ChemicalAlia

After a brief period working at another larger game studio, I decided to start the new year as a self-employed artist once again. 

2016 was a pretty rough year for me at times. I realized that many of my long-held career dreams and goals really aren't feasible, or are no longer the possibilities that they once were.  I struggled a little, and suffered a period of burn-out, something I never thought would happen to me as I love making art.

But I got through the year, and going into 2017 I think it's time I re-evaluated what my main goals are as a professional artist, where I want to be, and what path I should take to get there.  Overall, I'm pretty optimistic and looking forward to the future!

I underwent another ligament reconstruction at the end of January.  I don't want to get too ahead of myself, but there is a good possibility that #3 will be the lucky number and this will finally fix my messed up wrist after almost 15 years of pain and problems.  That means I have to get through another month of my arm being in a cast, so hopefully it will be worth the inconvenience! 

I'm still working, but it's a lot harder to hold/control the pen, and I'm still getting a lot of random nerve pain and stabbiness from the four pins holding my wrist bones in place.  

FOUR MORE WEEKS.  I can't wait til I can start drawing/painting/modeling again like a normal person.  This cast is driving me nuts.

Wow, thanks so much to MidnightExigent and Phreja for featuring my Dota 2 Crystal Maiden Winterbringer loading screen!  That was a big surprise this morning; I'm super thrilled and so glad you enjoyed it!





Also thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes!

I've been living outside of Seattle since September, and just got everything approved and set up to go sign the lease at a new place in the city on Wednesday!  It's a one-bedroom and a little smaller than my current place, but it has a dog run on the roof (which is awesome for safety at late hours), and I get to live on the 9th floor, which will be awesome for getting over my fear of heights!  I've got relatives coming out to visit in early July, then I'm going back to Pennsylvania a bit for my mom's birthday (and because I love PA in the summer), and then my parents are coming out to stay with me for a bit before The International 5 tournament for Dota 2 starts. 

My sister and her husband just bought a cute townhouse not far from here, and it's been so awesome having them live close to me again.  I tend to work a lot, and I don't have any coworkers (since I work from home) and don't know a lot of people here besides and (who I've known FOREVER, and it's so crazy that he lives here too), so hopefully this move will provide me with more opportunities to make some friends and get out more easily. Knowing me, that's probably wishful thinking v:

The only thing I'm sad about is no tropical vacations in sight D:

You guys got any cool summer plans?




Also, good god, this website.  I forget that it doesn't automatically sort your submissions to the "featured" folder, which means half of my crap doesn't show up.  And when you manually do it, there's no way to sort your stuff by submission date, so everything is horribly out of order.  I've been doing some heavy cleanup of my gallery, and it's so frustrating.  I can't believe that has still not been addressed!  If I'm missing something obvious here, please advise thx

Hey guys, been a while.  Been focusing on a lot of work lately, and just wanted to show off Spectre set for to the Dota 2 Workshop New Bloom contest, cause we're super proud of it!

You can check it out on the workshop here  Votes don't count towards the sets being accepted by Valve, but we always appreciate the support!









It's also part of a larger collection by some artist friends of ours, called the Treasure of the Wondrous Ram!  There's sets for six agility heroes in this chest.  We'd love to hear what you think!

It includes:

Sanction of Celarian (Mirana), by Yi

Selemene's Eclipse (Luna), by Don Don and Ziedrich

Avatar of the Year Beast (Juggernaut), by Jeremy Klein and Ziedrich

Raiment of the Sacred Blossom (Phantom Assassin), by OrganizedChaos and Ziedrich

Blooming Entropy (Spectre), by DrySocket and Chemical Alia

Vagabond (Phantom Lancer), by Don Don and Ziedrich