TamarinFrog

Hey ya all! I teamed up with @IrohCards and made all new illustrations, based on my webcomic series, for a set of physical cards you can pre-order now! All proceeds go to charity!

You can order one or few cards but if you get all 4, there will be 5th secret free card that will be revealed later. Pre-order here!

I've been writing this journal in my mind past two years. And today is finally the day. Lost my faith at some points. But here I am. As the title says, I have found a new full time job and I'll be starting in mid April. I started looking for a new job properly about two years ago. And well, world stuff happened but I am glad the search has finally come to an end for now. I worked with a nice company as a freelancer a bit and now they are hiring me for full time. I'll be doing art stuff for them.

Now, this obviously means things will be changing here. I'll put together a little FAQ under. When will Patreon close? This March is the last patreon month I'm making content for. I'll be keeping patreon around till the start of summer, but I won't be creating any official new content nor charging any money there from current members.

(You can still join the patreon and pay if you want any of the old exclusive content while it's still open. Note that I won't take any commissions anymore.)

Will you be taking commissions in the future?

Maybe. I'll be keeping my company name so technically I could still accept commissions if I wanna do some extra work and money. Right now I have no plans but maybe. (I'd more likely be open for projects like the Deviantart commission I did November 2020. But no video game projects. My contract does not permits that.)

Will you still do art streams? What about game streams?

Yes! I enjoy streaming so I'd like to continue doing weekly art streams and game streams when ever. However, since art streams technically were my job and no longer are, I'm more inclined to just relax and not do them if I feel like taking a break.

What happens to Bottled Up?

BUP will continue as a passion project. Which is honestly what I want it to be. A personal project I do for fun and no stress of making it "marketable" and something that would make money. I'll do it for myself. And if people enjoy, that's a bonus! I however, cannot promise regular weekly updates anymore. It will update whenever I get pages done. I do think it will be better for the comic in the long run. While it was nice to "force" myself to make the comic with the regular weekly update. It honestly also stressful and didn't always leave me with much time to plan and write.

What other art will you do?

I'll still also do fan art. You can expect the usual, pokemon, ice climbers and such. I'm also really feeling animations at the moment so hopefully more of those.

What will happen next?

My work won't start till mid April. And I'm considering these weeks up to it as a holiday. So I'll be taking things a bit easy. There are still patreon stuff I wanna do. Including a big document about Bottled Up and how it came to be and first draft of the world and how different it was. This document will be posted on patreon first and this summer publicly. BUP will also go for the no-schedule-update-cycle. Next page will happen when I get it done. Please give me time to relax a bit now and get used to new life cycle with a fulltime job.

I think that covers most of it. If you have anything else in mind, you can ask in comments.

There's a lot else I wanted to write about. Reflect on these 7 years I've been doing patreon. Especially past two years.... Which, honestly were roughest of my life. And covid had nothing to do with it! That was just a cherry on top of the personal shit sundae that was going on at the time. None the less, I'm still dealing with that stuff. But I think I'm doing better now and looking forward to re-plan and build my life. I am getting older and I have plans and things I wanna do now with my life.

None the less, I do wanna thank you all for taking a time to read this and following my art. I like drawing for fun. And if you enjoy my drawings. That's super nice.

I do also wanna thank the people who supported me on patreon and thought my art was worth that support. You kept me afloat these past 7 years. And I'm eternally grateful to you and how much I grew as an artist, especially thanks to your commissions.

This is pretty much 7 years of commission work. Thank you all. Much love. See you next time. Hei Hei.

This retro week has made me feel nostalgic and think about the fads at the time. So what was I really into as a kid? Easy answer would be pokemon, but there's something else I'd like to mention: stickers!

Stickers and sticker books was a must have in my girl friend group. We all had our books full of stickers and we would show them off. And I learned how to do business thanks to these things. We traded stickers like crazy just before the class started. And the more special the type of sticker, the more valuable it was. The golden edged and soft ones were really valuable!

I remember trying to get my friend to trade me this big unicorn Pegasus with golden edges for a long time, haha.

I did have the biggest collection of round shaped holo stickers. I was really proud of that collection. Shame I don't think I still have those sticker books saved...

Connie had always been given to nostalgia, even for things that she hadn’t actually experienced the first time. Swing music from the 1940s, old farmhouses, rotary telephones, and fashion from the 1920s or 1960s; it all resonated for her as strongly as the TV shows from her own childhood.

She met Phil at a friend's cookout, and didn’t expect that they would hit it off. He worked with computers and spoke eagerly about the latest gadgets; Connie used modern technology willingly enough, but she didn’t find anything exciting about it. But Phil didn’t look askance at the hat she wore, and when she talked about her favorite songs he immediately looked them up on his phone. Then he pulled out a bluetooth speaker so that they could listen together, and she was tickled to see that it was fashioned to look like an antique radio.

When the virus hit, it was easy enough for Connie to embrace new old-fashioned habits: baking bread, fermenting food, and narrowing her focus to the things she could touch. These things made her feel safer. She didn’t mind putting most of her regular routines on hold, but she did wonder if this meant an end to her growing friendship with Phil. They kept in touch a little on social media, but it lacked substance.

Then one cold, sunny morning a small package arrived. It held a flash drive shaped like a cassette tape, and a handwritten note. Just looking at them made Connie feel as warm as her grandmother’s cookies.

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Reverse caption for the story by JessaMar

I mentioned in the status post on Tuesday that one of my best gaming memories is Super Mario 64, and for this journal, I can't help but go deeper into why.

Video games have been part of my life before Mario 64, but I never really played them. I used to watch my brother play them, I enjoyed it a lot. Especially when we got Nintendo 64 and he played Super Mario 64 on it. I enjoyed it so much, that I had to beg my brother to play it so I could watch it. I got tired of waiting for him to play, so I mustered my courage, and played the game myself. You see, I was a bit of afraid of playing games myself. Thinking I wouldn't be too good at it and some of the Mario's deaths, especially his drowning animation, scared me.

I turned the game on, started a new safe file and jumped in.

I still remember the moment I got to the Bomb-Omb Battlefield... Moving Mario on that lush green field... The pure joy and magic I felt. From that moment on... I knew video games would be part of my life.

Super Mario 64 will always be the most important game of my life and will always have a special place in my heart.