@OmenaKettu - @Aalasteir (Q) - Index

Q: How would you describe your personality? You say that art is an essential part of human self-expression, which is very powerful, and you are passionate about art in all its forms. How did you develop your passion?

My friends describe me as passionate, giggly and a menace. I have trouble recalling a lot of the origins of my interests surrounding art, it might be one of those things that has always lied inside you and just has to be awaken? Now that I do think of it, trying to develop my own skills by broadening my vision and really pondering hard on every small detail of the things around me helped me to become more empathetic and understanding of art forms and styles I used to think badly of, for example modern art or art targeted by cringe culture.

Q: How do you feel being online has affected you? How would you describe your experiences with it? The origin of your username: OmenaKettu

I've kind of always been a terminally online gremlin since my toddler days, but I started inserting myself properly when I was introduced to an imageboard designed for children called Papunet. I saw people in there drawing cool anime wolves and I felt like I finally had found my people for the first time LOL. The amount of time I spent there posting foxes drawn with a laptop trackpad is concerning, the imageboard had set times of operation hours where it closed by 4 PM and I'd have meltdowns if my time with the site was cut down for the day. My addiction became less severe once I discovered other platforms from there that worked 24/7 like DeviantArt so my fears of missing out weren't an issue. A lot of my childhood was coming up with OCs, drawing comics and roleplaying with my online friends.

OmenaKettu is finnish and literally means AppleFox. As a kid I was a huge fan of foxes and some apple jam pastries from lidl. I came up with it when I had to try think of a more unique name than just 'fox-fan' and it just kind of stuck!

Q: How do you feel creating art has influenced you?

I kind of live and breathe art. I'm of course not an expert of it, far from it. I barely know any proper art theory or proper names for styles or artists, but art is something I constantly consume in some form and discuss so often I have a hard time of thinking of any other ways to meaningfully talk with other people.

Q: Where does your fascination with Goblins come from?

Oh man, I think we can blame World of Warcraft for that one. :d

Q: How do you feel that doodling at an early age, whenever you got story ideas, (what were some of the story ideas?) has affected you? In what way do you think that passion has evolved over the years? When studying other artists' illustrations and speed paints, what do you focus on, and how do you feel this has helped you?

  I've come to face the same issue all artists eventually do where the more you learn the craft, the more you struggle to draw for just the fun of it. I miss the days I could pump out drawings nonstop even if they were lower quality. On my papunet days I would constantly start new comics, uploading a few panels and then immediately moving on when the next story concept idea hit me. One that I think fondly of was about a dog that was turning into a 'golden warrior' where his teeth one by one slowly started turning golden.

When I was really trying to focus on learning art better, I hunted down speedpaints for artists that I loved and observed how they rendered things like colors and shading and little details. Atryl is one of the first artists I remember who's art I studied very hard, still use some of their brushes to this day. Of course my way of doing it is not the proper one, if you're starting out as an artist it's recommended to start with the basics like learning anatomy and understanding basic shapes foremost. Otherwise you end up like me who is good at rendering art but sucks at anatomy to the point of uncanniness. xd

Q: How to discover @MindChamber's art?

I discovered MindChamber's work through Madness Combat, 'With My Mind's Madness', 'Madness Regent' and 'Madness Accelerant' are to this day my favourite things to come out of Madness Combat. I just kind of fell in love with his art style at first sight and consumed near everything he had put out. He was a biiig inspiration during my art phase when I was focusing more on flowy and exaggerated cartoony stuff. Hell, a game project I worked on in school called 'PizzaBot' took heavy influence from his work.

Q: The story of you creating your account on 6/1/13

Pretty sure if memory serves right I made my account for the sake of Epic Battle Fantasy 3 :d I still yet didn't fully comprehend Newgrounds as a website, even if everything I consumed grew it's roots from there, I just had always consumed it through other platforms. I returned to Newgrounds to stay after becoming a fan of SleepyCabin in like 2017 and quickly became VERY passionate about Newgrounds when I realised it was the forefather of web art culture.

Q: How do you describe your experience of the NG Dublin Meetup 2024? Did you have specific expectations? And was there something that you were afraid of?

When I arrived on Friday I won't lie I was shitting bricks. I'm very much a homebody and suddenly I was all alone in a country I had not researched much at all and didn't understand anything of, at night time. My hostel sleep pod was humid as hell too to the point I barely got sleep, was regretting my trip hard at that point. But the next day when I could finally start meeting up with the other fellows everything clicked in place and it was SUPERB wonderful just walking around as a group and talking about NG stuff! Made all the suffering fully worth it. <3

Q: How did you become interested in history? What are some specific periods or events that you particularly enjoy? Was history also your favorite subject in school? What specific media about history do you really like?

I blame 'Once Upon a Time...' cartoons for sparking my interests. I really find the entirety of Bronze Age interesting, how humans developed their ways of society and culture each in such different yet all the same similar ways. As a kid I leaned more towards learning about Stone Age, I was fascinated by hunter-gatherer societies and inventions.

Q: Do you still like dinosaurs, and what did you enjoy about the "Once Upon a Time.." history cartoons?

I still follow some Paleontology enthusiasts on twitter, Protoceratops is my fav dino. :3 Once Upon a Time... Man and America were cartoons that I had playing on TV nonstop as a kid, the way they depicted life throughout different phases of history was really comfy yet interesting and educational, plus they made raw meat look like the tastiest thing ever. It's been ages now since I've last seen them but I remember being simply hooked on them, maybe I should revisit it.

Q: How does being born with a severe brachial plexus injury make you feel, and do you sometimes get frustrated when people don't understand what it's like?

It's something I've lived with through my whole life, so it's not like I miss something I've never had. But the disability was something that haunted my future since childhood regarding my employability. I only had one good working hand and no brains to make up for it, so art was something I was allowed to focus on since childhood in hopes of it turning into a career. Well turns out I don't want to make my art into a proper career, and I can somewhat keep up with my coworkers despite my mom's warnings, but I won't lie it is very frustrating to live with a handicap that sets you on a level lower from your peers no matter how hard you try.

Q: You mentioned that during your childhood, you suffered from an incomprehensible speech impediment and experienced occasional brain farts when speaking out loud. When I met you in real life, I didn't notice any speech impediment and understood everything you said. I am very surprised by this. How did you overcome your speech impediment?

When I was a kid I went to a lot of speech therapy. I don't remember when I exactly overcame my condition, my speech of course always made sense to ME but I constantly hear about funny stories and vocabularies I used to have. These days I'm good at 'faking it till you make it' my way through social encounters but there are a lot of times still I twist my words or completely forget them, even worse in English. I remember at the Dublin meet-up I was trying to ask Matt (Matt-likes-swords / Kupogames) to draw me NoLegs, accidentally kept calling him TwoLegs. I mixed the words up with goddamn warrior cats lingo.

Q: When you were a toddler, your family had to keep you in children's reins while traveling. One time, when you were not wearing them, you ran away from your grandma and straight into a pool, nearly drowning if not for a lifeguard. This horrified your mother and grandma, now you find it funny. Has this experience changed the way you view the world?

No, I do remember the moment I was underwater still but I feel like I was still too young to fully comprehend it. It's always been retold to me back as a funny story too which probably has helped keeping the memory as a lighthearted one.

Q: Do you feel that people can be too critical of art that might be described as poorly made?

Oh yes absolutely. I used to argue with my friends about the validity of illegal graffiti and modern arts. I think people often think too much about the techniques and skills that have gone into a piece, instead of the story, meaning or human soul behind them. A Person leaving their touch on the world even if it's just a dick doodle. Nothing pisses me off more than people harshly critiquing art done for pure joy's sake, like youtubers making critique vids calling meme animations done by kids as shit or in general people ridiculing beginner or otherwise 'weird' artists publicly.

Q: How would you describe your personal art preferences? Specifically what do you enjoy, about what you find nostalgic like MS Paint Sparkledogs and old Flash creations?

My tastes flip flop so much I have a hard time keeping up myself but generally I love art with a lot of tiny details so you can keep staring at it forever. I used to focus a lot on art styles inspired by 80s/90s urban art and fluidity especially when inspired by other NG artists, but nowadays I've been mostly heading towards a more semirealistic style as I've consumed more fantasy content in recent years. I looove old-school and grimdark fantasy art currently. However rainbows and glitters still remain in my works! :3

When I was a kid I played a shit-ton of animal dress-up flash games and watched 'Eevee Party 2' or 'SSS Warrior Cats' on repeat, but on the other hand I consumed a lot of NG classics as well, some examples I'll recall are Johnny Rocketfingers, Age of War 2, Castle Cat, Sonic Shorts and of course my beloved Epic Battle Fantasy <33 All the flash content I consumed has totally left it's impacts on me even as I continue my art journeys.

Q: What makes good OCs backstories, and intertwining Lores? what do you love about stories?

That's the beauty of it to me, it doesn't really matter when making personal OCs because all that is important is that they resonate with you. As long as that is the case, bits of story ideas and such will continue to bloom from there like a tree. I do totally view my silly little OCs and their stories n lores as a special garden I tend to. That's why I like stories from others too, to see what is important to each person and the ways they communicate their own passions and ideas in ways I couldn't come up with in a million years.

Q: Is it difficult being a Jack of all trades?

It's a double-edged sword, on one hand you can do a lot of things by yourself but on the other you're not really a master of any.

Q: How do you get the inspiration to try traditional art and writing?

Often by seeing things from other artists doing traditional art like showing off their sketchbooks or oil paintings. My writing inspiration comes often from fan fiction and I am not afraid to say it.

Q: Your experiences with doing graffiti? Why do you feel you were bad at it, and why does it hurt your only working arm?

I didn't have enough opportunities practicing different spray techniques or experimenting, I didn't really know places where I wouldn't be caught so I often had to wait for nights I was alone so I could sneak out of the house. I stopped very soon after a piece I made left my healthy hand aching so bad I could barely even press down on the spray cans anymore as I was working on it, and the following day my mom had spotted the piece and recognized it as mine. It was enough to convince me to stop LOL. I recently got to try graffiti again when my mom wanted to paint a storage house she owned, but I'm sad to report the spray cans still fuck up my hand and I'm not about to risk losing my only functioning hand.

Q: What does it mean to be oneself? 

Self-expression is important for the human soul, and it comes in many ways besides just art, Like fashion or hobbies. It's okay to change how you do it as you go about growing as a person, but never let anyone else make that decision for you. Never compromise on who you are, be unapologetic about it no matter how weird or fucked up you're declared from it. Because at least then you can at least know you are true to yourself.