I just finished a series of pictures I did for my sister. I wish I could share them, but, unfortunately, I stayed up very late finishing them and was too tired to scan them. I had to leave early the next morning to go out of town, and it was on that outing that I gave them to her.
She's taking a literature class this year with a focus on fantasy novels, and they were given an assignment to create their own fantasy worlds. Pictures where required, but it didn't matter where they got the pictures from, so she asked me to draw them for her. In her world, there were three separate worlds, each with their own humanoid race, and gateways that connected them all so that the races could travel back and forth, do business with each other, etc. Each gateway looks different, so that people can tell on sight which world they connect to, and I was asked to draw the three different gateways, and a member of the corresponding race.
What surprised me was that drawing the gateways was my favorite part. Even though I'm in architecture, I don't draw stuff like that for fun. My imagination doesn't usually go that direction. But being given a prompt like, "It looks like a Japanese torii, but it's Victorian," helped a lot. I really enjoyed designing that part of the pictures.
Now that their finished, I'm feeling a bit, "Okay, now what?" Sometimes I fall into awkward lulls between projects, and it's usually not so much that I can't think of something to do, but that I have a list and can't decide which to do next. A lot of costuming is in the near future, since I'd like to go to the Muskogee Renaissance Fair in May and I'd like to dress up for it. I also have a new costume I want to do for an anime convention this summer.
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A Sort-Of Related Ramble
When I first moved to Ponca City about two years ago, I went through a weird life style shift. Some of it was only natural, since I was living on my own for the first time, but some of it I didn't mean to, and didn't even realize I had done it until I looked back and realized things were a bit different. It was like moving pushed a reset button in my brain. I stopped reading books almost entirely, which is a shame. I got obsessed with anime (possible to fill the void the lack of books created). I used to write in a journal weekly, if not daily, and stopped writing all together. My art shifted into crafts, and I started to feel that if I wasn't building something, I was wasting my time. (Nothing very wrong with that one. Just an observation.) I spend more time on the internet than I used to.
Lately, I've been feeling rather unhappy. It's not that there's anything wrong, it's just that there's nothing happening to make me happy. I feel like I've fallen into the doldrums. Medieval fairs and anime conventions are a welcome break from the monotony, but I feel like there needs to be changes in my everyday life to make things better. I'm trying a back-to-the-(Sarah)-basics approach to see if that helps. I'm reading more, and keeping a journal again, and trying to spend less time on the internet. I don't know if or how much this will effect my arts and crafts. I want to do more drawing and writing, like a used to, but I don't want to give up crafting all together. (Obviously, I'm not planning on that, since I'm planning on doing some costumes.) I guess I'm still trying to feel out what changes I should make and whether or not they'll help. We'll see.
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A Ramble that Doesn't Really Have Anything to do with Anything.
I have a habit of finding things that I really like, that are, unfortunately, really obscure. This makes me a little sad, because then I have no one to talk about it with. So, congratulations, Blog Reader, you get to hear to talk about something obscure!
I had heard a while back that Yasuhiro Nightow, the creator of Trigun (you know, that anime I really like) had done another manga more recently. A couple days ago, I finally looked it up. It's surprisingly short, about four chapters, and I read it online that evening. (I'll buy it to, too, though, because I do have some sense of ethics. And, besides, I like it.) It's called "Kekkai Sensen," which, I think, would be pronounced "Kay-kie Sane-sane." Interestingly, I believe "kekkai" means something like "force field," but with a mystical connotation rather than sci-fi, and "sensen" means "battlefront," but the translators decided to give it the name "Blood Blockade Battlefront." Say that three times fast. It's about a city in which a rift opens between worlds and all kinds of aliens, monsters, vampires, etc. come spilling out. A "kekkai" is put up around the city to keep the rift from spreading to the rest of the world, and to keep the monsters in. The main characters are a group who fight supernatural villains in the city. I'm disappointed that it only lasts a few chapters. After reading all of Trigun's manga, I know what the author is capable of, and I feel like these few chapters only let us see the tip of the ice burg. I don't know why he decided to quit, but I really wish I could learn more about the characters and city they live in. (I'd especially like to see more of Jane, who claims to be a werewolf. She can become invisible, and can jump off skyscrapers without getting hurt, but never turns into a wolf. I don't know whether we just don't get to see it happen during the course of the story, or if Jane has a really weird definition of "werewolf.")
This thing has no wikipedia page (What? Something exists in the world, and it isn't on wikipedia?!), and when I typed it into deviantart.com's search, I got a grand total of four pieces of fan art. I'm starting to think the hard core Trigun fans are the only people on the planet who know it exists.
One of the interesting things about reading it was that there were times when I thought, "Yes. This is definitely by the same guy as Trigun." They're both fast-paced, wild, and really really weird, but there are other similarities, too: subtle aspects of character designs, the feel of the designs of the aliens and monsters, the sense of humor it had, stuff like that. The biggest was that Jane is very nearly a female version of Trigun's Wolfwood. It's another reason why I'd like to learn more about her, so that she'll stand alone as her own character rather than being, "that chic who looks like Wolfwood."
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| Jane |
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| Wolfwood |
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Read the chapter and answer the following questions. Questions are worth five points each.
1. What projects, or parts of projects, have been unexpectedly enjoyable for you?
2. What do you do to stay content in day to day life?
3. What do you like that few other people know about?
Oh crap. I didn't study or anything. D: There goes my GPA.
ReplyDelete1. Believe it or not, working in the yard has been really therapeutic for me. It started out as chore, because the woman who lived here before us just let the weeds run wild, and it looked terrible. But there's something really satisfying about planting things and helping them grow, and up until I started this yard project I had a reputation as a person with a black thumb. =/ It's actually really fun for me to go out every morning and check to see how much the cannas have grown, or whether or not the pansies have new blooms, or if the new tomato's gotten any bigger.
2. This sounds ridiculous, but being able to come home and snuggle with my pets really helps me when I'm in a terrible mood. It doesn't matter how bad my day's been - when I walk in the door and see all four animals bouncing at the door, it makes all the stress just wash away. When things start getting kind of overwhelming, I'll duck out for an hour or so or take an early lunch, come home, and just snuggle with one of the Danes.
Writing, too, is cathartic. Something about being able to channel any stress into a chapter, or even just a scene, is really helpful.
3. There's a series called "The Cat Who..." novels by Lilian Jackson Braun. Not a whole lot of people know about them, but they're about a retired journalist who solves crimes, along with the help of his two Siamese cats. It's cheesy and kind of ridiculous at times, but all the books are fast-paced and fun to read.