today's stuff

one nice thing about having time off is I have all kinds of free time to get bored and draw.

I've been feeling crappy all day. Of course on my day off.
Need to start my third scarf and watch more tv on dvd I guess.

Never ate lunch and I'm so hungry but apparently at some point there will be dinner?

card front

More that people may or maynot be able to see. Eventually I'll make a wordpress or something and just copy it over here.

want to make a christmas card out of this but I have few people to send it to. I want to put fancy font words with it, but I don't know that it will work. I printed it out down stairs and have been too lazy to go look...

fireboy 001

see below*

I used a brush in photoshop to get this effect. Its not great painting or anything. But it is the beginning to the 100 words thing as well as the story that came out of it. Nothing is really happeneing though in the story so I don't know what will really come of it.

*I do not know why sometimes these don't load in internet explorer but I went back through everything IN internet explorer and only one thing didn't load other than this and I know I've had problems more than once before. So either it will eventually show up or it won't. It won't even let me link to it.

project

I found this one someone's journal on deviant art. I've seen it before and I've been wanting to do it. I'm not posting every day like I wanted. I'm still sketching things, but not posting them.

Having a hard time just going on my comic thing. I think I need to spend some time just writing out the story so I don't have to think of the story and how to lay it out at the same time.

we shall see.

100 word challenge:

1.Introduction
2. Love
3. Light
4. Dark
5. Seeking Solace
6. Break Away
7. Heaven
8. Innocence
9. Drive
10. Breathe Again
11. Memory
12.Insanity
13. Misfortune
14. Smile
15. Silence
16. Questioning
17. Blood
18. Rainbow
19. Gray
20. Fortitude
21. Vacation
22. Mother Nature
23. Cat
24. No Time
25. Trouble Lurking
26. Tears
27. Foreign
28. Sorrow
29. Happiness
30. Under the Rain
31. Flowers
32. Night
33. Expectations
34. Stars
35. Hold My Hand
36. Precious Treasure
37. Eyes
38. Abandoned
39. Dreams
40. Rated
41. Teamwork
42. Standing Still
43. Dying
44. Two Roads
45. Illusion
46. Family
47. Creation
48. Childhood
49. Stripes
50. Breaking the Rules
51. Sport
52. Deep in Thought
53. Keeping a Secret
54. Tower
55. Waiting
56. Danger Ahead
57. Sacrifice
58. Kick in the Head
59. No Way Out
60. Rejection
61. Fairy Tale
62. Magic
63. Do Not Disturb
64. Multitasking
65. Horror
66. Traps
67. Playing the Melody
68. Hero
69. Annoyance
70. 67%
71. Obsession
72. Mischief Managed
73. I Can't
74. Are You Challenging Me?
75. Mirror
76. Broken Pieces
77. Test
78. Drink
79. Starvation
80. Words
81. Pen and Paper
82. Can You Hear Me?
83. Heal
84. Out Cold
85. Spiral
86. Seeing Red
87. Food
88. Pain
89. Through the Fire - [link]
90. Triangle
91. Drowning
92. All That I Have
93. Give Up
94. Last Hope
95. Advertisement
96. In the Storm
97. Safety First
98. Puzzle
99. Solitude
100. Relaxation

powerman

the kinks - powerman

I got an ipod touch. I am so tech-info-ed out.

this is what I'm working on and some other stuff. I want nothing more than to get it done.

not the comic page

buh okay!


[larger version]

I participated in the cheshire ball and while my cat doesn't have a whole lot to do with halloween I like him anyhow.

"Mooncat belongs to the moon. While he does not glow himself he can leave a dull white yellow glow trail, like a slug, and uses this ability to leave crude words or pictures on people's doors, porches or lawns. He can be found at night munching on berries from garden shrubs. Once Mooncat made the moon sad by not coming home in the morning, and he wears a "tear" around his neck to remember next time...probably. Mooncat is about medium dog sized."

imagine looking out front of your house and this giant cat-thing munching on your shrubbery! Maybe its because I don't associate halloween with scary its more of a family time feeling for me. Though lately with everyone going all over its less actual family time.

some day I'll actually get to make skull things in celebration. But who knows when I'll stop being a lazy poop and do that.

---

no comic page sorry. But I have been planning out how I want the pages to go and some dialog for it. Then the cheshire thing happened and I did that instead.

work in progress. w.i.p.

I intend to color it and give her servants and someone to be yelling at. This is where she finds out how much its costing her to keep the apartment that she use to live in, that ideally Nona would live in soon. The housing is usually passed through the family and isn't often very nice, but gets to be really expensive because no one lives in it for 10-20 years or more at a time and someone has to keep it from getting crappier. Usually this is another family business, taking care of a building and all the families that have "homes" there. I imagine Nona is at least 4th generation if not 5th in a line of magical people. and I just now decided that the first one was a man that was killed by his daughter...and thus the female line instead of a male one. So maybe more than 5 generations away from the original guy. All living in the crappy apartment at some point in their lives.

internet radio is cool because I can get stuff from other countries, like dance music stuff. But really do they need to talk over whole songs at a time. Like anyone cares about anything other than that the song is going on and it keeps getting interrupted. I get annoyed when this happens on regular radio too so not even that I can't understand what is being said.

blarg

new one on top repost on bottom. The face isn't right. I can't draw faces because I have a hard time looking at real faces. Which is the problem, cause people that have good cartoonish faces often started drawing regular faces.

making a website takes a long time. I guess I should just focus on getting my portfolio presentable. And handing in my resume to the people in career services at school.

radar love

full size

So I was driving home from work and I heard the song Radar Love by Golden Earring* and thought to myself (at the time I thought he was singing redeye love) how this is like one of my characters. Even though I know its not redeye, and instead radar I still think it fits.

Nicholas is death. So I can only assume he is destined to be with the character that brings life. Only it would be hard to be together? I think of the sun and the mood story and how they can never be in the same sky together even though they love each other or something. So basically they can be together from a distance. And even though nicholas is death its more of like a CEO thing, where he just has to do damage control should any of the reapers and stuff working with the souls have complications. It makes him have to be less like santa, and visit every dying thing everywhere all the time forever. I think originally his mother tried to help him when he was little but he quickly decided whatever system she had set up wasn't going to be effective and instated the current workings of dying and souls. None of which I have figured out yet.

*I'm not this music savvy, but I had to look up the song and...acquire it. So now I know all the details like who sings it etc.

website

full size

well this picture seems to work in explorer. I don't know why some of them come up and some don't. Its possible that blogger is being stupid not just explorer.

anyhow. I have been liking limey green colors for a long while now and I want to have a place of my own to live in and basically have a life. So that's what I made.

there will be buttons across the top and in the middleish part information. I need to see about these gallery code or things. I like how it works but I haven't been able to find where people get them or if they just write the code themselves. I don't think they write it themselves...so its out there somewhere.

In the mean time I need to finish my resume and start turning it into regular businessy jobs. I just need a full time job that isn't as horrible as dealing with mean people all day in retail.

cloud

I was looking at clouds at work one day, but I didn't remember what the bottoms looked like really...so it looks weird now. Like a cloud pooplet

nothing

I've gone from feeling excited about getting done with school (before it ended) to enjoying not having to do homework, and now I feel like I have no direction and no drive to do anything at all.

the plan is to make myself a mini working vacation where I don't play video games and when I am sitting at my computer I am working on job stuff. Or I am laying around reading books and drinking juice, which makes me feel better emotionally.

if ever anyone needed an example of what not refilling your creative well does, I am a good one. it makes life just feel plain shitty. Like an ichy sweater only your body feels to heavy to scratch or take it off. and you can't come up with any better solutions than just laying there...

full size

I wonder if may be I just don't want to complete things.

edit2: whatever its something with photobucket now.

I want to do this as the first part to my comic, nona's mother procuring for her the same apartment that she began in. But I can't do any kind of layout well enough to make me not want to throw it out. I keep seeing it like a movie instead of in panels or even in still shots. my mind just wants to rush past it. I guess maybe because its not important really, other than to make this lady scary. which isn't really happening either.

doodle

I don't know, just doodling.

wolfie?

he wants to be nice and dance.

some new character is forming, and I don't know if its a variance on Jackie or if its something else.

crochet e?

I'm not sure how to spell it. But I mean the game with the little wire arches and the mallets that you use to hit a ball to a stick...or something. I never played for real myself.

this is suppose to be Nicholas standing in the middle, with his brothers laying in the hammock and sitting next to it waiting their turn. In the back is a little one room cottage type thing that is full of tons of books and a bed of some sorts. Though most often nicholas ends up sleeping in the hammock outside.

jump

words

I feel very, detached from art. I talk about how I like to make things but when I go to do it I feel lost. I don't want to complete anything, I know everything in the world that I don't want to do.

What I want is to draw really simple things, and make really simple things. But this seems almost like I'm cheating myself. Because I can draw better than that, so I should. But I don't want to. I can create amazing shapes, but I don't want to.

I want to draw things with noodle arms, and for some reason little skulls. It makes people upset or uncomfortable the skulls. I've made four little clay people with skull faces so far and they are creepy, but happy to see me and I like them.

Just tried to take pictures of two of them, but I don't really feel like editing the photos right now.

I feel like I'm not doing what people expect of me. I'm not doing what I expected of me. I thought I would get done with school and feel like making a million things all over the place. But now when I start making something I am more likely to have no ideas or just feel very tired.

tired and sad.

I was doing better when my computer wasn't working, as much as I hate to admit that.

nicholas has 8 arms/legs. four are "hidden" I have a difficult time drawing them the way I want.

it turned into a foo dog?

I drew the eyes and everything kind of grew out of that.

look she's got such pretty bows...

thank you

this is the picture I made for thank you cards from me for the graduation stuff. The other ones match the invitations, but I've gotten cards from people before the invitations for things went out so I wanted it to be mildly unrelated to that.

I had a hard time doing this and I realized I was drawing with the wrong kind of music on. Changed it to stuff like crosby stills and people... and then I made this in under an hour? something like that.

Um...I think you should bring the couch home before you sleep on it.

I have some others, but I have to scan them in and I'm lazy.

I haven't been sketching and its probably because I have other characters I like more but have nothing to do with this story and I wanted to draw them. so I started a digital sketch and then...the power went out. Then I was on a whirlwind workathon it seems...so maybe I'm back. I keep feeling like I need a nap though.

four of four

{click to see larger image)

Okay so in case anyone was wondering "but Stevie what do you do with the rest of the paper you sketch on?" I sketch on it too but there are lots of serious...things...that don't really need to see the internet. I get upset and just make scribbles. Take tina sitting on the little stool, that was the first time I attempted her hair, it was sticky outy hair, then it was well kept short hair, then it was short hair with a hat and in the end I just "lit her head on fire" because I did not care anymore.

I also X things out much like that random spikey head in the middle there. I don't know and I don't really want to talk about it.

BUT! at one point I imagined up toaster cat. toaster cat (named thomas) is a toaster, and a cat. Mostly cat, but fully capeable of making toast. Little toasty slots in his back are where the toast goes. When he was a kitten you had to use the little toasts, which taste icky. Then he graduated to english muffins and can now easily handle toasting regular sized bread and the occasional bagel. However sometimes toaster cats can make breakfast (or toast time) difficult. What happens when thomas doesn't want to just sit nicely and toast things. You end up chaseing your toast around until its done. If you make him mad he burns your toast, but only if you make him really mad because usually smoke means he gets water dumped on him (no electic toasting, magic toasting, so water to put out fires is fine). Then there is the litter box, cause he can totally "accidentally" get litter all on your toast if you aren't careful. And before all that what if Thomas is not in a toasting mood? even the oracle has a hard time with cats, but she loves him.

I need to draw a baby thomas and little mini toasts

(all of the other appliances are just normal)

three of four I forsee

(click for larger image)

This is a "photo" of Ariel (right) and Tina. Tina is the oracle who previously didn't have a name. I love tina. Tina is probably me if I were, more outgoing/curious, had straight hair, and was thinner. and had way smaller boobs. They are not proportionate to one another, and ariel gets wonky looking legs because I was busy drawing and didn't notice till I was scanning it in.

two of some

(click for larger image)

I was upset with the abilities of my pencil. It was being squeeky on the paper and not very good with the shadeing. so I recovered from my DUH moment and got out my set of gray markers. Tada shading.

it looked better on the other side of the paper, but it didn't scan well.

oh so being all taken care of by her mother's servents and peoples, nona kind of sucks at living on her own. She managed to unpack blankets..and shovel them into a corner. and sleep. off to a good start! yes.

one of some

I don't like this one anymore, but I had fun drawing the outfit. I used non-photo blue pencil to draw and then went over it with marker. Then I made the outline digital. so tada.

this is I guess preliminary for nona's mom. She's some amazing magical person with a pet dragonthing, but I haven't figured out whats up with it all yet.

christmas in june

Nona is pissed because she is outside in the cold. Libby is in love with the guy, though rationally not in love with him? or something. So she's fine being there because he is. It looks mainly like someone is taking a picture of them in the snow.

took a week off to mope. I want to be done mopeing, so if I'm not its likely going to make me angry. Tomorrow's goal is quick ugly art or messing around with brush and ink.

oh the nameless guy has a whole creature of the night thing going on so the snow makes everything really bright. Plus being in sunglasses all the time is totally cool... yes. maybe.
anyhow, you are born normal human looking childthing and over time your hands/arms kind of grow into monstery furry claw things. It use to be a seperate ...species? that eventually turned into werewolf looking things, ears and snouty thing etc. However because they interbred with people the process of turning into the werewolf stops at various stages. So people have tails or ears and all over face hair with a weird facial structure. so this guy above is actually pretty lucky his face isn't stuck half way between human and animal.

made most of that up just now.

on the fly!

edit: well it seems I made the reasoning up, cause I don't remember getting that from anywhere, but I just saw an icon on livejournal that makes me think the guy came from that. floppy monster hands. sadness. Now I feel like I just bought the coolest t-shirt and then I found out everyone already had it. I think his name is Ken though. or something K. I don't know that it matters much though...I probably won't actually make this into a comic because I am super ultra lazy.

took the weekend off kind of. I sketched at work but not artslam things.

nona before she had to live on her own and after

Oh she is so working at a laundry mat. At this one I will also make her have to do like...commercial stuff too. Like a public one out front and then in back a more commercial one I guess.



legs
little anime cutesy sexy la la la...legs. TOTALLY elude me.
I just liked the shoe design, and I figured it would look all cutesy with the swingy feet on a wall and then it wasn't working and smooshpainting and blaaaaah. Thus the top of it doesn't follow the same drawing style as the bottom half, because I kept redrawing the bottom half. But in the right top corner you can see the style of shoe I was trying to go with.

still no name. I might just call her Noname Nonamae Nona. I like that well enough. It kind of fits with the story a bit.

anyhow these were from last night late. I wasn't going to draw because I didn't want to sit at the computer anymore, but then I realized I was laying on my bed next to a pencil and a pad of paper. tada.

So Nona. She will eventually have lots of names having come from an important family. Like Nonama something something SOMETHING. blah de blah de blah.

"um...yeah you don't have to say that every time you introduce yourself."

"oh..."

"Just say 'Hi I'm Nona. What's your name?'"

"Okay... Hello I'm Nona. What's your name?"

"Great!"

"But what if I don't really want to know their name? It seems stupid to ask all the time."

aaand etc.
I obviously have no problem writing dialog.

I think I want Nona to get a job with Libby at the laundry mat. :) Yay! excitement REIGNITED!
I don't know anything about a laundry mat, but I am in love with them. I feel like such a slumming yuppie. I don't know that the novilty will ever wear off though, I've taken a train every other day for over two years now and I still find them just as nifty. Same thing with the L and other things I can't remember right now. OH! container ships. and frankly forklifts are pretty amusing too.

so many posts today

this is the main character. She's not always useless. Thats kind of a lie, though. I guess I should say she's not always a crying lump of useless. She is sometimes a functioning useless. I want the story to be like regular people interacting, but with some weird bits and magics thrown in. Those tunic things are suppose to be black, or a dyed black/faded-ish. Its required attire for magicless "witches" not every one is magic, most people aren't. However at a certain point 15-20ish people who are "witches" (might change this to sorcerers or come up with a name) lose their powers. The powers may or may not return. At this point they are traditionally cast out into the world, though provided a place to live, with not much.

some houses/families have crest like symbols and others do not.

I think I want to call her friend yelling at her Sibil. Sib Sibby ... Or something with an S sound.

bluebird thankyou.

uh why whenever I color like this does it take all freaking day?

I really don't like coloring it takes so LONG. I feel exhausted. Maybe it just needs practice.

from yesterday

Drew this at work, left it down stairs on accident and so it didn't get posted till ...now



she has no name. This is the main character.
I was getting frustrated with my inability to just create correct proportions out of thin air without any reference or guides...so thats how the thing on the right came to be. I mock myself while I draw...

artslam

I joined artslam on livejournal. I'm wishing a little bit that I hadn't because my friends list over there is just completely over run by everyone posting the first day. I suspect it will slow after time, but its kind of crazy for me, my friends list is usually not so active.

anyhow. I am going character concept/development for this one story I've been building in my head. This isn't even one of the main characters. Its a minor character's secretary. She popped into my head because the main character is taken to see the oracle or whatever word I should use for that. I need to do research. Anyhow they first encounter Miss Ariel. She acts like she hates her job but that's just how she is and the oracle likes her so it doesn't really matter what anyone else thinks.

so many characters don't have names, including the main character. I think one of them is John, John and his strange friend Carl. and then Ariel. 3 of 7(that I know of) characters. I am aiming for 9 total, but that might not be how it turns out.

more from work

blah

stuff from work.

this only took ALL DAY!

geez

yar...

Drew this waiting at the blue line last night at about midnight.

inverted her hair...whoops.

Need to start making character sheets now that I have time. so many projects!

"Come on. How bad could it be?"