Hey folks!

Hope you all had a great christmas and are eagerly awaiting a brand spanking new year and decade! Something tells me it's certainly going to be an interesting one.

I honestly don't know what you can expect from me, but I do have a few little things planned. I will be investing in a new PC in the new year that will be a much, much, much need upgrade from my current machine which celebrated its 8th birthday this month

The biggest and main thing it will provide me with is a huge increase in speed and multitasking capabilities, with which, I'm finally hoping to bring you a livestream channel! I've seen many artists doing this and I think it's a great way to offer advice and demonstrate ways of working with digital art. I can't wait to get started on that so I'll let you know more about it when I can.

The ressurection of Paleshadows (my personal portfolio site I unfortunately had to close for various reasons) is possibly on the horizon with a new name and guise. If that does come to pass, it will be coupled together with a site dedicated to my personal project, Guardian Soul. But I'm not going to make any promises on that as it will be a large undertaking and well...you all know me... ><;

Other than that though...well, we'll just have to see what happens. Happy New Year guys!!

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COMMISSION STATUS - OPEN
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PRICES HAVE CHANGED SLIGHTLY! They now range from £60-£180+ and above depending on what you would like. Please email me echodragon@hotmail.co.uk with all the details and I'll get back to you with a price. To give you an idea of what you can expect it to cost:

CHARACTER RENDER £60-£70 -- A one off picture feature a character of your creation (I do not do fan art, sorry) with a moderately detailed background or none at all. Price largely depends on the complexity of the image.

LANDSCAPE RENDER £100-£150 -- Pic showing off a scene primarily focusing on an area of land within this world or another (See Vey'Ghan, Rydia, The Forgotten Shrine, The Sakura Groves). Price significantly depends on the complexity and detail required within the image.

HIGHLY DETAILED AND POLISHED FULL RENDER £180+ -- This can cover pretty much anything but is by far the most time consuming and delicate (See The Kiss, Onslaught, Aria Queen of Eve). The price is based largely on the complexity of the image and how long I think it will take. Tight and very short deadlines will significantly effect the price if I'm able to accept the commission.

FINAL NOTE -- Please do not add me to your friends list on msn or any other instant messenger. It will result in you being blocked. This is not me being nasty, I simply preffer to deal with online clients via email.

So I was looking at my stats page today and I believe a huge thank you is due to everyone once again for continuing to visit and comment on my portfolio

Ok, so realistically it's not very impressive when compared to some artists on here who manage to get somewhere in the region of 100,000 page views per day but, to me at least, it means a great deal. Ever since I closed my personal website DA pretty much became my main portfolio and it's proving a very good move. The number of pageviews alone beat out what my personal site received in FOUR YEARS, by around 2500 people! Not only that but alot of the images have been viewed around 8000+ times with The Road to Mae'Estaa being viewed over 10,000 times! Again it might not seem alot but that beats out anything my personal site ever had by a rather impressive 9000 people....lol...

The Kiss remains in its top spot with over 500 people adding it to favourites.

So WOW! Thank you very much everyone, thank you my 119 watchers, thank you to my visitors, thank you to my favourite-ers, thank you to people featuring me and everyone else inbetween :3

Soppy entry is soppy XD

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COMMISSION STATUS - OPEN
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Prices range from £70-£200+ and above depending on what you would like. Please email me echodragon@hotmail.co.uk with all the details and I'll get back to you with a price. To give you an idea of what you can expect it to cost:

CHARACTER RENDER £70-£80 -- A one off picture feature a character of your creation (I do not do fan art, sorry) with a moderately detailed background or none at all. Price largely depends on the complexity of the image.

LANDSCAPE RENDER £100-£150 -- Pic showing off a scene primarily focusing on an area of land within this world or another (See Vey'Ghan, Rydia, The Forgotten Shrine, The Sakura Groves). Price significantly depends on the complexity and detail required within the image.

HIGHLY DETAILED AND POLISHED FULL RENDER £200+ -- This can cover pretty much anything but is by far the most time consuming and delicate (See The Kiss, Onslaught, Aria Queen of Eve). The price is based largely on the complexity of the image and how long I think it will take. Tight and very short deadlines will significantly effect the price if I'm able to accept the commission.

FINAL NOTE -- Please do not add me to your friends list on msn or any other instant messenger. It will result in you being blocked. This is not me being nasty, I simply preffer to deal with online clients via email.

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By popular demand, The Kiss is now available as a print, both fine art and normal, as well as a wrapped canvas and a greeting card.

Sorry I can't offer better prices, I clicked premium subscription instead of premium print account by acident >< DA doesn't offer refunds apparently so I can't afford the other at the moment. *sigh*

I've still not heard if it got into Exotique 5 yet but I'm guessing it didn't because according to the site the book is due to be published in little under 2 months. Still I haven't got an email either way, and they usually notify you if you've been accepted or not. So who knows! I'll update if I hear anything. It will, however, be appearing alongside some more of my work on the dvd that comes with the next issue of Imagine FX...at least I think it's the next issue...it'll be in a future issue at any rate

UPDATE (26/08/09): Well it's official, I got the email this morning. Sadly neither 'The Kiss' or 'Mark of the Geomancer' made it into Exotique 5. However with the email stating they had a whopping 5,200 entries you have to wonder if they ever stood a chance XD

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Open as ever, prices range from £80-200+ depending on what you would like. Please email echodragon@hotmail.co.uk with the details.

IMPORTANT: PLEASE DO NOT JUST ADD ME TO YOUR FRIENDS LIST ON MSN, IT RESULTS IN YOU GETTING BLOCKED.

So I was browsing the tube of you yesterday listening to performances from the "Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy" concert tour (which incidently is an awesome listen and I'm very jealous of anyone that got to go) when I spotted a rather simple yet oddly profound comment on a video of the performance of "To Zanarkand" from FFX. I know what you're thinking, the comments on youtube videos are usually nothing to write home about but this one struck a chord for some reason. It's quite possible it was unintentional and said on the spur of the moment, but there it was nonetheless:

"Final Fantasy is Art."

Now being an avid fan of the series I'm biased here but, the more I thought about it, the more I realised how true this short statement really was. Not just of Final Fantasy either but most, if not all, computer games (the extremely consistently high presentation of the Final Fantasy series over the years just serves as an excellent example here).

Fair enough, where am I going with this? Well it got me to thinking and a wondering. All art starts with an idea seeded in the mind of an individual, is planted on a canvas and through creative care is nutured until the artist is happy to sit back and see it in full bloom. Then they set about sharing their creation with the world. This doesn't apply just to art, but to any creative outlet the human mind dared dream such as music, drama, writing etc.

Now I don't pretend to know exactly everything that goes into making a game but I have a rough idea. Surely though it is the exactly same process any individual goes through but on a much larger scale. Yet it is more than that, it's a coalation of many creative avenues all coming together to create an experience that anyone can be a part of. Is this not what any artist strives for, to produce work that can be enjoyed by all? Is managing to bring all of this together successfully not an example of an ultimate accomplishement in art?

The Final Fantasy series, among others, certainly inspired me to take my art more seriously simply in the hope that I could maybe, one day, be part of such a thing. Think about it for a second. Have you ever perhaps played guitar hero or rock band and come away wanting to try a real instrument? Have you ever played through an RPG an been so moved by the story that you wanted to create something in tribute to it? Has watching the animation on screen ever inspired you to try your hand at it? Has the voice acting ever made you want to prove to the world that you can do it better?

The Arts as a whole seem to be forever wrapped in controversy these days and usually not held in much regard among the general 'average joe'. As an artist it's somewhat humbling to think though that art has been quietly evolving out of the spotlight in the form of the computer games and that people of all ages have picked them up rather unsuspectingly in their living room, been inspired by them, worked hard to get into the industry, and gone on to continue to provide another generation with art.

Hmmm, food for thought indeed no?

Well folks, it's been an interesting four years. There have been some incredible ups and some rather irritating downs, yet that's pretty much life in a nutshell isn't it. My mission when I decided to leave college and further education behind me and strike it out on my own was to set up a resonably good looking website and, through it, document what it was like trying to break into the digital art industry. I didn't expect it to be fast and in fact it took me well over two years to learn enough to get a website I was happy with. Eventually my mission wavered and simply became to make the site a place to see all my work. It wasn't original, it wasn't the easiest thing to keep updated, but it was my own and I enjoyed working on it when I could.

In recent months, however, I have begun to lose alot of motivtion to continue on as I have been over the last few years. Don't misunderstand me, my passion for art isn't gone. Far from it in fact and I still dream of making the breakthrough one day. But it's becoming more apparent as the days go by that I simply no longer have the drive to turn out artwork after artwork when I seem to be reaching such a small audience, and there appears to be little interest in my style. There is also the fact that I can no longer afford to fund the hosting costs to keep it open.

So unfortunately I've took the decision to close Paleshadows. I'm not sure how long the process will take but from this point on there won't be anymore attempts to update the website. My livejournal, which is linked to the site, will also not be seeing any new entries either. I won't be deleting the journal though and may looks for something else to blog about because I do enjoy writing.

This DOES NOT mean my art is going to dissapear from the web and from now on Deviant Art will be my main portfolio site on the web and will see the most updates as and when I finish any new work. I'd like to thank everyone in the very small fan base I may have garnered for sticking with the site over the years and folks at Rydia.net for providing such an outstanding hosting service. I don't think my site has gone down since it went up and I've never had a problem with their servers. I thoroughly reccommend them

Maybe sometime in the future the website will see a reincarnation, but for now at least the end is nigh for Paleshadows.

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On a lighter note I'm still open for commissions. Prices range from £80-£200+ depending on what you would like done. Please contact me via email (echodragon@hotmail.co.uk) if you want to know more.

PLEASE DO NOT SIMPLY ADD ME TO YOUR MSN CONTACTS LIST AS YOU WILL GET BLOCKED. EMAIL ONLY PLEASE!