#been wanting to doodle her for a while and i didn't finish the sketch until now.....

[spacey-xannabelle]

Fateful Encounter...

Last month, at around April 10th, I decided to revisit an old project I started months prior which was to polish up a test sketch of a comic page about Lucy encountering Lumi in the dreamspace. And after slowly making progress on this, I'm finally finished with this!

I'm gonna leave some artist notes under the read more, but overall I'm super proud of how this turned out!! This is pretty much my first serious attempt at making comics in general so this has been a very interesting learning experience!

Artist notes: So this is what the original sketch for this whole thing was. It was just me scribbling out a scene I had in my head for Startrails that I wanted to put on paper:

This I'd say was made around 2020-2021 ish. At the time, I didn't really do much with it. Until several months ago, I thought of trying to redraw this page and expand upon it.

But my first attempt at doing this didn't quite lead anywhere. I barely got through the thumbnailing process and just gave up bc I lost motivation (and life/work stuff was Happening so yea I had to put this aside as I figured stuff out). Here's the first draft of the thumbnails:

It was just two pages at the time and was pretty simple. I left this project sitting in my files for a while until I one day just, started binging videos from Thestarfishface on YouTube, primarily her webcomic guide videos. And I decided I'd give this project another go.

It was here where I began making a second draft of the thumbnails and this was what I had to work with:

I wanted to experiment with the panels and get funky with the compositions this time around. The 2 page draft expanded to a 3 page thing. But I thought it would've been better if I added one more page at the end with Lucy waking up as a conclusion to wrap this whole thing together.

And in the middle of working on page 3, my friend had suggested to do a an impact frame page, which I hadn't considered during the thumbnailing, so 4 pages became 5. And this was the result!

I posted the pages as I finished them onto my deviantart so that's where a lot of my thoughts were journaled as I went along dfjsdh. To summarize my ramblings there, this project was a very fun (and a bit frustrating) learning experience! I'm hoping to keep practicing and improving my workflow, and hopefully one day make Startrails a full fledged webcomic :')

Additional ramblings:

The structure that Lucy finds Lumi in is inspired by an orrery.

For page 5, I initially didn't plan for much dialogue but as I drew it, it felt just a liiiitle bit empty, so I kinda just threw in some dialogue for Mira. But bc I was already in the inking process (and I just wanted to have this project completed), I didn't redo the page to even include Mira in it. So Mira's just out of frame sdfjskdh. If I had more time and energy to keep this up, I'd have made a revision of the page so I could include her.

This experience has taught me that I could seriously work on my rendering process a bit more, and that my layer management is just atrocious sdkfjksdfh

This has also taught me that while Medibang has the tools needed for me to draw these pages just fine, it also lacks some stuff that I personally need if I were to do a longer project like this. So I'll be experimenting with CSP next!

The dialogue throughout this whole thing wasn't all that planned out- I really just stuck close to what the initial doodle had which probably wasn't the best idea bc I just have like, 2 pages of Lucy's awkward sounding dialogue aaaa. I might do something a bit more dialogue heavy to help improve this skill next time.

Anyway, thank you for reading through my 1 am ramblings on this little project of mine shdkjhks

#artists on tumblr #Art #Digital art #comic art #original characters #OC lobby #OC art #Xan draws #Lucy #Lumi #Mira #Kinda dfjfkh #Startrails

[starzie]

I wish I could talk about my stories more, but I'm just too secretive.

Been thinking about it lately because I'm feeling inspired to work on them.

I have about six stories; The first five used to be one story, that I kept changing and reworking until it kept getting divided. Been working on that since I was 16. Had to come up with working titles for all of them, to keep my files sorted. Let's see:

Oni Story

Shadow in Red

Madness

Ivy Vines

? (this one is blank I don't remember why)

Rearrange each first letter, and you get MISO. Whenever I write scenes that are use more than one story/world, I call it the MISO AU I really need to write the actual stories....

The original story that each one stems from, took place in three different times: The Backstory; The Journey; And The Epilogue. The plot revolved around the "main character", (Avasa), going missing in a pocket dimension. The Backstory was about how she got there; The journey involved her various friends and loved ones trying to find her, and befriending each other in the process; The Epilogue, they did find her, and now she has to live in a changed world.

Back then I really didn't know how to write for it. The character sheets, writing, and actual comic were always three different things too.

So I kept simplifying it, changing things around, and going in different directions until I ended up with so many different stories.

Ivy Vines, although an anthology, would be the closest one to the original story; Only it's about following the main character into the pocket dimension.

But the protagonist from Madness, (Bayla), is the most similar to Avasa.

edit: I just started talking about my stories from here lol

Madness is a romance series, about a starseer, Bayla, often hired for divinations. Although she's a(n unofficial) matchmaker, any romance of her own is doomed to tragically fail. Usually from the same things.

A little comic I made a while ago for fun ;p Small crossover, since Scarlett is there

Oni Story, is an adventure comic about two vagabond Oni, Joshua and Damien. Damien, the blue oni, suffering from amnesia, has forgotten his birthplace and family name. With the help of Joshua, the red oni, the two set out to find answers. (Haven't been working on this one lately, because it requires research on Japan-- Which I just haven't had time to do--)

Drawing from 2016. I had these characters for a while

Shadow in Red follows our protagonist, Scarlett (Himura), as she navigates her various relationships, while being haunted by a cursed mask. A supernatural action series with heavy drama.

I've been working on this series the most. The drawing on the pink paper, I did last week. Plus some concept art, for the mask villain. If you squint your eyes, the face changes. Scary

So that's all the stories that stemmed from the one I wrote when I was 16. None are finished, but I'm working on them. At a snail's pace 🐌

But! Aside from that, I'm also working on a new story, that has nothing to do with the other ones. Shoot. I've been working on it since the inital lockdowns. So about 3 years now.

My sixth story is called:

6. 3lone Prompt*: *Pronounced However

In 3lone Prompt, our protagonist is a clone of The Original Sorceress. Her body, made out of the remains of her body. She is, and is not The Original Sorceress. Our protagonist has no name of her own, but goes by [6], (Pronounce it however you want).

[6] encounters remnants of The Sorceress's past she must resolve; While unraveling the mystery that is The Original Sorceress's life story.

Collected a few sketches/doodles of [6] and cleaned them up. She has an ocean theme.

Oof. Didn't think I'd take this long to make this post. Finally at the thing I wanna talk about

3lone Prompt was largely inspired by RPG video games, in a meta sense

What do you do when you finish the story? All the bosses are beaten, peace is brought to the land-- What if someone else opens your file to play it? This someone has never played the game before, doesn't get a lot of what is being referenced; But can sort of piece it together. What if it was you but you forgot everything

(Was thinking about this the other day.) Around 2007, I played Pokémon Pearl, and finished it. I loved the game a lot, so even when the story was over, I explored the areas again. And again. One thing that stood out was the villain's headquarters. It's in Veilstone City, and the grunts still curse your name whenever you show up. You can climb the floors, and use the teleporters, but you really have no business being there anymore.

There's something really quiet about that kind of setting. You have everything you need, to travel wherever you want to go, but nothing you must do. Almost like a forgotten world. The story's over but the music still plays

For 3lone Prompt, I tried to build on that thought. (But it's not literally a video game, just a high fantasy setting.) The story focuses on past lives, and what could have occurred during.

In this meta sense, [6] would have "spawned" near the end game, with all the items. Meaning she has all The Sorceress's abilities; but no idea how to use them. She doesn't even know what her main objective is.

Can she piece together the clues? Let us find out!

#starzoc #starzie #my art #my stories #writing #talking aboot my art #long post #like really long this is your warning before you click read more

[fowl-leaf]

My 2022 summary of art!

Blank

I haven't really been consistently posting my art anywhere for the past year or two, but I figured I might as well still do a summary of art since I like doing them.

I was reluctant to put any arpg stuff on here since that's generally just doodles, but I ended up having to since I was so busy with 3D modeling some months that I didn't have any other completed pieces from those months to show.

Full images and commentary below the cut! It's long.

JANUARY

Herman reading a book (about making soup)

I like this one bc of the pink color

FEBRUARY

Spring fern, my beloved

This was just going to be a quick doodle, but I ended up adding some rim lighting just cause

MARCH

Gale!

The sketch is from some point in 2021, but I didn't clean it up or color till later on in 2022 so I'm counting this drawing for this year lol

I realized that I haven't finished many drawings of her so I decided to fix that with this one.

APRIL

More Spring fern!

This time, surrounded by fern-like palm trees. Because ferns.

I liked choosing the colors for this one a lot

MAY

Whisper, but she's a merfolk instead of a scalie (Whisper is normally an axolotl)

In peak irony, one of my rare humanoid drawings was the only piece I felt like posting to my FA

I'm pretty sure this is the first time I actually tried doing mermay, so this gets to go on the list too (got 2 drawings in before I got bored and quit)

JUNE

Strudel flash prompt that I drew quickly

I wasn't digging the set of many sequential but connected prompts, which is why I ended up going for a different look.

Which reminds me, I don't think I've logged into toyhouse for a while now so there's probably a bunch of missed connections since I put a bunch of characters UFT. Will fix that later!

JULY

Ah, good ol' artfight month.

I liked how this drawing of several of Nul's forms turned out the best, so this drawing gets the spotlight for this month. (Nul and all variants belong to @kitsicles)

I had a stye in my better eye for a noteworthy part of this month, so I couldn't draw as well as I wanted to and ended up simplifying high effort pieces because of that.

AUGUST

Bobby the alchemist

bottom text

(didn't finish any noteworthy personal art, so arpg art goes here)

SEPTEMBER

GG Marzi on the run

bottom text

(again, no noteworthy personal art finished, so arpg it is)

OCTOBER

Software test of Rebelpaint, and I like it a lot. Exactly what I wanted!

Tbh I liked this a lot more than anything else I finished this month, so it gets to go here. Funny ocean creacher indeed.

NOVEMBER

Vix and Whisper

I was really busy, so my favorite thing was a meme drawover I did with some OCs. 500% cannon to their oc lore.

DECEMBER

I was initially going to put the deer, but remembered that I actually drew it last year and just colored it this year because I forgot about it until I was digging thru my files for mostly complete wips.

So instead, I'm putting this partially complete drawing of Ring I was working on

It's not done, but it's complete enough to count for this year imo.

---

For reading this far, you get to see a very incorrect coloration of blizz

Here's to a [hopefully] better 2023!

#summary of art #2022 summary of art #my art #not doing proper organization tags since I'll do those when I post the pieces individually sometime later #oc art

[griffonhatchling]

Trigura for amazing @lionsarchlabs ^w^

#gw2 #guild wars 2 #gw2asura #asura #trigura #lionsarchlabs #art for others #Trig #own art #been wanting to doodle her for a while and i didn't finish the sketch until now..... #*ashamed* #Echodreamer's been one of my fav artists for two years now kjsfushef #Seeing Sjoti in their style makes me cry happy tears ;_; #so hope you like this coloured doodle! <3 #I haven't forgotten the doodle you did of Sjoti and Trig talking #I was going to reply with a doodle back but I'm so slow as usual but it will be done! ;O;

[tmp-jatp]

Okay, so I have three that I really wanna know whatever you can tell me about them:

1) Ghosts at college - !!!!!! Tell me more, tell me more 🎶

2) juke the little mermaid au - YESSSS!! Gimme gimme gimme *grabby hands* 🧡

And 3) spy!alex au - HELLOOOO!!! I didn't know I needed this until now, but omgggggg 😍

I'll take whatever you can give me and I'll wait patiently for the fics 🥰 shskdhdjsksh

ahhhh ok so you picked some of them that will almost definitely never be finished (maybe i should move them out of my “wips” folder and into an “abandoned” folder of things i can recycle in the future...) but i’ll share some of what i have for each of them :D

ghosts at college - basically it’s a bunch of fluff where julie graduates high school and goes to college. there’s not a lot of plot, mostly it’s a few ideas tied together with fluff and one scene as well. anyway, julie lives in a dorm and her roommate, anna, slowly becomes aware that julie’s weird. weird things happen around her. sometimes anna overhears that she’s having conversations on her phone but when anna unlocks the door julie’s phone is on the table. reggie and alex are around sometimes but luke is there almost all the time. here’s an excerpt:

luke likes to spend all his time with julie even if they’re not interacting. he likes to be in the same room as her. he’ll be writing or humming or playing and she’ll be working on homework and only she can see and hear him but she’s got this little smile on her face

anna knows julie’s in love with *someone* but she doesn’t know who

sometimes anna heard talking through the dorm room door but as soon as she starts unlocking the door the talking goes quiet

one time julie and luke are having an argument about something. anna thinks it’s a phone call with the elusive boyfriend and she either walks away to give privacy or she opens the door and sees julie facing away, red in the face, yelling at air, her phone on the desk.

band cuddle nights on julie’s bed while anna stays out late or after anna is in bed/asleep. julie laughs at stuff they say. they watch movies on julie’s laptop without headphones and it kind of annoys anna but she puts up with it

julie will lay her hand on alex’s shoulder or curl into reggie or wrap her arms around luke when anna isn’t there or julie thinks anna can’t see her

julie is careful to not talk to air when anna is around

but she does take a lot of phone calls with her airpods in

that elusive boyfriend

hmm

and then julie gets sick (not angsty sick fic sick, it’s fluffy hurt comfort sick) and luke cares for her. that’s when he and anna “meet” for the first time. i have other more general stuff that i might recycle for some other fluffy canonverse post-canon stuff, who knows. 

juke the little mermaid au - julie is ariel and luke is eric. dirty candi and flynn are julie’s “sisters”, ray is triton. caleb is ursula. here’s literally everything i’ve written for it 😂

Julie wants to see the world, because anywhere is better than down here. Her mother was everything to her, and her dad is kind and loving, but he keeps pressuring her to sing again and it’s too much. Julie just wants to be free from that pressure. She knows he does it because he loves her, but she doesn’t know if she’ll ever sing again.

Luke doesn’t want to get married. He shouldn’t have to, yet, he’s only 17 for God’s sake! He just wants to play music and spend time with his friends. But his parents want him to get ready to rule. His coronation isn’t until he’s 20, he has time, but he has much to learn bc he’s avoided it until now and 3 years isn’t much time to learn all it takes to be a king. Luke also wants to run away. He goes sailing alone, to try and go somewhere away, he doesn’t care anymore. He plays music to himself with his guitar.

Julie sees him while he’s out there. A storm rises which he wasn’t prepared for. His boat capsizes. She saves him and brings him to shore. Julie is curious about him, and now that she’s seen the land, she wants to go there. The land is somewhere where people aren’t pressuring her to sing. She’ll be free there.

Julie visits Caleb who will let her be human in exchange for her voice. He wants to use it at his club, the place she’s been warned never to go and where only crooked people are. But it’s actually a pretty cool place. This one guy, Willie, is really nice to her, but so are other people too. Julie makes the trade with Caleb, she won’t need her voice anyway.

She meets Luke’s friends on land. They introduce her to Luke. Julie’s never experienced her hair being so light and fluffy and bouncy before, it’s incredible. Julie sees Luke playing music with the boys. She at some point sees her “wake up’ song that Rose left for her and suddenly wants to sing again. But she can’t, because Caleb has her voice. Something something, jolts, something something 3 days to true love’s kiss?

lastly, spy!alex au - this was from a prompt that will sadly never be finished (sorry, tiger). the prompt was: spy au, childhood friends, “you had no idea, did you?” and i tried to combine those and make it willex but i had had nearly no experience writing jatp at that point and i also am more of a juke person than a willex person so the fic just wasn’t vibing. but here’s my back-of-the-napkin pitch for you, copy pasted directly from my doc, if you’re interested:

spy!alex finally cracks the case he's been working on for years: the hollywood ghost club. it's an elusive black market that deals in the worst of the worst but it always changes locations. the moment he thinks he's pinned it down, the whole operation disappears like a ghost. anyway, he finally catches the ringleader, the infamous caleb covington. willie, caleb's sort-of assistant and alex's something watches from the sidelines, having been tricked by caleb into thinking that they were just running a cool club.

thanks for the ask, vi! i appreciate it <3 these fics will probably never ever get written in full but they’re fun ideas and not every idea can turn into a masterpiece. sometimes an artist just needs to sketch and doodle instead, and that’s okay. but there’s value to recording and saving your sketches and doodles bc maybe one day you can recycle them into something greater, or you’ll come back to them and be inspired to continue them or to create something entirely new. 

#tmp answers #tmp writes #wip tag game

[journalproject]

Chapter 1

"It's been 5 days since Sarah Hensen, a 13 year old girl from Athens, Indiana, went missing. The Amber Alert is still out for her. Sarah has brown hair, green eyes, is five foot one. and was last seen walking home from school with two neighbors. Her parents and two younger sisters were found dead in their home the night Sarah went missing. If you have any information on Sarah's disappearance or location, or you have information on the murder of her family, please contact the police at..."

"Emma," My mom called up the stairs. "The bus is going to be here soon!" Her feet tapped up the stairs.

"Just a second!" I responded. I shoved my binder into my bag and looked around the room for anything I forgot.

Mom knocked and opened my door, a smile splitting her face. "Excited for your first day?"  

I grasped my necklace. "I'm ready for it." My stomach flipped over.

Mom surveyed my room. "Your room certainly looks ready. There's not a thing out of place! Why can't you do this to the rest of the house?" She playfully nudged my shoulder.  

I shrugged. "Okay, okay. I should go."

"Sure you don't want me to drive you?"

"Yeah. It's the same route as middle school, after all. Not a big deal."

We walked downstairs together. "You be careful today. Say please and thank you, be nice to your teachers, listen in class, make friends--"

"I have friends already mom."

"You can always have more."  

I shrugged again.  

"Fine, go." She gently pushed me at the door. "I love you!"

"I love you too." I closed the door. Despite the warm day outside, I felt very cold. I grasped the straps of my bag and rounded the corner to the bus stop. There was already a mass of seven or so students on the driveway of some poor person's house. I stood a distance away from the rest of them.  A couple of small groups hummed with conversation while another couple loners stood quiet like me. I stared at my feet until I could hear the metal groaning of the bus coming to rest in front of us.  

I followed the line shuffling onto the bus and swung into a seat. My teeth smacked together over bumps on the short ride to the school.  The sunbeams came over the hulking structure right into my eyes. Rodchester High. The throngs of students chattered as they followed each other into the modern looking glass paned structure.  

I pushed myself through the conglomerates of students blocking the paths in the hall to get to the locker given to me the week before. As I struggled with the lock, a dark brown haired boy slid in the spot next to me and opened his lock without a problem.  

I bit my lip and looked at the floor before asking, "Hey do you think you could help me with mine?" I raised my head to look back at him.

He turned to look at me, then looked around him. "Me?" He asked softly.

I nodded. "I can't get it to open." I motioned at the locker in front of me and handed him the small slip of paper that had my combination on it. He glanced at it for a moment before twirling the lock, hitting the locker in several places. It popped open easy for him. I stared at him, eyebrows raised. "T-thank you."

He dismissed my gratitude with a flick of his wrist and went back into his locker.  

I busied myself with unloading my backpack and weighing myself down with various journals and supplies I needed. First and second hour were both terrifying. New people, new teachers, new place. So many new faces that didn't come over from my middle school.

Third hour  I sat down next to a semi-familiar face. His hair was swept off to the side to stay out of his face while his head was pointed down to his notebook, eyebrows drawn in concentration. I peeked over his shoulder to get an eyeful of what he was looking at. I could only make out a lot of line drawings and some scribbles in the margins before he caught me looking.  

He snapped the book shut and bit his lip, face blushing.  

"Hey, I didn't get your name earlier. When you helped me open my lock—thanks again by the way. I'm Emma." I stuck out my hand and smiled at him, hoping he didn't see how hard it was shaking. He glanced at my hand then back to me before shaking it tentatively.  

"Andy." He pulled away.  

Eager to keep the conversation rolling, I asked, "Are you new here? I don't think I've seen you before."

His eyes darted away from mine. "I-I was homeschooled before this. This school is so big. So much bigger than I expected.." He trailed off.

I smiled softly. "It's even big for me and I've been going to public school my whole life. I can't imagine what this must be like for you. Do you know anyone here? Play sports or participate in clubs with any of the people?"

He shook his head slowly. "No. We don't—didn't—live close. Close to anything really. Middle of nowhere."

"Did you just move here over the summer then?"

"Yeah, something like that."

Before I could inquire farther, the teacher got everyone's attention and started class. Not like there was anything important mentioned. We went over the syllabus like every other class had done so far. When she decided she was finished repeating everything we've heard the other two hours, she let us talk for the rest of the hour.  

I turned to Andy who was in his notebook doodling in whatever he didn't want me to see. I cleared my throat this time to get his attention.  

"What's your schedule look like for the rest of the day?"

He scrambled around in a black binder for a second before pulling out a sheet of paper. "After this I have Spanish, lunch, gym, then physical science."

I tried to hold back the laughter that bubbled up.  

"What?" He eyed me warily.

I handed him my schedule. "Nothing, just, looks like we'll be seeing a lot of each other." His head nodded as the realization dawned on him. "Lockers next to each other and everything except first and second hour with each other. Hope we don't end up hating each other."  

He let out a shaky laugh to match my stronger one.  

"If you don't know anyone, you can feel free to sit next to me and my friends during lunch. All three of us. We aren't a large intimidating crowd."

He smiled weakly at my joke. "I might just do that. I don't really know where we go to eat anyways."

"I've only been there like once so it'll be an adventure. Did you bring a lunch with you?"

"Yes...? Why would I not?"

I blinked rapidly in confusion. "Um, there's lunch you can buy at the school. Some people prefer that, or they get free lunch or something."

He cocked his head. "So they just.. Make you food. Do you get to request anything you want?"

"Have you not been in public like ever? It works not to dissimilar to fast food. There's options to choose from, most of the time they're edible, if you're lucky it won't be cold or way too hot."

"This sounds horrible. Why would you get the food there if its so bad?" His face contorted in disgust.

I shrugged. "You forget food, some of it's good, more convenient. There's reasons."

"I'll stick to my food from home."

"Whatever floats your boat, man. I'd recommend having some money on your account for those fuck-up days that you might forget a lunch, but the lunch ladies are pretty forgiving. They will negative charge your account and then you can pay them back. At least that’s how it worked in middle school."

His eyes widened when I cussed.  

"What?" I raised an eyebrow at him.

"I-I'm not used to very liberal swearing."

I patted his arm, noting how he went rigid when I touched him. "You'll get used to that real quick around here."

We both jumped when the bell rung to signify the end of class.  

I eyed him as he scrambled to gather his things. I picked-up my singular binder and followed him into the crowd of people in the hall. I quickly lost sight of his brown hair in the mass of people. Shrugging, I went to my locker and grabbed my journal to draw in and hopefully pass some of the time of the next class.  

Andy was assigned to sit in front of me, so I spent most of the class staring at the pattern of his blue plaid shirt. His fingers continually drummed on the desktop while he sketched in his notebook. Every cough in the classroom made him jump nearly out of his seat. Despite what he likely wanted, he was drawing a lot of attention to himself. Several people were glancing over with disgruntled expressions with his constant noise.  

As the bell rang this time, I grabbed his arm so he didn't run off and disappear again.  

"Kid, you coming to lunch with me?"

He pulled his arm out of my grasp with a sharp tug. "As long as you don't touch me."

His words felt like a kick in the gut, but I forced a smile and laugh. "No problem. Come on, let's grab our bags, and I'll introduce you to everyone."

#Chosen #My writing #kidnapping #story #high school