#storytellervault

[dividlibro]

The Thanksgiving Sale is still going strong! Get this illustration (and 4 more) in full colour my Vampire: the Masquerade, Nosferatu Character-Pack at a discount of 33%!!!

The offer is up until December second.

[secretsofthemasquerade]

Hello everyone

A quick reminder that because of the earthquake in Mexico, I am trying to gather funds to get my mom back to France (since she is effectively without a job as a translator interpreter she doesn’t get salaried benefits, and September being conference month, everything got cancelled so she won’t get paid squad).

I can’t offer much in terms of “commissions” (mostly because White Wolf would get on my ass if I did :p), but I do have options if you’d like to support me and get something in return.

That is: Use my affiliate ID links for DriveThru and Storyteller vault.

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?affiliate_id=356031

http://www.storytellersvault.com/browse.php?affiliate_id=356031

You can also buy the item(s) I’ve put to sale on the StorytellerVault (I’d REALLY appreciate it if you left a little review, comment or rating, as they really help us creators get noticed!). Link. I get half of the price as payment (the other half goes to the platform and White Wolf).

Or you can Buy me a Coffee (in euros)

I really appreciate all the support I get on tumblr in general, from many of you guys send me often lovely messages of cheers and I really value them, they warm me a lot and I’ll keep fighting.

Sadly the past couple of weeks have been catastrophic, so without going into detail, half my classes got cancelled which means that much less direct income, the earthquake happened the night before my driver’s exam which I failed because I had no sleep that night so I’ll need to pay extra fees to be able to present the exam again, my regular work hours got cut, I had to enroll in supplementary health coverage and it’s going to cost me 30€ a month because I’m not eligible for our version of medicaid anymore, my computer got sent back to MSI because it’s malfunctionning and god knows what’s going to happen then, my phd tutor isn’t helping much, I’m housing a friend in need, one of my foster kitties left to her permanent home and I miss her, it’s getting dark and I’m getting fall downtime, etc etc..

[dividlibro]

Prework of a nosferatu portrait I digitally painted a while back. Soon I will finally release the entire character pack on the ‘Storyteller Vault’.

Stay tuned ;)

[ This lovely lady is based on ‘Eunice (Unique) Primrose’, a nosferatu character from my V:tM London Chronicle.

She was a young and sensible nosferatu girl that thought, she found the family she never had in clan nosferatu. She was happy to be embraced...

But times where troublesome:

The hunger drove her to commit acts she never wanted to do.

She found a friend, she could not love and loved a man, she could never have.

But the final blow came, when she could no longer deny, that the ‘family’ she had found, was breaking apart. Never to be whole again.]

[dividlibro]

Another prework of a nosferatu portrait I digitally painted for a nosferatu character pack to post on the ‘Storyteller Vault’.

[We return to ‘Pjotr Stanislav Raikowskij’ after the embrace. This russian scientist and former ghoul quickly found his place in the surveillance and disturbance section of the local nosferatu.

He never wanted a close friendship with his coterie. He lost a lot of people dear to him over WW2, and he can’t have at again.

He uses his skills, once tainted by the nazis forcing him to use them for their cause, to lead the politics and fears of human and kindred alike, in the directions of his clan.]

[secretsofthemasquerade]

Mexico

So after almost a week I finally got a hold of my mom who lives in Tepotzlan (near Mexico City).

She's fine but there's no transport and she has no electricity. There's a law that says that if there is a earthquake your boss can't force you to come to work, effectively giving you a paid leave, but my mom is independent, she's a translator interpreter and if there is no conference, if there are no documents to translate she has no pay.

This effectively puts her without income, on the worst possible week of the year (mid to end September is the start of conference season, and since most of them are cancelled...). She hasn't told me about her finances, but I'm pretty sure she's low on savings. If she managed translation work, she needs a generator and a 4G key to have electricity and internet. That costs money obviously.

I can't go, I don't have the funds nor the leave from work (classes are paid by the hour, and my base job already has my holidays taken during uni's winter close down, administration being what it is...), and while I don't really get along with my mom well, there's still a feeling of responsibility. I'm her only child and she's alone in there (her last bf died of cancer a few years ago, nasty stuff)

I want her to come back to France, and I want to try and convince her by showing she'll have a better life here, because working in such conditions with no retirement and no assets (and just about no healthcare) isn't right when you're above fifty (she's lived like this ever since we moved to Mexico when I was 5, so, twenty five years ago).

If you want to help I'll put more stuff on storyteller vault. Moreover anything you buy from drivethrurpg with my affiliate link gives me a little % so please consider

Thank you

That is: Use my affiliate ID links for DriveThru and Storyteller vault.

You can also buy the item(s) I’ve put to sale on the StorytellerVault (I’d REALLY appreciate it if you left a little review, comment or rating, as they really help us creators get noticed!). Link. I get half of the price as payment (the other half goes to the platform and White Wolf).

Or you can Buy me a Coffee (in euros)

[secretsofthemasquerade]

Okay folks, I’m gonna be a bitch here but you’ll humor me.

Over the last few months I’ve had fairly little interaction, and I’ve been reblogging more and more of my own content to get some traffic by the new followers, so they read the older works, etc.

I only barely make more than a dozen notes on many things, including general purpose promotion stuff. I’ve asked you guys plenty of times to download a FREE pack of pics from drivethrurpg/storytellervault to judge basic interest about what I do, and honestly I had none. I had to press a close friend of mine to do the thing so I’d have at least something positive there but here out of my 1200 followers? What I do isn’t even worth that kind of effort? Just look at architecture pictures? And say “yeah there’s a few good pictures there we can use to illustrate”? Yes I did have a “don’t get this” comment, without any details, without any explanation. Wtf.

This was a test to know whether I’d write supplements or further content which would take me lots of time and energy, but seeing this absolute lack of response? Lack of care? Why do I even bother?

I mean I do have a few people here who do send questions and interact often with me, engage in interesting discussions. And I love you guys (you’ll recognize yourselves ;)).

But honestly? I feel like second rate for most.

I’ve even opened a random ic ask blog for Lyle a while ago, and I had half a dozen questions. In total. I’ve even had to reblog character asks to get traffic but, nope. Whatever hopes I had to do the hard work of writing a fanfic or anything, it’s gone because nobody cares.

I need validation. Not pity.

[secretsofthemasquerade]

It’s been a while since I had a big ass rant, so... here! 

(disclaimer, I don’t know shit about art, I’m not an artist, but just because I’m not a pilot doesn’t mean I can’t recognize a bad landing when on a plane; that said, I recognize technical skill and this is deffo not the issue here)

Okay folks, THIS is the current picture on the StorytellerVault (the place where amateur authors will be able to self publish their vtm, and eventually wod, supplements)

So... I have so many questions

Why is the guy naked? Why doesn’t he have a penis? If it’s because it’s to keep it PG, then why is he naked? Why is the Gangrel crouching? Why the feathers? What the hell is wrong with that dress? Why has she got her left foot resting on her knee? Why did the artist choose yet again the horrible “girl with half opened mouth with blood dripping from a corner” trope? Why is the dead guy in that position? Why have they wasted so much blood? What’s with that girl’s pose, really? 

And now, compare and contrast to Sei-ey’s Lasombra work

Naked people, yes, but this is obviously an organized orgy for hunting purposes. Clothes make sense, color suits night time far better, characters have personality, and the blood on the girl’s mouth is far messier and more suiting to what happened in this scene. The proportions and posing is far more grounded, dynamic, and the eye travels far more, without being distracted by weirdness.

Obviously the technical skills and the styles used for both pieces are veeeeery different, and the backgrounds are also very different (Sei’s focus being on a moist/cloudy city with impressionism style in the buildings, while the first artwork is far more detailed in the city background and the vampire characters are more eerie). That doesn’t take away that the first one is all kinds of weird and wrong, despite great technical skill, while the second is far more believable as a “we’ve just hunted and you saw us”, somewhat posed pic. Compare the dynamism, compare the characters, compare the execution of the theme, the composition...

Why.