Tomyo-chan

I ended up digging through stuff trying to find an old file and I ended digging through many old images of when I started on this site and the few internet friends that made up my world then.

    When I tell people I meet nowadays that I had a Sonic OC that was basically a recolor from a sonic character maker, a lot of people will wince at the thought but I still look at that part of my life fondly. In some ways, my only regrets was not connecting more. At the time in my life, my mum had cultivated a high distrust in online interactions for me which had made it all the more amazing that the original people broke through to me enough to join this site as they did. To this day, they are the only friends I've ever exclusively known from the internet. 

       Last month when I was at SPX, I had bought a zine by Carey Pietsch called 'Connection Lost' in which part of she talks about the friends from a preteen's site that she misses but can never look up because she never had the ability to learn their real name. And while the same had happened to me from plenty of sites I had been on, DeviantART was not one where I expected to find myself at a dead end. T-Squaredpro in particular comes to mind, who I had associated as one of my closest friends then. He had come back into my thoughts when they announced Star Fox 2 on the SNES Classic and I remembered his video edit he had made inserting his own character. I remember personal conversations with Selina and admiring GreatNS and Shade. I remember sending files back and forth with Draiky even though it had /my voice/ of all things. DeviantART being the site it was didn't feel like somewhere where these identities get abandoned as easily as sites like Neopets or Gaiaonline. Being an Artist has this... tangibility to it to me that I am kind of surprised that I also am finding myself in this spot. Some have left and some have deleted their accounts and to my knowledge the only one left is Bridgette, at least from my original friends. 

    20's is the start of a time where your fears of the future and societal struggles make you somewhat nostalgic and I am. I sometimes miss the times when pageviews was the name of the game, Takamin was the place I hung out with people during the superbowl, I wasn't as bothered by age as I am now, and my weeb self was oblivious to my horrible attempts at Japanese while I dreamed of finding my next doujinshi from the con I went to once a year as I dreamed of making my own. That being said I am happy the way I am going in my life, I love living a life not stuck in corners or locked in rooms from fear and to know what and where I want to go in life and that some teens now admire me when I sell my art. Maybe the thing that frustrates me nowadays is the way the internet has become used is connected but insular at the same time, you can interact with numerous people but there is a much greater difficulty in connecting. But I hope somewhere out there, Tsquare is playing Star Fox 2. I ponder how Selina grew up and hope she's doing well. I wonder where Draiky and Shade are now. I hope by some magic I graduate at the same time as Natalie and I hope you have been doing well and finding success in life Bridgette. You guys were a happy part of my life and that's why it's sad I can't tell these things directly.

So I came around looking at my DeviantART and realized that I haven't written a journal in YEARS and I figured it was worth making something a little more relevant that a kickstarter that's game has already come out for.

On that note I guess it's time to say what's been up. Well, I had begun posting more to Tumblr in 2012 when the community there was more active for the art I was making. Around this time I started college and through meeting some amazing people at the time, I became extremely active as a cosplayer and doing cosplay photography. However, by 2014 I had a bunch of factors that pulled me away from drawing including school, lack of a proper desk to work at, health problems, and the biggest kicker, my original tablet that I had since 2007 had stopped working and the newer bamboo model that replaced it didn't mesh well with me. However, in 2015, I made it my goal to start Artist Alleying which finally became reality in 2016. It's something so small nowadays but it had been a dream of mine since I was 15 to be able to do. Through this and a better job I was finally able to purchase myself a Wacom Cintiq (another dream of mine) and since it has become a lot easier to produce artwork again. Since my slow down here it's become a lot easier to use Deviantart as a 'best of' location for my artwork(Long gone are the days of the hundreds of doodle uploads). There's a lot of things that I have kept putting off posting that hopefully I'll get around to this summer.

Hey guys! I just wanted to bring up this for those who don't know about it! Shantae, the best video game genie protagonist in the world has had a kickstarter going on! For the few of you who don't know(because I've raved on and on about it), Shantae was my first video game and was one of the reasons why I started drawing! However, more than half of the funding period is over now and Wayforward hasn't even reached it goal yet! So I'm looking to you guys to take a few minutes to watch the video, see the all star team that's working on it, and maybe donate some of your money to it since you can get the game for only $15!

~Tomyo

Another update but remember how I've been talking about my laptop not working? Now my laptop charger isn't. I don't know how long it will be till I can post anything. I'm sorry.

As of this point in time, my tablet has completely stopped working and I'm without my primary form of art and I may not be posting for a while.