Miffed Kitty Press: Home of the Epic Desk

Rant incoming, and I don't know if it's funny or sad... don't sue me, pray at me, or unfriend me for my heathen ways. Recently I was commissioned to do a project for a friend. The project itself was a calendar about demons, and where their myths came from (Sumerian legends, Hebrew texts, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Johann Weyer, Milton, etc). To me this was a fun project, because I got to create characters based on these creatures of myth. I'm a character artist... making up what I think monsters look like is part of how I make my living; and I always strive to be better as an artist in that respect. I did the art, I made some characters, and I learned something: All these demons are a representation of our fears... about ourselves. Each horrific creature was representative of fears that reside within all of us. Apathy. Revenge. Vice. Hate. The fear that something (or someone) out there was working against us. Oh, the irony. It was a fascinating subject, lik...

So, recently someone asked me: "If you weren't an artist, what would be your job?" My answer kinda shocked them, but after I thought about it it kinda shocked me too. "Well," I said, "before I was an artist professionally I had a lot of jobs that were never the right fit .  Being an artist is the only thing I'm good at that doesn't involve hurting people." The person asking the question gave me a look that required me to explain further. "When I was younger," I continued, "I was a security officer for a few different companies, a bouncer at half a dozen nightclubs and venues, and for about a year I was the co-head of security for a professional wrestling company.  Granted, I got tired of random people being belligerent and it being required that I always be nice to them... or them stepping over the line and starting a fight that required me to shut them down without actually permanently injuring them." The person asking the...

So, characters are textured and integrated fully (no proofs or shots, they are all in-engine now, but they still need rigging) and major aspects of our FPS to RTS system are being worked on now through January - yay. By the end of December my hope is to have all our ships and ship flight mechanics started and past the initial integration phase. We have ships of all shapes and sizes, clearly demonstrating the tech of each race: We have HUDS started: So now the trick is to figure out which ones will be playable in space combat.  The smaller ships are already being integrated, but the question of the big ships remains: How do we make larger ships playable and balanced, while still letting the smaller fighters not feel overwhelmed when a cruiser enters the battlefield? This will be my challenge in the coming weeks as all 7 Space Combat levels are brought into Unity 2017 (from Unity 5 where they were built) and I start to balance out the ship to ship combat. My bi...

So this month I finished a commission that I have been working on for over a year. I mean, this thing took some work. I pushed myself to see if I could to it, and I did. And nobody cared but the client. Facebook, being the place that hates you unless you pay (and even then, good luck) gave me a WHOPPING 102 reach; and that was with 4 shares... almost like the algorithm was shaking its finger and going "nope, don't care, you didn't pay us so we're not going to show anyone".  I've gotten over 1k reach from 3 shares, so this is dumb.  It got 2,500 reach on Twitter -because Twitter is reliable, if not fickle- and a couple of new Artstation likes, so yay. Did any of my friends or fans (the ones who saw it anyway) say "Damn dude, that's bad ass" ? Nope. I told my wife I wanted to celebrate, and was met with cooler than lukewarm (she hates zombies).  "You could shave the cat..." she suggested.  No dice on that front. Har...

21 Multiplayer Characters from Status Quo: Chronicles of a Universe at War. Characters and lighting by Cheshire (the guy who writes this blog yo).  Zbrush & Substance Painter All characters >18k poly, rendered real-time in Unity 2017 with the new post-processing stack. Rig Vest design by Ricardo Diaz Samaniego. Subtools by Creepy Cat.

Studio finished in the new place, and back to business.  I'm going to start blogging again, and I don't know how I feel about that.  The last time I kept a blog (besides this one for tech stuff) was a moody Livejournal account where I vented about all manner of angsty stuff and girlfriends who treated me just as bad as I treated them.  I'm over all that now (Thank God) and I'm working on being a better artist and creator.  Expect a lot of rambling...

1)  Collect a list of Journalists and Publishers that write about topics similar to yours.   You can use free tools like Buzzsumo that let you search your topic of interest and find the top content that is related to it. Once you find the content, simply find the author who wrote it, and research their email. Most of the time, their emails are listed on the publication site, or their personal sites. 2)  Craft an outreach email.   Journalists are usually very busy and get a lot of inbound email, so you have to make sure your email stands out from the crowd, and is short, sweet, and to the point. Here is an example of a good outreach email template:   "Hey (Journalist Name), I've been following your work for quite some time and am a big fan. I especially like the article you wrote about (TOPIC) called (NAME OF ARTICLE). I've been working on something pretty interesting related to (TOPIC) , and wanted to share it with you because I...