Incidents and accidents

After going back and looking the the sketch from yesterday, I came to the reluctant conslusion that Larken was correct in saying that they looked similar. However, I quickly decided that coloring them might fix the problem. I personally think they look nothing alike now, despite not having changed a thing about the drawing itself. Larken, comments?

Best friends in my graphic novel. On the left, the as yet unnamed Larken character, on the right the main character, Aloria (Lori for short). They’re headed home on a hot day from a walk to the grocery store.
This illustrates the facial structure differences between the two, Lori’s eyes go up, Larken’s go down. Larken has a shorter (cuter) nose, while Lori’s is long and upturned. Lori’s mouth is a little smaller, but her lips turn down more. Both girls are about the same height, but Lori has a longer torso while Larken has longer legs. This makes me laugh, because in real life, I’m a good 6 inches taller than Larken, with both a long torso and long legs. Larken’s eyes also don’t turn down that much, but I wanted her to look markedly different than Lori. Once I practive her more, she’ll look a bit better. Eventually, she’ll be named. I’m toying with Noelle at the moment, but I don’ think that will be the final name.
All I can say is: Why are the best friends the sexy ones?

… and again. Blonde, brown, or black?

Here’s a quick thing that I’m working on for my graphic novel. Since the script is coming close to being done, I was working on character design. I have myself and John’s character already done, so today i was working on the girl who will end up being the Larken character. I did a few designs and sloppily colored them. Each picture will take you to a larger image. When you’re done looking, please vote for what you think is either the best or the closest to Larken’s personality. Leave some comments below on why you picked what you did. (For those that care, my favorites are 1, 3, 4 and 8.)

Here’s another quick snip of the graphic novel. I found this part particularly funny. Lori is modeled after me, and Bruce and Christine’s names will get changed eventually.

Xine “Hey, I liked your long hair. Come on, the test are ready/”
-Both go to Christine’s kitchen. She’s set up a bucket of water, a pan of dirt and a pan with some wood in it.
“Okay, start with the fire first.”
Lori “How?”
Xine “I don’t know. Think about seeing a fire on the wood?”
Lori “I don’t really ____”
-Is interrupted by a FOOM! Of flame from the wood. Frame of both girls looking at something red and glowing off screen, very surprised.
Xine -Grabs the bucket of water and douses the wood
“God, Lori! Leave me some eyebrows, would you?”
Lori -Looks at blackened pan
“Maybe we should do this outside.”
Bruce -Cut to Bruce arriving home. He turns off the car, gets out and walks toward the house. He undoes his tie and untucks his dressy shirt and he’s walking in the door.
“Honey, I’m home! Honey?”
-Wanders into the kitchen to find the blackened pan of wood and wet floor. He races around trying to find Christine, finally checking outside. He sees Lori and Christine. Christine is holding a running hose. Both are soaking wet and smeared with dirt and soot. There is a small pile of burning logs off to one side, and the bucket of water has some undulation water sticking up out of it. As he stares, slack-jawed, some dirt clods roll by on their own.
Xine “Oh, hi, honey! How was work?”
Bruce -Silently pulls the door shut and turns and goes back in the house. (Perhaps he gets a beer?)
-Cut to Xine, Lori and Bruce at a table. Bruce looks a little the worse for wear and there are quite a few empty beer bottles lined up in front of him.
Xine “… and that’s when you got home. You know everything that happened after that.”
Bruce -To Lori
“So… some dude told you that you’d be an elf, Nathan turned into an ogre, you got kidnapped, you turned into an elf, you got some special powers, then my wife cut your hair and convinced you to test your powers in our backyard.”
Lori “That pretty much sums it up, yeah.”
Bruce -to Xine
“It took you THAT long to tell me that?”
Xine “Helloooo.. Theater major here.”
Bruce -to Lori
“So, Freak of Nature… ::smile:: What exactly CAN you do with those powers?”
Lori “As your long-winded wife surmised, it’s all elemental control. Earth, wind, water, fire. I don’t know how much yet, and I can’t do a damn thing to man-made objects. No alloys, no plastics, no brick.. etc”
Bruce “Interesting. Well, this beer is about to catch up with me, so I think I’ll head to bed. You girls have fun burning down the rest of the backyard.”

Graphic novel:

35 Typed pages (79 Handwritten)
1179 Lines
19,904 Words
108,080 Characters

Aloria. This is my main character in a graphic novel (/web comic) I’ve been in and out of writing for 10 years. Whe I first began, Aloria’s name was Etoh, and she looked like a normal enough person except with dragon wings. Later, her name became Evera, and she looked like this , then she got a makeover and looked more like this for a while. Then she changed again, to this for a bit. After that, she became a cat person for a year, but eventually lost the ears but kept the now-trademark face markings and picked up her new name of Aloria. The story has changed so many times that it’s not really even the same world, much less the same book.
I read other web comics online, most notably Inverloch and Earthsong. Each new page both of these talented ladies publish makes me compare my novel to thiers, yet again. I find most often that I begin to feel like my novel sucks hardcore when compared to the art or the story or the whatever.. Yesterday, I stumbled upon Alpha Shade, which is another really well done one. I liked the art, the story is intruiging… but for the first time I compared my novel and I thought “No.. it’s good, but I like mine better.” So I thought it might finally be time to write about something that’s taken up so much of my time as of late. Of course, I’m not going to blurt out the whole story (because I want you all to read the darn thing once it gets going). I’ve also had artwork of mine stolen before, so I don’t really think it’s a good idea to put up the story the characters go in. There’s no real way to privatize an idea once it’s on the web, but I will give you all a little background and the first part of the script. I will send the whole (currently unfinished) script to trusted people should they want a copy. I have no name for this novel/comic so far, so suggest some.
Background: Earth, 2007 (may change) AD. People worldwide have begun to change into other creatures. It’s the result of magic coming back into the world. (You gamers may recognize this bit from Shadowrun). The remaining normal humans are shitting themselves in fear. Some get angry and violent, some preform illegal experiments on the changed.. etc. The government has no official stand on the new creatures.
———-Begin script———–
-Begin with a view of a cute girl with wings, flying through the clouds. She has a smile on her face, just enjoying the wind. She passes over a small house and hears a ringing sound. As she gets closer,… cut to inside shot of the same girl, cuddled sweetly in a mass of big blankets. The alarm is ringing, and then switches to the radio.
Radio “__eaking news out of downtown today. Another riot has broken out in front of Bailey’s Coffee House. For the second time this week, protestors against equal right for (non-humans) have gathered in front of the only store left in town still owned by a (non-human). Several dozen people threw rocks through the windows before police arrived.
Lori Turns over, grumbles and levers herself off the pillow to check the time. 8:02 *flick* 8:03. She sighs, pushes her hair out of her face and sits up.
Radio “Mr. Bailey told us that ‘a buncha human supremacists ain’t gonna run me outa town.’ The rise of (non-humans) hate crimes seems to be the result of higher tensions all over the world as more and more (non-humans) appear. Numbers of adults and children turning into (non-humans) are on the rise, but still no (non-humans) babies have been born.”
Lori Rubs her eyes and flicks off the radio.
“Great. It’s not enough to quarantine them illegally and subject them to torturous tests, now we have to stone them out of what little they have left? I’m ashamed to call myself human these days.”
Gets up, gets dressed, gets some candy and turns on the news.
TV Cut to shot of TV screen with numbers of reported (non-humans):
August 7, 2006 = 1
October 2006 = 300
December 2006 = 4000
February 2007 = 10000
April 2007 = 20000
May 26, 2007 = 35,021
“Numbers of (non-humans) being reported are on the rise, but due to continued backlash toward (non-humans) appearances, there are assumed to be more in hiding.”
Lori “Damn right there are. I wouldn’t want to get beaten for coming out in public.” ::sigh::

Thanks to Larry, Elvenwings.com is sporting a fancy new Gallery! He put up the software god knows how long ago, but I only found it was there last night. I got it configured, then had to get his help again to get it secured. I spent all day today getting the pictures into the right albums and getting everything all captioned. I got the new artwork in as well, for the first time since March 2004! It was just getting really annoying to make the separate web page and thumbnail for each new picture, then get it uploaded, then get it coded in to the main page.. etc. So, much happy with gallery, because I can just get it in the right place with a minimum of fuss. People can leave comments on the pictures now too!

Joshua is leaving for Texas on Friday, so we’re going out tomorrow afternoon for a last old-school round of ice cream at Maggie-Moos. He also just called and told me he saw hummingbirds at his feeder today. Damn Damn! Everyone I know that has a feeder up has them, except me! I know because I’m in a urban area, and because I have no flowering plants to draw them in.. but… nerg. At this rate, it’ll be June by the time I see any here. I might have to go over to Trinny’s place just to get my fix. Or something.

I also had some of my artwork stolen recently. Some 14 year old kid got the black and white sketch of the pensive angel from me somehow. He saved it from crickie.com , then uploaded it on deviantart.com under his name. He didn’t change a damn thing about it, not even the file size. I confronted him about it, and the had the nerve to call me a bitch and tell me that it was his. He claims to have drawn it in 30 minutes in pen. This makes me FURIOUS! I mean, it’s like someone walking into my house and taking my hard work, and calling me a bitch for ever thinking that it was mine. I worked really hard on that. Hell, I work really hard on all of my stuff. That one was one of the hardest works I’ve ever done, and one of the best jobs I’ve done on hands in a while. What’s worse is that anyone that knows anything about visual art can look at the rest of his gallery and see that none of it is drawn by the same hand. It’s ALL stolen from other people. Damn kids. You can see my stolen work here and my DeviantArt gallery here. I’ve reported it many times, but it’s still up. I found it Friday night at about 7pm, so it’s been up all weekend. I’m surprised the thief hasn’t taken it down himself. He knows where he got it, and he sure knows he didn’t draw it himself…. GRRRR!!!

Finally, I have new art up at Midnight Confessions. With school and work and homework and John, I haven’t had much time to myself recently. I’ve wanted to some drawing, but I have had other things to do. Today, I got all of my homework done early and spent about 4 or 5 hours on this . It was great to sit down and focus on beauty for half a day. I feel better.

I also helped Megan on a few problems with her new layout over at Hints and Allegations. She decided she needed a real overhaul today at about 10am (my time) and was done with it by 3pm! It looks great too! She said she was getting a bit tired of the dark colors and needed something happier to make her feel better. So she put up some happy purple and some pretty wildflowers, and it’s a whole new page! Yay for Megan!

I also watched Shrek tonight on NBC. It was as great as it was the first time I ever saw it. I was surprised to see a sneak preview for Shrek 2 at the end. I can’t wait to go see it.