It has been refreshing to take some time to do other things, even if one of those "other things" was picking up more hours at work. Managed to get a little raise out of it at least!

Also I never did spend much time with Minecraft after the bees got added, I've spent the past week or so farming honeycomb so I can spam the hell out of candles once my friend updates the server to 1.17. The bees are so cute!

Thanks for all the support over the years, I'm definitely glad we bumped into each other a couple years back when I started using this site again.

For some reason, I get the feeling you read this more like an obituary than anything, but it is nice to know I had a positive influence in some way regardless. I do appreciate all of your support the past year or two, even if I don't often reply to messages in a timely manner--it's actually extremely rare to find people who are interested in anything I do that's not "fat animal in diaper" or "fat animal in underwear", much less anyone that will reply to my replies to them, or actually carry on a discussion about world-building stuff. A bit of appreciation goes a long way toward keeping the motivation alive.

Also, I appreciate the gift over on FA again! I figured I should say something as not to appear ungrateful.

I have done a little bit of doodling since, a couple of portraits and a fat wolf in underwear, but I think I'll wait until I have a few things ready to start posting again.

Perhaps I should ask, you mentioned being a non-artist, but do you have any characters of your own, or story ideas, or anything like that? I find that on sites like FA, even the non-artists have galleries with a few reuploads/reposts of art they've commissioned of their characters or fursonas, yet your profile is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, with an avatar image of what I assume is some sort of llama or alpaca and the only real activity being a favorites gallery full of my art. We talk an awful lot about my ideas but I don't know if we've ever discussed any of yours... unless you are the mysterious and secretive type, or a lurker. I doubt that you're a lurker, though, as you actually comment on things and interact and have an avatar.

I guess I did word it that way because I was, and still am, legitimately not sure if or when I plan to return to posting, and if I do, if I'll be maintaining that sort of activity level.

As for how I managed it, I think I mentioned this somewhere before, but basically I was super depressed in late 2014 and went radio silent online for a few weeks, and did a bunch of drawing in that time. Once I was ready to return to DeviantArt I decided against dumping everything at once since a "dump" is a great way to overwhelm watchers and have them just hit their "remove all" button, and went instead with one of the only worthwhile features of their premium membership, their scheduled submissions, to post one item a day. (A year or two ago, I discovered Postybirb, a third-party program that lets you upload to multiple sites and even schedule submissions, rendering DA's "Core Membership" utterly worthless while also making it easy to run 3 art site galleries simultaneously, that's how I typically manage the precision and consistency in my post timing, descriptions, tagging etc.)

Ever since, my output pretty much kept pace with my posting schedule and there was usually a backlog of at least 10 pieces at any given time so if I just had a bad day or week nobody would even know.

The daily posting was self-imposed and that's something I really had to come to terms with--even though I knew I was under no real obligation to generate and post content for daily activity, I'm not monetized in any way outside of a donation widget on FA that's the equivalent of a tip jar and the occasional commission so there's no financial incentive, and I'm not concerned with popularity and algorithms and such to the point where I need to maintain constant presence and relevance (if I were I'd be posting to Instagram and Twitter and other narcissism-based sites rather than art sites), I guess I still felt obligated for some reason.

Oh, yeah, I remember that windmill and our discussion of it in the past, I think I activated my "world-building" powers to justify some of the decisions made in-universe as matters of practicality and circumstance. That may just be the most suitable location in the region even if it's far from ideal, as it seems the entire area is very hilly and this might be the only remotely practical place to set it up, and the construction might be limited by the materials available to the locals, even if it might just come down to aesthetics more than any sort of world-building, storytelling, canon, etc.
I do like the hoverbike quite a bit, though. Practical, and just plausible enough. Reminds me of that time I drew Sawyer (as an adult) riding in what was clearly an old junk car but retrofitted to be a hovercar by the addition of some thrusters and repulsorlift tech.

As for the line I used as a description for the art of Apollyon, that's a verse from Year Zero by Ghost BC. A very fun song to have blasting in your car when you pull into Walmart in the summer, as the chorus is literally "HAIL SATAN, ARCHANGELO! HAIL SATAN, WELCOME YEAR ZERO!".

It does sound like you have a lot of ideas and you'd be an excellent collaborator. That whole "not draw to a standard that conveys what's in my head" thing gets to a lot of creatives, myself included. The only advice I can really offer there is to try. Design a building or a fantasy/sci-fi (yet firmly rooted in real engineering) vehicle or building or tool and see what you can come up with. I would also be interested in hearing some of your ideas for characters sometime as well. I get the feeling I need to design some sort of Space Alpaca engineer character for you sometime though, based on what we've discussed so far and what I've managed to figure out from chatting with you I get the feeling I could come up with something suitable--a slightly older and experienced character, perhaps a bit on the chubbier side, probably wearing some sort of mechanic's jumpsuit and a tool belt. The type that would fit in well with my other "space service station" sorts like Ysla, Kip, and Domec.

Maybe I should design this regardless, sometime--if you like it, I'd be happy to gift you the design, and if not, it would still be a decent new character/species design to add to the galaxy.

I guess I should also ask, if you were to commission art, what would you commission? Back on the subject of not knowing much about your own ideas, most of those with galleries full of reposted art have at least come up with a character to commission art of (and in most cases said character is usually depicted engaging in their creator's fetish exclusively unless it's a reference sheet for other fetish artists to work from). In the past, I have been commissioned to draw characters, help visualize an idea someone has had, and even been commissioned to draw my own characters in situations that interested the client on occasion. Would you (hypothetically) be one to throw money at me to draw pin-up pics of Angelo, or do you have your own ideas and characters that have yet to be revealed to the world?

First, the important stuff--I'm sorry to hear you had a health scare there. I'm not sure what to say to that, as it sounds like you already got it all sorted out and things are going well with that, or at least well enough to be on some backwater art site telling some guy that draws fat cartoon animals in underwear and/or diapers about it.

I think "art block" and "reply block" come from the same sort of lack of motivation and inspiration, as I've noticed for me they really go hand-in-hand. I tend to let replying sit until I have a day off or enough free time to really give a good response where it's deserved, but lately I've noticed my disinterest in art has extended to a disinterest in replying to messages as well.

You have some interesting ideas there, I can definitely see it. I get the idea that he'd be someone that had a good-paying job and managed to retire quite early, and works mostly to have something to do or to spend some time out of the house and in an environment he likes. Unfortunately, I don't think Buck or Angelo would spend much time working in any clubs--I see Buck eventually working at some sort of bar, gas station, convenience store, or small restaurant off a highway in the wooded countryside, and Angelo has dreams of opening his own restaurant somewhere in town. That's not to rule out that either of them might have a stint at whatever this world's equivalent of a Chippendale's is at some point, of course...

This is also the first time I think I've ever seen you mention Lola, actually. This must be based on someone you know. Now that I think about it, I don't know what to call you or any potential character of yours, either. We really should discuss designing a character for you a bit more as well, you've already secretly stuck enough money in my tip jar now and then for me to doodle something for you at least.
Given your fascination with trying to figure out the engineering principles behind some of my alien and sci-fi tech, and the fact that I don't think I canonically have any llama/alpaca type characters anywhere, I had figured something a bit more "alien" might have worked. Retired engineer from some quiet world that winds up working in some space station with the likes of Ysla and Kip, a guy that despite being a bit on the older side just seems to be able to figure out the tech of various races and factions, and might even be the only guy there with any idea how to work on exotic craft like ancient Luciferian gunships that are older than a good percentage of the existing civilizations in this part of space. Probably wouldn't ever meet Buck or Angelo at some station thousands of light-years away from their homeworld, but he'd probably run into the likes of Domec, Markeb, and Djamil on occasion.

It sounds like what you were imagining is a bit more down to Earth though. Nothing wrong with that.I could even split the difference and design an alien alpaca and have him leading a totally normal terrestrial life, as alien races settling on other worlds is a fairly common theme in-universe. My equivalent/parallel Earth, called Demeter, already hosts a small but significant population of offworld species that just sorta blend in with all the other anthropomorphic critters around. Would anybody suspect that the alpaca handyman is secretly trying to rebuild an old Lightbearer Dominion transport shuttle or Cygnian Federation Vega V-140 out in the big old barn in his backyard, scouring junkyards and flea markets in hopes of finding a working hypermatter reactor control module or some plasma conduits?

Maybe we should move to this site's notes/private messages to discuss things more sometime, not that I mind dumping world-building and brainstorming in public of course. I just worry that we might get into things that are a bit too private, or potentially spoilers, to discuss out in the open--or that the most-commented-on thing in Weasyl history will just be us rambling about pudgy cartoon animals with big butts and side jobs in a journal about me taking a break from posting!

Yeah, Year Zero is a banger. I get serious "Disney Villain Musical Number" vibes from it.