Good morning, Art Station world, fellow artsits and yadda yadda... 

So, blogging here. Yeah.. I guess it's a thing, or could be a thing or should be a thing, so here goes. 

Why start blogging now? Here? After being a pro member here for a few years even? Well, let's start off by answering that one. And for the record, I do find it useful to think and write that way, often posing some kind of hypothetical question to myself as a means of letting an answer bubble up out from whatever mental muck it may emerge.

As to why start this? Well, it begins with some disgruntlement with social media in general. See, for a very, very long time, I've promoted myself via social media, like so many others. For me, that meant heavily on Facebook, a little on Twitter (though not much because I'm talker and that platform just befuddles me...), a little on Instagram, a little here and there. I think you get the point. But as a solo, working artist, dealing with both clients and personal projects, trying to market commercial products under my own brand as well as ferret out potential client work, I've seen the social media game spike some years ago and then fall down a steadily declining slope to the point where it seems to have settled on a certain equilibrium of people. The same people. All the time, the same. And that's fine. I love those folks. They have supported my work for 20+ in some cases. But it doesn't really reach many new eyes. Then there's  the added fact that given the climate of the world today, or at least inside my country, the feeds invariably are packed with politics no matter how hard one tries to prune them. Considering the amount of time I was spending in Facebook specifically, just looking for engagement with people only to find myself buried under infuriating politics at every  turn meant that I needed to step back and re-calibrate.  I recently removed the FB app from most of my devices and started only checking on my specific pages and messaging, leaving the usual timeline behind as much as possible. Amazing what that did for my mental health. I wish that were a joke, but it's true. So what about interaction with folks interested in my art, interaction with other artists and maybe potential clients or customers? 

Back when Art Station first started, I joined. I liked the format, of the site and a lot of it's promises. Having been a member, and in some cases actually involved in the founding of a number of other long standing art sites, I saw a lot of potential, but mitigated my expectations accordingly. Most new endeavors fail, even if they look to have merit. Art Station has surprised me, and so when thinking about where I would share my thoughts on day to day art life and all the other stuff that  goes along with it in lieu of the social media platforms I now feel are nothing short of malignant cancers, I landed back here. We'll see how that goes.

Format is important to me. I like the way this site works a LOT. So there's that. It's easy for me to pop on spout what's on my mind, share art, and check out tons of great stuff. That only made it attractive. I've also see how it's grown over  time and how it seems to have an active audience of artists and art enthusiasts, also a big plus. What I hope to get out of sharing my words here, and not just my art, is perhaps some conversations and interaction with others from the community of artists I am already enjoying watching. Also, in choosing to replace my social media poison with this, more focused platform of interaction, I'm hoping to satisfy my need to connect while weeding out quite a bit of negativity. 

Since this is my first blog post here, then, let me drop a short introduction.

I have been a professional artist since 1993, working in comic books, advertising, animation, just about every facet of 3D that's existed in some respect including film, animation, effects and gaming. Rather than go into all that, I'll just note that recently I enjoyed what, to me, has been the highpoint of my career, after doing untold amounts of work for hire since I was 19 years old, finally having published my first creator owned comic series, "Apocalypse Girl", through the great folks at Source Point Press. On deck now are other books with fellow creators there, as well the follow up volumes 2 and 3 of Apocalypse Girl. I split my production time mainly between working on the various comics I'm involved with and producing mountains of 3D content for Daz3D, which has proven to be an awesome home for that side of what I enjoy doing. In the works, outside of my visual arts, I am planning to take a month soon to finish my first novel, a horror piece that is very personal to me and which I have high hopes for, at least in it's execution.

My other passions outside of art are martial arts, in particular Shotokan Karate-do, music (an addiction that can derail me from the rest of life far too easily, thus a great deal of discipline is exerted around it), comic books and roleplaying games (D&D, Warhammer, GURPS, and my all time favorite, literally anything from any version of The World of Darkness!!!). Don't be surprised if something pops up in here from time to time about any of this stuff, as most of my "art life" has connections out into the rest of this.

So, there you have it. I am curious as to how it will go, sharing things here. That's all for now...

Gotta go make stuff...