Plushie Christmas Presents

All the photos from the Christmas present my sister and I made for the gang.

Happy New Year!

It's the end of another year. ^-^
A lot's happened, but it feels like it's gone by so fast.
I think I've improved in several areas. I've made a few more plushies, though not as many as last yer. O_O I just finished 2 of them as gifts, so I'll post pictures of them soon.
I think I've improved in drawing.
I've written a lot, but I wish I wrote more. How typical.
I'll try to get better at all of these next year. Especially writing and drawing (more on drawing on my next post).
But I have awesome friends and family as always. I love you guys! Thanks for everything! Can't wait to spend another awesome year with everyone!

Kenshin the Warrior

I actually had this planned for a while (since before I decided he was my favorite character), but I finally made it.
I have another one of these planned once I can gather the pictures. I have to get them myself because there aren't as many online as there were for this one.

Hopefully you can see the full version. If it doesn't open, try doing the "full image" thing. Actually, it would probably be easiest to look at it on DA.
(There's one picture I put on twice, though it has different color schemes. I forgot to delete it even though I noticed it beforehand...)

Mekki

Another one I got back a while ago.
This is a dragon from Katani's story. His name is Mekki, and he's Melly's partner. He's sort of a big baby, actually, but I thought he'd make a cute picture. And I was right! He's soooo adorable!!! This one might actually be my favorite now. But it's right at the top with the very first picture I got of Heyoa.
It's by Shivita.

And it seems like I didn't post the picture of Melly and Mekki on my blog. I thought I did, but I guess I only put it on DA.
So here's my picture of Melly and Mekki.
I realized after I finished that I forgot to make Melly's skin darker. --_-- Aren't I smart?

Polaris

I've had these for a couple weeks, but I kept not posting them.
Here's Polaris! By Ninja-jamal. He's the one that made this freaking amazing poster of every Pokémon before generation 5. Actually, Polaris's eyes are supposed to be blue. But she looks really nice besides that! Soo cute!

Skyward Sword

So, I had a party with my friends today which was fun as always.
And right afterward, I sat down and played the ending of Skyward Sword. I'd been at the point before the final battle for about a week, but I'd been so busy that I didn't want to risk starting it only to have to stop (I did that once as it is).
So, I finally finished! YAAAAAY!!
The final boss was shorter than I thought it would be. But the game itself was pretty long. I thought it was a good game. The flying and birds and stuff was especially awesome. But Twilight Princess remains my favorite game (and Midna remains my favorite Zelda character).
Except my file had to be deleted in order to do the replay of the game. --_-- Sigh. I wonder if there was a way to duplicate my file so I didn't have to delete it... too late now though.
I still think the Loftwings should have had names.
I liked Fi's songs and dances too.
Damn, the first silent realm was really stressful, but they got a little better each time as I started to understand them. --_--
Ghirahim was an interesting bad guy.
(I wonder if I should go back to my Shadow Link fanfic and add some Skyward stuff into it...)
(Minor spoilers)
I thought it was cool how Groose actually ended up being useful. For the part when he came down to the land, I stopped hating him, but I still kept thinking, "Okay, even though I don't hate you anymore, please stay away from me because you still kinda freak me out a bit with that face."
And if Ghirahim is a sword too, why does he actually have emotion? Fi doesn't really.
It's kinda annoying how they made that Demise guy the precursor to Ganondorf though...
But overall, I'd recommend it. I thought it was a good game. I was able to figure out almost everything without a guide (except I had to look up one thing about fighting Ghirahim for the final time, and I needed to look up some stuff about 2 of the Goddess Cubes). Since I've played almost every single other Zelda game, I've gotten pretty quick about figuring out the puzzles.

EBO ALERT!

Okay, everyone! Right now I need all of you to go to fanfiction, click on the "help" link in the top right, and send an email to the address listed under "new categories/characters." In the email, ask them to add the Evil Baby Orphanage (or the EBO) to the miscellaneous category.
I'm going to try to rally support from other Nerdfighters too, but please help on this guys! I think it would be great to get this category up before the tour de Nerdfighteria!

Kenshin

So, on my last Friday of school (I guess it must have been December 2nd) I was driving home with Dad, and we stopped at a Japanese store. They had those boxes that have a toy in them, except you're not sure which of the toys you'll get when you buy it. Those always bug me a lot because I tend to have abysmal luck with them.
This had a set of Kenshin figures. And since those are older and harder to come by, I decided to get one. I decided not to be picky and decided that I'd be happy as long as I didn't get one of the figures (I didn't really want Saito). Because I'm impatient, I opened it right there in the store and gave a sort of hushed victory cry when I found that for once I got the figure I wanted from one of these mystery boxes: Kenshin.
As usually happens, I started putting my toy together in the car on the way home.
This may seem like a random change in subject, but it links in. When I was playing Crisis Core, Crystal was telling me how Zack was probably her favorite character. Now, as you can tell from my list, I have a lot of characters that I like (you know, if they're animal-ish, funny, or if they need a hug). But I'd ever given any thought to which character was m favorite of my favorites.
So, as I was putting together the Kenshin model, I realized that Kenshin was probably my favorite character. And when I referred to my list, I realized that he was higher than all the others. Of course, when I told Crystal and Ellen this, the first thing they asked was "why."
Well, partly because he's really funny, especially the "oro" which still makes me laugh every time I see it. How can it not?!?!

He may be funny, but he's also a freaking awesome swordsman!
And as Crystal pointed out, in addition to fitting into the category of people that make me laugh, he could also fit into the category of people that need hugs. He does sometimes.
So, I finally discovered my favorite character (though FMA remains my favorite anime/manga).
Go Kenshin!

Yotsuba

Still lots of posts I want to make, so I should probably do one.
A while ago, Crystal got me to read a manga about Yotsuba. It basically follows this silly little girl named Yotsuba. She manages to turn lots of ordinary evvents into very interesting experiences. It took me a while to get into it, but it's pretty funny and fun.
I feel like I should be writing more, but I want to go and try to work on my picture of Katani. And maybe write some. Ugh. I gotta get up early tomorrow though so I can't stay up much longer.
Anyway Yotsuba with a bunch of cats.

FREEEEEEEE!!

My last final was yesterday, so I'm finally free! ^-^
There's a lot of blog posts I gotta make too, which I will do later because I'm behind on my fanfic again. Maybe I can catch up with it during break. Plus work on about 3 other stories... Yeah. There's still a lot of stuff I want to do over break. I don't think I'll finish all of it. But I'd really like to try to finish Katani's story, because I think I'm getting close to the climax!
And I need to get past the first 2 paragraphs of my EBO story also so I can try to get the EBO group on fanfic.
And I still haven't finished typing Briena's poor broken sequel story. --_-- It's too long. Typing it is a paiiin. I don't think I'll ever hand-write something this long again, if I'm only going to type it after. Blehhhh.
I should probably start editing the Arith and Saleera story with Ellen too...
Plus I haven't made my Yukata yet. And there's a couple doll I want to make along with a few other little crafty things I need to finish.
And there's all the anime and manga Ellen, Nicole, and Crystal assigned. The list seems endless... but I'm slowly working away at it!
And there's normal books I'm reading too.
And I gotta finish some of the games I'm playing.
Which reminds me, I gotta post about one of them.
Yep. This turned into a to-do list of my break. Heheh. I will never be bored. Especially since I don't seem to have any empty days before Christmas.

EBO

We just got the places that John Green's going to visit on is tour for The Fault in Our Stars. And one of them is near my house!!!
I'm trying to talk Ellen and Nicole into going, but their classes have started by then so they're not sure they can make it. I hope they can come! Nicole's the one that turned us into Nerdfighters, after all.
So, I'm planning to make some little gift items to give to John and Hank, since they seem to get a lot of cool stuff when they meet Nerdfighters.
Which brings me to another point. This is a post I've been putting off for a while. And I'll post about it in more depth tomorrow, probably.
The Evil Baby Orphanage (EBO). It's an idea created by a Nerdfighter. What if you could go back in time to when someone like Hitler was a baby? You could kidnap that baby and raise him in an orphanage so he wouldn't grow up to do all that horrible stuff.
The moment I heard that over a year ago, I developed a vague idea for an EBO story of my own, set on Magic-Earth with my own characters.
Recently I started developing the story a lot more. I know how it starts, though my idea for the middle is rather fuzzy.
I'm planning to put it onto fanfiction when I get started on it. Problem is there isn't a section for the EBO on fanfiction. I'm sure there's tons of nerdfighters who'd like to put their EBO stories on fanfic, so once I get my first chapter done, I'm gonna go to one of the Nerdfighter discussion forums and try to get people to spam fanfic to make an EBO section. When I finish my first chapter, I'm gonna ask for you guys to help with that too! I know Ellen has a fanfic account. And I know Nicole and Crystal read fanfictions, but I don't know if they have actual accounts. So, Ellen, I'm counting on you! (But not yet. I'm not ready yet).

Analyzing People

So last night, Ellen, Nicole, Crystal and I spent a lot of time talking about people, and analyzing people and what people are like and what makes people like each other. It is interesting to talk about that stuff (especially for designing characters). Unfortunately I was working on a homework project at the same time and the water and electricity bills I had to interpret were kind of killing my brain cells so I wasn't able to hold a very intelligent conversation... And I was kinda doing this half-crazed laughing the whole time.
We should probably do it again when my brain is actually functioning. Heheh.
...
This is a random post. I could continue on but I'm tired and I'm gonna go to bed. Heheh.

Reducing Footprint

So, for my climate change class, one of our projects was to reduce our ecological footprint (our impact on the environment) by trying to live differently for five days.
I already do a lot to try to reduce my footprint, like taking the train or carpooling, and taking care of a compost bin. Short of moving to a solar-powered apartment, I wasn't sure what I could do.
So I decided to make a bunch of smaller changes, or to do more of them.
I didn't buy any meat for the 5 days. I bullied Mom into turning the lights and computer off downstairs and to save some of the water she wastes while she's trying to heat it to wash her face. I went to the Farmer's Market to pick out a bunch of food. I only drove a couple very close places during the 5 days, and I took the train and carpooled to school. I did some other small things too.
But you guys should try that some time. See what you can do to reduce your footprint, even if it's only for a few days.
Find out what your ecological footprint is here.
And here's that list of changes you can make to reduce your footprint. This thing took me forever to write, so I'm gonna continue to link to is.
If everyone on the planet lived like I do, we'd need almost 4 earths to sustain us. And my footprint is a helluvalot lower than most Americans. A lot of my footprint is probably because I live i a house, not an apartment.
One of the reasons we'd need so many earths is because there's too many people...

Yes, that's Betsy

No, that's not actually Betsy. That's Nick. I realized very belatedly that I never asked him to join my blog. So I finally did.
Now for an explanation.
Maybe a year ago, Brian brought over his Boom Blox game to my party and everyone had a character. Nick's character was Betsy, a cow (all the characters are block shaped). I found that amusing, so I kept going, "Betsy, it's your turn."
As a result, Angeles and her friend are convinced that Nick's name is Betsy.
On top of that, since Nick didn't have a Mii character on my Wii, he used my Ben Mii. So now Brian thinks his name is Ben.
And Ellen and Nicole have always known Nick as Squirrel Guy...

So, yeah. No one knows Nick by his name.
Which is probably kinda my fault come to think of it.

Introducing Betsy the Block Cow, aka Nick

This is my first blog post ever, on any blog! I don't know what will happen when I press "Publish Post", although I have a good idea...Hi Ellen and Nicole and others whose names escape me!

Fang and Paintbrush Practice

So, finally figured out how to download new paintbrushes to photoshop. I found some fur/feather/scale paintbrushes on DA from Tatchit and Sullivan.
I also did a bunch of sketches of Fang since I didn't really like my first picture of him. So I decided to play with some of the fur brushes. Actually, I really only ended up using one of them. And it worked best the first time I used it...
Anyway, these are a little better than that first one. The top corner was kinda supposed to be a chibi Fang, but it looks more like a plain puppy.

Here's Fang's torque bracelet thing again.

I've started working on a picture of Katani, Arith, and Ben. They're three of my main guy characters, and I don't draw then enough. None of them are in the same stories together, though theoretically Katani and Arith could meet since they live in the same time. They'd just have to fly across a couple continents to meet.
I finished coloring Arith today and he looks unexpectedly adorable, which isn't something I usually think about either my drawings or my characters. I've started working on Ben.

Avatar Opening~~!!!~~

Hey hey! I just found the opening to the new Avatar series! Woot! Can't Wait!~