and of course I had to ruin my streak of having a little variation in my rep by drawing a bunch of veloce faces sigh LOL. I am pretty bad with faces so I thought I should do something like this for practice or something. I’m so backwards from most people where they draw faces so well and the rest shitty

I wanted to draw a realistic face so I did this. I reffed kristen stewart’s photos for this piece due to my lack of facial feature understanding. And then I realized I don’t like drawing realistic faces LOL because the amount of realism I want to achieve makes me ultimately feel like I’m copying someone rather than drawing as I wish

The last pic is a “wip” again that’s really finished LOL. I didn’t want the picture to be over the top since it’s the artbook cover, but right now I really really want to add extra elements to it, but I know if I do it will be too much so I’m just very blarg about it. Usually I know I should paint covers last but I decided to colour this first so that I can sit on it and improve it over the next few months. Hopefully it will be better towards the end but I will probably get super pissed off about it LMAO ffffff

I’m also considering updating CP twice a week (4 pages) instead of once right now. I want to be able to keep up at least 1 book per year, and 4 pages a week would guaranty that. I noticed I’ve been able to complete pages faster nowadays. I used to take 2 days regardless of page simplicity, usually an extra day or two if the page is complicated; but now complex pages take me a day per page and less than a day if the pages are simple. However being the greedy ass that I am, I want to work out something where this extra work I put in would reward me. I’ve seen comics do donation goals for bonus pages (amya, artifice, red string) but I don’t really feel comfortable accepting donations, plus I don’t have enough readership to do it consistently. The other option I was considering was to continue posting at the current rate, but draw 1 book per year anyway so that those who don’t want to wait for updates can opt to buy the book to read the remainder of the pages in book form. (eg. I sell volume 2 now with complete chapter 6 even though web updates are still at chapter 5.) But this is also a problem  because the site will only lag further and further behind in updates and there is really no way for it to catch up. Also those who bought the book could ruin the story for those who didn’t. If you have an idea, please do share it here! I appreciate your help (:

but that’s ok I remembered today

auresque yay! I wanted to draw a slutty woman and I was like do I want to make veloce look even worse lol… THEN I WAS LIKE WAIT HER MOM IS PERFECT! but somehow I made her look demonic lol ]: she’s not actually evil as this picture looks. she is just your typical superficial, remorseless and self-centered woman who happened to be terrifyingly powerful and decently smart. She has no meaningful goal or motive because she gives less than a shit about the workings of the world and only wants to enjoy herself and have a good time. she loves asserting her absolute superiority in the world, making those powerful figures who refuse to submit to her suffer utter failure and humiliation. Just to do this she trolled a dude who tried to take her down in a 30-year war, switching sides so much that the guy had to give up in the end because his country couldn’t keep up, and his alliances were shattered due to her messing around.

and these two… it’s so wrong but hey they care for each other so why not

Man I can’t believe I wasted a whole drawing sketches and stuff instead of CGing something I can post/sell/use ): but it sucks because I’m in sketch mood and if I try to paint, it will look like shit lol

man how was the last blog post posted on Friday? IT WAS A LONGASS POST AND EVERYTHING ON THIS POST WAS DRAWN ON FRIDAY TOO. I must be on crack. [EDIT: OH WAIT NM I PROBS POSTED IT AT LIKE 3AM LIKE I USUALLY DO LOL]

ANYWAY this is a continuation of my previous attempts to draw a fight between them. As you may remember I tried to do that a few times before, they were ok but I wasn’t really happy with any of them, and I wasn’t going to paint two full body characters in painful designs if I wasn’t ecstatic about the sketch LOL… but I was listening to this song–nicknamed “the duel”–on Friday and for some reason this image popped up? Maybe that’s what people call “inspiration” but really it felt like some sort of cheating. But whatever LOL I’m pretty happy with this sketch, and the people I respect the most all said nice things about it so I will probably cg it when I feel like torturing myself. click here for a very uninteresting wip gif

Then I coloured granny ross (so manry… do you see it as rose-ian or ross-ian? lol)

I was going to make her kimono a little fancier with patterns and things but I went for toning practicality and decided not to. The original idea for her was a lot more korean hanbok than japanese kimono; I accidentally drew a full kimono after I looked up how they work LOL (and realizing that I’ve been drawing it wrong all my life harhar) so I’ll probably make the bottom part more dress-like in future edits. I would keep it like this but this looks like it would be extremely challenging to keep up with walking behind Rae LOL. She used to be the general of Arenscura, then switched over to become the minister after the previous minister left, because of the extensive knowledge of Arenscura she accumulated after looking after the country for so long, and she was getting old. I might not go with this story though because it poses problems for how Rae should interact with her because she would have to be his mentor figure, but at the same time I want Rae to have absolute authority and an environment free of any restrain, so I don’t want anybody in the palace who he would have to show respect to.

and lastly a picture of bb with a srs face requested by Jenny… I was like dude it would just look like veloce dressing up as bb LOL. it was so weird and hard to do this kind of serious face because the way I distinguish bb is mostly with her eyebrows and eyes, which are killed by this expression LOL ):

YAAA SCENE FROM STORY GUESS WHO SHE IS SAYING THIS TO

I don’t think I’ve ever bothered to actually draw their differences much, but blackbird is supposed to have a smoother, rounder cheek/jawline and flatter face, whereas veloce has an angular one. blackbird has a little muscle tone but I never draw it because I don’t know anatomy and don’t know what is too much/too little HAHAH. Veloce’s body is like that of some lady who never does any work, and it doesn’t show at all that she can fight, because her abilities didn’t come from training, and her fuel is in her spirit not her physique.

I learned that phrase from my livestream OK ANYWAYS I’VE BEEN DRAWING MANGA THUMBNAILS ALL WEEK UNTIL LIKE YESTERDAY but the good news is, it’s done! The other good news is, vol.2 will only be 154 pages long :D that means I can put in another bonus story at the end YAY. I was sad though because there were a lot of places where I totally feel like more space and panels would make the flow a lot better, but I just had no choice due to page count. I hope I don’t run into this problem often ): My thumbnails are messy and funny because everyone has derpy faces and bodies (since it’s only a thumbnail), I don’t want to show them even if I don’t have to consider spoiler issues LMAO. But here are some screenshots! The dialogs are not here cus they’re written separately, and I only put in punctuation in the word bubbles to keep track.

So after I was done, I randomly sketched for fun and this happened

I put veloce on top this time but she’s still being dragged around SHE JUST FAILS OK

Then I thought I should really clear up my recent wtf trend of fap material art before I start looking awfully suspicious… so I decided to work on the Minister of Arenscura’s design. I intended it to be a grown up, pleasant looking woman at first, but Finni suggested that I use a completely different type of person since I was talking about the lack of diversity in my cast. She ended up being a generic little nanny :D LOL she only has like…. two or three speaking scenes and is really only there to establish the world setting, so I didn’t even want to waste a name on her, but I guess it would be easy to confuse her with Meron because they’re both ministers ): Her name is Rosien Keur(堕星 河), meaning the stream/river of falling stars. She’s a northerner descendant like Rae so her name is made using the pronunciation of the Chinese characters mentioned above. Her family name is Keur (river) and she was named after the reflection of a meteor shower in the river at the time of her birth. I’ll make a neater draft later for colours and stuff!

So I was happily thumbnailing along, finished the last 30 pages of chapter 5, then 2 pages into chapter 6 a new important character was introduced, at which point I realized I HAVEN’T DESIGNED HIM YET LMFAO. I only had his character in mind and some vague outfit specs but I never worked on it LOL… BECAUSE I HATE TRYING TO CREATE CHARACTERS ARBITRARILY. well now that I need to know how he looks before I can continue thumbnailing… I spent today revamping the one or two drafts I had attempted like last year. It was very annoying (except for his hair i love drawing fluffy hair <: at one point I tried a ponytail and he looked like N lol) but I got the basics out LOL. He looks crappy and blocky right now, I’ll have to learn to draw him lol ): creating character design is such a pain

I had to ref my old drafts soooo hard for every one of these, my memory sucks ass I can’t even remember how to draw my own characters

So this is Des! He doesn’t have a last name yet because I’m all out of names LOL ]: He is a fluffy white puppy beast-human (I didnt draw his fluffy white tail) and the General of Arenscura. This is his casual/patrol outfit so it doesn’t have a lot of armour, looks informal, and most of the armoury (and the cloak) is more for show than for practical purposes. The blue gem is Arenscura’s imperial crest; it’s worn visibly so people can tell who he is. In an actual mission or battle it would be hidden so that it doesn’t get damaged or taken. It’s not that Arenscura is an oriental place, it’s just that Rae was his father figure so following Rae’s culture is Des’s way of showing respect and loyalty I guess. I’m so not used to drawing oriental clothing lmao ): I always make the layering look awkward and bulky instead of just nice and thick. And I have so little oriental design elements learned to use because I don’t draw these much. It sucks because I like oriental clothing q_q I’m going to tweak small details some more when I learn to draw him in the future, and maybe make it look a little more respectable (lol it looks so plain right now), but for now at least I know what he looks like and I can keep thumbnailing HAHA. There’s still like 3 characters in chapter 6 that needs a face LOL…

He’s the second most powerful authority in Arenscura, next to Rae and tied with the Minister of Arenscura. In this world, every country usually has a Minister and a General as the second in command for the ruler. The Minister manages the affairs within the country and its relations with other countries, while the General takes care of keeping peace and order within the country and is responsible of fulfilling military objectives issued by the ruler. Basically like the chief of police and minister of defense at the same time I guess, except he actually goes out into the battlefield. Des is a loyal and really determined person, but he doesn’t adapt to changing circumstances well, so his position gives him a lot of stress and he tends to worry about anything that may not be going completely as he expects. He’s pretty much the opposite of Rae who takes his job rather chill. Des was appointed by Rae as the General even though he was inexperienced back then and there were better candidates. Rae had to do a lot of stuff for Des for a while because Des was still learning, so he worked really hard to not let Rae down. He’s not that  great a tactician because of his determination and willingness to see something through to the end even if it is no longer effective/viable, rather than finding alternative solutions.