Happy Holidays everyone! I hope the year treated you well and next one is better.

MWAH °3° ~<3

I'm vaguely aware that the site and its leadership have been involved on multiple scandals that I know no actual details about and many people don't exactly approve of them and their choices through the years; however, it's undeniable that they've managed to keep this place running and be one of the top sites for furry artwork to this day.

While the only interaction I've had with Dragoneer is their one "shiny" they left on my page, and I don't know the person at all, I've spent over a decade being active in the site and it saddens me deeply to learn of their passing. My chest feels heavy.

Hope we get to learn more of the context in the following days.

My sincere condolences to any and all family and friends who might end up reading this.

I've been streaming on Twitch for about a year now without making much of a fuzz about it anywhere other than my Discord, but now I'm finally getting a bit more confident about speaking in front of people, so I might post an occasional notification here, maybe once a week to not spam too much. I stream games and artwork.

SO! This Friday Jan 26th I want to do a special thing where I browse through your 'sonas and rate them. If you want me to rate yours, here's the form https://forms.gle/DRggawt2tbWbGV5p7 There will be criticism, but it'll be in a positive constructive manner all for good fun. You don't need to be there in the livestream, I'll save the VOD and put it on Youtube for people to watch any time.

If it gets cancelled for low participation or something, I'll post a lil update journal about it 👍

\o/ Let's go!

- Return to streaming.

I used to stream regularly a few years ago, it help me keep productive and avoid procrastination. I faded out of it for a combination of problems, the main one was that my internet connection became extremely unreliable, disconnecting every 5 minutes, speed going down to a tiny fraction of what I was paying for in an attempt to keep a connection, I spent a whole year complaining to get them to fix it and they never did. Recently a new company entered the area and I instantly switched to them, so we good on that front. Other reason I stopped streaming was depression from failed relationships that gave me a strong hit on my confidence, making me stay hidden in a box, but now I'm mostly past that, doing well emotionally to dare put myself in front of people again.


- More YCHs.

I want to draw things that I want to see, but I need money for food and such of course, so that means drawing what other people wants to see instead. The best middle ground are Your Character Here pieces, where I come up with a hot or fun idea and the people who like it get their characters in that drawing. I want to do more of that.


- Price update.

For regular commissions I'll be increasing my price list a little bit higher. Last update was early 2021.


- YCH/Adopt Base.

I've been working a little on a wide range character creation base, it's not ready to come out yet though. I have a male and a female fox base up for sale already, but this new one I'm preparing will cover a bunch of species with a lot of options but it'll be less detailed so all parts are compatible and such. This should come out during 2023 for sure.


- Patreon comics.

Hybrid Pride has hit a bit of a hiatus as my productivity dropped, while I've focused my remaining energy in fulfilling the monthly sketches for the highest tier and the monthly patreon thang piece, only skipping a few of the monthly pieces to work on the new base instead which will be available for free to patreons. There are three more Hybrid Pride pages up only on Patreon with one more almost ready to go up, but I have neglected posting them publicly here or on twitter because of how slow they are coming out. I expect that with the return to streaming I will be able to spend more hours on those as well to get them rolling out again and get to the damn sex parts already haha.


- Freebie.

I try to do a minimum of one public freebie every year, keep an eye out through the first few months of 2023 for a free raffle or something in my journals or submissions. Maybe follow my twitter accounts too in case I hold the giveaway there and forget to post about it in furaffinity, links in header and footer ;D

---

Let's see how it goes. What are your plans for 2023, frens?

Hi frens!

Joining the itch.io Winter Sale with a 34% discount (40% on bundle) on my foxy bases for adoptables/ref-sheet until January 1st.

https://itch.io/s/86253/itchio-winter-sale

Thank you everyone for supporting what I do, for commissioning me, supporting my Patreon, giving me tips, buying t-shirts, commenting, faving, sharing my art around with friends, and for simply coming to take a peek at my drawings through 2022. Thanks all of you for helping me grow! Happy Holidays everyone, see you in 2023 \o/

Lemme hear how you have been, frens. Tell me about your 2022.

Show a link!

SFW or NSFW 👍

Heyo! How you doing?

I separated my safe and lewd content in twitter to have one safe account to show people who get a little curious about what I do but I don't want to run them over with the craziest lewds by accident xD

https://twitter.com/LeongonLewds <- Can I get some follows there? Pretty pleeeeease.

The lewd account will have the NSFW art exclusively, with no opinions or shitposts. ;D Thank you in advance for the support, frens!

I was looking at this thing about how just having 50 viewers on your twitch stream puts you on the top 1% already. To me that makes sense since streaming is a competitive situation, you have to fight for peoples eyes live, so it makes sense that most of the eyes are onto the same few who are online at the same time.

But that gets me thinking about how that 1% would look on a site like this, where you can see and interact with a lot of people one after another and not have to chose one over the other.

Anyone knows what would be more or less the numbers for the 1% here? Maybe a number on average views per submission, or amount of watchers? 🤔 I'm not even sure if it's possible to make a reliable calculation based on what info FA makes available at the bottom or on searches.

From just my perception I get the feeling that the 1% here would be the ones with 15k+ watchers, but that's pretty much just a baseless guesstimation.

Art related or otherwise.

I have answers! (Not necessarily correct ones though :D)

If you're considering buying one to see if you can get into the hobby of digital illustration... Get the cheapest non-Wacom you can find, like a Genius MousePen.

It's impossible to grow too big for it, I promise you. Your skill is totally independent of the quality of the tablet and you can grow your skill on the cheapest tablet for years until you decide that investing on a professional tablet is worth it because is something that you're not likely to stop doing anymore.

A better/bigger tablet will only make things marginally easier, with a few less eraser strokes or undoes, better build quality to last for many years, and a screen tablet can even be worse for you depending on what you are exactly doing since with it your hand will be in the way.


So, yeah, get the cheapest and test yourself for how much you like digital art, keep using it until it breaks or until it turns into your stable hobby or profession. The one thing that makes your art quality is between your ears. And if you try this and find out it's not your thing... You've only spent 10 bucks on it. ✌😁

It's June 18th. 🎉 Happy birfday to me! 🥳🎂

Next one I hit 40... 👴 Old lion.

And CLOSED


Gonna draw a sexy pokewaifu for this Monthly Patreon Thang™, I'm taking suggestions on my twitter for which mon to do. I'll grab the most suggested ones and ask my patreons to pick one in a few days :D Please give me some suggestions :D

https://twitter.com/LeongonArts/sta.....58435025805315
https://twitter.com/LeongonArts/sta.....58435025805315
https://twitter.com/LeongonArts/sta.....58435025805315

I feel like I should have done something for this day, a sweet couples ych or a freebie or something with my own characters. But it's hard to look forward to it or most holidays when alone and bitter with no local friends or lovers, lol.

But hey! To all of you out there in a relationship, have a wonderful day! And those who are alone like me, try to love yourself a little today, give yourself a present.

Happy Valentines! ~<3

I wonder how many in the fandom, or at least people watching me, are antivaxxers and/or flatearthers... Or conspiracy theorists in general.

I get the feeling that most believe in science around here, but there has to be a bunch of them too, same like there has to be a good chunk of Trump supporters even if the general feel of the fandom is that we are against him.

I'm curious. 🤔

Conversation is welcomed, just be gentle about any comments for or against these ideas. Let's be nice to each other even if we disagree on shit. Remember the best part about the furry comunity is how everyone is welcomed with their different kinks and ideas.

Sleep.

It's been know for centuries that it's sleep what helps with the creative process and improvement of skills during a period of high demand for focus.

When with your current skill you're at a frustrating roadblock repeatedly failing to make it work the way you want it, and you absolutely want to make it work, taking a nap allows your brain to enter its rewiring process for efficiency. It cleans waste and creates new neural pathways to facilitate the result you were focused on achieving, be it writting, playing a melody, drawing... anything creative, and once you wake up you will find it slightly easier to make it work, and even wake up with the answers after having dreamed them. If you can't remember your dreams and you're trying to come up with something on the imaginative and story-driven aspect of creativity instead of having the need for laying down things physically, an option is to sit down and try to fall asleep while holding a spoon in your hand, so when you fall asleep the spoon hitting the floor wakes you up straight from the highly creative rewiring of your brain and the new ideas are fresh in your mind, this works great for writing stories, lyrics, comedy.

But yeah, in short, if you're stuck at a roadblock, an option besides forcing yourself to push through is to step back and nap, letting your brain do its thing to enhance your performance for that specific task you were bashing your head against.

This works when you're totally absorbed by the task you're trying to achieve, so if it's about something you don't really want to do, but have to, I don't know if it does work.

I can tell from personal experience that it works to get over roadblocks in artwork techniques, writting stories, writting code. But again, I had breakthroughs with this only when I was deeply absorbed by that activity all day.

EDIT: We are going with Roxy, she got most mentions \o/

Taking a lil break this last week of the year, but I still want to draw something fanart for funsies soo...

I'll ask my discord and twitter for other aspects of the drawing, but you here pick the character :D

So, gimme suggestions, I'll do one from among the most mentioned.

\o/ Go go go!

Let's share some horror stories. But keep the artist anonymous as per the 2.4 harassment CoC rule of this site.

I don't commission other artists but I have a few horror stories related to trades and collabs. If the artsts in question recognize the events, please don't take it as an attack. For me it's water under the bridge and I hold no grudges at this point, I'm just sharing my stories because I want to hear some from others. Besides I have failed people several times too on the personal side, I suck at building relationships, I actually struggle with a strong fear of people in real life.

Here we go \o/

1.

Alright, one was a trade with an artist I liked a lot both in style and personality. The trade was just one character sketch and their character was pretty cool so I did my sketch and gave it to them... they never did mine.

Soon after that I started realizing that artist had terrible ethics, keeping long commission lists, making people wait forever, always taking more commissions despite that long list, etc. So I walked away. I stopped watching them. I don't know what is of them now, they were kinda popular at the time this happened having over 5k watchers. Hope they cleaned their game and are being more professional.

2.

Another one is this one artist with whom I agreed to make a comic collab. I adjusted my schedule to make room to work on it after we decided the involved characters, one was going to be one of mine, and... They never gave me the references for their character.

They did give me a very simple chibi ref, so I had "some" idea of what I was working with, but I asked for a better description of their details, size, body build, etc. Even if was just text. I asked a few times, through several months. Never got the details. They were managing the script. It never got handed to me so I could start sketching up the pages.

Then one day I mentioned that my character I purposedly draw to look more like a kobold than a dragon because I like to get that character triggered when others think is not a dragon. Then the artist proceeded to discard my character from the project because they wanted a dragon, not a kobold. Like they just read what they want to read instead of what I was telling them.

So after that I dropped off the project for my whole schedule and time being messed with. A year passed, I talked with them again, we decided to give another try at working together on something, same thing happened, nothing progressed from their side.

I liked this person. To a large degree I empathize with them and their personality and hardships. They are a very jaded person, having grown through a very complicated environment full of prejudice and injustice. But I gave up on trying to work with them or befriend them, they failed me at every turn.


How about you guys? Do you have some financial or personal horror stories with artists? Share some, just remember to keep them anonymous.

Hola! Reminder that I'm offering these two bases that you can use to make character designs, and sell adoptables and ref-sheets. Check em out \o/ https://leongon.itch.io/

º3º ~<3 mwak!

River, the dog that Fallout 4's Dogmeat was modeled after, passed away.

I sunk so many hours in that game that finding this out actually broke my heart. I'm sure she was the goodest girl. Rest in peace.

Hola! Maybe I'll make this into a visual guide sometime but for now let's just discuss what makes a good reference sheet for your character, and what generic tropes should you try to avoid when you get your next character's reference sheet.

One of the biggest issues that are generalized around the fandom is when people shade their ref sheet. It makes sense from the client side to have the character looking their best in every part of the ref sheet, but for artists shading can get in the way of clearly understanding the tones and patterns of your character. "Is that a different color fur, or is just the shading?" So... don't. At least the front/side/back poses should be always flat color, and any fully rendered artwork should be extra, on the side. The point of the ref should be to help the different artists make a consistent rendition of your character first and foremost, of course unless the goal of your character sheet is for a different use other than commissioning artists.

If you have tattooes or markings that should be always done the same way, and you wouldn't be happy enough with aproximations, you should add the tattoo/marking in a space that makes it easy to copy and morph. The two best ways would be to put it over a fully white or fully black background, or even better have it as a .png with transparent background in a separate file to offer to the artist. Many artists will chose to draw it themselves for style reasons, but having your marking as a layer that they can wrap around the correct area will make it so much easier as it'll work as having a sketch to draw the final thing over.

Make sure the palm, nails, pupil, teeth and feet are clearly visible at least in one of the poses. Asking whether the character has claws, their color, if has paw pads, if is digitigrade or plantigrade, if has fangs... it wastes time, and some artists won't bother to ask at all and just will default to what is easier or what is they personally like or are more comfortable with. Try to make sure it's all clear in your ref.

Make sure to include height, genital size/sexual preferences and personality. Height is important when your character is interacting with others or objects. Naughty bits and sexuality for obvious reasons... need to know how big things are and into who's holes they like to put them. And personality is to draw your character behaving and reacting appropiately to what's happening to them, you don't want to give artistic freedom to your artist to then get your scary manly dominant wolf looking all subby and cute by accident.

Avoid information that is irrelevant for the artist. The important info can easily get overlooked if it's presented among a bunch of other data. At least make a separate section for the longer backstory and info the artist doesn't need. Alternatively you could get an alternative ref sheet version... One that is for artists with the aforementioned flat colored poses, tattoos for copy and only relevant text, and other for showing to friends with shaded poses, longer backstory and such.

If you don't have a proper reference sheet yet, but you have several separate drawings, avoid showing the artist the bunch of them. They usually have inconsistencies from one to the next, making the artist have to mix and match and pick what one detail to believe from each or, again, stop drawing and wait for your response on if your char is bulky like in exibit A or more thin like in exibit B. So, pick the one you like most, and show only that one to the artist. Show another only if the first didn't show something important that only the second shows, but yeah, don't let the artist choose among a list of several pics, you choose the one you like the best.

---

That's all I can think off the top of my head. Please don't take it personal if you do any of those things :D Just try to consider these the next time you're about to commission a character ref.

Let me know what you think. If you have any other suggestions for better reference sheets share away. Let's make it a conversation \o/

Check the poll:
https://twitter.com/LeongonArts/sta.....98152336150537

I'm curious about how my watchers/followers/friends feel about this. Vote plz? :D?

Many artists react very aggressively when receiving feedback, which makes a lot of people who has interesting valid constructive criticism hold back from sharing it altogether to avoid annoying the artists they like. I wish I could have more honest feedback from people, so far I can only find it on reuploads of my work on other sites where the commenters don't expect I would read it.

So, if you are like me and appreciate constructive criticism and want ideas to try on your artwork, leave a comment and I'll take a looksie and tell you what I think you should try to do to improve in general or fix your specific problem. I've been doing this for over 10 years now, and have picked up a lot of tip&tricks that I can share.

Winner is number 55 out of 60.

Congrats to  brodyoda

Thanks everyone for participating and helping me grow. I hope you stay and enjoy my gallery and future uploads. Have a nice day \o/

... who chose to click my +watch button this year, who likes and comments on my uploads, who is supporting me or has supported me on Patreon, who has commissioned me, specially those who added an extra tip and those who patiently waited a couple months longer than supposed to as I got sick or lazy at times.

Given the pandemy and social issues plaguing the world, I can say I'm quite happy with what I got this year. It could have gone much much worse, and it didn't... most things worked out alright for me and I'm very grateful to everyone who has added a little or a lot to make it so.

Thanks everybody. Enjoy the holidays. And let's hope next year is a good one for all of you!