March 23, 2010

Sword’s Innocence rough cover sketch 1

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Filed under: 1. The Adhemlenei (The Four Kingdoms),Photoshop,Zela — Tags: , , , — Illinia @ 10:48 pm
Rah, said the dragon.

Rah, said the dragon.

Sword’s Innocence rough book cover sketch 1

drawn March 23, ’10, 10-11:30 pm

(607)

Hey, guys! So about that book that would need to be submitted before July 1st or whatever to get a free copy from CreateSpace… well, this is my rough draft of the cover. I’m planning to get someone else to paint it ‘coz that would be cool, but I need something to show them what to do, right? So this is from this chapter, a few paragraps in. Though I’m going to rewrite the book, I’m leaving this scene in. I was also going to have a ‘dramatic confrontation’ cover, where Zela, in green, sword in hand, is confronting… Muila, in a red dress? who is looking at her disdainfully from the top of some small steps… in a dark location. But this one is WAY COOLER so I drew it first.

I used my dragon-drawing book, too!

So… in the foreground is Zela on Silver the dragon, and chasing them are three (I only put two) dragons, and then the brown spiky thing is the city, and there’s a road leading past it and to it, and there’s one of those amazing blue-green lakes nearby (there is no food colouring in Canadian Rockies water, folks! Just in case you were wondering) and the brown, rather barren mountains (green in the valleys) stretching back to green mountains and then blue, with a glimpse of the green plains waaaaaaay over on the left, and dark stormclouds capping it all. And then there’ll be a title with a twisty border and a back summary.

Oh, hey, chorus didn’t stink totally tonight! What a pleasant surprise! The weather has been gorgeous, too, and the flowering trees are just WOW. Come live in Vic, folks! It’s pretty darn good in the spring!

But I need to stop eating unhealthy food. Just need to get to the end of this week and then I can relax a little!

Huh, maybe I’ll have a go myself at this cover after Script Frenzy. Oh, I need to rewrite the other book and turn it into a PDF, too!

March 19, 2010

Symmetry

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Filed under: 1. The Adhemlenei (The Four Kingdoms),Photoshop,Zela — Tags: , — Illinia @ 10:17 pm
OTP (One True Pair)

OTP (One True Pair)

Symmetry, finished

coloured – some point in history long before this website went live

(605)

Click for larger image! (much larger image – 1000px vertically)

This is the finished version of this picture, which I drew specifically for the purpose that it now serves as the ‘logo’ or ‘emblem’ of my website. I realized tonight that I forgot about it. So here you are! It took me a long time to colour, especially Flaer’s hair. I used Photoshop 5 and a mouse. I realize his eyes are rather huge now but hey! You can tell they’re green. Which is good. Less happy about the cloth, but I guess it’s all right for my skill level. Grass was a total cop-out (green paint bucket, some broad dodge and burn, and then put the ‘pencil sketch’ filter on heavy or something like that) but I dunno how to do grass in Photoshop. X D

If you ever hear of a concert at which will be performed Locus Iste by Nicholas Piper, GO HEAR IT. It is AMAZING. I can’t tell you so much about Different Windows by Daniel Brandes. The stupid bus didn’t show so I was late and missed the beginning.

Did I mention the Knights of Pie? UVic fundraising organization. Bunch of guys dress up as monkly knights and put on short trials that usually end in pieing the person who can’t pay equal to the donations raised by their accusor. Ivan was raising money for a children’s hospital and was tired of MichaelG showing up late to rehearsal. Result: Epicness. Lemon-meringuey epicness.

Also I hate diminished fourths but what ya gonna do about it. Learning a stupidly hard and rather theoretical piece for some composer guy I know. It’s a good idea but just well-nigh impossible. I could rewrite the piece for myself but I’d rather be lazy and just learn it the way it is. And by rewrite I mean make a clean copy in Sibelius with such notation as makes sense to me, not rewrite the piece itself. : P

 I do like Franz Strauss, though. He wrote a second horn concerto that was just found thirty years ago and Christine may be playing the Canadian premiere. X D But Hans Pizka, the editor, is fail. He put the horn part in the wrong transposition, so Christine is playing in Eb major while I’m playing in C major. FAIL. I’ll stop flitting from subject to subject now.

I want to be a great visual artist, textual artist, sonic artist… painter drawer animator model maker author poet musician composer pianist organist violinist singer… Did I miss anything? Prolly. Hahaha.

December 28, 2009

Christmas in colour 2009 (finished!)

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Filed under: 1. The Adhemlenei (The Four Kingdoms),Ceniro,Esgalwen,Flairé,Photoshop,Rana,Zela — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Illinia @ 12:52 pm

christmas09colour41

Christmas in Colour, 2009, finished!

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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.

December 26, 2009

Christmas 09 – still a colour WIP

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Filed under: 1. The Adhemlenei (The Four Kingdoms),Ceniro,Esgalwen,Flairé,Photoshop,Rana,Zela — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Illinia @ 1:20 pm

christmas09colour2

Christmas in colour ’09 – still WIP

hair/eyes coloured Dec 26 ’09

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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 in Colour, part 1

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Filed under: 1. The Adhemlenei (The Four Kingdoms),Ceniro,Esgalwen,Flairé,Photoshop,Rana,Zela — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Illinia @ 1:04 am

christmas09colour1

Merry Christmas 2009, in colour! part 1

coloured Dec 25, ’09

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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!

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