Renciel

I'm typing this on my phone as I'm about to head off to bed. It's been like— more than a year since I've written anything close to a status or journal here and since I've recently posted a new upload I thought I'd pop by to say hi— that is, if there's anyone still around :') It feels a bit therapeutic coming back and writing here. dA was my childhood and my rock from which I grew so much as an artist. Then Eclipse came, and I moved to IG back in 2017. It was great until the algorithm changed, and by 2020 I barely got a fraction of views from my own followers, let alone public. I've had a good run of freelance up till 2022, and then I decided I was a bit tired of the hustle and since then I've settled into a full time job as a Senior 2D Artist. I'm doing well there, but I miss my life as an unemployed, independent creator from time to time. I really do miss the dA community, and I've peeped in to see how it's been doing from time to time, but it's so overrun with AI and artists... well, "artists" that flood the front page with these pieces of unoriginal work. I really miss the MLP community that was so prevalent and strong in almost every space on the internet, and now that G4 is over, it's thinned out over the last few years. So I look back at it fondly, knowing I could say over a thousand times how much I reminisce and miss something, and yet it'll never come back. G5 is fine, but it's mediocre and lacks depth. I was talking to a new colleague who grew up in dA too, and he was telling me how he had a bunch of friends, and when Eclipse took over, things just weren't the same because people left the site, and he's only really been in contact with one or two now. There are still mutuals and people I know by memory here, and I just hope you've all been well! I'm not sure where I'll go next in my art journey, but even though its been difficult I'm not really giving up and I'll bounce back someday. Meanwhile, I'm Renciel on Discord if you ever wish to chat (: I'm playing Sons of the Forest now, and it's been crazy (in a good way!) Take care, signing out ✌️

Hey guys! I hope you've all been well ^-^ It's been almost a year since I created my last dA journal. So I wanted to just pop in for minute to just write some updates. Since the change to eclipse, I've been staying on the site less and less, only coming on here to upload my works. I do look through my notifications and I must admit it's still really nice to see familiar usernames in my stacks :'> Names of regular accounts I've started to recognize through the years. Thank you guys for supporting my work all this while. dA was such a homey site and albeit my social anxiety it was easy to participate in different facades of the community, and it was my number one portfolio site till the interface apocalypse. It's only due to the users I've grown to recognize, that I feel that bit of melancholy coming back every now and then. A few weeks ago, I noticed dA- yet again, did some changes to the alert/notification system, and golly it's horrible. I don't make it my mission to complain but