About

You can call me Jin, or Lonemiqo. He/him. I like amassing worrying amounts of mostly useless knowledge and lore from my favorite fictional worlds, science fiction, tiny food reproductions, stickers and books, lots of books, from fiction to drawing manuals to lorebooks and artbooks and comics. By day, I am a video games translator, but it wasn’t always like that.

I hail from the capitol of Italy, Rome. Even before I was born, my parents watched Heavy Metal at the theater, and so it was that the seeds were planted for my interest in sci-fi, fantasy and drawing. Then at 6, barely able to read, I watched Metropolis, by Fritz Lang, a silent movie which shaped my love for art déco, dizzyingly tall architecture, and again, science fiction.

I had been playing all this time, but at some point I got obsessed with Wolfenstein 3D and started writing fanfiction and drawing Wolf3D OC fanart, even before knowing what that meant.

Then, a couple years later, I got across my first manga, which was Sailor Moon. That same year, I started drawing manga-style and creating tons and tons of OCs based on the Japanese stories that I had started buying tons and tons of.

I also went to comic school a long time ago, but when I learned what being a mangaka really entailed, the constant need to churn out stories and pages, the effects on their health that this entailed, I decided to give up trying to be a professional artist and chose my second favorite thing, which was translating. Possibly from Japanese. I wanted to learn Japanese to be able to play role-playing games in their original language. I even had my training arc and went to Japanese school in Tokyo to learn all I could!

But enough of that; let’s talk about art.

Even though I mentioned that I get hyperfixations around games, movies and books that I fall in love with, my real game is in OCs (original characters, though if you are here, you probably already knew that). But with time, and because I was driven into a freelance career, I had less and less occasions for drawing and for almost 10 years I stopped altogether. But then, in late 2019, something happened that changed that.

I started playing Final Fantasy XIV.

Some of you might be nodding knowingly at this point; this game truly is capable of permeating the thoughts of any artist ever, and I think one of the reasons is, it makes you really care for your character. They aren’t just a placeholder to watch the story unfold, they actively participate in it and shape it by their actions. And so I fell in love. And I slowly realized my character, T’khot Soulblaze, was more than just an avatar. He’s the one my nickname on this site comes from. I started thinking up a backstory for him, and small scenes in the game’s story in more detail than the cut scenes showed. More importantly, I started drawing him constantly. After almost a decade, I was drawing again.

Enter T’khot Soulblaze.

My FFXIV alter ego is a Miqo’te youth, a race of humans with cat-like ears and tail (they also increasingly share traits with felines, they curl up when going to sleep and stretch exactly like a cat when waking up for example). Almost from the start I felt a special connection with him, and with time I found out that was most likely gender euphoria.
I love him so much, I’ve made him into my face online, and he’s the whole reason I started considering again spreading my art on the Internet (and offline as well!).

I want to draw him as a fashion icon; as an adventurer, as the Warrior of Light, as the protagonist of comics written by me, and I promise I will get there in time. I’m planning a merch series with him. I even made an isekaied version of him who’s just hanging out in Tokyo like I do. (He’s waaaay more fashion-savvy than me in those artworks, though)

Why do I make art?

I make art because it has the power to make me feel incredibly fulfilled. I seek that fulfilment in each stroke of my pencil, looking at my finished drawings and seeing something that I like. For me, the process is the entire point and the joy of using my hands and my brain to create is unparalleled.

Maybe because I was born in an age where making art still meant using analogic means like paper and pencil, I want to advocate for analogic art. For pencil sketches, inked sketches, watercolor sketches, alcohol marker sketches. Even the numerous digital artworks you’ll see on this site are born as analogic pencil sketches, which I then transfer on iPad or PC to work on them. My favorite thing as far as completed artworks go are monochrome drawings and grayscale illustrations. I owe much of my passion for drawing to manga, and as such, I feel most at ease and confident with this kind of art, and with cinematic scenes and dynamic poses. My main subjects are characters, and fictional worlds with rich backstories.

What I want to give to you, dear visitor, is inspiration. I like creative chaos, and I found out that you can’t create anything from nothing. I fell in love with inspiration references like ideas for character designs or moods you can find on Pinterest, and I would be happy if looking at my art gave you the itch to create something yourself.

Also, being a queer person myself, please assume that ALL my characters are some flavor of queer themselves. They’ll be either not cisgender, or not straight, or both. I want to only live in safe spaces and offer one to those who visit this site.

And lastly, an important disclaimer:

Every single thing I’ll ever produce and you find on this site will be 100% human-made, including my worst enemy, copy. No AI output whatsoever is used intentionally on this site, and if you do find any elements that are produced with AI, please let me know either commenting on a blog post or via contact form.

I hope your stay is a pleasant one! And if you like to read my yapping, consider subscribing to my little newsletter.