Katani and Tyra

So, I finally finished the picture of Katani and Tyra.
Tyra is being tugging at Katani's hair, and he's just looking at her like "what are you doing?"
Spent all evening coloring it. Gasp gasp.
I think Katani and Tyra turned out pretty good. Though the background could have been better. The water feels lacking. The sand is... decent at least.
I hadn't drawn Tyra before, so it was good to get her on paper. And my other picture of Katani was kinda lame. His legs were too short.
I only used the computer for one thing on this picture: to accentuate the lock of hair that Tyra's tugging at. It got a bit smudged.


There's still lots of manga pictures I want to draw, but I also want to draw a lot of my own characters.
SOOOO MUCH STUFF TO DO. How can people ever be bored?
And with 2 contests on Deviatart, and my Pokémon fanfic, and Katnai's story... plus I was planning to edit my Midna fanfic, and there's Briena's old story that's on paper that I still need to finish typing, and I wanted to edit that Under the Masks thing, which really needs help, and Ellen and I need to go over Arith and Saleera's story again...
GASP GASP.
But today I drew my picture for my second Pokéventure paragraph. I just gotta color it. And Crystal's working on the illustrations for out Wisp entry. It's due in just a couple days.
Ellen and Nicole! Post on the blog about your chapter! I don't know what you're doing! Nicole! You still owe a blog post!

Random Crafty Stuff

Heheh. More stuff form meeee.
I wanted to try making a figurine, and Drifloon looked easy, so I made a Drifloon. Note to self, next time bake the head before trying to put on the details. I had to be really careful not to smoosh him up as I did the face and hair. The legs are yarn.


And Ellen has this awesome book about how to make cake and cookies and stuff out of felt. The problem is that it's in Japanese. So I got her to translate one of them for me. It looks soo delicious! Though I probably could have done better at positioning the strawberries and stuff.



And Nicole told me that the second season of Natsume was up, so I started watching it. The snow bunny was really cute. So Crystal told me to make one. (I really love the fox boy and the little kid with antlers also. ^-^ )
And then Nicole wasn't feeling too good on Thursday, so I made a snow bunny for her. A nd since it only took 20 minutes, I made one for Ellen too. And then Crystal (though I haven't had a chance to give her hers yet). And I just made one for me too. Heheh.



And then because you know you wanted to do it:

Wisp OCT

So, a couple things.
A few days ago, the first round of Pokéventure ended. I earned a decent score (3 people got top scores, and most people got passing scores, and a few people got lame scores. I got passing. I 'll have to up my game). And we got our partners from the first round. I'm partnered with a Pichu.
So, Crystal got Ellen, Nicole, and I involved in an original character contest on Deviantart. You're allowed to enter as pairs, and Crystal thought that would be fun. So, we decided partners by flipping coins. I'm with Crystal. She's using her established character, Ferris, and I'm going to use a dog.
Here's the homepage for the contest.
The premise is that you wake up in a strange place and are told that you've been entered in a contest. If you can bring a coat to Death, he will return someone to life. But to do so, you must defeat or kill the other people you meet.
So, I gotta finish my character reference sheet. I'm going to do most of the writing, and Crystal's gonna illustrate. We started already, and we're trying to figure out how our characters will agree to cooperate, since they're both rather... unyielding.
I'll post links to it when we finish the first round.

A couple other random notes.
Mom took me to a Picasso exhibit last week. He's a pretty strange artist, although you certainly can't say that he's not interesting.
And after that, Ellen and I went to the county fair. It was really good this year!! There were so many cute animals! And there was an anime booth too, but I didn't get anything there, because I used my money to buy a katana sword. I've been wanting one for a while, and they actually had a booth there with some swords from anime. And Ellen knows katanas pretty well, and she said the Kenshin-based sakabato sword (the blade is on the back side of the blade curve, so you can fight without killing someone) was a good quality and good price. So I got it. And Ellen gave me some sword lessons. It's awesome! I want to learn moooooore!

Side Characters

Now on to actual writing stuff. I've been putting this post off forever.
Actually, in the first semester of college, Nick said something in a speech he gave during class that I've thought about a lot since. He said that side characters are often a lot more interesting than main characters.
Which is often true, mainly in the books and movies that are popular in America. The characters that support the main character are often less normal and more interesting. Somehow that doesn't seem right.
It's very hard to get me to dislike characters. Unless they're blatantly unlikeable, I usually don't dislike them. Even if they're not that interesting, or they're "too nice" or something. I know Nicole has some characters that she really loathes that weren't intended to be loathed by the author. Nicole, I don't think it's good for you to hate a fictional character so much, considering they're not characters that want to take over the world or eat someone's heart or anything weird like that.
And another thing. This speech was before Ellen and Nicole got me into a bunch of anime. This was still back when I only knew Ghibli, Pokémon, and Zelda. And in the list of my absolute favorite characters, they're pretty much from anime/manga. Anime seem to have a lot richer characters than most books or movies you get around here. There are good ones, don't get me wrong. But anime have really interesting ones. And all my favorites too. Like Midna, Ling, InuYasha, and Kenshin. Even Zuko is anime-inspired.
But Anime do a good job of making the main characters interesting. And a lot of manga show the popularity polls. Sometimes the main character is the most popular. I think that's true for Ichigo.
So, make good side characters. But don't make your main character normal.
I need to fix Katani in this respect. I haven't a very good job of portraying him so far.

Wing Sweatshirt

So, I fell like all my recent posts have just been to show stuff off. I haven't done too much recently that actually relates to writing. Except I still have stuff I want to show off. ^-^
So I'll do both.
Actually, this actually has something to do with my stories.

So, a while ago I saw this awesome sweatshirt with a beautiful pair of wings on the back. I asked the person where they got it, and I looked it up. It was over $100. I didn't want to pay that much for a stupid shirt. So, as is often the case, I decided to make my own. I drew a (rather less fancy, but still nice) pair of wings and we took it to a place that can get things printed on shirts. They had to put it on a light colored shirt so it would show up (cause the guy didn't have one of the really expensive machines that lets you print it on darker fabric.
Actually, the wings are a touch low . If I ever get another one, I'll have them be higher.
But I finally have my own pair of wings! Hahahah!
And they're gold, like Fern's wings. Though I only made them one shade of gold instead of 3 shades, like hers are.
Come to think of it, Maximum Ride is the reason I got so obsessed with wings. And that's why Fern makes heavy use of her wings now.

I've been working on Katani. He's finally on his first mission (A practice mission, actually). It seems most of my writing time goes to fanfics. Once I finish a chapter, I have to start another one (cause it's been taking me longer than usual to finish them, and I keep publishing them later than I used to. Strange, considering I'm on summer break. Where does all my time actually go? Actually, to crafty stuff and chores, and jobs for mom, and stuff like that).

Just so this post isn't too confusing, I'm gonna start a new post to finish the rest of what I wanted to write.

Dragon Collection

So, someone on Deviantart (actually one of the people whose kiriban I won) asked to see collections that people had. I... have a lot of collections. But I thought it'd be fun to pick one to take a picture of. So I picked dragons. I collect good dragons. This picture doesn't have all of my dragons, but it does have most of them. The others are too hard to get too, and I wasn't feeling like that tonight. Even so, it wasn't nearly as easy as I thought it'd be. Taking the dragons off of my shelves and walls wasn't too bad. But I went into one of the display cabinets in a different room. I knocked a tiny baby dragon onto the floor and Dad and I looked around for over 5 minutes before I found it buried in the carpet right beneath where I was sitting.
Then one of the legs of a little glass dragon broke off. It won't be hard to fix though.
And then the dragon with blue glass wings (the smaller one) lost its horn. That thing has lost both its horns, its wing, and then its tail last week. Even though it's metal I keep having to glue it back together. Freaking piece of garbage. It wasn't cheap either.
Most of these dragons have a story.
Of course you know I made Haku (Both the big and little ones).
There's some little dragon Pokemon.
There's Toruk (AKA Great Leonoptryx) from Avatar. Close enough to being a dragon, I suppose. I have a banshee/Ikran too, but that one was too hard to take down.
Most of the beautiful Windstone dragons (check out their website - she has AMAZING stuff) were gifts (They're really expensive). The little one that's hatching I found at a garage sale.
There's a dragon kite in the back.
The sea serpent that's behind Haku is a puppet.
Oh, this is funny. I just discovered this a couple days ago. See the dragon skull? Remember that old movie I mentioned in my last post? In one very short scene, there's a dragon skull on a stake that's the exact same as the one in my picture! Haha!

Voyage of the Unicorn

Back in elementary/middle school, there was a movie that I really liked called "Voyage of the Unicorn." It was a movie made for TV, so I don't think they ever released it on video/DVD. I just found my recording of it, so I watched it. Ya know, it is a little low-budget, but it's still a fun movie. ^-^ Brings back a lot of memories. I remembered a lot of the dialogue somehow.
Here's a link to the first part in case you want to see a fun (although not necessarily a masterpiece ^o^ )fantasy. (Just so you know, The Unicorn is the name of a ship).

I like going back and finding stuff that I used to really like.
Like there was a cartoon I used to love called Unico and the land of magic, or something like that. Dad recorded that one for me too. And I recently discovered that it was in fact a sequel. I like the second one better though. Maybe because that was the one I was attached to as a kid.

Butterfly Dragon

Something cool I found on Deviantart that I wanted to share.

Waka Plushie

I'm addicted to making plushies. ^-^
It's all Ellen's fault.

Waka. Heheh. I made him a flute. Maybe I'll make his sword too. But we're fellow flutists, so I had to give him a flute.
His weird hat took a long time, but I like it.

Don't Underestimate the Little Ones

Whenever people go to an animal shelter, they always look at the dogs and cats.
So, this week at the Humane Society, I snuck out to visit the "small mammal" room.
Rabbits and guinea pigs are so underrated.
The guinea pigs ran up to the front of the cage, wanting their noses scratched. The rabbits stuck their noses out of the bars, begging for love. I used my magic key (I have it for cat TLC, but I use it elsewhere too ^-^ ) to open up the cages to pet them. One rabbit actually tried to climb out of his kennel because he wanted to be held. That's very unusual for rabbits. Most rabbits don't like being held. But he enjoyed it. He was a sweetie (And He didn't shed much at all, Nicole!).
A couple weeks ago, I visited again, and I opened one of the doors to pet a bit white rabbit. He enjoyed the company, and when I came back he fairly tried to climb up the bars because he wanted more attention!
And a while ago, there was a really sweet rat too.
And they have mice and hamsters.
Don't neglect the little ones too! They're just as full of love as the dogs and cats!
And now I move on to Alaska, my own fluffy bunny. Yes, she may shed a lot, but I don't mind. I love her, and I don't mind getting furry when I cuddle with her. Although her fine, light-weight fur does indeed tend to fly everywhere, its fineness is the reason her coat is much much softer than the fur of most other animals.
She's fine being held, and she likes sitting on laps. She loves being pet, and she gives lots of kisses. Unlike some animals, who lick people to get salt off their hands, rabbits will lick if they like a person.
And Alaska loves giving kisses.
She's incredibly trusting, almost to a dangerous level, because she likes feet. If I'm about to step on her, she will NOT move. I've almost tripped over her a couple times in the dark. (Interestingly, Lan likes feet too).
And Alaska will let me lift her front half on the ground, which goes against most rabbit instincts since they're a ground-dwelling prey animal (I hold hr like this when I want to massage around her forearms). And though most rabbits hate being pet under the chin, Alaska likes it.
And here's the sweetest thing. Every night, Alaska escorts herself from my room to her cage in the hall. She only goes in when she's hungry. But before she eats any food, she always sits by the cage door, waiting for me to pet her goodnight. If I try to shut the door too soon, she will stick her nose out so I can't shut it. She used to put her paws against the door to push it back open.
^-^
I love my fluffy.