from a long way away

blobs: lying in the sun

2012-02-11T00:43:00.003-08:00

game: the blob adventure

2012-02-05T02:55:00.000-08:00

I've been working on a boardgame as self-mandated "homework," and though I don't have a finished product I'll go ahead and share the rough concept and process thus far.

The first iteration of the board. The objective is to collect three different items (Banana, Banana Bread, and Grapefruit Extract), each of which can be found in one of the regions-- the Forest, the Desert, and the Lab, respectively. With each move, the player draws a card from the respective stack (also Forest, Desert, and Lab). Each Area card stack contains not only its special ingredients, but also random events -- both harmless and harmful -- and various items and Blobs, all of which have different useable abilities.

The Typo Hideout is necessary location for one of the types of cards you can obtain in the Forest-- it keeps the player from drawing any cards until they make it to the hideout.

On the right is gameboard iteration #2 (during test play #2, hence all the little symbols and pieces on the board). After the first test play with Chiggy I realized that there were way too many spaces on the board! Also, instead of automatically winning after assembling the ingredients, a Castle & Castle Road were included, so now to win you must also take all the ingredients there.

A lot of other smaller changes were made the cards, but after this test run there are a lot of other problems and plain un-fun things to fix.

None of the character sprites on the board belong to me, actually-- two belong to Nintendo (Mario & Kirby), two are recolours/remakes of existing sprites from Chrono Trigger done by my friend Aqua, and the green blob was made from scratch by her. All of these are quite old, and were originally made for our sprite "comix," based off our old roleplays, which were based off Neglected Characters, which were (finally!) based on Super Mario Bros.

comic: nagasaki, pg. 1

2012-01-17T19:34:00.001-08:00

True story. (Or the first page of it, at least.) The goal is to draw up the entirety of Iva and I's mad adventures around Kyuushuu (and maybe Mt. Fuji) in comic form~ A lot happened, so it'll be a long project. But hopefully a fun one?

Buckets of thanks to Google Maps & Streetview! Without them the background would have been er, much simpler.

(Deepsea) char.design: player character

2012-01-16T04:05:00.001-08:00

Final choices are down to #1, #2 and #6. Much thanks to Chiggy for their input! I like how I take the time to make alterations and give choices, and in the end I still go with the first idea I had. I guess I already knew what I wanted, and I just wanted to prove to myself that it was the better one?

char.design: leah & alice

2012-01-15T14:00:00.000-08:00

Blonde girl (I have this feeling her name might be Leah? But all my papers with the rest of this story are elsewhere) was supposed to be the main character of a short comic fueled by my temporary depression in February, when everybody left me to go to Korea. :( But that faded and so did my interest in this. I still like her character design, though, so perhaps she'll show up somewhere else instead.

(Deepsea) Area: Mercave

2012-01-14T20:03:00.004-08:00

A merperson town-like area in the deep sea! How exciting. Lots of things to fix on this, but I suppose I'll just redraw it sometime in the future. Was good practice, at any rate.

jaco in b&w

2012-01-07T02:23:00.000-08:00

Paint SAI, ~2 hours; model is Jaco van der Hoven, as photographed by Lorenzo Marcucci.

figure study: sprawled

2012-01-06T02:17:00.001-08:00

Paint SAI, ~1.5 hours; referenced from photograph by Marcus Ranum.

RO: flower religion

2012-01-02T13:17:00.000-08:00

shirakawa-go

2011-12-31T02:43:00.000-08:00

Paint SAI, ~4 hrs; used a friend's photo for reference.

yakushima

2011-12-30T02:41:00.001-08:00

Paint SAI, ~2.5 hrs; used my own photo as reference.

game: underwater escape

2011-12-29T13:23:00.012-08:00

I was reading game design books as well as an online lecture/class, and one of the challenges was to make a simple boardgame. Well, it's simple alright, just not at all marketable, since the main concept is that the player holds their breath. So afterwards I started thinking of less health-endangering games around the same concept, which is where Deepsea came from.

Nevertheless! The original rules:

----------------------------

For 2 players. (Adding additional players will increase difficulty.)

----

CAUTION!

Do not attempt if you have any breathing difficulties! (Seriously.) Any damage incurred to yourself or others during the play of or due to the play of this game is not my responsibility. Play safely.

---

RULES:

1a) Starting from their first roll of the die, the player must hold their breath. They can only take a breath on AIR POCKET spaces (outlined in cyan) or when they reach SAFETY.

1b) Player may breathe freely while on an AIR POCKET.

2) Taking a breath outside of AIR POCKET spaces or SAFETY requires you to return to the bottom of the sea.

3) Move by rolling a single die; players go in alphabetical order by first name. (In the case of the same name, continue with last name.)

4) Game ends the moment a player reaches the SAFETY space, or passes it.

comic: morning routine

2011-12-28T02:26:00.000-08:00

I have a problem where I inevitably get myself buried in a huge, unmanageable and complicated project, so I'm trying to learn how to draw (and write/plan) short things. This is one attempt.

Paint SAI, ~30 min.

payong

2011-12-03T02:39:00.000-08:00

Paint SAI, ~2.5 hrs; used my own photo as reference.

umbreon

2009-12-29T13:15:00.000-08:00

figure studies

2009-11-07T23:30:00.002-08:00

I haven't posted anything here in ages.

jake. again.

2008-08-27T17:51:00.002-07:00

for a character that barely ever appears in the comic, he gets an awful lot of fanart from me?

tonari no hidan

2008-03-07T14:18:00.002-08:00

Inspired by Tina's poll~ ♪ I realize that my Hidan looks distinctly unHidanlike. Oh well. It was a several-minute doodle. xD

I -wish- my neighbor was Hidan. ):

(Yes, those are handcuffs...)

blobs: nya(a)araka

2008-01-17T17:21:00.001-08:00

Meh, I found this coloured picture in my sketchbook and decided to scan it in... but while working on making the colours look right (first time EVER my scanner failed at colour D:) I decided I didn't like it enough to post it on DA. XD The end.

sute yet again

2008-01-02T00:17:00.000-08:00

francis greenwich

2008-01-01T13:06:00.001-08:00

Named by Lora+Chiggy. xD

Francis Greenwich, the satanic seahorse. xD I was playing with Tina's tablet. *0*

stolen: aednat [WIP]

2007-12-02T08:32:00.001-08:00

"Who will raise their voice?...
and who will call a truce,
and who can break our fall?"
(Capercaillie: Who Will Raise Their Voice?)

Aednat again. There anorexic-thinness is, in fact, intentional, since this is near the end of her life... She wasn't in the best of health since she essentially took over all duties of the Highest, reorganized the gods, and also refined all the small details after Feivel left. :(

sketch request: Jake

2007-12-01T23:01:00.000-08:00

Lora requested one of her characters (one that I hadn't drawn before)... and I chose Jake. From Satisfied?. (I also contemplated drawing Annabella, but that idea obviously got axed.) Because, well, we all know I love the messed up ones. xD And for the record, I -did- plan on giving him clothes when I started! >_>

... I like to think of this as the post-Miller-noncanon-spoof-that-is-still-being-drawn-image. >:)

stolen: aednat with leif

2007-11-30T15:59:00.001-08:00

Aednat with her oldest child, Leif. (*gasp* Abbess actually has CHILD characters?! What has happened?!)

For the curious (or just bored), name explanations--

Aednat: "little fire," Irish-Gaelic.
Leif: "descendant," Old Norse.
Fico: "a fig," Italian.
Feivel: "brilliant one," Yiddish.
Thor: .... do I really need to explain this one? ._.;;

Leif's name is very obvious (first-born descendant of the founders). It's also the only name that wasn't chosen by the people themselves -- he was named by his father, Thor. :)

Aednat named herself, but the name was originally given to her by a companion in Ireland because of her bright hair.

Fico was not entirely serious, and happened to like figs. Never bothered changing his name later, because he considered human things to be ridiculous.

Feivel named himself "brilliant one" because 1) he is fairly self-assured and narcissistic, and 2) he was well-aware of his naturally-given charms.

Thor was a scholarly fellow with a fascination for mythology and religion... but because he landed in Norway, and spent most of his early post-arrival years in that area, he had a special fondness for Norse mythology. He chose his name after he was established as god/higher-being.