All About The Things
Identity Disclaimer
Depending on how you got here, you may notice that some of the branding and name choices do not correspond to the same legal name you followed. Deal with it. This is a pen name, and I will be happy to confirm and prove to prospective employers, and ONLY prospective employers that I have applied to work with, exactly who I am. I happen to value privacy, and having plausible deniability to identity should any of my work reflect poorly on me as a person (which will primarily take the form of "slightly racy" and noticably queer, NOT racist/sexist/homophobic/violent/hateful).
Furthermore, the Jack Verdis presence on the greater social media sphere is not 100% all me all the time; the Etsy and AvantGoblin shops are team-monitored, and some of the creation choices and captions are team-sourced also. All roads lead to home, though, and the artist is at least physically present and logistically involved in all of it.
About The Artist
I am primarily a digital media artist, living and working currently in the Appalachian mountains where I grew up. My skills are numerous, but unrefined and difficult to market, so until further notice I'm just doing what feels right and throwing it in a pile; most of which is this website and associated social media presences. I'm compelled to make art, so much so that I have completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts, and I do make things whenever possible. Those creations have turned out to be primarily digital, being easier and more portable, replicable, and marketable; though my heart is always in sculpture. I also have a great amount of hobby experience in Microsoft Office 365, a surprising knack for advanced geometry and calculus, an inhuman level of attention to detail (regularly missing the trees for the leaves... wait, are we in a forest?), and I think a fairly even hand and grasp of English grammar, editing, and technical writing. Programming was never a skill I felt I could pursue, yet here I am learning html by brute force and ambition alone.
In my free time, besides creating visual artwork, I enjoy cooking strange things and serving them to unsuspecting guests, playing board games with friends, kayaking, and camping. Some of the better cooking experiments have found their way onto the recipes page, or will at some point in the future. I also love musicians and live concerts, even if I can't play a thing.
My dreams and ambitions include being just plain stable enough to make my own artwork, and be a part of interesting projects that can use it. I'm still not sure what that looks like long-term, but I'm keeping an eye out for opportunities while happily building a consistent portfolio, under a name and brand I can be happy with, and gainfully employed elsewhere.
About The Artwork
The artwork here is all created in a digital space using Autodesk Sketchbook across Android devices. All of it is drawn fully from scratch, using digitally duplicated realistic tools like pencils, ink pens, paints, markers, and soft erasers. Layers are used for quality and correctability, but not vectors; all the images are real-size (or slightly reduced for readability) as drawn.
The primary styling choices here are just that; choices. Bold ink outlines to lend a cartoon goofiness, but carefully blended and implemented colors and textures behind it for a more fine-arts touch. This is a style I intend to stick with, being versatile and also pleasant to draw.
About The Goblins
The goblins (and friends) pictured here are a general attempt to un-racist the more "fantasy traditional" goblin. The pointed ears, piggy noses, and wandering eyes are therefore evolutionarily descended from some kind of fantasy cross between flightless bats (slightly fuzzy, big ears, funny noses), and a non-color-changing chameleon (green, eyes that move independently, sticky fingers). Due to niche pressure from both evil overlords and hungry adventurers, goblins also do not have bones, only an amount of cartiledge and sometimes rocks (mostly for teeth), making them ideal for throwing across a room for evil emphasis, and very difficult to use for bone stealing. This also makes them rather poor at architecture, smithing, large-scale agriculture, and most things that require finesse and grip strength at the same time; resulting in that goblin-classic "invasive" effect of simply taking or adopting what is needed, from tools and snacks to abandoned castles.
Contrary to popular belief, goblins are not fungus - they're soup. Duplication is usually voluntary, and involves placing a number of adult goblins and soup ingredients into a cauldron with an amount of liquid, and heating. More goblins will then be removed than went inside. Under ideal conditions, a goblin will live for plenty of time, like a canned soup; perhaps only turning an interesting color or gaining a certain smell after a number of years, which has little effect on quality of life, but some effect on usefulness in creating more goblins. In other circumstances, like a battlefield, it is fairly economical to create and then lose dozens or hundreds of goblins who will live only a matter of days before being squashed or eaten. Soup recipes for battlefield goblins are rarely as sophisticated as that of independent goblins, and attempts of adding bones to soup both for wartime stability and cross-species breeding attempts results only in hobgoblins (a reasonable number of bones) or bugbears (entirely too many bones).
About The Site
AvantGoblin is illustrated and coded 100% by hand, character for character (with a reasonable amount of copy and paste for some of the more repetitive listings), in html, using neocities.org as a hosting site, of which I am a paid contributor. It is likely always still going to be under construction, but I keep learning new tricks and cross-referencing them across as many pages as is relevant, which is slowly helping the overall polish of the site.
This site is also very specifically designed in such a format that the same version will work on both desktop and mobile, at all or most useful resolutions, and relies heavily on text, accompanied by images with alt-text. There are no flashing lights or moving images, no special effects, and no sounds. It will absolutely never contain an advertisement for anything that is not also produced by the same artist, in part or in whole, and efforts will continue to remain accessible for all interested parties.
Some Legal Stuff
I, Jack Verdis, am the sole creator and owner of this site and the artwork in it and linked to it. Please keep your stupid AI out of my stuff, and if you are a wandering human, say hi and give credit if you're walking off with anything. All available goblin merchandise is available on either the AvantGoblin Shop or the Etsy listing (and let's be real, the Etsy listing has more not-goblin stuff, and that's okay). Any other advertised merchandise is NOT me, and any and all goblins or other artwork that is made by me are available either in the gallery, on listed and linked social media, or privately commissioned.
Furthermore, I am not secretly a millionaire. I am happily married, I don't believe in crypto, I only use Paypal for internet transactions and only in the Goods And Services section. There is no such thing as a business account, and I will never ask you for money except in exchange for artwork. Your favorite real celebrity probably works the same way. Stay safe out there.
No ads, ever. Clean, simple, accessible, and above all, full of goblin energy. Thanks for visiting!
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copyright whatever bloody year it is, created 2024