SaraKpn

You may have already noticed, I'm drawing promo art and the cutscenes for an indie game called "Quarantined: Viscerafest". It's an old school Doom-style first-person shooter. We follow Caroline, a human bounty hunter on her quest, but she ends up in some weird, gory places
The game is being developed by Acid Man Games, a tiny team of 2 people, plus me for the illustrations.

Will be for sale on Steam. No release date yet. It's still in production. You'll know when it comes out. I'll be promoting it tirelessly

Here's the alpha trailer:


And the soundtrack, which is awesome imo: www.youtube.com/playlist?list=…

The promo art I did:

Article 13, a bill created by the EU in regards to copyrights on the internet, has been passed and will come into effect on January 22nd 2019. In short, this means that no one in the EU (which is me included) will be able to upload or download copyrighted material, not even for memes and probably not even for parodies.

Examples are fan art and especially Youtube content creators. How many videos will be blocked and how many channels will be banned for displaying copyrighted material? Game content, movie clips, music, etc.
It used to be so that the uploader was responsible for any violations, hence the strikes you get. As long as you didn't break Fair Use, you'd be fine. Now Youtube (or other respective sites) will be held responsible and must pay a large fine (into the millions of dollars) if such content slips through in the EU, even if it was uploaded in the US or anywhere else on the globe. So YT will play it safe for themselves and just block everything in the EU. So be prepared to lose all of you EU viewers/customers.

So... DOWNLOAD MY STUFF BEFORE IT GETS DELETED!! I don't know what will happen to my fan art or if DA will be affected.

Also, here's a good youtube explanation: 

Just a heads up for all of you about any art I make, so you're not wasting money on the wrong people.

I DO NOT SELL FAN ART!

Any licensed characters I draw that I don't own the rights to will NOT be printed or sold in any way digitally, on merchandise or prints! The ONLY way to get fan art is through personal commissions in which you get 1 copy for personal use. I only upload fan art on the following sites FOR FREE viewing:

www.deviantart.com/sarakpn
sarakpn.tumblr.com/
www.facebook.com/sara.knaepen
twitter.com/SaraKpn

I don't have any online stores!

Any (web)comics are only uploaded here FOR FREE viewing:
www.deviantart.com/sarakpn
www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/…
www.smackjeeves.com/profile.ph…

Comics featuring characters that are not my own will not be sold or printed in any way. Only personal commissions that require 1 copy for personal use will involve payment.

If you find my art on any other site, original or modified in any way, in any form or medium including digital, prints, merchandise and so on, they are being used without my permission and you are being conned! I do not own the rights to licensed characters I make fan art of and I will deny all involvement in any copyright violations by third parties or potential lawsuits caused by these third parties.

Looks like I'll have to upload smaller files from now on. Shame.

So the EU has voted in favor of this new bill, that will force big platforms on the internet, like youtube and facebook, to censor anything even vaguely indicating copyright violation. As little as 2 words in common will be blocked. Supposedly, they'll use an automated censorship-bot which, unlike humans, will be unable to distinguish between actual violation and fair use (parody, satire, etc) being uploaded online. One more voting round will come early next year, but it looks like this will become reality.

Makes me wonder if I'll still be able to upload fan art. We have no idea how this will play out. This basically gives the government control over internet censorship, instead of the big companies. Hell, the only reason I heard about this, was because Tumblr urged us to send a petition/e-mail to our governments opposing this (which I did). Worst case scenario, the internet will become fully censored, like the Chinese internet. This is a breach of free speech and I don't like it!

Maybe there's a way around it? A VPN maybe? Man, I don't like the sound of this :/

Here's the article:
www.theverge.com/2018/9/12/178…

Let me get straight to the point. I've decided to not pursue a fulltime job as a comic artist at this time. I'm going to find a dayjob and do art on the side. There are a number of reasons for this.


SHORT VERSION:

1) I can't be sure I'll make enough money to live with the currency and tax differences that comes from being paid by US publishers. I very much want a place of my own and a steady income, so I've had to shift priorities.

2) There is a wave of extreme politics going through comics, movies and games that I don't like personally, but also (and this is a fact) cause the entire industry to lose millions of dollars AND fans. Unlike some of them, I like having money and a means to live.

3) To be honest, the passion and interest I felt before have been diminished somewhat and I don't feel like fighting for anything anymore, due to the previous reasons and me getting older. I can't work toward a goal that doesn't exist anymore. I just want a simpler, quieter life now, and not get involved with a world of drama.



LONG VERSION (skip to get to Pokémon part):

First of all, Top Cow has been great and I have no complaints about them overall. My work has been well received and there are still opportunities I will take. This is just my observation and opinion (backed up by facts) about mostly mainstream comics, especially Marvel.

This may not be so obvious looking in from the outside, but there's a wave of (extreme) socialist politics happening in the comics industry pushing for more diverse characters. That in itself is not a bad thing. In fact, I enjoy drawing characters with different looks. It's the way they are going about it that disturbs me. They push very hard to insert characters of all races and genders at the cost of good storytelling. They push it so that, all these stories are about is promoting diversity, but in a way that nothing else actually happens in the story. It becomes boring and gets old quickly. It comes across as them bragging about having the moral high ground and preaching down to you.
They also tend to take well known characters and write them completely out of character. You're guaranteed to lose fans for that. Or they replace well known male characters with female minority characters, which would be okay if it didn't feel completely forced and made to appear this new characters is superior to the old one in every way (for example female Thor, or a new female teenaged Iron Man). You won't see any of these in the movies since Disney doesn't like it because they don't sell.

The second thing that disturbs me is how SOME comic creators treat their fans. Their Twitter is a complete cesspool. If you don't like their comic because you don't like to be told what to think or simply because the story was genuinely badly written, they overly defend themselves and are quick to call you a racist or Nazi. I'm not even exaggerating. Some even went so far as to blackmail other comic creators just because they voted for Trump and criticize their work. True, sometimes there is no real politics in a story, but we're so used to it now, that we expect it and actively look for it. Same thing happens in movies, like female Ghostbusters, The Last Jedi, Ocean's 8 and the new upcoming Terminator. Having a female cast doesn't automatically make it good. You need good storytelling for that too, but try to explain that to them, and all of Twitter will know you're a bigoted racist white supremacist etc. -_-

Another example: Iceman is part of the X-Men franchise. He was revealed to be gay. Okay, no one has a problem with that. He has a boyfriend, cool. The problem is when the entire comics becomes him arguing with people for 22 pages about how people shouldn't judge him for being gay. Can you imagine a superhero story like that? You can make your own comics about that, no problem, but a superhero comics NEEDS superhero stuff to happen!

The fact is sales are dropping like a brick tied to a concrete block, yet they don't seem to care. Do they even notice, I wonder. They keep pushing the same thing over and over, but no one wants to buy it. 50+ comic stores in the US have gone out of business because of this. They value making political/social statements more than making money and good quality entertainment. This happens with Marvel, with Disney and Star Wars, a bunch of indies... DC is hanging on but for how long? All of my goals I wanted to reach are swept away by political weirdos who, I kid you not, often threaten with violence and have already cost a lot of people their jobs. They will sift through your Twitter every day to find dirt on you. I'M NOT KIDDING! There's some serious paranoia and conspiracy going on

I'm tired of it and frankly, tip-toeing around everyone's feelings so they don't completely tear down your career does not sound appealing, even if it's just a few people doing it. I don't want my life destroyed because of stupid politics. I had no idea this is what I would find.

Again, it's not the case everywhere, but it's mostly Marvel. If you or anyone you know plans to break into comics, you might want to wait another 10-15 years.



POKEMON:

Here's where I need your feedback. I've NOT decided on anything yet, but I've been thinking on focusing more on personal art. This could include a continuation of Pokémon 20YL (I've resolved some lingering clichés and I'm very happy with the story now). I miss it myself, too. It was a fun time.

What would you think if I continue Pokémon with free access as before, of course, but also gave you the option to support me on Patreon. Possible rewards would be high-res versions of the pages, concept art, step-by-step making of, speedpaints and script pages. Also all my other art of course. I'd do a "pay per upload" thing, in case I get a comics job somewhere and would need a few month to work on that. Just so you're not throwing away your money. I'd upload like 2-3 a month max.

Let me know what you think and for being patient with my life endeavors. Hope you haven't forgotten about me.

Thanks for reading