I'm hearing an #artist or two on birdsite saying they've been given an invite to Mastadon.art, suggesting that's a thing that's happening now.

If anyone on #mastoart sees this, peeps my #art and deems me worthy, I'd love to jump on over there to see what all the cool kids are up to.

Despite the state of the art engineering facilities at HQ, Hayun was not content to sit and wait for the squadron to come limping back from the battlefield for repairs. Never a fan of doing things in an easy or straightforward way, she opted to take a fighter jet and mess with essentially every function that it was originally designed for, creating a field and combat-ready maintenance vehicle.

The addition of air brakes and VTOL wing pontoons allows for hovering and precision maneuvering at low speeds. Standard machine guns were replaced with single barrel carbines to make room for sensor arrays and what I can only think to call "grippy claws." In the back are sensor-jammers and shorter fins, allowing a better range of movement for the center-mounted cutting laser. The laser has its share of combat applications, but it's mostly intended for making quick and dirty field repairs to friendly units.

All this added kit results in a craft with low top speeds, making it a sitting duck in dogfights. Rather than make head-on engagements, her suite of tools lends itself best to sneak attacks in obstacle-dense environments.

#art #mastoart #CharacterDesign #ConceptArt

#CharacterDesign is fun, but giving a #character stuff to use is a personal favorite exercise. An ongoing series of mine involves designing space fighter pilots and their jets. Taoyi here is a very by-the-book soldier, so she doesn't mod her kit. She could, she's allowed to, she just chooses not to.

#art #vehicle #VehicleDesign #artist #mastoart

The news of #Twitter going into open free fall is only surprising in terms of the sheer speed at which #elonmusk can destroy a company.

All he had to do to avoid this was nothing.

Not a secret that #Taiwanese and #Japanese convenience stores are uniquely accommodating, though I give Taiwan the edge for having more of them (the most per capita globally) and almost always having at least few places to sit, relax, and have a snack or something.

Plenty of worse places to wait out a little rain.

#art #artist #artists #artistsonmastodon #artistsofmastodon #city #catgirl #taiwan #conveniencestore

More #Taiwan themed work, "Late to Class"

This could really be any city, but I based it off photos I took in #Taichung . Why do I always put catgirls in Taiwanese settings? Dunno, it's fun.

#art #artist #artistsofmastodon #artistsonmastodon #cat #catgirl #city

Since #mastodon has a higher character limit, I'm happy I can say more about some of my pieces.

It might not look it, but this is among the more #Taiwanese #illustrations I've done. You won't see it in travel shows, but #Taiwan has more claw machines than anywhere I've ever been. I don't even think #Tokyo can compare to #Taipei in terms of machines per capita.

It's common practice to line the walls of otherwise empty business units with these machines, which are usually full of anime figures and merch, sometimes with weirder things like, jeez I dunno, laundry detergent? I've seen that. I'm sure someone can one-up me on strange finds.

Sometimes these 夾娃娃店 just pop up to generate a little passive income while a lease runs out, sometimes they pay for themselves and they stay around for years. Whatever the case, if you like collecting stuff, it's always worth peeking in to see what each place has.

Unlike the US, Asian machines typically don't cheat, they just operate on different rules. Grip strength is always the same, but the claw opens before returning to the drop point, meaning you have to figure out how to use the weight of the item and the position of the claw to fling it towards the hole. This piece is inspired by all the money I lost trying to get a rare #HatsuneMiku figure from the back corner of a machine, only to leave in defeat. Once I get my magic powers, I'll return for it.

#art #artistsofmastodon #storytime

Well, it's official. After about a week on #Mastadon , I've gained more followers than I could scrape together on both #twitter and #instagram after a year or more of really going for it on those platforms. That was, is, and continues to be nuts. Thanks for your support!

This has been a pretty eye-opening experience as a #creative on the internet. I knew that most modern platforms deliberately hide smaller users' posts from search results because they want you to buy boosted posts and all that, but I wasn't sure just how bad these algorithms skewed things until now.

It also caused me to consider how #algorithm based platforms have a latent psychological effect on artists: we compare ourselves to success stories, seeing our relative engagement as a gauge for how far behind them we are, without realizing just how much the scales are unfairly tipped against us by the platform itself. It's demoralizing and opaque, and probably causing many young artists to give up when they shouldn't.

This is why I'm a frequent advocate for Newgrounds. in some ways it's a relic of the old internet, but it endures because it's never been pay-to-win and never will be. Similarly, it's what will be making me an advocate for Mastadon going forward.

#art #artist #socialmedia