This winter, I have a lot of fun ideas and projects, as well as artwork I want to do for other people as gifts. But there are also some things I need to start doing for my future career.

Probably my first step will be to submit some contemporary art into a judging thing. It's a Canadian contest that is not advertised at all, which means the chances of winning are fairly high. If your art is well recieved, they grant you $20 000. This is to help out artists who are just starting out and want to go somewhere.

My teacher has several friends who have won, some of them won twice even! The trick is to keep submitting new art every 6 months, even if you lose- you need to stick with it. xD If you really want something, you need to be persistent.

The money would be good to save for A) a down payment on an affordable home in NS and B) An animation paper Hole puncher (which costs $700), the professional program itself (close to $2000), cell paper and cell paint (...gets kind of expensive, probably close to $1000). The reason I would go the cell route, rather than colouring digitally through photoshop, is just plainly because I like the look of handpainted cartoons better... and the Android series with Lexus and all that is something personal I want to put my all into.

So it's clear that I need to acquire a bit of money to get things rolling, but there's a lot I can do without money that I should focus on more. Working on creating nice contemporary artwork will be the door to the first essential monetary gain. But also sticking with my series and getting it all planned out will require a lot more time. It's developped a fair bit, but there are a lot of holes still and I don't have all the characters solid.

An alternate route would be to pick up Alien Birds, because I do plan on publishing books on that series too, and it is a much easier series to write. It's pretty much open to anything and everything, no matter how crazy. The characters are a lot simpler and the freedom is endless. There is little to no chronology. It is probably something I could have ready to publish faster than the Android series, which would mean I'd probably get a bit of extra revenue which would make being financially independent a little easier while I work on the major series.

So I'm kind of rambling, but just trying to reaffirm a plan here so that I can actually start maybe getting somewhere. xD I'm almost 21, so I think it's time to get serious, even though I've never ever been serious at all before.

I need to start applying art towards more financial pursuits, otherwise I'll have to get a job I feel is wasting my time and is unfulfilling.