Character designs for a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fanfic I wrote a few years back and will probably put on the blog once I'm done putting up all my Neopets stuff. It's the story of how a peculiar unicorn saved her small kingdom with the power of happiness, and fought for everyone's right to be happy and hope for a bright future. Because it takes place several centuries before the show, in a made-up region of Equestria, I got to create a lot of pony OCs and even a villainous creature, so it was a lot of fun. 

Borealis creates shimmering aurorae in the sky, although she also has a more practical job as leader of a group of exiled ponies who live in the woods. She has given up on the idea of ever being able to return to her home--can anypony convince her otherwise?

Birthday Bash is implied to be a distant ancestor of Pinkie Pie. He's exceptionally good at remembering absolutely everypony's birthday--and throwing them a fantastic party to celebrate.

Sundance and Moondog, pegasus siblings, create striking atmospheric phenomena around the sun and moon, respectively. They're not sure why that got them exiled, because it doesn't actually do anything important, it's just nice to look at. Curious.

Scooper Duper makes ice cream and has a real talent for creating new delicious flavors. He's got the color scheme of mint chocolate chip, my favorite ice cream flavor.

Queen Tanith is a lamia tyrant who has ruled over the kingdom of Daybreak for the past few centuries, working its ponies hard in dim factories to provide goods for other areas outside of Princess Celestia's jurisdiction. Anypony who tries to resist is promptly turned to stone by Tanith or her army of shadow serpents. Nopony knows why Celestia hasn't come to help them yet, but just about everypony has given up hope--except for Radiant Dawn, a unicorn schoolteacher who tries hard to keep her students hopeful and courageous despite the principal's criticism. Hopefully that won't land her in trouble one of these days... (ominous foreshadowing)

More sketches!

Prehistoric kitties, Smilodon and a cave lion:

Tufaimon, a Digimon I made up for a roleplay with a friend. She's a dragon goddess who rules over the earth Digimon.

Random character design.

Concept sketch for the  EX-β006 Karkadann from Blue Diver!

Blue Diver is still at the editor's, so I'm taking the opportunity to brush up on my art skills. I've been watching technical tutorials on YouTube and following along... with my own subject matter, of course. :) This sketch came about while watching a tutorial by vehicle designer Dwayne Vance.

The Karkadann is an experimental PT model, its primary weapon being a pair of arm-mounted laser ribbons for mid-range combat. Its computer is also equipped with sophisticated combat algorithms developed by a martial artist. As a result, the Karkadann is a highly technical PT that most Divers have difficulty handling--but Auva, a trained martial artist and test pilot hopeful who wants to make a living out of flying innovative vehicles, takes quickly to the Karkadann. It's a speedy, lightweight unit that also packs a powerful punch, with a tradeoff in the defense department.

Expression studies for Celice and Isengrim from my Neopets cast.

 

More doodles, including some Pokemon stuff.

More paleoarts! I can't get over how adorable Lystrosaurus is.

10 Myths About Being an Author I'd Like to Bust

When it comes to my authorial career (or lack thereof), this past year has been a tremendous learning experience. I'm sorry to say it's largely been an experience in finding out what doesn't work. But, like any good scientist*, I was open to possibilities and decided I would at least try some things to see if they made any positive difference. The lack of desired results was a highly informative result in itself. I can now definitively say I know what I don't want to do as an author, and I can also pass this information along to other authors, indie and otherwise, to prevent them from learning certain things the hard way.

*I am not a professional scientist, just a huge nerd.

You can read my series of long-winded essays over this past year to get a feel for what I've been trying to figure out and the sorts of trouble I got myself into. Suffice to say here that trying to follow "advice", "best practices", etc. for authors, which I gleaned from books, online articles, and personal correspondence with other well-meaning authors, not only did not get me an increase in sales, but plunged me into a bout of horrendous stress-related health issues. My life lacked joy and fulfillment, ironically as I was striving to find joy and fulfillment in my work. It felt like the harder I tried to get my career to where I thought it should be in order to have a meaningful life, the worse things got and the more meaningless my life felt.

Finally I came to the point where I had to admit to myself that all of this just was not working at all. I unloaded 95% of what I had accumulated in my fruitless quest to advance my career, and immediately found myself happier and less stressed. And I vowed to do things as a writer my way and listen to what God and my body were telling me, rather than listen to a million voices on the Internet who don't know me, don't particularly care about my overall well-being, and are imperfect humans who can just be plain incorrect.

As a disclaimer--if you actually enjoy doing any of the below-mentioned items, and/or find that they are really helping you in what you want out of your career, that's awesome. I'm really happy for you. But these are all things that just gave me an immense amount of stress and health issues, so I firmly believe they are not a "must" for every author, and do not even guarantee more readers/sales/whatever. Every author, every artist reserves the right to create and share their work in a way that is healthy for them. It's not worth making more money off your work if most of those funds are going toward medical bills for problems caused by overstress in the pursuit of making more money. Make sense?

Okay, let's dive on in.