#website things

Hey Everyone! Follow THIS link to head over to my website and check out my first blog post! 

My personal website is finally up! theartfulmegalodon.com! It’s all the best I’ve got to show, and I’m sure most of it will look familiar to you if you’ve been following me. Although now’s your chance to see some of the medical illustration I’ve been doing for the past 6 1/2 years! Very different from my personal art. Do please check it out in my Medical gallery! Some of those pieces are award-winners, even! (But be warned, some of it is actually quite gruesome.)

All my so-far-completed Godlings pages are there, of course, along with the all-updated character head designs for my gods and goddesses.

I don’t really know what my future will bring, or where I’ll land when my career is forced to jump tracks this February, but if there’s any chance this site can dazzle someone, it’s worth the time and effort it took to make it. And if any lovely, kind souls out there among you care to offer any feedback, I’d love to know what you think!

SO.

There have been some recent significant changes to the employment status of the Meg. In case you don’t know, I’ve been working full-time at a small company for the past six and a half years doing medical illustration. I do not actually enjoy medical illustration generally speaking. I am good at it, I’d like to say, and I do NOT begrudge the medical/anatomical knowledge that I’ve acquired because of it, but it does not bring me any kind of joy. It doesn’t help that this particular job requires me to work in the exact opposite manner to my natural inclination, and that stress is compounded by unpredictable, demanding deadlines and, unfortunately, poor workflow management.

Unless some unforeseen upset occurs, beginning mid-February I will no longer be a full-time employee. I will transition to being a contractor, and that means several things:

The company doesn’t have to pay my insurance benefits, so it’s basically a win for them financially. It really doesn’t help me at all.

I am a free bird when it comes to freelance work. I can choose NOT to do any cases my soon-to-be-former boss offer me. That power of choice DOES bring me joy.

I will be seeking a different full-time job somewhere, as some kind of illustrator. I’ll be casting a wide net, and I barely know where to start, but I’m trying to think positively.

In the meantime, I may very well have more time for myself, meaning more time for Godlings, more time for random illustrations, and more time to catch up on the foot-high stack of books and comics on my bed that need reading.

There’s a possibility that I will be open for commissions to you, the fine folk who do me the honor of following my work.  These would most likely be character illustrations: fan art or OCs. I can’t promise anything right now, but just keep an eye out! It might happen!

This feels like a necessary step, one that’s been a long time coming. (Realistically, I should have left this job at least a year and a half ago.) Who knows what the future holds now? Who knows who will hire me, or how well I’ll take to the whole “working from home” freelance tap dance?

The world is big and scary, and the art “community” is splintered and hobbled these days. A saturated market distantly observed by employers who don’t want to pay benefits. Full of absolutely excellent people, true, who are talented and compassionate, if usually broke and struggling, or supported by a significant other. I’d be proud to count myself among them, and I truly think this change will be to my eventual benefit. Gods willing.

If you’re feeling charitable, do please check out my new website! The brand new theartfulmegalodon.com is live and chock full of art! It’ll will be familiar art to you, no doubt, and the medical section is still under construction, as well as all of the descriptions for the images, but I’m proud to have made it, and you can finally find all of the Godlings and Death Mage art collected for easy consumption in their own sections on the site!

If you can spare a moment, even just in spirit, wish me luck! Hugs and thanks to you all!

So, my new website is a pretty early work in progress, and is going to continue to be a pain in my butt as I struggle to figure out how to... you know, build a website.  (The catch is making a portfolio-type site with separate galleries, which is apparently a whole different level of difficulty.)

But you may remember that I wanted to sort of greet any newcomers to the site with brief descriptions of each gallery and chibis (of myself) so that they knew right away what they were looking at, and what they were in for.  And because it’s something a lot of people wouldn’t bother putting effort into.

And now the gallery folder art is done!  Here are the five different categories I’ll be separating my art into.  And while I have written out little blurbs for each one, I didn’t include them on these pics so that they wouldn’t chance look like links.

Glad to be done with them!

It even has the coding from our old (now deleted) website so I don't have to start 100% from scratch