About my old art, and a new future

Greetings, everyone!

I've got something to share... A little reflection on my past and how I produced my artwork.

When I first came to DeviantArt, I was still in high school. Since the beginning of my digital art, I have done 'everything' in Flash. School tried teaching me how to use Photoshop, and I finished my Photoshop assignments in Flash. Adobe Illustrator was another program they tried teaching me, in which, I finished those assignments in Flash as well. And the hilarious thing was I passed them all despite being complete in the incorrect program. Heck, back then, I was so obsessed with using Flash, that when I was supposed to make a document form (a text file), I made that in Flash, too. Why? I have no idea. Probably because I could.

So anyway, a little bit on how I've actually done my art...

Ever since the start of my experience in Flash, I drew everything in it with a 'mouse'. I'd start with maybe a square, circle or a line, and I would stretch corners and edges, to twist and mold my shapes into 2D sculptures, and I did lots, and lots of copy-pasting to save time. And this used to be so fun for me!

However, you have seen my decline in artwork. My submissions have slowed down over the course of time, to the point my channel almost feels dead. Well, that's because... Drawing with the mouse, shaping and molding my pictures together from a square, is getting kind of un-fun. I don't like doing it any more. It pains me to open Flash now because of this tedious struggle of accurately twisting images together. I have been trying to figure out why I don't have fun doing what I used to enjoy. And it all keeps coming back to the mouse.

The thing is, I love sketching things on paper. I do it quite often, actually, even little mundane scribbles. I fill pages of concept art on paper, and I only dream about putting them in the scanner to trace them in Flash. Then I think about the mouse again. So I go back to my paper.

I needed to do something about this. If I wanted a future in being creative, I had to make an investment.

So, after many moons, I've decided to invest in a Wacom tablet. And the one I purchased was not cheap. It was indeed an investment and a half, but I have high hopes that it will make digital art, animation, and game development, fun again. I didn't want to get a cheaper one, because I wanted one that I knew would get me where I want to go. The one I purchased has a built-in screen; the Wacom Cintiq 13HD Creative Pen Display (Try saying that three times fast).

I don't have it yet, as it's on order. But I'll be receiving it in a few days... And I really hope this payment was worth the risk.

Here's to a brighter future!

—TheBlox—