The Artists' Comments

My little creatures didn't just pop up from nowhere; they all have a history. And, seeing as I'm a talkative and long-winded person, I figured I might as well create an extra page for each of my adoptable cyberpets to explain how they came into being. Most of my artwork has at least a tiny story behind it, and I put a lot of heart and soul into these cyberpets of mine.

Dragonlings were, if memory serves me rightly, my first real cyberpet adoption. I'm a bit mad at myself that I deleted the old site I made for them, because I'm horrible with dates. I started my first generation of Dragonlings way about around, oh, 2000 when I got my first scanner. They were awful and I think I may have adopted out only one of my creatures to someone aside from close internet friends. Needless to say, it didn't last long.

I stashed and forgot the idea of Dragonlings for a long, long while until about early 2006, when The Crystal Palace revamped itself to once again focus more on cyberpets. With a renewed cyberpet frenzy of creating and adopting and now (for me) buying, I started to think up ideas of what I could offer for adoption online. I first thought up a wolfish creature, which I am still developing and will be housed on this site. I started playing around with other ideas as well and, seemingly out of nowhere, remembered my old Dragonlings and their protector Cajarna.

Needless to say, I started on drawing a new generation of Dragonlings right away, and within a weekend I had drawn the first seven to completion. Before this site was finished, I had finished nearly twenty of the little creatures. I found I still loved the idea, and had a lot of fun drawing them (especially since I had been so busy in previous months that I hadn't any time to draw, and the artist in me was dying to be let out again!). Hopefully, my Wildlife & Fisheries major will help me create better Dragonlings as I progress.

I wanted a cyberpet where each one could be one-of-a-kind, and for the longest time I also wanted to create a pet that was hand-colored as well has hand-drawn; I only lacked the knowledge to make them transparent with any computer program. After seeing Syrcaid's kirin offered at The Crystal Palace in the same 'style', I asked what her secrets might be. Between her and the masterful Tlouey I managed to figure out how to cut out the image's background and the benefits of saving them as PNG files which, if you use Internet Explorer, is why my Dragonligns might not show up as they should.

With any luck, my Dragonlings will become a bigger success than they were in 'the old days' when I first dabbled in drawing the little creatures. All I know is it's great fun drawing them, it lets me get in some artistic practice, and it's a lot faster deleting the images' backgrounds than previous techniques I've used...which is always a good thing.