It seems only a small percentage of folks I know are even aware of this, but a short time back I published a short story novel. I titled it Unending Expansions, and have it up for sale via the Self Publishing site, Lulu.

You can see it & buy it here:
[link]

Oh and yes, it is a mature rated book.

I wrote a bunch of new material just for this book, and have not hosted the digital copies anywhere before. ^^ Its not getting much attention however. Largely because this really is a niche market, and I can't exactly count on huge droves of people reading my journal to buy a book.

So yeah, I'm a self-published author. ^^ Hooray! Go get the book if you'd like. Its full of all sorts of fun expansive goodness. Plus other things, like actual stories!

Requests. Ah, such a fun topic to get into. There are two definitive camps in this particular debate, namely those who think Requests are OK, and those who do not. There are of course the polar extremes on both sides, from the incredibly hostile artist who hates everyone who even mentioned the word Request, to the rabid art whore who thinks everyone should draw for free, because they say so.

Now here comes some fun opinions from myself, as well as various little observations I've made over the years.

You know what kiddies? Time is valuable. Even leaving the sometimes flawed idea of “Time is Money: out of the statement, time still has a value. Time spent drawing for somebody is time you could spend working at your job, or playing a video game, or hanging out with your friends doing one thing or another. With all things, you need to look at the sacrifice being made for the activity in question, and how better you could be using the time for other things. Yes it may be “nice” for us artistic folks to open up the floodgates for people whom want something for nothing, but we usually have better things to be doing. Or at least, more pressing matters.

In my case at least, I work for a living. When I'm not at work, like I am now, I'm in school furthering my education. Then comes homework and course projects, obligations for other things here in reality, housework, errands, feeding myself, managing my money and other such things, etc. All of this takes time, and usually leaves only a few hours in the day to truly enjoy myself. During these periods I usually want to amuse myself in one way or another, from chatting online, to playing games, and occasionally even working on some of my creative ventures.

I've already written a book of short stories, and I have a more serious novel attempt on the go. All of this takes up quite a lot of time when I work on it. When I have the time, I also enjoy drawing. Now what do you all think would be higher on my list? Drawing for friends whom have frequently drawn me, or drawing for some faceless person I've never met before whom thinks I should stop what I'm doing and draw them? Not to mention all the art I do as trades, or commission work. The latter of course takes priority, seeing as I'm being paid for my time.

Here's a wacky idea for those of you among the rabid requesting circles to mull over. You are not ENTITLED to anything for free. This is not some perfect lotus eating world where everyone gets whatever they want without having to put out any effort. I'm not saying that everything needs to break down into some kind of business potential, but come on. You can't expect people you don't even know to just shit out a bunch of art for you, only to have you demand more or just go to the next artist and do the same.

Do you have any idea how many people have just stormed up to me out of the blue, and demanded I draw them a series of pictures? Or a comic? Or write them a fucking novel with illustrations? Sure they're the extreme, but the vast majority of people with requests on the brain have started conversations with me for the express purpose of getting art out of the deal. And trust me, that doesn't fly with anyone. At least, nobody with a backbone thicker than your average toothpick.

So! What can be done about all this? You people want art, and nobody wants to just give it to you. Well here's a wacky idea, pick up a pencil and start drawing for yourself! I know what you're saying, “But Tombfyre, I SUCK at art! Nobody loves me! I'm going to cut myself now...” To that, I say bullshit. If you bother to put the time and effort into it, you can at least start sketching up some passable material. I will admit there are the odd individuals out there that couldn't draw to save their life, but they're the exception to the rule rather than the rule itself.

You want to know how I got my start? Somewhere in my early 20's I realized that just writing sub-par literature wasn't going to cut it if I wanted to get more attention in our wonderful little furry world. To top it all off, various friends of mine encouraged me to start drawing. I realized quickly that all I knew how to do was stick figures doing various lewd things. So I looked at a few how-to-draw guides on the internet, and got started. Most of it was pretty shitty, and done with a mouse in MS paint for the first 1-2 years of my artistic career.

Then I switched to paper, and things just took off from there. I'm still only a moderately good artist in the grand scheme of things, at least in comparison to some of our art gods out there. But as you can see, somebody with zero drawing talent can WORK his way up to being a decent artist. Its taken 7 years to get where I am now, so this kind of shit doesn't happen overnight. But if you're willing to put in the effort, and make friendships along the way, who knows what might happen. Don't be in a crazy hurry to flood your galleries with art people have made for you. Try making friendships instead, you'll find things like art just comes along for the ride. The friendship is the most important part.

Another thing you can do while you're out making friends, is pay attention to journals and the like. I've lost count of the times I've seen artists suddenly get bored, and decide to take 10 requests or something to give him something new to do. Just don't be an asshole and try to take up all 10 slots yourself. Nor should you do stupid things like request dozens of pictures or comic strips. Those take FOREVER to do, and you're likely going to be told to go fuck yourself. Just a heads up on that. :3

As for me? Who knows, I might even take a few some day. For now, I'm still getting endless people sending me messages or contacting me on MSN and the like just so they can try and suck up to me for art, or outright demand it. Some of them still get quite pissy when I tell them to go to hell. So, re-read the above commentary if it already hasn't sunk in. So, once again, I do not take requests. So do us both a favor, and just don't ask. You'll save us both some grief.


And before anyone gets their panties in a bunch, no, I'm not attacking anyone in specific. I don't even know 99% of the people whom have asked me for art over the years. Most people ask, get a no, and are already on their way to beg somebody else before I'm done writing the period. And as for the rest of you, I barely know any o' you lot either. So no, this is not a direct attack.

If it were, I would have said so already.

Now then! That's all I really had to say on the subject. Discuss if you should feel like it! I'm going to put the tea kettle on.

Ta-ta. :3

Apparently some folks out there just don't seem to understand that I'm not an artwork machine for them to abuse, nor take over in any way. I don't take requests, and have not done so for years. Some may not know this, or just have no decency in them not to demand things from every artist they see.

Lately I've been getting everything from shouts, to notes, to comments on my art basically telling me to drop what I'm doing and start drawing comics/art/series featuring X theme and Y characters. I keep telling these people to bugger off, but a few of them just wait a few weeks and come up with another insane request. I'm not sure if some of them just don't understand what the hell I'm saying, or if they have no idea why I wouldn't just bend over and give them what they want.

So yeah, a reminder. I don't bloody take requests. I draw what I want, and when I want to. I'll likely draw friends I know most often, and I might even consider requests from them. But we bounce art off each-other all the time.

And no, that doesn't mean you can grab your crayons, vomit colors all over some paper, and suddenly I owe you art. People have already tried that before with me, and it doesn't float.

/rant

*edit*

And just sending the same request a few hours later after I've already told you no won't get you a different reply. This means you, Inflationartfan. Go away.

Well I've started going through the ass-end of my gallery, and removing a lot of old deviations. They're some of my first works done via mouse in MS paint, back in 2004 and earlier. DA doesn't even seem to have the files themselves anymore, just broken thumbnails. ^^()

So, all the MS paint goodies are now gone. Next I'll probably be moving a lot of older hand-drawn stuff either to scraps, or getting rid of them as well. Yay for cleaning up old crap!

And once again, the collection system is bothering me. Its bad enough that people are show-casing other peoples work, but now some of my deviations are being added to collections such as "The worst shit I've ever seen." ... Fucking assholes around here, I tell you. And DA even decided to give us messages about this shit! Yay!

The Collection thing is a fucking joke.

Yeah... Collections suck. You're supposed to submit your own artwork here, not make gallery collections of other peoples work. Thats almost as bad as just re-submitting it into your own gallery.

I have no idea why that feature got implemented.