Creative Corner

Got them edits in, reposting this! Deathtoll's pirate snapper and his many fuzzy crew. Not the [i]best[/i] crew, but still kinda The Best Crew. [img]http://i.imgur.com/Tg39iDE.jpg[/img]

Queue pinglist: @Negcol @tybaltcatulet @Zyxyz @Nishiboys @Doki @FlouricBurn @Sylvandyr @Alphazi I resurface again, with evidence of activity and a life update! Been getting a chance to do some dragon art (some inks for NegCol): [img]https://i.imgur.com/ruYLknp.png[/img] [b]An explanation and apology for my delays in communication and updates: [/b] Work put me on a contract basis when I got incredibly sick, and over the past couple months, the contracts have been thin on the ground. So I've been having to take some commissions for bill-paying currency (and prioritizing those over dragon-cash) in order to not put financial stress on my husband. But on the upside, having to hustle my hobby to make money has made me both faster and better, so hey! I have a system for refined sketches that takes me maybe a sitting or two per[b]**[/b], and I anticipate being able to chomp more efficiently on my FR queue in between jobs for real-world dollars. ^^ I will be working on FR stuff periodically during the work weekday, making an effort to make consistent queue progress. I appreciate all of your incredible patience thus far! I've been grateful for the understanding while I play life catch-up; it's meant the world to me to have breathing room while I cope with my health issues. Thank y'all very kindly. :) [b]**[/b] ([i]a la [url=https://imgur.com/G6F4jzX][b]this piece[/b][/url], which is SFW but he is nonetheless making A Rude Hand Gesture so proceed as appropriate, haha[/i])

Thanks for the update!

Wooo! Got a flowery dragon here for @NegCol : [url=https://i.imgur.com/dIyTdeQ.png][img]https://i.imgur.com/dIyTdeQ.png[/img][/url] (I've linked it to a larger version of itself because FR is a place of Narrow Images.)

This is literally the best drawing thread I've ever seen

@ruggafluff Hey, I was wondering it you ever plan to open this up again?

@Zorualuvr It is in the eventual plans, yes! I've had a long, long couple of years of dealing with health problems and am currently recovering from hip surgery. But things are on the upswing so hey, I can hopefully get caught up in the near future.

pings and what i owe you! @tybaltcatulet (artist's choice) @Zyxyz (colored derpling) @Nishiboys (artist's choice) @Doki (artist's choice) @FlouricBurn (BIG KAHUNA) @NegCol (BIG KAHUNA) @Sylvandyr (big piece) @Alphazi (herbal boy)

Artist's choice was more of a simple illustration, "big kahuna / big piece" was a full-scale illustration with background in it, derplings were somewhere in-between (i am still happy to make something as cute as i know how ;)


Life has finally, mercifully, measurably started to recover from the whole "I almost died" thing.

I'm about to itemize the list of ways life has gotten better, not to elicit any sort of pity, but to really just say... it wasn't that I didn't want to get to you, it was really just an intense survival struggle for a long, long time there. TL;DR: Art relevant stuff is after this; I'm still up for it if y'all are, just. Dang, y'all. Daaaang.

• My body feels a lot better lately! Celiac diagnosis improved a lot of things, not being so anemic I'm dying means working out has let me build muscle mass, and ease some of the aches that come with the genetic disorder that I... also got diagnosed with. (Fun couple years, let me tell you.)
• I also got surgery to fix the constant pain in my hip, and it helped a ton!! They made me do $1000 of physical therapy before insurance would agree to pay for it and it took SIX MONTHS from diagnosis to get it fixed. But y'all, I forgot what it was like to not be in so much pain it was a struggle not to cry. It's so much better now.
• I have stopped having so many crying fits after having to put down my dog! Whose care was taking up a lot of my energy and time in the last parts of his life (dementia apparently) when I had almost none to spare and was living with torn cartilage in my pelvis. (It was time and he had a good run. Still sucked and I still miss him. But when we can afford it in a few months, we're getting a new rescue doggo.)
• We got done moving! We had to hire a lawyer at closing and it made everything a nightmare, and I had to do a lot more physical activity than someone post-op really should, but we made it. I cannot convey how awful my body has felt the past couple weeks, but hey, it has actually been healing!! That's new!
• I finally got properly medicated for a condition that had apparently been misdiagnosed until I was 30 years old, this age right now! (Apparently unmedicated bipolar disorder is both nearly impossible to manage by willpower alone, and also exhausting. Whoops!)

I tried so hard to be productive around all of that, but frankly, it just got on top of me. A lot of things went so bad for a couple years there that I had to dedicate more energy than I really felt like I had to surviving the circumstances, as well as finding ways to fix my nightmare body. (It was easy to get in over my head by taking what seemed like an okay amount of things to do; everyone else could, after all!)

But the active struggle paid off, and I can do things again. I'm finally at a point where I can be productive on most days without my health taking me out of the game, or my massively dysfunctional mood swings making some minor life drama into a days-long meltdown I had no power to control.

I REMAIN COMMITTED TO THE PROMISE I MADE WHEN I TOOK ON THIS QUEUE. I'm gonna gitcha; my health's a lot better, and our financial situation is better enough that I do not have to constantly scramble to take USD work (and struggle to finish it) just to help pay bills. It is easier to survive now, and I do not have as many difficulty modifiers going for me lately.

That said, I know I've promised activity after minor victories in past, so if you get this ping and go "nahhh" and you want the treasure equivalent of whatever I owe you back, I can make that happen. I still appreciate that nobody has yelled at me even though I know it's... well over a year since that big foddart order? Years?? (I legit don't remember a lot that happened when I was really, really sick.)

But if you figure a sunk cost is a sunk cost and you like art, I'm still up for holding up my end of the deal! I have old orders written down, but it's been a while and I'm all about letting you pick something you're more interested in these days. (I have the scale of piece you're all written down for in the teeny pinglist up there, but I can send you what info I have saved privately too!)

Again, genuinely, thank you all for your patience. I've seen some pretty scathing artist's bewares for shorter time periods and less-infrequent communication than I was able to provide over the past couple years. Now that I am better, I am going to do better, but it still stings that I've had a queue outstanding anywhere for so long. I wanna fix it!

Let me know how you'd like to proceed from here! Whether you want your dragon-money back, or actual art-of-dragon (even if not in dragon form!*) Either way, I wanna make it right.

*(Or even if not an FR dragon. On the upside, not being anemic means my brain works again and I'm way better at human faces now. Gijinkas ahoy!! I will draw pretty much anything y'all want. <3)

@ruggafluff your journey has been hard but you've come out victorious in the end! health is most important over all, and you doing better is what matters <333

@ruggafluff Congratulations and well done :)

I'd still love the art whenever you're up for it!