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.
