Back in the Underground

On Saturday, I discovered that Undertale is available for the Nintendo Switch.
Until then, I was resigned to never playing the game again. After all, I didn't want Sans to get mad at me if I reset their timeline.
Does it count if I'm not restarting the game, but playing it on a whole new file and system?
Well, anyway, I did it. I finished yesterday.


I was so much better this play through! I died a few times, but it's embarrassing how bad I was when I first played Undertale. I think part of it was that it was a different battle style than I'd ever used. And I'm not used to moving with the keyboard. And I was terrible at using my items. But the Switch control was a lot easier. And now I know the game so well that I knew what to expect. I'd played it myself, guided two of my friends through it while watching over their shoulder, and watched many videos on Youtube of the different secrets held by this awesome little game.
And this time I did all the extra little secrets! Well, I did forget to fight one of the secret bosses - the one down the secret pathway. I was too sucked into the game and forgot to look up what date I needed to enter to unlock it. Oops. Well, if there's a next time, I'll get him then. And I haven't yet unlocked the little dog's room. The credits are hard to not touch. TT^TT
But I did get all yellow names in the credits!

So this time I beat Papyrus on the first time! In my first play, he kept locking my in the dog house, and eventually he gave up trying to fight me.
I didn't date him this time either. We just hung out. I tried to do different variations on the things you could do differently.
Hmm. I think this goofy skeleton was my first date. Though an unintentional one. That ended in rejection anyway XD

I think my game had a glitch. I somehow ended up walking through a few things I wasn't supposed to. Although I found something interesting. In Grillby's I accidentally got behind the dog playing poker. I tried to go through the door. It said that the door was a fire escape, and I couldn't go through because I'm not fire.
Then I couldn't get back out. I was trapped in that corner and had to restart the game XD
It almost happened a couple other times, but I caught it before I got trapped in another corner.

This was great timing though, because when I wasn't able to work, I finally made a Sans to go along with my Papyrus!


I mad Papyrus a few years ago, following an internet tutorial. But the Sans tutorial I didn't like as much. So I finally tried making my own Sans. I love how he turned out!

It's hot, so all the doors and windows are open. I'm trying to write, but two of my neighbors have loud TVs on. @_@

Just had to write a character death last night. TT^TT

Sometimes I think my writing is toying with me a bit.
I've mentioned this several times. Whenever I don't know what happens next in a story, I just have to sit down and write, and things unfold by themselves (though this story has strained that to the limit).
That happened again just now. I've been thinking for two days about how to fold up this final battle so that it ties up all the loose ends. And of course the moment I get to that point, the solution just pops into my head.
I guess I overthink things until I actually get in the groove of it.


Emerald tree boa (in the shape of a soft serve ice cream cone)

A Surfer in the Whitehouse

My uncle's book is for sale!
You can order it here on Amazon.

Kats

At the end of Arrin's story, I change POV a couple times. And it suddenly got easier to write.
Especially when I was writing for a character named Katerine (I may change the name though). I wonder if it's just easier for me to write for Kat.
I never thought it was particularly hard to write for Arrin. But I guess it would make sense, since Arrin doesn't have any memories, and she's very different during the story than she usually is.
See, blog posts help me figure out why I'm having trouble with things. This is what brainstorming is good for.

Now in honor of Katerine, called Kat affectionately, here are some zoo cat pictures!


Lions (mom and son)


Sumatran tigers


Bobcat

Sketchbook Complete!

Hey, I finished my sketchbook on Sunday!
I seem to have improved quite a bit since the last sketchbook. I've been working on this book since 2017. It takes me a while to fill them XD
As I've done before, I thought I'd post my favorite drawings from this sketchbook. I have a lot of favorites this time!
These are all in colored pencil (with a touch of pen on a couple of them)

(description comes after the picture)

This is the first page in the sketchbook

I wanted to recreate that haunting scene form How to Train your Dragon. Toothless!


This is the rose hip fairy! It's from a book series I loved as a kid - flower fairies. I tried to redraw one of them. It turned out good! I'm going to redraw one more of them - my favorite, the willow fairy.

(Coco spoilers)
I was in the middle of this sketchbook when Coco came out. So there's several pages in a row of skeletons.
And despite how crazy Hector is to draw, most of my drawings of him turned out pretty good!

Here's my idea behind this piece. Hector died and was alone in the land of the dead for about 50 years. Then Imelda died. And I imagine at that point, Hector met Imelda and discovered that his family hated him and wouldn't even speak of him. Not only did he die and never get to see his daughter again, but his family has thrown him out.
This scene is right after that. And (in my head) this is when he broke his leg. He was so upset that he stepped wrong and got in an accident. Of course, the broken leg doesn't hurt nearly as much as a broken heart.


Every now and then, I draw Fern with some of her friends (she travels to different worlds to meet people and basically interfere in movies and stuff XD It's fun). Hector and Fern are both excited about their beautiful shoes. Fern usually goes barefoot, to make shape-shifting easier. But she makes an exception for the beautiful boots the Riveras made for her as a thank-you gift. (And of course Hector got shoes when he was accepted back into the family. You can see them at the end of the movie. Shoes hold the family together! )


Back to another sad one.
At the end of the movie, Miguel leaves the land of the dead and runs home to try to save Hector. But there's a chunk of time there where Hector must be slowly dying, and no one knows if he'll disappear or not. Imelda would of course be by his side. They've only just gotten each other back! She doesn't want to lose him again.


There's a cute scene of Hector and Imelda at the end of the movie. I redrew that scene here, with the two of them alive.


Here's one I drew a few days ago.
This is sort of a crossover between Undertale and Coco.
In Undertale, Papyrus has this line: "Don't cry because I won't kiss you. Because I don't have lips." But Hector and Imelda do kiss at the end of Coco! So I had to draw this.


And I had to design my own alebrije.

Okay, moving on.
These last ones are from my stories.

I like this one of Shanka leaning against a gate.


And we have Ajonse and Asani.


This is a creature I made up. I need to put them into a future story.
At the zoo, I've heard many people call the snow leopards "snow tigers." I've been wanting for a while to draw a snow tiger. So here it is! It's a cross between an amur tiger, polar bear, and snow leopard.


And finally the picture of Huyana

Huyana

Here's the picture of Huyana I drew!


I'm so happy how it turned out!
I bought some books in Yosemite, about the American Indians from around there. Since that's where Huyana is from, it was really helpful to figure out her design.
She has a doeskin dress with a fringe along the bottom (although it's hard to tell because I tried to make the dress flare out behind her). The fringe ends half way between her knees and ankles. For jewelry, she has a beaded necklace, earrings, and a hair tie decorated with feathers. Her people have tattoos. I just gave her one. It's a rain cloud, but instead of rain, it's pouring feathers. The design inside the rain cloud is taken from the designs they weave into their baskets.


(The last page of my sketchbook was blue paper, hence the background color)

Huyana has white-tailed kits wings, and also orange eyes like the birds have. So I made her feather ornaments orange to match her eyes. The sash too. It helps add color with the brown dress and black hair. And then blue beads for a bit of contrast.

So yeah, I had fun with her design.

Back at work today!
My job will be pretty different for a while. More crowd control than anything. And it will probably be part time.
But it's good to see the animals. There's a new baby monkey!

This is actually the older baby mandrill. He's the big brother of the new baby. So until I get some photos up, I'll share some of this crazy little nut XD


There's one photo of him with his mom. And here's dad.
In one picture he's grooming one of the females. And in one picture he's yawning. Those are some intense teeth.

Get them out of the way

I haven't fully decided yet who my favorite character is in Arrin's story. There are two potential candidates.
One of those characters is hard for me to portray (at least so far) since he can't actually speak during most of the story. That's why I haven't yet figured out how much I like him. I have a lot of things to fix on the next draft. One of them is bringing out this character, who can't speak aloud.

The other character I like is Huyana. She's one of the magical races that live around the world. She's one of the wind people, who have wings. She has the wings of a white-tailed kite. She can hover easily, and has orange eyes like a kite. I just drew a picture of her, so I'll put that up soon.
When I started, I didn't know Huyana would be so nice. She just wants to help. Her teacher said she should go, thinking it would be good experience. And by helping Arrin and her friends, Huyana is also protecting her home. But really, she's happy to help.
But I keep having to get rid of Huyana throughout the course of the book. I didn't realize it until I got to the end, and saw she wouldn't fit in one stage of the finale. So I had to send her off.
That means that I'll have to cook up an awesome entrance for her during the "final battle."

I have an excuse to put up a bunch more back-logged zoo photos: birds, in honor of the bird girl!

Amazon parrots


Hyacinth macaw




Magellenic penguin (if you zoom in, you can see the bristles on the inside of their mouth. They point down toward the throat to help them swallow wriggling fish.)


Magellenic penguin with the grayish coloring they have when they're less than a year old (when they get a year old, they molt out their kid feathers and grow in their adult tuxedos)


East African crowned crane




Hamerkop


Pink-backed pelican. What luxurious hair.




Brown pelican


Coscoroba swan - the smallest species of swan.






Bald eagle


Eurasian eagle owl. She's holding half a rat for lunch.


Blue-bellied roller. Usually they look brown. But when they spread their wings, you can see those beautiful blue feathers.


Greater rhea. He puffed up the feathers on his head, because he was showing off to the lady.