Future going forward
UPDATE: My art will remain in storage until further notice. I love deviantART but I'm not ready for a platform that condones AI art as anything more than a moodboard/experimental medium kept in quieter channels. I find it extremely disingenuous to have it appearing in galleries beside art created by skilled artists in our industry on a shared platform. And the old, "well, people are gonna do it anyway" isn't a helpful sell. The issue here is proximity and consent. The impression I got today from the announcement and twitter space interviews both was that nobody read the room, truly listened to what artists (suppliers of this data) want, and the vibe check failed. So I am going to exercise a cardinal tenant of the internet: Don't like it? Don't interact. I am sad that I feel this way for a site that I grew up on. A site I was so happy and excited to be sponsored by, and I sincerely hope that my feedback is heard kindly. There are many people here both staff and mutual peers that I adore. I hope for something better to come out of this mess. I cannot ignore how exhausted and scared I am. It gets harder and harder for me to post my stuff to galleries for fear of these surprises. I was hoping deviantART would continue putting ethics first before trends. But I was not convinced of that today in anything that was presented. I'll be keeping my subscriber content up for now since it is not material that AI generally wants and it has always been in my heart to try and help a fellow artist with resources. But I am definitely taking a more firm step back from posting art here for the time being. Where you can find me: https://linktr.ee/Quelfabulous
Exciting Career Announcement!
Hi DeviantArt fam! I have some BIG news! I’m excited to announce that I accepted a job offer as a full time UI Artist on SMITE at Hi-Rez Studios starting in January!
This news comes with some big changes and poses some important questions going forward. But first I want to say how incredibly grateful and blessed I am to have gotten to know so many wonderful art peers and supporters over the last few years. I joke and say my streams are made possible by you in the PBS voice but it’s true. Everyone who commissioned me, supported patreon, subbed to my twitch, purchased my brushes, prints & t-shirts-- all of you have contributed to my livelihood and growth during this 3 year period. I can’t thank you enough & I hope in my next career chapter, I can pay it forward in helping other creative peers get closer to a comfortable & meaningful career path.
Now for the questions...What does this mean for my patreon, DA subscriptions, streams, learning content & passion project going forward?
Patreon & Commissions
While December will remain active, Patreon will be paused for January and possibly February 2022. This will be a short pause while I figure out my new time schedule, but ultimately I want to continue streaming, mentoring, & sharing personal content with you. This month, I will be making a super clean PSD & tutorial with my Endwalker piece that I’ll be streaming on Thursdays, and all the works in progress in the discord to go along with it. I’m also hosting a massive art / writing trade gift exchange in our discord that I’m super excited for. See the 🎄│holiday-elf-exchange-2021 channel to sign up! I will no longer be taking private commissions. If you are in the Tavern Lager tier currently for commission openings, you might want to hop down to a lower tier for December. I’m sorry I will not be able to fulfill a final commission opening, but its very important that I do not cause myself burnout during onboarding for the new job. There are possibilities that I will open private commissions again next year in small batches. Those of you who supported me at this tier and I did not have the opportunity to work with you, you will be considered first. I will be re-structuring all tiers during the pause. After I get a feel for my new workload, I may possibly reopen in February with the following tiers:
$35 Mentorship Tier: I will no longer be offering the House Tea full mentorship tier. I will be condensing both remaining tiers into the basic $35 tier and instead of a monthly lesson, we will have monthly group critique/hangout sessions as a class.
$5 NoxQuel Support Tier/DeviantArt Chowder: Same cost as a twitch sub, this tier would be for folks who want to continue supporting the development of Drums of Atelaer, funding for Discord boosts & hosting costs, and getting early access to any and all personal art/tutorials I do.
$2 NoxQuel Support Tier, but more affordable. Tip jar lite.
Streams
I would like to keep working with the DeviantArt Collective but its also very hard for me to know at this time what energy I will have left over at the end of my new workday. What I can tell you now is that I want to continue Horsin’Around on Monday nights. I will have a better picture of a future stream schedule after my first month of work. I will keep you folks in the loop. Streams may shift from art production to art talks.
Drums of Atelaer
The beauty of having a full time job is now my financial prioritization nightmare of freelance is eliminated, which means 100% of my personal art time can re-focus on my passion projects and characters.
These next few months will be an adjustment period & I hope we can continue sharing our journeys and worlds we’re building with one another.
#FFWEAPONVEMBER Winners Announcement!
November was a busy month and it flew by! I am endlessly proud of all the entries entered in our challenge this month. I am super excited to announce our winners with stumpyfongo and kloir !
1st Place: "Final Fantasy Silver Dragon Lance" by PralexArt
Top 5:
Makelek, keno-fi2138, HDdeviant, StyleForeverAndEver, FoxyOfMoon
Prizes:
🗡️ 1st place: One Month Core Pro + membership, 1000 fragments, shoutouts on social media, and on-stream features of your work from all 3 of us!
🗡️ Top 5: One month Core+ membership, and 400 fragments
Congrats again to our winners! We will contact the DA team so they hand out the rewards! I will be doing shout outs and features this week on twitter, tomorrow's stream & in the NoxQuel discord!
Hello fellow Deviants!
I have an exciting new challenge for you all this month with some fun prizes to boot! This month we are teaming up with stumpyfongo and kloir to bring you the #FFWeaponVember challenge!
🗡️ The goal of this challenge is to design a weapon that is inspired by the Final Fantasy universe!
🗡️ Hashtag used to enter:
🗡️ When is it Due?
Nov 28 @ 11:59pm PST
🗡️What am I creating?
Your task is to design a weapon that looks and feels like it could exist in the Final Fantasy universe. This will involve researching and creating moodboards, thumbnailing out ideas, and pre-visualizing the weapon by rendering/painting it in a way that makes it feel like it could exist in game. Have fun with textures, materials, and any visual effects like magic, fire, ice, etc!
🗡️ What should I submit?
Your final submission will be an 11x17 (landscape) concept sheet that features the finished/rendered weapon on the right and any relevant exploration work on the left. Feel free to include any additional research, moodboards, thumbnails, and sketches in the description of your post! We want to see all the hard work that went into designing this weapon.
🗡️ Are there any rules?
Don’t design any NSFW themed weapons. Beyond that just have fun! Don't forget to post using the #FFWeaponVember tag!
🗡️ What about prizing?
That’s a great question! Stumpy, Kloir and I will judge the entries and the prizes will be as follows:
-1st place: One Month Core Pro + membership, 1000 fragments, Shoutouts on social media, and on-stream features of your work from all 3 of us!
-Top 5: One month Core+ membership, and 400 fragments
-Top 10: 300 Fragments
Winners will be announced on Wednesday December 1st through a journal feature!
For those wondering what Core memberships mean: https://www.deviantart.com/core-membership
🗡️ TUNE IN on November 12 at 10am MST ( 12 noon EST, and 9am PST) Stumpy, Kloir and I will do a squad stream on twitch and discuss the process involved in concepting weapons for gaming. Get tips and tricks to help you as you begin the process of designing out your weapons!
Need a place to start for inspiration? You can check out all the 3d weapon models live in FFXIV with this handy website! https://weapon.ffxivcollection.com/
Can’t wait to see what you all create!
Retro Halloween Ball Challenge Wrap-Up!
A Huge thank you to everyone who participated in my first ever challenge hosted here as a part of the DeviantArt Collective. It was unbelievably fun getting to know each of your characters in such a unique way. For those who missed the live Exhibition stream, tune in below. We talked in depth about each of these artworks! https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1193854368
Prizes: Unlike last year, I do have some nifty DeviantArt goodies to offer! I was on the lookout for the most creative submissions that tap into Halloween season aesthetics with a fun nod to period fashion. Picking a Top 3 was so incredibly hard because everyone brought forth & executed some really amazing ideas. Consider this section just a few pieces that really had us embracing an eye emoji during the exhibition.
Our Top 3:
I am the Night (Elf) by emily-lorange Why Top 3: The technical execution on this one is immediately attractive to the eye. Emily treated us with an absolutely wonderfully fun concept that unifies in a satisfying way, making this piece super stand out!
SylviOCHalloween by Saltsparkle
Why Top 3: Salt did a ton of research on the clothing for this piece and it shows. Not to mention the patience for tiny details- definitely listen in on this part of the exhibition because it's amazing!
At The Halloween Ball by @TheBrassGlass
Why Top 3: Brass went hard in the paint (literally) on this piece, gifting us with a feast of detail we're unworthy for. If you stare long enough, you will find new things to make noises about!
Honoring All of Our Participating Artists All participants in the challenge are getting 400 fragments! (And some diamond badges from me because every single one of these pieces are so GOOD.) Please visit and show some love to each of these works!
