April 26, 2011

Kings and Queens

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Filed under: Random blog posts — Tags: — Illinia @ 10:25 pm

Hi! Working rather furiously on Hindemith and Script Frenzy. It’s a little late at night for Hindemith so right now scripting. I’m technically halfway through.
Wanted to blog about acquiring a particular song today. I finally went on the iTunes store and bought a song called Kings and Queens, by a band called 30 Seconds to Mars (pretty awesome title if you ask me). Anyway, my only real contact with this song is that on last year’s Tour de France, they played the day’s/segment’s highlights to that music. It was pretty inspirational. Unfortunately, I never found any of these clips on YouTube, which would have been awesome. Maybe they’re there now and I never checked. Oh well. I’m only out $1.30, and I have the whole song now!
Even more unfortunately, I found it has associations to something much, much stupider… When I was flying back from London, ON, I saw a girl watching a movie about CG owls a few seats ahead of me. When I got home, I looked it up. It’s called Guardians of Gahool or something like that. It looked kinda fun and doofy (until they started fighting with swords and stuff. What??) though the reviews were not so great. Then I went to their official site and watched the trailer and AUGH THE SONG WAS THERE. Soooo… both song and movie kinda ruined for me now. The song doesn’t belong in that movie. Only Viking music belongs in that movie, imo. I didn’t get to hear the sound; remember I was on the plane and you can only use headphones to get sound and I didn’t feel like searching for it on their TV thingy. And now the song is a little less “EPIC HUMAN EFFORT” because it has a touch of owl association. Am I making sense? I better get back to scripting. While listening to this. I know inspirational rock and roll has less to do with AU (alternate universe) Victoriana than it does with CG owls. But IT KEEPS ME WRITING WHOOOOOOOO

EDIT: One reason I like this song, I have realized, is that it uses the same bass progression as another of my favourites, the Kyrie by Mr. Mister. It’s a simple I-II-[I6]-IV-V-I. Or something like that.

October 2, 2010

Influence Meme

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Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , — Illinia @ 7:40 am

Influence Meme

filled in Sep 30, ’10

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Okay, I saw this on the True Magic art blog and had to fill it in.

L-R, top-bottom, in no particular order of influence:

True Magic itself. It is a lovely, lovely webcomic, and was one of the first to introduce me to the concept of webcomic. Its self-proclaimed ABC’s (Adventure, Bishounen, Comedy) was a perfect combo and Gauth (pictured) is for me the quintessential Man of Mystery.

Norouet: a French-Canadian traditional band. I love listening to their music and it is hugely inspiring, whether it’s of images of wild, unearthly elven dancing, or just to get me the energy to write and draw.

Fire Emblem: how I learned to draw anime was by tracing these guys. A long, long time ago. Also the story of FE7 is really fantastic; it was like nothing I’d ever read or played before. It was deep. …Back then.

Winter Harp: my favourite music for writing. Very medieval sounding, with harps! Perfect for the majority of my writing projects.

Music, particularly Organs: MUSIC IS MY LIFE. In case you didn’t get that already. It’s where about 75% of my inspiration comes from, for characters, events, plots, cultures, anything you can think of.

Star Wars: Heehee. Heroes and villains!

British Columbia, Canada: Gorgeous scenery. It underlies all the Adhemlenei, even though it’s probably subconscious still at this point.

Miyazaki: anime, but not over the top, with deep stories and occasionally very pretty guys. ^_^

LinT: the second webcomic I ever read. I love Colby’s style, which is an odd blend of other stuff, but it comes across very well. Also her story is both funny and dramatic.

Awkward Zombie: hilarious expressions. Nuff said.

Legend of Zelda: elves! Quests! Sacred swords and objects and things! Quests! Elves!

Professor Tolkien: of course he gets the 3×3. His amazing world both broad and deep and filled with characters and races and quests and swords and light and dark is, of course, the inspiration for modern fantasy everywhere. As opposed to archaic fantasy, which is legends and myths. But legends and myths… just aren’t the same as when you put it all together in a whole world. It’s breathtaking what this one man did.

There’s all kinds of things I’ve left out, like my Dad’s big influence, some of my friends, Bruce Lee, my piano teachers… I might have said it before, but actually EVERYTHING is an influence on my world, if not my art. Everything can be taken and integrated somehow. My art… kind of grew on its own, really. But if I kept to the literal influences on my visual art, I don’t think this chart would be so interesting. So you get some tenuous connections. But I think it’s worth it.

June 19, 2010

La Plus Jolie Maitresse

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Filed under: 1. The Adhemlenei (The Four Kingdoms),Pencil — Tags: , — Illinia @ 11:01 am
Wheeeeee! (that's not in the song)

Wheeeeee! (that's not in the song)

La Plus Jolie Maitresse

drawn

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This is Gullac (obviously), singing, while hanging from the bowsprit of an elven ship. Not so happy with it, but it gets the gist across. This picture was inspired by the song La Plus Jolie Maitresse by Norouet, and I have no idea what the words mean in the rest of the song besides the title, but it’s really pretty.

Things to do today: clean house, practice organ until I go crazy, finish reading Moby Dick, play lots of Brawl.

May 26, 2010

Provinciaaaaaals!!!

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Filed under: Random blog posts — Tags: , — Illinia @ 11:33 pm
  • Current music - listening: Rhapsody in Blue
  • Salsa: 2 hours
  • Weather: cloudy, occasional showers
  • Running distance: from the SUB to my place (not nonstop)

Hi! So I think that those of you who know are probably wanting an update on the Provincials that I was rumoured to be in today…

In case even this is news to you, well, a couple weeks ago I was playing piano in the Performing Arts Festival here, and Walter Prossnitz really loved my crappy playing for some reason – it must be better than I thought! I’ve improved over the last year… but I didn’t think that much. Anyway, so he recommended me to the BC Provincials at National level, and they were in Duncan. So I said “YES I WOULD LOVE TO GO EVEN THOUGH SAE HAE WOULD TOTALLY BE A BETTER CHOICE.” She was the runner up he chose.

So, I practiced pretty hard, and my pieces improved again even more, and then I got up at 6:30 this morning and went to Duncan. I was first up… The first movement of the Waldstein… could have gone much better in a lot of places. My hands just wouldn’t stop shaking. Actually, it was much better than the local Festival, so I’m grateful for that. And there were parts where it was very nicely under control. But I messed up the first run which is really embarrassing. The adjudicators said that I need to release tension (VERY TRUE) and it needs more dynamic contrasts. And other things.

The second movement went well. They liked the musicality but it needs more march-ness. Interesting – not something I had thought of.

The third movement went pretty well except for a LOT of little slips… hands more under control but still having a few problems. They said I should be more open, again, for more sound… more sturm und drang… maybe doing the literal pedal thing that Beethoven marked down – the loooong pedals in the first theme – not so great akshuly. But if I didn’t do them I think I’d more criticism from more people. So those are staying. But I will try and fix the other things. Over time. I don’t think I can become magically better very fast. But Cindy my previous teacher was there and apparently she has a student who practices so much his parents can use the threat of cutting practice time! THIS SOUNDS SO AMAZING. I MUST TRY IT. Of course, this means giving up this thing that people usually call ‘a life’ but it might be worth it? For a while? Yah?

So the runner up (he looks sad… all the time…) played Mozart and then the Prokofiev piano concert #2 or something… and someone played the Tchaikovsky piano concerto… the winner was like 12 years old and Mom thought he was a girl because of his haircut but he’s not, and he’s not overtly Asian but I bet he is… he played the 2nd and 3rd movements of the Beethoven #3, and then Rhapsody in Blue. SOLO. All by himself. No pianorchestra. It was INCREDIBLE.

…I feel so pathetic now… I am adequately pleased with my performance of the Dutilleux but I am not in the league of those other folks yet.

Soooooo… I work hard this summer? On music? No summer job for me, I think. Gonna be too busy!

Also then I went to salsa for the first time in MONTHS and everyone still remembered me! Sam got a haircut. I saw lx-sama on the bus up there and he knows Sam so he said to say hi. Salsa was incredibly fun and I was really tired afterwards and needed a drink really bad but I still ran most of the way home. I need to start running regularly for exercise… I’m quite round in the belly.

May 19, 2010

The Totally Not-Canon Adventures of Flairé: Memory

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Filed under: 1. The Adhemlenei (The Four Kingdoms),Coloured Media,Flairé,The Totally Not-Canon Adventures of Flairé — Tags: , , , , — Illinia @ 10:31 pm

ttncaofep1pg32

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The Totally Not-Canon Adventures of Flairé: Episode 1: Lost Blackbird: Page 32: Memory

drawn/coloured May 17-19 ’10

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          Leslie never forgot how that music made her feel – all excited and relaxed at the same time, as the songs grew more and more lyrical, peaceful, and happy. But she could never remember how it sounded. (falls asleep on chair…)

And music happens with some trite totally cliché’d voiceover narrator. The colouring went better this week, but I coloured in some of the wrong squares in the blanket so I had to fix it in Photoshop. Boring page, I know. But come Sunday for the shocking conclusion!

Flairé: The conclusion is shocking?

Yes! It is! Weren’t you there?

Flairé: I… yeah…

While our resident stalker goes to recover his memory-

Flairé: Hey!

-we’ll talk about something else. Actually there is not much else to talk about. My brother’s French course is singularly useless for teaching French to people who don’t already know, like, grammar and stuff, which my brother doesn’t.

Also my soul got eaten by FFIV and now I can’t listen to any other music. And I keep prowling the Wayrift websites in case someone comments and I have a response.

Also I have light in my room again! My burned out lightbulbs (75% of the light in my room) got replaced!

Also Philosophy is strange. Ugh.

Also my piano teacher is happy with my progress the last few weeks but she doesn’t think (or want me to?) I’ll become an organist ever. Bah.

Also I dreamed I was studying music theory with a friend while sitting on a couch, and I kept leaning over to see what he wrote, but I guess he didn’t like that because he pushed me off the couch. : P

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