I've got a new job working for ADG Architects and I'm living in OKC now. ADG is the firm that did the ballpark stadium in bricktown, so that's cool. I've been here in OKC for a month now, so here's the rundown:
Home: I'm still not done unpacking. *sigh* I have less free time in my day because of a longer drive (plus getting up earlier for the drive means going to bed a little earlier). And the first couple of weeks were so exhausting that now that things have slowed down a bit, I don't want to work on anything like unpacking or decorating. I just want to relax.
The apartment complex is pretty good. Aside from the occasional blaring car radio the place seems pretty quiet. (Why is it an unwritten law that loud radios have to have rap? Why can't somebody blare something cool, like 80's pop?) My street is full of retail stores and restaurants, which is nice. I feel like I can appreciate where I am more, both my part of town and the whole city, once I get a little more settled in and explore everything the place has to offer. I mean, I've lived here a full month and I haven't even been to a mall yet! What is wrong with me!
Oh, also, my grandparents live in one of the city's suburbs, which is nice. I've already gone to visit them. My grandma fed me enchiladas! Score!
Work: As soon as I started they threw me into overtime for the first two weeks. Which was very stressful. I was learning on the fly, working late every day, plus there are all those post-move chores, like changing addresses, talking to insurance agents, talking to your bank, etc. So the first few weeks I was running at 100 mph all day every day. Very glad things are slowing down now.
The place seems pretty good. There are 40-50 employees, but I work on a team of about six. I've heard Princess Bride quotes being thrown around by my coworkers. That's a good sign. Every Friday the place provides bagels and fruit for breakfast, and there's been occasional cookies just because. Another random pro/con is that I can't go home for lunch (too far away). The con is that I have to pack a lunch before work every morning. The pro is that I use my lunch break to read, which is something I haven't been doing much of lately, and I'm glad to be back in that habit.
I'm reading Anne of Green Gables, by the way. If you want something light hearted and cute, then do read it. It's adorable.
Creative Projects: I... don't know.
I hit a sudden Trigun burnout (Woah! Gasp!) so any writing/art/whatever on that front I dropped. As for the video game, I don't know what it's fate is. A big part of me still wants to do it, but I feel like our little group lost interest and I would be left on my own if I continued with it. That's a bit daunting. For the moment, I'm just letting the project sit in hiatus-land until I'm more settled into my new home and job and ready to turn my attention to projects again.
That's about it, I guess. I'm still sort of coming down off the stress of having moved and the overtime and such. I still feel like things haven't quite become normal yet. But I'm doing good.
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Still Truckin' Along
It's been a while since I did a blog post.
In the meanwhile, I drew this:
Pen and colored pencil, and a piano with slightly wonky perspective. (This is technically fanart, just weird alternate-universe fanart, so ten points if you can name the man, twenty if you can name the chic.)
On the video game front:
(It might be helpful to note, for anyone who doesn't know, that a "thomas" is a large, flightless bird that exists in the Trigun universe.)
I've got the first bit of game started, but I'm like 1/2349728347928th of the way through. XD But the beginning is going to go the slowest, because I'm having to make graphics and learn the program. I'm holding out hope that it will go faster later in the project.
So, yeah, that's it for now, I guess.
Peace out!
In the meanwhile, I drew this:
On the video game front:
(It might be helpful to note, for anyone who doesn't know, that a "thomas" is a large, flightless bird that exists in the Trigun universe.)
I've got the first bit of game started, but I'm like 1/2349728347928th of the way through. XD But the beginning is going to go the slowest, because I'm having to make graphics and learn the program. I'm holding out hope that it will go faster later in the project.
So, yeah, that's it for now, I guess.
Peace out!
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Video Games - Week 2
A lot of work done, but not the kind of work that gives me very much to show off.
I've been learning more RPG Maker, and compiling info for my team mates to use, such as sprite sizes and such. And this weekend a few of us had a big brainstorming session via Skype group chat and knocked out most of the plot. That part was REALLY fun for me. I've never collaborated on a story before, but myself and one other person in particular seemed to click really well and then exciting stuff happened. "What if we did this?" "Oh! Hey! What if we took that idea, and we did THIS with it?" Yes yes yes! That's cool! Let's do that! And then we can do this and this!" "Oh! Yes! Good thinking!" At one point she told me, "I'm super excited about this project, so if I start steamrolling you with my ideas, just tell me to slow down. I don't want to be overbearing." I was like, "Pfft! Are you kidding? I love you for being this excited!"
There's still the details to work on in the plot, like the actual dialogue and such. And... you know... the actual levels, since right now our descriptions of them are stuff like, "It's a cave, and it's got lots of cliffs and ledges and stuff, and some places are really sandy and you slide down to a lower ledge, but some places you can climb up the cliff, so it's like shoots and ladders. And in the end, you fight a sandworm." Yeah, that might need some fleshing out. But I think some of our artists have decided to start on the graphics for the main characters, and we're getting pretty close to actually starting in on the game.
At one point in the conversation I started quietly panicking. I knew I was working on the programming, but no one else had really said anything about doing it with me, so I was starting to think I might be the only one. And then one of our team mates starts in on all this outside-the-box stuff, "Can we fiddle with the battle mode so that you can move around and do things inside the battle," "Can we take it from a top-down view and make it a side-scroller," etc. And I'm sitting there about to hyperventilate like, "askdjfalsdk Are you going to make me do that? Are you going to make me figure that out? I don't know! I'm still learning how to do things NORMALLY! I don't think so? But maybe? If I say 'Maybe' are you going to make me do it? Should I tell you 'No' just in case so I don't have to?" But then things calmed down, and we settled on the idea that side scrolling was possible, because other people had done it with RPG Maker, but we would only have a short segment that way, almost like a mini game, and that was the only weird thing we would do. And I can live with that, so I breathed a sigh of relief. A big one.
We're planning on making a proof of concept game, a mini version of our game about ten minutes long that tests out the look and feel of the thing. When we do that, I'll post it on here and you guys can play it.
That's about it, I guess. Here, have a Wolfwood dialogue face that one of my teammates made.
<(Thanks for visiting the blog. I'm gonna go find Needle-noggin now.)
Peace out.
I've been learning more RPG Maker, and compiling info for my team mates to use, such as sprite sizes and such. And this weekend a few of us had a big brainstorming session via Skype group chat and knocked out most of the plot. That part was REALLY fun for me. I've never collaborated on a story before, but myself and one other person in particular seemed to click really well and then exciting stuff happened. "What if we did this?" "Oh! Hey! What if we took that idea, and we did THIS with it?" Yes yes yes! That's cool! Let's do that! And then we can do this and this!" "Oh! Yes! Good thinking!" At one point she told me, "I'm super excited about this project, so if I start steamrolling you with my ideas, just tell me to slow down. I don't want to be overbearing." I was like, "Pfft! Are you kidding? I love you for being this excited!"
There's still the details to work on in the plot, like the actual dialogue and such. And... you know... the actual levels, since right now our descriptions of them are stuff like, "It's a cave, and it's got lots of cliffs and ledges and stuff, and some places are really sandy and you slide down to a lower ledge, but some places you can climb up the cliff, so it's like shoots and ladders. And in the end, you fight a sandworm." Yeah, that might need some fleshing out. But I think some of our artists have decided to start on the graphics for the main characters, and we're getting pretty close to actually starting in on the game.
At one point in the conversation I started quietly panicking. I knew I was working on the programming, but no one else had really said anything about doing it with me, so I was starting to think I might be the only one. And then one of our team mates starts in on all this outside-the-box stuff, "Can we fiddle with the battle mode so that you can move around and do things inside the battle," "Can we take it from a top-down view and make it a side-scroller," etc. And I'm sitting there about to hyperventilate like, "askdjfalsdk Are you going to make me do that? Are you going to make me figure that out? I don't know! I'm still learning how to do things NORMALLY! I don't think so? But maybe? If I say 'Maybe' are you going to make me do it? Should I tell you 'No' just in case so I don't have to?" But then things calmed down, and we settled on the idea that side scrolling was possible, because other people had done it with RPG Maker, but we would only have a short segment that way, almost like a mini game, and that was the only weird thing we would do. And I can live with that, so I breathed a sigh of relief. A big one.
We're planning on making a proof of concept game, a mini version of our game about ten minutes long that tests out the look and feel of the thing. When we do that, I'll post it on here and you guys can play it.
That's about it, I guess. Here, have a Wolfwood dialogue face that one of my teammates made.
<(Thanks for visiting the blog. I'm gonna go find Needle-noggin now.)
Peace out.
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Making Video Games?
I don't know, am I? I'm not really sure.
There's a program out there called RPG Maker, which lets amateurs build their own video games. (The newer editions of RPG Maker, you have to pay for, but there are old versions that are free.) I was talking with some fellow Trigun fans online and mentioned that I had once thought about making a Trigun game on RPG Maker, but the amount of work it would take scared me away. I was really surprised when several people said that sounded like an awesome idea and that they'd love to help work on something like that. And the next thing I knew people were throwing ideas around and volunteering to help make the sprites, and it just kind of... happened. And now there's about eight of us who are building a video game.
Honestly, I feel really weird about this. Part of it is that I'm not much of a gamer. I play once in a while when the whim strikes me, but I feel underqualified to be a part of the project. Mostly, though, I have a strong fear that the initial novelty will wear off, and everyone will ditch the idea. I don't know. We'll have to see what happens.
My major job will be to work on "programming" the game inside RPG Maker. I've downloaded it and started learning the ropes. It's easy to use, but getting things to actually happen in the game requires coding them a certain way, and that's the tricky part. It's giving me flashbacks of the computer programming class I took in high school, which is kind of a good thing, actually, because I liked that class. While reading tutorials, I've been testing out what I'm learning by building a test game, which isn't really much of a game, but more like a place where the character runs around and random stuff happens for no very good reason.
But I did put together a mini game this afternoon using what I've learned so far. You have to collect chickens for an old lady. RPG Maker comes with freebie graphics to use, although you're encouraged to make your own. I used those to make things easy, and then started throwing chickens around just to see if I could make a coherent game. (And, yes, certain friends will note that my very first coherent game I made involves chickens. Of course it does.)
I recorded myself playing the game, although the video quality stinks out loud, because I'm a noob at recording my screen, so sorry about that. The video starts out in RPG Maker, and then I open the game in a new window. You gotta give me a second, because I wasn't sure if I was recording or not. XD
So, yeah, that's what I've been up to. I'll likely be updating my progress here on my blog.
That's it, I guess. Peace out!
There's a program out there called RPG Maker, which lets amateurs build their own video games. (The newer editions of RPG Maker, you have to pay for, but there are old versions that are free.) I was talking with some fellow Trigun fans online and mentioned that I had once thought about making a Trigun game on RPG Maker, but the amount of work it would take scared me away. I was really surprised when several people said that sounded like an awesome idea and that they'd love to help work on something like that. And the next thing I knew people were throwing ideas around and volunteering to help make the sprites, and it just kind of... happened. And now there's about eight of us who are building a video game.
Honestly, I feel really weird about this. Part of it is that I'm not much of a gamer. I play once in a while when the whim strikes me, but I feel underqualified to be a part of the project. Mostly, though, I have a strong fear that the initial novelty will wear off, and everyone will ditch the idea. I don't know. We'll have to see what happens.
My major job will be to work on "programming" the game inside RPG Maker. I've downloaded it and started learning the ropes. It's easy to use, but getting things to actually happen in the game requires coding them a certain way, and that's the tricky part. It's giving me flashbacks of the computer programming class I took in high school, which is kind of a good thing, actually, because I liked that class. While reading tutorials, I've been testing out what I'm learning by building a test game, which isn't really much of a game, but more like a place where the character runs around and random stuff happens for no very good reason.
But I did put together a mini game this afternoon using what I've learned so far. You have to collect chickens for an old lady. RPG Maker comes with freebie graphics to use, although you're encouraged to make your own. I used those to make things easy, and then started throwing chickens around just to see if I could make a coherent game. (And, yes, certain friends will note that my very first coherent game I made involves chickens. Of course it does.)
I recorded myself playing the game, although the video quality stinks out loud, because I'm a noob at recording my screen, so sorry about that. The video starts out in RPG Maker, and then I open the game in a new window. You gotta give me a second, because I wasn't sure if I was recording or not. XD
So, yeah, that's what I've been up to. I'll likely be updating my progress here on my blog.
That's it, I guess. Peace out!
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Adventures in Minimalism
I heard someone say once that everything we experience gets thrown into a big pile in our brains and gets all jumbled up in there, and then, once in a while, we can reach in and pull something out that's new.
Once upon a time, I watched an anime titled "Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo." (Don't ask me how to pronounce that.) It's is, indeed, The Count of Monte Cristo, but moved to a steampunk-ish sci-fi setting, and given some trippy animation. Seriously, the whole show looks like this:
Notice there's little to no shading, and nearly everything is colored in with some kind of texture or pattern. The show was a little darker than what I usually go for, and it was told from the point of view of Albert, (the son in the story, and the kid in the picture above,) who was annoyingly emotional most of the time. So, to be quite honest, I watched it for the art style. (And for Albert's friend Franz, who was the only person in the show besides the count who was competent in any way. He rocked.) It's been on my to-do list ever since to do some kind of picture that imitated that style. I just never really figured out what that picture would be.
Some time later I discovered an art style called minimalism. I really don't know how to describe minimalism, so here, have an example:
Once upon a time, I watched an anime titled "Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo." (Don't ask me how to pronounce that.) It's is, indeed, The Count of Monte Cristo, but moved to a steampunk-ish sci-fi setting, and given some trippy animation. Seriously, the whole show looks like this:
Notice there's little to no shading, and nearly everything is colored in with some kind of texture or pattern. The show was a little darker than what I usually go for, and it was told from the point of view of Albert, (the son in the story, and the kid in the picture above,) who was annoyingly emotional most of the time. So, to be quite honest, I watched it for the art style. (And for Albert's friend Franz, who was the only person in the show besides the count who was competent in any way. He rocked.) It's been on my to-do list ever since to do some kind of picture that imitated that style. I just never really figured out what that picture would be.
Some time later I discovered an art style called minimalism. I really don't know how to describe minimalism, so here, have an example:
 |
| kuabci.deviantart.com |
Honestly, I never had any intention of doing anything in this style. I just really liked it, and logged it away in my brain under the label "Things that Look Cool."
I own a nook, which I quite like. (This is all related, I swear.) It comes with a few wallpapers for your screen, but nothing very impressive. I finally decided it would be cool to make my own, and to do something related to my favorite book characters (in hopes that seeing them would inspire me to read and not just play the sudoku app.) So, I reached into that pile in my brain, fished around a little bit, and pulled out this:
Erik, aka The Phantom of the Opera, Inspector Javert (Les Miserables), Sherlock Holmes, and Percy Blakeney (The Scarlet Pimpernel). (There's so much space at the bottom because the nook puts a row of icons down there. I managed to get the spacing so that they fit pretty comfortably in the free space on the screen.)
This was one of those projects that, the farther along I got in making it, the more I realized there were easier ways of doing it. Even by the end, I was probably making things more complicated than they needed to be. So, suffice it to say that this happened in photoshop, with pictures of the characters combined with pictures of fabric.
Finding pictures of the characters standing full length was by far the hardest part. The Phantom and Holmes saved me by being popular enough to have Halloween costumes, and those were the only full length images of them I could find. Javert came from a book illustration. Percy was a pain in the butt. His top half came from a book cover, and the bottom half from a picture of a period costume sewing pattern.
Finding pictures of fabric was the most time-consuming part, but also kinda the funnest part. The background is a stock image of old paper.
So, yes, now my nook has awesome wallpaper, and I'm pretty happy about that. It was really time consuming, but really fun, too.
Peace out, gang!
---
Bonus ramble, if you want to stick around to hear it.
Making this was strangely nostalgic for me, because, a few summers ago, I did a lot of fanfiction writing about these guys... all together... in one story.
I really wanted to write something, but didn't have any good ideas. So just to scratch the itch, I started doing these little drabbles in which a teenage girl named Michelle had the ability to enter the world inside of books and bring characters back out with her if she wanted to. These four guys practically lived with her. All the little scenes I wrote were plot-less, pointless, inconsistent, and out of order, but they kept me entertained. Erik was well-behaved because Michelle bribed him with an ipod. (Oh, did he love his ipod!) Javert hated him, unsurprisingly, but Holmes kinda liked him because he was interesting, intelligent, and played the violin. (Holmes still watched him like a hawk, though.) Percy just kinda hung around, cool as a cucumber, being a bit of a goof sometimes.
I don't even remember now what kind of stuff I wrote. I think some of it was melodramatic. Javert was taken from the end of his story, which is a very unfortunate ending for him, and had some lingering issues that crept up once in a while. And Erik... was Erik. But mostly it was just silly stuff, like everyone being really impressed with the microwave, except Holmes broke it because he started putting random stuff in it just to see what would happen.
And, yeah, I just felt like sharing.
Monday, March 18, 2013
Project Wrap-ups and Naka-kon
Okay, let me start by getting this picture out of the way.
Here's Vash with his gang of Pokemon. That makes all four of the main characters, and this little series is complete! Yay!
I've also finished my stun gun. Remember how I was putting paper mache on the whole thing? It took longer than I thought it would, because when I put the paper mache on, I had to leave some parts of it dry, so it could sit on that part while the rest was drying, so I had to break it up into parts and do a part a day. (And also because I procrastinated some. But you didn't hear me say that. Sh!)
When I hit crunch time, though, I couldn't afford to do it in parts, and ended up with wet areas all over the place. I got a little creative trying to figure out how to let it dry.
Then I painted it, which went much faster than I expected (and waaaay faster than painting styrofoam goes), and so, finally, I had this.
Which is pretty much how it looked before, just with a different surface texture. I took it to Naka-kon this weekend and I'm very pleased to announce that this is the first con which I didn't have to do any repair work afterward. It got a little bumped and scraped, but nothing is loose and no paint came off. Woohoo!
Naka-kon was a lot of fun. (Of course!) I think I had fallen into a rut before hand, in which nothing existed in the universe except for my job and the internet. It was nice to have a reminder that there's a whole world out there with fun stuff to do and awesome people, and that those things make me happier than the internet does.
I won't post pictures on here, since they're already on facebook, but I will share one since I likely won't post it anywhere else. I met one of Trigun's villains, Legato, and he suggested we take a picture of me shooting him. Except I tried to kind of scowl at him and just ended up laughing.
(This guy was one of the highlights of the con for me. Not only was I really excited to see someone cosplay Legato, but he was a super nice guy. He caught sight of me the day before and told me he would be Legato on the next day, so "you should come find me and shoot me." I told him his costume was fantastic and he said, "Thanks! It makes me feel pretty. I think it's the hair.")
Okay, that's everything! Peace out!
Here's Vash with his gang of Pokemon. That makes all four of the main characters, and this little series is complete! Yay!
I've also finished my stun gun. Remember how I was putting paper mache on the whole thing? It took longer than I thought it would, because when I put the paper mache on, I had to leave some parts of it dry, so it could sit on that part while the rest was drying, so I had to break it up into parts and do a part a day. (And also because I procrastinated some. But you didn't hear me say that. Sh!)
When I hit crunch time, though, I couldn't afford to do it in parts, and ended up with wet areas all over the place. I got a little creative trying to figure out how to let it dry.
Then I painted it, which went much faster than I expected (and waaaay faster than painting styrofoam goes), and so, finally, I had this.
Which is pretty much how it looked before, just with a different surface texture. I took it to Naka-kon this weekend and I'm very pleased to announce that this is the first con which I didn't have to do any repair work afterward. It got a little bumped and scraped, but nothing is loose and no paint came off. Woohoo!
Naka-kon was a lot of fun. (Of course!) I think I had fallen into a rut before hand, in which nothing existed in the universe except for my job and the internet. It was nice to have a reminder that there's a whole world out there with fun stuff to do and awesome people, and that those things make me happier than the internet does.
I won't post pictures on here, since they're already on facebook, but I will share one since I likely won't post it anywhere else. I met one of Trigun's villains, Legato, and he suggested we take a picture of me shooting him. Except I tried to kind of scowl at him and just ended up laughing.
(This guy was one of the highlights of the con for me. Not only was I really excited to see someone cosplay Legato, but he was a super nice guy. He caught sight of me the day before and told me he would be Legato on the next day, so "you should come find me and shoot me." I told him his costume was fantastic and he said, "Thanks! It makes me feel pretty. I think it's the hair.")
Okay, that's everything! Peace out!
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Wood Puzzles, Pokemon, and Paper Mache
When I first started those Trigun + Pokemon pictures, I originally meant to do the main quartet, plus the main bad guys and perhaps a few secondary characters. But I knew my attention span wouldn't hold out that long, so I cut it down the to four heroes. Good call, because I have one left that I've started the sketch for and I'm itching to do other things! So much so that I've been slipping in other small projects.
Project One: Last weekend, I revamped a wood puzzle. A friend gave it to me, and for some reason, I looked at it and said, "I want to paint it."
I painted the pieces black with acrylic paint, and then drew on the pieces with a silver sharpie. I've been playing Zelda: Twilight Princess, and got the idea for the color scheme from the Twilight Realm, which features dark colors with light highlights. The text is the Hylian alphabet used in that game. It actually correlates with the English alphabet, and the blocks have real words on them, although I chose random, Zelda-related words like, "Link," "Hyrule," "Hero," etc.
Project Two: If you could call it a project. There's a drawing challenge floating around tumblr in which the participants go to a website that generates a random pokemon. They then redraw that pokemon three times, redesigning it three ways. It's for general drawing practice and for exercising your imagination. I spent an evening doing some sketches.
Project Three: Naka-kon is coming up and I need to get cracking on my stun gun. Today I started paper mache-ing it. My paper mache paste kinda weirds me out. It's made from flour and water, which the internet assures me is a totally common paper mache recipe. But it has the look and feel of thick pancake batter, and I can't shake the feeling that I'm smearing pancake batter all over my gun. I feel like a mad scientist creating an experiment in which a styrofoam gun, breakfast food and newspaper combine together into one monstrous abomination of nature. Science has gone too far!
Here's a picture, by the way.
Tomorrow, I'll smear pancake batter on the other half. Later in the week, or next weekend, I'll add a second layer. The internet says to use about four layers, but I think that's for a hollow paper mache project that needs to be really sturdy? I'm just going to go with two. I think that'll do me, since I'm doing it to hide tape and to give a better surface to paint on, and I don't need it to be all that sturdy on it's own.
That's all for now! Peace out!
Project One: Last weekend, I revamped a wood puzzle. A friend gave it to me, and for some reason, I looked at it and said, "I want to paint it."
I painted the pieces black with acrylic paint, and then drew on the pieces with a silver sharpie. I've been playing Zelda: Twilight Princess, and got the idea for the color scheme from the Twilight Realm, which features dark colors with light highlights. The text is the Hylian alphabet used in that game. It actually correlates with the English alphabet, and the blocks have real words on them, although I chose random, Zelda-related words like, "Link," "Hyrule," "Hero," etc.
Project Two: If you could call it a project. There's a drawing challenge floating around tumblr in which the participants go to a website that generates a random pokemon. They then redraw that pokemon three times, redesigning it three ways. It's for general drawing practice and for exercising your imagination. I spent an evening doing some sketches.
 |
| Look at this derpy guy! I tried to make him look a little cooler. |
 |
| Keldeo's a little cutie. Here's "Slightly More Realistic Keldeo," "Epic Stallion Keldeo," and "Baby Keldeo." |
Here's a picture, by the way.
Tomorrow, I'll smear pancake batter on the other half. Later in the week, or next weekend, I'll add a second layer. The internet says to use about four layers, but I think that's for a hollow paper mache project that needs to be really sturdy? I'm just going to go with two. I think that'll do me, since I'm doing it to hide tape and to give a better surface to paint on, and I don't need it to be all that sturdy on it's own.
That's all for now! Peace out!
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Surprise! More Pokemon!
Okay, so it's not really much of a surprise. Here's the next picture for my Trigun + Pokemon stuff.
Not much to say, I guess. Just like the other ones, this was inked in pen and colored with color pencils. It's dark, but it didn't come out as overwhelmingly black as I was afraid it might. XD One of the precautions I took was to layer the black with another color. So his suit is black layered with blue, and the pokemon are black layered with brown.
Something funny: Trigun's creator once jokingly implied that Wolfwood looks like he belongs in organized crime. (He totally does, by the way.) I worked on this while I was visiting my parents last weekend, and my mom looked over my shoulder and says, "So, is he kind of a dark character? Because his pokemon are kind of scary looking." Dangit, Wolfwood! XD Stop being such a bad-guy-esque good guy! (Just kidding, don't stop. It's one of the things I like about you.)
Okay, so, I have Vash next, and then I'm done with these pokemon pictures. And after that, I promise, I'm gonna do some not-Trigun stuff. I know it might be hard to believe, but there are other things I care about besides Trigun. And those other things need some love.
Peace out.
Not much to say, I guess. Just like the other ones, this was inked in pen and colored with color pencils. It's dark, but it didn't come out as overwhelmingly black as I was afraid it might. XD One of the precautions I took was to layer the black with another color. So his suit is black layered with blue, and the pokemon are black layered with brown.
Something funny: Trigun's creator once jokingly implied that Wolfwood looks like he belongs in organized crime. (He totally does, by the way.) I worked on this while I was visiting my parents last weekend, and my mom looked over my shoulder and says, "So, is he kind of a dark character? Because his pokemon are kind of scary looking." Dangit, Wolfwood! XD Stop being such a bad-guy-esque good guy! (Just kidding, don't stop. It's one of the things I like about you.)
Okay, so, I have Vash next, and then I'm done with these pokemon pictures. And after that, I promise, I'm gonna do some not-Trigun stuff. I know it might be hard to believe, but there are other things I care about besides Trigun. And those other things need some love.
Peace out.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Happy Valentine's Day
I made some Trigun themed valentines to share on the internet. I always think it's cute and amusing when I see people make their own valentines based on their favorite things and wanted to do it, too.
(An explanation of the jokes, for those not familiar with Trigun. "Makes my heart stampede" = Vash's nickname is Vash the Stampede. "I need to make a confession," = Wolfwood is a priest. He's holding his "portable confessional," which is a little model church that he claims allows him to take confessions anywhere. He can never talk anyone into using it, though. "Just doing my job" = It actually is part of Meryl's job to follow Vash around everywhere he goes. "Mille feuille cake" = Milly loves food and mille feuille cake is one of her favorites. The last two are bad guys. That should pretty much explain everything.)
I think the seeds for this idea were planted quite a while ago when I saw someone add pick-up lines to pictures of a Trigun cosplayer. Then, there were some valentines going around the internet lately featuring historical figures with pun-filled pick-up lines. And then this happened.
I wanted these to be quick and easy, so I drew them on paper, did the line art in ink, and then scanned them. In photoshop I colored them with the paint bucket. I put together the backgrounds and text in photoshop, too. (Fun fact: the hearts are on their own layer, and are actually black in every picture. The layer is set to a low opacity to make them appear a darker shade of the background color. This way I could copy/paste the layer onto every picture without having to recolor them.)
Happy Valentine's Day!
(An explanation of the jokes, for those not familiar with Trigun. "Makes my heart stampede" = Vash's nickname is Vash the Stampede. "I need to make a confession," = Wolfwood is a priest. He's holding his "portable confessional," which is a little model church that he claims allows him to take confessions anywhere. He can never talk anyone into using it, though. "Just doing my job" = It actually is part of Meryl's job to follow Vash around everywhere he goes. "Mille feuille cake" = Milly loves food and mille feuille cake is one of her favorites. The last two are bad guys. That should pretty much explain everything.)
I think the seeds for this idea were planted quite a while ago when I saw someone add pick-up lines to pictures of a Trigun cosplayer. Then, there were some valentines going around the internet lately featuring historical figures with pun-filled pick-up lines. And then this happened.
I wanted these to be quick and easy, so I drew them on paper, did the line art in ink, and then scanned them. In photoshop I colored them with the paint bucket. I put together the backgrounds and text in photoshop, too. (Fun fact: the hearts are on their own layer, and are actually black in every picture. The layer is set to a low opacity to make them appear a darker shade of the background color. This way I could copy/paste the layer onto every picture without having to recolor them.)
Happy Valentine's Day!
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Stuff that looks suspiciously like stuff you've seen before...
Second picture of a Trigunner with their pokemon.
(I accidentally made Meryl's hair a touch too long and it blurs together with her eyes. Oh noes!)
Meryl has water and ice types. At first I was afraid that Krabby would be this awkward red blob in the middle of the picture, but I'm actually really glad he's there, along with other areas of red and yellow, to give some warm spots to the picture. These are kind of giving me a lesson in color choices, I think. I liked Milly's a little better, with the pink, yellow, and brown pallet, and seeing this one is kind of making me worried for the next one, since it's going to have a heck of a lot of black in it. (Vash's picture is last and it's all red and yellow. It's either going to look good, or it's going to look like the page is on fire.)
Anyway, not much else to say, I guess. This was done exactly like the last one, with inked lines and colored pencils.
In other news, remember my cosplay prop? My stun gun?
You know, that thing that I bring up because I have to repair it over and over again? Well, I think I went to a whole ONE convention without it, and I decided I wanted it back. But I had deemed it too unstable and unrepairable, so I was mulling over my options and decided we can rebuild it! We have the technology! It's going to take drastic measures, though. The plan is to duct tape the ever living daylights out of the weak joints, and then paper mache over the whole thing, not just to cover the tape, but to give me a more reliable surface to paint on. (The paint is constantly chipping off the styrofoam.) Yesterday I did the duct taping, but I might add more for good measure.
So, yeah, that's it from me. Peace out, guys!
(I accidentally made Meryl's hair a touch too long and it blurs together with her eyes. Oh noes!)
Meryl has water and ice types. At first I was afraid that Krabby would be this awkward red blob in the middle of the picture, but I'm actually really glad he's there, along with other areas of red and yellow, to give some warm spots to the picture. These are kind of giving me a lesson in color choices, I think. I liked Milly's a little better, with the pink, yellow, and brown pallet, and seeing this one is kind of making me worried for the next one, since it's going to have a heck of a lot of black in it. (Vash's picture is last and it's all red and yellow. It's either going to look good, or it's going to look like the page is on fire.)
Anyway, not much else to say, I guess. This was done exactly like the last one, with inked lines and colored pencils.
In other news, remember my cosplay prop? My stun gun?
You know, that thing that I bring up because I have to repair it over and over again? Well, I think I went to a whole ONE convention without it, and I decided I wanted it back. But I had deemed it too unstable and unrepairable, so I was mulling over my options and decided we can rebuild it! We have the technology! It's going to take drastic measures, though. The plan is to duct tape the ever living daylights out of the weak joints, and then paper mache over the whole thing, not just to cover the tape, but to give me a more reliable surface to paint on. (The paint is constantly chipping off the styrofoam.) Yesterday I did the duct taping, but I might add more for good measure.
So, yeah, that's it from me. Peace out, guys!
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Because I'm an adult, dang it, and I do what I want, even if it means drawing pokemon but not doing my chores.
So, there were some pictures floating around the internet of the Avengers and the pokemon that they would own. (You can find them all here.) I thought that was a really fun idea and wanted to do something similar. Only, of course, there's a certain anime that's my one true love, so guess what characters I used?
I want to do at least Vash, Wolfwood, Meryl and Milly. If my artistic ADD hasn't kicked in by then, I may do some bad guys and/or secondary good guys. This week I did Milly and her team. I told myself it was because I was saving Vash for last, as something to look forward to, but I think, honestly, I just love the crap out of Milly and wanted to do her first.
Milly's an uncomplicated girl, (in fact, she's pretty much the only one in the story who doesn't have issues) so I went with normal type pokemon. And she's the type who'd love anything adorable, so I gave her a bunch of cuties. (By the way, the walking Easter egg on the end there is pretending to be Milly by wearing her coat, and the pinkie on the other end is unhappy that the coat is being dragged around and made dirty and such.) The Avengers pictures gave stories for how the character gained each pokemon, but I didn't bother. (Although I like to think that maybe the Chancey was given to her by her parents, because it's associated with nurses, and they know that Milly's a bit ditzy and that she's running around having adventures with a guy who's a supposed outlaw, so they're like, "Oh gaw, our baby could be toast any minute. Take a nurse with you! Take a nurse with you!")
Anyway, as far as the drawing style/technique goes, I was pretty much making it up as I went along. I've gotten into the habit of doing little doodles that I outline in pen and then color with markers. But the markers are kinda lousy because it's just a packet of twelve crayola fine-tip washables (some of them smell like fruit and the black smells like licorice) so they don't exactly do a professional level job. For this picture, I felt like doing more outlining in pen, but wanted to do a better job than the markers, so I went back to my colored pencils. The texture that the pencils gave turned out to work really well, since it kind of gives a soft, fuzzy feel, and it's a pretty cutesie picture. So, yeah, this is the first time I've used that pen/pencil combo and I kinda like it.
Okay, that's all from me! Peace out!
So, there were some pictures floating around the internet of the Avengers and the pokemon that they would own. (You can find them all here.) I thought that was a really fun idea and wanted to do something similar. Only, of course, there's a certain anime that's my one true love, so guess what characters I used?
I want to do at least Vash, Wolfwood, Meryl and Milly. If my artistic ADD hasn't kicked in by then, I may do some bad guys and/or secondary good guys. This week I did Milly and her team. I told myself it was because I was saving Vash for last, as something to look forward to, but I think, honestly, I just love the crap out of Milly and wanted to do her first.
Milly's an uncomplicated girl, (in fact, she's pretty much the only one in the story who doesn't have issues) so I went with normal type pokemon. And she's the type who'd love anything adorable, so I gave her a bunch of cuties. (By the way, the walking Easter egg on the end there is pretending to be Milly by wearing her coat, and the pinkie on the other end is unhappy that the coat is being dragged around and made dirty and such.) The Avengers pictures gave stories for how the character gained each pokemon, but I didn't bother. (Although I like to think that maybe the Chancey was given to her by her parents, because it's associated with nurses, and they know that Milly's a bit ditzy and that she's running around having adventures with a guy who's a supposed outlaw, so they're like, "Oh gaw, our baby could be toast any minute. Take a nurse with you! Take a nurse with you!")
Anyway, as far as the drawing style/technique goes, I was pretty much making it up as I went along. I've gotten into the habit of doing little doodles that I outline in pen and then color with markers. But the markers are kinda lousy because it's just a packet of twelve crayola fine-tip washables (some of them smell like fruit and the black smells like licorice) so they don't exactly do a professional level job. For this picture, I felt like doing more outlining in pen, but wanted to do a better job than the markers, so I went back to my colored pencils. The texture that the pencils gave turned out to work really well, since it kind of gives a soft, fuzzy feel, and it's a pretty cutesie picture. So, yeah, this is the first time I've used that pen/pencil combo and I kinda like it.
Okay, that's all from me! Peace out!
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Legato Drawing
Okay, here's the drawing I did but wasn't able to post last time.
This is Legato from Trigun. He's not very high of my "Favorite Characters" list. In fact, he's creepy, sadistic, and... creepy. Oh, and he's creepy. The first time I watched the anime, I absolutely hated him, and every time he'd come on screen, I'd point my fingers like a gun and pretend to shoot him. But the manga gave him a little more character development, and, over time, I've developed a sort of morbid fascination with his character. What led me to actually draw him was someone on tumblr complaining that there wasn't enough fan art of Legato out there, so myself and a few others volunteered to provide some more.
I actually started this drawing by tracing a screen shot from the anime, and then tweaking everything into more realistic shapes and proportions. (Which actually was an act of laziness, to be honest. I could have just looked at the picture and drawn it, but whatever.) You don't really realize how wonky anime actually is until you do something like this. Apparently anime characters use volumizing shampoo, because there's, like, two inches of hair sitting on top of their heads. (And those are the ones without the spikey hair. Like, seriously, what hair products does Yu-Gi-Oh use? I want to know!) And when their head is turned a little to the side, their eyes are still so wide, they're practically on the sides of their heads. Oh, and their eyes are big and their noses are pointy, but we knew that already.
I had a hard time with his expression, because originally, I was going to give him a wicked smile. But with his hair across his face, I couldn't use his eyebrows to portray emotion. So if I made him smile, he looked like a genuinely happy guy. (No, Legato. You are NOT a genuinely happy guy. And if you ever were happy, you little creep, I'd be worried.) So I changed his expression to hopefully make him look kinda ticked off instead.
On a related note, I took art class every year of high school, and a portrait drawing class at a Vo-Tech, and the portrait drawing class was the only useful thing out of the lot. I'm pretty sure the teacher was gay. I don't have a problem with that, I just distinctly remember noticing that he tended to call his students "honey," and the fact that that's the thing I remember the most is amusing to me. He also had a prop one day that was a skull with pantyhose pulled over it to illustrate the curves and indentions of skin on the face, and he made some joke about how the pantyhose weren't his, he had bought them just for the class, and I thought, "Really? Are you sure?" I'm not really sure why I included this story. It's just that I remember that guy every time I draw a portrait and I felt like sharing.
Peace Out!
I actually started this drawing by tracing a screen shot from the anime, and then tweaking everything into more realistic shapes and proportions. (Which actually was an act of laziness, to be honest. I could have just looked at the picture and drawn it, but whatever.) You don't really realize how wonky anime actually is until you do something like this. Apparently anime characters use volumizing shampoo, because there's, like, two inches of hair sitting on top of their heads. (And those are the ones without the spikey hair. Like, seriously, what hair products does Yu-Gi-Oh use? I want to know!) And when their head is turned a little to the side, their eyes are still so wide, they're practically on the sides of their heads. Oh, and their eyes are big and their noses are pointy, but we knew that already.
I had a hard time with his expression, because originally, I was going to give him a wicked smile. But with his hair across his face, I couldn't use his eyebrows to portray emotion. So if I made him smile, he looked like a genuinely happy guy. (No, Legato. You are NOT a genuinely happy guy. And if you ever were happy, you little creep, I'd be worried.) So I changed his expression to hopefully make him look kinda ticked off instead.
On a related note, I took art class every year of high school, and a portrait drawing class at a Vo-Tech, and the portrait drawing class was the only useful thing out of the lot. I'm pretty sure the teacher was gay. I don't have a problem with that, I just distinctly remember noticing that he tended to call his students "honey," and the fact that that's the thing I remember the most is amusing to me. He also had a prop one day that was a skull with pantyhose pulled over it to illustrate the curves and indentions of skin on the face, and he made some joke about how the pantyhose weren't his, he had bought them just for the class, and I thought, "Really? Are you sure?" I'm not really sure why I included this story. It's just that I remember that guy every time I draw a portrait and I felt like sharing.
Peace Out!
Saturday, December 29, 2012
I'm still doing things... sort of...
So I haven't posted in almost two months. XP
I was going to post regularly during Nanowrimo, but I didn't. I think part of that was because every time I thought that I ought to write in my blog, I told myself it would be more constructive to write on my story/story ideas. Another reason was that I didn't do too hot during Nanowrimo and I think deep down I didn't want to broadcast my floundering efforts to the world. Floundering is a good word... Like a Magikarp... Sarah used Splash! Sarah wrote 200 words. Sarah fainted.
I meant to push on through December so that I could at least claim my word count goal as a prize, even if it was late. But then we had this project of doom at work and I had to work overtime for about three weeks, and that killed me. Those were dark days in which I was chained to my desk at work, a chain with links too thick to saw through with my nail-clipper file, while someone came by once a day with a shallow bowl full of slop so that I could keep up just enough strength to keep going. I tried to send help to the outside world, but all I could do was write notes on post-it notes, fold them into paper airplanes, and then aim for the open door whenever someone came in or out.
Okay, just kidding. There was no chain, the slop was actually Christmas cookies, and I complained a lot to several people, who listened and sympathized, so that was nice of them.
Soon after the project of doom was over, I had to get ready for Christmas, and Christmas break, and for the past week I've been doing some really awesome chillaxing.
I drew a for-real, honest-to-goodness pencil drawing, but I'm at my folks' right now and I don't have a scanner, so that will get plastered on three different websites once I get home, including this one. I've had artist's block for months, so drawing again felt REALLY good.
And then there's my fanfiction. I worked on it during nanowrimo and got up to the climax. At that point, I was able to look back very clearly on what I had written and realized I had accomplished the most boring fanfiction ever to be fanfictioned. The IDEA of the story I still like. But the plotline was terrible. I decided to set it aside for the time being and come back to it with fresh eyes. In fact, in the last few days, I've been musing on it, and I've already come up with some alterations that improve things greatly.
Things on the horizon:
So, yeah, that's what's up with me these days.
Peace out!
I was going to post regularly during Nanowrimo, but I didn't. I think part of that was because every time I thought that I ought to write in my blog, I told myself it would be more constructive to write on my story/story ideas. Another reason was that I didn't do too hot during Nanowrimo and I think deep down I didn't want to broadcast my floundering efforts to the world. Floundering is a good word... Like a Magikarp... Sarah used Splash! Sarah wrote 200 words. Sarah fainted.
I meant to push on through December so that I could at least claim my word count goal as a prize, even if it was late. But then we had this project of doom at work and I had to work overtime for about three weeks, and that killed me. Those were dark days in which I was chained to my desk at work, a chain with links too thick to saw through with my nail-clipper file, while someone came by once a day with a shallow bowl full of slop so that I could keep up just enough strength to keep going. I tried to send help to the outside world, but all I could do was write notes on post-it notes, fold them into paper airplanes, and then aim for the open door whenever someone came in or out.
Okay, just kidding. There was no chain, the slop was actually Christmas cookies, and I complained a lot to several people, who listened and sympathized, so that was nice of them.
Soon after the project of doom was over, I had to get ready for Christmas, and Christmas break, and for the past week I've been doing some really awesome chillaxing.
I drew a for-real, honest-to-goodness pencil drawing, but I'm at my folks' right now and I don't have a scanner, so that will get plastered on three different websites once I get home, including this one. I've had artist's block for months, so drawing again felt REALLY good.
And then there's my fanfiction. I worked on it during nanowrimo and got up to the climax. At that point, I was able to look back very clearly on what I had written and realized I had accomplished the most boring fanfiction ever to be fanfictioned. The IDEA of the story I still like. But the plotline was terrible. I decided to set it aside for the time being and come back to it with fresh eyes. In fact, in the last few days, I've been musing on it, and I've already come up with some alterations that improve things greatly.
Things on the horizon:
- More drawings, hopefully.
- Since I'm nearly starting from scratch on the fanfiction, it will be awhile before there's anything worth sharing.
- I plan on doing some cosplay/prop tweaking before Nakakon in March.
- All-in-all, though, it's a little hard to say. I feel like the new year is a chance to make some resolutions and take care of some flaws/bad habits, so it's possible that I may not get much creative work done while I focus on some self-improvement. Also, I got a nook for Christmas, so I may not get much creative work done because I'm reading.
So, yeah, that's what's up with me these days.
Peace out!
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Writing... Stuff...
So, four days into Nanowrimo. Let's see how I've done so far.
To reach the end-of-the-month goal, I have to average 1,667 words a day.
Day 1 - 2,301 words. Excellent.
Day 2 - 1,457 words. Decent.
Day 3 - 0 words. This is why I can't have nice things. Like the internet. It's too distracting.
Day 4 - 999 words, but I intend to write more after this, so it should be higher by the end of the day. I'll see if I can hit my 1,667 goal. Then I'll only be a day behind.
I've found I have two major flaws working against me. The first is procrastination, and the second is an attention span the length of a gold fish's. I have a couple of plans that I think may prove helpful. One, is to track down and download my trusty "Q10" program, which is a simplistic word processor that takes up the entire screen. (You have to actually minimize it to even hit the Windows "Start" button.) (If you're interested, just google it. It's a free download.) That might lower the temptation to pop into the internet while I write. The other is to set a time limit for myself and set an alarm. One of the temptations, when you're writing for a word count goal, is to check your word count every five minutes. I think maybe if I measured my progress by time, and set alarm so I don't have to check the clock either, I might be able to work better.
I had an interesting experience while writing in which I introduced a new character, and then they ended up being different from how I pictured them. I needed a bad guy for the hero to fight, and I ended up with this idea of a teenager. He's a knife fighter, and moves really fast. I was actually kind of picturing something parkour-ish, in the way he'd chase people down and kill them. I imagined he'd be this really cocky guy, who tries to play it cool, and chasing down his prey would be kind of a fun game for him. Then I started actually writing about him. Was he a cool, cocky guy? No. This guy's creepy. This kid is not right in the head. He does enjoy chasing his prey, but in a really creepy, overly-predatorial kind of way, and he's not someone I would ever want to meet in a dark alley... which is pretty much what happened to the hero.
And then he went and got himself shot! And I wasn't really expecting that! And then I was like, "Oh no, creepy predator guy, what will happen to you? Will you live? I don't even know! But, strangely, I kind of want you to live, so you probably will, even though I have no idea what I'll do with you for the rest of the story, because you were only supposed to be in this one scene."
(Oh my gosh, "creepy predator guy" sounds terrible! You need a different nickname, Creepy Predator Guy Who Has Nothing To Do With Stalking Women.)
And, I guess I promised an excerpt or something. So here's a little scene that was kind of amusing (to me anyway). This is from Trigun fanfiction, but it's spoiler free, and you don't need to know anything about Trigun to read it. The characters in question are Razlo, a character from the manga, and Chapel the Seer, who's my own. If you know Trigun's Chapel the Evergreen, well, he and Seer are of the same stock. In this story, Chapel is a title and has been passed down from Evergreen to Seer. If you don't know Chapel the Evergreen, all you need to know is that Chapel the Seer is a priest and he's evil. The name Seer comes from his ability (although somewhat limited) to read the minds of others. In this scene, Razlo had stolen something from Seer and was captured soon afterward. He's found himself tied to a chair and expects to be tortured.
To reach the end-of-the-month goal, I have to average 1,667 words a day.
Day 1 - 2,301 words. Excellent.
Day 2 - 1,457 words. Decent.
Day 3 - 0 words. This is why I can't have nice things. Like the internet. It's too distracting.
Day 4 - 999 words, but I intend to write more after this, so it should be higher by the end of the day. I'll see if I can hit my 1,667 goal. Then I'll only be a day behind.
I've found I have two major flaws working against me. The first is procrastination, and the second is an attention span the length of a gold fish's. I have a couple of plans that I think may prove helpful. One, is to track down and download my trusty "Q10" program, which is a simplistic word processor that takes up the entire screen. (You have to actually minimize it to even hit the Windows "Start" button.) (If you're interested, just google it. It's a free download.) That might lower the temptation to pop into the internet while I write. The other is to set a time limit for myself and set an alarm. One of the temptations, when you're writing for a word count goal, is to check your word count every five minutes. I think maybe if I measured my progress by time, and set alarm so I don't have to check the clock either, I might be able to work better.
I had an interesting experience while writing in which I introduced a new character, and then they ended up being different from how I pictured them. I needed a bad guy for the hero to fight, and I ended up with this idea of a teenager. He's a knife fighter, and moves really fast. I was actually kind of picturing something parkour-ish, in the way he'd chase people down and kill them. I imagined he'd be this really cocky guy, who tries to play it cool, and chasing down his prey would be kind of a fun game for him. Then I started actually writing about him. Was he a cool, cocky guy? No. This guy's creepy. This kid is not right in the head. He does enjoy chasing his prey, but in a really creepy, overly-predatorial kind of way, and he's not someone I would ever want to meet in a dark alley... which is pretty much what happened to the hero.
And then he went and got himself shot! And I wasn't really expecting that! And then I was like, "Oh no, creepy predator guy, what will happen to you? Will you live? I don't even know! But, strangely, I kind of want you to live, so you probably will, even though I have no idea what I'll do with you for the rest of the story, because you were only supposed to be in this one scene."
(Oh my gosh, "creepy predator guy" sounds terrible! You need a different nickname, Creepy Predator Guy Who Has Nothing To Do With Stalking Women.)
And, I guess I promised an excerpt or something. So here's a little scene that was kind of amusing (to me anyway). This is from Trigun fanfiction, but it's spoiler free, and you don't need to know anything about Trigun to read it. The characters in question are Razlo, a character from the manga, and Chapel the Seer, who's my own. If you know Trigun's Chapel the Evergreen, well, he and Seer are of the same stock. In this story, Chapel is a title and has been passed down from Evergreen to Seer. If you don't know Chapel the Evergreen, all you need to know is that Chapel the Seer is a priest and he's evil. The name Seer comes from his ability (although somewhat limited) to read the minds of others. In this scene, Razlo had stolen something from Seer and was captured soon afterward. He's found himself tied to a chair and expects to be tortured.
Chapel the Seer
walked in and closed the door behind him.
“Oh... It's just
you.” Razlo said. Then he eyed Seer and asked, “Wait, are you
the torture dude? I've heard you guys are running on a short staff.
Maybe you're pulling double duty.”
Seer looked
unamused. “I'm here to interrogate you, if that's what you mean.”
Razlo looked him
over and then said, “I've never been interrogate by a priest
before. Is this what making a confession is like?”
The unamused look
grew stronger.
Razlo gave a cocky
grin and said, “Forgive me father, for I have sinned!”
“You're not
forgiven.” Seer answered flatly.
“Aw, come on,
Chapel! I mean, Father! I'll pray my rosary beads and everything!”
“Honestly, I
would be surprised if you even knew how to use rosary beads.”
“What? Give me
a break! Everyone knows about rosary beads!”
With slight
amusement, Seer said, “Alright then, tell me.”
“Uh... well...
They're beads.”
“Yes,” Seer
said slowly.
“And... uh...
they're pink, like roses, and that's why their called rosary beads!”
Seer gave him a
blank look. “Uh...huh...”
“And, you say a
prayer for each bead on the string.”
“And that prayer
is?” Seer prompted.
There was a
silence following that question. Finally, Razlo offered, “Our
Father, who art in heaven?”
Seer gave a look
that showed he was waiting for more.
Razlo continued,
“Hollow be thy name.”
“It's
'hallowed,' not 'hollow.'”
“That's what I
said!” Razlo said quickly. “Uh... then it's... thy kingdom come,
thy will be done... on earth and in heaven... Give us this day our
daily bread... Forgive our trespasses as we forgive the trespasses of
others...” Razlo paused. It stretched into a very long pause.
Finally he decided to cut his losses. “Forever and ever, Amen!”
“That was
horrendous.” Seer said. “Now what's the other prayer?”
“Uh... You just
say that one over and over.”
“No, there are
two prayers involved.”
Razlo concidered a
moment. “Is it... a Hail Mary?”
“Yes. How does
that one go?”
“Uh... Hail
Mary... full of grace... blessed art thou of women... and blessed art
the fruit of the loom.”
“It's 'fruit of
thy womb,'” Seer interrupted. “You're praying about
underwear.”
“I said 'womb!'
I totally said 'womb!'” Razlo cried. “Hey, wait a second! I see
what you're trying to pull here! I got you all figured out! You're
trying to torture me by making me pray!”
Seer raised an
eyebrow. “Is prayer torturous for you?”
“Yeah,
obviously! Praying is boring sissy stuff!”
Seer sighed.
“Alright, we'll get down to business, then. Tell me where the
plant is, and I'll read your thoughts to find out myself.”
Razlo frowned at
that sentence a moment before saying, “Don't you mean, 'tell me or
I'll read your thoughts?'”
“No, I meant
'and.' I'll read your thoughts to see if you're lying or not.”
“What!? What
the crap! Why even bother asking me to say it!?”
“I thought it
made things a little more polite,” Seer answered.
“Man, this is
bull! I'm never letting myself get tortured again! It totally
sucks!”
There was a
silence while the two eyed each other. Razlo guessed correctly that Seer was reading his mind, and he wanted to make sure his expression showed that he didn't appreciate it. Then, slowly, Seer grew
angry.
“You don't know
where she is!” he cried.
“Nope! I passed
her off to someone else!”
“Why didn't you
say so!?”
“Because you
were going to read my mind anyway, you idiot!”
Seer gave him a
hateful look. Then he turned on his heal and left, slamming the door
behind him.
Razlo relaxed in
his chair and grinned. See? I told you I could handle
being tortured.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Nanowrimo 2012
So, next month is Nanowrimo. (That would be National Novel Writing Month, a challenge to write 50,000 words of a novel during the month of November.)
In case you haven't noticed, my creative attention span has been jumping from one thing to another lately, and, as such, my writing projects and ideas are a bit too messy to participate in Nanowrimo properly. But, I'd like to go for it nonetheless, but just a little differently. I plan on aiming for 50,000 words of anything. This could be random out-of-order scenes, original work, fan fiction, novel length stories, short stories, whatever I end up writing. Just as long as I'm writing, no matter how random and ever-changing the subject matter is, I'll be happy.
I made very half-hearted attempts at this the last two years, and if there's anything I've learned, it's that in order to reach that word count goal, you can't do it half-heartedly. To keep me from wussing out, I've struck a deal with a friend to be my support buddy, and, somehow, I also ended up joining a facebook group to boot.
I plan on using the blog during the month to post word counts, musings and excerpts while I write, which will either be cool or boring for you guys. I'm not really sure which. XD
We start on Thursday... here goes nothing...
In case you haven't noticed, my creative attention span has been jumping from one thing to another lately, and, as such, my writing projects and ideas are a bit too messy to participate in Nanowrimo properly. But, I'd like to go for it nonetheless, but just a little differently. I plan on aiming for 50,000 words of anything. This could be random out-of-order scenes, original work, fan fiction, novel length stories, short stories, whatever I end up writing. Just as long as I'm writing, no matter how random and ever-changing the subject matter is, I'll be happy.
I made very half-hearted attempts at this the last two years, and if there's anything I've learned, it's that in order to reach that word count goal, you can't do it half-heartedly. To keep me from wussing out, I've struck a deal with a friend to be my support buddy, and, somehow, I also ended up joining a facebook group to boot.
I plan on using the blog during the month to post word counts, musings and excerpts while I write, which will either be cool or boring for you guys. I'm not really sure which. XD
We start on Thursday... here goes nothing...
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Short Story
Hey gang!
I'm gonna post a short story. It's actually... *checks* 17 pages in a word processor, and almost 10,000 words, which I think is on the long end of a short story. *checks that, too* Wikipedia says a short story can be up to 20,000 words, so I'm good. Not that it really matters. I just wanted to warn you that you might set this aside for when you can read it in one sitting.
And, I should warn that it's a Trigun fanfiction, and that it's set AFTER the end of the anime, so there are SPOILERS. Like totally. We're spoilering it up in here. So if you don't want spoilers, or you don't watch Trigun, I'm sorry. :( I'll have something not-Trigun next time. (And this isn't, by the way, the fanfiction I mentioned before. That one's long, and still not finished.)
I started this quite a while back and didn't finish it. But with Halloween coming up, I was reminded of it, since it's a ghost story, and completed it. Although, it's not scary. In fact, it's meant to be kind of humorous, because silly Trigun is the best Trigun. But, basically, the whole thing was more or less made up as I went along, for my own enjoyment, so I can't guarantee the quality. But if it gets a chuckle out of you at any time, I'll consider it a success.
This doesn't have a title, because I'm bad at titles. I would probably name it something like, "Attack of the Ghost Who Was Actually Quite a Nice Ghost and Didn't Mean to Scare Meryl, So He's Very Sorry, But Not Sorry for Being a Pain in the Butt to Knives, Because Knives Deserves It." Yep. Award-winning title right there.
Okay, anyway, here's my gibberish.
I'm gonna post a short story. It's actually... *checks* 17 pages in a word processor, and almost 10,000 words, which I think is on the long end of a short story. *checks that, too* Wikipedia says a short story can be up to 20,000 words, so I'm good. Not that it really matters. I just wanted to warn you that you might set this aside for when you can read it in one sitting.
And, I should warn that it's a Trigun fanfiction, and that it's set AFTER the end of the anime, so there are SPOILERS. Like totally. We're spoilering it up in here. So if you don't want spoilers, or you don't watch Trigun, I'm sorry. :( I'll have something not-Trigun next time. (And this isn't, by the way, the fanfiction I mentioned before. That one's long, and still not finished.)
I started this quite a while back and didn't finish it. But with Halloween coming up, I was reminded of it, since it's a ghost story, and completed it. Although, it's not scary. In fact, it's meant to be kind of humorous, because silly Trigun is the best Trigun. But, basically, the whole thing was more or less made up as I went along, for my own enjoyment, so I can't guarantee the quality. But if it gets a chuckle out of you at any time, I'll consider it a success.
This doesn't have a title, because I'm bad at titles. I would probably name it something like, "Attack of the Ghost Who Was Actually Quite a Nice Ghost and Didn't Mean to Scare Meryl, So He's Very Sorry, But Not Sorry for Being a Pain in the Butt to Knives, Because Knives Deserves It." Yep. Award-winning title right there.
Okay, anyway, here's my gibberish.
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Fanfiction and Heroes
So...
I'm supposed to be writing a mystery story, or drawing, or cross stitching, or something like that.
Instead, Trigun was like, "I OWN YOUR SOUL!"
I've been writing fanfiction.
Oh, and, I might, maybe, kind of, might have started a tumblr... for Trigun. Tumblr seems to be the only place that the fans are active at all (it is kind of an old show, after all), so I broke down and got an account in the name of fan interaction. I won't bore you with the details of either venture, as it would only make me sound like the ridiculous fangirl that I am.
Writing fanfiction is kind of interesting, though. For a long time, I always viewed it as cheating. The characters, or the setting, or both, are already provided, so fanfiction was the "easy" way out. I held nothing against those who wrote or read it, I just felt that if I was going to take the trouble to write something, I didn't want to "cheat." I would, occassionally, write a little fanfiction myself, but it was always boredom writing and nothing that I took seriously. Then I started coming up with fanfiction ideas that I thought were really pretty good. They were good enough that I wanted to write them and do a good job. I had to sit down and have a serious talk with myself about whether or not this was acceptable behavior. I decided it was okay to have ideas, as long as I didn't take the ideas seriously enough to actually write them down. Which is sort of like saying it's okay to keep a lit cigarette in your mouth as long as you don't inhale. It's a ridiculous thing to say. Last weekend I finally inhaled.
Geez, I feel like I'm confessing a terrible decline in morals! It's only fanfiction! It's not even the dirty kind! The romance is heterosexual and G-rated, okay!?
But it feels weird to be writing something and thinking, "Is it okay that he said that? Is that out of character?" and, "Wait, I think I need to double check that. Which volume of the manga was that in?"
Once it's finished, I may post it online somewhere. Don't know yet.
---
On a different note, I'm going to take a moment to write about something a bit cathartic. It's been on my mind.
I wish when I was a kid, someone had told me that it was okay to pick fictional characters as your hero.
I always dreaded having to write about my hero in elementary school. I didn't have one. There was no single person that I idolized in any way. I would make something up about my mom or dad being my hero. I do love both of them, but I didn't idolize them. I was jealous of the kids who could write things like, "I love basketball, so Micheal Jordan is my hero," or "My uncle is in the army, so he's my hero." Maybe I've just lived a life that's too boring and sheltered to be attached to anyone cool enough to be my hero. It didn't even occur to me that I was allowed to write "The Animorphs," or anything like that. Real people listed real people as their hero. Only the total dweebs ran around saying they wanted to be batman when they grew up.
Once I got into high school, though, I started doing this thing, occasionally, where I would try channeling a fictional character in order to get a confidence boost. I remember walking through the high school and thinking about Aragorn from Lord of the Rings. I would remember that he was called "Strider" because he was long-legged and took long steps. I would lengthen my stride just a little, walking down the halls of the high school. That was enough to give me a little boost. There was one day, while I was working summers during college, when I was having a bad day at work. I started pretending to myself that I was a Time Lord (um, Time Lady?) who was just pretending to be a normal human. Working at a retail store was just part of the guise. I didn't even bother explaining to myself why I needed to pretend to be a human. I was a Time Lord. That was all that mattered. And one of the reasons I'm so infatuated with Trigun is because some of the characters were the right thing at the right time for me. That's a really long story, but I've definitely channeled Trigun before.
I recently read about a study which had some surprising results on how fictional characters effect self esteem. You can read it here, but I'll summarize for you. Some people wanted to know if men's self esteem was hurt by seeing buff guys in pop culture, similar to the way women's self esteem can be hurt by seeing skinny women on TV. They showed pictures of comic book super heroes to college age men, and then asked them to rate their happiness, give their view of their body, and take a small strength test. Guys who had an emotional attachment to the characters they were shown, outranked the rest in all three categories. So, thinking about a fictional character that you love boosts your self confidence and can even make your physically stronger.
How awesome is that?
I admit, the results might be just the same if a person were shown a picture of a real life person that they looked up to, but that doesn't really matter. What matters is that the dweeby kid running around saying he wants to be Batman when he grows up is doing himself just as much good as someone with a real person that they look up to, and probably more good than I did for myself, resigning myself to a hero-less childhood.
So if I were asked as an adult to write about someone who was my hero, I would probably end up writing about someone like Doctor Who. And I would be totally okay with that.
Peace Out, gang!
I'm supposed to be writing a mystery story, or drawing, or cross stitching, or something like that.
Instead, Trigun was like, "I OWN YOUR SOUL!"
I've been writing fanfiction.
Oh, and, I might, maybe, kind of, might have started a tumblr... for Trigun. Tumblr seems to be the only place that the fans are active at all (it is kind of an old show, after all), so I broke down and got an account in the name of fan interaction. I won't bore you with the details of either venture, as it would only make me sound like the ridiculous fangirl that I am.
Writing fanfiction is kind of interesting, though. For a long time, I always viewed it as cheating. The characters, or the setting, or both, are already provided, so fanfiction was the "easy" way out. I held nothing against those who wrote or read it, I just felt that if I was going to take the trouble to write something, I didn't want to "cheat." I would, occassionally, write a little fanfiction myself, but it was always boredom writing and nothing that I took seriously. Then I started coming up with fanfiction ideas that I thought were really pretty good. They were good enough that I wanted to write them and do a good job. I had to sit down and have a serious talk with myself about whether or not this was acceptable behavior. I decided it was okay to have ideas, as long as I didn't take the ideas seriously enough to actually write them down. Which is sort of like saying it's okay to keep a lit cigarette in your mouth as long as you don't inhale. It's a ridiculous thing to say. Last weekend I finally inhaled.
Geez, I feel like I'm confessing a terrible decline in morals! It's only fanfiction! It's not even the dirty kind! The romance is heterosexual and G-rated, okay!?
But it feels weird to be writing something and thinking, "Is it okay that he said that? Is that out of character?" and, "Wait, I think I need to double check that. Which volume of the manga was that in?"
Once it's finished, I may post it online somewhere. Don't know yet.
---
On a different note, I'm going to take a moment to write about something a bit cathartic. It's been on my mind.
I wish when I was a kid, someone had told me that it was okay to pick fictional characters as your hero.
I always dreaded having to write about my hero in elementary school. I didn't have one. There was no single person that I idolized in any way. I would make something up about my mom or dad being my hero. I do love both of them, but I didn't idolize them. I was jealous of the kids who could write things like, "I love basketball, so Micheal Jordan is my hero," or "My uncle is in the army, so he's my hero." Maybe I've just lived a life that's too boring and sheltered to be attached to anyone cool enough to be my hero. It didn't even occur to me that I was allowed to write "The Animorphs," or anything like that. Real people listed real people as their hero. Only the total dweebs ran around saying they wanted to be batman when they grew up.
Once I got into high school, though, I started doing this thing, occasionally, where I would try channeling a fictional character in order to get a confidence boost. I remember walking through the high school and thinking about Aragorn from Lord of the Rings. I would remember that he was called "Strider" because he was long-legged and took long steps. I would lengthen my stride just a little, walking down the halls of the high school. That was enough to give me a little boost. There was one day, while I was working summers during college, when I was having a bad day at work. I started pretending to myself that I was a Time Lord (um, Time Lady?) who was just pretending to be a normal human. Working at a retail store was just part of the guise. I didn't even bother explaining to myself why I needed to pretend to be a human. I was a Time Lord. That was all that mattered. And one of the reasons I'm so infatuated with Trigun is because some of the characters were the right thing at the right time for me. That's a really long story, but I've definitely channeled Trigun before.
I recently read about a study which had some surprising results on how fictional characters effect self esteem. You can read it here, but I'll summarize for you. Some people wanted to know if men's self esteem was hurt by seeing buff guys in pop culture, similar to the way women's self esteem can be hurt by seeing skinny women on TV. They showed pictures of comic book super heroes to college age men, and then asked them to rate their happiness, give their view of their body, and take a small strength test. Guys who had an emotional attachment to the characters they were shown, outranked the rest in all three categories. So, thinking about a fictional character that you love boosts your self confidence and can even make your physically stronger.
How awesome is that?
I admit, the results might be just the same if a person were shown a picture of a real life person that they looked up to, but that doesn't really matter. What matters is that the dweeby kid running around saying he wants to be Batman when he grows up is doing himself just as much good as someone with a real person that they look up to, and probably more good than I did for myself, resigning myself to a hero-less childhood.
So if I were asked as an adult to write about someone who was my hero, I would probably end up writing about someone like Doctor Who. And I would be totally okay with that.
Peace Out, gang!
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Cross Stitching
Here's the story, though.
I never would have considered cross stitching, since, to me anyway, it holds the stereotype of being an activity that is only done my one of two types of people: old ladies, and Victorian ladies. Since I am neither, it wasn't an option.
But one day I stumbled on a little crafting niche of cross stitching geeky stuff, like these:
 |
| http://www.flickr.com/photos/22085563@N06/ |
 |
| http://miloceane.deviantart.com/art/Cross-stitch-Yellow-s-Pikachu-275035689 |
 |
| http://www.flickr.com/photos/stopsign/3282603064/ |
 |
| http://www.flickr.com/photos/krupptastic/3487964783/in/set-72157614432044697/ |
I thought, "Hey! That's cool! Maybe if I'm cross stitching something that I really like, it could be fun." I decided to give it a try. After much pondering, I decided to cross stitch the four elemental symbols from the series "Avatar: The Last Airbender." This was good because a) I'm in love with that show, and b) I wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy cross stitching, so I could start with just one symbol, and if I liked it, I could do the rest.
I started with the air symbol. I've a fondness for air out of the elements of the show, because air benders are pacifists and avoid direct conflict, and that's me in a nutshell.
Since airbenders wear orange, I grabbed orange thread for a background (and that left blue reserved for water, if I got that far). The thread changes colors down it's length from orange to yellow and back, so I thought that would look cool. For the symbol and a border, I grabbed a very dark brown, rather than black. I don't like using straight black much in art. I feel like true black is somehow sort of lifeless. I'll frequently mix it with brown or dark blue to make it either a "warm" black or a "cool" black, and that feels more comfortable in an image to me.
Anywho, I had to make my own pattern, which was a bit of a task, and involved graph paper and drawing, erasing, and redrawing little X's over and over again until I was satisfied.
This is how far I got in a week. It's about a quarter of the background, and you can see where I intend to put in the spirals when the background is complete.
 |
| (This is about three inches across, or about thirty stitches.) |
I've learned a lot from this past week. I learned about cross stitch fabrics, and how to secure the end of your thread without trying a knot. I learned different ways of making your own cross stitch pattern, and that cross stitch thread comes in more colors than Skittles. And I learned that cross stitching isn't really my thing, and that's okay.
I consider myself always in a bit of flux. I'm always learning new things about myself, and about what I like and what I don't like, and how I feel about different things. I tend to roam from one type of art or craft to another, and sometimes I think it would be better if I just picked one thing and stuck to it. But then I would stop learning about myself.
Here's to hoping that someday I will actually finish this.
Peace out, guys!
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Random Stuff
Okay, I'm gonna be honest right up front. I got nothing this week. So I'm going to just ramble about random stuff, and hopefully it will all be art/writing related. Maybe you'll find it interesting. Maybe.
That story I'm working on:
I thought it would be cool to write a mystery, because I've never done that before and I've always sort of wanted to. And then I thought it would be cool to set it in Victorian England, because everybody likes Victorian mysteries, right?
So I've been swinging wildly back and forth between, "This story is going to be cool! I'm gonna rock the mystery genre, baby!" and "WHY DID I THINK THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA!?" I don't know much about the Victorian era, and I don't know how the British police force works. (Are all detectives plain-clothes detectives? What rank do you need to be to work on a murder mystery? Do detectives have secretaries? Did women even work as secretaries in the Victorian era?) I've bought a book on the Victorian Era, by the way, which is helpful, and, honestly, pretty interesting and I'm enjoying reading it. It seems like whenever I learn something new about that time period I experience a mix of pride on their behalf, and horror. That was the era pain killer started being widely used for surgeries and childbirth and stuff. Yay! That's so great! But they didn't seem to know what exactly made for good medicine, because you could buy over-the-counter opium... for children's ear aches.
And, getting back on the topic of writing, if you know the answer to the mystery, then all the clues seem obvious to you, so how do you know which of the clues you're writing into the story are obvious and which ones aren't?
I just need to keep reminding myself that few people will ever read this story. I mean, I don't intend to try and get it published. I'm just doing it for fun and for the challenge. So if I totally crash and burn, that's okay. Right? Right.
On the subject of favorite characters:
I'm just throwing this out here, because I think maybe I'm weird about this. It's really common for me to have two favorite characters in a story: one that I really enjoyed all through the story, usually someone funny or lovable; and one that elicited the greatest emotional response out of me. So when I try to figure out who my favorite character is, I can never make up my mind. Do I pick the one who made me smile all the way through, or do I pick the one who made me cry in the end? They're both my favorite. You can do that, right? Have two favorites?
For example, in "Avatar: The Last Airbender," Sokka... (do I really want to admit this?) Sokka and I have the same sense of humor. (And now that I've started in on Korra, he's the character I miss the most.) But Zuko, of course, was the one who pulled my heartstrings. And in "Trigun," Vash is awesome in a plethora of ways, but Wolfwood hasn't so much pulled my heartstrings as gotten all tangled up in them so that he almost can't move without getting an emotional response out of me.
So now you know. I frequently have two favorites per story.
On the subject of critiquing stories:
I'm not quite sure how it happened, but somewhere along the way, I've gotten into the habit of analyzing the stories that I read and watch. What did I like? Why did I feel like that part was well done? What didn't I like? Why was that part "wrong?" How could it have been done better? I'm sure this has something to do with me writing stories myself. Sometimes I think it's a good thing, because it will make me a better writer, but sometimes I think I'm being awfully arrogant, telling the professionals what they did wrong and how they should have done it.
It's kind of a two edged-sword, because some things, when you start analyzing and critiquing them, only come out more impressive. The more you pick them apart, the more you see how well written they are. (Avatar:TLA, I'm lookin' at you! You are a heck of a well written story! I applaud you!) On the other hand, if I find too many flaws, it'll kill the story. There's a sad sad tale in my life about how I found too many things I didn't like in the Trigun movie, and now I can't hardly think about it without thinking about all the ways I want to "fix" it.
Completely random:
On Sat. Sept. 15, there's going to be a real-life Pro Bending tournament at Lake Hefner. Anyone can enter, as a team of three or individually. Individuals will be divided into teams at the event. Fire is replaced with nerf balls, earth discs are replaced with frisbees, and water is coming in the form of water balloons. I'm already signed up to be an earth bender with my sister and a friend. If anyone's interested, you can find more info, or sign up here: https://www.facebook.com/events/304327766332887/ Or you can just show up. I'm sure they won't turn you away.
Okay, done rambling. Peace out!
That story I'm working on:
I thought it would be cool to write a mystery, because I've never done that before and I've always sort of wanted to. And then I thought it would be cool to set it in Victorian England, because everybody likes Victorian mysteries, right?
So I've been swinging wildly back and forth between, "This story is going to be cool! I'm gonna rock the mystery genre, baby!" and "WHY DID I THINK THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA!?" I don't know much about the Victorian era, and I don't know how the British police force works. (Are all detectives plain-clothes detectives? What rank do you need to be to work on a murder mystery? Do detectives have secretaries? Did women even work as secretaries in the Victorian era?) I've bought a book on the Victorian Era, by the way, which is helpful, and, honestly, pretty interesting and I'm enjoying reading it. It seems like whenever I learn something new about that time period I experience a mix of pride on their behalf, and horror. That was the era pain killer started being widely used for surgeries and childbirth and stuff. Yay! That's so great! But they didn't seem to know what exactly made for good medicine, because you could buy over-the-counter opium... for children's ear aches.
And, getting back on the topic of writing, if you know the answer to the mystery, then all the clues seem obvious to you, so how do you know which of the clues you're writing into the story are obvious and which ones aren't?
I just need to keep reminding myself that few people will ever read this story. I mean, I don't intend to try and get it published. I'm just doing it for fun and for the challenge. So if I totally crash and burn, that's okay. Right? Right.
On the subject of favorite characters:
I'm just throwing this out here, because I think maybe I'm weird about this. It's really common for me to have two favorite characters in a story: one that I really enjoyed all through the story, usually someone funny or lovable; and one that elicited the greatest emotional response out of me. So when I try to figure out who my favorite character is, I can never make up my mind. Do I pick the one who made me smile all the way through, or do I pick the one who made me cry in the end? They're both my favorite. You can do that, right? Have two favorites?
For example, in "Avatar: The Last Airbender," Sokka... (do I really want to admit this?) Sokka and I have the same sense of humor. (And now that I've started in on Korra, he's the character I miss the most.) But Zuko, of course, was the one who pulled my heartstrings. And in "Trigun," Vash is awesome in a plethora of ways, but Wolfwood hasn't so much pulled my heartstrings as gotten all tangled up in them so that he almost can't move without getting an emotional response out of me.
So now you know. I frequently have two favorites per story.
On the subject of critiquing stories:
I'm not quite sure how it happened, but somewhere along the way, I've gotten into the habit of analyzing the stories that I read and watch. What did I like? Why did I feel like that part was well done? What didn't I like? Why was that part "wrong?" How could it have been done better? I'm sure this has something to do with me writing stories myself. Sometimes I think it's a good thing, because it will make me a better writer, but sometimes I think I'm being awfully arrogant, telling the professionals what they did wrong and how they should have done it.
It's kind of a two edged-sword, because some things, when you start analyzing and critiquing them, only come out more impressive. The more you pick them apart, the more you see how well written they are. (Avatar:TLA, I'm lookin' at you! You are a heck of a well written story! I applaud you!) On the other hand, if I find too many flaws, it'll kill the story. There's a sad sad tale in my life about how I found too many things I didn't like in the Trigun movie, and now I can't hardly think about it without thinking about all the ways I want to "fix" it.
Completely random:
On Sat. Sept. 15, there's going to be a real-life Pro Bending tournament at Lake Hefner. Anyone can enter, as a team of three or individually. Individuals will be divided into teams at the event. Fire is replaced with nerf balls, earth discs are replaced with frisbees, and water is coming in the form of water balloons. I'm already signed up to be an earth bender with my sister and a friend. If anyone's interested, you can find more info, or sign up here: https://www.facebook.com/events/304327766332887/ Or you can just show up. I'm sure they won't turn you away.
Okay, done rambling. Peace out!
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Redwall Happend This Weekend.
I've found myself doing something unexpected this weekend.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, (mostly in middle school), I was completely in love with a book series titled Redwall. It has a medieval setting, but the characters are all animals. Think Disney's "Robin Hood." During that time, I would get online and do RPG's, in which I would jump on a forum, make up a character, and write stories jointly with others in which each person was responsible for writing what happened to their own character.
One of my fellow RPGers was "Aquamarine," who somehow managed to track me down years later. We've been facebook friends for a while. This weekend she invited me to join a "Redwall Party" in which she and several friends were going to do an RPG for nostalgia's sake. My first reaction was something akin to panic. "Does she know how long it's been since I've read those!? I don't remember anything! Something about mice... and I think there were squirrels and otters there, too... and swords..."
But I accepted.
We're "partying" through Monday night, so I've been spending just about all my time hanging about on this forum. Somewhere in there, I jokingly said, "I have no idea what's going on here. I'm just posting when they tell me to." Only I wasn't entirely joking. I'm holding my own pretty well, though, I think. Every time I post, someone says, "Thanks, Sarah! That was great." So, either, I'm doing well, or they're just making sure to be really nice to me.
I'm writing an otter family, by the way. A father, a son, and a daughter. At the moment, the son has been captured by the bad guys while attempting to rescue his friend, also captured by bad guys. I'm very amused that, early on, we all heard that the bad guys were planning on making the good guys play a cruel version of tug-of-war in order to win back the prisoners, and everyone immediately starts making big, burly otter characters. (But my character came first! Hipster Otter was a big, burly otter before it was cool!)
It's all very nostalgic in a very weird way.
That's all for now. Peace out!
Once upon a time, a long time ago, (mostly in middle school), I was completely in love with a book series titled Redwall. It has a medieval setting, but the characters are all animals. Think Disney's "Robin Hood." During that time, I would get online and do RPG's, in which I would jump on a forum, make up a character, and write stories jointly with others in which each person was responsible for writing what happened to their own character.
One of my fellow RPGers was "Aquamarine," who somehow managed to track me down years later. We've been facebook friends for a while. This weekend she invited me to join a "Redwall Party" in which she and several friends were going to do an RPG for nostalgia's sake. My first reaction was something akin to panic. "Does she know how long it's been since I've read those!? I don't remember anything! Something about mice... and I think there were squirrels and otters there, too... and swords..."
But I accepted.
We're "partying" through Monday night, so I've been spending just about all my time hanging about on this forum. Somewhere in there, I jokingly said, "I have no idea what's going on here. I'm just posting when they tell me to." Only I wasn't entirely joking. I'm holding my own pretty well, though, I think. Every time I post, someone says, "Thanks, Sarah! That was great." So, either, I'm doing well, or they're just making sure to be really nice to me.
I'm writing an otter family, by the way. A father, a son, and a daughter. At the moment, the son has been captured by the bad guys while attempting to rescue his friend, also captured by bad guys. I'm very amused that, early on, we all heard that the bad guys were planning on making the good guys play a cruel version of tug-of-war in order to win back the prisoners, and everyone immediately starts making big, burly otter characters. (But my character came first! Hipster Otter was a big, burly otter before it was cool!)
It's all very nostalgic in a very weird way.
That's all for now. Peace out!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)