It’s almost done!! I’ve done the layout for all pages, and all that’s left is to finalize printing info (trying out a new printer!) and finish as many images as I can before September to add to the book! It doesn’t help that I still have cons to go to though lol ): I’ll finish Duel and the kanzeon pictures at the very least. I would like to do more but I don’t think I have enough time to and I don’t have any easy but effective compositions in mind. What I have is shit like this:

this picture will have to wait until the next artbook LOL OH WELL. I sketched up the composition at otakon and did this today. This is similar to another scrap I did a while back where blackbird was carrying veloce away while fighting some amorphous blobs on their tail, but I like this one a lot better than that shit LOL. The original inspiration for this pic was a story I remembered from elementary school literature class from the revolution in China. The army was journeying through the mountains but the enemy was catching up; a squad of men volunteered and lured the enemy off a different route up to a dead end at a cliff over the mountains. 5 of them fought there against the full enemy force to distract them and buy time for their main troops to get away, and when they finally exhausted all their ammunition, they destroyed their weapons and jumped off the cliff. Then I remembered Chris showed me a gorgeous piano piece of some socialist song called “the people united will never be defeated” and I was like oh my god THIS IS PERFECT… now blackbird/veloce is commie

And here’s what I have so far for duel! I was really frustrated with the image last time I posted a wip of it, but I realized it was because of my livestream mentality of getting things done rather than making things good that I was having trouble getting it to look the say I wanted. I livestream really only because I thought it might be beneficial to some people, to get a recording to post on youtube, and to have fun chatting sometimes while working. I didn’t do it to force myself to draw faster but it looked like I did it subconsciously out of awareness that the people watching would become impatient. It had a negative effect on some of my pieces, especially one like this one where I’m going out of my comfort zone. So I decided to just not care about the recording for this image and take as long as I need to fuss over everything like I used to, and redraw entire parts if I need to like I used to. Sometimes when I compare my drawing process with someone else’s, this stuff I do feels redundant, a waste of time and seems like a bad habit that I should correct, but it’s obvious to me now that this kind of neurotic method is what people like the most about my art when it reflects on the final product. Although I only got very little progress into the picture since last time, I’m a lot less discontent about it now because at least it’s going the way I want it to go.

I never thought I’d have trouble finishing stuff, but I do now because I just feel like drawing simple pieces, but I’m very self conscious about the sequence in which I make new drawings, and I’ve finished way too many simple pieces recently that I feel like drawing something complex to break the chain. The result is I have a hard time picking what I want to finish and actually finishing it LOL ]: I’ve also been doing a lot of work for a friend’s web design so I haven’t had much time to draw at all ~_~ but thanks to my astounding discipline I was still able to make some progress on stuff to post haha

Coloured scrap from aikon! I had the word bravura pretty early on so everything on this picture actually centered around it. I actually really liked the idea and the feeling in general because this kind of flare and outlet is what I like the best, but the picture turned out to be a lot more tame than it should be lol ): I don’t know if I’m just subconsciously trying to be cool or something but I’ve always liked cars and fighter jets and battle ships as artistic objects even though I barely know anything about them, and I’ve always wanted to have a drawing or two of them. So here it is, a concert on a carrier! not that the music can logically be heard over all those jets flying overhead, if they should even fly when a thunderstorm is nearby, but who cares about logic LOLOL. I was inspired by a part of the art of piano documentary where a pianist was performing for fighter pilots outdoors, and propeller planes flew over them and drowned out a bit of the music, but it was an amazing effect and the thought of performing at such an environment gets my blood boiling lol

face, now with body!

This one won the polls so I pushed myself to get started on it. I was hesitant because I didn’t really know where to bring this picture in terms of environment, you can kind of tell HAHA. I made more progress than this wip but it looks better like this LOL ]: I debated between using lines and not using lines for this one; I went with no lines in the end because most people voted for it, but now I kind of regret it because it looks… weird LOL salfksdljhl I hope it’s only because I only started refining it and that it will look nicer and more consistent once I finish more of it. But if not, I guess I can always do lineart afterwards….. dot dot dot

On life, I went to the dentist a few days ago to clean my teeth and they tried to do an xray of my teeth with a chip inside my mouth. Except it’s too fucking big and I couldn’t get it next to my teeth. Both the hygienist and the dentist tried like 4 times to shove it to the right spot, and the plastic covering on the chip ended up scratching my gums omg I was in so much pain. I tried to stand it because I thought it was just pressure, but I only found out afterwards that it actually HURT my gum because the two lesions grew into canker sores now UGH. I was tearing from the pain at the appointment, and the doctor was like “no need to get emotional” and in my mind I was just like WOW REALLY FUCK YOU ASSHOLE LOL. The second time I went back it was a different hygienist, she tried to do another xray and I was like no I can’t do it. I showed her the lesions and she was like “oh did the doctor say what they’re from?” I was like YOU GUYS DID THIS LOL FUCK MY LIFE ]: so in the end she let me go without it…. and my mouth’s been painful for a week now FFFFFFFF She also basically like stabbed all my teeth at the gum area to measure the gap between the gum and the tooth? holy shit man had I known I would’ve taken a pain killer or something cus it was just like 2 hours of torture ): and I walked out with the dentist telling me I should surgically remove 3 of my wisdom teeth even though they aren’t even close to my molars. I’m trying to avoid it because he says it could be a year, it could be when I’m 50, it could be never, when they do come out. But my dad is pushing me to do it anyway just because it’s covered by his insurance LOL…… 2011 SUCKS, 1 SURGERY IS ENOUGH

I’ve been having such an “art block” per se that I haven’t done anything since I finished next week’s update yesterday. ok that doesn’t sound like a long time LOL BUT IT IS. I’ve been getting by with working on a web design for a friend, but otherwise I barely got anything done. It’s not even a real art block because I can come up with things to draw, it’s just that I’m forcing myself to go for illust concepts of stuff I like but have trouble doing, ie modern, casual, down to earth, more photo-like rather than arbitrary and posed. And those didn’t go anywhere ): so I got annoyed in the end and just flipped to an unfinished sketch from last october, finished it and pretended I got something done LOL

a princess of northern descent! I believe I was really just trying to make a chinese princess crown with baroque ornaments but I decided to draw her some fancy clothes too. I think this is weirin but I’m not sure…..

yesterday night’s attempt to convince myself I didn’t waste the night away LOL. I painted half of it and got a little bored because I really just wanted work on illustration ideas some more. It was nice to colour hair brainlessly for 2 hours and occasionally chat on livestream!

And lastly, tonight’s attempt to be productive was to .:*~research drinks~*:. because, you know, I decided to make poor veloce an alcoholic but I don’t drink at all nor know how they’re served :D The best way to avoid making her look like a poser is of course to do it myself, but I hate the taste of alcohol lol SO youtube will have to do! I ended up looking at bartenders and this guy is pretty funny and the best I could find tonight. Everyone else looked like juggling clowns because they just toss their bottles around for a while with a long or nervous face, then pour the drinks like nothing happened which is pretty lame ):

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 (:

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!