Hello world! Thanks so much for everyone’s continued support as I grow!

I know I’ve been super silent on here the last few months and I want to apologize for that! However a big part of the reason was due to my work with FGG Games, as the recent illustration project I had with them took me a LOT longer than expected, pretty much from mid September all the way into December (And I still have one more quick illustration to pound out for him on this project)!

However with the start of January I began implementing updates for 2025 that I’d been really wanting to get handled for awhile now, and a lot of them are live as of yesterday!

The first thing of note is that I organized my files database and my portfolio for 2025. This is more a Me-End type thing, but it will make a lot of stuff easier going forward, and I’m hoping you all benefit a bit from the streamlining of my work pipeline.

Along with sorting those files to hell and back, I also created a 2024 Year-In Review trailer video that I’ll be making live on my Youtube and Twitch soon!

Before I dive into the BIG changes. I want to make a quick note regarding my pricing!
As of January 11th I have once again changed my pricing. I try to update my prices every 6 months or so, so this should come as no surprise! However I do this to try and keep my pricing FAIR and reasonable within to constraints of the art industry as a whole.
The reason for this change is, in short, that my prior pricing removed some key options like sketches that I wanted to get back in there, and made commercial use of my work unattainable for many clients; Which goes against my own business philosophy with art, and my desire to connect my work with small businesses and other individual creators. As such this pricing has returned the Sketch category, as well as returned my commercial use pricing. I’ve also added back in my Logo Design pricing so that people who are looking specifically for logo work can get that without needing to think about a character or figure being involved. Turning a ficure into a logo is still the same newer price add-on that I decided on 6 months ago, but my logo work now accounts for text and graphic logos that aren’t character-based again!

You can see my full commission pricing menu here.

The actual big changes that I wanted to talk about though, come with my branding and how I display myself!

Branding, Vtuber, and Motion/Animation

To start with I now have a brand new 2025 logo; And with that logo I wanted to also update my profile picure everywhere, which led me to start drawing a new icon; But before I realized what was happening that new icon turned into a fully functional vtuber model I made in Live2d and as of YESTERDAY’S OFFICIAL DEBUT STREAM over on Twitch, has been made live everywhere!

https://videopress.com/v/bsqy1AXI?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true

Moving into 2025 I still have a lot of work to do, but this is all work towards a massive project I’ve been planing for the last year and a half; The next step is to get my virtual gallery up and running, but I STILL need the funding to upgrade my website to have FTP capabilities, to start implementing that! Until then, the project is roadblocked.

But even so, regardless of the status of THAT project, this step means that I now have the knowledge about the creation of (and rigging for) Vtuber models under my belt, so on top of MINE I will be working on figuring out how to price them going forward so people can purchase Ash Something original Vtuber models in the near future!

This knowledge will also lend itself to animation projects I have planned in the near future, as well as a variety of other things moving forward.

E-Book: So You Want To be A Professional Artist – A Guide To Selling Art and Commissions and Other Tales by Ash Something Art

As a reminder: This is a FREE art resource I am prviding to everyone. All you need to do it keep the credits intact when you share it around, and not edit or change anything about it.

This e-book went live the middle of last year, and as it did I started migrating away from products like Adobe and others, which generally speaking are there to profiteer off of artists; In the process I also started stepping away from platforms that have implemented Generative AI or are Pr-GenAI in their business; This has been a HARD process because I’ve been established on a lot of these platforms almost since their creation(s) back in the early 2000s, before I was even doing this art thing professionally.

However, as I’ve been slowly working on that migration I’ve been working on updating this artist help book as I go, to have newer and up to date information, but I’ve also been working my entire ass off trying to gather resources to provide with the e-book link that will help out anyone who wants to learn art or grow as an artist, in general.

You can find the ebook here

This google drive folder contains the following:
– The standard copy of the ebook with around 150 pages of content separated into categories that are easily navigable via a hyperlink-enabled table of contents on the sidebar
-The Dyslexia friendly version, in PDF format, which has similarly navigateable hyperlinks on the contents page, however this one does not have a sidebar unfortunately.
-A notes document, from me discussing how you can use this document/folder/etc.
-A folder containing the OpenDyslexic font that I used and credits to the creators of the font.
A folder containing sample documents and contracts as they pertain to the document (The main documents have hyperlinks to these documents where they are importantl Please leave this folder where it is if you download the files so you don’t break these hyperlinks)
-And finally, a NEW folder, containing a wide range of tutorials, free bases, and other assets that I have compiled with the intention to help artists grow. You don’ thave to watch a lengthy video that refuses to get to the point, you now have simple images that tell you everything you need about a variety of topics.

The big update here is the new folder with the tutorials and assets! This folder will also be updated intermittently as I find new tutorials that I think will be useful to you all!