Thank you so much to all the musicians who have been choosing my art as inpiration for the Art Inspired Music Contest!

My favorite so far is Whirlguy's track. Go give em' some love!

Hope youre all doing well and are staying caffinated. <3

Prints have been something I've flirted with off and on over the past couple years, and while getting them into the hands of my supporters is a great experience, the entire process has proven to be extremely tedious. Sending prints via redbubble or inprint leaves me with only a tiny fraction of the money made from the product with no guarantee of quality, and the prints i've sent by hand have seemingly vanished in transit on several occasions.

Ever since pixel day there has been an insane demand for Unrest prints. While I'd love to say "SURE!" and ship these things out, I have to first work out the pricing and method of shipping prints.

Thankfully now I can print and ship things directly from the shop right downstairs from the studio I work at, and the prints are professional quality as well! This means selling prints is a much much much greater possibility, though there are still some hurdles in my way.

The shipping averages at approximately 22 dollars here in the United States, and will average at a higher rate for those in outside the U.S. I'd hate to charge 30-40 dollars for a single print, so I'm trying to work out a way to add more value to the package by including additional goods.

Would any of you be interested in buying prints in the 30-40 dollar price range if they come in bundles of 3 with additional drawings or surprise items?

Let me know what you think and feel free to chime in and throw some recommendations my way.

Here, gander at this cute bird. Captain's orders.

also

Listen to this to optimize your bird gandering experience.

Enjoy ⁽ ⁻ ᵛ ⁻ ⁾

First and foremost, happy new year to all of my wonderful followers watching this. I hope you had a good one.

2015 was an eventful year for me, for better or worse.

Around this time last year I was given less than a months notice that I needed to find a new place to live. At the moment I was unemployed, rather depressed, and had been dragging myself through one of the worst artistic dry spells i've ever experienced. 

I packed my stuff up in my car, went to the cafe, opened up my laptop, and started drawing like my life depended on it. I made a massive amount of design mockups in order to put together a portfolio, hoping that i may be able to get a graphic design gig somewhere to make some quick cash. Unfortunately I was turned down by the firms I applied to. Rejection after rejection I was told that my work wasn't well suit for design, that it's too cartoonish or fantasy-like.

I had been up for four days straight, had only eaten a few lousy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches over the course of a week, and was feeling particularly useless. In a desperate attempt to crawl my way out of an art block, I created a picture called Unrest. This picture captured exactly what I was feeling in that moment. I felt engulfed by a fire perpetuated by misfortune that I brought onto myself. A flame composed of an anger towards my own laziness, apathy, and comfort. I was plagued by a fear of opportunity, and now only the ashes of that fear remain.

I promised myself that I would never compromise my integrity for petty comfort again. To never give up on my dreams because of the wishes of shitty family members, shitty friends, or my own shitty insecurities. When opportunity came to me, I wouldnt run and hide.

Shortly after that, some amazing people came through and helped me out greatly. I found a new place to live and started working my ass off. As luck would have it that next day I was approached with a massive opportunity, and I took it. Funny enough, I was offered a gig after the person running it saw the same design portfolio that was turned down by all the other clients I reached out to.

I spent the following months doing all of the art for a music festival. Going from a period of doing no art at all to assuming workload of an entire team seems insane but it was what I needed to pull me from the depths of unproductivity that I had sunken to. It was crazy. I hardly slept, learned practically everything as I went, and did things I didn't even know I was capable of.

The festival was great, and is still the funnest and most succesful project Ive ever worked on.

2015 didn't come without its own grievances though. I've struggled with my living conditions month to month, watched my closest sister go through cancer, and was continuously forced to put personal work to the side in order to pay a mountain of medical bills. Hard drives crashed, computers broke, and my sketchbook was stolen, setting my personal projects back by an abysmal scale.

I'd be lying if I said this year didn't completely wear me down a few times, but we are better for the moments we endure. 

The quality of my life is different now. I'm more productive, more outgoing, and as creative as I've ever been. Though there's still a mountain before me, a colossal pile of unfinished projects and half dreamt worlds, and my ascent has just begun.

I spent the last year working hard on other people's projects and learned a lot from it. This year I think it's time to work on my own project. Its finally time to turn those little worlds I've shared through the art portal into living, breathing games.

This is the year...

~Carrion <3

I'm back on deviantart! So if original sonic characters and celebrities faces photoshopped onto random stock photos of people wearing fur coats is your thing, go follow me and I'll give you one of those stupid ass Llama badges or something.

You can find my page right here.

I should be uploading there more frequently and might start dumping sketches and rough work. I tend to only post finished work on sites like newgrounds and tumblr for the sake of display, but being able to control which pictures are displayed on my main page helps with that a lot. So if you follow me there expect to possibly see more conceptual work/traditional art on my deviantart in the future.

Recently two sketchbooks were stolen from my car. 

It was a pretty hard hit.

One was a dream journal, the other a world building sketchbook. The dream journal had four years of daily/weekly handwritten journal entries stashed in one of its folds, along with dream inspired level design drawings. The Sketchbook had drawings made for a world I’ve been building for over ten years.

There was a lot of work put into these sketchbooks….

Some of the drawing were old.

Yeah…Some of the drawings were very old.

Very, very, very old…

With a memory as terrible as mine, to call this a loss would be an understatement. Though I am thankful for the few scanned pages and digital work I still have, the massive chunk of drawing and world building Iv’e lost is seemingly irreplaceable. That being said, the more I think about the loss, the more I feel like this was more of a favor than anything else.

Iv’e grown a lot as a person since the time I started building this world. From the time I only had MS Paint….

….and the time in which I still used my initials as a signature…..

…to the time I embraced a persona, and adopted a new medium….

Iv’e built a world of my own.

At times I’ve lost myself in this world…..

But it has always been therapeutic, a form of self exploration. I’m a better person for the places and people I wrote about. It’s like medicine.

In the time that Iv’e built this world, Iv’e made great friends!

Iv’e also lost some great friends along the way…

In the months leading up to the sketchbooks being stolen, I had been putting together a design document for a new project. The issues I ran into the most frequently were symptomatic of a poorly built foundation. 

Latching onto a concept you thought up when you were a child is difficult, but hard to let go of. You tell yourself that you’re being loyal and authentic, when you’re really harming the final product.  

Iv’e always entertained the idea of wiping everything away and starting over. Just scrapping every old idea that conflicted newer concepts. 

To burn away all the old ideas to let new ones grow.

In fact, I almost made a game about that very struggle one time, but it turned into a suicide note.

I could never go through with the idea of starting over. I had already done too much work. Too much writing, too much drawing, too much time spent creating this place. I had too many memories tied to these ideas, too many contributions from close friends who I may never be able to speak to again.

I’m 22 years old. Half of my life has been spent on this one thing. Starting over is a scary idea.

It seemed impossible, until now. 

Now those things are out of my hands whether I like it or not. There are still photographs and digital works, sure, but the time has already been spent and the fine print is lost.

If I’m ever going to start over and make this happen, the time is now; so rather than looking at this as a loss, I’m going to embrace it as an opportunity. 

Despite the inarguable loss, I can admit a certain amount of relief.

No one will ever see the world I built up all those years, I’ll never tell that particular story again. That world was never for anyone else though, it had always been for myself, which was its biggest flaw.

I’m starting over, building a new world from the ground up.

Aspects of that world will live on in something new. People, places, and loose ideas will feel familiar and consistent with what Ive already shown. But many of those places will stay between my ears, beneath the lids of my eyes.

This is quite literally the end of a world.

“As art is one’s reaction to the world around them, it is even more so a reflection of the many worlds within.”

Here’s to moving on, and building many more of those worlds.

-Carrion

Just wanted to check in and let you all know that I love you all dearly.

<3<3

I'll rise from the dead and return to hitting up the art portal soon enough.

In the meantime, here's some commissioned work I'm allowed to share with you guys.

(prepare for bad puush screenshots)

My inbox is contantly being ravaged by all you fuckboys asking if you can program LIT so here's an update to clear the air. <3

How bout that Jam tho? I may or may not be looking for someone to work with.

Also heres a little character doodle I did a while back. I wanted to share it with you guys but figured it isnt worth posting in the portal, so ill just start dumping doodles and sketches here on my page.

Some of you may have seen that Newgrounds did a limited sale on pastries that Tom and April Fulp made by hand. I decided to pick some up, and write up a review. After getting mine in the mail, I opened the box right up and had a turnover with some coffee. It was delicious! The strawberries were fresh and the turnover itself was very crisp and sweet. After about half an hour, my stomach started hurting and I felt a bit queezy. I then felt my anus puckering in and out as if satan himself was waiting at the gates of my asshole ready to unleash a fiery hell upon my pants. I ran to the bathroom casually trying to not catch too much attention from the workers at my office. My plans to be quiet were quickly foiled by a monstrous roaring that soared out my gaping rectum as hell and all below came flying out staining the toilet and the walls around me with a deathly stench. I was in the restroom for five hours before I could even stop the flow of asswater enough to wipe. 

Never again, Tom. Never. Ever. Again.