Heehee, I am chatting with one of my younger Thai cousins in Thailand. :D It is difficult to judge how much English he knows and therefore what words and sentences I'm allowed to throw at him. xD So cute.

So it was Christmas! And soon it shall be New Year! Huzzah! Here's a lot of pictures that happened over the gift-giving period. :D



So I spent Christmas Eve with some of Joey's family where I had a fantastic dinner and was gifted beyond all reason. :0 His mother gave me the second season of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force which Joey and I watched together post haste and it was quite funny (first time I'd watched even a full episode, ha). Frylock is my favourite. :D

And Joey gave a me a keyboard.


LOLWUT. When Joey's mum presented me with this enormormous wrapped box (me, having recieved my ATHF DVDs and thus thinking myself immune to further gifts) I just stared at her and waited for her to say something along the lines of "Psyche!". Then I stared at the box. And stared back at her. And again. But the Psyche Out never came and I was only stared back at in turn until finally I just opened the bloody thing.

So now I'm back to relearning to play piano. Rerelearning?

Somewhat before Christmas actually set in, I scored these two vinyl bear doll things!

What are these guys called? I know they have a special name... Munnis? Is that it? I want to look up how other people are customising theirs! I'm going to modify the white one pretty significantly into a toy of my DnD character, Ath (she's a satyr :B). Dunno what to do with Mr.Silverbear there. Suggestions?

On Christmas morning, Jen woke me up and shoved my stocking in my face. I growled at her and tried to go back to sleep. It didn't work though so I got up ten minutes later and discovered a set of poker cards and some chocolate coins. No potatoes this year. :(

UNDER THE CHRISTMAS TREE
(among other things)

This totally sweet-as calender!

Yes, I realise I have recieved a gift that would not be amiss on a 12 year old boy's wishlist. I dont care, it is that awesome. A paper plane EVERY DAY??? What is this, some kind of crazy dream world where paper GROWS ON TREES!!?!?!?

THIS.

Is that totally hot? y/y?

Inside:



Yes, really every cartoon in the New Yorker. :0 Like, tens of thousands. HOW am I going to get through all of these? Squeebus.

...Thanks, Mum.

After Christmas, the gifting was pretty quiet for a while.

Then today! (Not so) mysterious package! Oh mans!


Is that so?


Well, I can't argue with that kind of logic.

...And the reward! What a reward!

It- It's beautiful. So beautiful.

(Do you want HQ scans, o mighty gift giver?)

It even came with candy!

I've already eaten half of one of them. :x There is no candy more delicious than art candy? That's my excuse?

I'm going to have to frame that art or something. I dunno. Something. I don't know where I would put it. The office? My room? At the moment it is just sort of residing in my art folder and that's obviously not good enough!

And that's not all!

I placed third in the Guild Wars Wintersday 2007 contest with this entry:


I get a keyboard out of the deal. Nice. The space bar on this one's been sticking for years... I also get a miniature Island Guardian (it's a pet for those not in the know...) which is apparently worth, like, 5000k gold on the market. Holy shit. I currently have, like, 30k gold. 5000k is more in-game money than I can even comprehend. Should I sell it? Keep it? Dedicate it to my shrine and then sell it? (That would decrease its value but, uh, it'd still be worth A LOT). Someone advise me, I'm so torn! D:

I think that's about it! Best Christmas Ever. I don't know how I'm going to top it next year. Place second or first in some art competition, get more art trades and Joey buys me, like, a Wii? That'd do it. Yeah. *hintnudge* xD

Or family from Thailand comes over... That'd be nice. Haven't seen them in a year now, is it? Hmmm...



I have work in... 5 hours-ish. Gotta sleep! D: Ohnoes!

I have the most ridiculous amount of work rostered for next week. It's not really the number of hours that makes it ridiculous though (26) so much as the sudden onrush. Last week I had, what, 12.5 hours? Next week is going to be 26 hours spread inconveniently over 5 seperate shifts. I tend to not get anything else done when I know I'm going to be working the same day. D: Ohnoes!



The post office attempted to deliver a mysterious package about a week ago. It was too early for my GW concept art book to arrive and I doubted that anyone had sent art trade art early enough for it to arrive already... How mysterious!


It was my Malaak comic from Cedarseed. Lebanese superheroisms FTW!


Also, it was signed. Yesssssss.


Okay, I'm secretly double excited about Malaak finally being published because I actually made a suggestion that was actually *used* to great effect in that panel in the lower left there. :D Yes, my tiny contribution, go forth!


Extra bonus round! A mysterious postage box full of candy to be posted out?? Oh so mysterious!

(Note to xmas art trade people: I'm very much running behind with mailing out my stuff. D: But it should still be possible to get everything over in time for Christmas! Woo! :3)


I wandered around Chinatown today as well and, to my enormous surprise, spotted THREE Osamu Tezuka mini vignette anthology blindbox trading figures! :D Bought all of them - two of Princess Knight and one of the Phoenix (SCORE). I've been trying to find people to trade my extras with for a while to no avail so I think I'm just going to Ebay them.



The only art I've really been working on has been art trade art and that short comic about the adorable witch girl from ages ago. It's good practice, I guess. I really just want to get past the awkward panels on page three (going to rework them AGAIN) and get to the fun panels after page 7. Uggghhh, working on page 3 and 5 at the moment.

I need Guitar Hero.

IT'S A GW XMAS :D also yaaaay comPOW!

Some art for a guildwarsguru.com art forum project that I've been sitting on but can now post because it has officially gone up today! Yay!




Probably the most complicated inking I've had to do yet! :D I thought it came out pretty good even though I got lazy in places. Originally this was just going to be the necromancer on the undead reindeer and then I was like "OHAY YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD BE COOL??? IF MY BRAIN IMPLODED FROM DETAILING A TINY MINION ARMY LOL".

Also, here is the version that went up on the site. Hastily slapped on minimal EXTREEEEME lighting condition colours ftw! (Extreme lighting always looks cool, amirite? :D)



Also also here is the Xmas calender site with infos and other entries so far!. Mine went up on the sixth (aka, today). Check out the other submissions because they are rocking! :D

Ummmm, after my 7-hour (agfkl; rre) shift today I totally went to AFKcafe and met Arekudemon/Rosek and that was AWESOME because we talked about ink (yaaaaaay) and, uh, conventions and etc! In theory we were there for the illustration group thing (tentatively named comPOW!) that Areku/Rosek is trying to organise but since we were the only ones who showed up and all we did was chat and look at art and proofread eachother's scripts I don't know if that counts as an official comPOW! meeting. :| If I can scrounge together the money (already done, haha), time (uggghhh, exams??), materials (lol, I have to actually finish a comic?) and courage (D:) I might head down to the Sydney SMASH! anime/comics/etc convention in 2008 and share a room and stuff with Areku! :D That would be pretty cool!

In other news, I started playing Animal Crossing yesterday and, sorry guys, but with a distraction of that scope and quality I will probably NEVER DRAW AGAIN. (and I realise I am kind of late on the Animal Crossing bandwagon here but...anyone else play and want to exchange friends codes? :B)

(Hey, I can add a comPOW! tag to LJ now. :D)

You know, I was just thinking about the old days of free image hosting and WOW are we spoiled nowadays with our FREE hosting that allows outside image posting, simple and intuitive interfaces and HUGE by comparison file space. I SALUTE YOU, PHOTOBUCKET.

I swear, if there is a World War in my lifetime I will be on the side of the Internet. I will be some sort of internet patriot.




First, our guest star:

I really love AlexDS's comic, The Meek. Go read it if you are able, but I believe the LJ is friends-only now? If you can't then, uh, I assure you it is fantastic and, uh, all is right with the world? :B Anyway, the Dagre (drawn here from memory so if its wrong/lame that's all my fault, soz) is some sort of crazy beastthing that lives in Luca the Dictator's mind and I'm not completely sure yet if it's an actual supernatural thing or a manifestation of Luca's own desires. Or something. Either way works for me! Or both!


And the pogeymans. In contrast to the Dagre, I just can't get these guys to leave!

Jerks.


Most of the arts I scanned in today (and a few older things) were posted over at the GuildWarsGuru art subforum. Thread here if you're interested. I'll probably just update that thread with gw things in future to avoid spamming everyone's flists. I'll still post the nice/r things here though. :D

Oh yeah, I spent more time tweaking the contrast on the sketches today. Continue, y/n?


So. Exams are over. Uni has retreated once again to give us all hope for the new year before inevitably stealing back in February to crush our meagre dreams. What does this mean? POKEMONATHON, DUH.

As soon as I finish with art trade art and getting a little bit of a headstart on the 151 that is. ;D

The clock just ticked over so... Happy Halowe'en, people! :D

Of course, I live in Australia where Haloween is not unheard of but also not, you know, a big deal. Any deal at all. But I'm going to celebrate with a post full of (pocket) monsters! :D







The bulbasaur-dudes looking different from the usual because at the time I was still enthralled by these stunning beasts. :0 D'aaw, Nidorans!



So. Making Raticate cute? Really hard. At least, it is without turning it into something not-Raticate. :/ I'll try again another time. Making Jiggly/Wiggly-tuff NOT-creepy - also really hard. D: lol, Squirtle, you are a PLAYA.



Okay, I'm out of full-blown monsters... I fully admit that the face shape is sort of stolen off of one of Joy Ang's characters. I was fan-girling over her art right before I drew this. D: Um. It's okay though because I'm not using these 'maids for anything!



I just like these sketches? I might dump it in OC and slap some shades on there some time this week... Technically fanart because those two middle characters are Sizer and Ocarina from VoH, albeit out of place and out of character.




I probably won't have anything much to post next week. Exams (and studying for them) is well under way now. ;_; God, I'm going to be overjoyed once they're over. Even if I flunk every subject and get kicked out of UQ - OVERJOYED. :| I hate exams sososomuch.

Yesterday was my birthday (possibly is still is my birthday in other parts of the world, y/n?) and I am now 20. Haha, a few people thought I was 21 for a short while, including me, but actually this is not the case! Had a nice dinner and I'll be getting some birthday money. :) Also I've taken the next few weeks off work and that's AWESOMExTENBAJILLIONomg.

In keeping with my bizarre self-imposed tradition, I spent until the wee hours of the morning finishing my current sketchbook. It just so happens that for the last several years my sketchbooks have neared their last few pages around about my birthday, so now I always start a new sketchbook the day after my birthday. I had about ten pages left in the last one two days ago but they're now filled! Which means I HAVE THINGS TO POST. HO SHI-




I like the angsty one in the bottom right best, myself. The dude in the top left is kind of that Scarecrow dude from the latest Batman movie but only kind of. I finally finished the second Phoenix Wright game. I love Franziska(sp?). And Edgeworth. And Nick. And Mia. <333 I'll get the third game when exams are over. Along with a modded PS2 (finally, amirite?) and a couple other games and and GAMING PARADISE OMG.



I really dislike the first Impulse redesign I did. :| For serious. It's in my dA scraps somewhere because it doesn't deserve to go anywhere near the gallery argh. This one I like a lot better. I'll do something more with it when I get time. :D


DnD characters from here on out.


This is my character, Ath. :D Woohoo, a satyr! :B She got excommunicated by her satyr brethren for being a failure at satyring - ie. she has ZERO musical ability and thinks humans are kind of cool. She has an adorable owl named Pepe which she uses as a conversation starter because she's too shy to talk about herself. Also, note that her name is actually my first name backwards. Omygosh, how clever of me! :0



Annastrianna, a sorceress from the elven high court or something. I have no idea what I'm doing with her dress. Leaf patterns and intricate celtic designs are the bane of my existence. I mean, right after motorcycles and detailed backgrounds anyway. Or something.



So halfway through starting to draw the half-orc character I realised I didn't actually know what orcs are supposed to look like, let along half-orcs. I meandered away from the DnD standard a fair bit because they're fuggin' ugly. Fug that. I like Mr. Angryface there. Teefs! He embodies my feelings about DnD-standard half-orc noses (or lack thereof).



I started drawing the studded armour (by the end of this campaign my armour drawing abilities are going to go from nil to WHOAS, I swear) and then his player turned around and informed me that he wanted it to look more hacked-together-by-an-amateur to begin with. Whoops.



This one has the player's approval. Unfortunately, repeatedly drawing those patches of leather with the stitches and the studs is going to drive me INSANE. :c



I really like this one. Especially the way the priestly/magely vestments are applied along the back (it's purely ornamental btw - not actually holding the battlecoat together, lol). The battlecoat and boots came together quickly and she's wearing a cotton shirt and poofy pants (pantaloons, :D?) underneath.



Everyone likes this one. He's a rogue with the infamous alias of ~Nightbreeze~, hahaha I find that HI-larious but I'm not going to mention that to his player. Much. xD The leather vest and thigh/knee guards came out well. I resisted the urge to super gay him up after his player was joking about playing him flamboyantly gay. I'm still going to draw him a teeny bit FABulous though!



The compulsory silent ranger with wolf companion. Silent stalker of the forest, orphan with angsty backstory, not-so-secretly wants to get bitten by a werewolf and have melodramatic monologues aboute the repercussions... Evers RP group has one (minimum). You can see that I very sneakily reused some of the armour from the failed half-orc's design. :D



We probably have the most balanced DnD group ever. Three females and three males, both IRLs and in-game. Huzzah!



Guidelines for the Christmas Art Trade thing will be out in a few days. :D I'll crosspost to dA, of course.

lols, I just recieved this in my Gmail today. :D



Yaaay, 11 more days! Unfortunately, I'm going to be doing the exam grind for the next month. D: Mostly because I have not been studying. At all. Srsly. Ugh ugh ugh ugh. It's my own damn fault aarrghhh.

Anyway! So! Time for my awesome Christmas idea, yes?

I want to do something like a physical art trade with people for Christmas! And if we start now we'd all have enough time to actually get them done and sent off? I think the idea is cool, but getting people to participate could be difficult. Thoughts, anyone? If I can get FIVE people to exchange art with me I will consider this a complete success, honestly. :P

Comment if you're interested and I'll try and work out a more detailed plan~


So far I'm thinking that I'll just personally trade with anyone who's interested! At first I thought to maybe try and set up some sort of random free-for-all secret santa dealio with a hojillion artists but that is A) way too much work and B) just too complicated to satisfy everybody. So screw that idea. I'll probably put up a list of fandoms/subjects/etc that I'm able/willing to do art of and jot down the names of anyone who wants in and then solicit each individual for an address to send stuff to via note or email. Then people can send me a list to pick from for their half or put up an open list on their journal - thus turning this into an MEME. YES.

IF this gets any further than an idea, one of the rules will be that you can't open and look at your art until Christmas. :D (and of course, no posting the art that you've made for someone else until Christmas!).

Alternatively, this could all happen through email, I guess. But that's not as cool. D: But also safer than semi-random people knowing your postal address. Since these get arranged between individuals though, I suppose you could also pick and choose who you email/post depending on how well you know the other person or how open the place you post the offer on is etc.



Anyway, yeah, post with ideas and expressions of interest, guys? :D Or even expressions of DISinterest if you think this is a dumb idea?

Whoooooaaaaaas, hey internet! Long time no see. D:

I'm kind of dizzy and feeling a bit off today - The combined efforts of my headache, the medication I took for the headache, and the 4.5 hour shift of standing around bagging people's groceriesm, no doubt.

So anyway, here's a couple more pokejinkas that I've been playing with for a couple weeks!




Butterfree! I'm pretty happy with this one. :D The antennae are meant to be, like, little radio antennae on his combined mp3player-radio-headphones or something.


I fucked up on cream bits a fair bit (especially the female's hands, which I've just given up on). And the male lopunny. I really only wanted to draw his head and scarf-ears - after that it was like, yeeeaaaah jumpsuit whatever. :/ I kind of like my choice of light green background though! Are my colour sensibilities getting better or do I still suck but now I can't even tell anymore? Thoughts?


I need some sort of naming convention for these dudes. For posting on DA. That's kind of why I've been putting off posting the Haunter one for over a month. Lols, I suck. 8D



Well, that's the long overdue artpost done. Another post later! With my totally AWESOME(??) Christmas idea. :D Yaaaaaay!

Okay, so this is my new favourite internet-spawn:



Accelerating chicken = hilarious.





It is so obvious which pokemon this is that I feel kind of dirty posting it. :C Less obvious ones next time, maybe!




Just starting on her. Pretty happy so far - she's a little long in the face maybe. Not sure where to go from here since I've decided the placement of the guild symbol (a golden circle of geckos - I was going to place it behind her head like a halo :B) is going to be a bit awkward though.

Anyway, going to eventually offer something similar to the finished version on the GWGuru forums for GW monies as, like, "guild portraits" or something. :B Haven't decided how much to charge or whether I'm going to colour them digitally or traditionally. Two different options and different prices? :\

I <3 GW YES I DO




Next week: Cray guild portrait finished? More pokejinkas?? Old sketches??? SOMETHING ELSE ENTIRELY????

It's a real mystery.

Actually, I should join the Pokemonathon soon. Hmmmm. I have a week vacation coming up. I will start then! Someone remind me later.

Ooh, I'd better add a new LJ tag for pokejinkas.

Exam today and it is now two-thirty in the morning and I haven't studied. Argh but I'm going to bed. >:(


So. I've been sketching a lot of GW fanart. Partly in preparation for opening up commissions for GW currency and partly because I'm having a lot of fun finally fleshing out the characters and learning how to draw their clothing. :D



My oldest and favourite character, Cray! She's primarily a mesmer - the classiest class! She's a total snob. :D And her clothes are really fun to draw~


In my head, Cray has very subtle expressions. Which is tricky because it means I constantly draw her looking the same and boring. I'unno! She doesn't really have much of a personality yet, aside from being a snobby mesmer. :/ She likes treasure hunting and identifying items and INTERRUPTING ENEMY SPELLCASTERS BUAHAHAHAH.


And my Factions-native monk Sama Bean. Her name is a bit of an in-joke between my boyfriend and I. >_> The first bit just derives from my name - Samantha - and the second bit is sort of a pet name. :B Anyway, Sama is a friendly young Shing Jea acolyte. She's naive and happy and probably likes sweet things but like hell I'm going for the sweet-tooth title. :| That shit is EXPENSIVE. I think I'll turn that sketch in the bottom left into something coloured and finished. She's pretending to smell her Lotus style monk staff like it's a real flower, since it's not that obvious. I think it's cute. SHUT UP.



Sooo yeah! *dork* I think my next (non-abandoned like my poor lvl 4. necro Marilyn Marrow) character will be a warrior named Mamath Mazilla. :D I want to make a male elementalist as well. He can be the unwilling pimp to my myriad of female characters. xD

Omygosh, he is going so fast as to ESCAPE COLOUR ITSELF. :0
lols, his grin looks kind of creepy. It wasn't like that in the original sketch, I promise!



Also, the answers to last post's pokejinkas aaarrre: Gyarados and Magicarp (which were pretty obvious), Gengar (who was pretty vague, 'cause I still don't know what I'm doing with him other than maybe MAFIA BOSS) and Quilava (who is totally rebellious. Just like every other second stage fire starter ever!). The plan at the moment is to do Quilava, Charmeleon, Combusken and Monferno being rebellious together. :B



I bought two booklets of shiny new cardstock/paper today and some new ink. There was a sale! Also, buying those pushed me over the edge of $500 on my loyalty program card so I got a $50 voucher for artstuffs. SAWEET!

I actually DID get around to sending in a little Impulse thing to Project Rooftop! I will post that tomorrow!

TODAY:

A sketch for Eatfun, which I'll do more with later but for now here's, like, a teaser or something!



Under the cut:


I whited out all the names/captions, so you'll have to guess what they are. It shouldn't be hard. Hopefully. D:


So yeah, tomorrow: Impulse, maths assignment by 5pm (:<) and if I'm lucky I'll have time to finish Poison Ivy or a couple gijinkas. :\

Oh, but I have to work on Tuesday AND Friday this week so actually I should probably just work on those other assignments. >:| Fuck you, employment!

Not really that interesting BUT:


The original pencils are from 2005 apparently! I actually still really like them (after some modifications). I think it'll turn out well, if I can get the lighting right. :D

I got a hundred dollars this week for drawing a couple of images for some Chinese flash cards. SAWEET! The, uh, commissioners were some family friends who publish a textbook for learning Chinese (mandarin) and their artists have all up and quit on them recently. Which sucks! But I profit from it, ohohoho! Had to imitate the old artist's style. That was weird. >_>

So, with that hundred dollars I bought:
- A Lanstag Zoids toy. With a name like that (it's a STAG with a LANCE! GET IT? GET IT??), I could NOT pass it up. :B
- A Liger Zero X Zoids toy
- preorder for a HMM Blade Liger

The HMM Blade Liger looks really nice. Behold! Unpainted prototype images!



I have no idea how I am going to assemble that bastard (needs glue and cement and stuff apparently? D:) but I guess I'll work it out.

I was never a fan of the Zoids anime (because they were all STUPID) but I've always liked the toys for no reason. I've wanted a robot lion since I was a child (Barbies? Haha, whut, no) for NO APPARENT REASON and now...I shall have two. :B And a robot moose. Haaahaha, I still find that thing hilarious! I can't wait for them to arrive!