Tales of the End of Days

I went to the ROM today to see an exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was really something else, learning about how cultures affected one another, how the way people did things changed over time depending on the circumstances of their life, and seeing the amazing remnants of the past still very much alive and gathered together for us to see under glass.

I love the ROM, I'm a real museum nut, but I don't often get the chance to go to museums, and galleries, and all manner of things that I very much like, because I've never had friends who were interested in that sort of thing, or at least.. not interested in ever having to pay for things.

Seeing the scrolls in person was amazing, reading their translations and being able to get in reeeeeeally close to see the fragments with their beautiful cramped writing, the ink as clear as if it had been written yesterday. The parchment and papers were full of holes for translating, but I loved reading the translation of a bit of parchment that gave hints to the end of days... about the Apocalypse, and how the Lord would come down and would help the poor, restore sight to the blind and bring the dead back to living... It was just really awesome to read, and to think that it was written hundreds and hundreds of years ago, and was hidden in a cave to prevent destruction by the Romans. Gave a bit of a shiver up my spine and I was like... "Oooooooo.... cooooooool!"

There was so much of the ROM TO see, I was a little sad I couldn't just go haywire and run around the museum like the fascinated child in me really wanted to. It's been years and years since I got free range of the ROM (it was my first time inside the new wing, and I'm still not a fan of it. Inside OR out, though I think the original structure still inside the building was very cool), and I got to see the gemstones exhibit, the dinosaur exhibit, the Dead Sea Scrolls, I got a quick look at ancient world artifacts, though we walked through so quickly on our last minute hunt for the Book of the Dead, I was far too fascinated by a line up of flintlock rifles (those things are MASSIVE!!!!!) to really register where we were in the museum. Also got a passing glance of the mammals exhibit, and the awesome gold mosaic tile ceiling that used to be the main entrance of the ROM.

I'm so so so so glad Sarah and her family invited me along!

To the left (and by left I mean right, because I'm ridiculous) I have my drawing of Rebel. I didn't think I was going to finish this today because of the trip to Toronto, and I didn't like the way it was going, and I wasn't very fond of it in general. I don't do very well whenever I draw Rebel, and I really don't know why. He's cautious and thinks about everything he does. He's the counter weight to Ninja, who is very sporadic and doesn't think about anything she does. He's fiercely protective of his little sister (who is really not his little sister, but he raised her since she was practically a baby and that's just how they roll) and normally gets himself injured in the process of saving her from some reckless choice she made. In their story, he actually gets killed because she didn't think her actions through and in saving her.. he took a couple arrows to the back and didn't recover.

After that, Ninja thought a little bit more about her actions and became a little more hardened and stopped treating everything in life like some sort of massive game.

I think I'm going to redraw this picture.. Just because I've finally worked out what I would like this image to look like, and I'm not satisfied with his costume, and there's some anatomy things that are really bothering me.

Anyways, I'm tired. I crashed at like.. 8:12 last night and woke up at 8:30 this morning, I think I'm good to go to sleep again!

I'm out; 11:15

Look, It's A Jacket!

Yukio doesn't normally wear jackets because he can't get them over his arm. Looks like hes found a way around that little problem! Can't imagine his coat being very useful, all pinned up to his shoulder like that...

I've already gushed about as much as I could about how much I love Yukio and how much I love drawing him, but in light of the new RP... I GET TO DRAW HIM AGAIN!!! Muahhahahahaha. I was going to just use my old drawing, but I realized I couldn't because I coloured Ninja and Tinette in a completely different style than the second last picture I drew of this guy.

Coming up with poses that scream "Unstable" are very very hard; this is my latest attempt. You'll notice his legs are in the same position they were last time, with the toes pointed in. He walked a bit like a broken puppet, with twitchy awkward movements and occasional shuffling of feet. His clothes get torn to shit and he doesn't notice, often gets wounded and doesn't notice.. and he's right now covered in blood that isn't his, but belongs to someone else he recently dispatched.

In his defense, he's not really sane. He's still human under all of that! Somewhere.

I didn't draw his weapon again! Ooopsie, though actually I thought about that. Normally his weapon (Which is a blade split down the middle) attaches to his wrist, acting as a further extension to the modification of his arm. On consideration, it's a highly ineffective way to have a weapon, permanently fixed to your hand; and he's right handed anyways, meaning he fights with his weaker hand--

I made it detachable! And he's extremely proud of it.

I don't have any marvelous stories for today! I didn't crash my bike, or get hit by a car, or lose my homework, or even so much trip up a set of stairs.

I think today is going quite well!

My parents are back from Rome. Dad called me yesterday and woke me up from my afternoon nap to ask me how I was doing, and I told him I got hit by a car. He seemed baffled before asking, "How did you get hit by a car!?" Though I bet he hung up the phone and had a good chuckle at it. Only me, right?

Oh yeah, dad called me in the middle of my lecture, where my phone went off and scared the holy bejeebers out of me. I promptly tried to text him to tell him to stop calling, and he called again! Brilliant. My mom wanted to come and visit me tomorrow, but I had to take a raincheck on that because tomorrow I'm going to see the Dead Sea Scrolls tomorrow at the ROM with my friend Sarah and her family. I'm excited! And need to print off that ticket...

Anyways, I'm long overdue for a nap, so I'm going to crash now.

Sliiiiiide To The Right

Had to explain to my teacher today why I missed her class last week. I KNEW she was going to think I was a slacker! Pft.. stupid car. Oh well, she understood, explained to me the homework I missed and what I have to have done for next week (collages) and stuff like that.

SO THERE'S THIS GUY IN MY CLASS... Named Profideus. I don't have any idea if I have the spelling right, but isn't that just the awesomest name?! I thought it was bloody amazing.

If I could just slide everyones attention to the right! I present Ninja. This has to be the first drawing of Ninja that I've actually really really really liked. Normally when I draw my 16 year old hyperactive character... I don't like her. This is perfect! It's got her personality (it was supposed to be the thumb on nose 'Nah nah nah!' but it just looks like a happy wave) in the way she's standing, in her different coloured shoes, her red hair.. You know what, I think it was the outfit I was always drawing her in. This suits her much much better, and I think I'll give her original costume a redesign.

Goes along with the Tinette I posted.. last night? Rebel is next on my list of characters to draw =3 Then Yukio.

A Stitch Left Behind

Tinette, the super vain demon I posted about two posts ago 8D

Only now she's in a completely different world with completely different circumstances and completely different company. Sort of.. Technically. This is the same RP my last post was for, and I'm still working on the profile pictures for Rebel and Ninja. I just really wanted to draw Tinette today, so I did.

She's still the same old Tinette in terms of personality at least.

I wanted to try and keep her outfit mostly orange, and I was sitting on photoshop thinking, "Dull orange dull orange dull---" Dull orange = brown. WELL ANYWAYS, I kept her outfit mostly orange. I had a different doodle for this I wound up scrapping because it looked too much like it walked off the pages of a Final Fantasy art book... I think it was the stuck up colar that did it more than anything, oopsie.

I was having fun playing around with different techniques in colouring again, and I really really prefer working with as few layers as I can as opposed to layer hoping through a build up of twenty some odd layers. It's just too much effort and a pain in the arse. Once again, four layers total, one for colours, one for shadows, one for the lineart and one for the background. Which was transparent, but you get the idea... I went through a few choices for the overlapping shadows and landed on green, because it looked better than purple! I was also trying to use mostly shadows for this drawing, and I had a lot of fun painting them in.

I went to get my stitches removed today! Next time, I'll just bloody well do it myself. I brought my friend along because I am a huge wuss when it comes to doctors in general, and normally I force someone to come with me for even minor things (yet I didn't call anyone when I was hit by a car... In my defense, I was embarrassed) liiiiiiike... getting stitches removed. Kay... I think I want to avoid this nurse in the future. She's the same nurse who couldn't draw my blood last year, and the removal of the stitches was painful as hell. I felt like she actually grabbed my skin and took it with the stitch. I cried. Weep.

It wasn't until hours later, after I got home, had my shower, ran my laundry, ate lunch, watched movies.. When I realized that... there was still a stitch in my face. I didn't believe it at first, as I was busy removing bits of dead skin from the cut, but sure enough, there was a definitive black line where one of the stitches used to be.. and if it wasn't a stitch, then I had something seriously wrong. I asked one of my roommates if it looked like a stitch to her, and she said no. I wasn't convinced, and went back to the bathroom. I couldn't just leave it in there, but what was I supposed to do? It wasn't like I could go back to the clinic and be like... "Hey, you missed one, can you take it out now?" And I couldn't remove it myself because.. Well because it hurt like a holy mofo to get them pulled out earlier that morning.

In the end, the fact that I couldn't leave it in there beat out the fact that it was going to hurt, and I picked up my own tweezers (not the nice, precise medical tweezers the nurse was supposedly using on me) and.. pulled it out myself. And oh hey, that didn't hurt at all! What....

So yeah.. I think I'll just go ahead and remove my OWN stitches next time I get hit by a car and split my chin on the curb and have to get my face stitched closed. Or recruit a friend to do it so I don't have to. Hurray, stitches out! Now just a regular old cut to heal up!

Midnight Projects

I have really been having the most rotten string of luck lately. It has been a loooong seven days! Last Monday I crashed my bike into a bunch of bushes due to a dusty path and a lack of traction on said dusty path for my tires to cling to. They just skidded out from under me and left me with an interesting collection of cuts on my hands and a massive carpet burn on my knee. Oh and a sore shoulder, that too. I picked myself off the ground and finished my trip to school, needing to attend class.

I was stiff all of Tuesday, but I dealt. Wednesday however.. I got hit by a car that knocked me clean off my bike. I smashed my chin on the curb, picked myself up, prepared to continue on to class and had to stop because I was bleeding all over myself and hadn't noticed. Some witnesses saw me get hit and came over to help me; One of them called an ambulance and I was greeted by a lot of police officers and paramedics who asked me a lot of questions and took me to the hospital, even though I insisted I didn't have the time, I needed to get to class.

Turns out my whack on the chin was worse than I thought, even with the massive amounts of blood on my hands. I had to get three stitches put in, and tomorrow I get them removed. I'll have a lovely scar and had to stay home from Thursdays classes because I could hardly move, but my muscles are no longer sore and aching with every move I make; my worst injury is my chin and my knee (that I whacked again and the scab likes to split when I stress my knee too much). Within a few more days I should be right as rain!

Anyways, a doodle I made today during my lunch break. This is Rebel and Ninja, who I very much missed. Me and my friend opened up a new RP and I knew right away I wanted to use these characters again, as the RP I HAD introduced them to, died. I'll also have a chance to RP Yukio, though he's mostly going to be a plot device as he's too unstable and I can't control him on his own. He needs someone to obey.. and I think we've worked this out.

Right, so this is pretty much a process thing cause I had a large number of sketches for this idea.. I like drawing up inch tall thumbs of what I'm going to draw, generally just the bodies, maybe hair, props, clothes, but tiny things. I wanted to practice it on a slightly larger scale and then wound up drawing it to finish.. I don't normally do an actual mock up, but it happened because I got carried away. Then the final drawing, inked, cleaned up, flats and shaded. As usual I'm probably going to get bored and paint in that as actual painting, but I think I'd like to draw Tinette and whatever is underneath all those multiple multiple cloaks these two are wearing.

Posted mostly for the benefit of Corrin x3 because I know she enjoys things like this.

Just a step to the right

Today I present, Tinette. Just some quick colouring.

I'm still practicing my experimental technique of painting everything on one layer.. So far, I'm happy with it, I quite like how easy it is to flip between painting things because it's all on one huge layer! Yukio was painted the same way, with a flat coloured base that I built all of the shading on. the mud and dirt on Yukio however, was added on a second layer, just for ease of subtracting where I added too much mud.

Tinette had a grand total of three layers: one for the lineart, one for the painting, and one to act as a solid background so I could see what I was doing.

Tina is a demon; she's incredibly vain and absurdly proud of herself. She's a master of trickery, which is more or less solidified magics, as demons aren't a race known for their magical prowess. She is very fun to RP because she's a nasty bitch 8D She doesn't get offended easily but has a very.. angry personality. Oh, and you insult her looks or do something to damage her looks.. You're going to get hurt. Violently Vain, let's describe it as that.

I have one more left to colour, but I think I want to redraw it first as I'm not happy with it.

So WEEE, Tinette!

Just a dash of madness

Ta dum! Alright, so I've finished.. Two of four. I didn't colour his little alternate costumes this time around, because I wasn't very fond of them.

I LOVE this character; I love the inbalanced way he stands and the fact that he doesn't understand the way he interacts with the physical world.

He's not technically human anymore, and not technically alive either.. He's got a pulse and needs to eat occasionally so his body doesn't just.. rot and fall off his bones. Though I imagine that would be awesome...

I decided to add some streaks of gray to his hair to help enhance the whole.. 'Crazy' motif.

So, Yukio is awesome. He doesn't really understand the plane of the physical, and walks with this... shuffling gait, like a poorly manned puppet. He has no soul because he removed it years ago and stored it in a little phial he wears around his neck to protect him from his own dark practices. He rarely expresses emotions past anger, confusion, and psychotic happiness. He's mental capacity is much that of a child, and a LOT of things confuse him. He cuts his own hair, but.. he doesn't understand how scissors work, so his hair is very messy and asymetrical. He also stitches closed his own wounds and repairs his own clothes, but lacks the understanding on how to.. well work a needle and thread.

He makes these adorably creepy rag dolls to store peoples souls in when he removes them, because he's awesome like that. Wears SUPER high pants, and his clothes are all very old, and if he looked after them, they would be very nice. As you can see though, it's been many.. many years since Yukio considered changing his clothes. He doesn't UNDERSTAND 8D.

I love Yukio and need an excuse to RP him at some point or another.. Just as a side character though, he needs someone to keep him in check, as he doesn't realize when he's hurting people or doing things that could have disastrous consequences to himself or others...

Suka DOES miraculously manage to return his soul to him (somehow in the panic of almost dying, she releases it by shattering his little glowy phial) and he gets a little more.. Human.

In the ORIGINAL of my story, it was Yukio who fell in love with Suka and vice versa. Yukio went after her to save her when Eli kidnapped her and all that fun stuff, but I couldn't keep it. I couldn't keep it because Suka didn't have the backbone to carry on as she did up until she met Yukio.. It's a shock and a half that she has the guts to save herself by snatching and shattering his phial. So sadly.. Yukio had to take a step down and be a side character, and I had to invent a male lead who could BE there for Suka up until he gets his chance to cameo. He has a role, yes, but his original role was much, much bigger.

Oh right, I moved out. I'm now living with my fellow artists and classmates in a townhouse in Toronto. I'm still upset I didn't get into animation, but the excitement of the courses I'm going to be taking has overshadowed it to the point where I don't get.. TOO upset anymore.

I'm going to go play with my baby and see if the art jam is set to go yet or not!