Ever see a piece of artwork that just blows your mind? It's incredible, and it looks like it was painted it just a few strokes. Yet it somehow captures the essence of the subject in a way you've never thought about before. Then you read the description. And the artist says something like, "I whipped this up in five minutes. It's not very good and I hate it. I'll probably take it down later." And you feel let down, because YOU liked it. But the artist knows better than you, right? And it must be crap, somehow. So you go away slightly offended without knowing why. Dean Wesley Smith talks about this in a blog post called No One Cares. He's ta

There! I trace. I use puppets for Past Sins. I'm a dirty tracer who doesn't have the patience to hand-draw each and every panel. If you want to know how I use the puppets (cause I don’t own flash): – I screenshotted every angle (front, 3/4, side, behind 3/4 and back) – I trace over the body line of the circle of the head and the body – I copy/paste those traced lines over the sketch I made – I start to puzzle everything together. I need to make the legs in a pose myself, I need to edit the mouth, ears, and eyes. Mouth, ears and eyes I had to make myself cuz I didn’t trace those. – I add a mane

Last week, a popular YA author Maggie Stiefvater posted this story on her blog. She essentially did a test to see exactly how much damage piracy was doing to her book sales. Her story has erupted into debate across the authorsphere, because her results are hard to argue with. But they’re also extremely interesting. Here is the short version:   I’ve decided to tell you guys a story about piracy. I didn’t think I had much to add to the piracy commentary I made yesterday, but after seeing some of the replies to it, I decided it’s time for this story. Here are a few things we should get clear before I go on: 1) This is

hi i'm rainy and i'm kinda pissed off so i just got this lovely comment this morning: now i'm not making this post to start drama with this person because it's not worth my time, but i did want to address this issue with everyone because i feel like this needs to be said i don't have time to reply to each and every person who comments. that's a fact. it might be hard to believe but i have a life outside of the internet and other things occupy my time aside from checking deviantart every 5 minutes, especially now that i'm 18 and need to figure out and prepare for college and living on my own. there was once a time when i was younger and had