#miena

After years of waaiting, I finally could draw that part of Muriel's route where they escape from Lucio after he appeared at the Masquerade.

Muriel’s Harem—the anime.

(Just kidding I personally hate harem tropes).

Muriel belongs to The Arcana @thearcanagame.

Tari— @mcarcanageek

Agrippa— @victorscribbles

Autum— @autum-the-apprentice

Syris— @syrisart

Luna— @melomoona

Miena— @scaredy-apprentice

Rhemi is mine (Check out these lovely blogs!! They are amazing and the sweetest people ever and I love them. 😍)

Sorry this took my awhile! I hope everyone likes it!!

Enjoy my hot trash!

Miena:  New Work

Miena has been featured previously in Cross Connect.  Miena creates evocative and moody landscapes similar to that of Yutuu Toyoi (of 1040uu fame).  She delicately balances the drawing and the motion together in exactly the right proportion so that you feel that you are in that particular place;  reading a book, having some tea, and feeling the gentle breeze in your hair.

Posted by David

More unique art on Cross Connect Magazine:

@scaredy-apprentice hehehehe Ajii likes the 😘. But you should come back so he can give you a proper kiss.

Miena is one of the more successful gif artists I have observed in my year of writing this blog and posting gif artists to Cross Connect, and so I asked them some in depth questions about life as a Gif Artst, and Miena was generous enough to respond with honest and in-depth answers.

Your work seems to be quite popular, and I see you take commissions.  Are you able to make a living doing that?

Thankfully I have been able to make an income by making illustrations and animated illustrations for others, but not quite yet as to completely make a living out of it. I would certainly love to, and I already feel so honoured and beyond blessed to be able to do what I love now, but I’m still relying on other things and other people to be able to do this, so this aspect of my journey is still a work in progress.

I think about a year ago you had a fairly small presence on Instagram, but now you seem to be doing quite well.  Was that a difficult transition?

It honestly was a tricky transition! I actually grew up using Tumblr - I’ve been using Tumblr since 2011/2012, and I have a few other blogs besides ‘mienar’ currently, and am in a fandom myself. I also don’t really use other social media as often as I have of Tumblr too, so having to learn and understand Instagram as a platform, learning about the community, and learning different ways to interact with others definitely took me way longer than I’d like to admit.

Do you display your work on just Tumblr and Instagram?

I display my works both only on Tumblr and Instagram, but some contents can be more or less suited in one platform than the other. For example, I find Tumblr to be more suitable for completed and polished artworks as well as finished commissioned artworks, while I’ve found Instagram to be more suitable of quick, regular paintings with the occasion of completed artworks.

What changes did you have to make to adjust to Instagram after being on Tumblr for a long time?

There are a few changes that I needed to make while adjusting to Instagram.

Technically speaking, the biggest change would have to be converting my animated GIFs into videos. Unfortunately, Instagram doesn’t give you the ability to just post GIFs, so my workflow now includes having to convert my animated GIF into video via a mobile app, add sounds and SFX (which is something that helped elevate my works actually), and sharpen my final artwork because my gifs tend to get blurry after all the final conversions and editing.

Another change is a mentality change, which was somewhat fascinating, though in a negative way, is how I’ve been treated by other people due to the number of followers that is displayed on my account. I didn’t really have to go through this problem on Tumblr since Tumblr never shows your follower count, unless you install a widget for it, and I was treated all the same from when I began up until now.

On Instagram though, I have been a target for some people to look down upon me and my worth due to my ‘smaller’ audience more times than I’d like to speak of, and when my audience grew, the same people have begun treating me ‘nicely’ and as ‘equals’. Fortunately, it’s not something I’m that fazed by nor that I care too much of, but it was certainly something unpleasant that I just had to get used to.

Did moving to Instagram really help you gain commissions and followers?

I do believe moving to Instagram has helped in gaining more commission requests, but not so much at a bombastic and drastic rate. It more so just felt like ‘a gradual and natural increase of commission requests as my audience base grew’ kind of thing.

Are your followers on Tumblr the same, or have you seen that drop off at all?

Admittedly, there actually has been a drop off, not in followers, but in activity and engagements.

Last year, Tumblr announced and made a huge and very drastic change in their policies and rules as a platform, which caused a lot of anger, discontentment and platform-migrations from so many of the Tumblr users. This has actually impacted my blog too - although the number of followers I have has maintained/increased, many of my older followers' blogs have been abandoned due to that outrage, which results to my posts not getting as much reach.

This has actually caused an internal turmoil if Tumblr was a strong enough platform for me to continue on (and this was also what led me to expand my Instagram in the first place). It was something that I had to debate internally for a really long time, but I came to the conclusion rather recently that although there aren’t as many people engaging in my posts, I realised that what matters most is that there are still people on Tumblr who are present, have chosen to stay and engage in the content I share, and I want to stay on Tumblr with them and for them.

What have you been trying to do as an artist to grow your gif work?

One of the things that has been really helping me a lot in terms of elevating my works, both in terms of illustrating it and animating it, is by watching more movies, TV shows and basically consume other forms of media. I know it sounds like an excuse for me to watch more movies and shows, but I promise you that most of it is for research purposes!

Through the consumption of different media, it actually helped me build newer and fresher understandings and ideas for lighting, colour schemes, different moods and atmospheres.

Besides that too, learning what techniques actors, directors, cinematographers, editors, etc. do and use to create a particular scene and what they’ve done to achieve a certain feeling helps me put more thought into what I do rather than just ‘hoping for the best’ or having to always rely on trial and error, like for most of my older works.

I’m not sure how prominent this new change has been translated through the final look of my recent art, but I know for sure it had helped me a lot in regards to the process and the behind-the-scenes upon making them.

Have you used the same tools?  Or have you tried new techniques?

The tools I use have still been the same from when I began ‘mienar’ until now. (Devices: Wacom Intuos Pro Medium and iPad Pro, Softwares: Photoshop CS6 Extended and Procreate.)

Though I have been using Procreate so much more now as I nowadays prefer to work directly on a screen tablet, but besides that, nothing has changed.

How do you feel about the future of gif work?  Are you confident moving forward that you will be able to keep making a living (if you are) or do you feel like you will need to expand into other areas?

I really can’t say much about the future of gif work and gif artists, as futures are really unpredictable in itself, but what I would like to say is that I’m always so amazed, and in a way, really touched, at the responses that gif artists get of their works, despite their works being intangible towards the viewers, especially of those who have chosen to get one of their own (via commissions).