Let the Madness Ensue!

I got so caught up in Gaia's Halloween event, I forgot I wanted to post this.

I do have a reason for drawing something so stupid, don't worry.

But first, a summary of my not so awesome night on the town!

When I first arrived at my sisters apartment yesterday after lunch, I dove right in to start cleaning. Cause I'm awesome like that. Weeeeell, I could only go through boxes of stuff that belonged to my sister, and anything of James' (sssss) I couldn't really touch because he said he had to sort through it himself. Everything was piled into boxes that weren't obviously marked as "Misc" but were serving that purpose. I did my best to trash, sort and organize everything, but I can only do so much with only 50% co-operation. Though he did get more helpful as I stopped trying to rummage through his boxes and let him do his own thing.

In the end, we didn't get a massive amount of cleaning done, but we did make a very nice dent in the amount that was left.

We could fit my mattress in the living room, which is where I had to sleep, so that was a sizeable dent.

After cleaning, we took a bit of a breather and decided to head out to paintball!

Holy crap, I forgot how much I loved paintball. When we first started, I started to hyperventilate and had to calm myself down so I could actually play, but I was highly amused by the darth vader sounds I was making through my mask.

Until I got shot in the knuckles and I realized.... Oh dear, this hurts a hell of a lot more than I remember.

Turns out we got much more powerful guns than the ones we got back in high school at Sgt Splatters.... and James doesn't seem to believe in the whole "mercy" thinG, or the "DO NOT HIT YOUR OPPONENTS IF THEY ARE ANY CLOSER THAN FIFTEEN FEET!" rule.

During our second round of capture the flag, I decided to set up the riot sheild to act as my own portable protection. James had to get the flag, and then make it to our side of the feild. If he couldn't make it, too bad, Jesika and I won. Well.. He didn't come the way I expected, and instead of coming around the building in front of me with the flag, he decided to take us out and capture the flag when there was no one to obstruct him. He came around on my left, and I noticed him a second before he started shooting and managed to fling myself backwards into the buidling provided. I gathered my wits, and approached the window, knowing I'd have a clear shot of him through that window.

Didn't HE have the same idea?

We both showed up at the window at the same time. He fired first, I got off two shots before one pelted me right in the neck. My shots clearly didn't hit home, but the one that hit me in the jugular knocked me clean off balance. I tried to recover, but the pain was insane. I caught my heel on a skid, and went down. Lost grip of my gun, landed hard on my elbow, whacked my knee, and was still blinded by the tingling pain in my neck. It hurt so badly I was actually fighting back tears; but it was justified. He wasn't even a full three feet away when he fired at me, and caught me on completely unprotected skin. And then to top it off, I fell over. I was flat on my back for about a full minute before I managed to bite my lip and roll over, having managed to stave off my tears. I crawled to my hands and knees, gathered up my gun and staggered to my feet--

When James kicked the door down.

I threw my arms up and told him not to even think about it, I was so beyond out.

We had to take a break after that, and I have a nasty welt on my neck to show for it. It's even worse now, surprisingly...

However, in the rounds FOLLOWING, I climbed up to a second story platform and hid there for a good twenty minutes, waiting for James to walk into my firing range. And he did. Oh he did, and I got him gooooooood. Left a mark on his thigh. I also staked out behind a door, that James kicked open and failed to notice I was standing directly behind. He bolted through the tiny room I was hiding in, and as soon as I confirmed it was james and not my sister... I fired three shots, one that got him on the underside of his upper arm and the other that got him in the vest. BUT I GOT HIM OUT TWICE, AND ONLY SUFFERED TWO WELTS FOR IT. And a shoulder scraping and a knee bruising, but that was because I fell. Like a sack of bricks.

So paintball = Awesome. I don't care the injuries I suffered, paintball is bloody awesome.

Then, we went to the Madison. On Madison street. So creative.

I don't like bars.

I'm not going to go there.

I went home feeling sick.

Jesika has given up on the idea of me ever actually enjoying myself at the Madison.

Or any bar.

Ever.

So the picture!

My sister was watching me as I doodled Ain in his winter get up; because Ain's a stick in the mud and doesn't care for Halloween (Though actually he's fairly superstitious so would wear a mask on Halloween), and asked me if I could draw her. As an Amazon.

Of course I didn't want to, so kept telling her I'd get around to it, and coming up with excuses not to do so. Until we missed the train to Brampton and had to sit at Union Station for an hour and she started harassing me again.

BTW my sister and I don't get along very well, I'm going to put that in right here because she's being a nasty bugger in the other room right now.

So I started a teeny doodle, and I came up with something, but it was boring, so I figured I wasn't going to use it. I tried to think about what I knew about Amazons, and what I found fascinating about them.

I don't know a lot of stories that involve Amazons, except the story of Hercules, where he needed to steal the garter off the Amazon queen Hippolyta (This is the same Amazon Queen who murdered the random unknown 'Antitheus'; Ainmires accidental namesake) in his seven labours.

Well... then I started getting really funny ideas, because my sisters loud and annoying and angry when it comes to her boyfriend James because he's so much stronger than she is and can easily incapacitate her when she's trying to hit him or poke him or do whatever it is she's trying to do.

They also spend their spare time trying to scar me, which actually disgusts me but no matter how uncomfortable I am and make it clear I'm uncomfortable, they won't STFU.

So here, I drew my sister, the angry Amazon woman and James, the powerful and slightly amused Hercules. I now only have one page left in my sketch book, and have to sleep on the couch because my sister is horrible.

She claims she doesn't make noise when she sleeps, but BOY is she wrong.

She also kicks.

And in staying up late and typing this blog, I forfeited my rights to the guest bedroom.

Fan-bloody-tastic.

I'm going to be a nasty bugger MYSELF tomorrow, and hide in my room and play on my iPod. I'll emerge hours later to finish the Gaia event, and my SISTER can get landed on the couch.

She's so evil when we're around the family Dx or other people. Or anyone other than the company of us two. When it's just the two of us, I can deal.

Alright, I'm going to bed.

Annie out!

1:49

From the Hand of the Great Masters----

Came the Adobe CS4 Masters Collection!!! Muahahahaha.

I'm pretty sure actual artists had nothing to do with the making of the program... But artists were in mind! Anyways, I'm kinda unfocused and still feeling rather bleh today (for no reason) so, I decided to just add something I quickly coloured and ramble for a while on my blog.

Yes, I'd so much rather post here where no one comments as opposed to my DA where no one comments. The blog is definitely more for me.

SO ANYWAYS, without any further ado, today I decided I wanted to design Alleiah, who can be recalled from my post I made months ago about these two guys; being their uncreative mother. Alleiah is Rebels birth mother and Ninja's foster mother.

I was watching a movie with Sarah and my mind started to drift back to a story idea I had a long time ago that was inspired by the city of Midgar; from FFVII. The idea of a walled city, and a fierce dictatorship. I liked the idea, but I never got anywhere to developing the characters in the setting. The were nameless, featureless people acting out a story that never had a solid plot line.

After finishing that movie, jumping around the internet, and flipping through a very very terrifyingly old notebook of mine, I went to bed. As I let myself gradually doze off, the characters for this nameless story became clear to me... Rebel and Ninja, characters I had more or less completely fleshed out, but never worked out what story they were in or what part they played.

Plots without characters, and characters without plots, it's a match made in heaven, right?

Anyways, this image is what stood out most to me in my mind as I fell asleep. It's some time after they've deserted the city (where Rebel was a relatively high up operative) and managed to track down their mother. The reunion didn't last very long, as other soldiers managed to follow the two back to their destination. Rebel, going hulk style, easily took out the grunt sent after him; refusing to be arrested because he wouldn't take innocent lives. He apologizes to Alleiah for bringing the danger to her door, where she kisses him and tells him he's a good son, that's she's proud of him, and to keep protecting her daughter (that she hasn't seen since she was born).

There isn't much plot past that point, but I'm thinking maybe it would make a good warm up comic for Timestamp... Something just to get into the gist of things before I jump into the complicated and relatively dark storyline of Suka's life.

Gold isn't really the colour of Alleiahs kind, silver suits them better, but it matches her skin and clothes. You'll notice by their ears they aren't human, Alleiah and Rebel both being members of a species of fae always referred to as "The Children" (Yes, I did totally steal that from my Battle of the Gods storyline; I always recycle ideas from projects of mine that never got off the ground), who aren't really trusted by the humans, and who don't really trust humans. Rebel lived a life of discrimination so his adoptive sister wouldn't have to.

I'm tired 8D Think I'll go read a book.

~11:00

A Field of Coloured Post-its

Just a very very quick post before I got to sleep as I'm very tired and need to pack in the morning and go home for the thanksgiving weekend!

Fruits of my labour (which is a fancy way of saying I wasn't paying attention during lecture today)!

Ta dum. Alright, first up, top left in green was me playing with my GREEN marker instead of with my BLUE marker, and the result was something I wasn't too fond of, but I was overdue for a happy Suka picture.

Right below that, is ME, expressing my frustrations at being unable to connect to the internet.

To the right, are all doodles of Tinette, as I was exploring her character design during class, both to match recent happenings in the RP (Yes, we destroyed her face) as well as just.. Character drawings because I'm rather fond of Tinette and enjoy drawing her hair. To the lower right, is an image of a child Tinette dancing (I bet you didn't know Tinette was a DANCER) and then beside her some 15-20 years later Tinette, also dancing. It's why she can fight so damn well and why she has no problem running stupidly long distances and stupidly fast paces. She's very pretty when she smiles, I discovered, but she doesn't smile a lot. She sort of like a female Ain... which is creepy to think about.

Speaking of! Above the dancing Tinettes I doodled Kara and Ainmire, because I hadn't drawn a single decent picture of Kara yet, and I can't really see Kara without her clinging to Ain... So Ain got roped into the picture too. Aren't they adorable? He looks very happy.

The next three on the right were me tinkering ever so slightly with Tina's outfit design, and then decided I should really stop obsessing over Tinette. So who did I draw? NINJA! Another one of my female characters who actually has a strong personality... I'm not totally sure where Suka came from.

Below the two girls, is Rebel, being tired, probably because of Ninja, again.

So on the walk home today, I crossed through the field like I always did, and was relieved to find there was no gym class. I was listening to "Lose You" by Pete Yorn, and while I was walking through the field I started to notice these very vivid pink squares scattered through the grass. It took me a few moments to notice they were post it notes, and there were also vibrant blue squares scattered about.. For some reason it felt very artistic and awe inspiring, just as little post its. It made me feel comfortable for reasons I don't know, and it made me feel very deep!

I enjoyed my walk home because of those post-it notes.

Fruit flies buzzing round my head, keep buzzin' round my head keep....

I'll keep singing to the tuneless song. Well it does have a tune, it goes to that song that's like... "Raindrops fallin' on my head, keep fallin' on my head---"

The other day while I was in the bookstore, I figured I'd buy myself a prisma colour marker. I already have a few of them, a bunch of varying grays, a green, a red... Fun stuff, but I saw the "sky blue" marker and for some reason it fascinated me.

I picked it up and decided to pay for it, the thought in my mind that I could use it to make achromatic drawings on top of my gray collection of markers. In my brain I was thinking I could start up a new style for myself as I got used to markers and started to build up my collection.

I'm enjoying it! To the right I have a couple sketches I drew tonight and coloured really really fast sketch like, just to try and get the feel. I also coloured a few of my older, cleaner sketches to see how it looked, and I've decided I want to pull out my green marker and try making achromatic drawings in green.

I also completely forgot about my gray set of markers and wound up not using them at all, but that's alright because I enjoyed myself with just the blue on top of all my messy lines and then my cleaner inked lines.

I was also experimenting with Tinettes design, and when I drew her hair I was like... "Ooooo, I LIKE this drawing!" It was supposed to be a doodle following the recent happenings of the RP, but I wound up liking the drawing enough to not want to destroy it.

My tea is incredibly sweet tonight.

I also was playing with eye styles tonight, because I just watched the Swan Princess and was like.. I want to try something ELSE for eyes! She just doesn't look... she looks far too like.. Eh, I wanted to give her more angular lines to match her angular face and her sharp personality. So for Tina, I looked up pictures of Megara, from Disney's Hercules to give me ideas for how I would pull off a more angular eye shape without looking ridiculous.

Also, something I noticed in the Swan Princess that I never picked up on before.. Adding eyelashes to characters eyes just gives them that much more depth. So when I doodled Suka tonight, I tried to give her eyelashes to look less flat and pasted on her face. AY FINK IT WORKED! Which of course, in turn, makes me happy.

Everytime I draw Suka now-a-days, she looks worried and unhappy. And is healed. I'm having far too much fun with this healed version from the RP, when in her world her disease kills her and she never really gets the chance to show off her face... Half a face is so hard to express emotions with! I like drawing her full face >< Oh well, I think I'll go and try to draw a happier Suka, and maybe play with my green marker, when I dig it up.

Tomorrow is my least favourite day of the week and I have the startings of a headache! Oh glorious.

And I am out! 10:25

It's All a Process!

I finished that picture of Yukio I was working on yesterday. I had a lot of fun, even if the background was super lame and made up on the spot. My roommate Leah says it reminds her of Christmas, and that this is Yukio celebrating Christmas time magic!

I'm sure that's the case.

It looks a little strange on my LCD monitor, but I'm still okay with it. As I predicted, even though there are some elements that bother me, like the fact that his head is too large and his vest looks a little odd (but I fixed it up a bit on photoshop so I liked it a little more) I am happy with it.

I forgot, however, to cover him in oodles and oodles of mud! Oh noes! This is an example of his better taken care of clothes; even if his vest clearly can't function the way it was meant to.

I quite like his boots!

Still fooling around with different techniques to cleaning up my line art. I think I like the way I was doing earlier, just erasing the red lines in my sketchbook so they're fainter, and then scanning in the image as black and white. Just by making the red lines fainter, the scanner fails to pick them up. Only thing I don't like about that technique is that the lines are rough and pixely. Not that you can tell when I downsize the image, but I can see it while I'm working and it just eats away at me.

This time around I scanned it in as a colour and removed the red channel and did clean up work and all that bull, and I still had spotty remains of my red lines left behind. You shouldn't be able to see them from the smaller image, but I could see them while I was zoomed in colouring in the flats.

Next time I scan in colour, I'm going to try the method I used to remove my blue lines; I'm going to use the hue/saturation slider and work with the magenta's, red's and whatever other sliders I have to use and see if I prefer that method or not.

Problem I have with those two techniques (with blue, or red, or whatever other colour I use) is that my lines are ever so slightly translucent, and you can see when I colour underneath them, especially with lighter colours like flesh tones, or whites and yellows. I think I can get around that by working with the curves slider though, so I'm going to experiment with that too, I think.

It's all a process right? Just need to figure out which of the many techniques I want to use! I would like to eventually learn to ink directly in photoshop with my tablet, but as of yet, I haven't figured out a way of doing that I like. Other than the pen tool, which I'm very practiced in and would like to step away from. I sort of like inking things in my sketchbook anyways, as it's something I was never very good at until about halfway through the summer where I started making a point of inking everything.

It's all a process!

It's A Bit Like A Mirror, I guess

A little over a month ago, my friend Ksenia asked me if Suka shared any of my personality traits. I thought about it.. and I thought about it.. and I suppose in a way, she does. Of course, it wasn't until I was walking home from the bus stop with a bag of veggies in the crook of my arm, I was thinking about how I always wind up drawing Suka holding her basket in the same manner.

And that is where this idea came from!

In a way, Suka is everything I want to be, and at the same time everything I never want to be. She's very sweet and kind, and no matter what, her primary concern is always those around her. A trait I wish I could pick up on. She also doesn't complain much, while I on the other hand, complain ceaselessly. It's another one of those things I wish I could just steal from my OC. She's also very subdued and quiet, while I'm loud and bright. Yet, we both don't like strangers or being in crowded spaces, or trying to make friends, and we don't like bugs, yes, we both hate bugs. Suka is also insanely needy and very tactful because she's afraid of angering people. I am stupidly blunt at times (It leads to unpleasantries between friends) and I'm not needy.

We both share the trait that in a stressful situation, we can both keep our heads until all reason for panic is gone, and then we break down and bawl. In some ways that's good, in other ways, not so much.

Here's a preview to the painting I'm working on right now. It's Yukio, again, because for the past two weeks I've had amazing life drawing models who have the most amazing, twisted, almost impossible looking poses, and everyone I drew I was like... Goddamn, these poses are so perfect for Yukio!!

And then I came home and drew him just walking around all happy like. I've already inked this, and laid down the flats, and NOW I'm noticing things I don't like (his head is too big, his vest ((which isn't in the lines to the left)) looks awkward on his body, and just a few other things) But I think when I'm finished painting it, I'll quite like it.

I like it already, because it just has Yukio's air too it, without me having to completely distort his body and make him stand pigeon toed awkwardly like I normally draw him. Not that I don't like those, it's just fun to draw him actually in action for once.

Ah yes, Yukio can use magic. Did I ever mention that? It was a concept I threw around on his creation- Warning, hyperlink leads to super super old badly drawn image - Where becoming the Soul Puppeteer, opened his body to be a vessel for all kinds of dark energies; which of course, he learned how to harness. Even after his soul gets returned to him, he is still capable of accessing these dark powers, but he doesn't like to use them because they're a reminder of a past he forcefully left behind.

I'm enjoying this image! Going to go continue painting now.