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EYproductions

Mostly drawing animals
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I feel I should start with a note. The following post is just a quick announcement about some housekeeping on the Animalburg Patreon page. I didn't want to put off this change or avoid mentioning it while it's fresh on the brain. However, I realize that much more important (and much more serious) stuff is happening in the world right now. So don't feel any obligation to read this post if you haven't the funds/time/brain-space for contributing to a silly comic about talking hamsters right now. No hard feelings. Delete this post, continue with your day, and stay safe.


For those who are still reading...


When I started a Patreon page for Animalburg, I didn't know what I was doing, what the art/webcomic market would be like, or what I'd be able to deliver for patron rewards. Admittedly, I still don't know any of that stuff. It's all trial-and-error right now. Whee!!!


But I have realized one of my errors has been pricing my Patron Tiers too high with not enough perks to justify them. So today I'm fixing that.


Here's what's new:

  1. Fancy Rat and Guinea Pig (the two highest tiers) have been removed. They may reappear in the future (a few years from now perhaps), but there isn't really a reason for them to exist right now.

  2. Golden Hamster has been reduced to $5, and now has access to all the coloring pages (previously the domain of the Fancy Rats). Time to raid the Crayola aisle and have some stress-reducing coloring fun!

  3. House Mouse (the $3 tier) now has access to behind-the-scenes content. See how a page comes together, from notebook doodle to full color jpg file. (Laugh at how often I use white-out.)

  4. House Mouse and Golden Hamster tiers will now have access to new comic pages as they are finished (not just one week early). Since my goal is to create a 10-page buffer by New Year's Eve 2022, this perk should increase in value as the year goes on.


So, if you have the means and are enjoying the Animalburg comic, please consider joining a Patreon tier at https://www.patreon.com/animalburg_comic. If not, no worries. I genuinely enjoy entertaining you all with silly talking animal drawings, so the views and favorites have been very encouraging and motivating. The comic will continue to post once a week for free as usual on DA and ComicFury. Thanks!

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A few years ago, me and my BFF came up with Adventure Story Climax Bingo. We've never actually played it, but here are the 25 potential spaces we came up with (originally written on a napkin!”)

  1. 1-on-1 duel between protagonist and villain

  2. Villain turns into some hideous monster

  3. MacGuffin gets smashed/destroyed

  4. Countdown that takes way longer than it would in real life

  5. Protagonist visited by ghost of fallen mentor

  6. Laser beam at the sky

  7. Character appears to die (then recovers in the conclusion)

  8. Villain gets impaled

  9. Villain falls off a high place to their death

  10. Villain gets offed by their own minions

  11. Villain gets turned good somehow

  12. “Gondor calls for aid” occurs (army of friends shows up out of nowhere)

  13. Lightning storm

  14. Cute side-character makes a heroic sacrifice

  15. Cute side-character bumbles something up

  16. Hero finds “they had the power all along”

  17. Explosion

  18. Setting catches fire

  19. Villain goes insane/drawn with crazy eyes

  20. Villain says something along the lines of “Nothing can stop me now!”

  21. Protagonist hitches a ride on convenient flying transport

  22. Good-guy commandeers a bad-guy weapon for use in battle

  23. Protagonist has to “power up” in some way

  24. Everything instantly returns to normal once the villain dies/doom machine is turned off

  25. Villain shouts “Nooooo!” as they are being defeated

Thought of something we missed?  What are your must-haves for an epic final battle?  Let me know in the comments.
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I used to think I was unafraid of being caught not knowing something. This is still partly true, but only partly. I've never been shy of saying “I don't know”; it's a less dangerous answer than just BS-ing my way through life.

Someone at work this week, a trainee no less, casually pointed out the flaw in my armor of conscious ignorance. Though I'm ok with not knowing something in general, I am still deeply afraid of being wrong. These are two different things.

I'm ok with being clueless, as long as I know that I'm clueless.

I'm not ok with feeling certain and later finding out that I was actually clueless.

Ask me how a quantum computer works; I'll say I don't know. I know I don't know. Furthermore, it's not necessary for me to know how a quantum computer works because I'm not likely to ever use one. I'll happily sit for an explanation, but it's not a big deal.

Ask me how to pack an order at the warehouse. I'll feel certain that I know. I'll explain, and demonstrate, and finish of with a neat “easy as pie”. Set it on the line. Goodbye order. Have a nice trip to your new home!

Five minutes later, my supervisor comes back with that order. “You did this wrong. You need to do it this other way. How did you not know this?”

Even more embarrassing when it happens in front of your trainee.

Yet, my fears have their limits. This week was an exhausting week. Peak Season hit like a snowstorm in April. I lost track of how many hours I worked, I just showed up and left when they told me to. At least 6 hours of overtime are on the books. There's the realistic possibility that the next 3 months will be more of the same. I'm tired. Everyone's tired.

And it's like a piece of my brain went “sproing!” from worry-fatigue, because suddenly I don't care.  I'm in that mode where I could get reprimanded by my boss and all I'd feel is vague annoyance at the amount of time the reprimand took.

Maybe this is a good thing. I can shrug and move on instead of melting into a pathetic puddle of "What have I done!?!?!11"

The fatigue also has me dreaming of a life doing freelance art work from a tiny house for 6 hours a day, instead of packing boxes of meaningless... STUFF in a fuel-and-cardboard scented warehouse for 10 hours a day.

Maybe I do care a little still. Maybe I'm just angry.  (I'm probably just angry.)

But maybe it's time to start crafting a better job. (Before my fear of being wrong comes back.)

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A few months ago I moved out of my parents' house. Not all of my stuff is gone from their house; it is an ongoing process. Once a week I drop by to clean a few more things out of my old room (and raid the fridge; I won't deny it. In my defense, I usually act as a human leftover-disposal, eating whatever Mom and Dad have gotten bored of.)

My old room was my permanent address for 18 years, almost exactly. From 3rd grade to 4-years-past-college it has collected school work, craft projects, gifts, photos, keepsakes, tech, and random rocks from the yard. It is not a time capsule, more of an archaeological dig. And each item I have to make a choice: keep, donate, or throw away.

Childhood hat with years of memories? Keep.

Fancy shoes from Junior Prom? Donate.

Two dozen gestural sketches of nudes drawn on newsprint? Throw away.  (As much as my art teachers will scream, let's be frank. They're all half-drawn. I've no interest in ever looking at them again. My family has no interest in looking at them. My friends have no interest in looking at them. The models who posed for the picture have no interest in looking at them. Historians in the future will have no interest in looking at them.)

The pastel drawings of those same models that took me hours of class time to do? Keeping those. (Except for the one that I no longer have because the model bought it from me. Highlight of my college career.)

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, the chart.

Back in college I had a chart to keep track of my blogging goals. Yes, I had a blog. Two people read it. It wasn't a big deal, but it was mine. I used to keep a schedule of posting something – anything – every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I would post a drawing or photo once a week, at minimum, and a video once a month. The chart helped me keep track of all this. The chart idea was wildly successful. For most of my time at DePaul I posted a great deal of work on that blog.

Then the season of depression hit, and I no longer felt like I had anything to say. The blog died.

This year, while moving my life a ½ hour down the interstate, I found the blog chart. Nay, found many blog charts. I had tried to re-start the blog several times. Some with the same goals, some with loftier goals. All attempting to re-ignite my engine of creativity. It never worked. The charts remained blank.

And now I think I know why. The short answer: I can't.

Let me explain.

In the heyday of the blog, I was a full time student producing loads of art-related schoolwork for class. I didn't have to search for something to say, I would just talk about a new insight from class and post a WIP of my latest assignment. And I had time. I had scads of time. I could do homework on the train to and from class. I could spend hours in a library or a quiet computer lab. Someone else set my goals, I only had to live up to expectations and everything turned out hunky-dory.

That is no longer my life. Now I work full-time, in a job that generates no artwork at all. Nothing I do at work can be brought home or will last longer than a week. My commute is unproductive because I drive. Forty minutes total of each weekday is spent with eyes focused on a road. The radio is on, but I can rarely remember what was said. No one is setting my goals but me, and frankly I suck at it. I never meet my own deadlines. My desk is my work space and entertainment rolled into one, take a guess which happens most often.

Those blog charts: post 3 times a week, post an image once a week, post a video once a month. I could achieve that 5 years ago. I did achieve it. It was a possible goal.

But that is not my reality anymore. The reality is I can't meet those goals.

And it's time I stopped beating myself up about it. Beating myself up is preventing me from learning what I can still do.

I can't make art at the speed I used to. I don't have the time. But, I could still output the same quality, that shouldn't have changed too much. I still have access to materials, all my old textbooks, plus the newness of YouTube. So if time and myself are the two main factors, then maybe...

Maybe I can post twice a week, sporadically. Space it out a bit.

Maybe I can post an image once every two weeks. Two weeks is enough time to come up with something, right? A comic page? A funny sketch?

And maybe, just maybe, I could post a new video two months from now. Two months doesn't sound so hard. A little walk cycle? A head turn?

We'll see.

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So I just uploaded a bunch of bird pictures.  I will probably upload 10 more by tomorrow.  Let me explain.

So here in Illinois, USA, we have been hit by Winter Storm Ion (Was a chemist in charge of making the winter-storm-name list this year?) I live in the area predicted for 5-8" (between 13-20 cm).  So the last two days have been spent bracing for impact as it were (Canadians and residents of Colorado, you have my permission to laugh).  :snowing:

Knowing that it was going to be a rough day for all God's creatures, not just the ones with cars, my family decided to put out additional bird feeders. Our feeder total is now at 3, with additional seed scattered on the path for birds that prefer to eat on the ground.

A mixed flock of dark-eyed juncosblack-capped chickadeestufted titmicehouse sparrows, and white-breasted nuthatches hung around our house all day, unperturbed by the wind and snow.  Red-bellied woodpeckers and downy woodpeckers pounded away at the frozen suet cake.  Our resident breeding pairs of cardinals and mourning doves also made an appearance, as well as a single European starling, who was a little skittish being so close to a house (funny, that; a starling in Chicago wouldn't bat an eye).

With so many birds so close to the window and holding (relatively) still... well... I just HAD to take pictures.

So yeah.  That's why you all just got spammed with 5 pictures of chickadees.  Sorry.  I couldn't help myself. :forgiveme:
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