Update 1/4

Hiii, very quick post about the latest update on this website (and to say I didn't give up on that blog lol). I wish I could tell "oh I've been very busy working on all the cool stuff I wanna work on" but unfortunately I've been rather busy staying alive and well, I got very sick for two months straight, we had a deadly heatwave that got me stuck in a bed and plunge in the dark for 10 days to not die, I got nearly kicked out by a toxic violent alcoholic and abusive man who failed as a father, which I'll mention again later because I'm tired of having to shut the fuck up about it to protect an illusion of peace we never got and a man who was never my father, so overall not so good news. But I did find the time to work on commissions and on this website, which I consider my little baby and a part of me lol. So far I've redone the main page and the commission part. Allow me a little break down of the changes and why. I know some of the people who read me are working on their website or blog (or both in some case) and I know a part of them take inspiration from my own experience so this is for you lads, so you can learn from my mistakes. For the main page, not a lot changed on computer, I redrew the main pictures and change the color palette.

Thing is, I adapted my first color palette to Sam(s), so mostly orange, black, green and a bit of blue. But (I'll go back to that very soon, I have a few blog posts nearly ready to post) I've changed a lot this past year and I needed something more like "me", with my favorite color palette, I needed to adapt Sam to me and not to adapt me to him, if that make sense.

I also needed to redraw MCU Sam because of course the way I draw/write him changed a lot in a year (unlike comics Sam who I've been drawing for over a decade now so while I change things here and there, he already has a very strong base lol).

The other big change is how I organized the page, it looks basically the same but I gave more visibility to the commission part (I learnt a lot of stuff about how to make a proper page after one year with a website also lol). I might add a donation button but I think I'll keep that for the blog part. I will also update the pictures in "gallery" once I update that part. I left a somewhat "cluttered" page because it's my style, but I made it more readable and I organized it to have the most important parts visible first, aka the portfolio and commission part (for work) and then blog. The point of having a picture on the right isn't just to have a quick look at what I do (thus the need to update it also) but also to encourage people to scroll down where they'll find the blog part, a quick presentation and my social media. But for the laziest, the most important parts are right away and my work is way more visible at first glimpse.

The biggest change is for the mobile version. Basically it used to be a very lazy and ugly "parts of the website but organized differently to have a mobile cropping". I made a whole design specifically for mobile, with less things, for a smoother experience :

I still need to add a contact button, probably between membership and social medias, but that's pretty much it. My biggest mistake on that first version was basically to put too much. I'm learning, both in my artstyle and the way I organize myself, that less is often better. And this is what I've been applying here.

As for the commission part, I have no screenshots of the first version but it was basically merely my rules and listing of my price on a very generic background. I gave it a whole personality, it's what I'm working on for this second version, giving each of these 3 big section (blog, commission and gallery) their own identity, as if you were on a place to another. While respecting a general aesthetic and making it "me". So for the commission, I thought it would be funny to take inspiration from video games, like Hades or Persona or dating simulators, with a nice picture of the character showing up and a dialogue. The idea was to make a somewhat cyberpunk MCU Sam, it's mostly him I use for my website because the problem with comics Sam is how it leads people to think I can't draw foreheads lol (it's a real fact), kind of working on illegal modifications to people. I'll talk longer about all that when the full 2.0 of the website is done and I break down everything more in detail but I gave him a little lore. I wanted to have this kinda roleplay vibe, like you enter his illegal horror shop and he'll work on "you", as commission are often very intimate demands, in the way that characters you draw for others are character that means a lot to them, who are part of them, so it made sense to me to have fun playing with that. Here's a video (too big for a gif lol) of his little lab, I'll make a version without commissions showing up eventually but anyway :

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/7cbe1b_ef419f04d46540f8abdb3ecae2be75b8/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

It really wasn't meant to be animated at first. Lately I've been wanting to put more energy into cluttered backgrounds, as I want them to be part of my artstyle. And so that was the idea, but I've been carried away and thought it would be funny to very slightly animate it, to have this "video game" effect even more relevant.

Here're the Sam I drew for that part :

This is why it takes so much time lol, I draw everything myself.

I also drew Sam with the same outfit with all of my different "artstyle", sketch, flat color, full color and chibis (though I'll have to slightly rework the chibi).

It's easier to tell each artstyle appart with one same design and understand the difference between each one of them (also because I needed an excuse to draw him in crop top).

I still have a few things to fix commission wise, the starting price of full arts are too high, I'll lower it. I'd like to add backgrounds in commissions also but I'll have to think of a way to make proper backgrounds for an ok enough price.

The reason I removed them in the first place and let them exclusively for full arts is because I was basically spending at least two weeks on 100 to 200€ illustrations with backgrounds. You need to be good at math to understand the problem : I could pull basically only 2 full arts a month and that was a montlhy paycheck of less than 500€ (without removing all the fees I have). It's my main income and it didn't even reach a half-time job pay, so I gave up on that, for now, leaving them for full arts only. But I still want to find a middle ground and be able to do ok enough backgrounds for commissions without having to take a full art. Idk if it's possible yet, I'll see that.

I'll also update some buttons that aren't good enough to me (to you probably but not to me lol) and a few typo here in there. All these changes are ready to go live but I'll post them when I'm done with update 2, it's not a huge priority as there's no auto buy on full arts so I can lower already if someone contact me.

Speaking of auto buy, that's the biggest, most important and best update. You can now buy directly from my website, no need to go through Ko-Fi or Vgen anymore. You can select what you need, add your ref and I get everything directly in my mailbox. It works super well, it's super useful, it makes me super happier than it should and it gives this very trustful professional aura to my website and my work (I mean, after years doing hundreds of commissions I am a professional, but when you don't know me you don't necessarily know that through what you post only so it's important to look professional as well in the way you present things.

The mobile version is basically the same with less text, so you lose an aspect of the roleplay part but otherwise it was just too much and annoying to read, I'll have to fix the text of the full art section because of that also, too much texts atm, but I needed to quickly post this update to re-open my commissions (I stayed 3 months with no income and in the meantime I still have professional and personal fees to pay lol) so it's not fully done yet.

So what's next. As you can see from the title, I'm working on 4 updates, this way I can take my time and work on other things at the same time. Next update will be blog, it takes A LOT of time because it's the most personal part of my website and I want it to reflect that. To have my blog posts but also to put a bigger spotlight on the Sam commissions I bought from great artists. I want to keep my personal instagram visible as well because it's kind of my microblogging on things I watch/read/play but I need to update it (I haven't for a while) and I also want these small quick reviews to be on my blog, without making too much posts of this kind (the amount of posts being limited I think) but I don't know if I'll keep the format "monthly updates" I started for that. I have a lot to think atm. I already made two different illustrations for the main illustrations and wasn't satisfied by any of them (don't get me wrong, they're very good and I like the result, just not for the blog) so I'll start a 3rd version of the blog and see if this time it matches the overall chill vibe I want. I want it to be cluttered too, but calm, relaxing. I want to have a little cool music playing in the background and stuff like that (I need to find a musician from who I can buy a relaxing music when I can). Once the blog is updated, then I'll start posting on my blog again. I'll update a few older posts, maybe delete some and reposts them to have them make more sense and I'll post a lot of new stuff. Personal, Sam related, art related.

I need to make proper categories and have them properly showing up in a good looking menu with a small description of each of them so people can directly browse what they want, but for some reason this part has been somewhat complicated and my blog won't show links to categories anymore, so I need to find why.

Anyway, that's a lot of work but I have a lot of fun. I hope I'll finish this update this month, then I'll work on the portfolio part. I'd like to cut it in two, basically, the professional portfolio and the gamma part with all the gamma related arts, I have a few ideas for that so it should be faster. However I need to update the arts inside and so to draw more but I have no time to do that atm.

The last update will be everything else, the membership and contact part mostly. I'd like to add a newsletter system eventually for people who want to follow my blog posts and art posts, but I'll think about that, it seems a bit complicated. If July's heat could be more merciful, it Should be able to pull a few things. But so far it's hard to say. I'd also like to thanks all the people who have been supporting me in these very complicated past months, your support meant a lot and helped a lot, both financially and psychologically. I've been in a state of deep stress and impending doom mood these past few weeks, but even though I find a joy and peace I never felt before through the people I love, through my little passions (Sam, Tim and more as I've been watching a lot of movies and reading a lot of books recently lol) and through you. I often see people feeling useless, but you gotta understand how every little comment I get, little like, little DMs, little attention is why I keep doing what I'm doing with a real smile on my face. All of you have the power to change someone's day, life even and you prove it every days. Like I said, I changed a lot and I made a full post to talk about that as soon as I post the next update. But I wanted to thanks you again. Once the next update is online I'll delete this post and the previous one, I'll do a final big post when all the updates are live to explain what I change, how, why, hoping it will help the few of you who are working on their own places (which I highly recommend for a lot of reasons I'll mention when I make a post about it, probably a "how to have your own website/blog" or something like that).

I hope the next update will be more joyful, as I'd like to work on a lot of cool stuff I'll mention soon!

Until next time, enjoy~