Calvin and the raccoon

Very rarely is Calvin sweet, but this is one of the times. This is a sad one, but it's good. I thought it deserved its own post.

King of the World

My first picture done entirely on photoshop.

Changing Names

You know what's really hard? Changing names. THere have been a few instances where I've wanted to change the names of my characters. In "The Light of the Sun," Erika's name was originally Angela. Actually, Erika and Angela were completely different characters. But I didn't think Angela fit the role so I used Erika instead. I changed that one very quickly. Angela became Erika within only a few chapters.
Then in "Of Spirits and Demons," Darien Jaiyer changed his name. In the original draft, his first name was Daniel. I think it was over half way through that I changed it to Darien. But it wasn't too hard to remember because Darien seemed to fit better than Daniel. (Besides I stole the name Daniel from someone I know and I didn't feel comfortable doing that even though I've stolen names for other characters before).
And then in Shadow Split, Briena's second story, there's too many characters. And the Aboree was named Terra. But that never felt right. First of all, she was from Africa. Terra doesn't have anything to do with African stuff. It just means "earth" which isn't very creative. The name Terra was actually a statement cause I'm sick of people pronouncing my name Terra. They do it all the time if they're reading my name or something. Terra is clearly spelled Terra, not Tara. So there. Observe all of the "are" sounds with the a that is in my name.
fAr
jAr
mAr
bAr
and even
tAr
etc.
Either way, back on topic.
I have committed one more major name change as of last night. IN "Of Spirits and Demons," Kimia was the girl in the legend. KimIRA, Briena's friend, is named after KimIA. But I decided that I wanted KimIRA to be the girl in teh legend, and KimIA would be named after Kimira. So, I did the whole "find and replace" thing on my computer. Kimira is officially Kimia and Kimia is officially Kimira.

Back in Business!

I do appreciate it, Ellen!

Anyway, both of us have been reading and editing like crazy and I talked to Ellen last night on the phone. We're gonna edit and maybe add some chapters in the middle of the story. Ellen's actually coming home from college for a dentist appointment (and I found out that I have one tomorrow -_- ) so we're gonna have an onigiri party. I heard about those (after seeing them on Pokemon) in Fruits Basket, so I asked Ellen how to make them. So we's gonna make onigiri (rice balls) and work on our story this saturday.

Done!!

Woot! I just finished re-editing the Moon Dragon story (we need to come up with a better title for it by the way >__<) but I've been working on it for the past...week or so. And I just finished it! but unfortunately my email stuff is refusing to work so I can't send it to you Tara!!!! Hopefully it'll be up and running again soon.
I was pleasantly surprised when I was rereading this. Usually when I go back and read my old stories they sound so...meh. But when I was re-reading this I was just like "OMG this is awesome!" cause I was reading it more like an editor than an author, there were hardly any big changes for the plot. I fixed some grammar and spelling crud, and added a few sentences here and there for my chapters. But all in all it was freaking awesome.
I had forgotten just how crazy my characters are, and I realized that they're all kind of similar -___- that will not happen in future stories (hopefully).
And now I must go work on a project that's due on Wednesday that I havent started, cause I've been working on this! (joy) And there's another one due soon too!
So Tara, appreciate that I got all of this done XP tee hee just kidding. I'll send it to you soon, and you can edit it. I was tempted to add a chapter towards the end, in the middle of mine though. Cause the time Saleera spends at the castle before the banquet thing was assigned to me. But Arith kind of vanished. So I dunno what you want to do about that.
Wow this is a long post. Oh, by the way, cockney accents...so hard to write >____<

Strawberry Rhubarb

Ooh, now I'm gonna talk about something tasty!
Duartes. An AWESOME restaurant. Very famous for many things. We got some of their jelly for christmas. We opened the Strawberry Rhubarb a little while ago. It's SO GOOD. Ooohhohoho.
Actually, before now, I didn't even know what rhubarb is. It's made from the stem of a rhubarb plant. Whatever it is, it tastes great when it's mixed with strawberry and spread on bread. I'm gonna go have some now.

Changing Stuff

Time for me to ramble again.
About another thing that bugs me.
Luckily I don't see it happen often. It's happened most when they were getting DVDs out there. You get a movie like Fantasia or The Last Unicorn. And I have the old VHSs still, so I can easily tell the difference. In Fantasia, they got a new narrator. Why? The original one was better! And in the Last Unicorn, the DVD I got of it, they changed part of that. Someone said "damn" and they took it out. Come on! Do you really need to mess with a movie by doing that? Compared to how people talk nowadays, damn is hardly a bad word at all! Don't mess with good movies!
And I think I mentioned this before too. Totoro. I grew up with the original english dub. And Disney released a new english dub. What was wrong with the original? Sheesh! I'm glad I got the DVD of that when I did.

Photoshop

So, I did these a while ago. The first two are "a girl" and her Rattata from the Pokemon Adventures manga (the girl has a name, but if you want to read it, I won't tell you cause it'll spoil something. If you have read it, you already know who she is!). It's actually pretty good. It's different from the other Pokemon stuff. (You can find the best copy on Manga Fox). Anyway, I thought she was really cute as a kid.
I was experimenting with coloring things on the computer. Ponyo is easy. This was much harder. None of my lines were dark enough for the computer to read so I had to re-trace all of them on the computer, which is really hard for me. It took me a looong time. Also my first experiment with chibi. I love that word. Chibi. I only know these words cause of Ellen and Nicole. Sigh.


And this time I made the lines dark enough. I only had to fix one spot. And I decided to try shading too. Though I forgot to add a background. I think there's a way to find cool backgrounds but I don't know what it is.

Earth Dragon

Again, I redrew one of my dragons. Earth Dragon.
He's sort of picking at the dirt more than burrowing. At least that's what it looks like.
Yep. Now I have decent drawings of most of my dragons . Except one, think. Which I'll do eventually.
Yah.

Titan Dragon

You puny human!
I forgot to put up this picture! I finished it a while ago.
I redrew the Titan dragon. This is Titania from Ellen and my story.

Riverdance

Oh yeah! A few days ago, we went to see Riverdance. It was good. Very good. The 2 main dancers weren't as good as the original 2, but they were still great. It was fun to see in person . I've only seen it on video. And we have the music too.
Watch it. The original version. It's great.

The Amulet of Ra

Another year on my blog! Happy New Year!
OK, so I designed the amulet from The Light of the Sun. And I "know" people who do jewelry. So had it made! My sun amulet!!! Here it is!

In the story, it's gold. This is not gold. It's bronze. But it looks gold. If this were really gold it would be worth several hundred dollars. Haha. I wish.
Either way I loves it! I got it for Christmas.