Note: I wrote this some time ago, don't know why I didn't post it then, it seems pretty complete to me.
I've finally started to emerge from the torpor of my woes. A combination of the imminent spring, bringing with it more light and time, a clearing of my life of all distractions, the necklace which is both a symbol of the relationship I have with my mother, and an opal compass rose, giving me direction.
My gods are speaking to me again, a post I'm gathering together now, and I no longer feel pain in remembering the wrongs that were done to me. I've put that behind me and am prepared to keep moving forward in a new life. I'm more motivated to my art work, and even tentatively reexamining my career options, though I still remain quite trepidatious about going out into the real world.
I divide my life into three categories. Family, Art, and Work.
The first is self-explanatory, kith and kin, social interactions, relationships, friends. It is stable at present, and hopefully will have the opportunity to regrow, after having had a rather drastic pruning.
My Art is my soul, it includes my spirituality, as I don't think I could have the relationship I do with the magical forces I work with, without the inspiration and imagination of my art. It gives me so many skills and broadens my horizons in a way no other part of my life can challenge. My art is an integral part of me. I have learned the hard way that I cannot form an identity for myself without acknowledging my art.
The last could be called Career, and I feel like there is something missing from such prosaic descriptions. What I want to do with my life, is both simpler and more complicated than what it becomes upon facing The Real World. I need animals, I breath them, I dream them, I create them. My efforts on this front are mixed, as they factor in quite a lot in my art, and a few of them even become one with my family.
Saturday, June 14, 2014
Thursday, January 23, 2014
I need to see my mom
In addition to the fact it’s been awhile, things are strained with the in-laws, and I need to get some stuff, my mom just lost her job of 14 years.
I’m flat broke, or I’d be there already. There’s literally only about $3 in my bank account, leftover from Christmas money. My mom is 61 years old, a compulsive hoarder, with cataracts in both eyes and a bad back. She’s finally acknowledging that she should try to get on disability and is applying for the ACA. I know she’s dealing with some other difficulties in trying to get unemployment, and trying to fight some credit card fraud in her name.
I know I can’t fix her or solve all her problems, and I know I can’t stay in her house for more than a few weeks at a time without having a mental breakdown myself. I still want to spend some time with her, help her move some things, and just be there for her to vent to. I’d like to maybe have her come down to spend some time with me here, as much as my in-laws are problematic people, they usually put on their best behavior while someone new is in the house, and quite frankly she’ll butt in and stand up for herself if they overstep their boundaries. I think it would do her good to be in a house with some extra space. Hell, she could probably help them keep things clean and look after the baby some better than any of them have(it may seem counter intuitive that a hoarder is good at house cleaning outside of her home, but hoarding isn’t simply a result of laziness or poor housekeeping).
But I need to go see her, and spend some time with her and talk to her and let her decide what she wants to do.
If by any chance you’d like to donate to help me out, send a paypal gift to sabelfukaimori@gmail.com
Saturday, August 3, 2013
Finally some thoughts on Feminism
This is going to be a little bit of a disjointed ramble, as it's pieced together from a conversation I was having on facebook.
The problem is that people outside of the movement think of it from the view of Patriarchy, as they think feminism is about women wanting to become men. I know this because I was basically trying to be a man before I discovered feminism and realized just how misogynistic my futile attempt at assimilation was. It's left me so confused though, analyzing every aspect of my life to reevaluate each decision to make sure I'm making the choices true to myself, and not being influenced by any of the societal trends that pushed and pulled me before.
I think it's also a lot to do with how we are as a society. I honestly think the 90s were pretty ideal to grow up a girl, because there were a lot of tomboys in the media. Growing up with three brothers, no one ever told me that I was wrong or that I should prefer girly things. I did or played with girly things on occassion, as a coy sort of game, but it was never a big issue. Girls could do boy things, boys could do girl things and anyone could do anything or be anything. Or so I thought, perhaps I was just raised more or less the right way.
Sometime around the turn of the century though, femininity became synonymous with frivolity. Masculinism started to rise up, although I don't know if that term or MRAs had started to identify themselves or not. For the 2010s though, MRAs are holding themselves up as a courageous underdog, decrying all that 'useless' Politically Correctness of the 90s. I've heard a lot of jokes about how our country felt emasculated by the 9/11 attacks, and the following wars in the Middle East have contributed further to a sense of cynicism and despair, and so those who were once complacent have started attacking anything and everything that might be vulnerable.
The bright point is that Feminism has woken back up, and we have our own fangs and claws, and we're realizing that the complacency of the 90s was a false dream, we've woken up to the fact that our battles are still being fought, and more importantly, that there are other people who never got the chance to be complacent.
Entrenched in the Great Recession, we are in a place where everyone is feeling the pinch. Unfortunately those who were in positions of greatest privilege have no idea what it means to be under privileged, and so in an ironic bout of hypocrisy they blame those who have been suffering as underprivileged individuals. I acknowledge now, in a way I couldn't before, that I am a person of privilege. I have always been poor, I'm mentally ill, I have been homeless, and of course I'm a woman who has been sexually abused. But I'm a white woman, which I'm sure has helped grease the gears of the machine so that even a broken cog like me can pass for a little while. In a lot of ways, my comparatively minor trials and tribulations have been a gift in preparing me to recognize the resources I have at my disposal.
I don't fool myself into thinking that I know anything about what People of Color or Physically Disabled people are going through, even when I was homeless, I went through it in a situation of relative comfort, safe in a women's shelter. Even at my lowest point, I still mused to myself daily that I wasn't being treated the same as the other women on the streets with me, especially not the women of color whom in reflection I might very well have disadvantaged simply by being there. I had passing privilege even then, rather than being identified as homeless, I think anyone who saw me simply considered me a tourist with all my bags. I chose to be homeless, as much as any person can call it a choice, because although I never asked and didn't need to, I knew my mom would come and save me if I called on her.
I have been incredibly fortunate, and even this has been a self-indulgent post of navel-gazing from a white working class feminist coming to grips with intersectionality, but more on that later, because the #1 rule of ally club, is not to talk over the people less privileged than yourself. They are out there screaming at the top of their lungs, and the rest of us are too absorbed in our own worlds that we don't even hear it.
The problem is that people outside of the movement think of it from the view of Patriarchy, as they think feminism is about women wanting to become men. I know this because I was basically trying to be a man before I discovered feminism and realized just how misogynistic my futile attempt at assimilation was. It's left me so confused though, analyzing every aspect of my life to reevaluate each decision to make sure I'm making the choices true to myself, and not being influenced by any of the societal trends that pushed and pulled me before.
I think it's also a lot to do with how we are as a society. I honestly think the 90s were pretty ideal to grow up a girl, because there were a lot of tomboys in the media. Growing up with three brothers, no one ever told me that I was wrong or that I should prefer girly things. I did or played with girly things on occassion, as a coy sort of game, but it was never a big issue. Girls could do boy things, boys could do girl things and anyone could do anything or be anything. Or so I thought, perhaps I was just raised more or less the right way.
Sometime around the turn of the century though, femininity became synonymous with frivolity. Masculinism started to rise up, although I don't know if that term or MRAs had started to identify themselves or not. For the 2010s though, MRAs are holding themselves up as a courageous underdog, decrying all that 'useless' Politically Correctness of the 90s. I've heard a lot of jokes about how our country felt emasculated by the 9/11 attacks, and the following wars in the Middle East have contributed further to a sense of cynicism and despair, and so those who were once complacent have started attacking anything and everything that might be vulnerable.
The bright point is that Feminism has woken back up, and we have our own fangs and claws, and we're realizing that the complacency of the 90s was a false dream, we've woken up to the fact that our battles are still being fought, and more importantly, that there are other people who never got the chance to be complacent.
Entrenched in the Great Recession, we are in a place where everyone is feeling the pinch. Unfortunately those who were in positions of greatest privilege have no idea what it means to be under privileged, and so in an ironic bout of hypocrisy they blame those who have been suffering as underprivileged individuals. I acknowledge now, in a way I couldn't before, that I am a person of privilege. I have always been poor, I'm mentally ill, I have been homeless, and of course I'm a woman who has been sexually abused. But I'm a white woman, which I'm sure has helped grease the gears of the machine so that even a broken cog like me can pass for a little while. In a lot of ways, my comparatively minor trials and tribulations have been a gift in preparing me to recognize the resources I have at my disposal.
I don't fool myself into thinking that I know anything about what People of Color or Physically Disabled people are going through, even when I was homeless, I went through it in a situation of relative comfort, safe in a women's shelter. Even at my lowest point, I still mused to myself daily that I wasn't being treated the same as the other women on the streets with me, especially not the women of color whom in reflection I might very well have disadvantaged simply by being there. I had passing privilege even then, rather than being identified as homeless, I think anyone who saw me simply considered me a tourist with all my bags. I chose to be homeless, as much as any person can call it a choice, because although I never asked and didn't need to, I knew my mom would come and save me if I called on her.
I have been incredibly fortunate, and even this has been a self-indulgent post of navel-gazing from a white working class feminist coming to grips with intersectionality, but more on that later, because the #1 rule of ally club, is not to talk over the people less privileged than yourself. They are out there screaming at the top of their lungs, and the rest of us are too absorbed in our own worlds that we don't even hear it.
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Thoughts on Hyena Magic
9/17/13 Edit: As I said, I'll update this from time to time, there's a few more musings.
I'm just going to keep this as a repository for my own experiences and understanding on the most constant influence on my life. The experiences others pick up from Hyena may differ, and even with myself, the personal Striped Hyena influence is a bit more subtle than the Spotted Hyena magic that dominates my experiences.
Hyena magic is Madness. At best, those I've known touched by hyena to be blatantly eccentric, most of us both embrace and struggle with mental illness, substance abuse and sexuality.
Hyena is blunt. We are what we are, and we don't shy away from ourselves.
Hyena is about primal need. Clan, food, sex, sleep, hunt, den.
Hyena has strange compulsions by human standards. For myself, the eating urges illustrate it best, from the slightly odd tendancy to chew bones and eat marrow, to the desire to eat out of the garbage and spoiled or raw food, more desirable because of its undesirability.
Hyena magic is about survival. We get by, no matter what.
More on eating, and it's importance. It is erroneous to compare Hyenas to Wolves. Hyenas compete by being more successful than one another, not generally through direct competition. Although they are noisy and squabble such as to attract all the animals around at a kill, most focus simply on out-eating each other.
Fatness isn't a bad thing, the plumper you are, obviously the better you are surviving. Still, we value a certain level of fitness and grooming in our hunting partners, but in general we have different ideas of what qualifies as attractive compared to the mainstream.
A lot of people assume that the hyena is lazy. The truth is simply that hyenas don't waste our precious time and resources on things that don't matter to us. We don't sweat the small stuff, but people assume we are just as laissez faire in all aspects of our lives, and to the outsider it can look this way. The truth is that while hyenas are very thoughtful and ruminate long on important subjects as they would gnaw a bone, we make our decisions with just a glance.
Our hunting technique is unique. Most predators stalk their prey, striking a surprise ambush attack.
Hyenas just walk right up to the herd, looking it over. We tease them into motion, and as a whole, immediately find a target, and run them to the ground. We do not wait for our prey to fall before we begin devouring them. We are tireless, agile, and coordinated.
Hyenas outperform even chimps at teamwork.
"When a naive animal unfamiliar with the feeding platforms was paired with a dominant, experienced animal, the dominant animals switched social roles and submissively followed the lower-ranking, naive animal. Once the naive animal became experienced, they switched back.
Both the audience and the role-switching trials revealed that spotted hyenas self-adjust their behavior based upon social context."
The key is the Clan, hyena hierarchy is different from typical linear hierarchies. In wolves, pack members eat according to a rigid order of rank. Much of their time is spent reinforcing these roles. Hyenas are more malleable, for one thing, the strictly divided ranks between males and females is excellent. There is less intersexual conflict, even as much as the males are ranked below even the lowest of females. Relationships are still very important, but are much more mutual and beneficial in general. Growing in rank is easier through cooperation and sharing than it is through oppression and dominance. As well, the much larger size of a clan as opposed to a pack has interesting effects on relationships between animals. As much as the larger clan is respected, smaller groups bond more tightly and most hunting parties consist only of 2-4 animals.
When the clan comes together, the stakes are more dire, and such calls to action only happen in times of war, whether the threat is that of lions or a rival clan.
Hyenas don't waste time on fruitless battles. They know when to back off and run, and accept defeat to live again another day. Spotted Hyenas are the most successful predators in africa, 95% of their diet was prey they brought down.
And if you haven't read it, this entry is 100% accurate to my experiences http://totemist.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/my-words-are-my-fangs-thoughts-on-spotted-hyena/
I'm just going to keep this as a repository for my own experiences and understanding on the most constant influence on my life. The experiences others pick up from Hyena may differ, and even with myself, the personal Striped Hyena influence is a bit more subtle than the Spotted Hyena magic that dominates my experiences.
Hyena magic is Madness. At best, those I've known touched by hyena to be blatantly eccentric, most of us both embrace and struggle with mental illness, substance abuse and sexuality.
Hyena is blunt. We are what we are, and we don't shy away from ourselves.
Hyena is about primal need. Clan, food, sex, sleep, hunt, den.
Hyena has strange compulsions by human standards. For myself, the eating urges illustrate it best, from the slightly odd tendancy to chew bones and eat marrow, to the desire to eat out of the garbage and spoiled or raw food, more desirable because of its undesirability.
Hyena magic is about survival. We get by, no matter what.
More on eating, and it's importance. It is erroneous to compare Hyenas to Wolves. Hyenas compete by being more successful than one another, not generally through direct competition. Although they are noisy and squabble such as to attract all the animals around at a kill, most focus simply on out-eating each other.
Fatness isn't a bad thing, the plumper you are, obviously the better you are surviving. Still, we value a certain level of fitness and grooming in our hunting partners, but in general we have different ideas of what qualifies as attractive compared to the mainstream.
A lot of people assume that the hyena is lazy. The truth is simply that hyenas don't waste our precious time and resources on things that don't matter to us. We don't sweat the small stuff, but people assume we are just as laissez faire in all aspects of our lives, and to the outsider it can look this way. The truth is that while hyenas are very thoughtful and ruminate long on important subjects as they would gnaw a bone, we make our decisions with just a glance.
Our hunting technique is unique. Most predators stalk their prey, striking a surprise ambush attack.
Hyenas just walk right up to the herd, looking it over. We tease them into motion, and as a whole, immediately find a target, and run them to the ground. We do not wait for our prey to fall before we begin devouring them. We are tireless, agile, and coordinated.
Hyenas outperform even chimps at teamwork.
"When a naive animal unfamiliar with the feeding platforms was paired with a dominant, experienced animal, the dominant animals switched social roles and submissively followed the lower-ranking, naive animal. Once the naive animal became experienced, they switched back.
Both the audience and the role-switching trials revealed that spotted hyenas self-adjust their behavior based upon social context."
The key is the Clan, hyena hierarchy is different from typical linear hierarchies. In wolves, pack members eat according to a rigid order of rank. Much of their time is spent reinforcing these roles. Hyenas are more malleable, for one thing, the strictly divided ranks between males and females is excellent. There is less intersexual conflict, even as much as the males are ranked below even the lowest of females. Relationships are still very important, but are much more mutual and beneficial in general. Growing in rank is easier through cooperation and sharing than it is through oppression and dominance. As well, the much larger size of a clan as opposed to a pack has interesting effects on relationships between animals. As much as the larger clan is respected, smaller groups bond more tightly and most hunting parties consist only of 2-4 animals.
When the clan comes together, the stakes are more dire, and such calls to action only happen in times of war, whether the threat is that of lions or a rival clan.
Hyenas don't waste time on fruitless battles. They know when to back off and run, and accept defeat to live again another day. Spotted Hyenas are the most successful predators in africa, 95% of their diet was prey they brought down.
And if you haven't read it, this entry is 100% accurate to my experiences http://totemist.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/my-words-are-my-fangs-thoughts-on-spotted-hyena/
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Uncanny Valley Studios is GO
Okay, okay, it’s been awhile and I have some pretty big plans for my art starting again next year, hopefully at Further Confusion.
I am currently living in CA and looking for a real job. I am going to take my real life career fairly seriously and hopefully I can get my living situation, finances, and education back under control. My health is still my number one priority though. I’m also going to try to make it to the Prancing Skiltaire regularly.
So in between all of that, I’ve been reorganizing all my creative projects and attempting to put them in some kind of recognizable order. This means my writing has progressed from snippets of cool dreams written on scraps of paper and such, into one compiled master list of around sixty distinct stories, not including those which revolve around recurring specific groups of characters and settings.
I’m also 85% certain I will have the time and resources to offer Meme Badges again Soon™. Possibly ordinary conbadges, but I am very trepidatious about returning to commission work. To those I still owe commissions, yes, I have been working on them, and no, I can’t show you any progress right now, but Soon™ I should have access to a scanner again, and have some form of coherency to all the various art files on my computer. But if you want to double check on them just in case to remind me I owe you something, PLEASE LET ME KNOW. I feel bad enough that I’ve already issued one refund, but in general I’d much rather prefer to finish the work, although to be realistic and completely honest I have no idea when I will have the time to do that. I’m still learning how to manage my time, and I have quite the back up of information and responsibilities to process, and although the going has been slow, I have been making constant progress.
With all that out of the way, let me make the actual announcements, aside from meme badges, which will be addressed in their own post later, once I have finished the base templates.
I will be officially registering Uncanny Valley Studios as a business next year. Unlike the last time, I do not expect to turn a profit any time soon. The way I will be doing business will be much different from my past endeavors. As I alluded to earlier, the biggest change will be that I will no longer be taking commissions in any real capacity. I will focus primarily on making original one of a kind pieces of art to sell individually, as well as making resin casts and the like.
Any commissions I will offer will be auctions, as will be most of the artwork I will create. I am going to become a fairly selfish artist, and use it primarily as a therapeutic outlet.
The most ambitious project I am going to start the process on is my infrequently mentioned but positively massive magnum opus, The Chronicles of Matri. I originally created the series as a creative writing project for my seventh grade English class. Over the past decade or so, it spawned from what was originally planned to be a series of roughly ten full length novels, to an entire universe of spin off stories. At some point a few years ago I got frustrated with the project because I simply didn’t think my writing was good enough to express things the way I wanted to.
So I put it on the back burner and focused on much smaller projects, most of which are just as half finished and slip-shod as it ever was. For instance, I have suffered several file transfers over the years, and have always had to spend months reorganizing my files because I kept deciding to use a different format, hopefully, fingers crossed, my current PC will be more reliable, and also my file organizing has greatly improved. My focus over the last year and a half has been to improve my life skills, as well as attempt to regain my mental health.
In anycase, I should be opening auditions for The Chronicles of Matri at the beginning of the year, along with everything else, as a collaborative effort to make it a full length Animated Web Series. I have been working tirelessly on building my show/pitch bible so that prospective employees will know exactly what I am looking for. I will obviously need lots of animation artists, special effects technicians, sound engineers and composers, not to mention all-important editors. The world of Matri is a near-future Science Fiction Fantasy story, combining elements of urban fantasy as well as sword and sorcery, and the setting is concurrent with modern Earth. It will deal with politics, espionage, social justice, romance, adventure, mysteries, and every day life. It takes place over the course of generations. My biggest obstacle to date has been compressing and polishing all of the data in my head to show and not tell. I do not want to make a documentary or encyclopedia, I want to make an engaging experience that elicits feeling and thinking. I want people to be moved by it. I don’t care if people love it or hate it (although I would prefer the former) but I want it to be something that people respond to.
The other big project is that I may be opening a line of Anthropomorphic Ball Joint Dolls. I will only be releasing one of a kind dolls for auction, and if there is sufficient investment on behalf of interested parties, resin blanks for customization. And again, I will probably still offer the occasional auction for a custom commission.
Fursuits and Plush Toys will mostly be the same deal, but in a much smaller capacity. I want to make it plain that I will make these projects first and foremost for myself, and after making such things, I will consider them for sale. Custom commissions are probably still a ways off, and again, by auction only, but mostly because I want to be sure that my products meet the highest quality standards and my work in the past has not been that. This may lead to a readily available inventory of pre-made goods though, so not all is lost. I want to specialize in blanks of rarer species, as well as more defined and realistic human and animal features in my masks. Anatomical details are going to be the death of me.
My illustrative art will continue, I really hope to find the time and space to take up traditional painting, as well as better flesh out my digital portfolio. I will probably not offer commissions at all. I may offer gifts and trades at my discretion, and very improbably will ask for requests and suggestions. I will however hopefully have original canvases and prints to sell. As with the fursuits, I’m going to concentrate on defining a signature style. My goal is and has always been what I term “Expressive Realism” where I’m less interested in the very technically accurate fautographic anatomical realism (which is still important), and more invested in making the artwork look alive and emotive.
Finally, speaking of suggestions, I want to start sending out e-mail newsletters to people interested in my art. If you want to join any of my mailing lists, let me know in an email to uncannyvalleystudios@gmail.com. The mailing list options are as follows:
Uncanny Valley Studios News- an aggregate of progress on everything I’m doing. It will probably be reflected on my tumblr, and will be a no-more-than weekly newsletter, possibly monthly, at the very least Quarterly.
The Chronicles of Matri Production Newsletter- Exactly what it sounds like, news and updates on my progress in preparing this series for realization, it will include sneak peeks, exclusive contests, rare art, rough drafts and general production and casting details. So if you want to be a part of this project, or just would like to follow along to learn and/or offer suggestions on how to take a story from a seed of an idea to a fully realized universe, this is the one for you.
Anthropomorphic Ball Joint Doll Production Line-This will have a much shorter and sweeter name in the realization, but I have not yet decided what to name the doll making portion of my studio, as I am still so early in the process.
Fursuiting Shenanigans- Fursuit building and outings, picture and progress heavy, technical, as well as silly.
Lost Paradise Plushies- I don’t expect I will have too much to say on the plushies any time soon, but who knows how quickly that will change
The Shade Writing Club- After dusting off my files of 60+ tales I wish to tell, I need to get to work on sharing them. I should be uploading some of it to the appropriate online art galleries I’m already a member of, but this will be more of a workshop for input and collaboration. The first things I’m going to share are the incredibly embarrasing, but often amusing things I wrote in high school, mostly for the IRL writing club I was a member of at the time(I was the youngest member by about 20 years and the other writers were often astounded by me). I also have the rough draft of a script for an exciting new graphic novel that should be ready for publication next year, along with everything else.
Basic Drawing Mentoring Group- In the years I’ve been drawing I have tutored and been tutored by a number of fellow artists. I’m not sure as I will go so far as to assign specific mentors and mentees, although I would not be against the idea, but it would be nice to have a workgroup again.
The newsletters may be subject to revision or deletion based on my feed back, and I might even be convinced to make additional ones where appropriate (for example, I’m not going to share ALL the production details with people outside of a project).
After all of that I am ending with a plea for help, I am competent with basic computer functions, but I have no idea how to make any of the following and feel like I really need to learn: Spreadsheets and forms; Simple flash applications(I want to make a dress up game and dating sim style adventure); Basic Web Design; Email groups and RSS feeds; Kickstarter Campaigns; Film and Animation Production, Budgeting and Editing; Sound Engineering; Basic Music Composing Software. If you are knowledgeable in these subjects and have advice to offer, want to promote your favorite free shareware programs, or want to volunteer in the preproduction phase of The Chronicles of Matri and Uncanny Valley Studios email me at Sabelfukaimori[at]gmail.com with an appropriate heading in the subject field. PLEASE note that this is not the same email that newsletter requests should be sent to (and neither is my personal email). Although I will be checking messages elsewhere, I have limited internet access and I check my email first. I plan to cross post this message (or something very similar) to my twitter, tumblr, facebook, G+, DA, FA, IB, Nabyn, PA-Furry, livejournal, etsy, blogger, FIMfiction, Fanfiction.net.
TL;DR I’m going to do a bunch of stuff, plz halp me lern how does computers work, let me know if I owe you anything, Meme Badges Soon™. OkladyIloveyou bye bye.
I am currently living in CA and looking for a real job. I am going to take my real life career fairly seriously and hopefully I can get my living situation, finances, and education back under control. My health is still my number one priority though. I’m also going to try to make it to the Prancing Skiltaire regularly.
So in between all of that, I’ve been reorganizing all my creative projects and attempting to put them in some kind of recognizable order. This means my writing has progressed from snippets of cool dreams written on scraps of paper and such, into one compiled master list of around sixty distinct stories, not including those which revolve around recurring specific groups of characters and settings.
I’m also 85% certain I will have the time and resources to offer Meme Badges again Soon™. Possibly ordinary conbadges, but I am very trepidatious about returning to commission work. To those I still owe commissions, yes, I have been working on them, and no, I can’t show you any progress right now, but Soon™ I should have access to a scanner again, and have some form of coherency to all the various art files on my computer. But if you want to double check on them just in case to remind me I owe you something, PLEASE LET ME KNOW. I feel bad enough that I’ve already issued one refund, but in general I’d much rather prefer to finish the work, although to be realistic and completely honest I have no idea when I will have the time to do that. I’m still learning how to manage my time, and I have quite the back up of information and responsibilities to process, and although the going has been slow, I have been making constant progress.
With all that out of the way, let me make the actual announcements, aside from meme badges, which will be addressed in their own post later, once I have finished the base templates.
I will be officially registering Uncanny Valley Studios as a business next year. Unlike the last time, I do not expect to turn a profit any time soon. The way I will be doing business will be much different from my past endeavors. As I alluded to earlier, the biggest change will be that I will no longer be taking commissions in any real capacity. I will focus primarily on making original one of a kind pieces of art to sell individually, as well as making resin casts and the like.
Any commissions I will offer will be auctions, as will be most of the artwork I will create. I am going to become a fairly selfish artist, and use it primarily as a therapeutic outlet.
The most ambitious project I am going to start the process on is my infrequently mentioned but positively massive magnum opus, The Chronicles of Matri. I originally created the series as a creative writing project for my seventh grade English class. Over the past decade or so, it spawned from what was originally planned to be a series of roughly ten full length novels, to an entire universe of spin off stories. At some point a few years ago I got frustrated with the project because I simply didn’t think my writing was good enough to express things the way I wanted to.
So I put it on the back burner and focused on much smaller projects, most of which are just as half finished and slip-shod as it ever was. For instance, I have suffered several file transfers over the years, and have always had to spend months reorganizing my files because I kept deciding to use a different format, hopefully, fingers crossed, my current PC will be more reliable, and also my file organizing has greatly improved. My focus over the last year and a half has been to improve my life skills, as well as attempt to regain my mental health.
In anycase, I should be opening auditions for The Chronicles of Matri at the beginning of the year, along with everything else, as a collaborative effort to make it a full length Animated Web Series. I have been working tirelessly on building my show/pitch bible so that prospective employees will know exactly what I am looking for. I will obviously need lots of animation artists, special effects technicians, sound engineers and composers, not to mention all-important editors. The world of Matri is a near-future Science Fiction Fantasy story, combining elements of urban fantasy as well as sword and sorcery, and the setting is concurrent with modern Earth. It will deal with politics, espionage, social justice, romance, adventure, mysteries, and every day life. It takes place over the course of generations. My biggest obstacle to date has been compressing and polishing all of the data in my head to show and not tell. I do not want to make a documentary or encyclopedia, I want to make an engaging experience that elicits feeling and thinking. I want people to be moved by it. I don’t care if people love it or hate it (although I would prefer the former) but I want it to be something that people respond to.
The other big project is that I may be opening a line of Anthropomorphic Ball Joint Dolls. I will only be releasing one of a kind dolls for auction, and if there is sufficient investment on behalf of interested parties, resin blanks for customization. And again, I will probably still offer the occasional auction for a custom commission.
Fursuits and Plush Toys will mostly be the same deal, but in a much smaller capacity. I want to make it plain that I will make these projects first and foremost for myself, and after making such things, I will consider them for sale. Custom commissions are probably still a ways off, and again, by auction only, but mostly because I want to be sure that my products meet the highest quality standards and my work in the past has not been that. This may lead to a readily available inventory of pre-made goods though, so not all is lost. I want to specialize in blanks of rarer species, as well as more defined and realistic human and animal features in my masks. Anatomical details are going to be the death of me.
My illustrative art will continue, I really hope to find the time and space to take up traditional painting, as well as better flesh out my digital portfolio. I will probably not offer commissions at all. I may offer gifts and trades at my discretion, and very improbably will ask for requests and suggestions. I will however hopefully have original canvases and prints to sell. As with the fursuits, I’m going to concentrate on defining a signature style. My goal is and has always been what I term “Expressive Realism” where I’m less interested in the very technically accurate fautographic anatomical realism (which is still important), and more invested in making the artwork look alive and emotive.
Finally, speaking of suggestions, I want to start sending out e-mail newsletters to people interested in my art. If you want to join any of my mailing lists, let me know in an email to uncannyvalleystudios@gmail.com. The mailing list options are as follows:
Uncanny Valley Studios News- an aggregate of progress on everything I’m doing. It will probably be reflected on my tumblr, and will be a no-more-than weekly newsletter, possibly monthly, at the very least Quarterly.
The Chronicles of Matri Production Newsletter- Exactly what it sounds like, news and updates on my progress in preparing this series for realization, it will include sneak peeks, exclusive contests, rare art, rough drafts and general production and casting details. So if you want to be a part of this project, or just would like to follow along to learn and/or offer suggestions on how to take a story from a seed of an idea to a fully realized universe, this is the one for you.
Anthropomorphic Ball Joint Doll Production Line-This will have a much shorter and sweeter name in the realization, but I have not yet decided what to name the doll making portion of my studio, as I am still so early in the process.
Fursuiting Shenanigans- Fursuit building and outings, picture and progress heavy, technical, as well as silly.
Lost Paradise Plushies- I don’t expect I will have too much to say on the plushies any time soon, but who knows how quickly that will change
The Shade Writing Club- After dusting off my files of 60+ tales I wish to tell, I need to get to work on sharing them. I should be uploading some of it to the appropriate online art galleries I’m already a member of, but this will be more of a workshop for input and collaboration. The first things I’m going to share are the incredibly embarrasing, but often amusing things I wrote in high school, mostly for the IRL writing club I was a member of at the time(I was the youngest member by about 20 years and the other writers were often astounded by me). I also have the rough draft of a script for an exciting new graphic novel that should be ready for publication next year, along with everything else.
Basic Drawing Mentoring Group- In the years I’ve been drawing I have tutored and been tutored by a number of fellow artists. I’m not sure as I will go so far as to assign specific mentors and mentees, although I would not be against the idea, but it would be nice to have a workgroup again.
The newsletters may be subject to revision or deletion based on my feed back, and I might even be convinced to make additional ones where appropriate (for example, I’m not going to share ALL the production details with people outside of a project).
After all of that I am ending with a plea for help, I am competent with basic computer functions, but I have no idea how to make any of the following and feel like I really need to learn: Spreadsheets and forms; Simple flash applications(I want to make a dress up game and dating sim style adventure); Basic Web Design; Email groups and RSS feeds; Kickstarter Campaigns; Film and Animation Production, Budgeting and Editing; Sound Engineering; Basic Music Composing Software. If you are knowledgeable in these subjects and have advice to offer, want to promote your favorite free shareware programs, or want to volunteer in the preproduction phase of The Chronicles of Matri and Uncanny Valley Studios email me at Sabelfukaimori[at]gmail.com with an appropriate heading in the subject field. PLEASE note that this is not the same email that newsletter requests should be sent to (and neither is my personal email). Although I will be checking messages elsewhere, I have limited internet access and I check my email first. I plan to cross post this message (or something very similar) to my twitter, tumblr, facebook, G+, DA, FA, IB, Nabyn, PA-Furry, livejournal, etsy, blogger, FIMfiction, Fanfiction.net.
TL;DR I’m going to do a bunch of stuff, plz halp me lern how does computers work, let me know if I owe you anything, Meme Badges Soon™. OkladyIloveyou bye bye.
Friday, April 26, 2013
I'm not giving up.
Cross posting this from my livejournal, just to give an update that I'm not dead yet.
Today I did an intake at a mental health clinic. I have an appointment with a psychiatrist in June, if I don't manage to show up on a day no one else does. I would have stayed longer today for Counseling Orientation, and I still might go as it's not until 2pm, but I needed to come back to eat something, and I don't know that I'll be up to biking another 10 miles.
I'm feeling a bit better, Monday I'm going to send out my resume and apply online to a few places (I never knew that craigslist is a viable place to find jobs). Maybe turn in all the ones I've picked up and visit the welfare office too. This weekend I'm going to clean/organize my things down to the bare necessities (I've accrued more belongings already and I already had too much with me before) and do some volunteer work. I roughly want to schedule going every other day or so, at least two or three days a week. If not today, I'll definitely go to the Counseling orientation next Friday.
I'm more certain of my plans now. I'm still going to try to get a job here, and I need to start some more preliminary conversations with the colleges I'm looking at, but I'm fairly confident that I'll have enough FAFSA money to live on for awhile, and really, I just need a little extra leg up on the world and I can make it. I do think my boyfriend should sign up for FAFSA and get his associate's degree too, although things with his parents are complicated and could cause trouble for him.
I think I know what to talk to my mom about when I call her, I'm not giving up and admitting defeat and slinking back home, I'm going to go back to school, but stay with my mom for the summer until my FAFSA disbursement lets me get a place of my own. Assuming I don't find a job, which looks like more of a possibility now that I have a slightly better idea of where to look and how to present myself.
And I'll be seeing my boyfriend again today and hopefully we'll talk more now that my thoughts are a little more organized.
I've got a few weeks to make a final decision on what I'm doing, I need to get a Nevada ID to get services at the place I'm at, but if I move back to CA, it'll be another year before I qualify for residency again. I would rather stay here, eventually getting a job with the Animal Foundation or Animal Control and taking advantage of the better outreach infrastructure that is lacking near my mom's and lower costs of living than Orange County.
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Fear of Undeath
So I recently found a really cool website called "Mark Reads/Watches". It started with him giving chapter by chapter reviews of the pain that is the Twilight Series, and eventually expanded out into other media and series. In one of his reviews he mentioned that his greatest fear would be to die alone and forgotten. That's pretty bad, but I would be unbothered by such an end, in fact, it'd almost be welcome.
See, the problem is that I'm kind of actually on the brink of suicide. Currently, I don't think I'm going to make any attempts, but I came very close yesterday to hanging myself in the closet with a dog leash. There are lots of reasons why I'm feeling this way, but that's not really what this post is about. What this post is about is the number one reason why I have never actually attempted suicide.
I think I would fail. I even had a brief consideration that I should make an attempt at an attempt just so that I could be institutionalized, but ultimately did not because I fear that in that case I would succeed. Cutting would interfere in my ability to make art, and I would really like to continue working on that. One of my biggest fears about institutionalization is being separated from my art projects. One of the most frustrating things about my current illness/predicament is that I actually want very much to be able to sit up and do things so I can work on my current project. Another likely outcome of a suicide attempt would be brain damage, and considering a great deal of my depression already revolves around feeling like a burden on others. I especially hate myself for my current suicidiality because I finally realize what a horrid effect it would have upon my love.
But suicide represents above all else an end to the pain. This week I have been in constant pain. Laying down the whole time reduces the pain that comes of standing or sitting, but it never actually goes away. Every time I am reminded of how useless I am, emotional pain wells up in my chest and it feels like I'm being crushed. I'm also reasonably certain I've developed ulcers because my stomach and guts hurt. It hurts when I don't eat. It hurts when I do eat. While I'm eating I have to stop because my gag reflex acts up. When I have to get up to use the restroom, my vision melts, my head throbs and my limbs tremble like they've fallen asleep, including pins and needles feeling. This isn't fun, this isn't enjoyable and it's barely tolerable at best. I just want it to be over. And even when it feels like it's getting better, a single negative comment can make it all worse.
Being homeless wasn't so bad when I still had some energy. As things stand I'm being kicked out Monday because I've spent all week in pain and I didn't want to exacerbate the pain. I'm not going to get very far. I don't even have the energy to sit up and repack my things so that I can take some stuff with me. Even the very basic things, greatly reduced to fit and be the least weight necessary, I probably won't make it a block. I expect it will take me a day or two just to make it the three miles to the shelter, where they probably still won't have room for me. I don't know how I will make it to an area to panhandle for money, for food. I don't know how I'll make it to the library. My optimistic hopes of volunteering at the animal shelter, much less getting a job, are only a pipe dream now.
Some of my brain functions are closer to normal now that I've been trying to eat enough to recover, and today is better than yesterday. But in all honesty, I think things are about to get a whole lot worse.
And this didn't even end up the post I wanted to make, I was going to talk about how the ever popular zombie apocalypse rubs in my face the cruel reality that I not only wouldn't survive it but that any hopes or solutions I actually have and want to pursue to live in a defensible self sufficient homestead are just as fantastic. The idea of becoming a zombie is abhorrent to me, because I'd really rather just die and return to nature, but the last couple of days, I feel like I've actually been that zombie, and I just want it to end.
Death doesn't scare me, it fills me with relief that eventually I can stop trying so hard for so little, that every attempt I make to do anything isn't just going to result in another cruel slap to my face. I pray for oblivion, just to let me absorb back into the universe to make something new and better than me. It doesn't matter that I don't even really believe that it's that easy.
What I'm most afraid of is that my life just continues to be the same series of unfortunate events where one little mishap, in this case, a pair of new shoes that caused blisters, leads to me becoming severely debilitated. It leads to traumatic events that leave me in constant fear of recurrence, of fearful thoughts that play on repeat no matter how minor the threat. I'm afraid that I won't die on the streets, but that I'll be attacked, raped and disfigured. And the misery will just continue, over and over again, in new and ever more inventive ways to destroy me.
See, the problem is that I'm kind of actually on the brink of suicide. Currently, I don't think I'm going to make any attempts, but I came very close yesterday to hanging myself in the closet with a dog leash. There are lots of reasons why I'm feeling this way, but that's not really what this post is about. What this post is about is the number one reason why I have never actually attempted suicide.
I think I would fail. I even had a brief consideration that I should make an attempt at an attempt just so that I could be institutionalized, but ultimately did not because I fear that in that case I would succeed. Cutting would interfere in my ability to make art, and I would really like to continue working on that. One of my biggest fears about institutionalization is being separated from my art projects. One of the most frustrating things about my current illness/predicament is that I actually want very much to be able to sit up and do things so I can work on my current project. Another likely outcome of a suicide attempt would be brain damage, and considering a great deal of my depression already revolves around feeling like a burden on others. I especially hate myself for my current suicidiality because I finally realize what a horrid effect it would have upon my love.
But suicide represents above all else an end to the pain. This week I have been in constant pain. Laying down the whole time reduces the pain that comes of standing or sitting, but it never actually goes away. Every time I am reminded of how useless I am, emotional pain wells up in my chest and it feels like I'm being crushed. I'm also reasonably certain I've developed ulcers because my stomach and guts hurt. It hurts when I don't eat. It hurts when I do eat. While I'm eating I have to stop because my gag reflex acts up. When I have to get up to use the restroom, my vision melts, my head throbs and my limbs tremble like they've fallen asleep, including pins and needles feeling. This isn't fun, this isn't enjoyable and it's barely tolerable at best. I just want it to be over. And even when it feels like it's getting better, a single negative comment can make it all worse.
Being homeless wasn't so bad when I still had some energy. As things stand I'm being kicked out Monday because I've spent all week in pain and I didn't want to exacerbate the pain. I'm not going to get very far. I don't even have the energy to sit up and repack my things so that I can take some stuff with me. Even the very basic things, greatly reduced to fit and be the least weight necessary, I probably won't make it a block. I expect it will take me a day or two just to make it the three miles to the shelter, where they probably still won't have room for me. I don't know how I will make it to an area to panhandle for money, for food. I don't know how I'll make it to the library. My optimistic hopes of volunteering at the animal shelter, much less getting a job, are only a pipe dream now.
Some of my brain functions are closer to normal now that I've been trying to eat enough to recover, and today is better than yesterday. But in all honesty, I think things are about to get a whole lot worse.
And this didn't even end up the post I wanted to make, I was going to talk about how the ever popular zombie apocalypse rubs in my face the cruel reality that I not only wouldn't survive it but that any hopes or solutions I actually have and want to pursue to live in a defensible self sufficient homestead are just as fantastic. The idea of becoming a zombie is abhorrent to me, because I'd really rather just die and return to nature, but the last couple of days, I feel like I've actually been that zombie, and I just want it to end.
Death doesn't scare me, it fills me with relief that eventually I can stop trying so hard for so little, that every attempt I make to do anything isn't just going to result in another cruel slap to my face. I pray for oblivion, just to let me absorb back into the universe to make something new and better than me. It doesn't matter that I don't even really believe that it's that easy.
What I'm most afraid of is that my life just continues to be the same series of unfortunate events where one little mishap, in this case, a pair of new shoes that caused blisters, leads to me becoming severely debilitated. It leads to traumatic events that leave me in constant fear of recurrence, of fearful thoughts that play on repeat no matter how minor the threat. I'm afraid that I won't die on the streets, but that I'll be attacked, raped and disfigured. And the misery will just continue, over and over again, in new and ever more inventive ways to destroy me.
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