I thought it would be fun (and keep me from getting bored in between visits to my table) to offer free dino doodles to folks at Fossil Fest, so of course I had to go all-out and draw this adorbsies Giraffatitan advertising for me. 

Also playing around with lettering. Lettering skills are one of those lost arts that few people except professional calligraphers seem to pay attention to anymore, but are such a cool and enriching thing to know.

Remember when everybody was into hand-lettering things for a while?

And now it's the 2020s and we just ask AI to make something look fancy.

I'm concerned.

Shadow Play, Chapter 17

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7
Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10 - Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 - Chapter 13 - Chapter 14
Chapter 15 - Chapter 16 - Chapter 17

Zoltan glowered at the mages who had trapped them, his mane bristling and magic coursing through his fur. “You dare test zhe Lord of Shadows?!” he snarled, and they cowered.

“I didn’t know we was dealin’ wit’ him!” an Eyrie said, dropping his wand. “I hear this guy took out like twenty mages wit’ one spell!”

“I hear he’s in cahoots with Hubrid Nox!” said a Kacheek as she backed away from the fearsome Halloween Kyrii. “We picked the wrong guy to mess with!”

Vile turned to run—and bumped into Mammoth, who frowned down at the comparatively tiny Skeith. The Elephante clamped his hands on Vile’s shoulders. “So, about those negotiations,” the furry Defender said.

 

I've been wanting to try to crochet some Cookie Run characters because they just have such strong and great designs (and are so loveable). First up is Wizard Cookie! He's one of my favorite Cookie Run: Kingdom characters. His English voice actor does such a hilarious job with him, and his personality reminds me so much of myself.

The shape of the hat definitely needs improvement, but overall I think this wasn't bad for a first try. This was also my experiment with designing elements of a base "Cookie" template I could use for further Cookie Run characters, and I think I got it mostly right... but it turned out way too big! Wizard Cookie here clocks in at about 11cm, and considering he's one of the "fun size" Cookies, a taller Cookie like Hollyberry or Bamboo Blade would be nearly twice his height. And while jumbo plushes can be fun, they also take a lot more time (and more yarn) than smaller projects, and kind of lose some of their cuteness factor.

Mostly the reason this happened was because I tried to determine the minimum possible size I could make the eyes and then scaled the rest of the design from there, but the eyes still turned out too large. So for my next Cookie Run amigurumi, I made the eyes using two strands of four-ply yarn instead of the entire thickness of the yarn, and the scaling was much better. #YouThoughtThisWasADrawingAndWritingBlogButActuallyIt'sAnAmigurumiBlog

As for who the subject of my next project was, I'll save that for later. :) For now, enjoy Wizard Cookie! Wingardium... Jelliosa?

 Boy, we breezed through Kanto pretty quick, didn't we? And here's the last one. I thought it would be fun to put a bit of a different spin on the Mt. Silver encounter with Red, given Red's history with Oak.

As Chapter 2 came to a close, people asked if I was going to do a Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald chapter. I honestly thought about it, but by the time I was wrapping Chapter 2, I'd become pretty busy with other projects and didn't want to try to squeeze in a semiweekly webcomic on top of everything else. In addition, I no longer had my copies of Sapphire and Emerald, and this was before Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire came out, so I had no way to adventure through Hoenn and collect riff-worthy NPC dialogue.

Plus, I just really didn't want Trainer Wants to Battle! to become one of those things that continues for the sake of continuing and slowly, painfully declines in quality. It's better to finish strong with a project and leave the audience with something they'll always have positive memories of, instead of becoming one of those things that start out great and end terribly and alienate the fanbase, and make it so you can't even properly enjoy the old, good bits anymore because it just reminds you of how badly wrong the whole thing went later on. Entertainment industry, get your act together.

Anyway, if anyone's actually been keeping up with this series, I hope you've enjoyed it! I've entertained the idea of doing more Trainer Wants to Battle! now and again, but I am honestly so swamped with other projects right now that I literally don't have the time or energy for a webcomic. Still, it was a fun journey putting the comics up here on my blog where they'll be available until Google gets shut down (so like never), so more people can enjoy them.

Shadow Play, Chapter 16

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7
Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10 - Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 - Chapter 13 - Chapter 14
Chapter 15 - Chapter 16 - Chapter 17

Defenders began to come out of the woodworks. Aisheena lobbed fists full of light at her opponents and Lightning Lenny dodged them with his unmatched speed, leading them right into the range of Kourage Korbat’s stupefying sonar. Judge Hog lifted another crate in one hand as though it was a pillow, and tossed it at an Eyrie flying for him, while Blackwing flung energy and wisecracks in equal measure.

Amidst the fracas, Zoltan motioned for the others to join him as he ducked around the corner of the warehouse. He slid his paw through the air as though he was closing a curtain. “Zhat’ll give us a little time to catch our breaths,” he panted. “Are you all right?”

“Just fine,” Hyren said, and Terra and Blynn nodded.

Isengrim crouched down and hugged his family. “Just so you know,” he said, “I never would have given in to Vile. Ever. And I never would have let him hurt you, either.”

“We know,” Terra said, hugging him back. “You’re awesome like that.”

 

The Idaho Museum of Natural History did a Facebook post where they showed off their new trucker hat by putting it on fossil mounts around the museum, and when I saw it, I just had to draw the actual animals modeling the hat. I think my favorite is the Oryctodromeus looking like a little kid wearing a too-big hat.

I don't draw normal paleoart.

 Not sure why anybody thought building a town on Cinnabar Island was a good idea.

I was honestly really sad when I got to Cinnabar in Gen I and found the entire place destroyed except for the Pokémon Center. Although, looking back, I suspect the developers did that because they had to cut some corners on Gen II Kanto to get it to fit onto a Game Boy cart. (I'm still secretly holding out for some ridiculously massive Pokemon game where you can visit all the regions.)