to support themselves in an artistic field. I don't think less of anyone for having a different philosophical position on economics and art than I do.

But this is one of the most compelling reasons I decided not to pursue a career as an author or artist (not that I'm saying I have the skills to be a shoe-in in either field). I've written a couple of books now, and I started shopping one of them around before I really sat down and thought about how I feel about it. For-profit publishing is definitely the best distribution model we have currently. I'd love to have my stuff read by ten-thousand people instead of a hundred or so. But I feel like participating in that economical model would just be wrong... for me.

This is the same reason I haven't made an adoptables yet. I love the idea of adoptables. And I could just do them for free, really, just to make people happy, and open up for donations if I really wanted to. But I would feel wrong about handing something I'd made over to another person exclusively - it's creating scarcity.

Commissions ride the other side of the line. Those, in my opinion, are safe. I'm not trading art for money, I'm trading my time. That is always fair - so long as I really am trading time.

* * *

Before I get too long-winded (too late!), let me move on to the final point: What's next! Just like after I finished the Monster-girls project, I have a few things lined up I want to work on for myself and my friends, and I might take a commission here or there. But there's another project I've been thinking about that been lurking in the back of my mind: Sphinxes of the world. I love sphinxes - the way the look, the way they act, the role they play in mythology. That's especially true of the traditional Phix of Oedipus fame, but all kinds of sphinxes are great. I've reduced them to a concept and an algorithm to my satisfaction, and I want to apply those to other regions of the world, and other mythological domains.

And I'd love to do this as another project like monster girls, where I work for people and take a fair, minimal amount of money to keep me on track and keep people interested. (I turn around commissions much faster than personal work on average, stay on track with the projects for much longer, and get a lot more interest in the form of comments and favorites.) But how could I do this? They'd be perfect for adoptables, but... I don't feel like that's right (see the above). I could do them as commissions, but who would want to commission characters I've come up with and designed. I don't think I could successfully describe the necessary features of a sphinx successfully enough that anyone who wanted one would get it in the way I think is 'right'.

I'm really open to suggestions here. I don't really want to abandon the idea of 'Sphinxes of the World', but I'm positive if I just do it for myself I'll end up dropping the project - maybe even before it gets started.

Huzzah! I'm so tired. :)

What's next? Sleep.

I'm sure this is in a billion places on this site already, but what the heck is this from?

http://i.imgur.com/jT4Ai5x.gif

And... errr.. does anyone have a bigger version? :)

EDIT: Nevermind - I should have guessed it was another Orangina commercial:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dAKBJYQV9U

Holy cow! It's the second Tuesday of the month and I forgot to put up my "Ask Me Anything" notice. I'm such a slacker when it comes to being a font of personal knowledge.

It's TMI Tuesday!

Ask me anything! Ask me personal questions, ask me questions about characters, ask me about drawing or writing - whatever you want! Ask me questions about astronomy, philosophy, religion, the relative sexiness of evolutionary atavisms - whatever you want! Every question will be answered! (Not every answer will contain an equal mix of truth and snark.)

Just the Party slot left! This project will be complete next week! Woohoo!

* Harpy - Sansuki
* Centaur - KlinKitty
* Slime - KibaCheetah

* Naga/Lamia - KlinKitty
* Merman - mine
* Drider - V

* Plant Boy - JohnV
* Squidboy/Octoboy - Solidness
* Demon - Cerulesta

* Incubus - Greenwing
* Movie Monster - JaabirthePython
* Zombie - mine

* Insect Boy - Cerulesta
* Dullahan - Greenwing
* Dragon/Reptile Boy - YoukaiChan

* Ghost - Greenwing
* Robot - JohnV
* Alien - Darkvyce

* Cyclops - JaabirthePython
* Satyr - mine
* Canine Boy/Werewolf - Haloronin

* Feline Boy - CrazedPhantom
* Vampire - Voreistyum
* Multiple Limbs - Siuddithsi
* Character Adaptation - mine
* Unusual/Unique Monster - Nephilim

* Gory Monster-Boy - Ka-Atis
* Sweet Monster-Boy - DarkVyce
* Second Chance slot (Naga) - Swallow-Her

* Special slot: Monster-Boy Party! - Amethystine

Sorry for the delay in updates! Getting back on track after being ill was a lot harder than I expected. I'm a little off now on my weekly groupings, but it actually works out well. I'll hit the next three next week, and save the last and most complicated one do do on its own.

Only 4 to go, and they're all booked!

* Harpy - Sansuki
* Centaur - KlinKitty
* Slime - KibaCheetah

* Naga/Lamia - KlinKitty
* Merman - mine
* Drider - V

* Plant Boy - JohnV
* Squidboy/Octoboy - Solidness
* Demon - Cerulesta

* Incubus - Greenwing
* Movie Monster - JaabirthePython
* Zombie - mine

* Insect Boy - Cerulesta
* Dullahan - Greenwing
* Dragon/Reptile Boy - YoukaiChan

* Ghost - Greenwing
* Robot - JohnV
* Alien - Darkvyce

* Cyclops - JaabirthePython
* Satyr - mine
* Canine Boy/Werewolf - Haloronin

* Feline Boy - CrazedPhantom
* Vampire - Voreistyum
* Multiple Limbs - Siuddithsi
* Character Adaptation - mine
* Unusual/Unique Monster - Nephilim

* Gory Monster-Boy - Ka-Atis
* Sweet Monster-Boy - DarkVyce
* Second Chance slot (Naga) - Swallow-Her

* Special slot: Monster-Boy Party! - Amethystine

If you see your name on this list where you don't want it, please let me know right away. If you don't see your name on the list where you do want it, also please let me know right away. :)

So the next slot that's coming up is mine (nobody has commissioned it), and it's 'Monster-boy adaptation'.

I need to take one of my characters and dress them up like a famous monster-boy - someone from a book or movie or video-game or something. I have a vague idea of a possibility, but it's not great. Anybody have some really good famous monster-boys to suggest?

For those of you who asked, thank you very much! I'm well on the road to recovery from bronchitis. I still get black-out coughs a dozen times a day or so, but no more not being able to stay awake for more than a few hours at a time, or passing out in the shower, or things like that. Unfortunately, the medicine that's helping to clear that up is making the opposite true - this week I've had insomnia, and averaged about 3.5 hours of sleep a night. For a guy like me who loves and cherishes his eight hours, that's... a change.

I wish it were productive insomnia! I've had plenty of time to give people advice on reddit and answer RPs, but solo creative work like drawing and writing has been close to impossible. Not sleeping much makes me a very reactive person, apparently - give me some stimulus to respond to, and I'll yammer at you, but otherwise I'll happily just stare blankly at a wall while the hours go by.

The medicine run is done tomorrow, so hopefully I'll be back on track soon.

Monster-boys isn't far off from complete, though, and after that, there's the next big project... but. But I can't figure out how to do it, or if I SHOULD do it. I'll post about that again (working title: Sphinxes of the world) when I can pull my thoughts together.

Sorry, folks. I have this illness I'm still really having trouble shaking which is making me take longer than I should on the Monster-Boys. Some nights I can power through it, but others my head just isn't having any of it.

I'm trying to keep up momentum, but there might be some slow-down on these last 8 slots.