elle maya (or maya elle) (or elle) (or maya)

21 / pronoun ambivalent

Hi! This is my silly little homepage. I'm a australian artist who draws, animates, makes music, codes, writes, etcetera etcetera. I'm pretty much doing a bit of anything as long as I'm vaguely interested in it.
Currently, I'm trying to work on comics - I'm much busier these days as a working adult unfortunately!

What software do you use to draw / animate?

Well for the better part of the last 6 years you would've caught me using Medibang Paint Pro, a free (albeit with an ad on startup) drawing software absolutely not made to be animated in. I however recently upgraded to Clip Studio Paint EX, a premium art product which has a significantly cheaper "Pro" version with more than enough features, a 6 month free trial and regularly goes on sale if you'd like a copy (although Medibang is more than powerful enough!). If I'm animating, I'm using Blender Grease Pencil mixed with its more traditional 3D tech. It's free, and is what I use in rare moments of sanity. I personally learned most of what I know about it from this video by Worthikids, although I'm sure there are tens if not hundreds of other helpful tutorials on youtube if this one doesn't float your boat.

What tablet do you use?

I currently use a Wacom Cintiq 16! It works quite nice, but I am on my second one (the first one had its screen crack, thankfully under warranty!). I don't think something like this with its glass screen is designed to withstand the 40C+ Australian summer - at least, the climate change heatsink version of it, anyways. Prior to that, I used a Wacom Intuos Pro Medium for about 6 years. The drivers were a bit dodgy, it chewed through pen nibs, and frankly the lack of a screen was annoying; but it lasted from 2017 until mid-2022 before it finally began playing up, so I can't complain too much, considering how the average cycle of a drawing tablet these days seems to be 2 - 3 years.

Computer specs?

I recently upgraded from an awful decade-old heatsink of a PC, so here's my thankfully much nicer PC's specs:

• CPU: Ryzen 7 5800X
• RAM: 32GB DDR4 (can't remember the brand nor will my pc tell me)
• Storage: 2TB SSD (+ a bunch of other HDD storage devices)
• Motherboard: ASUS PRIME B550M-A WIFI II
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 with 12GB VRAM
• Monitor: Some random Lenovo at 1080x1920

My original build was about $1400AUD all up with case + fans and such and a stopover GPU, and it was another $700AUD or so to upgrade the GPU to that 3060 and monitor. I can't recommend building your own PC enough - avoiding RGB saved me several hundred alone, and just getting some low-end GPU also saved me a couple hundred if not thousand dollars (although gaming was bottlenecked until I upgraded). also, if you're really really cheap (like me), scouring suburbs around verge collection and your local tip can yield great results. people have a habit of throwing out perfectly good PCs because they don't meet their needs anymore! just make sure to wipe the hard drives, because the same people who throw out good PCs also aren't really concerned about identity theft.

WTF is this font?

Assuming its loaded properly, this is funnytype, a font aiming to recreate my digital handwriting. you can download it here. previously, the site featured sluckfont, another font of my own creation I use quite often in my works. this font is nice and blocky, and I've also been informed by dyslexic and blind(ish) friends of mine that it's very easy to read things written in it, so do with that info what you will! you can download it here. if you'd like to use either for your own works, they're both under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, so feel free to use it for whatever (with credit, of course)!

hey, what's that banner thing at the bottom of the site for?

it's my way of sharing my friends' and others' cool neocities sites! click on it and you'll be whisked away to another world :]. if you want to join this cool little circle - down below this paragraph is the current banner for this site! if you wanna make your own, it's just a 1:4 ratio image/animation, so something 100x400px, 200x800px etc would work.

(p.s. if you want your own here, just hit me up and show me your site and I'll add yours into rotation if I think it's cool! like a little endorsement from me hehe)

How do I contact you?

if you want to contact me, you're best to do it through my twitter, where my dms are open and I can actually see said dms. if you want to email me, you gotta go through the twitter first as well and ask nicely. I'm not one for formalities, so don't expect anything fancier.