Goodbye, The Griffin's Lair :(
So recently I had a case of art theft on DeviantArt (which I wrote about here, http://calger459.deviantart.com/journal/30641787/#comments) bad enough where I finally decided to take my original website, The Griffin's Lair, down. I created the site way back in 1997 when the internet was still kind of ass (AOL and chatrooms were still the big thing. Ah memories...) and free hosting sites like Fortunecity and Geocities were slooooooooow and very buggy. I tried Fortunecity to make my site first, then moved it to Geocities which ran much better. The site lived there for a couple years, during which I taught myself HTML and basic web design and learned how to use a scanner to put my drawings up on the web. It led to a lot of good things, including my first commissions! Then a guy came along who liked my work and offered me free hosting on a fast, non-buggy server. I gladly took the offer, and The Griffin's Lair started its long, happy run :)
When this ridiculous art theft occurred (by some kid calling himself Digi-Poke-NarutoKid of all things) I actually hadn't updated my original site since 2004; that was about when I finally invested in my own domain name and paid hosting service to create Entis Animation for my professional work. With that site, there was no need for The Griffin's Lair anymore, but I kept it up because, well, it was being hosted for free and it was nice to get the occasional email from people who'd discovered my work on that site and liked it, or who'd found the Japanese/English dictionary I'd written up for my anime shrine and thought it was really useful. I'm going to miss those emails, and I'm genuinely bummed that people won't be able to browse those old drawings anymore. I have to take steps to protect my work better though; things I upload to Entis Animation are fairly low resolution and embedded in Flash Gallery which makes it harder to steal, and any piece I complete now has my logo watermarked onto it. That wasn't the case for any of the work that was stolen :/
So, in a nutshell the guy who hosted The Griffin's Lair for so long kindly put a redirect that'll bounce anyone automatically to my current site, and will be deleting the old files at his convenience. Goodbye Griffin's Lair, you will always have a special place in my heart. 1997-2010, 13 years!! Not a bad run at all :)
...good lord, I've been on the internet for 13 years?! I suddenly feel old...
When this ridiculous art theft occurred (by some kid calling himself Digi-Poke-NarutoKid of all things) I actually hadn't updated my original site since 2004; that was about when I finally invested in my own domain name and paid hosting service to create Entis Animation for my professional work. With that site, there was no need for The Griffin's Lair anymore, but I kept it up because, well, it was being hosted for free and it was nice to get the occasional email from people who'd discovered my work on that site and liked it, or who'd found the Japanese/English dictionary I'd written up for my anime shrine and thought it was really useful. I'm going to miss those emails, and I'm genuinely bummed that people won't be able to browse those old drawings anymore. I have to take steps to protect my work better though; things I upload to Entis Animation are fairly low resolution and embedded in Flash Gallery which makes it harder to steal, and any piece I complete now has my logo watermarked onto it. That wasn't the case for any of the work that was stolen :/
So, in a nutshell the guy who hosted The Griffin's Lair for so long kindly put a redirect that'll bounce anyone automatically to my current site, and will be deleting the old files at his convenience. Goodbye Griffin's Lair, you will always have a special place in my heart. 1997-2010, 13 years!! Not a bad run at all :)
...good lord, I've been on the internet for 13 years?! I suddenly feel old...