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Taeryne

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So Magic the Gathering is 30 years old this year and they have released a number of celebration products featuring highlights of each year... only to be met with unrestrained backlash from the community repeatedly. Now I don't disagree that many of these products are rather poorly executed, but I want some more positivity about what really is a monumental moment in gaming.


So as my own personal tribute to this I will be painting (at least) 30 cards with personalized arts. I will select a card from each year that was both iconic to story or tournament play and I find interesting to redesign or personally still play.


For each card I must concept at least 3 art variations before painting. Each selected concept will get both a full watercolor test run and final acrylic card painting. I will try to complete this project before the year's end, which will be at least one card every 2 weeks.


Wish me luck!


Progress:

1993 - Black Lotus

1994 - Ball Lightning

1995 -

1996 -

1997 -

1998 -

1999 -

2000 -

2001 -

2002 -

2003 -

2004 -

2005 -

2006 -

2007 -

2008 -

2009 -

2010 -

2011 -

2012 -

2013 -

2014 -

2015 -

2016 -

2017 -

2018 -

2019 -

2020 -

2021 -

2022 -

2023 -

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Yay another successful year of Inktober!


2020 has been a rough year for most and thoroughly demoralizing in the art department. I wanted a theme to match the year, but not just draw depressing things. I don't think I could make it through the month if I did. I got to babysit my younger sister's (black) cat Luna last month and saw another deviant post their 100 cats project and my brain just sparked at the idea of drawing black cats as heralds of misfortune.


This was really fun from start to finish. Beginning with the hunt for all the black cats. I had initially sat down and tried to come up with the list from memory only, but only came up with about 15 characters. I quickly turned to friends' suggestions which only added about 5 more to the list that I did not have already. SO of course I then caved and consulted internet-chan and wow did the list explode. I was pretty pleased to get to pick and cut cats instead of having not enough, but also felt bad about some who did not make the final cut (particularly Le Chat Noir). For anyone who wants to do their own Black Cat list here is a mention to all the cats I did not use:


Arthur (Code Geass)

Babu (Sankarea)

Berlioz (Aristocats)

Bewitching Nidalee (LoL)

Binx (Hocus Pocus)

Charlie (Coraline)

Daniel (Shinigami no Ballad)

Exploding Kittens (The Oatmeal)

Iori (School Rumble)

Kaya (ghost Stories)

Kuro (Blue Excorcist)

Le Chat Noir (Rodolphe Salis)

Litten (Pokemon)

Mao (Darker then Black)

Mao (Flowering Heart)

Morgana (Persona 5)

Neo Spacian Dark Panther (Yugioh)

Noir (Nyan Koi!)

Panthero (Thundercats)

Sakamoto (Nichihou)

Scratch (Relic Knights)

Sylvester (Loony Toons)

Tac Nayn (Nyan Cat)

Takkun (FLCL)


I also had a lot of fun looking up the history of each cat while hunting their ages for ordering. Still more fun was researching references for the older ones that have had many iterations over the years. Trying to adapt my limited drawing capacity to all the different art styles was a welcome challenge. Overall an enjoyable project.


I would like to take a minute to vent about the whole "Inktober" now being a controlled concept. Inktober was invented as an artist daily creative exercise. Anyone can pick a month, make a list of prompts, use an ink medium and share everyday. Whoever thought they could copyright that, declare that everyone follow their prompts, only post on their site and otherwise not allowed to use the work Inktober is insane. I am NOT ok with that and will not cede to that ridiculous effort at controlling artists and their art.


Anyway, Happy Halloween to everyone. I'm gonna enjoy discount candy day tomorrow.

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I’m sorry in advance for this long rant. I just needed to get this all out of me.

**EDIT** this is now a living post that I'm going to keep adding to as things come up**


I've been posting on DA for 14 years (and browsing for a few additional years before), since the era of 20 some odd middle grays and we have come a long way. Lot's of great new features have been added, things have been "cleaned up" to be more understandable and thus accessible. DA (for me) is about sharing my art easily. What I liked about DA is that it was easy to use and had clean/simple (and not flashy/messy) visual layouts. It also has a huge community which gives me lots of art to discover as well!


So I'm not so much on the "can we please not have eclipse" side, but the "please make it better". In no particular order I’m going to address a mess of things so I can self-analyze how much of it is actually bad vs acceptable growing pains I’m needlessly whining about.


-Can we take an objective look at what DA is trying to do and why?

Then what about it is upsetting me (and/or everyone) so much?


+DA (I think) wants a fresher look. These shades of grayish-green are old and bland. Black is Bold and Contrasting!

Actually, studies have proven that it is easier on our eyes to read white off black and the only reason we chose to keep putting darks on lights is due to our habitude to ink on traditional paper, but whatever. Also black is marginally less stressful on the long-term life of your screens, but also who cares?

What I care about is ease of posting my art and finding the art I want to look at. Does having a newer/edgier looking site change either of those things. Nope.


-DA (I think) wanted to clean up the top bar and add commonly accessed things to it.

DA name and Home button do the same thing while being right beside each other. Although I think you can set your home to other things like Watch which is also right beside the home button. You can access your Watch and Deviants You Watch by buttons right below each other. Actually, I really don’t get why they would separate the Watch, Messages and Notifications, as well as removing that dropdown that tells you how many of each you have. I don’t know the traffic numbers on the DA Shop but I feel like anything that makes them money should not be hidden in a dropdown More Tab. I think the Commissions tab was new but if I wanted a commission, I don’t think I would find it in that mess, it desperately needed a sort or search function (but it seems to be gone now so whatever). Also I’m not sure how it tracks you and what it’s calibration time is, but the Recommended For You has yet to show me something I actually want to click on that I have not already seen.


+You know what would be practical? Top bar menus being accessible without having to scroll all the way back to the top of the page (thus losing my place).

Well they half got it. As you scroll down the home page or your watch list it’s still there. When you view an artist’s page or gallery it disappears and is replaced by another bar specific to that user. It’s not perfect but it is still kind of an upgrade.


-DA seems to believe “Banner images are bright and fun so everyone should have them!"

A lot of other sites make a great first impression with nice big banners. However those banners are custom made to fit their sites needs. A lot of us don't have a good banner image already (not big enough or good framing) and don't particularly want to have to make one. The auto resizing is poor too and if your image is too small or big it pixilizes like hell. So we are stuck with our page's first big impression looking worse than before. ALSO banner images are not scrolling cleanly, jitter a lot (especially behind any galleries) and it just looks completely buggy.

**May 28** Banners are greatly shrunk down now to be less stupid.


+Everyone loves their icons so let’s make them bigger!

Times have progressed from the days of 30x30pixil icons. I remember fussing over perfectly downsizing an icon image so it could be accepted for upload. DA definitely made a few people happy with bigger and easier icon upload. However they still suffer from massive pixilation issues. That could probably be solved by people just actually making a new icon. It’s a relatively small amount of work (compared to the banner) for a small but noticeable upgrade. Acceptable trade-off.


-On the topic of bigger is better, how about we make all pictures display full screen?

I make and post images at certain sizes (as do a lot of other artists). This new scale to height/width of your screen thing is just frustrating, cause it pixilates everything I post or look at. I’m not fond of having to scroll to the X in the corner to get back to the deviation (I keep hitting my back key) but I guess I’ll get used to it eventually. I really wish they made it 1st click: height view, 2nd click: width view, third click: return to deviation page (instead of toggle). Bonus points if they could correctly insert the proper sized file it its relative order.

Also why have a more button for only one additional option (Report)

Also how do I disable DA from posting all my phone and photo settings that take up more page than my comments?

**May22update** +Images seem to no longer be oversizing and now display at intended resolution. They can be closed by clicking anywhere off image instead of the corner X only (why have the X at all at this point?) Also posts are showing less unwanted extra info.


-People are here to view art. Let’s make that easier. How can we make browsing your messages, watch posts and comments/favs cleaner?

I already mentioned the no watch/message/notification numbers anymore, but really they don't matter.

The side-scroll buttons are cute in concept but buggy still. They skip messages sometimes (possibly stacked ones?) and jump artists randomly occasionally.

Where is my remove from messages/watch button?! Now we need to go back to watch page and manually X all of them? Initially I was annoyed that the X was in the top left instead of the traditional right corner, however there is a practical reason for that: due to the larger and now scaling with ratio thumbnails (instead of the old standardized size ones) having the X in the left means it will remain in the same location as you clear watches… except it doesn’t if you need to keep one image in a row because it constantly tries to reside around the one image you didn’t clear… The group by artist stacks just slow down browsing IMO, but I’m sure some people might like the extra sorting. Did you really need an Edit Watch on every watch? Remove all from artist when not stacked, why even? And Stop Watching Artist is apparently a button you also readily need.

**May 28** if you view your watch in ALL mode it squares everything in much more practical way!

-The new notification dropdown is entirely unnecessary and the new notification page is a disgrace of design that looks like it was made by a first-year graphic student. Other than showing you what comment people are responding to this was all downgrade.

-Messages now has a white background with mid to light grays and it is visually jarring, both for not matching the rest of the site and gray on white being more stressful on the eyes. It’s minimalistic look just feels lazy/incomplete.


-Catagories are old-minded and restricted. Hashtags are so last year. Know what’s hot? TOPICS!

Please just call things what they are. Also, I for one like to browse by those (previously) mandatory categories. I liked that when you uploaded it asked for a category and had descriptions and examples of all types to help you out. Now I need to type all those into everything I post myself or be like the people who don’t tag anything (both of which are annoying).

+On the plus side we finally got a feature I’ve wanted forever: Muted tags! (Tags? Not Topics? Come on DA a little consistency please.) It was rather terrifying to discover how many ways/words you can tag my test target for the new system. Sadly the filters only apply to topics entered so the system is entirely dependent on artist properly tagging everything themselves. Also notable that it does not filter titles. Overall, it is a still a very welcome feature.


-DA thought the old site was chunky and a new interface could speed up the site.

Nope, site is just heavier since everything is just bigger and has slower load time now. I can no longer stand DA on my phone. I can’t browse DA on my laptop while someone else in the house tries to play LoL without them suffering lag.

I would also like to vent about the terrible new visual interface (in)consistency. I was a fan of standardized thumbnails (way back when, like current-old DA watches appear) because it is visually clean, but I get they want to show more art. However comics (or anything vertical) are getting shrunk to nothing while wide pieces get nearly half a row of display space and it feels entirely disproportionate. This is made even more visually obvious because of the reduced space between preview images as well as the removal of the drop-shadow, overall making browsing feel more cluttered/messy/stressful on my eyes to try and spot things.


-All artists need portfolios!

If you want a career in art, then probably. If you’re not looking to make a profession of it, then no, but I guess it won’t hurt to have one ready, right? Actually very wrong, a half-assed or out of date portfolio can be devastating for you, but we’re not getting into that now. Professionals looking to post portfolios will use a more serious art site, not DA. DA is kinda the facebook/open dumping grounds of art. No offence to DA in that respect, anyone (child to pro) posting anything (pencil sketch to full renders) is respectable and exactly why I’m here. However, nothing I post here makes my portfolio and I wouldn’t want a future employer seeing most of what I post here, let alone what other people post here. For those who actually wanted a portfolio here, it was always as easy as making a folder called Portfolio and setting it as your primary link.


+This is the perfect time for everyone to update their profile! Now with more customization!

I was really annoyed by all the out-dated information I’d had to input 14 years ago popping up again and having to remove/delete it again, but really it took me all of 3 minutes. I’m sure there are lots of people who like all the new page customization. Overall, I don’t care but I think it’s generally positive growth.


-I don't know if DA was bought out, lost a lawsuit with the previous designer or just doesn't want to pay a third party provider for the current site anymore, but it feels like they invested in something entirely new so are just rolling with an unfinished product cause it's paid for and higher-ups are pushing an obsolete deadline. I get it that they are going forward with or without our approval. Eclipse works (unpleasant but functional) and I just hope DA will hear us and try to at least fix anything that is worse than before.


-**May 20** I just realized that eclipse no longer gives me a 5day countdown to birthdays! Will see if I get a day of notice, but I doubt it...


**May 22** Does anyone else's screen scroll to top of user page when you are trying to type a message to other profile pages? That is simply unacceptably shit programming.


Still here? Tell me if you agree or disagree with anything here or what I’ve missed cause I’m sure there is so much more to talk about.

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Hello to what few watchers I still have, thank you for sticking with me.

This is the first year I've made it through Inktober! Yay!
I really enjoyed drawing everyday (even if some days at first were hard to get started), it felt good to be putting pen to paper again. Mostly fanart (cause easier on the after work tired brain) but I'm pleased that my generic black cat has the most faves and not any of the fanart. I will try to keep drawing daily, small things, probably finally finish 5th gen of pokemon.

I also now have Photoshop on my new computer so I will be resuming other projects like Little League of Legends.
I also have a huge model commission currently, so you might get to see some of that too.

Looking forward to being more active.
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I'm back...

1 min read
Sorry to my watchers for not posting much this year.

I've been depressed, over-worked, stressed, had family drama and a slew of other things.
My time when I used to draw and paint has been consumed by playing League of Legends, Pokemon and other mindless brain sinks. It's not a good place to be in when the thought of what you used to love and live for just makes you feel more exhausted and overwhelmed and you would rather just hole yourself up than try. I know if I could just back to doing a little bit every week it would help me get around this mental block that has had me in stasis.

So I am going to make an effort to get back to posting regularly now. I have been slowly picking up my tools and trickling out things that I can look at and feel better about myself. Very little finished but it is a start.

Thank you to anyone still watching me, I will try not to disappoint.
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Could Eclipse be better, Please? by Taeryne, journal

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