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Jio-Derako

fragmented infinity
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Identity Crisis

6 min read
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Crisis is probably an overkill word, but I can't seem to think of a better title. So, let's get right into it; some of my current tentative plans, thoughts, and little snags.

I've been here for a while. Seven years; soon, it'll be eight, since that first time I stumbled upon deviantART, thought to myself "let's go for it!" and made an account; I went straight into the galleries, found some drawings I liked, and asked the artists if I could try my hand at coloring them. I wasn't very good at first, but it was a first step, and I'm proud of where I've come from that point. And coloring other artists' work helped me get a leg up on networking right out of the gates, even to the point where I had one or two requests from artists for me to color their works. It wasn't anything big, I was in my early teens and so were most of the people around me, it was just fun.
And, in a way, that's a part of why I'm at this point now. It was fun at the start, but things didn't last; now, only a select few of the artists I'd interacted with are still around, a good portion of them moving on to non-artistic careers and all that fun stuff that comes with growing up. A couple have stuck around to continue working on art; I can probably count these on one hand. Even the group of friends I've picked up from only a few years ago, members of DAcademy and ArtistTree, a lot of the names I remember from the earlier days of all this have moved on elsewhere or simply drifted off in their own directions. Life goes on.
And I've not been immune to all of this, either. I've been here for close to eight years now, but it wasn't eight straight years of art. It came in smaller bursts, with some really busy years, and a couple where I had next to nothing to show at the end of them. Those "Year in Review" memes have been my bane for a while now, since I don't have enough finished pieces to fill them up!

I'm starting to ramble on, though.
Where I sit right now is a bit of an odd spot; I've gone through a couple of little evolutions and a few bigger ones, and while my most recent works have taken a big step up in scope, they've also slowed way down. And in the midst of all this, I went and started working on an alternate account as a bit of an experiment; that little "experiment" has, over the past year or so, turned itself into something a lot more successful than I could have imagined. Which has been a confidence boost, a motivator; it's taught me that, with the right drive, I can absolutely send myself to a higher level, but it requires that I shake off all those little self-imposed limits and imagined expectations.
...That is probably more complicated of an explanation than it needs to be. What I mean is, my alternate account had a clean slate, it was completely anonymous, and I could do whatever I wanted. There were no expectations to fall short of, I could do all the weird stuff I liked without being judged by anyone I cared about. And what I got instead was a ton of people who just enjoyed what I was doing.

So, that's what I want to do again. Jioruji Derako has come a long way from being a name generated by an English-to-sorta-Japanese website, and it's been a great journey. But I want to start fresh; I want a clean slate. and at the same time, I don't want to throw things away. I'm tempted to just start another account, but then this one just rots away (and I end up wasting my premium membership); I can rename this one and clear things out, but some little OCD part of me wishes I could reset my pageviews and comments and all that too (without losing that little "seven years old" marker of course). Another option I suppose would be to try and set my focus elsewhere entirely, make a name for myself on Tumblr instead, but deviantART is what I'm most familiar with and it's where I continue to have the most success.
I don't have to do anything really, I could just change the name here and start doing whatever I liked, but it's more of a mental thing; I feel like I'm still tied to all the little things about this account that have dragged me to a halt here, and I really love the freedom that comes with a fresh start. I just don't know how to go about it.


So there's my current... crisis. I guess I just want to hear thoughts and opinions from others; I certainly have no plans to start fresh and leave friends behind in the process, but I can't help feeling like a lot of my watchers here are just empty accounts or people who are waiting for me to do repeats of some of my older works. (that one Absol picture I did years ago continues to get favorited, and occasionally gets me a watcher, despite the fact that I haven't done anything related since then.) If only there was some way to merge accounts, so I could start fresh on a new one and then scoop this one back up later. Or a way to selectively clean the slate (I did figure out how to remove the deactivated accounts from my watchers, so I could clean that out entirely if I liked).

What do you think? what would you do if you wanted to reinvent yourself?

ĜЄΘ.>
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Gearing Up!

3 min read
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Hullo there, everyone! Especially anyone who's come across my gallery here from my business cards. :meow:

Due to a little hiccup with my personal site's webhost, the site is currently unavailable, so until I can get things fixed up on that end, my fragmentedinfinity.com URL redirects right to here instead. It's probably for the best! Having a personal site appears more professional, of course, but it's hard to compete with the ease-of-use from a deviantART gallery.

Otakon was a mixture of success and failure for me. Pretty impressive result, considering I wasn't even there! With a bit of encouragement from a friend of mine, I managed to make some updates and get a few prints done just in time to send print #1 - my very first print to be printed - off to be auctioned-off in the Otakon Art Show. Unfortunately, it didn't sell - and none of my fellow artists' prints did, either - so that was a failure. Getting the prints done in the first place was a success, though, and I've been told that a number of my business cards were distributed, so if I get even just one new fan from that, I'll call that a success as well.
But with the print still in my possession, or soon to be back in my possession at least... well, it seems like a waste not to do something special with print #1! I've got some plans for it, I think. But no hints! Okay, maybe one hint, "giveaway".
Oh, that may have been too big of a hint. No matter. You should probably keep an eye out here, for details on that sometime later.

What else?
Not too much else to say, I suppose; I'll be getting some more paintings finished up to be sold as prints, and hopefully soon. I should probably do something about my website, too, but that's not a big priority right now.
Commissions are still open, if you were wondering! Prices are still fairly cheap at the moment, because I also need more stuff to fill my gallery; I'll probably raise the prices up a bit later on though, since it's pretty low when you consider the amount of time I spend on each piece! So you should definitely jump on board sooner rather than later. ;P

Thanks for stopping by! If you've found me thanks to one of my business cards, I'd love to hear it, too.

ĜЄΘ.>
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So some of you may have noticed - or more likely, not noticed - my lack of activity recently. I'm not dead! Just focused elsewhere.

I've been a bit unmotivated lately, at least for my usual painting work; most of my efforts are currently spent working on commissions (which I am very grateful for). A little more than half of these commissions are actually coming from elsewhere, so they're not getting posted here. Likewise, a fair amount of my recent work is also diverted elsewhere.
I do intend to put a bit more focus here at some point, however. Coming up in August, I'll be sharing an artist's table with a friend of mine at SaikouCon, in Bethlehem, PA. (if you're in the area, consider heading to the convention! It's their first year, but they're aiming to be one of the larger anime cons on the east coast.)
I've got to finish up at least a few more images I can sell as prints at the con, so once I finish up my current commissions, that will be taking a priority; I've got one project in mind so far, and a couple concepts which are currently written on sticky notes on my wall.

Beyond that, though, I'm really not sure what more I can do to boost my activity! It's partially a lack of motivation and willpower, combined with distractions from my other online projects... I have been starting to get into storywriting a bit more lately, and I've got new ideas for a larger story I'd like to tackle, but I have no idea if or when that will come to fruition. (I have grand plans for the one story, but it's likely too big of a project for it to be my first foray into storywriting.)
I'm also hoping to buckle down a bit - well, a lot - and start to develop my drawing skills further. I've had plenty of success with painting, but I generally rely on 3D renders I do to provide a base to work from. I'm confident that I ultimately do have the ability to draw a figure from scratch, but I simply haven't had the practice to be able to do so with any sort of comfort or consistency. If I can get into a habit of doing daily sketches or the like, perhaps that will help; and perhaps it will do nicely to boost my activity, here. Weekly sketch dumps would be a good start.

Anyway, for any of you still out there and watching... what is new with you? Any big projects, or changes, or just interesting things going on today?

ĜЄΘ.>
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Hello there, everybody! Hope you're all having a great day... yes, even you!

So many new projects in the works for me, I figure we're way past due for a new journal update here. Let's get right to it, shall we.

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First and foremost, I'm starting to make some progress on a longtime goal of mine, becoming a professional freelance artist. Nothing too big just yet, only the one commission piece so far, but it's a big step from doing art as a hobby, towards doing art as a career.
I've still got a few more projects to get squared away (more on that in a moment), but I intend to start doing commissions in the near future; look forward to more info on that soon!

In the realm of Real Life, I've also been making some changes and progress. Most notably, I've started to delve into the convention scene, starting with anime/gaming convention Zenkaikon earlier this year, and internet/geekery convention Intervention more recently. I'll also be on-staff for the next Zenkaikon, in March of next year; for those interested, it'll be in Lancaster, PA (see here for details). Let me know if you're headed up there, I'm always happy to meet up with new and old friends alike.
Zenkaikon led to making a few more connections with other local artists, and the formation of the Philly Web Comics group; PWC will be holding its second meetup this Saturday, as a matter of fact, so I'm quite excited for that.

The general theme here has been networking, starting to spread out a bit and connect up with other local artists and generally awesome people. To that end, I'm working on advertising myself a bit more; a short comic project should be wrapped up by this weekend (and will be posted up here shortly afterwards), and after that, I'll be taking some time to work on various art pieces suitable for a portfolio. Business cards and a personal website are also on the to-do list (website will come whenever I find the time, and business cards will come after I've got a site and some artwork to put on the backs of the cards).

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Which leads me to my next topic, and a question. With networking becoming more and more important for me (especially if I'm to start doing freelance artwork), the internet is an obvious venue for such things. I've got deviantART, of course, as well as Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr; soon, a personal site as well.
Simply having a profile on a site doesn't mean you're networking, though. At the moment, my Facebook page is the most updated, with deviantART being close behind; my Tumblr blog has been rather neglected lately, and my Twitter feed even more so.
What I'd like to do is start to work on a bit more activity, but I'm not quite sure yet on which front I should focus, to start with. So how about you? Do you have a particular social site you prefer to use, or think is better than others? Not limited to just the sites I listed, of course. I'm interested to see where the majority of you folks tend to spend your time.

So, lots of projects in the works, lots of ideas, lots of little (and big) goals... with any luck I'll remember to make an update on progress soon, and I should at the very least have a five-page comic to show off after this weekend. :eager:

ĜЄΘ.>
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Networking

5 min read
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Heyo fellas! Been a little while since I've written a journal entry here, partially due to the topic I'm about to delve into.
You don't need to read the whole thing. But I'd appreciate it if you weigh in on the questions!

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So, networking! Also known as self-promotion, getting yourself known, or "pimping yourself". It takes many forms, online especially; just about everybody does it, some more consciously then others. Sometimes it's as simple as saying hi to a few people, and earning a new friend. Farther up the ladder, you might find yourself traveling across states or even countries to attend shows and conventions with the hopes of widening your audience. It doesn't necessarily have to be your art that you're trying to promote, but for the purposes of this little entry, I'll mostly be sticking to the art topic.

Now, before you get your hopes up, this isn't going to be the part where I start explaining how to become well-known. I haven't figured that part out yet, myself.
Rather, I'd like to spark a bit of discussion on the topic, and maybe glean a few thoughts and opinions from all of you out there.

Let me simply lay out a by no means exhaustive list of some of the methods I've seen, though maybe not tried.
:bulletred: Online gallery/portfolio. This one's easy; you're on it! deviantART and ConceptArt.org are the two major ones that I'm aware of; creating your own website is less social, but does a much better job of showing you off. (On deviantART for an easy example, everybody tends to look alike at a glance; your gallery is the biggest thing setting you apart from everyone else, and even then it can be all to easy for your work to disappear beneath the mountains of fellow artists' works.)
:bulletred: Social media. Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr are three major ones, but there's plenty of others out there. Myself, I use all three, though Facebook tends to be less interesting, Twitter takes a fair bit of work to stay active, and Tumblr isn't well suited to showcasing a single artist's work.
:bulletred: Live streaming. Livestream is (unsurprisingly) the most popular one here. From my limited experience, livestreaming your artwork or some other art-related subject is a great way to reach out and involve your audience, though it's also not necessarily the best for gaining an audience if you don't already have one.
:bulletred: Communities. This also includes deviantART and ConceptArt.org, but primarily, when I say communities I mean forums, chatrooms, and other such social tools. There's no one example here; the communities that work for you will tend to be more specific ones, geared towards your art style or interests or related subjects. It's a great way to make new connections however, especially if you think outside the box. (An artist who primarily paints images of cars might find a lot of interested folks on a car-themed forum, for example.)
:bulletred: Conventions and shows. Yes, there is such a thing as meeting people off the internet! Conventions and shows are a great way to do so; anime conventions for example will almost always have an "artist's alley", where artists can get themselves a booth and sell some of their art. Other conventions and shows might not have a setup for artists - or even have anything to do with art - but they might have something to do with your art, like that previous example of a car artist finding an audience in a bunch of car folks. Tough to show off your work, but a great way to meet people interested in some of the same subjects you're interested in.

I'm sure there's plenty more to add to this list that I'm not aware of, or even some items I've simply forgotten about. But I need to cut myself short here before I get too far! My goal here is to spark discussion.
So, here's some questions for all of you (that's right, ALL of you, including you, bored passer-by who got distracted by my journal):

:bulletgreen: What (if any) networking tools do you yourself use? (well, obviously deviantART, but feel free to mention if you don't use it much, or use it all the time)
:bulletgreen: Do you try to network a lot, or not at all? What's your goal? (i.e., doing artwork as a profession, or just meeting lots of people)
:bulletgreen: Do you have any tips, opinions, or experiences with networking you'd like to share?

Answer as many or as few of the above as you'd like, or simply chime in with whatever comes to mind. I'm all ears! (well, technically, all eyes, in this instance.)

ĜЄΘ.>
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