RULES:
Answer each question in as much detail as you like. Skip anything you don't know or would prefer not to answer.

How many usernames have you had? (You don't have to share them!)

too many to count really ! i had a tendency of changing it every time i got into something new (and generally picking fandom-based usernames...) so every 2-3 years, and randomly changing my usernames in the middle of them too + making new accounts... this is the longest ive ever kept a single name at four years

What does your current username mean?

it's really the words "toxicity" and "toxoplasmosis" jammed together . my reasoning? i really just liked how it looked and sounded, but also parasites = cool and a loose connection to cats as they are the only host that allows the parasite to breed as well as the alteration in behavior in infected rodents being interesting. really though, i just needed something original and not tied to any character i was a fan of at the time when i was making my website URL!

What is the first program you used to make digital art?

almost certainly microsoft paint... my wife......

Where did you first start posting your art?

does anyone remember Scratch, the coding website? there (was, i havent used it since i was 13..) a very active art and animation community on there and that's where i got my start really posting and making digital art back in roughly 2011/2012, 2010 if you stretch it

What is the first piece of media you drew fanart for?

i'm going to go past the answers of things like "pokemon" and "sonic the hedgehog" because those things make up like 90% of the answers to this question so im going to say warrior cats and the lion king when i was 7-8. you can really see that i had my start drawing quadrupeds/felines as that's still what im most comfortable with (and i really liked stories about cats dramatically killing each other over completely stupid and petty reasons)

Who was your first self-insert/persona/fursona? What did they mean to you?

i've had countless over the years, but my earliest were all Warrior Cat ocs, a tossup between LostTail and Beaconbright. both were pretty "of the time" being played-straight possessed by demons and stuff, which actually awesome and i treasure both of them for that. (beaconbright was possessed by a evil cat once, grew wings at will, and took a vow of peace after killing several people. Losttail was more of my representative at the time, and i can't remember her whole story but she had her tail ripped off when she was a kit.) Both of them were kind of loose on the personality (it was just my personality, i guess, but i never considered them straight-up self inserts) because i was like, 8 years old, but i hold them very close to me for being some of my earliest and most passionate expressions of my artistic ability, and for being without the shame that sunk in just a couple years later.

for quite a few years after that i tended to use canon characters to functionally act as a persona, whichever one i related to the most i themed my accounts and everything after and drew them in place of me. i was actually doing this up until like, 2020! you might be able to guess that because my name is Dib. i had lots of fursonas and my plush-persona during this time, but none felt like they stuck and i typically only used them for private and personal pieces outside of rare instances. i have so many fursonas that suffered this fate that i actually can't count them all off the top of my head

Who is your current self-insert/persona/fursona? How are they different to your first?

Max, my icon, is my current fursona, and .. Maxwell, the neon-haired plush-angel on my profile is my persona. Max is pretty similar to my originals in spirit, and that's on purpose. they're both colorful cats with spiked collars and fluffy bangs and that sense of shamelessness. Maxwell is just the same since i first made her, only changing with how my real self changes, like the color of hair. Palette, is um. well. she's Palette

What phases/styles has your art gone through? (e.g. Did you have an anime era, a cartoon style, a watercolour phase?)

my art can really be better described in eras of media i was into due to that being the driving factor behind most things i do, but here:

1. just figuring out i CAN draw, very young child. mostly crude pictures of pokemon and sonic the hedgehog and animals like foxes or cats or dragons

2. it's all cats and dragons now, but still primarily focused on learning the basics of animal anatomy. i also got introduced to the world of Warrior Cats AMVs, solidifying my love for animating and animation forever. around 7-8 years old

3. POKEMON TIME PART 2: HUMANS. i wanted to draw the humans i was into at the time so badly but ijust physically could not so i drew them in a kind of "chibi style" i copied off deviantart pages i was scrolling. maybe 9-10 years old?

4. UNDERTALE TIME : FORMATIVE MEMORY CREATED. i also first got exposed to the fandom concept of "furries" around this time and just knew that's what i belonged to so i started drawing those for the first time as well. i was quickly advancing and was more or less capable of drawing humanoids and furries now! stylistically, they were strongly influenced by Undertale spritework and my favorite UT artists of the time, as well as cartoons like Gravity Falls and MLP:FIM (i was drawing a lot of ponies.). i was always obsessed with making my own style for furries, but i did copy things from animated movies. animation was also a huge thing i was working on at the time, i animated basically daily. i wouldve been 11-12 here

5.5. Mini Era: DINOSAUR TIME. i had always enjoyed drawing dinosaurs, but this is when i decided to Get Good at it. i did a lot of tracing skeletals to learn the anatomy and reading whatever scraps of information i could find on them. Dinosaurs are the other thing i've always been disproportionally good at drawing over anything else. this is around ages 12-13

6. steven universe era. we don't talk about the cataclysmic effect this had on my art style. ages 12-15

7. no seriously that went on for so fucking long. i mostly copied fanartists of that shows style up until around the middle of 2018 i decided to take my generally cartoony but otherwise semirealistic and grounded style (for animals/furries, more cartoony for humanoids) and exaggerate it and make it as geometric, bright and ugly as possible. i actually respect what this phase did for my art later, like learning how to use colors and shapes and stylization, AND the general mindset of revelling in my art being "ugly". however it was very strange looking with sonic-style neon yellow uni-eyes, giant hands and feet, pencil-thin long necks and waists. this just got worse and worse, plateaued and actually started to refine into something more cohesive until i hit a hard reset at age 15

8. INVADER ZIM ERA: HARD ART STYLE RESET. i just tried to copy Jhonen's style as hard as physically possible during this time, like, that's literally all i did. there's some palaeart thrown in there but it's basically all just trying to be as Invader Zim as possible: giant eyes, long bodies, pencil thin wrists. this actually did really good things for my style and i still have this like backbone to my current art keeping me going. this was from ages 15-17

9. wtf ever im doing now i dont even know

What/who do you think has influenced your art style the most?

animation in general, all the things listed above, and just animals and furries in general! i've already talked about my inspirations, though

What/who inspired you to be an artist?

i wanted to be an artist because i wanted to see my favorite characters move around and in situations and no one else was making the exact ones i wanted to see . everything else is just a mutation on that

What tools are integral to your current workflow? (e.g. Programs, brushes, references.)

cup of soda by my desk, MS-PAINT, emotional support Swatch PNG

What improvements have you made recently?

basically everything, but ESPECIALLY humanoid anatomy and a broader range of body types, poses and composition

What steps would you like to take in the future?

BACKGROUNDS,.S . PLEASE. and getting back into animation, and much bigger more intricate pieces.. especially not focusing on the lineart being "PERFECT" based on arbitrary rules (perfectly smooth? no wobbles? exactly like the sketch with no differences? completely smooth, no errors due to being made with human hands. i HATE it i don't even want this, i just think its not right or wasted time if i don't do it.. even though it looks worse when i'm done half of the time) because THAT is what sucks the fun out of my art and makes me have anxiety attacks every 5 minutes while drawing. just anything that happens to catch my interest though im not much of a planning kind of guy