Emerald Winter .NET

This painting is already sold, but it will be on display at Megacon and there will be prints available.

I am updating the comics regularly again.  My vow is for every week day I do not work my regular job, I will have a new page.  Of course, the Monday/Friday (LL) and Tuesday (EW) schedule will still be in effect until I can find the time to do four pages a week and shift EW’s schedule around. Right now I am hard up for some funds, so I am trying to get more hours at work.

As for this site, I am working on the style again.  I am tired of it randomly messing up, so I’m just going to start over from scratch.  So… you get to look at the Wordpress default for a little while.  -_-;;

Sorry, no art today.  Just thought I should update this so that everyone will know my status.

Today I am finishing up the edits for Lavender Legend book 1.  After this is done, I still have to come up with some extra content.  This will probably be a few pages of jokes, some character art, and things like that.  I have only two weeks left to get this in order, so that’s why I’m not updating my comics at the moment.

This is my first drawing in 2010.  Although this was supposed to be my warm-up sketch, I didn’t feel anymore like drawing anything after I finished it.  *facepalm*  It was supposed to be a villain from Emerald Winter, but I think it’s just a random guy now.

I haven’t been around for about two weeks.  We went to visit my family the day after Christmas, and then as soon as we got back, we had to drive all the way to Kentucky the next day to attend the services for a family member on Brandon’s side that recently passed away.  It was a very long, depressing, trip.

I am glad to be home now, and hopefully this year can be as productive if not more so than last year.

Well, that illustration was painless enough.  I still want to do some traditional art, but I think this particular one was too complicated for it.  I headdesked a little about the colors, it’s not as vibrant and wild as I intended.  You can see where I made Felicia’s hair brighter blue than usual.  His hair is supposed to be black, I remind myself.  But I think it looks all right.

The code for the site got reset when I upgraded Wordpress, and apparently I never backed up the style.  So I tried adding the style back and it’s getting there, but there’s still some areas that are messed up.  I’ll continue editing when I can.

I decided to go with digital medium for the time being.  It’s looking pretty good so far.  I am glad I went this direction since I can make such sharp shapes with the cell style.

I got some flyers done today.  In the end, it only cost $10 for 100 sheets (which each have two half-sheet flyers on them for a total of 200) but for doingit at Staples, because I work there, I’ll get $5 back.  I don’t get it off the price flat out, they do their employee discount weird like that.

I also bought some HP ink because they were going to give back double rewards for empty cartridges with an HP purchase.  So I ended up spending $90, but about half of that should come back to me, plus $40 from the ink recyling, or something like that.   I have to spend it all at Staples, but that’s where I get all my supplies anyway, so no big deal.

Internal conflict:  Do I do this illustration traditional style or on the computer?

Traditional:   It was way more work, prone to mistakes, consumes materials–but it provides me with an “original” to sell at a high price… if it doesn’t get so messed up that I have to edit it on the computer to save it.  Traditional also has a unique texture.

Computer:  Easy to fix any mistakes, better dramatic lighting effects, I can instantly edit parts of the image to fit different formats, it doesn’t consume any materials, makes no mess.  No original copy, less of a unique look.

Maybe I’ll try it both ways because I’m crazy like that.

I don’t care if it’s not perfect anymore, I am done with this picture and it will just have to stay as it is.  The face looks much better to me now, as well as the shadow areas.  There is some trouble with the hair not being consistent, but I am not so concerned about that.

Nanomango is over and I succeeded!  Some of my pages were really more “doodle” and less “pencil” but that is beside the point, amirite?

If you’d like to see what I’ve done, and get a sneak peek at upcoming pages, take a look here.

Further proof that I have no idea what I am doing.  I tried to improve the image by adding facial muscles which are visible when someone makes a smile around the mouth and under the eyes.  But now she looks old.  X_x  What am I doing wrong?  I wonder if I simply can’t marry the animu design of the character to realism with any success.   I’ve seen it done, but maybe /I/ can’t do it with /this/ particular character. XD

Seriously, this is like Mok-kos Lorta.  If you don’t know what MOK-KOS is, you don’t really want to know.  But I will let you see it anyway.  Or Sader.  The sad thing is that while Sader is abootleg, MOK-KOS is a real, liscenced figurine of KOS-MOS.

BUT– BACK TO IMPORTANT BUSINESS!

Emerald Winter and Lavender Legend are both 2-3 weeks out of date because of several issues.  1)  working retail during holiday season coupled with the cold and dark always fills me with an unshakable sense that everything I do is pointless and that I should jump off a bridge.  I have to really “cheer up, emo kid” at myself a lot, haha.  I’ve blown so much money on eating out  this month, it cheers me up.  2) preparation for Megacon, although it is not until March, is quite time-consuming.  3) I am also doing nanomango, which is good for my comic in the long-run because it provides me with buffer pencils.  I work way faster when I have roughs to work from.

So expect Janurary to be a flurry of updates, but as for November and December, I am just doing my best to do a little each day, and not worried about the update deadlines.

More sketchiness.  I think I’ll do a bunch and work on the best ones for prints.

I think taking a break from the hectic update schedule is a neccessity for me.  I often feel like I have three completely different lives that I have to keep up with: online projects (which I don’t typically get paid for) and maintaining an internet presence, updating and keeping in contact with acquaintences and the like; then there is my home life with my family, cooking, cleaning (which I have a hard time getting around to, I live like a slob); and there’s my “real” job where I flounder in miserable retail.  Sometimes I have to focus more on one at the expense of another.

Maybe that is why Felicia is a cross-dresser, a maid, and a resistance agent all in one?  Eh, it’s probably not connected!