Launched!

Good golly gosh, it's a new website, you guys! It's taken a lot of time on-and-off between work, with a few big gaps of creative block where I just let it sit for a while, but finally, I have launched my website number next, built from scratch this time. Plus I have a Facebook page now, too!

"But Angela, what has brought about this big change?" asks an imaginary reader. I shall tell you:

When you live a quiet, humble, work-from-home life, and all the noise of college ended many moons ago, you have a lot of time to yourself and soul-searching becomes the natural course to take. A few months ago, mine led me to the conclusion that my web presence needed to be overhauled to better reflect the truest me, as I had finally figured out who that was. While college had given me a very muddy, all-over-the-place notion of what to do with my future, with its barrage of fun, shiny new skills to learn, in the aftermath, ultimately I found the answer to be something that should have been obvious to me since even before college, but wasn't until now, when I've really got my own life by the reins. I'm a crafter of critters! Realistic ones, magical ones, painted ones, sculpted ones, and animated ones. A lifelong fascination with animals, natural history, mythology, and fantasy, plus the soul of an artist—mix it up in a giant bowl, pour it in a pan and bake it at 350°F to get a delicious creature designer cake!

And so, I set about crafting my new site. I left out all the content I felt may have been leading people off the mark, but I also added a brand new section to it called Extras, which is full of goodies and links that hopefully will be helpful to fellow artists. Design-wise, I studied the sites of some of my favorite artists to get ideas of how they approached showcasing their stuff. I got the basic design structure down, but something just didn't feel right. Then, I started developing a species...

... A frugivorous deer-like animal. The males use their antlers for display by eating the fruit of a particular tree which grows during their mating season and has a pigment that makes the antlers' nodes glow in low light. This gave me the idea I needed to tie up my site and make the splash page—a visitor's first impression—really hit home and say "this is what I do, if you're interested, come on in!" A little bit of After Effects, CSS, and Javascript, and BAM. Everything felt right. A few finishing tidbits, and up on the 'net it finally all went. Now I can get back to the business of making actual content, and really get myself out there. Look out, world!

And of course, my readers, do check out all the newness and let me know what you think!