Amanda 2015

The bob is back!

Amanda is now in her second semester at Harvard College and has started dressing and looking a little more grown up.  She had an interesting adventure or two with her friend Ciara last term... maybe I will write it up for you soon.  Amanda is still very much in touch with Kat and Hannah on Facebook and we may hear more from them soon.

As much as I know people like the younger versions of Amanda (School and Summer) - and believe me I love the Summer haircut especially - I felt it was time to get 'back to the future' or at least the present, if such terms even apply to characters that transcend our normal concepts of time and continuity.  I looked back and saw that it was nearly a year since I had illustrated Amanda as she 'normally' looks.  And a lot of my pictures of her as a full adult are old ones and not quite as polished as I can maybe do now.

I want to do more with College Amanda, if that's the best name for normal Amanda, but it does leave me with a slight quandary because there are three excellent CYOA's that have been written for Young Amanda, by MosbyRedux and Ultimate-Clash.  Now these require a proper 'launch', and I am ashamed to say that they are waiting for pictures (like quite a few things are waiting to be done) and that's all that's holding them back.  Problem is, I am not really up to producing quality work at the moment AND I don't think a Young Amanda renaissance right now is the right thing for her when I am trying to bring the focus back to her adult life.  I don't have an answer at the moment for how to solve this, so please, any suggestions are much appreciated.

Sorry it's been a while since I posted, by the way.  My dry eye syndrome was getting better but took a turn for the worse over Christmas and has been a pain since.  The problem is that, whenever it starts to get better, I get back on the PC, watching TV, using the iPad and doing all the things that caused it in the first place.  Then it gets worse again. I think the only thing that would 'cure' it would be 1-2 months living as a monk or exploring the jungle, away from all these things.  It really is a horrible pest of a thing to shake off, and the problem is that I don't feel like doing uploadable art when I am in discomfort.  Over the last years of posting to dA I have tried to set myself a gradually increasing standard of picture and thus I now see problems that need to be fixed in everything I do.  Unless I have the patience and persistence to do things properly I don't want to upload the result.  I see a lot of artists I have been following for years now, and sometimes I get annoyed that their stuff now looks just like what they were churning out 5 years ago, with no progress in their techniques. This annoys me in two ways because I am a) annoyed that they are not trying to 'develop' and b) envious that they can have fun and satisfaction from steadily uploading a stream of art without inhibition over quality.  I hope I don't offend anyone with this comment and I don't have anyone specific in mind, more I am thinking of the body of 3D artists as a whole.  And, by the way, I am the first one to admit fault as I stubbornly refuse to upgrade from Daz Studio 3.

This has turned into something of a journal update, and I think I will fill in the rest rather than posting in a journal, as people seem more likely to read deviation text anyway.

I wanted to say thank you to the 20+ folk that have bought the Pose Pack 3 as this has justified the time I spent on getting it ready for sale and also given my low finances a much needed drip drip of life.  I have been working on Pose Pack 4 which is going to be a set of multi-character poses: grabs, struggles, carries, drags, clubbings, chloro, that kind of thing.  It's very much going to be the sort of pack I wish I could buy but no-one sells.

During development on Pose Pack 4 I have produced a ton of concept art, several hundred images, none of which I want to upload because they are 'draft' quality only and because I don't just want to cheapen my characters by bulk uploading part-finished knockout pictures of them.  Yeah it would get a lot of views and faves but I don't want that.  Nonetheless, I do get a lot of requests for commissions for stuff that is actually pretty much what I am doing in draft.  It's made me think that I might be prepared to package up the recent draft images into packs of 20 and sell them for $10 each, just like the bonus pics that come with the Pose Packs.  I know that folks are prepared to spend $20-$30 for videos and photosets by commercial producers that are frequently disappointing - you know how you see one scene in a promo that looks awesome so you buy a 20 minute clip, and then that scene is disappointing?  Well I could offer 20 non-disappointing scenes for half the money, I feel.  Because I know what people like to see (I make it for myself after all) and I can compete with commercial titillation.  

Anyway, just throwing it put there.  In case anyone is interested, I have been doing pretty much all of my private pics of either Kat, Amanda (young, summer and college) with some Ciara. Yes, some of it is the worst kind of porn (e.g. there's nudity, groping, fondling, nonconsensual, bondage, monsters and death) and that's why it won't make it onto dA, but honestly I am quite poor these days and prepared to monetize it privately.

Let me know either here or privately if 'Unseen Back Catalog' packs appeal.  I would appreciate some guidance as to where people's interest lies, what they are not seeing but want to, and how I should categorize the packs?  By character or by scenario?

Thanks for reading.  Probably best that I mirror this with a journal post, since it got a little long.


Background to this picture by beckas used with thanks!