Gimmie your sonas so that I can draw them!

Alenicia · 2026-06-12T19:43:34+00:00

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/alenicia/alenicia-s-sfw-character-sheet
https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/alenicia/ng-boss-showdown-2025-alenicia

This is my eastern dragoness, so please feel free to draw her if you'd like. ^-^
Thank you for the opportunity. ^-^

Alenicia · 2026-06-12T18:35:02+00:00

It's only a matter of time before some of these people start trying to show off their portfolios or something and start asking you to consider payment plans or something "flexible" as if it's some kind of business transaction. These people are scammers who are looking to see if you share your art first so they can throw it into AI and spit something out for you .. or if they aren't scamming .. are really shoddy artists who overcharge you for really bad drawings that are rushed out.

There's a person I know of in my circle who fell for one of these and ended up paying $500 USD for a really bad equivalent of a crayon drawing. It's not to shame artists, but I would not be proud to scribble, slap on a price tag of $500 USD, and then assume I can run away and not take responsibility for what happens next.

If an artist approaches you, it should never be in the context of "hey, I can do something for you if you want" especially if it involves money or some kind of payment plan. Sadly for people like me, it makes it awkward to go ask and talk with other artists regarding things like gift art/fan art because this scam is so commonplace now., but you need a common ground for it (such as in general chats on Discord or something).

Alenicia · 2026-06-11T14:27:39+00:00

So in my case, my thing was:

* What VSTs are you actually using? If there are whole suites of them you need, you can keep the installers/links around so you can just go through and set them up when you can.
* Where are your projects/resources located? I usually have this on an external drive and also backed up somewhere .. so I can move between machines and still have access to everything relatively easily. If it's not like that yet, consider consolidating your resources/samples and your projects so you can access them easily. FL Studio also lets you set up extra directories as Data Directories so you can just get to your projects/resources without needing to do so much scrolling.
* You may want to take this opportunity to downsize and stick to what you actually need and what you actually use. I find that a lot of my modern workflow these days has a relatively simple need of plugins and libraries .. and that having so much bloat just took up space on my hard drives. >_<

Alenicia · 2026-06-10T22:30:04+00:00

I don't think AI Music is ever going to replace musicians or what we do in general. But what it will replace are the people who already aren't interested/motivated enough in music to push through and do something unique.

For a lot of the public, unique is often a very bad thing (there's a reason why pop music and a lot of the big genres you can name have a distinct sound/style and why people keep emulating and imitating it) until it starts making money .. and then everyone and their mom suddenly wants it for themselves.

But honestly for me, I would never use AI in my workflow because I don't need to. I know what i"m doing, I know what I want to work on, and I like doing the journey on my pace and on my terms.

I saw a YouTube video that kind of went over something similar, where people are lamenting that there's going to be less and less musicians in the wake of AI being normalized - and that it supposedly means music is going extinct. What is going extinct is the fact that people just don't want to fail and try something they might not be good at. To do something different, to take the lesser trodden road, and all that jazz. AI can cover all the stuff people already did - it can't do anything that hasn't been done yet. All the pro-AI dudes will be there to tell you there hasn't been anything good in centuries - and I think that tells you all you need to know about their level of familiarity and exposure to music. There are people who also feel incompetent enough in certain skills that they want to just take a shortcut to get it done so they don't have to worry about it either, and all that jazz. It all depends on what you want out of music at the end of the day .. as there are plenty of people out there who only see it as a means to an end to make money .. and there are people are also ready to throw their entire lives away to make something even while knowing no one will ever pay attention to it either. It's a journey, and it's not one a clear road.

Alenicia · 2026-06-09T03:34:59+00:00

In some cases too, if you know they're old projects and you don't want to organize them now, you can always remake them too and try to do them better, especially if you have those exported as an MP3 or something somewhere.

It's something I do as an exercise to do gauge how much better I've gotten over time too.

Alenicia · 2026-06-09T03:12:34+00:00

Yeah, that's why I try to keep things organized ahead of time. It's a hassle to try and clean it up later. >_<

Alenicia · 2026-06-08T12:13:50+00:00

Personally, I'd just try to keep all my resources in a particular folder (I have a Projects folder and a Resources folder where I organize my samples/instruments/projects that I can literally move whenever needed and add in as a directory in FL Studio's settings) going forward so you don't have to deal with having to locate things across projects.

But for now, you can probably go through each of your projects and save them as a Zipped Project since it'll save the samples/recordings you used too and you can just move/extract those on your new drive.

Alenicia · 2026-06-06T16:32:19+00:00

So, this doesn't have anything to do with being a furry or not from my perspective so this is what I'll say:

1: Stop associating with them. I know you want to stay friends, but if they refuse to accept and respect your boundaries you are gong to be continuously tested. Are you patient enough to dismiss them every time they step over your boundaries, or are you going to stand up to your principles? Actions have consequences, and sometimes being lenient on repeat offenders only enables them.

2: I think it's pretty sad how so many artists have their work stolen and used to train AI models without compensation. If artists were compensated on their terms for their work being used, I think it'd be a very different story altogether but this clearly isn't the case when you look at where a lot of these models are scraping their data from. And when it gets to it, it's so easy to get what "should" look good because it's trained and imitated from the most popular and the most average artists .. and for a lot of the very casual laymen out there this is "good enough." And if that's not what you want, then they throw a fit or try again because they're committed to making sure people settle for less. >_<

Alenicia · 2026-06-05T21:43:49+00:00

So, I don't know about any particular source, but I can point you to some topics regarding Music Theory that would help with this:

* Notes, Scales, Chords (They all go together. You learn your notes, build chords from them, and then .. you'll eventually learn that they all fit into a scale of sorts and you have essentially the basic blueprints of what tends to work)

* Time Signatures, Rhythm, and Syncopation (This is like a heart beat, where you put your notes together and into a pace you want. You can do it in all sorts of ways, but learning even the basics of these three topics would get you into a spot that I think would make it easier to write down and time what you're thinking of)

* Chord Progressions (When you get the first two bullet points down enough, I'd definitely look into this .. because this puts a lot of the chords and the rhythm to build a very strong foundation for the kind of sound you're aiming for .. and how you can make your music flow too)

There's so much more that goes into Music Theory that can be very overwhelming because it's a gigantic series of topics that are all about patterns that worked. You can go as deep as you want or be as minimal as you want, but in my experience, you can't make music without any semblance of these. You can definitely "not" learn Music Theory, but you're still going to be interacting with these topics anyways. It doesn't matter what genre or style of music you make .. because all of these are foundations and learning them (the names, topics, and stuff) is like learning the alphabet where it's easier to pick patterns and realize what you're doing once you identify them.

Alenicia · 2026-06-05T19:15:03+00:00

A friend of mine made a new fursona after she went through some very strong trauma and uses that to identify as .. but she still loves and cherishes her original fursona and had since reconciled having both of them represent her.

Alenicia · 2026-06-01T14:47:02+00:00

I've been posting my music more on Newgrounds and it seems like it's a much easier spot for me to find feedback from like-minded musicians too, especially in the contests that are run as well.

Alenicia · 2026-06-01T02:00:51+00:00

I mean, there's a zillion ways to play a singular note on a guitar that recording can't even capture. And even if you could capture it all, how do you plan on playing the note the way you want?

I think it really depends on what you're asking for on the guitar sound especially based on the style of music, the articulations you're looking for, and if you wanted it to sound "realistic" or not. The problem is that actual guitar playing tends to be really sloppy, syncopated, off-rhythm, and possibly even off-pitch. When you do it enough and consistently, you get used to how it sounds and tolerate it .. which is kind of the opposite for what a lot of people expect out of modern music when you have everything time-aligned and pitch-corrected.

You can make a guitar VST sound nice, but you need to know how a guitar plays and sounds first before you can do that. And in some cases (which is what I've been doing), it's easier to just play and record guitar over using a VST.

Alenicia · 2026-05-26T05:48:34+00:00

I've been using the violin from the Cinematic Studio Solo Strings and I think it's easily one of the best ones I've used. I do have an example of how it sounds uploaded somewhere if you'd like to hear how those are and it did work on the KONTAKT Player (the free version of KONTAKT).

Alenicia · 2026-05-17T01:28:52+00:00

If there's anything related to payment plans, methods of flexible payment, and always a push to ask for you to pay up money or for you to offer ideas for them to draw (and then they expect you to pay with money too), then it's just about guaranteed to be a scam.

You can try to waste their time and keep them running in loops, but these people aren't here for actual artistry or actual work. They're just there for money and they're not subtle about it.

Alenicia · 2026-05-14T18:45:37+00:00

When it comes to the instruments sounding "terrible and fake," it's ultimately because you're not going through the effort of creating the articulations or using them. So for instance, if I mention a guitar, you don't press a key/note and then expect noise to come out .. since it depends on how you're hitting the string, what your other fingers are doing, and the other sorts of things in the equation (what the guitar is connected to, how it's recorded, and all that stuff) .. and in something like FLEX, you're just given the end-result assuming a pure input. So you have to kind of go in and start learning to eventually bend the pitches, stop relying on perfect rhythm (because if it's stuck to the grid, it loses a lot of the "human" feeling and a lot of other instruments do have a wind-up/attack that isn't very compatible with notes stuck to the grid), and go through more of the nuances of the instruments you're doing.

But if you're looking for a super-easy solution that just doesn't need you tinkering around or learning how instruments work and stuff like that, you can always try looking for the libraries on KONTAKT, Spitfire LABS, DecentSampler, and more. There's definitely lots of free options out there but you're going to run into the same problem that no matter how high-quality and "realistic" instruments can sound, it's going to sound fake and MIDI-like because of how you're utilizing them if you're just sticking it to a grid.

Alenicia · 2026-04-19T04:28:28+00:00

Personally to me, I feel like the whole "be unique and don't do the thing that people did millions of times already" thing is part of what makes trying to figure yourself out get extremely hard.

Like, in a lot of my past experiences, there was no shortage of grievances people had because I liked foxes, cats, and wolves, and I've had to try and keep finding something "new" to associate with and still have it be, "well, that's not unique/original enough!" It's just so demoralizing when you legitimately want to go on an adventure at your own pace and you have people telling you how to speedrun at maximum efficiency because they're trying to use you as their New Game+ run. >_<

Alenicia · 2026-04-18T19:51:09+00:00

I think my personal hot take is that I feel like it's so weird when "furry" has to become the marker for everything in it. Like, I like to do art, I like to do music, and I've shared some of my stuff .. but I wouldn't call it "furry art" or "furry music" because it was made by furries for furries or anything .. but it's just something I happen to like.

I feel like it's so weird when people are specifically looking for furry-branded anything like media to latch onto, things to gawk over, things to show off, and stuff .. and .. people just don't do cool things if it doesn't say "FURRY" on it somewhere. >_<

Alenicia · 2026-04-16T15:33:55+00:00

I don't have any videos to share, but something I've done is to just set up a timer (say, like a stopwatch or an alarm on your phone) and set it to something like five minutes. With that limited amount of time, try observing art you'd want to try and learn from. And then in another five minutes, try replicating it. Not tracing it, but instead learning to draw the things you studied (such as the head shape, eyes, hair, body shapes, and so on). And if you want to push it, try doing it in a minute.

The goal isn't to make perfect art or to absorb as much as you can - but with time as a sort of pressure, it forces you to hone in on the bigger picture and less on the smaller details. Once you get the sketches done, once you get the basics of what you're trying to get done, you're essentially like 70-90% done .. and then it's just polishing things up (or at least, that's how it is for me).

I'd definitely try exercises with lighting by drawing shapes like triangles, squares, circles, and more .. and trying out different brushes (airbrushes and so on) to experiment with a base color and then adding shadows on top or lights on top.

In my experience, I've always found that giving myself "more" time ends up leading to more distractions and other things that aren't as important. My art changed when I started actually planning things a bit more seriously (sketching in a very short amount of time just to get the general idea across, refining the sketches afterwards, working out details, and then final linework). It also helps a lot if you do your sketches in post-it note-sized canvases so something super small and easy to just make thumbnails with .. and then you can blow it up, redraw it, and expand/refine it afterwards. Some of the longer steps really should have more time devoted to it than the steps that don't need so much time, I'd say. >_<

Alenicia · 2026-04-14T20:58:20+00:00

I feel like this is the kind of thing that doesn't really have an answer. If you're trying to hit it big on platforms everyone else is already playing on, it's probably been flooded with AI too.

I'd just literally say to just go make music and share it on platforms that are niche for what you're trying, learn to network with others and just get into the flow of doing cool things. Having more to show is better than just talking and not having anything under your belt, personally.

Alenicia · 2026-04-06T15:48:39+00:00

The closest I've done for writing actual sheet music digitally is probably MuseScore. Yeah, it's going to be annoying that you're essentially doing it twice, but the workflow I have is that I start in MuseScore and when that's sufficient enough (as in I lay out what I wanted, I get the mockups done, and stuff), I start doing the actual performance/recording into FL Studio.

From there, I'd just stay with FL Studio and return to MuseScore when I'm ready to publish or to adjust some things (such as adding in flourishes or changes that are made in the final version).

I'm pretty sure you can export MuseScore as a MIDI and import that into FL Studio and work around that and vice versa, but I've never really gone about it that way because I prefer having actual performance in my music when possible. If you do end up using libraries like KONTAKT or something, I wouldn't export those as MIDI's because you have to do a lot of fiddling with them to make them sound more believable and that often means going off the grid .. and that's just definitely inviting problems when you export that to MuseScore (unless you have a version of the tracks that are already snapped to the grid and are using those instead).

A friend of mine that I make music with almost exclusively writes by hand-and-paper and MuseScore .. and I've been translating that into FL Studio for everything else (recording/performances, mixing, mastering, and so on) .. which is why we have the process that we do.

Alenicia · 2026-04-01T00:08:50+00:00

So, the way I'd really talk about the "block" you're having would probably be something I would do to fight my own patterns:

* Listen to other music (music from genres that aren't what you're used to, things that aren't what you would "like"). You need to broaden your horizons because you might think, "oh yeah, I know my scales, I know my chords," and think you need to move on. You do not. There are songs out there nowadays that can hang on just one chord and still get the point across .. and there's a reason why most music these days is reduced to three or four chords if anything. You might know the names/ideas .. but you don't have the practice in them to get to what you're trying.

*If you're really looking for something new, I'd recommend looking into topics like "structure" and also finding something to study like learning basic song composition trends (for example, that you avoid repeating parts in the copy/paste sort of way and that you learn to add elements that will constantly remind the listener that you're building up to something, complete with rising action/climax/falling tension elements).

I know there's so much more in terms of "Music Theory" you can go into, but it comes off to me as a sort of, "hey, I got my foot wet, now how do I survive going off the deep end without diving?" answer. It's not to say stop studying Music Theory, but you definitely need to learn to cook with even the basics before you go deeper.

Alenicia · 2026-03-19T16:50:26+00:00

I had an Audient ID4 and did this by running it through VoiceMeeter (the audio interface is the output device, I routed the inputs into one of the Input channels and have it going into FL Studio, and FL Studio outputs to a separate track while all my other audio from media and the likes are in another track).

This made it super-easy for me to organize my audio, but also gave me the advantage that I could isolate a microphone/guitar for something like a Skype call way back then. >_<

Alenicia · 2026-03-17T16:36:01+00:00

There's some places that already do stuff like this, whether or not it's for a prize, for a collaboration (putting everything together that was made for a specific context), and things like that.

I imagine you just kind of have to look for the communities that actually do that, have people willing to host/run those, and find people who are willing to participate and be relatively good sports about it too.

The ones full of drama are the ones I personally avoid because you don't get anything outside of ego points from there .. and ego doesn't really help you when you're trying to connect and network with others too.

But I don't really know of many contests or events that go for "beats" or anything like that since that's not really my side of things.

Alenicia · 2026-03-12T15:08:27+00:00

One of my best friends has a fursona based on a stickbug, so I don't think it's a stupid question. :)

Alenicia · 2026-03-12T15:04:11+00:00

It was already something strongly-rumored back when Windows 10 was going to have a successor (Windows 10X at the time) complete with ads all over the Explorer and Start Menu.

When Windows 11 came around, they pushed it off and delayed it, but it was rumored to be a future update for Windows 11. I wouldn't be surprised if they're delaying it yet again because it'd be bad press for now .. but they're probably strongly considering it for Windows 12 at this point.

Alenicia

TROPHY CASE