History
Back in 2004 or so, I started dreaming about owning my very own website. Why? Because I wanted a place to showcase a webcomic, called Amcornos, which was my pet project. The only problem was that I had no idea how to make a website (or a webcomic, for that matter), and I had never heard of free comic-hosting sites like Smackjeeves. So this presented a problem.
Nevertheless, I refused to give up on my dream of running my very own art website. I even had a name for it: Blue Uncia, after one of my favorite original characters. So, not to be discouraged, I created a new folder on my hard drive, called it Blue Uncia, got my mitts on a not so legal version of Dreamweaver, opened Dreamweaver... And that was about as far as I got. The interface was mind-boggling, but what was even worse was that the terminology was completely unintelligible to me. What the heck was a 'Home page' anyway?!

Simply put, I was as green as grass when it came to the website-building-thing. After clicking around for a bit, I got frustrated and closed Dreamweaver, vowing to learn how to use it properly once I had more time (and patience).

Years went by...

The dream to own my own website was still alive, somewhere in the far corners of my mind, but only just. The lonely folder called 'Blue Uncia' was still sitting on my hard drive, completely empty. And things looked set to stay like that for a looong time, until fate intervened. As part of a course in college, I was required to build a website. To make it possible for us to not miserably fail this course, my college was offering free HTML crash-courses to its students. Tentatively, I enrolled, secretly eager to acquire the skills to build my art site.

As it turned out, HTML is actually pretty easy to learn. The crash course only consisted of three two-hour meetings, and a test, and apparently this was enough to give me the basic knowledge I needed. On hindsight, I could have smacked myself. There are actually plenty of HTML guides on the internet, but it never occurred to me to look them up.

Summer 2006. After passing the test, I set to work to build Blue Uncia. After several test versions, I got one working that I liked. I gave it a few totally redundant bells and whistles, like the famous 'style switcher' and I got it to look nice and pretty. But then I hit a snag. I didn't have any content for my website!

An emergency patch-up job was required, so I created the first version of the current galleries. Having accomplished that, I sat back and reviewed my progress. I had a working website, which looked reasonably pretty. It had several web pages with impressive looking 'Under construction' notifications, I had a fancy style switcher, and I had a bunch of galleries containing some of my older art. Great! So far so good.

But I wasn't satisfied just yet. The galleries seemed like a great idea, but they still didn't offer enough content. I knew I needed something more, I needed a webcomic. But I wasn't quite ready to start on Amcornos yet. So then I had another brilliant idea. "Why not make a comic to provide content, while I prepare for Amcornos? Brlliant! BRILLIANT I SAY!! Oh, but what should this webcomic be about? Oh, I know! Pokémon! I like Pokémon, and a lot of other people like them too. It'll be a nice way to attract some visitors. Yes, I'll do that!"

For those of you who think Stuff of Legend, the comic that was born from this chain of thought, is this brilliantly planned master piece, I need to disappoint you. This is really how it went. I created a cast, based on my brother, a friend of mine, and myself. And then I pretty much dove into things, without thinking the plot through too much.

SoL would have died an early death, if it hadn't been for one magical event. My family decided to give me a Wacom tablet for my birthday. It turned out to be the PERFECT birthday gift. The tablet allowed me to produce art faster and faster, and it improved my technique. I don't know how else to explain it.

I kept producing one page after the other, and I filled the rest of the site with content, until there no longer was an 'under construction' notice in sight. So, on March 2007 I finally decided to take the big plunge. I contacted a webhost, purchased a domain and some server space, and released my site onto an unsuspecting World Wide Web. That's right, up until now, everything was strictly offline only.

More years passed. My tech-savvy cousin convinced me to streamline the site further by using includes, making it easier to update. I added more pages. More and more content got added to the galleries. Stuff of Legend actually developed a plot of sorts. I started receiving modest quantities of fan mail (and fan art, jay!). And slowly but surely we arrived at the present, summer 2009. The galleries are chuck-full of stuff, the fan art gallery now contains over 100 pieces (!!), I organized a contest, SoL has over 180 pages, Amcornos STILL isn't any closer to being publishable, and I'm seriously considering to revamp the entire site. Blue Uncia 2.0. If only I wasn't such a horrible procrastinator...

About Blue Uncia
As you may have understood by now, Blue Uncia is where I put the results of my creative enterprises. For the moment, most of my interests will be focused around graphic artwork, which you will mainly find in the galleries. These galleries are constantly expanded. Currently there is one active webcomic, called 'Stuff of Legend'. This comic is updated every Saturday. I also have various ideas for other comics lined up, although they still need to be thought through for quite a bit.

Copyrights
The copyrights to all the contents of this website belong to me, unless stated otherwise. The copyrights to all the art posted in the fan art gallery, belongs to their respective artists. The art was posted with their permission.
Stuff of Legend belongs to me, though Pokémon is a trademark of Nintendo/Game Freak. I run SoL solely for fun, and not to make a profit.

Just a few rules
Most of the art on this site is free for you to use in a personal context. All the images in the tutorials are free for you to use. You may download them to your own computer, for your own personal use. You may also take the images to publish on your own site, but I'd like to receive some credit.
You may also take and use images from all the galleries, for personal use (referencing, tracing, using it as desktops, etc.). If you want to use my art for your own websites, please contact me first and ask me for permission (chances are I'll say 'yes', unless the drawing in question is of someone else's character(s)).

About Stuff of Legend. This comic may only be displayed on my website, or on my DA account, unless I have given you written permission to show the comic pages on your own site. Of course, you may use the Sol extras. That's why they are there.

I DO NOT, under ANY circumstances, tolerate art theft. If I see you posting my art, and claiming it as your own, I will take action. I have plenty of ways to prove art theft, so don't even bother. I also do not tolerate direct linking, or 'hotlinking'. Bandwidth costs money. If you really want to show my art on your blog/site/MySpace/whatever, at least of the decency to upload it to a free image host like ImageShack first. I will find out if you hotlink, and I'll replace the images you hotlink to with nasty, nasty things. You've been warned. ;)

You may always request a link exchange, as long as you keep in mind that I don't link to forums. Your content must be uploaded to a website of some sort. I also don't usually link to websites with explicit mature content, although I'm not the strictest of people.

The chat-box
I have this gizmo called the 'chat-box' in my menu. It's a free tool, which allows you to leave messages for me, or any other visitor. The name 'chat-box' is actually misleading, because it isn't really like chatting. It's more like a tag board. Even if someone else is online, and you type a message, he or she won't automatically see it appearing on their screen. So please don't type messages like 'Hello, is anyone there?', because chances are no-one will answer. The chat-box has no automatic refresh, so unless you manually refresh the page or the box, you can't chat. Of course, I could upgrade to a premium account for 2 bucks per month, and get a box with auto-refresh, but you know... I'm Dutch... :P
Besides, I don't get THAT many visitors anyway. Also, no swearing, cursing, flaming or insulting other chat-box users. First-time offenders will be warned, and the offensive post will be deleted. After that, you'll get banned for two weeks, every time you cross the line.

- Last updated on: August 21st, 2009.

Copyright © 2006-2012 Blue Uncia - Charlotte. I do NOT own the rights to Pokémon or any other trademark. I DO own the copyrights to all my drawings, paintings and other creative products, including the storyline and the characters of my webcomic, Stuff of Legend. Please, do not copy any of this site's content without my explicit written permission and please do not hotlink.
Art found in the 'Guest art' section belongs to their individual creators, and was posted on this website with their permission. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.