GaiaOnline

August 2003 I joined GaiaOnline, and my addiction to the internet began.  Looking back on it, I'm not terribly proud of my involvement with the site because it was an awful time-sink, but it did spur my art, writing, original character development, and creativity in general, and for that, it's been pretty significant to my life. I've been poking around a bit lately, mostly toying with the idea of having an art contest to get rid of all the Gaia items and gold I managed to stockpile in exchange for art of Spark and Vahaadi, but I'm not sure if I even want to do that.  The site is kind of toxic to me.  There's lots of good there, but it requires sifting through lots of bad and basically just getting caught up in the petty social circles of the anime and gaming fandom to find it.  And I no longer need that kind of noise.  Back in the throes of my addiction, I never thought I'd be able to say that, but I can say it now.  And that's pretty liberating. :)

Anyway, as I mentioned, I generated a lot of art for my own use and others' on Gaia. Much of it I still kind of like, or find interesting just to show the (painfully slow) development of my art, so I've compiled it here. I've tried to arrange it in reverse chronological order, so the more recent pieces are at the front and my very oldest are at the end. Like a bad horror film on SyFy, you can watch the quality regress as you go! XD You may notice the art is signed under a handful of different usernames: "o-Raichu-o," "Inkdust," "Ink," or "IridescentInkSpell."  Signing my art with my real name is a very recent development, more or less exclusive to this blog and art that I do for people I know IRL.

Visit the GaiaOnline-inspired Art Archive! Password: inkdust

And for something Gaia-related and far more recent, here's a sketch I did for somebody today of their avatar whilst I was up to that aforementioned poking around. The avatar had really headed-lidded eyes, like he was either wearing makeup or horribly sleep-deprived.  I dunno.