DeviantArt

I'm still working on the new website. Most of the posts (including artworks, blog posts and 365 posts from 2009, 2010 and 2011) are missing. These posts will return eventually. Thanks for your patience! :)

Even more Premium!

Submitted by Rosana on Fri, 2011-12-23 01:45
DeviantArt Premium Membership

I treated myself to yet another premium membership today. Or well technically yesterday... I am now a premium member on DeviantArt! I bought a one year sub, and DeviantArt doubled the sub with another year! It's awesome. So guess what I'm going to do this holiday? Yes, work on my new blog and work on DeviantArt. :D

Art Communities

Submitted by Rosana on Thu, 2010-12-09 22:50

I am a member of many creative networks, like DeviantArt, Coroflot and Behance. I recently also joined Carbonmade. And I have to say I like it. But I don't have a lot of experience with Carbonmade yet. And there are a couple of downsides.

Carbonmade Frontpage
Carbonmade

Carbonmade is free to join. However, as a free member you can create up to 5 projects and within those 5 projects, you can upload 30 images. Not 30 each, 30 in total. For $12 per month you can become a Whoo member, which will allow you to upload 500 images. The thing is, I have my own website, so it's not worth it for me to become a paid member. I think if Carbonmade is the only portfolio you have, it might be worth the money. However, with the amount of creative networks today, I don't think it is, because you can easily go elsewhere.

Behance

I also joined Behance a while ago, but there isn't much on yet. I have yet to learn everything about Behance. I think it's a great network, but I'm not sure I fit in. I don't consider my work to be that good. It's okay, some of it. But the works I've seen on Behance are so good... I feel like a complete newbie and n00b. I love the fact that Behance is so customizable though! And I will definitely add more to my Behance account soon.

Dribbble

I still wish for a Dribbble account. It's hard to get one. It's invite only. So I believe only people already there can invite a few people? And I'm not even sure about that.

Coroflot

I've been a long time member on Coroflot, but still not an active user. Perhaps because I don't have any friends there? It's not really big like DeviantArt. I really need to update my page lol. I haven't really updated since 2008, when Seth was still a baby, and I was still 24. :P

DeviantArt

As for DeviantArt, I love and hate DeviantArt at the same time. It's hard to get noticed, but once people start to notice you, and you keep updating, it can be worth the time. I hate having thousands of messages in my inbox every day. But I don't want to remove the messages either because I might see something really beautiful. Sometimes I feel the people I want to actively follow there, are not interested in me. And a lot of the people who follow me, are not really interesting for me to follow. I only get a lot of views on my work if I add my work to dozens of groups. And even then I'm not sure if people will start to notice, because the groups can reject work pretty easily. I've had it happen plenty of times and it's not a nice feeling to be rejected like that. The lack of views, comments, faves and so on, is definitely a reason for me to abandon DeviantArt every so often. And then I'll return again for a few days, and disappear again. I also experienced the difference between a regular account and a premium account. Premium is a lot nicer, but it's not something I can afford right now. And with the lack of communication it's not really worth it at the moment.

GFXartist

There is another creative network I joined in the past, called GFXartist, but I also get the feeling there that you have to be extremely awesome to get some nice feedback and not have your work removed. I have registered an account to claim my name, but haven't used the account yet.

I plan to start using my RedBubble account more in 2011. The same goes for Cafepress, Etsy and possibly ArtFire. Especially when I'm going to sell some of my work!

I'm going to focus on getting my name out there. Again? Yes, again. And I will be using the sites mentioned in this post to do so! I might also start using Tumblr again, right now it's an inspirational blog with images from other artists. But my faithful readers here don't have to follow me on all these other websites, since I always post my items to my portfolio here. :)

Works with Wacom

Submitted by Rosana on Thu, 2010-09-02 23:04

This is a teaser image. Click to see the full image together with a nice story!

Sprinkles

Submitted by Rosana on Wed, 2010-05-12 23:15

This is a teaser image. Click to see the full image together with a nice story!

Cute eggs

Submitted by Rosana on Thu, 2010-04-15 18:59

This is a teaser image. Click to see the full image together with a nice story!

I can't help it

Submitted by Rosana on Thu, 2010-03-25 23:48

This is a teaser image. Click to see the full image together with a nice story!

I'm the one who left...

Submitted by Rosana on Mon, 2010-03-15 23:04

This is a teaser image. Click to see the full image together with a nice story!

Visiting mom, hospital and Sims rants

Submitted by Rosana on Thu, 2008-07-24 13:42

This isn't going to be one of those average blog posts I have. Well, perhaps it is, a little. But I will be ranting a lot - beware of the work-at-home-mommy.

This weekend my mom is coming over again. During my pregnancy, we had to find ourselves a place to live *really* fast. This was not an easy task. It actually was horrible. Luckily we found something through ChEeTaH's family. Otherwise we wouldn't have had an apartment by the time Seth was born. But we did. And we're happy here.
Thing is, that we kind of had to move away from my family. I know in foreign countries they think we all live next door to each other, because The Netherlands is so small. Well, I still have to travel two full hours to get to my mom. I don't like taking the train with a baby. And buses here are horrible. We do not have a car. Yes, there are people without cars on this planet. We don't have that kind of money. Anyway. It's not an easy task to visit my family. To be honest, the last time I visited my mom was in the summer of 2007, when I was still pregnant and lived in a city near her.
My mom has been visiting me ever since I moved here. She doesn't exactly have a lot of money herself. So she can only drop by once a month, at most. So my mom is visiting this weekend, just a day. We'll cook dinner together. She'll help me sew some curtains (well I already have the curtains hanging on Seth's room, but they're too long). We'll walk a little outside with Seth, near the Meuse and if she can, she'll also go to IKEA for me to get some things I couldn't buy last time. It's something I'm looking forward to. Ever since I gave birth to Seth (which has been 9 months now!) I've only seen 4 of my own family members; my mom, two cousins and an aunt. My mom and one of my cousins come visit me frequently. But the rest of my family members have either just send a card (in which they stated that they planned a visit for Seth's birth), or nothing at all.
I'm just glad my mom visits as often as she can. I'd like to see her more often though. However we can't move back there (too much of a hassle, no money, no transportation etc and we kind of like it here). And she can't come and live closer to us, for the same reasons. Of course there's Internet. But I guess it's pretty normal that any proud grandma would like to see her (grand)children often.

I also visited the hospital today. And I don't have any news. Except for the fact that the internist kind of made me come over for nothing. A phone call would have been good enough. The blood tests, urine tests and x-ray photos all showed nothing to worry about. And now I just have to start eating healthy (I am already eating healthy!) because I can't stay on these medicines forever. I know that too - but that's not a solution. I'm on my own again. I try my very best at becoming a more healthier person. But there isn't really anyone helping me. The fact that I have (severe) constipation problems is something doctors need to take a good look at. It seems I'm all alone again. What's wrong with the health care in this country? I pay a *HUGE* amount of money every month, but for what? I've had it with the doctors. I'm even too tired to rant about it.

Remember the blog post I did a few days ago about the new SNWeblogs themes? Well in the beginning I had the feeling it had been a waste of time. As it turns out, some of my team members are gone and I don't know anything about their whereabouts. I know from certain people what they are doing, because they informed me (and the rest of our team) in our team forums. Apparently not everyone thinks it's a good idea to do so. I am going to clean out our team very soon. If any of you read this, consider yourself warned. If you know you've been neglecting the whole team, including me, but especially the site, I won't put up with this any longer. I'm pretty sick of this. I can't do everything alone. Yet all my team members seem to have vanished. I'm not complaining about those that have informed me. But I am pissed at those that have been gone for months and have done zilch on the sites.

The whole team matter brings me to this following subject: relaxing, having fun, playing some games, perhaps even some Sims. While everyone is having fun with their personal life, their online life and their gaming life, I haven't been enjoying anything lately. I still do enjoy creating websites. However, I wake up in the morning, start working right away until somewhere after midnight, get a few hours of sleep and start again. This is starting to break me. I can't keep this up. I love the work, but I'd like to have some fun sometimes as well! I have fansites to bring people interesting news, forums and downloads. But what's in it for me? I haven't played a game for months now, except a few creatures made in the Creature Creator. I have decided I am going to play Sims very soon.

But I'm a nutcase. I want to have new recolors. So I'm making a few hundred (real amount: somewhere around 1000 recolors+walls/floors) first. I've done most of it already. But I can't play without these items I've had in my mind for a while now. There are some things my son has in real life and I want to make those for my Sims as well - just an example. I made 600+ walls recently and I am going to use those pretty soon!

Not today though. We're being picked up in a few hours for dinner at family. I'm guessing I won't be back before late in the evening - maybe even night time. And since I didn't get a lot of sleep last night - 2 hours to be precise - I'm guessing I will collapse once I get inside the apartment again.

One final rant, DeviantArt and any other online photo/art service. I've uploaded a few nice shots of Seth the other day, as well as some websites to show on the portfolio. Not a single soul responded on the items. This is exactly why I think I can do just fine without those lame online photo services. No one replies anyway. And if you reply on their items (multiple items!) you get maybe one or two comments back.

Seth - Original black and white Seth - High contrast Seth - Soft tone

Headaches, Spore, Gallery and then some more

Submitted by Rosana on Tue, 2008-07-15 22:29

I know it has been ages since I blogged. It's not that I didn't want to. I love blogging. But I've been very sick (headaches, I will tell you more about that in this post, continue reading). And I've been busy when I was not sick.

I've been having major headaches for months now. Ever since January 2008 or so, I've been having these awful headaches. I went to see my doctor and he just told me "it's stress". Well, yeah, whoopie. But that doesn't help me one bit. Now he basically says, I can't change anything. If the pain killers won't help, you're on your own. Great.
I've read an article about headaches in our news paper a while ago. After that I began to do some research. And as it turns out, my headaches are a lot like cluster headaches. If you do not know what kind of headache this is, please read the article on Wikipedia. And here is a website specialized in cluster headaches as well. I will go and see my doctor again soon, and I will discuss this. If he won't do anything about it (I want him to send me to a specialist), then I will go and find another doctor who will.

This week I have visited the hospital for some physical (blood and urine) exams and an x-ray photo. I will get the test results tomorrow. I'm pretty nervous. Anyone who knows me a little, knows why I have visited the hospital. I don't feel like talking about it right here, right now. So I just won't.

Spore's Creature Creator has been released for a month now (well, in two days anyway). I have made a ton of creatures. And I will offer more creatures on Sporepedia. But I am still finishing the new website. It's almost finished, however it's not quite done yet. It will launch soon. That's all I will say.

There are a few "secret" projects I am working on, projects for "me". With that I just mean it's non-profit, and not for anyone else. Just a website by me, for me. I can't spill the beans just yet. But one of these new projects will be a very happy project. Expect to hear more in early fall 2008.

Because of the headaches (and many other physical disabilities) I haven't gotten many chances to work on existing websites, including SNW and some others. I am however busy on Fast Finger's website. That one is almost done.
I have two (but possibly three) other new clients who asked for my help with their new websites. And I will be focusing on those for the next couple of weeks. I'm hoping to finish all these new websites before August. Because I planned to work on the new SNW during this entire summer. Until now, I haven't gotten one chance to do so.

I am also happy to announce that my new gallery is almost ready to go live. I'm still finishing up a few minor design things in the css. The problem again is not that it's difficult, it's not difficult at all. It's mainly the lack of time and just me being sick. I decided to use Gallery2 instead of any other (paid) online service. Here are some reasons I decided to start using Gallery(2) again!

  • I don't like having my pictures elsewhere. If some website or service decided to change their TOS or whatever rules they apply on the content uploaded on their website, I may lose my rights on my own content. They may even abuse their own TOS's in such a way that they are free to use the content I upload for their own purposes (like advertising, or whatever). I just don't like that. When I host my own photos, my own rules (and rights) apply and no one can take those away.
  • I don't want to pay an (annual) amount of money to be able to upload as many photos as I want
  • I like to customize and style my gallery. Many online services do not have this option at all. That's fine, but I want something that fits my websites.
  • I want to be able to customize each "set", "group", "folder" or separate page on my gallery.
  • I don't get a lot of feedback on my pictures on websites anyway. So it doesn't really matter which website I choose for my pictures. The amount of comments is in general very low (most of the times I don't get a comment at all). There is one website where I can get comments on my pictures (MyShutterSpace) and it's a nice website. But those are mainly real photographers. They don't want to see a whole bunch of family pics for example. And I don't want to bother them.
  • There is just one website who offers to have a watermark placed on your uploaded pictures, and that is DeviantArt. But it's a DeviantArt watermark. And I want to add different kinds of watermarks on different kinds of pictures.
  • I want to be able to disable my gallery with one click. With disable I really mean just put it offline for maintenance in a second. None of the websites I know can do this. You can delete everything, sure. But no gallery is capable of disabling something for a while.
  • I don't want an upload limit for the amount of pictures, not daily, not monthly, not annual.
  • I don't want an upload limit for the amount of space.
  • I don't want a bandwidth limit.
  • I don't want a limit to the amount of sets/folders/pages/groups I have.
  • I don't want anyone to tell me I cannot upload something because it violates the TOS is any way. I don't think I ever will. But I don't want to worry about that either.
  • I don't want to sign up on a website using another name than Rosiewosie, Rosie, Rosana or SNW. If it's unavailable, I don't want to become a member.
  • I want to be able to use (java/php) scripts on my gallery
  • I don't want to rely on another host or service for my websites (including my gallery). If I host my own gallery, I won't have that problem. If the site would go down, it's my own problem. But at least I would have the means to solve that problem.
  • I want a gallery with RSS feeds.
  • I want something to show off on my portfolio.
  • I want to use my own favicon.

I'd say those are plenty of reasons I should get my own gallery. I won't leave the websites I joined in the past. But when I'm done uploading most of my pictures (or an acceptable amount of them) I will remove some old ones from the other websites (Flickr, DeviantArt, MyShutterSpace, Facebook etc).

I'm also considering to start creating new (custom) templates for Gallery2. I am not one to say that the existing ones are ugly. But they certainly were not something I wanted to use for my own gallery. I can imagine the lack of nice templates for Gallery2 is a reason for some people not to setup their own gallery. You should though, it's awesome software!

Many active projects

Submitted by Rosana on Sun, 2008-05-04 02:16

I'm just posting a short note here to let you all know that the lack of updates here is mainly due to my activities (projects, yes). I currently have 8 websites I'm working on, so I'm kind of occupied until I have at least four of them online. Not to worry, I'm almost done with three of them.

In the meantime, you can stay up to date by adding me on Twitter. If you want to see my latest photos, I suggest you take a look at my DeviantArt or Flickr. And if you feel the need to stalk me some more, FriendFeed, Profilactic, Onaswarm and Soup show you most of my (social networking) online activity. Have fun with that ;)

Photos on dA

Submitted by Rosana on Sat, 2008-03-29 01:46
The Sky in that Building My Town Funky Sunset

A couple of pictures on my DeviantArt account. Click the thumbnails to see a large version.

3 DeviantArt Stamps

Submitted by Rosana on Mon, 2008-03-24 02:45

I made three stamps for DeviantArt yesterday. The first is a Fireworks MX stamp. I am a loyal Fireworks user, for 7 years now. I have tried newer versions (I have an old version of MX), but I just don't like the newer versions. I know the newer versions have options that the older MX version doesn't have.

But I don't care!

I don't want to switch to a newer MX. And I certainly don't want to switch to Fireworks CS3. That's why I made that stamp. It's very personal. But others are free to use it on DeviantArt if they want to.

The second stamp I made was a stamp for The Sims 3. Even though I am not too thrilled at this very moment when it comes to news and screens from The Sims 3, there's a good chance that other people are fans already. So I made this stamp. For me personally, I won't be using it on my DeviantArt. I am not done with The Sims 2 yet. And what I've seen so far, doesn't get me too excited either.

The third stamp is basically a smaller version of my Los Angeles vector. When I start using stamps, I want to express my love for Los Angeles :)

Here are the stamps. You can click on them to view them on DeviantArt, but the below images have the actual sizes:

Pixellove Deviantart

Submitted by Rosana on Fri, 2005-07-15 11:52

I've been a subscriber on DeviantArt for a while now. But tomorrow, my account will change back into a regular account. :( So errr, do me a favor and please visit my DeviantArt :) Thanks!