I Introduce Myself to Slothicorn

adamada (63)in #slothicorn • 6 years ago

This post should've been done about a week ago since I entered the Slothicorn Discord server. It was during my finals week that I rediscovered what Slothicorn was about. Heard about the initiative months ago but I never bothered to know further. By serendipity, I happen to see @kristyglas posting her introduction on my feed, I thank her for sparking my curiosity again.

For those of you not aware of Slothicorn, it's a community that aims to support creative people and integrating the influence of cryptocurrency in their art. It's a broad concept and you can find out more here.

Part of @slothicorn 's policy is to showcase the art process to verify that the artist is the original owner of the art and for them to screen plagiarists. This post will also contain my new work and it's art process. I could break these down into two but that would just mean I'll be doing a redo of my previous semi-introduction post here.

Summary of the Post:

My Introduction
Latest work and process
Other updates related to my skills advancement in digital art.
Future plans with Slothicorn

My Intro and Art

I'm not a professional artist and everything I learned about art is mostly self taught. I just want to attain skills equal to a professional digital illustrator. I started with traditional pen, pencil and paper sketches but when I got bored with them I decided to transition to digital media.

These are my most precious sources of motivation to pursue the passion:

Games
Challenge
Money

Looking at a game's splash art and poster frequently fuels me to improve my craft. It has nothing to do with a particular game. I just look at promotional posters and game related images and be amazed at how these images were rendered. Even when I see how pros simplified the style with online tutorials, the magic isn't gone. It's link to my innate tendency to daydream fiction, world building, and conceptualizing stories. All that are present in a game. I'm also a writer.

Freelance digital illustration work seems to be the type I would venture on if I wasn't studying in Med School. I had applied for leave from Med School before due to financial constraints. Worked as a call center agent and hated the job. Saved up my salary to buy a wacom intuos tablet hoping I'll escape my uncertain fate. But I received sponsorship for studying medicine and that lead me to postpone thinking about digital illustrating as a career. I still want it.

Money. I'm already passionate about creating art. Wouldn't pairing it with work that involves me doing the same thing be a blast? I hear stories of artists sharing the same passion but seem dissatisfied due to various reasons. Deadlines, difficult clients, and no clients to work with. Still, that doesn't seem to sway me a bit but I'm not going to underestimate that possible hardship in pursuing that line of work. I'm looking at digital illustration as a fallback if ever I could not continue as a Physician later on. It's practical and economical.

Latest Work and Process

I used PAINT TOOL SAI with Wacom Intuos for this piece. Still learning how to get used to the tablet. I know my setup is a bit disorganized or far from what a pro artist would do. Just trying to self teach here but would be open for suggestions in the comments.

I'm just playing with the background here deciding what brushes to use. It's always about the brush issue that takes me minutes to decide what to use. Brush brush here ctrl Z there, rinse and repeat like it matters. I'm just a beginner and this frustrates me.

I get inspiration from horror films, games with morbid themes, and art with minimalism involved. My art style is full of variations but there are certain techniques in rendering an image that subtly remains. You'd know once you venture into previous old posts made from traditional media and with minimal Adobe Photoshop enhancements.

Other Updates to My Digital Art:

I'm at point in my life where career comes first over passion. Studying medicine was my primary interest until I rediscovered I enjoyed creating illustrations more. I live in a country that values practicality over pursuit of passion. I'm stealing some time doing art sketches here and there just to prevent myself from getting rusty.

By June, I'll be full time in the hospital for Internship Training and that really sucks since it would be near impossible for me to have time digitally illustrating. I still want to pursue this dream on the sidelines as soon as I finish Med School.

Future Plans with Slothicorn:

I like Slothicorn's Initiative in making cryptocurrency be closer to artists. There is a lot of potential in this movement and I'd like to see it grow. I recently got involved with a game development project. I met some steemians who shared the same dream of creating their own game. We have a community account @takipsilim and you can see it's intro post here. I'm one of the artists there.

If I won't be making art for Slothicorn for myself, I'll be working on this game for Slothicorn. It's a project related to what Slothicorn is trying to promote. The game will have features of a fictional blockchain as part of its story (I'm also the story writer) and we will try to juggle up some novel mechanics to it later on.

It's a horror blockchain based survival game. More info about it from the community account's post. The image below is @kothy 's work. She's one of the artists in the team. We're just amateurs trying to make this game happen and there is no deadline.

The community account @takipsilim was a way to share and somehow monetize our work in progress as we go along with the project (we are happy earning pocket change because we understand we are just amateurs and our work is not on a professional level yet). It functions as a means to compensate our time spent developing the game on the sidelines. Once we got a demo working we might consider active solicitations (like serious crowdfunding).

We don't do active promotions to that extent because early fans might end up being disappointed that not much progress is made even in months. In the future, I hope Slothicorn gives us support that we need as soon as we are confident that we can produce some results worthy of their attention.