Wow dang yall, can't believe the last time I posted was in 2021, during the height of NFTs when bots were scraping the site to put art for fradulent sale. Well well well!! The Non-Fungibles have fallen but all that art generative nonsense has taken its place.
Anyway, I have NO idea if AI (especially the ones native to DA) would scrape art that's already been put in private storage... I am not going to find out either.
Anyway anyway...
[omg somehow DA has this glitch where it keeps randomising my URL links no matter how many times I correct it... just copy and paste the text instead of clicking]
My website is taking shape as a proper archive (reimenayee.com). It is still WIP, but with the fall of Twitter as well, I have essentially accelerated my mission to get Everything and Anything on my site so that nothing is lost. Art, tutorials, resources, old pieces of writing, etc. Which is why I am logged back in - I am entering private storage to transfer stuff back into the public, just not on DA anymore.
Here's a TL;DR of what's happened:
- The Carpet Merchant of Konstantinyya Volume II (English edition) is published.
- Both volumes of The Carpet Merchant are also now in French!!
- TCM has its own fancy website: https://reimenayee.com/the-carpet-merchant
- My most recent kids' book, My Aunt is a Monster, came out last year. It's about a nerdy blind girl who moves in with an adventurer aunt who was cursed into a monstrous form. - https://reimenayee.com/my-aunt-is-a-monster
- The Alexander the Great webcomic finished Book 1, and the print edition will be on sale soon!
- https://reimenayee.com/alexander
- It was featured in the British Library as part of their Alexander the Great legends exhibition last year! A bucket list goal achieved!!
- My adaptation of The God of Arepo (which I produced for last year's Shortbox Digital Comics Fair) exploded and it's now gonna get into the Library of Congress for winning the Ignatz Awards lol
- https://reimenayee.com/the-god-of-arepo
- Speaking of which, I won two Ignatzes since last I posted: one for Alexander and one for The God of Arepo.
- I'm currently working on a catalogue of comics devices, which are unique visual-literary devices used in comics (like how film has match cut and how poetry has rhyming schemes). I've got 62 devices rn.
- Got back into Neopets, but in a "I check back on my pets once in a while and follow Jellyneo news daily" which is better than "absolute silence"
- I am back in School and undertaking a Masters in arts management, so I am learning how to manage arts organisations, museums, festivals, etc that kind of thing. I am currently struggling to juggle my studies in addition to career and dayjob (how foolish of me to think I could do this again!!)
- Deep-cut followers would like to hear that after years and years of being Josh Groban's fan, I finally FINALLY FINALLY got to meet him in June at the stage door of Sweeney Todd. I gave him a piece of fanart. He thanked me and was a Normal Chill Dude about it. Signed the stuff I brought (first album sleeve, favourite album sleeve, and the Sweeney Todd playbill). I can be a Normal Appreciator of JG Content now.
- The World in Deeper Inspection's official anniversary was 10 years ago. Crazy!!! I celebrated it by redrawing and reinterpreting the original Chapter 1 (at https://alcottgrimsley.com), but then I went underwater from all the aforementioned juggling (and taking off to the US for a vacation, see Josh Groban encounter above). I will finish it OTL
I am curious to see who is still on DA. Shout out if you're here and reading.
Hi gang,
You may notice my DA profile here is pretty sparse - that's cos I've checked in every single piece of my art (13 years worth!) into private storage. Lately there's been a lot of news about bots scraping DA for art to put up for sale as fradulent tokens on crypto-art markets like Open Sea. I have absolutely no confirmation that any of my art/comics were stolen and I don't want to find out - yes I know about DA's reverse search tool -, but I believe that may have happened already. To prevent any further theft (since a lot of these thieves, when reported, simply repost the art later) I've decided to privatise my gallery until these crypto platforms suffer the consequence of allowing fraudulent sales.
My gallery's not all gone, and there's no risk of deletion. ATM I am working on making my self-hosted site a robust archive of my old art. In the meantime, you can find my current work in plenty of places, including my webcomic sites and Tumblr. (Plus I will be happy to restore our acquaintance if you're a long-time watcher!)
And of course, I'm not going to forget the fishpaste crooks and the speculative buyers looking for an easy profit from stealing mine and my peers' stuff. Here's my well-wishes for you guys: I hope you all get hit by link rot.