Xannijn

Hey to all! Again, I've been away for a while, and a lot has changed in my life over the last few months.

I left my boyfriend and moved someplace new. We were together for more than four years, but honestly, I'm fine, and I feel happier than ever.
I quit the English-Dutch teacher education. I never should have started in the first place: but my mother insisted that my master's degree wasn't enough. Our family hit a rough patch at the time, so I didn't object much and did as she asked. Which all in all was a mistake that I at least managed to put behind me now.
Starting next month I hit the job market, and we'll see how that all rolls when we get there.

I'm putting serious work in my portfolio and a comic I've been dying to make for years. I hope that combining it with a creative job isn't too draining and won't stop me from working on it all together: if it does, I can change jobs to something less creative, we'll see, life has its ways and you can work around a lot of things.

Overall I suppose I may seem lost, being out of school and single for the first time in all my twenties. But I'm surprisingly feeling very liberated: whether I work full time as an animator, stumble along as a freelancer or fold messy clothes in a boutique, I'm free to do as I please art-wise and life-wise. Not being with my (controlling) boyfriend has given me a lot of time to spend with my friends and family, which honestly is where it's all at! I'll take a single life with friends over loneliness in a one-sided relationship any day.

I'll open commissions again soon, however, this time it will be for reasonable prices. As in reasonable to me. I actually need money now: I'm not exactly a student anymore. So no more original animations that I spend four hours on for two dollars. Sorry.



In any case, I hope you're all doing well, and thank you for sticking around!

Love,
Xan

This is going to be a very short and very honest update:

I graduated with a master's degree in animation this summer. I was quite thrilled to finally be done with school, and had already been putting off commissions for months trying to get that degree.

Now, I'm back in school. Reluctantly. Getting that first degree took me 5 years and all my time and energy, but I adore art and animation. It was time and energy I loved spending. What I'm studying NOW, however, brings me no such joy.

Don't get me wrong, I love my fellow students, even with the now pretty big age difference that doesn't seem noticable. They're fun and interesting people that make my days worthwhile. But I've NEVER felt more treated like a child in college.
For one, because the reason I'm doing this has everything to do with my parents. Who insisted that I don't stop studying yet.

Jesus. Just... pardon my French, but fuck this shit. My mother studied for 4 years to get her degree, my father didn't go to college at all. When she was 23, my mother got married.
I don't want to rush into life. I have no intention to get married already or at all, or to get a kid or anything. But I want to move forward, not backward, and not leave my passion and my degree to rot for something new.

If I wasn't allowed to get a job in animation afterwards anyways, WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU LET ME STUDY IT FOR FIVE YEARS ON END.


And the crazy thing here is of course how childish this all is, on both sides, mine included. I'm old enough to make my own decisions.

I know that I lack the motivation to do this thing right. I'm studying to become a teacher, but no, not the one year it would normally take to get a teaching license considering I got my master, I'm doing another full fucking three years to teach Dutch and English. Fuck.


So yes. I'm in a pickle, and can't get out easily. It's something I have to discuss with my parents and boyfriend alike. But if I don't, I'm up for a few miserable more years doing something I don't like, and afterwards a job I don't really want anymore.


I owe everyone here an apology. And I'm a complete mess. I go from being super involved in school and getting up at 6 Am every day for a week to not wanting to go at all for days in a row. I'm sorry.

Hey all! Some of you are already aware of the raffle I'm hosting, concerning the few youtube account I've started this January.

Deadline for that was in fact the 30th of June, but with again lots of personal problems in my life, I failed to actually end it that day.

So I'm setting the new deadline on the 10th of July, this friday!


Everyone who is already officially in the raffle has commented on the forum post here: forum.deviantart.com/community…

If you haven't joined yet, and would like to join, you can still do that now! The winner will be getting 500 as promised!
To join, all you have to do is subscribe on youtube to Ginny or Steven, here: www.youtube.com/channel/UCc6uN…
Then come back here and comment that you did that!
Bonus cudos if you make a journal entry mentioning this raffle and the channel you've subscribed to!

So if you're already subscribed to one of them/both of them, but never joined the raffle, you can still do that now. 500 points is a pretty nifty deal!


----

Now on to some personal updates!

Just about a week ago, I got my results in for my master year in animation. Against all odds I did more than fine. I passed everything I participated in, and didn't fail as I feared I would with these youtube channels. I've lost some mojo for them a month of two ago. Got in a huge fight with my boyfriend, who said some pretty hurtful things, about me and my youtube project. So I was completely floored emotionally the last month of school. On top of that all, my family got no less than three horrible cases of bad news concerning other family members: my grandmother in the hospital, an uncle with (possibly) cancer, and my baby cousin with an awful illness - Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The latter surely being the worst news of all. The little boy is only 3 and a half years old, and likely won't make it past 7. There's absolutely no way to cope with this kind of news, and his parents are of course suffering the most. Please keep them in your thoughts/prayers, they need it more than ever.

So yeah. 5 years have passed since I went to college. I'm really happy to have picked something I love, rather than something that gets jobs. Because let's be fair here: there's not much 2D animation work to go around. Things are better now than they were 8 years ago, but still not amazing.
But I have to point out that I picked this major for two reasons. One obviously being that I wanted to animate, the other that I want to make comics. It's how I left art high school and it's how I'm leaving art college now. Again, not something bound to make a living.

Unfortunately, if my mother has a say in it, I'm not through with school just yet. After a series of fights with my boyfriend, most of my equipment ended up at my parents' house. If it were up to them I'd move back in this instant. While I'd rather pick up the pieces and make things work. So I'm back where we live together, minus all my stuff needed to animate. And my mother won't allow my father to bring said stuff back here. Yes, I know that I sound like a 15 year old again.
Not having a car nor a driver's license, I can't actually go get my things myself. It's way too much and too heavy to take on the train. Besides: according to my mother, now's the time to study something else, something 'useful'.


Let me put one thing straight here.


There is absolutely nothing useless to drawing.

The only thing truly useless right now is all my equipment.

How can I even THINK of growing if I can't even work?


I 'understand' how my mother dislikes my boyfriend now. It's not as if I'm completely happy with him now, either, if I'm being honest. But all this is just leaving me absolutely stuck in place.

I can't work. If I go home where my equipment is, I still can't work. My new PC doesn't have any of the programs I use yet. All of those have to be transferred somehow from my boyfriend's PC to my own.
Whenever I do go home, I'm being held back, constantly reminded not to go back to my boyfriend. My mother feels like he's 'not right'. If it were up to me, sure, he'd be seeing a fucking therapist already. But he doesn't feel like there's anything wrong with what he did/said. Or well, he does think it was wrong: but not that it's part of a deeper issue like a depression or anything. He honestly kind of blames me. Which is absolute horseshit, dear.
Honestly, my mother has no right to say those things. Literally NO ONE I KNOW anymore is 'right'. Or hell, maybe it's just me.
My father is considered depressed. He's had medication, he's been to therapists, but doesn't do that anymore. He has done some things that are more than wrong: but honestly, the worst of that is behind us. I think.

In any case it makes for uncomfortable situations everywhere I go. But I at least feel like there's something I can DO about the situation with my boyfriend. Hell, I'm part of that situation. With my parents, I'm just completely beside it all, and just stuck in an uncomfortable enviroment where people say nothing but nasty things all the time, be it direct or 'discreetly'.


Ugh. Sorry, this is getting out of hand.


All I know is that I want to work. I want to animate, draw, and write. I want to study something extra too: but not start all over on a 'useful' education and be back in fucking school for another 5 years.
If I really, really, REALLY have to go back to school, I guess I'd pick psychology. Or teaching.
But I honestly don't want to. At all. I would much prefer to just... WORK. For myself. To earn some money, and work on personal projects. Get a part time job on top in a store or something. I feel like I have to taste the sweet sting of retail work to appreciate it. And who knows, maybe that will make me get a change of heart and want to be a student again.


I hope you're all doing well, or at least better than I am now! I don't usually complain like this. But I don't know, venting feels really nice for once.

Hey all!

So I'll be out of art school soon, which is cool. I'll miss my school, friends and teachers of course, but at some point it's time to move on.
I'm considering to stay in school, for a different education. I was hoping I could join the bachelor-after-bachelor class on creative therapy: so that I'm still in art, which I love, but can combine it with actually helping people. It sounds like the best thing ever.


Other than that I hope to find some time in between to work on comics again and get back started on commissions. About that:

What's up with commissions?

I've been extremely busy in the last few months, working for school and several deadlines, as well as having some personal family/relationship problems in the mix. As soon as monday has come and gone, I feel like I can kind of unwind. Even if teachers simply destroy my grades for not liking what I've done.
There will be other responsibilities I have after that, but none quite as time consuming and pressing as school. I've also decided to get my own high end gaming/video editing PC. Until now I've always been using my boyfriend's PC, but considering how many gigabytes of space even a simple short Ginny video takes, it's just unfair to him.

So I'll be able to work on commissions again really soon!

However, odds are that I'm going to change the prices again just a bit. Not to worry for everyone who has already ordered something: I can't send any changes through as long as there's commissions left to accept in my messages.
Considering the fact that each icon tends to take a few hours of work at least, charging as little as 2 dollars for one isn't ideal. And many animators here on deviantart have MUCH higher prices. I feel like I can raise prices just a bit more.
The cute fox icon will not change in price! It's basically base work on my own animation, and usually these only take about an hour to do. (There's exceptions of course, but still)
I find that it's the most popular one I have on. Probably because it's the cheapest, but I think it also has something to do with the fact that it's so clear. You buy it and know pretty much exactly how it will turn out: just with the face of your character. So, I'm thinking about making some more basic nice animations, to work on as somewhat of a base for other icons. It's easier for me to do, a more certain purchase for the buyer, which leads to overall lower prices and less time I have to work on them, meaning I can do more at a time.


So yeah! I'll get back started on commission work ASAP, and will be adding extra commission widgets with more kind-of-base animations to start from!


Thanks a ton for reading, and I hope you're all doing well!

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