I am open to art trades. If you want to do a trade, send me a note with your proposal and we will discuss. As for requests, I normally only take them if I love your idea so much that I absolutely have to draw it, but for special occasions (which will be announced in my journals), I do make exceptions.

Suggestions on how I can improve my art or my characters are always welcome.

LQC characters:



<... ]]> *LQCTim http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/24741712/ http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/24741712/ Wed, 13 May 2009 17:06:28 PDT

Okay, so I haven't been looking at, posting, or commenting on art here all that much over the past couple of months or so, largely because I've become a huge World of Warcraft addict. But I have noticed that I've reached the milestone of 10,000 pageviews! Many thanks to all of you who have visited my page over the past three years and allowed me to accomplish this feat. I am planning a special picture to commemorate this momentous occasion, but I have a few commissions I need to work on first. I'm hoping to have more time to draw over the next few weeks.

I encourage you to keep visiting my page, faving, and leaving thought-provoking comments. All of this is much appreciated! And if you need me, I'll be in the Eastern Plaguelands.

--

For information on what the LQC project is, click here.

Commissions are currently negotiable. I'm still toying with the idea, but you're welcome to note me with what you'd like me to draw and what you'd be willing to pay for it. I just might be persuaded.

I am open to art trades. If you want to do a trade, send me a note with your proposal and we will discuss. As for requests, I normally only take them if I love your idea so much that I absolutely have to draw it, but for special occasions (which will be announced in my journals), I do make exceptions.

Suggestions on how I can improve my art or my characters are always welcome.

LQC characters:



http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/22941290/ Sun, 01 Feb 2009 11:14:38 PST

Just the basic version. I now own the #1 piece of time-wasting software in the world! Soon there will be another n00b wandering the land of Azeroth!

--

For information on what the LQC project is, click here.

Commissions are currently negotiable. I'm still toying with the idea, but you're welcome to note me with what you'd like me to draw and what you'd be willing to pay for it. I just might be persuaded.

I am open to art trades. If you want to do a trade, send me a note with your proposal and we will discuss. As for requests, I normally only take them if I love your idea so much that I absolutely have to draw it, but for special occasions (which will be announced in my journals), I do make exceptions.

Suggestions on how I can improve my art or my characters are always welcome.

LQC characters:

While you're here, take a look at my scraps! There's some pretty cool stuff in there--almost good enough to post as deviations, but I prefer not to post uncolored drawings in my gallery.

Other artists' drawings of my characters:

=Eggplantm drew me a great picture of Turja with his character Taurus (top left) as a prize for winning a guessing game. I liked it so much that I commissioned him to dra... ]]> *LQCTim http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/20327794/ http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/20327794/ Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:35:31 PDT

I've crossed the threshold of 7000 pageviews, and to mark this occasion, I'm offering the chance to win a free pencil sketch! To win the sketch, be the first person to leave a comment on this journal with the proper response to the following line:

Dental plan!

--

For information on what the LQC project is, click here.

Commissions are currently negotiable. I'm still toying with the idea, but you're welcome to note me with what you'd like me to draw and what you'd be willing to pay for it. I just might be persuaded.

I am open to art trades. If you want to do a trade, send me a note with your proposal and we will discuss. As for requests, I normally only take them if I love your idea so much that I absolutely have to draw it, but for special occasions (which will be announced in my journals), I do make exceptions.

Suggestions on how I can improve my art or my characters are always welcome.

LQC characters:

While you're here, take a look at my scraps! There's some pretty cool stuff in there--almost good enough to post as deviations, but I prefer not to post uncolored drawings in my gallery.

Other artists' drawings of my characters:

=Eggplantm drew me a great picture of Turj... ]]> *LQCTim http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/20122314/ http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/20122314/ Sat, 23 Aug 2008 23:47:37 PDT

If you haven't yet seen my poll regarding the possibility of an LQC video game, check it out here [link] .

I've been tagged again, this time by ~D-WRECK, and I'm going to do this thing. I thought of a couple more facts I wish I'd put in my last "tagged" journal, and I wanted something to knock that confusing Dethklok journal that nobody got off my front page. You know how this works...

The rules:
1. Post these rules
2. Each person tagged must put 8 random facts about themselves
3. Tags should write a journal about these facts
4. At the end post 8 more bloggers are tagged and named
5. Go to their page telling them they're tagged.

1. I used to love collecting Garbage Pail Kids cards when I was little. They were one of my early artistic inspirations. (Sometimes I think I did better shading when I was a kid than I do now.) I had the complete 1st, 2nd, and 3rd series, plus many from later series. Or should I say, have. I still have my collection, which contains over 1000 cards.

2. I'm a bit germophobic. Not to the extent of, say, Howie Mandel, who won't even shake anybody's hand, but when I touch food, I usually do it with my left hand, because I'm right-handed, so I do more stuff with my right hand, thus I touch more things with it, therefore my right hand has more opportunity to come into contact with germs. You'd think that since I want to avoid germs so much, I'd be able to keep my apartment cleaner...

3. I have a bad habit of writing run-on sentences. See above.

4. I may hear the alarm clock going off at 6:30 AM. I may open my eyes a few minutes later. I may get up, eat breakfast, take a shower, get dressed, and go to work. But I'm essentially still asleep until "the fog" lifts from my mind, which usually happens around 11 AM. Then I'm aware of my surroundings, I remember how to do my job, and I'm good to go until quitting time.

5. I write MIDI music on my computer, most of which is intended for my game projects. I have to place each note by hand because I can't play keyboards well, but it usually ends up sounding pretty good. I've also done some arrangements of existing video game music, like the warehouse theme from stage 1 of Double Dragon 3 on the NES [link] , and the Slash Skate Screamers theme from the arcade game The Combatribes [link] .

6. The worst movie I've ever seen is "John Carpenter's Escape From L.A.". The worst movie I've ever paid money to see is "K-PAX".

7. Even though I've been living in my own apartment for three-plus years, I still don't cook for myself much. But I make a nice teriyaki turkey burger, a very good grilled cheese sandwich, and omelettes that are getting better all the time.

8. When I was in college, I had a web page devoted to Mortal Kombat humor that was fairly popular. The page was taken down after I graduated, because they don't let you keep your university web space after you leave. A few years later, I acquired new web space when I opened my Earthlink account. And I think I still have all the stuff that was on the page on a disk somewhere, so I could theoretically put the page back up. But I won't, because the content is now woefully outdated. And, at the risk of incurring the wrath of the ~MoRTalKOmBAT-KLub, I must say that I'm not quite the MK fan I used to be.

I'm not going to tag anybody. I don't feel like hunting for people to tag, and most people have already done this thing anyway.

--

For information on what the LQC project is, click here.

Commissions are currently negotiable. I'm still toying with the idea, but you're welcome to note me with what you'd like me to draw and what you'd be willing to pay for it. I just might be persuaded.

I am open to art trades. If you want to do a trade, send me a note with your proposal and we will discuss. As for requests, I normally only take them if I love your idea so much that I absolutely have to draw it, but for special occasions (which will be announced in my journals), I do make exceptions.

Suggestions on how I can improve my art or my characters are always welcome.

LQC characters:

*LQCTim http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/19705811/ http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/19705811/ Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:48:03 PDT


Thirty-two years ago today, something grew inside of my mother...
That thing was ME!

Me!

Me! Me! Me! Me!
Talking up the LQC
But wasting time on baseball and my P...S...threeeeeee!

One more year of further stalling
Pace of comic progress crawling
All these months and just two pages
Prologue won't be done for ages

R! S! V! P! Please!
For! The! DETH! Of! Me!
I! Have! Lit-tle! Time!
And I'm run-ning! Out! Of! Life!

Happy!
Birthday!
Rrrrrrrrrrrgh! I'm gonna DIE!

--

For information on what the LQC project is, click here.

Commissions are currently negotiable. I'm still toying with the idea, but you're welcome to note me with what you'd like me to draw and what you'd be willing to pay for it. I just might be persuaded.

I am open to art trades. If you want to do a trade, send me a note with your proposal and we will discuss. As for requests, I normally only take them if I love your idea so much that I absolutely have to draw it, but for special occasions (which will be announced in my journals), I do make exceptions.

Suggestions on how I can improve my art or my characters are always welcome.

LQC characters:

While you're here, take a look at my scraps! There's some pret... ]]> *LQCTim http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/19183677/ http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/19183677/ Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:22:10 PDT

I'm feeling the woo-hoo! Thanks to you guys, I've gone from 5000 to 6000 pageviews in just about 2 months! That's not exactly a *14-bis-like rate, but it's getting better! As a token of my gratitude, I'm offering a free, full-color request. But I don't want to play any of those games where you have to get a screenshot of a certain pageview number--there's all sorts of things that can go wrong with that. The request will be granted to the first person who comments on this journal with the answers to these three questions about the LQC universe:

1. How old were Turja and Leogard when they first met?
2. What was Matt Rottweiler's research and development team working on?
3. What is Sadie's middle name?

Those of you who love my stuff so much that you've developed an encyclopedic knowledge of my characters and universe (keep dreaming, Tim) will have an advantage. But if you haven't, the answers to all three questions can be found somewhere in my deviantART account. It's sort of like a virtual scavenger hunt!

NOTE: I still reserve the right to turn down your request if it's something I feel really uncomfortable drawing, or if it's totally unreasonable (for example, asking me to draw 500 characters). In the event of this happening, I will instruct you to request something else.

--

For information on what the LQC project is, click here.

If you're curious as to whether I do commissions, I do not. Well, unless you're willing to pay me a ridiculous sum of money. I'm guessing you're not. The reasons I shy away from doing commissions are that I don't draw quickly enough to make it worth my while (it takes me, like, two weeks to draw a stick figure) and that I'd much rather receive a piece of art in return for art I do for someone else. This means that I am open to art trades. So if you want to do a trade, send me a note with your proposal and we will discuss. As for requests, I normally only take them if I love your idea so much that I absolutely have to draw it, but for special occasions like this, I do make exceptions. Suggestions on how I can improve my art or my characters are always welcome.

LQC characters:



http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/18281037/ Sun, 11 May 2008 21:12:00 PDT

Before I begin, I'd like to say how happy I am that I've passed 5000 pageviews. I do plan to do something to celebrate this milestone, but I haven't decided what yet. Hopefully I'll figure it out before I reach 6000 views. If you have any ideas of your own, I'll listen.

Looking at my LQC characters, I marvel at how much some of them have changed between the time I first created them and the time I decided to include them in the project. They haven't just changed in appearance; in some cases their personalities have completely transformed.

Several of my characters were originally bad guys, but were later switched to the good side. I think I did that so that my favorites could avoid the more limited lifespan that villains tend to have--unless I wanted to write a comic where the bad guys usually win. I did not.

Turja began her existence as the lead villain in an adventure I designed for one of my pencil-and-paper role-playing game campaigns. It was one of my less creative adventures. The premise was basically this: "The evil Zidnorians have taken over some planet. Even though you don't care about this planet, go to Zidnor right now and defeat the queen, which will instantly free that planet I was just talking about!" And the player characters, a group called the Dark Warriors, did just that. They beat Turja but good, and as they were wont to do, then brought her to their friend, King Skiline, a ten-foot-tall leopard, for further punishment. But instead of punishing her, he fell in love with her. And with those two becoming a couple, Turja entered the Dark Warriors' circle of friends, spending time with them, doing the stuff they did, and listening to the same music they listened to. I really started to like the idea of a woman of royalty who liked doing "regular people stuff". She seemed like she'd be a real cool chick to hang out with, and she could still hand out beatdowns when necessary. That's why I thought she'd be a fun character to write a comic about. So, while keeping her look and personality intact, I transplanted her into a new storyline. I didn't use the original Dark Warriors storyline because there were too many things in it that seem implausible to me now, would cause major plot holes, were just too esoteric to make sense to the general public, or would draw focus away from Turja.
Oh, and here's a neat extra fact about Turja: when I first designed her, she wore a mask. At the time, I was obsessed with Street Fighter II's Vega, particularly the mask he wore. I thought it was, like, the coolest thing ever. But I found that I couldn't come up with a good reason for Turja to wear one, at least without ripping off Vega's reason (which was to protect his handsome face from being damaged in his fights). In addition, I soon began to wonder what her face would look like under that mask. So I scrapped Turja's mask pretty early on.

Austra began around 1989 as a boxing kangaroo boss in a video game I planned starring my earliest character, Harold Mouse. As such, she had no real personality--she was just mean and wanted to beat Harold up. That game idea fizzled out in short order. But then, a couple of years later, the Street Fighter II craze hit, and naturally, I began to dream of my own fighting game. While trying to come up with a character roster, I suddenly remembered Aussi, as she was called back then. I re-imagined her as a kickboxer, with a much more humanoid body, which was how I was drawing most of my anthro characters by then. I envisioned her fighting much like SFII's Sagat, and I'm pretty sure that the influence of Sagat is the reason I made her so tall. She was no longer evil by then--in fact, she was kind of a goody two-shoes. She was conscientious, disciplined... and maybe a little boring, in retrospect. But I began to see more and more sex appeal in that tall, toned body, those striking green eyes, and those long, lovely feet. And one day (perhaps influenced by Roxy and Poison from Final Fight), I suddenly got the urge to draw Austra with the pink hair, the ripped top, and the tight black mini-skirt. Realizing that didn't fit her low-key demeanor, I then gave her a more flamboyant personality to match. And just like that, Austra became one of my best characters.

Ambiri was originally created as a counterpart to my cousin's character Tez, who was a member of the Dark Warriors and was also an oversized Serpentfolk. She had gone to the same swordfighting academy as him and had had a crush on him, but never mustered up the courage to tell him. He graduated first and set off for lands far distant. Ambiri, crushed by this, had become bitter, frustrated, and world-weary. To be honest, she was a real bitch. She made a name for herself in her own travels, and... ]]> *LQCTim http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/16729807/ http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/16729807/ Mon, 04 Feb 2008 19:45:56 PST

I've been spinning my wheels again, and it's got to stop. I am hell-bent on getting another Lizard Queen Chronicles page out before the end of this month, as well as the sketches I still owe people from my 4000th pageview. So, to that end, I am making this guarantee: I will post another LQC page and the three gift sketches before the calendar turns to March, or the first person who calls me on it gets a free, full-color request from me! "But Tim," you ask, "if you don't get all those other things done, how do I know you're ever going to get that free request done?" Uhhhhhhh... Good question. I may have to offer a guarantee for the guarantee.

P.S.: Don't worry about time zones. It just has to be March 1st in your time zone. If it comes to that, I'll figure out the time zones to verify your claim.
P.P.S.: Good thing February has 29 days this year.

--

For information on what the LQC project is, click here.

If you're curious as to whether I do commissions, I do not. Well, unless you're willing to pay me a ridiculous sum of money. I'm guessing you're not. The reasons I shy away from doing commissions are that I don't draw quickly enough to make it worth my while (it takes me, like, two weeks to draw a stick figure) and that I'd much rather receive a piece of art in return for art I do for someone else. This means that I am open to art trades. So if you want to do a trade, send me a note with your proposal and we will discuss. As for requests, I normally only take them if I love your idea so much that I absolutely have to draw it, but for special occasions like this, I do make exceptions. Suggestions on how I can improve my art or my characters are always welcome.

LQC characters:



*LQCTim http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/15812927/ http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/15812927/ Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:21:50 PST

I've reached the 4000 pageview plateau, and to show my gratitude to all of you who made it possible, I'm going to do something special.

The first three deviants to comment on this journal will get a free pencil sketch request from me!

There are a couple of caveats, however. I reserve the right to turn you down if you ask me for something I'd feel really uncomfortable drawing. If that happens, I'll ask you to request something else. Also, keep the scope of your request reasonable. If you ask me to draw, say, all 600 of your original characters, I'm not gonna do it.

Also, don't start breathing down my neck if I don't have your sketch done in eight seconds. It may take me some time, as I have a few other things I'm working on. I'll have all three of these done within a few weeks at most.

That being said, many thanks to all of you who appreciate and support my art, especially my watchers!

--

For information on what the LQC project is, click here.

If you're curious as to whether I do commissions, I do not. Well, unless you're willing to pay me a ridiculous sum of money. I'm guessing you're not. The reasons I shy away from doing commissions are that I don't draw quickly enough to make it worth my while (it takes me, like, two weeks to draw a stick figure) and that I'd much rather receive a piece of art in return for art I do for someone else. This means that I am open to art trades. So if you want to do a trade, send me a note with your proposal and we will discuss. As for requests, I normally only take them if I love your idea so much that I absolutely have to draw it, but for special occasions like this, I do make exceptions. Suggestions on how I can improve my art or my characters are always welcome.

LQC characters:



http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/14552997/ Sat, 08 Sep 2007 22:33:44 PDT

Animated bartender Moe Szyslak once remarked, "It's like my dad always said: Eventually, everybody gets shot." Similarly, it seems that eventually, everyone on deviantART gets tagged. Which makes sense, since you're supposed to tag eight other people after you get tagged. So if everyone actually does it, then after just seven iterations, you have 2,097,152 people getting tagged, plus all the people that got tagged on previous iterations, which probably adds up to every member of deviantART and then some.

So I got tagged by both *Eggplantm and ~spitzen. But even though I got tagged twice, I'm only doing this once, so I hope you guys don't mind.

When I tag you, here's whatcha do! (Copy the following text into your journal)

Post these rules
1. Each person tagged must post 8 random (hopefully interesting) facts about themselves
2. Tags should write a journal of these facts
3. At the end of the post 8 more bloggers are tagged and named
4. Go to their page and leave a comment telling them that they're tagged

(Okay, you can stop copying text now.)

And now, our feature presentation!

Eight random facts about myself:

1. I have a stomach of iron. I haven't thrown up since I was twelve. If you don't want to scroll down my user page and check how old I am, that means it's been 19 years since last I hurled. It was a bad school lunch Jamaican beef patty. I used to like Jamaican beef patties before that; I haven't eaten one since.

2. I was in the National Spelling Bee in 1990. Yeah, the one they show on ESPN nowadays. But I don't think it was televised back then. No, I didn't win. I was knocked out on the word "redivivus". It's one of those Latin adjectives that goes after the noun, like "emeritus". It means "returned to life", as in "the phoenix redivivus". And after all the ceremonies and stuff were over, we had to rush from Washington, DC back to New York the very next morning so I could make my Confirmation.

3. I've dabbled in video game design and programming throughout most of my life. I started several projects, but never finished any of them because they're just too much work for one person, and I can't afford to pay anyone to help me. You see that screenshot in my Webcam section? It's from Night Stalkers, one of my game projects. It's a lot like Final Fight, only the characters are anthro and all the fighting is done with weapons. If you really want to see it, you can download a work-in-progress version here: [link] But I can't guarantee that it'll run on newer versions of Windows. Also, don't use the Quick Save feature on the level editor. It's got a pretty serious bug that will overwrite the wrong file.

4. I like Hungry-Man chicken pot pies so much that when my local supermarket stopped carrying them, I started going to another supermarket that's well out of my way just to get them. Keep in mind that I don't have a car, so I have to walk, and I estimate it's well over a mile to this store. But no other CPP is acceptable to me anymore.

5. A couple of months ago, I actually learned the katakana just so I could try to read a Tekken 6 move sheet from Japan. They're not that hard to learn--it's the other types of Japanese characters that will kill you. The katakana are mostly used by the Japanese for transcribing words from other languages, usually English. Once you know them, it's sort of like reading English in code. It's weird. So, watch out, people who like writing katakana on their art for no apparent reason! I'll know if you're faking it! (Actually, I already have found a guy who was faking it, but I'm not going to embarrass him by calling him out.)

6. I can play the guitar, but not all that well. I can throw it into dropped-D tuning and bang out a few Helmet and Biohazard songs. That's what I do best. And I can play a few solos from Nirvana songs. They were my favorite band by far in high school. I don't play nearly as much now as I used to. My friend Matt and I formed a band in high school with a few other people we knew. Two other classmates of ours had formed an imaginary band which they called Torpid Liver. They had gotten the name from a Wendy's near our school. This particular Wendy's had its tables surfaced with formica on which was printed a pattern which featured old-time newspapers, and one of the papers had an ad for a remedy for torpid liver. Matt declared that all bands in our school would get their names from the tables at this Wendy's. So the next... ]]> *LQCTim http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/14339705/ http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/14339705/ Sat, 25 Aug 2007 20:10:29 PDT

So a few weeks ago, I was thinking about the predominance of foxes in the anthro community. Nearly every anthro artist has at least one fox character (I have five, but I've only posted one here), the Jewel Vixens have quite a large following, the new art sections of deviantART and Fur Affinity are flooded with foxes, and foxes even have a page dedicated to them on deviantART: [link] So I thought foxes had to be the #1 species among anthro artists. But wait! I then recalled that cats are exceedingly popular as well, and maybe I had been ignoring that fact due to my presumption that foxes were on top. If only there were some way to statistically determine how popular each species was... Then it hit me! I could enter each species into deviantART's search engine, and see how many hits I got! So on August 9th, I typed the names of a bunch of species into dA's search engine, with the specifier "in:anthro". In each case, I used only the species name, no gender-specific words for males and females of a species except for "cow" and "bull". That's because there is no commonly-used gender-neutral name for that species. It was a crude method of research, and many flaws in it could be pointed out. But this would settle, in my mind, the question of which anthro species is the most popular: foxes, or cats? And the winner is... [drum roll]

WOLVES!!!

That's right, wolves! With 44,520 dA search engine hits, lupines topped my list of most popular species! I was kind of surprised, but then I remembered that there are a ton of anthro wolf characters, too. *ShoNuff44's Shred, ~Carlito2517's Bedlam, *Eggplantm's Aquarius, ~Wolfie2Dope and ~wolfen89's fursonas, and then there's that Blackblood Alliance comic. The list goes on and on. I should post more of my own Bobbi Wolf. She's another one of my old favorites. Here's the full list of species I did searches on:

Wolf 44,520
Cat 40,166
Fox 37,632
Dragon 27,339
Dog 15,809
Tiger 10,265
Mouse 8,658
Rabbit 7,765
Lion 7,670
Horse 6,432
Bear 4,868
Rat 3,551
Lizard 3,381
Leopard 3,134
Cow/Bull* 3,109
Skunk 2,838
Snake 2,719
Kangaroo 2,302
Hyena 2,272
Goat 1,934
Otter 1,655
Deer 1,706
Sheep 1,289
Dinosaur 1,188
Giraffe 512
Crocodile 500
Mongoose 448
Meerkat 398
Alligator 238


*1,864 hits for "cow", 1,245 for "bull".

It looks like cats did beat out foxes for second place. Now, searching for "vixen" did yield 4,913 hits. If you add that to the hits that "fox" got, then that vaults foxes over cats. But by that same logic, you could add the hits for "kitten" (3,182) and "kitty" (16,625) to those for "cat", and that would put cats in first place by a wide margin! But I suspect there's a lot of overlap between "fox" and "vixen", and between "cat", "kitten", and "kitty". I could keep thinking of other synonyms and gender-specific terms to search for, and after a while it would just get ridiculous. That's why I simply used the proper name of the species, when possible, for the purposes of this project.

I was pleasantly surprised to see dragons make a strong fourth-place showing. There's a lot of talk that reptilian species are discriminated against in the anthro fandom, and as a guy who draws mostly reptilians, this is an issue that concerns me. But upon seeing the results for dragons, and respectable numbers for lizards and snakes, I'd say that claim is somewhat overblown. It is worth noting, though, that crocs and gators were near the bottom of the list.

I was a little surprised at how well hyenas did. I thought they had a relatively low visibility within the fandom. I think they're pretty cool, and apparently a significant number of others do, too.

Giraffes, a favorite species of mine, get no love. I guess artists don't want to deal with drawing that long neck and trying to make it look good on an anthro body. Of the few anthro giraffes I've seen, several have been drawn with short (human-length) necks, which supports my theory on this.

Mongooses, among my faves as we... ]]> *LQCTim http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/13827888/ http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/13827888/ Sun, 22 Jul 2007 00:21:16 PDT

I just renewed my deviantART subscription for another year. And that's a significant turnaround, because for several months, I was pretty sure that I was just gonna let it run out. I felt like I was wasting my money. The pictures of my original characters I posted were going almost unnoticed, and for a long time there was only one person who commented regularly on my art. But for some reason, I've really started to gain momentum over the last few weeks. Most of the stuff I post now gets well into double-digit views (which is a lot for me, comparatively), I'm getting more comments and faves than ever, and artists I look up to are starting to notice me and even give me advice in some cases. I think a lot of this is due to my pink-haired kangaroo friend, but I think I'm also reaping the benefits of sticking around, improving my art, building up my gallery, commenting whenever I can, and generally trying to make myself known throughout the dA community.

So I'd like to take a moment to thank all of you who watch me, give me comments, and fave my stuff. You make my deviantART experience more enjoyable every day!

Now, I'm worried about losing this momentum I have now. I've typed so many words about this comic I'm going to do, and so far all I've posted is a bunch of character pics and bios, and a pile of other random stuff. I feel that if I go too long without delivering the goods, people will start to think that I'm a fraud--that I'm all talk--and they'll go away. People are actually paying attention to me now, so I want to strike while the iron is hot.

The thing is, I wanted to get fancy with my storytelling. I planned to start The Lizard Queen Chronicles with Turja, queen of Geckoworld, jumping right into some dangerous situation and displaying her ass-whupping skills. Then, at the first lull in the action, I'd start recounting the events that led to her going from queen of Zidnor to queen of Geckoworld. I was going to jump around in time, kind of like Quentin Tarantino did when he wrote "Pulp Fiction" and "Kill Bill". But the problem was, I couldn't come up with a dangerous situation that Turja would be drawn into--at least one that wouldn't require the reader knowing about previous events that would happen in other stories. I was stuck in this quandary for months and months. But last week I finally had an epiphany: I knew what was going to happen in the prologue, so why didn't I stop trying to be fancy and do the prologue first? Well, there was a reason, but I'll get into that some other time. But if I got over my aversion to leading off with the prologue, that would lead into some peril which Turja would have to get involved with, and everything would start to flow from there. So that's what I'm gonna do. And as a result of this decision, I'm happy to announce that I will soon begin work on the first actual LQC comic page! I'm hoping to have it up within a week.

I also have another announcement to make. I'm getting close to 3000 pageviews, and I will be doing a request for whoever gets my 3000th pageview! If you log on to my page and it says that I have 3000 pageviews, get a screenshot and find some way to show it to me. (If no one gets a screenshot of 3000 pageviews, the person who gets the closest to it is the winner.) Once I confirm that you've won, you can ask me to draw something for you! I reserve the right to turn down your request if I find it too offensive, but that's unlikely to happen. And even if it does happen, I'll just ask you to request something else.

(By the way, for those of you who like my random, non-LQC stuff, fear not. There will be more of it!)

--

For information on what the LQC project is, click here.

If you're curious as to whether I do commissions, I do not. Well, unless you're willing to pay me a ridiculous sum of money. I'm guessing you're not. The reasons I shy away from doing commissions are that I don't draw quickly enough to make it worth my while (it takes me, like, two weeks to draw a stick figure) and that I'd much rather receive a piece of art in return for art I do for someone else. This means that I am open to art trades. So if you want to do a trade, send me a note with your proposal and we will discuss. As for requests, I only take them if I love your idea so much that I absolutely have to draw it. The exception is the prize for my 3000th pageview. See above. Suggestions on how I can improve my art or my characters are always welcome.

LQC characters: *LQCTim http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/12594955/ http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/12594955/ Sat, 14 Apr 2007 16:25:00 PDT

One of the things I love about deviantART is that so many artists here have their own original characters, a lot of which are really cool. There are a few characters here who have fan bases nearly as big as those of well-known mainstream characters from TV, movies, books, and video games. So I thought I'd share my favorite characters created by dA artists, with a few words on some of them:

Willy and Stella/Marcy/Sandy/whatever by ~Itchyscratchy

Willy never runs out of cool ways to kill zombies. The female character still doesn't officially have a name, but I can't resist a cute girl with pink hair.

Mint by *bittenhard

Sexy dragon maid. She actually has two forms: full dragon and humanoid (anthro). I prefer the more humanoid form.

Lakebound by ~edgarcorona

Lovely aquatic dragoness who usually goes around naked, though not always anatomically correct. Still, I can't complain.

DragonRift by *DragonRift

She's a big-time video gamer, and I kinda like how she's got a little meat on her bones.

Bee Bryant by *MDetector5
http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/12074078/ Mon, 05 Mar 2007 21:11:26 PST

Awww yeah! It's about to get crazy analytical up in this piece!

When I joined deviantART, I saw it as a place where I could get some exposure for my original characters. My characters are an offbeat bunch, some anthro, some alien, but it seemed to me that there was a niche for everything on dA. I didn't think I'd be one of those giants with six-digit pageviews, but I thought I could at least cultivate a small, but loyal fan base. Instead, I see tumbleweed rolling across my page. That's an exaggeration--I do get some visitors, but at least half pass by without looking at any of my deviations, and the majority of those who do look at my deviations only look at my fan art and ignore my original characters, who are the reason I got a deviantART account in the first place. My Simpsons-Mortal Kombat crossover pic, at the time of this writing, has over 400 views, which I'm very happy with. But there are a few pictures of my own creations that I've had posted here for months which still haven't cracked double-digit views.

There was a guy here named Carlito2517 whom I've had on devwatch for a while and whose stuff I really liked. He became so disillusioned from the perceived lack of attention he got here that he gave up drawing completely, which is very depressing to me. This was a guy who was pretty talented and got ten times more views on his characters than I get on mine. Said Carlito, "I guess I'm just tired of working my ass off on a drawing and feeling lucky to get more than two comments when there are countless others who can draw a stick figure on a cocktail napkin and get twenty within the first five minutes." He found the words to express what a lot of us are feeling. At least he left his art up. I've seen people here get so frustrated that they basically go "YOU GUYS SUCK! YOU DON'T DESERVE ME!" and yank down their entire galleries, metaphorically flipping the bird to the rest of us.

But I love my characters too much to quit drawing them. And I know that it's impossible to force people to be interested in your art--you have to make art that people will be interested in. So instead of getting angry at the dA community, or trying to guilt-trip you into looking at my stuff (which is usually my first instinct), I'm going to analyze the reasons for the lack of attention I'm getting and try to figure out what I can do to improve the situation. I've singled out a few key factors:

I don't do much fan art. Let's face it: when people use deviantART's search engine, they don't look for Turja Mandensis, Erok Inakazi, or Harold Mouse. They look for Naruto, Sonic the Hedgehog, Jack Sparrow, or what have you. This makes it a lot less likely that people will find my art in the first place. And if someone is searching for, say, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and sees my TMNT cartoon, that person will usually continue on to more TMNT stuff rather than looking at the rest of my gallery. That's part of human nature, and I can't do anything about that. I do fan art when I feel like it, and that's all.

I don't draw in a trendy style. I'm a mostly self-taught artist. We learn through imitation, but whenever I found myself imitating too many things a particular artist did, I tried to evolve away from that because I wanted to develop my own style. Early on, I was influenced by Peanuts, but I didn't want to be a clone of Charles Schulz. In my adolescence, I was influenced by The Simpsons, but I didn't want to become a clone of Matt Groening. The result of this is that I have a somewhat generic style. At least it looks that way to me. I don't even know how to describe my style. So I don't think I'm going to attract viewers through my style alone. I mean, I don't even vary my line weights. But I feel comfortable within my own style and I'm not switching to another style just for popularity's sake. Seems almost everybody these days is drawing anime/manga style, but I appear to have missed the boat on that. I also don't draw Jhonen Vasquez style, or Nightmare Before Christmas style, or Gorillaz style (which you could argue is a subset of anime/manga). I also have little interest in adorning characters with fashion-forward accessories. I don't draw ultra-baggy pants with straps that don't strap anything hanging off them, or rainbow hair, or 600 piercings in places I didn't know could be pierced. All these things catch the eye--they catch my eye. But even though some of these elements may actually fit some of my characters, if I drew them, I'd feel like I was only doing it to be trendy. Understand that I'm not criticizing artists who do use these styles or stylistic elements--hell, I watch<... ]]> *LQCTim http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/10964037/ http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/10964037/ Tue, 05 Dec 2006 18:07:53 PST

Actually, Mandy, it is a big deal! Thanks largely to deviantART's buggy, pageview-inflating counter, I have reached the milestone of one thousand views! In those first few weeks after I got this account, I often wondered if I'd ever reach 1000. There were times when it seemed like people were consciously trying to avoid my page. But here I am now, at quadruple digits! I think my art is finally beginning to find an audience.

I'd like to thank all my watchers: , , ,
, and . I'd also like to thank and for featuring me when that featured deviant thing was going around. So I guess I'm thanking Grim twice. But he's earned it. I'd also like to thank everyone else who has visited my page, commented and/or faved since I started my dA account. This wouldn't have been possible without you!

I didn't offer any reward for getting the 1000th pageview, but I'm strongly considering that for the 2000th. For the record, though, I'm going to credit the thousandth hit to because her name popped up between my 999th and 1001st pageviews.

Time to make more art and look forward to my next thousand views!

--

For information on what the LQC project is, click here.

If you're curious as to whether I do commissions, I do not. Well, unless you're willing to pay me a ridiculous sum of money. I'm guessing you're not. The reasons I shy away from doing commissions are that I don't draw quickly enough to make it worth my while (it takes me, like, two weeks to draw a stick figure) and that I'd much rather receive a piece of art in return for art I do for someone else. This means that I am open to art trades. So if you want to do a trade, send me a note with your proposal and we will discuss. Or if you have any suggestions on how I can improve my art or my characters, those are welcome.

LQC characters:


http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/10877995/ Tue, 28 Nov 2006 10:55:34 PST
The first ten deviants to comment on this journal will get three of their deviations (my choice) featured in this space. Since I enjoy scouring through other artists' galleries anyway, this works pretty well for me. But if you participate, you must also offer this same opportunity to be featured in your own journal.

1.

By the way, Grim was also the first known visitor to my page and the first one to fave any of my pictures (it was the TMNT cartoon).

--

For information on what the LQC project is, click here.

If you're curious as to whether I do commissions, I do not. Well, unless you're willing to pay me a ridiculous sum of money. I'm guessing you're not. The reasons I shy away from doing commissions are that I don't draw quickly enough to make it worth my while (it takes me, like, two weeks to draw a stick figure) and that I'd much rather receive a piece of art in return for art I do for someone else. This means that I am open to art trades. So if you want to do a trade, send me a note with your proposal and we will discuss. Or if you have any suggestions on how I can improve my art or my characters, those are welcome.

LQC characters:

While you're here, take a look at my scraps! There's some pretty cool stuff in there--almost good enough to post as deviations, but I prefer not to post uncolored drawings in my gallery.

Also check out this sketch of Sadie that did for me:<... ]]> *LQCTim http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/10702195/ http://LQCTim.deviantart.com/journal/10702195/ Sun, 12 Nov 2006 14:41:06 PST "Get back to work!"

It's mid-November, baseball season is over, and I've gotten past the obsessive need to play Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (I managed to make a pretty close approximation of Dival in Kreate-A-Fighter). So it's time for me to focus on the Lizard Queen Chronicles project again. The last month, in a way, has been an exercise in seeing how many pageviews I could get without doing any new art or faving much of other artists' stuff. But I'm getting my sense of urgency back. Damn it, I'm already 30 and I need to get going on this. I'm not gonna live forever. So I'm working on new character drawings right now, and I'm even thinking of doing a sample page.

For information on what the LQC project is, click here.

If you're curious as to whether I do commissions, I do not. Well, unless you're willing to pay me a ridiculous sum of money. And I don't think you are. I'd much rather receive a piece of art in return for art I do for someone else. So if you want to do an art
trade, send me a note with your proposal and we will discuss. Or if you have any suggestions on how I can improve my art or my characters, those are welcome.

LQC characters:

While you're here, take a look at my scraps! There's some pretty cool stuff in there--almost good enough to post as deviations, but I prefer not to post uncolored drawings in my gallery.

Also check out this sketch of Sadie that did for me: