This week, I finished up a new design of a nekomata done in a hybrid style of Japanese ire-zumi tattoos and a sick-ass panther.

If you don’t know, a sick-ass panther is a popular way to cover up an old tattoo that you don’t like any more. So much so that it’s become a meme in it’s own right. Just a quick google search gives amazing designs from artists all around the world, like these.

I really like them, they’re just fun and funky. I’ve also been digitizing some nekomata (猫又) I had drawn aaaaages ago, so they were on my mind.

A nekomata is a kind of Japanese spirit or yokai (妖怪) that are lucky cats that have lived a long life. When they reach a certain age, it is said, their tails split into two and they gain the ability to speak to people and often walk on their hind legs. They also often take on human characteristics. They are similar in look to a bakeneko (化け猫) but are not malevolent spirits. They can sometimes be called “twin tails” in English, too.

The most common mataneko you may have seen are from the game “Ghost Wire Tokyo,” where they are the ones you turn collectables in to.

I really like them, and it inspired me to draw a bunch of them – stay tuned to see the art and the pixel version of them soon!

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On another note, I have been pulling my hair out with website stuff. I got it into my head to integrate the store into FaceBook and Instagram, but there are so many hoops to jump through to push the products to my page. Once I (think) I got that working, imagine my surprise when I woke up and went to check and do some final tweaks to find my entire site was throwing a critical error!

Apparently, that is common when using their WordPress plugin. I had to go into the code and file manager and delete it in order to even access the site. And the problems from the plugin didn’t stop as soon as I was able to delete it. It made some changes in the backend code that I’m still fishing out, and caused my currency changer to completely stop working! So when something was ¥6,000 and you tried to switch to US$, it would show as $6,000!!! Yeah, no!

So I spent all day today changing everything I could over to US$. If you run into any problems or see somewhere it is showing an obscene price, please reach out and let me know or comment here so I can fix it. I think it also messed up my checkout page, so I guess I know what I’ll be doing this weekend – hunting down and squashing bugs. Ugh.

I’m sorry if this messes up anything else, please let me know if you see anything that is totally off. On the plus side, I have given more search and filtering options on the shop page, and I’m working on putting in a portfolio gallery. I’m also considering offering some of my Print on Demand Final Fantasy things here on my site, as I get like 5+ messages a week on Instagram asking if I’m still selling my Inferno Jacket or job jackets. I just need to illustrate the newer job stones (viper and pictomancer) and design them. It’s on my back burner right now, but I’m definitely thinking of doing that.

I also plan on putting up stickers, postcards, and art prints of the pixel stuff in case you like the art, but don’t have the time or space to do them as a diamond painting. Keep an eye out for that!