Cadence

I feel that semi-realistic and realistic art is in demand these days, but it really depends on the style a site is going for. I've been seeing more sims lately with realistic item art, though. Agree with @Dinocanid and @st4nn1s that cell-shaded works are easier to replicate. Rendering a realistic piece can be very challenging and time consuming.

I added a few photos the illustrations I have been working on... Have been pretty busy with work, and also getting an Etsy page up for the business I own with my partner. Craft fair season is starting (or already started tbh) and we are trying to get our online stores up and running before the big rush! We do mostly woodworking and stuff, but for kitchenware accessories and gifts/souvenirs. I dont do digital art a lot anymore. I do a lot more engravings now which means I use Illustrator to design vector images and scale them for the machine. It's a lot of tweaking to make sure things turn out well, but I absolutely love the work we're in. Everything that we have been making are made recycled materials, which we source locally. The business idea was one we had in uni and we finally made it work last year, and this is our second year now, trying to grow and scale it. I'm pretty happy I get to put my design skills from the pet site era to good use working on designs, web dev, marketing, photography, etc... But yeah it's a lot of work, and figuring out things as they go along, haha. Here's the page if anyone is interested and would like to help us share the link and information about what we do. (vector image for engraving) (finished product)

I finally have a video capture setup done for my work table, so I can now take timelapse videos and more while I draw. Here's the latest video I posted on my Facebook Art Page :

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Hi folks, What kind of trends do you see for this year onwards - for the pet site industry, or beyond (general gaming)? I remember that a few years back, there was a big hype about gaming moving to mobile, and sure there are a lot of games you could find in app stores. I personally think the appeal of downloading an app to play a game is levelling off. I think people are more likely to surf the internet and play games through their mobile phones, or tablets, without necessarily downloading an app or anything. It's kind of like how I'm more likely to play Flight Rising on my phone by logging into the website. If they had an app I probably wouldn't download and keep updating it to play. But their website (which I haven't gone on in a while) last I knew was not mobile responsive and having to zoom in / out of the screen really made it unplayable on mobile. I also think mobile data plays a big role now, and where we seemingly have more access to the internet when we're commuting to work or in a cafe or something. I also think the platform for a pet site nowadays would come down to what kind of gamers you want to attract. Like are you looking for casual gamers, or not? In my IRL community there's a big push on figuring out "customer journeys" and "customer profiles" when it comes to developing an app, game, interface, etc.. Which involve trying to fine-tune what kind of customers/user base you want on your platform and tailoring the game experience to their preferences and behavior. What do you all think?

I don't know if my post helps, but I always try to look for local designers. I've gotten burned by sites like Fiverr, etc., before. Or sometimes it's an issue of communication... Anyways, I've started to ask for recommendations for local graphic designers or artists who I could work with. They're more expensive, but I've come to appreciate the service that goes along with the process. And it's easier to make sure that the logo isn't ripped off from an existing one. Or that the designers actually follow through with the skills they say they have. It's also helpful when you can tell them the format you want, what applications you're going to use the logo for, etc. I stay away from design agencies who I feel overcharge for logos, and work with independent designers instead. I'd recommend checking out if there are any local design groups online, like on Facebook or something, or ask around for recommendations? I haven't tried this myself -- but I've always wanted to ask a business owner where they get their logo, if it stands out to me. I'm thinking they wouldn't mind giving a referral for their designer?

Thanks for this. I might just play around with DO this summer for my own website first. I will also look at Forge. I started a new job this spring, and I'm now managing three extra company websites so I would love to find a better workflow dealing with all my other sites. For those company websites I'm stuck using Hostgator until I can find a solution and convince my boss... they used hostgator and moved one of the sites to a managed wordpress hosting with GoDaddy (eek!), but the two other sites are still on HG. This happened before I joined so now I am trying to figure out the best way to consolidate everything haha. That's an aside though. DO or Forge could help a lot with my other clients. Because I've been so busy I have just temporarily moved some of my sites from DreamHost to SiteGround, just because it's cheaper. It's not my final move though, but decent enough in the meantime I think. I know that SG increases the price of their hosting plans for renewal, so I have like eight months left-ish to actually learn to use DO.

Thanks for the recommendation! I agree, DH is awful. Their support has also dropped lately, but thankfully my clients have OK'ed a switch away from them I just need to do some research and find some time to move the sites over, and we are good. I am going to take a look at Server Pronto. I have also heard so many good things about Digital Ocean, but it seems super intimidating for someone new at sys admin like me. I also don't consider myself savvy enough about Linux systems or maintaining a backend. I am all self-taught so I worry about migrating my clients over and something going wrong!

Not really - I still have Mythflow on the backburner, and will probably dust that off in a few years when my current startup matures! My current business is taking up a lot of my time, and with regular my day job on top of that, I am just so terribly busy. I am already doing 50-60 work weeks and I really do not have time for another project. Haha I also am not sure about the market for pet games anymore - or what direction I need to take MF so that it becomes appealing to non petsite gamers. It will take a lot of coding and development, and I don't have the funds for that right now.

@Digital I like your art! I have heard so many great things about the iPad with the Pencil & ProCreate. All my favorite artists have been using that and showing their work online haha.

Good luck with your Kickstarter, @Deloryan ! Exciting to see new games being developed & launched, and the art looks just amazing.

Will do, Mortain. Update; This is my latest painting. I have been extremely busy with my freelance work and recently acquired a new job too, so haven't had much time to paint. This might be the last thing for a while haha.

Thanks so much for your thoughtful replies everyone! Seems like there are a lot of different ways we come up with names. Unfortunately, I still don't know how to name my in dev petsite. I have the concept ready-ish, but the name still eludes me... @Noromtigel I was able to name a startup because of a pun, but I was admittedly having a few drinks when my co-founder and I came up with it. It stuck, people liked it, I have a love/hate relationship with it, I want it changed, but doing a massive rebrand at this stage is super annoying. Oh well. We get some laughs out of it still as an inside joke. @Design1online That's a neat way to do it, finding available domain names or ones that recently expired. I know I let a lot my domains expire, haven't had time for a lot of projects... I must imagine it is a good way to get inspiration for names, haha.

I've been working on putting together a Kickstarter campaign for a social enterprise I founded with my partner last year, hoping to raise funds for machinery & to scale our business. We're planning on a launch in April, so I've been working on some pre-launch swag & promo items to sell that will help offset some of the advertising and promo costs for the campaign. I'm so excited for it but so nervous! The gist of what the venture does is divert wood waste from landfills & my partner and I craft handmade items out of materials.

I think my artistic goals this year is getting better at anatomy, using markers (I got a set of copic markers recently and love using them), and being more active with promoting my work. Professionally I'm trying to land a good gig related to branding design, so I can support my partner when we move out together this summer. I have also been trying to finish a lot of my 2017 projects, and got my butt off to make a portfolio so that I can apply for agency jobs and maybe go back to design school haha. I've dicked around in 2017 after graduating from university, trying to figure what I want to do professionally since my field is non existent right now due to the current political climate... Soooo, design it is!

.Hey guys, hope your holidays are going well. I have been hosting my websites via DreamHost for the last few years, yet I'm not too pleased with how much their plans are costing for both shared & VPS hosting. Also as a Canadian and paying USD, the exchange rate kinda (really) hurts. Their customer support is pretty shoddy as of late as well, and haven't been helpful in dealing with some tickets I had submitted. So I'm hoping to switch to another hosting company - I have a few client sites that are getting a lot of traffic, and would not mind paying extra for something that is more robust and can handle the traffic. I thought I might ask you guys for recommendations as I haven't stayed up to date for years on hosting companies or services, and am worried the information I'm going off on choosing a new one is (slightly) outdated. My budget is ideally $30/month - I've been looking at BlueHost, and thinking of getting a VPS for said high-traffic client and a shared hosting for my smaller sites. I'm also debating whether it's worth splitting the hosting up so that the smaller blogs / shops can be hosted via Squarespace (saves me from setting up Wordpress), but ideally I'd like not having to logging in/out three or four different accounts and paying the subscription rate at full price for multiple sites. Thanks everyone.

I redid this painting from 2011 which is like, 6 years ago and I'm pretty happy with the results. Sometimes it's pretty cool to see how much you improve based on what you can finally paint v. before. I didn't know the techniques to paint what I had in mind back then haha Before/after comparison;

I really like this style! I'd love to see more item art like this

Finally finished the painting WIP I posted earlier;;

I tried my hands at drawing some adoptable templates in a cartoonish style lol. I don't know if I like it enough but here it is. Not familiar with drawing on square canvases.

I haven't gotten into GOT lol, so I think I might be in the minority here haha. But I do love Stranger Things (so excited for season two) and The Walking Dead (even though it's gotten stale for me). When I watch TV with my partner, we watch stuff like Little Witch Academia and Steven Universe.

1. Reddit, 2. Imgur, 3. I dunno? My local radio station? I frequent a few reddit subs for news, others for interests, and those alone take up too much of my free time already. I also stream my local radio station because they play a lot of my favorite songs lol. They're a modern rock station but sometimes they play classic rock.

Just a curious question! I have been working on some ideas for an adoptables site and am struggling to come up with a catchy but simple name for the game. Sometimes I like to plug some words together and mix them around, write down words related to the name in a brainstorming cloud and try to match something up. Other times I just make up stuff off the top of my head. So how do you guys come up with names for games? Or even pet species, and things like that?

Hey guys! Age: 24 Gender: enby Where you live (can be general or exact): west coast Canada What you do / What you are studying: I'm a digital marketer for the environment industry. Just doing a lot of work related to social media, writing, web dev, and SEO these days. How many pets (and/or) kids you have: None yet but I'm looking to adopt a corgi

Thanks @Digital I have been thinking of rebooting an old game dev project of mine so I might post some art WIPs for that later. I am currently working on some holiday greeting card designs and prints and building up a small back-log of stock. I'll have stuff to post soon I think.