Relevation of a new era...or Leaving It All Behind
I've been doing some hard deep thinking about the future....Wondering if I should remain a product of what I've been creating for the past several years or just give up on explicit content and find a new footing elsewhere. It's been awhile since I have given the safe side of art a try...But where do I even begin or start? What platform would be available to me that hasn't been taken over by AI garbage? Perhaps I can set up shop on twitter with some new safe content... You see, I have always considered myself a pioneer artist in the making. I take most of my inspirations from the past because there's a lot about the past to be appreciative about. I cannot say the same for the current era we live in right now that's one of the worse goddamn time's..Living through Western civilization as it collapse. I know what it must've felt like for the Roman's when their Empire was falling around them. We''re experiencing the same situation in the West today.
The only issue I will have switching gears would be trying to overcome limitations on what I can and cannot do with art that is non-explicit in nature even though I already have to put up with this on most sites anyway with certain explicit material. I'm so use to creating the kind of content I've been creating for years even though I didn't start out that way. It's going to be hard going from explicit content to PG-13 and seeing if I can find an audience that will accept what I have to offer in the gentler side of art...Of course by gentler I mean less of what I do now.
I have done some peaceful themes before in order to build up a clean portfolio featuring plenty of art that's easier on the mind, soul, and spirit of those who aren't dangerously as dark as I can be when I feel tempted to go to that scary place where I just allow myself to be seduced by what carnage I may have brewing in the library of psychological warfare.
Of course Raizen Fury isn't part of the darker series I am known for creating. Raizen Fury is an action thriller inspired by various action films of the early 80s and 90s including a lot of the martial art films from Hong Kong, throw in some comedy and fun stuff from movies like Can't Hardly Wait, it works quite well. Raizen Fury was originally intended to be an adult comedy series borrowing elements from Daria..Then overtime I came up with other plans for the series and somehow a series about girls in gangs sexually humiliating one another turned out to be the recipe I was looking for all along...It's just that over time I realized that adding dickgirls in there didn't work. So I wanted to see if I could start over again but this time without adding girls with dicks.
When I have these opportunities to create what I really love I take full advantage of it. The one thing I must do is build confidence again which I have lost a lot of when things started changing on me these past couple of years. I thought about retiring but it's difficult to give up on making things when you enjoy doing it... I love creating. It may take me some time to find a new audience. I said before how I found inspiration in Renaissance themed content so perhaps I can just go with that and see how far it takes me. Shadow Hill was a series that already explored such things, granted I made mistakes with it in the past because I played around a lot with various ideas. I do this all the time before I settle on what I intend to do with something that took me a week to put together.
I need something that will define me further, I have already achieved this acclaim to a certain extent, and Raizen Fury needs a new overhaul entirely. Yurei Yokai is one of the few I haven't experimented with enough but the series explores Japanese ghost and all sorts of other supernatural beings... I figured since the world is declining... And this might be my last year to create something before hell is unleashed on humanity.
The other night I watched that movie I use to own on VHS and every Christmas I remember coming downstairs just to watch it. It was called The Snow Queen, and it was the Russian 1957 version which is arguably the best version of that story. It's about a little girl who goes on this wild adventure to help her friend who's heart was turned cold and dark by an evil Snow Queen. I re-watched this movie over and over back in the 90s. There's just something about a dark and mysterious adventure that makes it all worthwhile.
I still have plenty of characters, and lots of unique environments. If I were to just cut out all the explicit stuff well I can have myself a dark fantasy story for a different kind of audience. Or I can keep trying to appeal to a decaying adult market that's going nowhere with all our freedoms being taken away from us and putting up with dumbfucks labeling everything as "abusive". Censorship gives me very little room to explore and do what I need to do to write the kind of plots and stories I want to write, and creating the art to go along with it.
Years ago I worked on a book titled Spider Tree then it was The Book Of Eve, that was the original title before it officially became Shadow Hill. I can always go back to that again, it was similar to The Snow Queen in some ways and it was the first PG adventure tale I worked on at the time but it had all the brother's grimm like elements before Disney watered it down since they felt that the original stories were too much for children. The thing is I never marketed my work toward younger audiences not even back when I was producing religious stories before I had any physical art to show off at all...
I was still aiming my content entirely at adults and older teenagers. I was about 17-20 at the time my mother approached me and asked me if I wanted to make art for the church, and bible stories for kids. At first I agreed to doing this but overtime my ideas just kept getting darker, more maturer..And by the time I made it to my mid 20s...I was no longer doing bible stories and art for Sunday school anymore. I started creating physical work in 2012, but I was still writing a lot back in 2002-2007. I tried forming a writing group and I met this artist who I would have draw the characters and I wrote the stories.
I believe there comes a time in almost every artists life when they decide to make changes to what they need to do to remain relevant. Sometimes they'll sell out to the mainstream media if it means they can make more money this way. In my case it's not about selling out. It's about abandoning a market that no longer appreciates the things I try to do for it anymore if things don't get better when I start working on my art again. I get people all the time telling me how much they miss my work, but I'm stubborn about where I host and post my art.
Looking at changing art direction is not something I want to consider as selling out...It's just I don't know what to do right now..Retiring completely is hard... Creating art is just part of who I am, and I'm always in the mood to make something. I really don't like the idea of giving up on what I currently create because I can do so much with it...
The problem is just finding an audience I can devote my content to without having to cut corners... I can't do the self censorship nonsense I feel that I'm better off just quitting if I have to do that. I have a lot to still think about... I don't think most people within the explicit market will even notice if I switched gears... Pixiv will only keep getting worse....
I figured the sooner I get a new pc the sooner I can start on some changes...That or maybe give the dark arts a second chance before I start marketing my new ideas to a different audience. But if I must be honest besides deciding on whether or not I have or should make changes to what I'm doing in 2024... There is a growing market for good stories and I know how to write them.
Years ago before I even knew anything about DAZ studio all I had was microsoft word and I would write out these long winded story lines that had no pictures. Once 2012 came around that's when I was able to take full advantage of a program that made creating what I needed to create that much easier. I never got the chance to sell something I could be fully proud of...Here's hoping that next month when I have a new computer I'll be back producing and creating those horrifying tales of Witches doing what witches do best in the cellar.... And no I don't think I can give up on being a Dark Arts Master...I love it too much.
