Henson heroically hefts his handy Homeville-ian Homescythe! XD
Heroic Henson
drawn Nov 2, ‘09
(571)
Fanart for Aja’s contest! I did not win. But those who won definitely deserved it. And I’m pleased with this picture, so everything is as good as it can be!
I need to study clothes. Meh.
It's a bunch of asylum resi- I mean, music students!
May Ling’s Recital Poster, take 1, 2009
drawn Nov 1, ‘09
(571)
Ummmm. This was my first try at a recital poster for this year’s recital. It fell through when May Ling told me she had about a dozen Conservatory students that would otherwise have gone in the middle. : P
Here’s the finished version, to remind you what I eventually came up with.
So, this version has all the important stuff, and six music students… Tab, a nice first-year, who came out nearly recognisable, KevinN… …… …who always wears shorts, JenniferH, Endy, whose name I spelled wrong (he has crazy hair but not that crazy), Clinton, who is a brilliant - and I mean jaw-dropping good - pianist but never dresses for it, and meh on the end.
I’m off to rename my kitty and let Tam get at the last of Greenhills! Then he shall warp forward in time and get his CANDY-CANE SPEAR WOOT. Then I just need to get Gullac up to tempo so he can get his CANDY-CANE DAGGERS. I don’t even know what secondary class I want for him. Warrior? Mesmer? Ooooh…
Last night, I played Zelda: Spirit Tracks, and I nearly got to the first dungeon. Zelda is a pushy little brat, isn’t she? Much different than the princesses of the same name that I know… I mean, she knows what she’s doing, and she does it well - but she’s rather selfish and it comes across strongly. Perhaps this will be her ‘learning journey’ - after all, this Zelda has never known not being a princess! (though the other ones were the same, and they weren’t so selfish… or freaked out by everything!)
Also I dreamed that Han Solo, Princess Leia, my mom, and my brother broke into an Imperial detention centre in a supermarket in order to rescue a Stradivarius violin. Oh, and Marteth had bright green hair. o_O7
(btw comments make me so happy! Thankies!)
I thought someone might find this interesting, so here it is! - It’s the two sides of the piece of paper that I used to help me plot out Pent’s Story. On the one side, like so:
is a map of all the characters and how they relate together. As you can see, some of them I didn’t name at first - or at all, until it came to actually writing. And I did some digging on the Fire Emblem Wiki to find out all I could about Etruria. This chart was an amazing help to me. I recommend this method to everyone writing about a group of more than three characters.
While actually writing the story, I used several lists in each chapter:
A short synopsis of the chapter plot
A list of the heroes, including their unit class, personality, age, origin, and sleeping arrangements on the march
A list of other characters with a one-word reminder of who they are, crossed out if they’re dead - looks like this:
Ocery strongnoble Lorad Ceciliafan
Aldash gobetween Lesil Louisefan
Deis Oceryland Rhost Douglasknight
Vork Clericdude Blier weaknoble
And at the bottom, a more detailed synopsis of the plot, with the part I haven’t written yet highlighted in red
And a list of what everyone is carrying in their packs (each holds up to five items, as per the game rules)
The other side of the paper:
is just a map of Castle Wrigley, Pent and Louise’s home, to give me a general idea of how it all fits together. But unfortunately, I have no sense of scale, so the ballroom is massssssively huge, and the kitchen is the tiniest thing. But they’re in the general place that they are in my head. Except I forgot the cute mini-towers on the corners. Oh well. Someday I’ll do a picture of the front of the castle. There is also a third story, which is more of the same of the second story, but with more servant bedrooms. I didn’t draw anything on it.
I have ideas for expanding the opening of Zela’s Story. There needs to be something more happening between when Zela and Flaer meet, and when they get married. Otherwise, it’s just extremely dull and icky romance without actually showing the dynamic between the pair. I may as well start the story from when Tam fell on Flairé! But I do want to have more, so I’m going to have a little story about the Lilemlen ‘court’, which will expand on what Flar, Stialia, Flaer, and Lyrestan actually DO all day, the relationships between these four and Zela and Gyoriing, introduce new characters for a more dynamic and wider world (though that means more to keep track of! Oh noes!) and maybe even have a little bit of Tam! Not too much. He does love attention. But this will be from Flaer’s POV, and will often watch Zela. Because I know who she is again, but it’s hard to put down on the page. So I need to put a lot of it. Yes? So, lots of Flaer, lots of Gyoriing, lots of Flar, lots of Zela. Now I need a plot! I have an idea for that too, but I only just got it Monday morning. So be patient, plz!
I’m also planning to have more material tracking Flairé and Tam around the Four Kingdoms while they’re tramping through the wilderness. : D
I’m not worried about myself keeping track of everyone. I’m fine, nearly all the time. I’m worried about my readers, having to remember who the heck so-and-so is while also remember his/her connection to forty-seven other characters, most of them relatively minor.
…I’m a Tam fangirl. X D
Christmas in Colour, 2009, finished!
(570)
And now, the finished picture! Ehhhhh… I actually used the tablet a lot less with the shading/highlighting. I used it a lot for the hair, of course, but the clothes… just didn’t work with that. I need to find a way to change the settings so the harder I press doesn’t affect the width of the stroke, but how dark/light it is.
Parts I’m pleased with: Marteth’s dark purple coat; Gullac’s teal shirt; Bayn’s grey jacket. Coincidentally, they’re the ones you can see least of. : P Tam’s jacket is a close second, though. His shoulders came out half-way decent. I’m also happy with all the hair and Flairé’s face, which was worrying me. Doesn’t he look like his parents? X D
I realize that the ink lines only get in the way now. I think I will experiment in the future with not having hard lines at all. With the tablet, I can do that now!
I’m collecting Candy-cane shards in Guild Wars so I can get the Candy-cane daggers (for Gullac, when I make him) and the Peppermint Scythe (because it’s cool). I already have a Candy-cane spear. I wonder if these weapons break if you use them too much? I don’t think so. But I’m a little nervous about actually using them in battle.
Gullac: I’m not! (sproings around like a frog, brandishing his daggers and laughing insanely)
Dude, I haven’t gotten them yet. Give me another hour.
The Totally Not-Canon Adventures of Flairé: Episode 1: Lost Blackbird: Page 10: Elven Ethics
drawn Dec 14, coloured Dec 26, ‘09
(569)
Flairé: And can you make another tailored to her?
Storekeep: I certainly can, master. Though I would have thought you’d have enough tiny clothing by now.
Flairé: (laughs) Nah, everyone deserves their own. Yes?
Storekeep: Sure. (smiles)
Leslie: (tugs on Flairé’s sleeve)
Flairé: What is it?
Leslie: It isn’t a bother… is it…?
Flairé: Now don’t you fret your pretty head about that. It’s my present to you.
Leslie: Thank you very much…!
Flairé: No prob. (both leave shop and enter the castle gate; Flairé carrying Leslie’s old clothes) (Flairé: (to guards) Hey, guys!)
Ehhhhh, can’t talk now - watching My Neighbours the Yamadas. It’s gotta be Miyazaki’s most random movie yet.
I beat Star Wars Battlefront Elite Squad DS. The ending was pretty lame too. Now I’m playing Zelda: Spirit Tracks. I got to Zelda’s bedroom and she immediately makes Link get changed into hero ’recruit’ clothes. She says she didn’t look, but I dunno. X D
Oh, and… CHIBIIIIIIIIIIS!!!! AHAHAHAHA
Christmas in colour ‘09 - still WIP
hair/eyes coloured Dec 26 ‘09
(568)
Wheeee! Still lovin’ that tablet. And the pillow. The pillow worked splendidly. This is my progress for today. Tomorrow I will colour skin, and the comic, which will go up instead, and then Monday I will do clothes. O_O7 And then I will figure out how to shade all the white areas, like Yoeath. Leslie, Flairé, and Rana’s hair is the best of this picture. I had to restart my computer before my tablet would work, though.
If you want a hilarious story, go buy Star Wars: Battlefront: Elite Squadron for Gameboy DS now, because the story is laughable. Ummmm… it’s the story of this Gary-Stu (= unrealistically perfect) clone who’s half-Jedi because the Kaminoians stole some DNA from a visiting Jedi and plunked it into two clones, and the player is one of them. He fights for the Republic, meets his father, questions his life, gets shot by his Empire-loyal brother, their father Grey tries to convert Empire brother, thinks he succeeds, and totally gets shot in the back. Then, “15 years later”, this Gary-Stu of a clone is in command of Grey Squadron of the fledgling Rebel Alliance. And cloney-boy pwns everything in his path while… a) chasing after the Death Star’s laser, which is en route to the Death Star, and he captures the transport, and… the Death Star still gets a laser. What the heck!? b) defends Yavin Base from Imps who magically show up inside the base, where there are no Rebels, and then finds and destroys a jamming device that magically prevents X-wings from taking off. Again: what the heck?! c) flies into space and is in the trench(!!?!) behind Darth Vader who is behind Luke. My brother just flew into towers and didn’t exactly help. So what kind of support was he supposed to provide? At the moment, he’s on Hoth, where they had to defend the Rebel base from Imps BEFORE going out and engaging them in the icy plains canyons. Where he takes a speeder there and then jumps out to fight on foot.
…
…
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA that’s the lamest story I’ve heard in a long time.
Oh, and Kota shows up for a cameo. And we’re pretty sure cloney-boy becomes a Jedi at some point because you can play as a Jedi, I think, in some parts, so the story’s gotta include it somewhere. We’re hoping he dies gloriously because we think he’s a twit. X D X D X D This story is, like, worse than the new Kyle Katarn games. Oh, and there’s a love interest named Sharra. (facepalm) Whatever.
Merry Christmas 2009, in colour! part 1
coloured Dec 25, ‘09
(567)
Aaaaaaaaand this picture should make a lot more sense now. Or maybe a little. Depends how much you were paying attention the first time? ^_^7
(sings and dances) I wuv my tablet, I wuv my tablet…
I’m using this picture as a tutorial to teach myself how to use it, and to relearn Photoshop as the version that came with it is similar to the one we have downstairs (Photoshop 5) but of course it’s different. So I will be shading and highlighting and making shiny over the next week or so. When I’m not playing Wii Sports Resort (that is a pretty darn good game, if I do say so). The tablet is very handy in that I don’t have to switch brushes to do the the tiny corners - I just let up on the pressure. It’s great! And of course it feels like drawing which is very comfortable. It’s a pretty cool device.
I’m not sure how I ended up colour co-ordinated with Flairé’s princely outfit. I think it’s because it’s a generally accepted fact that I look decent in black and red, and his outfit just happens to be black and red. Hmmmm. Oh, I just noticed that part of it is not the right colour (silly me), so I’ll fix that tomorrow. Esgalwen, too, is usually in red, but she also likes blue and green. …Marteth looks like his eyes are crossed. I better fix that. And maybe I’d better recolour Jalril’s tunic so it doesn’t look like part of his skin.
Y’know, the more I look at this picture, the more I like it. Is that bad?
Christmas dinner was great. The turkey was extra good this year. The sweet potatoes were mashed, instead of sliced in chunks as we normally have them, and they tasted like pumpkin pie. I have been wearing my contacts for 30 hours and my eyes are not particularly tired or strained, despite staring at screens all day. I wuvs my pillow.
Did I mention we toasted marshmallows on the fire in our fireplace? They were nommy. Om nom nom!
EEEEEEEEEEEE!!! Well, the most important thing to tell you is that my grandparents gave me a pillow, and I love it to death already. So far, even more than the new Bamboo Tablet I was given. (They also gave me a cute new hat. Mom bought one for herself, wrapped it, Dad put his name on the gift, and by this morning, she had forgotten what it was. That’s okay. I wrote The X-wing Carol for my Dad, and hid it in some California Megascenery for Flight Sim X, and I forgot what it was, too. : P Silly me.) But I haven’t tried the Tablet yet. I’m installing it now. So we’ll see what happens. X D
Good movies this year. I was given My Neighbours the Yamadas (Miyazaki) by my parents, my brother was given The Inspector General (Danny Kaye FTW!!!!!!!), my mom found Winged Migration in her stocking (love the soundtrack), and Snow White, too.
Kevin was given a DS and two games - Battlefront II and Zelda: Spirit Tracks - and they look coooooooool. He was also given some Warhammer seige defense equipment and it looks fabulous - Dad painted it. I think. And he was also given Wii Sports Resort. Oooh, fencing. I wonder how good it is. I’m sure it’s nothing like the real thing. BUT THAT’S OKAY.
My friend left a present in my mailbox the other day - it turned out to be cookies. Thank you, lx-sama!! And my choir gave me chocolates. That’s so nice of them. My brother gave me Over Sea, Under Stone, by Susan Cooper, the first in a set of five novels about Arthurian legend. I really like them.
Mom was given (besides the hat) mitts, three cooking utensils, and a programmable remote specially for her so she will never be confused by our myriads of electronic devices. And bath sponges.
Dad was given a cheese and sausage set that comes with a mini cleaver. It’s cute. He was also given Battlefield 1942 for PC, more Flight Sim scenery than you can shake an P-3 at, (he also got an Orion… disc… thing. I assume it lets you fly a really super-realistic Orion in FS.) and a book about aviation in Victoria. Oooh. He liked the X-wing Carol, and especially the first couplet (X-wings and TIE fighters/make great Christmas light displays / Red and green lasers/make pretty explosive holidays).
We have a fire going. It is excellent. We burned the wrapping paper. No garbage from that, at least!
Mmmm, pillow pillow pillow pillow pilloooooooowwww.
Okay, back to doing things. X D Installing!!
Whoa! Lots of pictures today, folks! Hold on!
drawn Dec 23-24 ‘09
(566)
First, a very Merry Christmas (or whatever you happen to celebrate) from all of us here at the Adhemlenei. People in this picture: Marteth, Bayn, Gyoriing, Lyrestan; Mathaning, Gullac, Zela, Flaer, Yoeath; Flaria, Jalril, Flairé, Tam, Rana; Ceniro, Leslie, Jennifer, Esgalwen. Quite a number! Didn’t have room to fit in Silver, but we all know she wishes you a Merry Christmas too. Yes? Yes.
Jalril is just embarrassed at standing next to a girl. Who’s dating his brother. She thinks he’s funny. And cute. Tam is a cloooooowwwwn. X D Flairé is wearing his princely-type tunic which you haven’t seen before! It’s red.
Eeeeeee I’m so excited!
Below are the Christmas presents I drew for the various webcomics I read.
Leaf of Chasing the Sunset (and chibi Feiht, Ayne, and Myhrad)! drawn Dec 18, ‘09
Jen, of True Magic! drawn Dec 18, ‘09
The Cigar Hermit (Juan) of LinT! An underappreciated character. drawn Dec 18, ‘09
Zemi and Kip (with Flairé, who thinks they’re the greatest funny dudes he’s met in the last century, if not longer) of Wayrift! drawn Dec 19, ‘09
P.S. Were you like this last night? (I wasn’t, but you never know who might be) XD So funny.
Well, why don’t I throw in a minor plot point and ask Flairé to hang a lampshade on it? Meh. Even he realizes in the story how obvious it is to run into two apparent orphan boys within months of each other.
This is the first climax of the story, and so I may take a break here for some time. It was very exciting, and the last image was in my head for quite some time, though I never associated it with Tam (WE’LL MISS YOU, TAM!!!1!!) until NaNoWriMo. Actually, I never knew who Tam was until NaNoWriMo. I didn’t even know he existed. I knew Flairé had some sort of best friend/mentor who went crazy at some point, but I didn’t know who or where or how. So now we all do.
Soooooo… workin’ on a Christmas picture for Adhemlenei. Will be snazzy. Hope you like. Working on practicing JJ (as we affectionately call Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring) for the carols that preceed ’Midnight’ Mass at 9:00 tomorrow night (Holy Cross). The organ has one and a half broken speakers, BUT THE ANTIPHONAL WORKS so I will totally be playing JJ. And what’s more, the antiphonal seems to be… well… not a true antiphonal, but just surround sound. You can hear the Great and Swell and Pedals just as clear as the actual Antiphonal (manual (keyboard)). It was very exciting this morning trying to get it to make some sort of sound. There were tons of people there, decorating the church for tomorrow, and one of them was an electrician who was able to determine that the amplifier for the one speaker wasn’t working. So we have an idea what the problem is. Msgr is so nice, too.
Didn’t play so much Guild Wars today. But I did watch the old old Scrooge: A Christmas Carol and yesterday, The Nightmare Before Christmas (love that movie! Love!).
And now I’m off to bed as I have a long day tomorrow and it’s going to start early by exploring Regent’s Valley in Ascalon after the Scouring. (This is Guild Wars, folks, in case you didn’t guess.) P.S. Playing with my bro is not bad! Not bad at all! (Is Flairé: Lv 10 Ranger/Monk)
P.S. LinT is done! Aaaaaaaaah! And congrats to Colby! (Sangwine is soooooooo pretty in that last page… as he always is…)
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