It has been a long and rough few months... Classes have been going rather poorly, meaning that I might be changing career options in a hard way, I found out that my long standing job is no longer existent, I'm feeling completely drained and even though classes are over I'll still likely be putting in several hours a day for the next 2 weeks to salvage what I can.

That isn't what made me write this today though and this is partially a venting post. Being the last day of classes, I decided that I was taking a break no matter what. Of course this means me doing art to relax. I usually have a few pictures going at once to keep me motivated and I chose the one that I'm almost done, hoping to do some good work. It's a larger file, I'm running on an underpowered laptop and after a recent OS reinstall, haven't gotten around to redoing some of the drivers; so it crashed. No big deal, Krita asks if I want to recover the file and I do. Upon save, however, I click the wrong file and it was a while before I realized this.

$*@!...

It wasn't the fact that I overwrote a file. It was the fact that I overwrote THAT file. Part of my resolution on detail involved doing a massive picture. I also opted for a single layer paint and to to a crash coarse in brush technique. I was tinkering with this for the past several months and probably had over 70 hours sunk into it.

$*@!, %$&^$!!

While I was running some data recovery, I went through all five stages of grief over losing this. Luckily, that means that I'm on acceptance and think that I can redo it better than before. The recovery didn't get the file, but I'll be filtering through the files to make sure, but that still hurt.

ANYWAY, onto the news. I'll get the slightly exciting stuff out of the way first and then go into what will relate to you out there. For over a year now I've been collaborating on what will eventually become an art gallery installation. Don't ask on exactly what, I was brought on because of my brief animation experience and skills, and the stuff that I do involves making pretty pictures, not abstract and deep impressionism. The final product isn't done, but my partner needed funding and I did up a short letter explaining some stuff on Open Source, collaboration and stuff like that. The great news is that it was worked into a paper and I'm being listed as a co-author in a graduate level publication. It is probably a little premature, but I did get a text and email with some paperwork that I think I have to do, but it's a pretty big opportunity!

Now for the stuff that you might find useful. I'll be opening up for commissions in a few weeks once exams are done. I have yet to work out pricing because since my last batch, I have improve a lot. They will still be relatively well priced, but if I'm spending 30 hours, $30 doesn't quite cover it. I'll probably offer digital sketches for cheaper and will think of some other stuff that won't be as much and won't take so long. If you have any ideas, whether it's stuff I've done in the past, something I should be looking into (ie, badges) or what you would think is a reasonable price, drop me a comment or note. I'll also take this as an official call for slots, if you want to reserve a spot (without any sort of commitment) before prices are posted, just send me a note; as usual any one of my sites work.

TL;DR:

Life's been sucking a fair bit, I'm an idiot, I'm getting published and I'm open for COMMISSIONS with prices coming soon.

Hope to hear what y'all are thinking,
~CW