Cadence

I've been working on a lot more digital paintings lately - here's one of them! Currently a redraw of one of my oldest paintings from 2013. I'm not finished yet with this one but I hope to finish it sometime this weekend.

I do post most of my WIPs on my Facebook Page or Instagram if anyone here wants to check them out!

Hi Sparren,

If you haven't found someone yet to do landscape paintings - I'm very interested. Currently, I have a more colorful, vivid style when I paint landscapes but I can easily adapt and reference different styles.   My DA folder has the previous, but I can put together a quick draft for the latter to see if my current work matches your needs & expectations. This might be a better option since my existing environment paintings are a bit dated.

I also normally paint using a letter-sized canvas (8.5x11), so 1200x700 should not be a problem at all.

As for timeline/availability, I'm at work mornings 8-4, but I have plenty of time in the evening. Meeting deadlines should not be a problem either - especially if you're looking at mid October for a finished piece minimum. 

Let me know if you're interested and would like to talk more!

Michelle

Congratulations on your baby girl!

Just wanted to say that Haley / Peanut is an absolute awesome person to work with. She helped design my game Mythflow's website when the game was still around. She was an excellent communicator, very professional, and knew exactly what I needed. 

On the off chance, would you be interested in sub-contracted work at an hourly rate? I mostly do front-end design/graphic design in my city and I'm hoping to bid for larger projects (municipal, etc.). I am interested in forming a design studio in early/mid 2018. Most of my clients pay me by the hour to start. I'm based in Canada though so I'm not sure how this would work. I mostly work within the environmental industry and with start-ups/social ventures. 

But let me know if you would be interested, since I don't know many reliable developers in my network. I'm hesitant to hire or interview developers to work with/for me if I don't know them that well.

I would actually try looking at local markets - where you live or see if you can get local contracts as an artist. With a digital portfolio you're already quite ahead of traditional-only artists, and could play to your versatility. I would recommend looking at local work, since you could leverage your name / build your brand / get referrals from client to client, and build a reputation that way. I feel online work is a hit or a miss when it comes to earning enough for part-time or full-time, especially with the volatility of e-communities, niche markets, or hell even exchange rates. Everything factors in at the end, unfortunately.

I struggled the way you did. My online commissions for web graphics or even digital illustrations vary too much month to month. And I wasn't too keen on forcing Patreon on my fans, so I decided to see if I could reach out to people I knew in my local community and do work for them. I went from maybe 1 commission every 3 months online to earning $18/hr as a graphic designer contractor, and I get 10-20 hours of work every two weeks for a small, long-term client in my field. I'm also doing web development for a smaller-revenue organization at $15/hr, but am close to landing a few more contract jobs from $20 - $30 an hour.  Once you can negotiate an hourly rate with clients, you've hit it.  I just finished a series of design work for the two clients last month and earned around $900, which I would personally NEVER see come into my bank account from online commissions. Never. And I leveraged my online commission portfolio when I started looking for local contracts. 

I feel like if you approached people you know in real life, or companies or within your social network, they're more likely to lend a hand than someone online. In the same manner, local companies or owners who contract out design jobs probably know the living wage conditions in your city and have minimum wage laws to abide to. And they'll have a better idea how much you're worth, and you have a better chance of showing them what you're worth. I always find it difficult selling myself online, since we're all behind a username, but in real life, it's easier to communicate AND negotiate work and pay. Plus if you have a uni or college degree, you can negotiate wages based on that by itself better in real life than online. Just my two cents.

Also! If you're doing local work, you could end up with pretty sweet contracts or opportunities to be a vendor at fairs or conventions. Or, you could also set prints up (those seem to sell pretty well so far, in terms of digital art), or see if you can get a consignment with a local artist group or gallery. Any of these channels could land you a long-term client or a big contract for your digital work, so you never know if there are cross-overs until a client approaches you with a "can you do this?"

This is just my advice haha, since I felt really shitty about my work / myself since my usual online commissions slowed down so much in the last 2-3 years. I had periods where I wanted to give up... but I couldn't just keep doing the same thing and hoping things will change. So I said 'screw it' to selling work online as my primary channel, and started looking for local contracts. And so far it's turned out well. Hope this helps!

18 hours ago, Nova said:

I reaallllyyy enjoyed this excerpt 

I'm very picky with what I read and sometimes, if the writing is atrocious enough, I will not only stop reading the book halfway through--but I'll throw it away. Even though your story was only a fraction of your whole book it kept my attention for the entirety of it. Keep at it!

Yay! I'm glad you enjoyed it I'm always nervous sharing my writing haha, which is why I guess I don't do it often. 

I'm currently on my 4th draft of my manuscript (80k words; I'm an underwriter... trying to hit 90k with this final revision). About to start agenting + querying in September, so the nerves are coming out even more now. 

I've been pretty busy with my new design job (super happy about that still xD) so everything I did lately are stuff I can't disclose yet. But I guess I've been writing /editing my novel (a YA cyberpunk fantasy) so I guess it counts? 

Anyways here's a snippet of my writing. The main character, Mona, is a magician with healing abilities but she works for a crime /black market cartel boss named Vee. 

Quote

The reception area is empty so I dash into the bathroom on the right. The water trickles out cold when I run the tap, and, dunking my face in the water, my energy slowly returns. But my bones are tired and my heart is weary. The day’s catching up with me; from the meeting with Dr. Reese and the talk with Delaney to Vee.

While the water drains, swirling into a funnel, the front door opens and light footfalls echo on the floor. A man by the weight of the footsteps, and with a sense of urgency unlike any other person who I’ve heard come through the doors.

“Be right there.” I call, drying my face with my shirt and stumbling back to the room. “We’re taking appointments-”

I stop mid-sentence the moment I glance at the man who walked in. Tall, lanky, covered in dirt. Once blonde hair now matted with grease and muck.

“I believe I have an appointment,” the man says. “With Vee.”

His accent makes me pause in my steps. It’s Aspherian, no doubt about it. But what is an Aspherian doing here all of places? Asking for Vee? Was he a spy? Even though he doesn’t look like one, he could very well be a capitol spy.

“We don’t serve Aspherians here.” I cross my arms. “At least not without a background check.”

“I spoke to Vee about ah, a month ago-”

“How did you contact him?”

The man stares at me like I’m stupid. “Through the net.”

“And how did you know about us?” I ask warily. Keeping my eyes trained on him, I turn on the hover screen by the receptionist’s desk. Scanning through the correspondence, I find nothing of a meeting tonight other than the ones already booked. “Today you say? A meeting?”

“Yes, of the utmost importance.”

My brows furrow. With a single flick of my fingers, I scan through the general correspondence dating back a month ago. The lines of text and fields shine into my eyes and they seem to merge into one never-ending page. And yet there it is – a small note signed off with the letter V.

 

Note to self, schedule meeting on 06-29.

 

No names. No purpose. No contact information either. It’s not exactly Vee’s SOP. Glancing up from the screen, with the blue glow of the monitor glaring in my face, I stare at the man. “Your name. Now.”

“It’s-” the man starts.

“--You’re in luck, Dylan.” The door to Vee’s office opens, and Dylan lumbers out with Vee behind him. “Such curious development it is,” Vee is saying. “I must mull it over.”

“Best you do,” Dylan rumbles. “Things a ‘changing, boss.”

“Yes. I-” Vee stops, seeing the newcomer for the very first time. His face turns white and his posture stiffens. He shoots me a glare. “Mona. How long has Silas been here, standing? Why did you not let me know he was here?”

“I-” I say, startled. “He-”

The newcomer – Silas – clears his throat. “Hello Vee,” he says. “I can’t tell you the relief it brings me to see my old friend again.”

I hope you guys like this I'm super proud of it, haha.

On 5/23/2017 at 9:39 PM, Aminirus said:

Beautiful artwork! Your environments are amazing :3

Thank you

Update: my commissions are closed! I got a long-term contract with a local environmental firm to work as their graphic designer, so I'll be busy with that for a while.

@Onyx if YA is your jam also, there's a book called "warcross" coming out that's apparently being compared to Ready Player One, by a pretty good author (in terms of writing style). I can't wait for that book either haha, it's apparently a story of a bounty hunter that ends up working undercover for a massive global VR game competition. 

It's coming out a couple of months and me thinks I will get a copy of it.

Oh what, they're turning it into a movie? 

I didn't know they were doing that haha - good they're getting Spielgberg to do the directing actually, I don't know if any other director can do the book justice.

I really liked Ready Player One; it was a book my boyfriend recommended me to read and I finished it in a day I think. I love the pop culture references and the style that the book was written. I wasn't a big fan of the last 1/4th of the book because of a deux ex machina-like plot twist, but the book was a great read nonetheless.

On 6/18/2017 at 9:06 AM, judda said:

Thanks for the info sadly it's very far out of my budget.  Good luck with the sale!

Thats quite alright. Thank you for your interest <3 

On 6/15/2017 at 2:53 AM, judda said:

Do you have an idea about roughly how much you are looking for?

Around $1k? That's about how much I spent in total, minus the time and resources I put in by myself. 

Hey folks,

I am interested in selling a site I was developing that I don't have time for anymore. It's a pet site called Mythflow, and I have basic programming completed (admin dashboard, login/etc), a responsive website layout for the game, a mobile app mockup layout, and the standard logos/graphics. I'm putting together a list of assets at the moment, but off the top of my head I believe I spent $600 on programming and another $300 on the website design. I put in maybe an extra $250 worth of time and resources in the other areas.

I was thinking I can toss in a few "starter" items and graphics, and a game development document/report with all the ideas and features I had wanted to incorporate, if anyone was in the market for buying Mythflow off me. Though I don't have the capacity of being a game dev/ owner, I could theoretically still stay on and provide insight and services if anyone wants to see the development through.

In general, Mythflow was going to be a pet-site with site wide / team based collaborative missions and a "build your own world" motif. Users were going to be able to create "environments" or "maps" in a 3x3 / 4x4 / 6x6 tile size that can be submitted to the site and be approved as official maps for exploration. These areas can be populated by flora/fauna and creatures and embued with elemental tiles that alter the gameplay, that other users can venture. Complete with a beastiary and your role as a botanist / ecologist or a documentary film maker, ideally the user could interact and create parts of the world at the same time.

If anyone is interested I can put together asset files and let you take a look them! 

I miss summer breaks... when I don't have to work. Haha

My summer will be focused on getting my start-up off the ground, building my business, going to a wedding shower, celebrating my 22nd birthday and looking for jobs now that I've graduated from university haha. I'm not putting too much weight on the last part (finding a job) since the economy is pretty awful here where I live, and I'm hoping that my startup will take off so I can work full time from it.

I have plans to finish editing my book, which I put off to the side, and submit a research paper for publication later this summer (I procrastinated on the revisions QQ). 

I've read books where the protag grated on my nerves, so I rooted for the villain instead - but the villain wasn't fleshed out either as a character. In those cases I did it mostly out of spite

But if I really was to enjoy movies or books, I'd need to understand the reason behind the characterization of a protagonist or villain. Is the protag supposed to be unlikable? If they are (and it's stated) I can tolerate a bad protagonist and root for them. But if it's just the result of terrible or lack luster writing I won't be able. Likewise if the villain is likeable I can root for them as well, but I think it's more difficult to sustain a book or movie with a terrible protagonist as opposed to a good villain. Depending on the perspective of course. 

Hi Tanya,

Are you looking for a coded responsive layout or a mock-up of a layout?

@Digital thanks for your hard work. I'm grateful to be part of this community and can't wait to see what is in store for it.

I second what @Aminirus says - I started off with an Wacom Bamboo tablet (the really old one, like seven years ago old) and then moved to a Intuos Pro Medium. If I didn't break it during a dorm move I'd stick with it; sure you still need to practice hand-eye coordination drawing but it's versatile enough for most kinds of work.  

I wouldn't recommend a cintiq unless you're serious about going into the industry or just want to make your art process faster - I now use a cintiq for those reasons and I don't regret it, but the price tag for it is expensive. To me it's worth it since I can produce an artwork within 2~ hours with a cintiq that used to take me 5+~ hours - but just starting off I'd advise against getting a top of the line cintiq tablet. 

Also: do consider portability when you're looking for a drawing tablet - I could carry around my Bamboo or Intuos Pro Medium easily (they fit into my backpack and are light enough) but I cannot for the life of me now carry my cintiq around to class or elsewhere. Not to mention the cintiq weighs more than the other two options and is more expensive (so I'm nervous about commuting around with something like the cintiq in my bag, worrying it'll break or crack).

Updated my commission thread with flat rates.

Hey @WinterBlues!

I'm interested in learning more about your style preferences - I've worked on quite a few website designs within and outside the pet site industry. I enjoy making sleek & modern layouts in any case so I would love to see whether my work interests you.  

Please shoot me a PM if you're still looking for someone!

On 5/8/2017 at 9:32 AM, Aminirus said:

Facebook, I won't lie, can be tricky. They've made things next to impossible for advertising and posting when it comes to trying to inform your members about things. After some research, I learned that the best way to stay in contact with your members and guarentee that they see your content is by using their Group Option (NOT PAGES). Pages is a scam and useless. Even if you have thousands of watchers, only 8% or so actually see the posts and if you an off site link, that drops down to like 4%. Groups guarente that everyone see your posts, regardless of where they come from, and plus, you have more options.

I second @Aminirus on Facebook groups. I tested out making a Facebook page for my art, and ran a few ad campaigns to see how well it retained active subscribers/followers. 

Spoilers: It didn't. I ran a few different ads with different demographics and different price points but what was common was that I'd get a spike in likes / views on my page, but no very little interaction once the ad expires. 

I also found a decrease in post visibility on my followers' news feeds. Simply put the content you post on a Facebook Page tends to get "lost" with all the other sponsored content they're showing you - and other pages that can pay $$$$$. It's harder to even show your posts & advertise. I'm also certain they make it even harder once you reach a certain level of activity / followers... Just to make you pay more for your visibility ;) 

I'm not 100% sure on that but it was definitely NOT worth the time to run Facebook ads for what I was after. 

Your mileage may vary but this was my experience with FB pages  I would use a Facebook group or curate some posts for a personal account and get interactions there. 

I'm not sure how many of you guys are Canadians or follow provincial election news but we just had our general election yesterday in British Columbia. 

I don't want to share my political views, but this is certainly super fascinating for myself (and maybe others on this forum). There's certainly a geographical divide between parties, but it looks like we're going to have a government that needs to work with each other to pass legislation. The absentee votes haven't been counted yet so we'll have to see if anything changes. 

I find the following details rather fascinating: 

• This could be our first minority government since 1952 - about 60 years ago. Wow.
• A party (that doesn't even have official party status yet) with only three elected MLAs may hold the most power in the legislative assembly. Who would've thought?
• The riding Courtnay-Comox had just nine votes separating one party from another. Nine votes made all the difference (but now there's going to be a recount + absentee counts so we'll have to see how that goes in the next few weeks). 
• There are still many absentee votes that haven't been counted yet that could swing a minority into a majority depending on some ridings.
• Some high profile Ministers had been unseated, so we'll have to see who replaces them & whether they're going to be better or worse 
• Voter turnout was around 56% this time? I think? I need to check the numbers. But I saw a lot of younger folks voting when I went. 
• Lots of reoccuring themes and major issues that were highlighted certain regions over the other. Probably a lot to disseminate there. 
• The leading party kept flipping ALL NIGHT last night as we watched the news. It was definitely a really exciting election to watch.

I'm usually not a political geek but last night's results are sure fascinating. I'm excited to see what will come over the next few weeks. 

Thought I'd start a thread about this if anyone wants to discuss or anything.  

On 4/26/2017 at 7:53 PM, LIZ said:

the only concert i went to was three days grace, was awesome!!

SO JEALOUS

I love Three Days Grace I don't think they ever come to Vancouver though :c 

My friends went to see John Mayer the other day, but I didn't go because the tickets were expensive. I already paid for Apocalyptica tickets for September (it was a splurge buy, I got it for my sister who's a huge fan of them and my boyfriend). So now I'm broke haha, can't go to another concert for the remainder of this year. 

@Aminirus That must be a fun concert you went to! Panic! & The Plain White Tee's would be a cool concert to go to I think. When I went to see USS it was in a night club and some people ruined the night for me since they were vaping and throwing empty plastic beer cups onto the ground. The music and vibe were great but the people there were not so good, lol.

/stalks this thread for information  

I'm currently with Dreamhost on a VPS. I upgraded from shared hosting because one of my clients's websites is taking off. I'm pretty satisfied with their customer service (they've been extremely helpful) but I am not a big fan of how the prices are in USD... I might find a Canadian hosting company since the exchange rate is hurting me pretty badly lol. 

YESSS @Digital I saw the trailer when it just came out.  I got soooo hyped for it (I still am haha). 

I can't wait for the movie to come out. I think it's the one I'm most excited about this year - I walked into the first movie with low expectations but was blown away how good it was. I was expecting the GotG1 to be geared towards a younger crowd, but I liked how it turned out to be more of an adult/mature movie with really good plots, humor, and character development. 

I'm linking this video below - it's a cover of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody by Pentatonix. I loved the cover and have been listening to it and showing my family the cover.

I DID IT THANKS @jakdacrowe

My boyfriend and I went to see USS earlier this year, and we have tickets booked to see Coldplay in September  I'm super excited for Coldplay - I used to play guitar and sing their songs. I kind of have most if not all their lyrics memorized by heart. >< 

Originally I was going to tag along with my boyfriend and his brother's wedding party to a Pendulum concert in London, UK in August but I had to decline my invitation :c 

I just found out Apocalyptica is doing a show in September as well - so I might go to that too! I was never a big concert-goer, but I do like going to see my favorite bands /music groups.  I'm into classic rock / alt rock, and keeping my eyes peeled for bands to come to my city   I like smaller venues (Coldplay being the exception) and I do like to listen to local bands whenever they're playing in pubs or bars haha.

So what concerts have you gone to? Who have you seen live?