If you’re in a rush, I encourage you to at least read the final paragraph! It’s the most important!

Time sure flies, huh? Today marks my first anniversary as an artist on FA so I wanted to do something special to celebrate it. So for the first time (and possibly last lol) a full group shot of my entire cast, including my newest addition who I’ll mention more later, Cepheid (or Seph for short)!

It’s been a fairly wild journey the past twelve months and to be honest I am stunned at how it all went. When I started out, I more or less anticipated remaining in relative obscurity, mostly writing stories with the occasional traditional art to accompany it. Likewise, I was not expecting to interact with many, if any, other users. And for the first month or two that was mostly how things went. But eventually I started to run into writer’s block, there were only so many ways I could write a story about a hungry goobold before it became repetitive. And alongside that I finally started to get comfortable with reaching out to the artists that I really liked, asking them for advice and learning from them. Several even becoming extremely important friends. Slowly I pivoted, starting to draw more and more, focusing on themes that I found most motivating, and, although I often refuse to admit this, I guess it is reasonable to state that I have gotten better as an artist over the past year.

Which is why I want to make a remark to the potential artists out there. I have no artistic talent. Frankly I don’t think anyone has “artistic talent.” The artists that inspired me the most, those ones that helped me to learn this past year, they all worked hard as hell to get to this point. Please do not think “I can never be an artist cause I did not start drawing when I was young.” For the record, I never drew a thing until mid 2020. I decided to start learning to draw then, focusing on construction drawing and using Drawabox as my guide. From there I eventually shifted to just drawing subjects in my free time such as TRPG characters. But honestly, after an initial surge, I was only drawing maybe for an hour or two a week. It was not until a year ago that I started to seriously draw and push myself. That I started to seek advice, to look over the art of my mentors and try to figure out what I liked and what I wanted to implement, to draw subjects that motivated me. And I do think you can now compare my works today to my works last year and see remarkable improvement. Even in the past few months I have continued to grow, for instance the far more natural look on Etherex in the above picture compared to his reference. I do not know the best way to learn to draw. I still have so much to learn myself and there are many things that I know do inefficiently at best. But I do know you cannot draw if you never start. So if you feel the desire to put pen to paper, heed it. You do not need some magic innate talent or two decades of experience starting with when you could first crawl. You just need to want to make it happen.

Now, as for the most important part of this day. I want to thank everyone who I have met and interacted with over the past year. First to all those that left favorites, comments, and the 407 watchers that I have somehow gathered over the past twelve months. Know that I greatly appreciate all your support, I never anticipated things would explode this much when I started, and I am happy that the content I produce is exciting to you. I hope that I can deliver another year of quality content (though I should warn I do expect the pace to slow down a little). Next, I want to thank the friends I have gained along the way. I tend to be rather introverted with regards to these things so my branching out is small and slow. But for those I do interact with more frequently I thank you for being awesome, for making this fun, for bearing with me those that have no interest in macro content whatsoever. Finally, I want to thank all the artists that have given me advice. Around December of last year I first started to reach out to those that I liked the pieces of and ask them for input or recommendations. I am not going to attempt to name you all because I fear I might leave someone out. But, I will at least name a few that have gone above and beyond. First, thanks to   vamux ,   ariel19_98 , and   magpi ! You three have been absolutely amazing. It is no exaggeration to say you have all had the biggest impact on my art style and you could directly trace each of my characters to one of you as the primary inspiration. Kiuh personally helped me redesign Soltoros into his v2 look, Fertos and EX-M8 were both mainly designed based on Vamux’s style. Maggie inspired Etherex and Keres, even providing some suggestions to make them standout. And furthermore she designed my newest character who you will see more of soon, Septh the singularity microraptor! (Shameless plugging: if you subscribe to her subscribestar you’ll be able to see Their ref early!) Plus the reality is all of my characters have some cross pollination of style or elements inspired by Kiuh, Vamux, and Maggie anyway. As if being fantastic artists and offering personal advice was not enough, you three are also just incredible friends and I am very glad to have met you. Thank you for everything! I also want to shout out   blockman3 and   senseofscale , two other great friends and artists that have helped me in the past few months in this journey. Thank you! So to all my friends, mentors, and watchers, thank you for the past year, I hope you enjoyed it and I hope that I can deliver similar quality content in the upcoming year!

- Soltoros the Goobold (and his crew of Fertos, Etherex, EX-M8, Keres, and Seph)