Shax here! Man, I was starting to wonder when (or if!) anyone would notice my DeviantArt gallery was a smoldering crater
.
But yes, I nuked it a few weeks ago for several reasons. Ben mentioned one of the lesser ones; a certain DeviantArt member asked me about a year ago if he could "reference" a pic of mine for a drawing he was working on. I told him it'd be fine- goodness knows I use reference material all the time! Apparently, the word "reference" encompasses an entire gradient of meanings; on one end, you have my definition ("Using a photo, drawing, still-frame or other work to inform how a pose/outfit/figure should look"), and on the other, you have HIS ("Tracing large parts of other artists' work to make some kind of goddamn franken-drawing for the purposes of advancing the "story" of your completely impenetrable Sonic/Mario/Dragonball Z crossover fanfiction.") So yeah, I was a little curious to see whether he could actually produce any new art without ready access to my own.
The title of this thread actually ties into another reason: it's always bugged me a little bit to be referred to as "Ayvuir-Blue." It's completely my fault; I needed a screenname, and "Shax" was already taken, and I was pretty deep into Final Fantasy Tactics Advance at the time. I've pretty much regretted my rash choice of username for lo these many years.
The major reason, though, is the fact that the gallery was stagnant. I hadn't uploaded anything in ages and didn't plan to- partly due to not having much time to draw, but mostly because, when I HAVE had time to draw, I've been making a conscious effort to work on some of the non-Princess, non-peril and unoffensive projects that have been rattling around in my brain for a few years now. 'Course, the last time I uploaded something like that to my gallery- a picture of a fairy riding on a swimming frog, done for a friend- the comments section filled up with "when do we get the follow-up with the frog eating the fairy?" comments.
So in light of all that, it seemed like a completely fresh start was called for.
'Course, I don't think I'll ever completely stop drawing the kind of things relevant to the interests of this forum! It's just too much fun! It will, however, move from being my SOLE output to being a small, less-published part of it. But rest assured, if I work on anything that you guys might get a kick out of, I'll post it up
.