WARNING: INC CHARACTER WALL OF TEXT. but first, have some wips

I think I scared some people by showing how my art look like in rough stage, especially if I do it all on photoshop lmfao BUT HERE THIS LOOKS BETTER

So my hearing loss for the past months is probably an inner ear problem because I suddenly started getting vertigo yesterday afternoon, and was feeling nauseated all day. Being the dumbass that I am and totally have never felt dizziness before, I kept shaking my head trying to figure out wtf was going on LOL AND MADE IT WORSE… I’m a lot better today, but my head feels heavy from oversleeping/overresting and my eyes are dying from looking at the ipad in the dark. But some computer usage fixed my eyesight! (WHO WOULD’VE THOUGHT… well it’s because my screen is placed at a nice height and really far away from me LOL) and I guess some work will snap my brain out of sleep mode. My dad’s like you’re overworking, you need to balance work rest and exercise but I’m like BUT LOOK AT MY FRIENDS… RUNNING ON COFFEE/REDBULL AND NO SLEEP WHY DOES NOTHING EVER HAPPEN TO THEM

As usual I feel the need to do something when I’m resting so my time isn’t ~*WaStEd*~, and I’ve been wanting to create more characters using my RO charas that I am turning into an original story (no name… just going to call it Monarch for now) So I did some mental character design for my RO characters. Apparently it works better than sketching for preliminary designs because it’s the stage where I have no idea wtf I’m doing, so with mental work I don’t have to keep erasing shit that don’t work! Here is the result of my hours of ceiling staring:

the lovechild of a Lif and Kaidaten LOLOL… It was inevitable because the original character is my RO soul linker which IS a Lif in her RO character design, and the wings theme randomly popped up when I used her in the WIP above ): you can totally tell I only care about her hair LOL… THE MIDDLE ONE WHERE I OUTLINED THE SHAPES OF THE LAYERS LOOKS LIKE A CABBAGE HAHAHAHA. I love this fresh green colour especially for hair, but keri already has this colour and his hair is not fun to draw…… I will try to change her hair some more when I research more birds later, not that it’s not insane enough already I can’t think of anyone in their right mind except for me who would want to illustrate something like that, let alone use the design in a manga setting HAHA BUT I DON’T CARE RIGHT NOW IM A HAPPY TROOPER

I came up with most of her character themes when I randomly decided to use her as the foreground of the CG. The background was a sky with huge clouds at first, and when I was deciding between day time and night time, I thought that it suits this character because I have two soul linkers, and they’re identical with identical names. I decided that they would have some control over weather, one for day and one for night. I haven’t found a good sounding name or a cool story for a mythological bird yet so their temp name will be Phoenix! LOL at least they have a name unlike my high priest chara…

Like my high priest chara and all my RO charas to be incorporated into this story, they are one of the Monarchs of the world. Monarchs give up some of their memories to the Mistress of the world, and in exchange have their talents boosted to godly levels and given a city/area/kingdom to rule over. The two Phoenixes are different entities with different souls, but they are inseparable and only one can be awake and aware at a time. They share the same name and appearance and no one except the Mistress knows that there’re 2 of them. They’re borderline intelligent, incapable of speech and acts like infants. Most importantly they lack some kind of long term memory. So they love to roam because everything is always fascinating and new to them, all the while influencing the weather of the world without knowing. But they always get lost and never know the way home. Whenever they start feeling miserable they bring forth storms and devastate the area, until someone capable of calming them down or returning to their home do so, and after a short while they repeat the event.

Some of these regions are well ruled, some of them are a fucking mess and Phoenix’s region is the latter due to their… absolute inability to be remotely responsible about their job. These regions also have weird tensions with one another because the Mistress doesn’t interfere with their ruling and the Monarchs weren’t chosen with the benefit of these states in mind. Phoenix’s constant–albeit unintentional–harassment put their region in terrible relations with almost every other region and it’s pretty much a miracle that their state is still standing.

A doodle I made for my manga site front page

like 80% of my friends and family that are close to me are sick… Basically everyone I talk to online on a regular basis had some sort of death cold/fever, and everyone under our roof is sick except for me LMFAO. USUALLY IT’S THE OTHER WAY AROUND… I’ve had this weird ominous feeling about the recent future for like 2 weeks now, I’m seriously just waiting for the sky to fall on me for some reason. I think I need to go to Wonderland and ride roller coasters for a day to set my head straight (given that my luck doesn’t run dry and I fall off and die) but I don’t think I will have time anytime soon ):

I also got a quote for an art book today; I wasn’t going to print that many copies because it will be of relatively old art and I don’t want leftovers, but the price difference between small quantities really is pretty ridiculous that you have to be way out of your mind to not print more than 500 copies LOL. So I think I’m stuck with the try-my-best-to-sell-more-books mentality rather than produce less approach…

Back to trying to make the little green loli girl not so loli LOLOL. I’ll have WIP to post in a few days!

I think this tumblr encounter pmuch sums it all up

I’m still trying to figure out how to make shipping cheaper, and it’s driving me insane now because oversize letter (the cheapest method that I’m aware of right now) has a weight limit of 500 grams. My proof book is 230 grams, and I wanted to be able to ship at least 2 books per shipment. with the lightest envelope I can find out there (which weighs 30-40 grams) I’m looking at like a 490-500 gram shipment LOL AND I DONT WANT TO END UP HAVING TO ARGUE WITH THE CLERK OVER A FEW GRAMS OF DIFFERENCE FOR LIKE $4 OF EXTRA SHIPPING PRICE. Seriously my dad was joking about how I should take all the preordered books with me to otakon and mail it there through usps and I was like hey, that sounds like a great idea! God I hope the actual books will defy logic and be lighter ): otherwise I’d have to blow dry all the books and mail them all on a very dry day to try to lower the books’ weight or something. Or pump helium into the envelopes I don’t know. And totally cutting out like 20 pages of the next book over this stupid bullshit lol

I have also been considering other types of publications, like artbooks. I’ve been counting the number of my art pieces I have right now that is presentable as an artbook. I’ve always wanted to make a reasonably thick book (ie about 100 pages), but shipping business is making me rethink this. I have about 30-35 that I am comfortable with compiling, so one of my goals for next year is probably going to be finishing about 20, maybe 30 illustrations and compile my first art book. I’ve always wanted to do themes, such as the collection dedicated to veloce and blackbird I’ve talked about before, but I realized I’ll ever finish enough illustrations to be picky about what I publish LOL. I’m also considering doing doujin-type mini side stories for blackbird, because I do have a lot of ideas for my characters in out of character settings. But then that’d be like drawing fanarts/writing fanfics for myself which is ridiculous LOL I need to think of ways to present it reasonably…

Something from last week that I haven’t posted here yet! Still not sure if I want to make it into a romantic picture or cute/silly picture with their XD faces going on

I suddenly have so much to draw ): There are three projects that I had agreed to a while ago that sprung up now, and I also suddenly have this great ambition to put effort into making prints that might sell well at Otakon. I do intend to keep the prints as “anime” as possible though, so hopefully I can produce more over a shorter period of time! But in the mean time I thought there is no better time to draw up totally unrelated pieces instead of getting work done!

I drew her as a ball jointed doll here, and if I ever finish this picture (which I most likely won’t) the ballerina will be painted as a real person. The story is from the second movement of Ravel’s Sonatine. It’s the song of a music box slowly winding down, when it stop and you look into the ballerina’s eyes, and you realize that the soul of a person is trapped inside. I would give her the blank/insane look again which I think actually fits the storybetter, but whatever I’m not finishing this HAHA. I still need a name for her ): outside of RO context I don’t really like the name Aesprika lol, and I am totally not going to call her Shilin lmao

And omg ok huge fucking wall of text: WHY IS CANADA POST SO EXPENSIVE. Shipping to my own country is more expensive than usps shipping from USA to here. Erina’s doujin only cost $2 before taxes but my book will cost almost $4. And $7 to the USA. And almost $9 internationally… this costs almost as much as the book. And this is large letter rates. If someone orders multiples it will turn into a small parcel WHICH WILL COST EVEN MORE LOL after all I’ve done to keep the price of the book low and enticing, shipping ruins it for me.

I’m doing all the shipping preparations and ordering shipping supplies as I wait for an estimate of time the books will arrive, so I can pick a date to start taking preorders. I’m thinking about May 1, which lands nicely on an update day: sunday (also 6th launch anniversary! although I don’t know if anyone actually knows that because I never celebrate it). I’m expecting the books to get here by the end of May/beginning of June, but if the company manager that I’ve been working with tells me it will be later then I’ll have to push back the date some more ):

I’m also really scared about the books being printed incorrectly right now because this company outsources the printing (that’s why it’s so cheap and good at the same time) so the proof is not made by the same people who will be printing the book. Since the book is backwards, I had to save everything backwards. The proof printed flawlessly, but as I gave him the altered pages (dialogs) I noticed the blank page count at the beginning of the file (end of the book) is 2. The book ends on a two-page spread, with 1 physical page of blank paper at the end, so technically there should be 3 blank pages on the file. I asked him and he said he didn’t change anything on my file and printed it as is. I didn’t change it in the end because I could be fixing something that’s not broken, but I’m just praying so hard right now that everything will be ok and that I’m just overworrying LOL… MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF BOOKS PRINTED WRONG IS NOT FUNNY. I’m not sure I’ve worried about anything this much for a while, not even my surgery because it was free LMAO