So it's rather convenient that dA's birthday celebration happened around the time I've been reminiscing a lot about my own dA experience. So I thought this was an appropriate bandwagon to follow!

I just passed my 8th year of being on deviantART back in June. Like many folks, I was a young, immature child. And much like a lot of people too, this technically wasn't my first account. Although I hesitate to say that because my "first" account was a Club account I created as a test trial because I was paranoid beyond belief about making an account all about myself. I honestly don't remember how long that account lasted (maybe a couple months) before I caved and made this one here and deactivated the old one.

Before my dA days I did all my online activity on my freewebs site. I met my first internet friends there, although they have since vanished into space. When I came on dA I was overwhelmed by the community and quickly started making friends through the Invader Zim community, as I was a huge IZ nerd at that time. So although I wasn't really a fanartist, as my original creations remained prominent, my IZ fanart was my catalyst into a fandom and bringing me to some of the wonderful people on here.



My main character and cast from my WIP novel Calestine Princess, and my Ambivian species in general, originated in the IZ fandom. In fact, CP was originally a fan fiction titled "Princess Nelthilta" or something of that generic like. The story was essentially The Almighty Tallest make a gamble with Ambivia for territory by battling, but lose terribly and in return get held captive by the Princess and her friends, who were all absolute nutcases and drove the Tallest crazy. And, as most fanfics do, it involved stupid illogical romance and crackchildren...


Thus the birth of Garin!

As all this tomfoolery was going on, I never let my big project "The Alfas" sit idle. The Alfas were a HUGE deal back in my middle school years and further into high school. Like, that's all I drew. I have stacks and stacks of artwork of these guys, and I almost wish I had joined an art site sooner to showcase all this ridiculous junk. A selection of stuff is located on my site still and although I did not post an extremely large amount of Alfas stuff on my dA here, you can find a number of decent ones.



And to answer the age old question - yes, this is the origin of my username, and yes, "Alfa" is spelled wrong on purpose. Our slogan was, and always will be, "Difference is Greatness" and, well, Alfa is definitely different.

Mature Content

As I started my gradual fall out of the IZ fandom, I took CP into an original direction, what I constantly titled "Novel Version". CP was an absolute mess of ideas that I pretty much concepted and spat out into art that is almost entirely inaccurate now, but still interesting to look at as some of my best pieces came from this work. I also started fleshing out my Ambivians a little bit more since they were a hot mess too. Did you guys know Ambivians used to be shapeshifters and had feral forms? No really.


They did.

Somewhere mixed in all this muddle I also started my comic Power of War. I don't even remember how long it went on, a couple years I think, before I finally quit with only 6 pages completed. Multiple redrafts of it were conceived afterward but failed to take off, but I drew random art of it for a good period. It was a very generic story but at the same time I still hold a strange fondness to it. I still hope to one day take the core plotline and put it into something else, maybe with a title change.




And, of course, the big deal. Probably what I'm most followed for... The Selection! It started entirely based off a stupid dream I had and me going "Derp I like to comic let's do it again! Cause the first time obviously worked out SOOOO WELL!" And, unlike PoW, it never died! TS has gone through multiple plotline changes since it started, and especially personality changes amongst characters. It's still got some big errors that need fixing, but overall I'm proud of the direction TS is going, and I still really adore some of my old pages. They are pretty amusing still.




Then like a great wonderful plague came the mighty OCT! Tapestry-of-Horror to be specific. Who could forget that crazy ride? I learned more than I could imagine from ToH, and being able to actually complete a story as long as it was... just amazingly fulfilling. I regret nothing about my run in ToH, and I got a great character outta it to boot! And let's not forget all the fantastic friends I made through it!




Before ToH's end, I also got into my blacorite characters with NuclearLoop and StupidShepherd and others. It was a change working with characters like this, but it ended up helping me on my anatomy a lot (yay nude characters!) and conveying expressions without a mouth. So many fun collabs resulted from blacos, and I learned a lot about character development through this process. Also finished two stories through them as well!




And after that came more works like Chernobyl-Curs, another entertaining OCT and something I learned a lot about for my written works...




...Learned things that I quickly put into my latest story, PICARD: A Man and His Boy. Which has also been my latest adventure in the world of HOOMANS! And my latest obsession~ I seriously need to post more art of it here instead of my Tumblr. I should do that.



So that's my journey up to this point. And I haven't even covered everything! I can remember every single piece in my gallery and usually remember when I drew it and the stories behind it. And that's just the art alone. I could go further on experiences I've had here, people I've met, and things I've learned. Maybe dA has become more of a business than it was back when I joined, and they seem to have an obsession with random add-ons and fancy doo-dads like badges (which apparently you get submitting one of these journals pff) but I still love dA for its essence as an art submission site, a place to grow and learn, and a place to be with the art community.

I hope I inspired people in my time here thus far as so many have inspired me. And I hope to keep on trekkin' in the years to come!

Also here's some more miscellaneous pieces that gave me giggles or otherwise I enjoyed while looking back.




~*~Filly B.~*~

New Banners Coming One Daaaay...


by: AlfaShampoo-Artemis