A not-wip wip of the commission I did. one more gift then I can go back to drawing bb yaaaaa! Another CD cover for lalela, and I guess I didn’t succeed in making her look black again LOL. It’s a huge challenge because my anatomy is not that good already, let alone being able to understand and simplify/stylize ethnic features… I should’ve been able to do it because I was aware of what a typical black facial shape should be, but I think I haven’t painted faces for a while and got lost in the rendering (again) and forgot about THE IMPORTANT THINGS.

I bought a pair of heels at pmall last month that I absolutely loved even though it was like $90 LOL ): I was just overjoyed that they were my size (even though it still looked a little big) because all my trips to clothing and shoes stores end with “do you have this in size 5 or 4″ “no” so I guess I didn’t care about the price HAHAH. I don’t even want to wear them because I’m scared of scratching/damaging its PERFECT APPEARANCE LOL see this is why I just… buy shitty running shoes and tshirts lmao. I put off taking pictures of them but here they are :D

please ignore the random marks on my feet LOL I was sitting on them…

I’ve been thumbnailing the rest of chapter 5 (and soon chapter 6) this week. I usually don’t thumbnail ahead of time because I don’t want to have to waste time on making it neat enough to understand, since I know a year down the road I will have NO IDEA wtf I drew on certain panels. Also I change my mind a lot so thumbnailing ahead of time for me is really a big waste of time and does nothing. But now I’m doing it because this book also went through a lot of drastic changes as I illustrated the pages. Like as I was illustrating chapter 4, chapter 5 was completely changed at least 3 times, I put in and took out a lot of different aspects of the story I intended to present using this event on the ship, and in the end even though I’m happy with the final flow/transition of scenes, it got too long. A lot of chapter 4 and 5 pages look rushed and crammed, and I have to try really hard to fit the chapter in under 70 pages while avoiding making the rest of the pages as busy as the ones before.

Before I printed volume 1, I wouldn’t have cared because I would just let the story run until it hits the scene where I want to end the book, because it’s not like I serialized the series and have to conform to some format rules. That’s how I did book 1 and it just so happened that all 3 chapters balanced out to be nice 50- to 60-page chapters. But now that I realized a 170-page book with my current paper quality setting is just a few grams under the maximum shipping limit before prices double, the page per book limit is now 170. I don’t know how I’ll manage page count from now on but for this book, I ended up deciding to thumbnail the rest of the book as soon as possible so I can adjust the pacing. Optimistically, this experiment will succeed and make me realize that doing this ahead of time will help improve smoothness of story telling, panel layout AND let me control page count. Pessimistically, I will just end up changing so much of the story as time go on that the time I spent thumbnailing would be gone to waste as I expected LOL. If the latter happens I will have to try using a slightly lighter weight paper and see if it effects the printing quality. So far my manga book paper quality is the best in all of the mangas I own (even though this is not much…) so I think I have room for that.

I wish I could post some of the thumbnails because they look really bad :D it’d be hilarious to let people try to figure out wtf will happen in the next few months’ updates but at the same time it will probably ruin the story for them for a few months LOL

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I was working on this commission but I was having a really hard time on it because I stopped in the middle of it like two weeks ago, and it’s like a mesh of things that I’m not familiar drawing (even though I came up with the idea myself…) So I decided to PROCRASTINATE and finish this song I had lying around for a while. In the end I didn’t finish it, it has no beginning or ending because those are hard AND I’M LAZY LOL. When I wrote this I was going to save it until I learn to play it and record it myself, because computer generated piano solos sound boring, unless they’re meant to sound mechanical and flat. But then I remembered I haven’t played piano for a year and god knows when I’ll do that again due to my parents’ work schedules lol ):

But ya when I started this piece, I had intended it to be an opening type song for CP, so I made sure it had a melody that can be sung to and is in a simple generic pop song form. But I know I can’t write pop lol so I decided to make it into a piano solo that could stand on its own :D

And then today I tried to work on the commission again and after like half an hour I derailed again to draw other stuff ):…

This picture is like 3 separate pictures mashed together LMAO. I just edited the toccata pic into this pic… the stabby part was in a sketch I did like 4 years ago that I never posted because it had tits, and the dance part I always wanted to do but I never did. I was going to do full body because I wanted to include stilettos (as in heels) to go with the daggers, but the figures got too small ): I was looking at tango pics on google and every picture is like… top half dance embrace, bottom half woman riding man’s crotch :D… needless to say I didn’t incorporate that part into this drawing LMAO

SHIPPED OUT EVERYTHING WEDNESDAY SO I HAD TO DRAW SUM. Long post but at least it’s just long with pictures :D?

I think this is what I’ll name my art book. I was considering Tarantella or just plain Ashen Ray before, but I think a toccata represents my art the best: obsessed with virtuosity and detail with little to no focus in form/content/emotion LOL IT’S SUCH SAD TRUTH

And I finished the r00d pic today. I think I’ll save it and post it when I’m selling my art book just like when I had my manga preorder promotion. But that’s ok this little square is most of the picture anyway LOL

And there was a terrifying thunderstorm yesterday that swept across my neighbourhood. I am scared of loud sounds, and by loud I mean like balloons and toasters (apparently it’s called ligyrophobia?? IT SOUNDS LIKE THE FEAR OF STDs OR SOMETHING) so it was a quite unpleasant hour or two. But this happened and I thought it was pretty fucking cute lmao

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.

The picture is technically finished! Like the sunset CG I’m going to save it for after I start taking preorders for the book to help with advertising ^^ but I’ve posted it in the gallery of this website already so you can see it there!

And I also took the livestream of the boots ornament on wednesday and edited it into video walk through :D livestreams are good for seeing individual brush strokes (and how slow I draw) but speed up videos are great for showing the overall process. I’ll probably avoid using livestream videos in the future though because I usually draw petty badly in streams, because I feel pressured to not pause and think too much, which is actually an integral part of my drawing process

I think this is as close as I can get to my pretty picture goal… I stopped before I start adding massive amount of details and depressing themes LOL. I started with Weirin but when I considered a sky texture for background, I thought the colours work with Veloce better. With interest to variety I’m pretty sure I should go with weirin but man, the pinks and lavenders LOL… Another problem is cyan doesn’t print, and I don’t know how to deal with that colour in terms of printing so I’ll most likely go with weirin. Which of the three do you prefer?

I mentioned this a few times to some friends but I don’t think I ever talked about it in public, even though it’s been a pretty big thing for me in the past few years–especially after I started going to conventions–but it’s been my goal to beat my old popular works for a while. I decided to write it here because I think it’s pretty absurd of me to do that and might be interesting to know. An artist improves and improvement sometimes means change, and and during change some old charm might be lost. Now that I’ve gone through 4 years of staggered experimenting with various styles/processes/procedures, I’m taking what I’ve learned and applying it to what people once liked best about my art. I didn’t expect this part to be this hard because I didn’t realize that some of the old charms of my art were thanks to my mistakes and lack of knowledge, and once you learn you can’t unlearn!

I really appreciate people enjoying my “basilica”, “too late” and “roxanne” pictures, both online and as a print in real life, but I don’t like the fact that they can be (incorrectly) seen as the apex of my career or the best I can do, because I can’t produce something with my improved skill that can defeat their popularity. It may be obvious that I’ve deliberately drawn things with this motive in mind and if not, this pretty picture thing I’ve been trying to do is an attempt to defeat myself at my roxanne picture. I understand that timing played a big role because those three pieces were all done during a time when I still actively posted, and deviantart didn’t destroy their fave system yet (I think), and now that they’ve got such surreal fame it’s even easier for people to spread it around. But even when I sold prints at conventions those three were the top three year after year. I’m so surprised that even after I finally did figure out why they were so popular, I could not come up with new pieces that work on the same concepts without them looking like a replica of those pieces. I’ll see at this year’s conventions to see if I finally succeeded!

And speaking of conventions, if by chance I win the AN contest and win a table, I don’t think my books will be here in time for the con ): is a little sad