An old random character design. I didn't really have any concrete plans for this character; it was mostly just me toying around with cyberpunk armor. But then I started to put together ideas for a story about a futuristic Kyoto, Japan, where a government agency seeks to preserve the delicate balance between humans and yōkai (supernatural spirit creatures in Japanese folklore) a decade after a devastating war between the two, and I realized this armor design would work great for the agency's field ops unit.

 

We've been trying to help her understand that the clothing options in the game are less about Link looking cool and more about him trying to stay alive.

It's not working.

 Sheikah monks are creepy. But cool. But creepy.

 

What happens when you give your niece the controller.

 Turns out video games are super easy when you've got someone else doing all the legwork for you. :)

More old art, this time of a Neopets character so obscure he's not even canon anymore. Sir Bold Heart was one of several very old Collectible Cards with dated artwork which were replaced by newer cards; if I remember correctly, it was around the time of Champions of Meridell and they were replaced by Meridell-themed cards.

Honestly I think Sir Bold Heart could have stayed with updated artwork; he clearly fits the Meridell vibe.

More Neopets clothing items modeled by Neopets (surprisingly enough).

I've been rather busy lately, but I was finally able to get back to the Idaho Museum of Natural History for more paleo doodling!

They've got a great cast of a Prosaurolophus skull, and I figured I needed more hadrosaurs in my life. I also wanted to illustrate a hadrosaur showing some of the more recent discoveries about this group's anatomy, such as the ridge along its back and a soft-tissue crest. Also important is the fact that hadrosaurs had a keratinized rhamphotheca (i.e. a beak) which allowed them to crop off bites of the tough vegetation that made up their diet. Any paleoart you see with a hadrosaur having a flat, kinda flabby-looking duck bill is inaccurate. 

As a matter of fact (and I am aware this is purely personal opinion and most people don't care), it gets on my nerves when hadrosaurs are called "duck-billed" dinosaurs because in life, the front of their mouths would have more resembled a turtle beak. "Duck-bill" also conjures images of these guys wading through swamps and scooping up mushy plants, when it has been known for decades that they were fully terrestrial and ate conifers and the like. It's an inaccurate and outmoded nickname and I really think it's got to go.

Anyway, that's just me being pedantic. Again.

Some older doodles of Celice Anfel from my Neopets fics modeling some of the spiffy robes at Brightvale Armour (which, being Brightvalian, I imagine she shops there a lot). I think the rightmost one got into the Art Gallery?

More hijinks playing video games with my awesome (and slightly horse-obsessed) niece.

A few more old Neopets illustrations, based on Collectible Card characters.

Realizing that I started playing the website before Meridell was discovered makes me feel like, super ancient.

Sav'aaq! I've been on kind of a Breath of the Wild kick lately. Helping my sister and niece play through it is really fun; it's one of those games that's just really fascinating to watch other people play because no two people approach it in the same way. 

I think a big part of the game's charm and appeal is that, while on the surface it's an action RPG, in reality the gameplay reaches a much deeper level than most of the rest of its genre, putting an emphasis on creative utilization of the environment, lateral thinking, and applied physics principles. The fact that there's usually no one right way to approach a problem means that there are as many styles of play and ways the action can unfold as there are players--in other words, a groundbreakingly emergent RPG experience.

Unless you're my niece, in which case it's just a game about riding horses. :)

I was super thrilled to see the Gerudo make such a great showing in BotW! I have an affinity for warrior cultures (if you haven't guessed from a lot of my writing), and I love deserts, so I've thought the Gerudo were awesome ever since the bygone days of Ocarina of Time. I really love the treatment they got in BotW, with an expanded culture and lore and Urbosa being super epic (the fact that she shares a voice actress with Hollyberry Cookie just gives her extra awesomeness points). It was also fantastic to see the Gerudo portrayed as a protagonistic people with a lot of likeable traits, since (with the exception of Nabooru) they were pretty much antagonists during Ocarina of Time.

I haven't actually played Tears of the Kingdom yet, but my (other) sister says as soon as she's done with her copy, she'll lend it to me, so I'm psyched to dive back into Hyrule.

Until then, I am avoiding spoilers like the plague.

 

The conclusion of the Mystic Flour Cookie storyline in Cookie Run: Kingdom gave me all the feels! It was so awesome to see Dark Cacao reunited with his warriors. Poor guy definitely needs a hug after everything he's been through.

I'm also really glad Caramel Arrow and Crunchy Chip came back in the end; they're two of my favorite characters (and in a game where virtually every character is extremely well-designed, well-written, and well-voiced, that's really saying something). I absolutely hate when a franchise has no qualms about offing characters left and right (cough Harry Potter cough), and I was hoping Cookie Run wouldn't go down that path. And they didn't, because they're cool like that, and they're good about not letting their plotlines get too serious, which is one of the many reasons I like the IP so much.

A young Pokémon trainer and her trusty reality-altering companion.

Glitches like Missingno. in older video games were a big inspiration for the plot of Pixeldust. Back in the day, I really enjoyed exploring beneficial glitches that allowed the player to have an entirely different experience from what the developers intended (go anywhere as Fierce Deity Link, anyone?). It felt like I was tapping into an alternate universe that had manifested independently of the developers, as though the game had taken on a life of its own.

Which is basically exactly what happens in Pixeldust, where the main character utilizes a glitch to travel to maps in an MMORPG that aren't supposed to be accessible to the public yet, and creates her own alternate (and much more interesting) narrative to the game's otherwise really cliché plotline. I think that's kinda the secret dream of a lot of RPG gamers, honestly.

Currently helping my sister and niece play through The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the first time. My niece is a hoot. These are all based on things she actually said.

Not pictured: "We have to find more Clorox and get lots of Clorox Seeds!"

Lo'gaan Shelumiel, princess of the moon elves of Kesh'tame Woodland and master ranger, and her sworn enemy General Noggerath, a mysterious orc warlord whose forces have invaded the peaceful land of Avonell to steal its pixiedust, which powers all the world's magic and technology. This is the plot of Heroes of Avonell, the super-advanced virtual reality MMORPG featured in my cyber fantasy novel Pixeldust.

I did this sketch because I've never drawn Noggerath and wanted to try out some stuff for his character design. Lo'gaan is also fun to draw; I based her outfit off of traditional Korean armor and clothing (the fictional development company who created Heroes of Avonell is based in South Korea).

Also, I wanted to announce that there is a new, revised version of Pixeldust coming out very soon! I recently re-read it and discovered that I wasn't really satisfied with the first edition; the prose is very clunky in spots, and there were some prime character development opportunities I missed out on. I also realized there were a number of parts that I'd altered from the original draft to go along with my editor's recommendations, but actually, ever since I published the first edition I hadn't been able to shake that it wasn't really how I wanted the story to go. And it feels very overwritten at times, like I was trying to solve problems in the original draft that didn't actually exist.

I'm not saying the editor didn't do a good job - she did a great job and really helped me polish the story development - but now I realize there were places where I should have stayed true to my original creative vision, instead of assuming that the editor was always right and that I had no idea what I was doing (I've gained a bit more confidence in my writing since then). So I've given the novel a bit of an overhaul, and I'm much more pleased with it now. I drastically changed some parts, including a big element of the ending, which I mostly did to lead in better to ideas for a sequel I've been tossing around.

As for Lo'gaan and Noggerath, I realized that their character arcs needed more substance and closure. In the revised edition (spoilers) Lo'gaan goes along with General Orsamus's descent into control-freak megalomania because she's distraught over being just an AI in a video game instead of a real special snowflake princess. But the protagonists - including Noggerath, who's not a bad guy and was only invading Avonell in a misguided attempt to save his own kingdom - help her understand that her true merit comes from her strength of character and honorable deeds, not a fake title of royalty and a fictional backstory. Noggerath saves her life after she helps them escape from Orsamus's forces, and offers her sanctuary at his home kingdom of Caed Dhraos. The two work together to protect Caed Dhraos from Orsamus, who has gone on a self-righteous power trip, and eventually end up a couple in a twist of irony. 

All of this was something I vaguely hinted at in the first edition, but in reading it again I felt like their character arcs just weren't coming through clearly enough and weren't emotionally satisfying, just hints of character development that seemed to be lurking under the surface but never properly manifested. I think my revisions soundly fixed that issue, however, as well as a lot of others.

The revised edition is not up for sale yet, but it should be soon. I'm very grateful for all the nice reviews the book has gotten, and I hope that this new edition will live up to those compliments even more than the previous one.

 Lately I've been musing about how cats are basically mammalian dromaeosaurs who figured out how to make all of their claws extendable, and then I just had to draw that.

Honestly I think cats and dromaeosaurs are really good analogues; they have similar ecological niches as small-to-mid-size hypercarnivores, and dromaeosaurs probably had a similar level of intelligence as cats (i.e. diabolical geniuses).

Of course, that means the logical conclusion is that they'd make great pets.

Koraidon from Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. 

I didn't dislike Scarlet and Violet, but I also didn't think they were the strongest entries in the core series. I feel like they had some good ideas and timely innovations, but didn't implement them to their utmost effectiveness. 

My main issue with SV is that in a nonlinear massive open-world RPG format, there really needs to be more for the player to do, and more ways to flesh out the game world, than the main plotline. Scarlet and Violet gave no compelling incentive to stray outside the path from one plot goal to the next, except for (extremely repetitive) Tera Raid Battles and the (occasional, very sparse) NPC trainer battle. A generous amount of sidequests would have really helped pad out the main plotline content in a meaningful way, like in Legends: Arceus (which I greatly enjoyed). 

I know Scarlet and Violet were trying to do the whole Zelda: Breath of the Wild thing, but I think maybe the developers should have more carefully scrutinized the really smart design choices that make BotW such a fantastic game, including the fact that BotW uses copious amounts of side quests to encourage you to explore off the beaten path, making full use of its enormous world map. When I played Pokémon Violet, I felt like I was constantly having to invent excuses to not have to zoom straight to the next plot destination and finish the game too quickly, and a tightly-designed game should create those excuses for you.

In addition, I feel like Paldea was extremely lacking in lore and development past, basically, the personalities of the named NPCs and the main (a.k.a. only) plotline. It's a big place with really not a whole lot going on outside of its towns--or even in its towns, which are mostly just buildings you can't enter and soulless menu-based shops. This is a shame and a real downgrade after every other previous core series game was crammed full of helpful and entertaining NPCs, usually some sort of addictive side activity or two (I loved Black 2 and White 2's Join Avenue and Pokéstar Studios), and busy environments that really helped bring the world to life. Scarlet and Violet, for all their fancy graphics and massive overworld roaming, ultimately aren't a whole lot but landscape, and landscape alone does not make an immersive RPG experience. 

Another, more minor quibble is that I feel like the player character customization took maybe one step forward and one step back in Scarlet and Violet. I loved the ability to customize your character's facial features in a more involved way than just changing the eye color and makeup, but I hated that you were stuck wearing variations of your school uniform the whole time, and most of the accessories were just not appealing (neither were most of the hairstyles, to be frank). The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero introduced a paltry handful of new outfits and accessories, but not even being able to individually choose what top and bottom you're wearing just feels extremely restrictive after the customization systems in previous Pokémon games. Hopefully they won't do that again, because it's not the 2000s anymore; games nowadays certainly have the memory capacity to let your characters wear whatever you want.

In summary, Scarlet and Violet sort of have the vibe of being cautiously noncommittal, like the developers wanted to make a mechanically innovative Pokémon game but didn't dare to inject a significant amount of personality into it, maybe in an attempt to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. The problem is that when you try to appeal to everyone, you end up appealing to no one and making a really vanilla game that lacks a solid creative direction. I think I can speak for a lot of Pokémon fans when I say that what got me hooked on the franchise, and has kept me playing all these years, is the experience of exploring and being immersed in vibrant, lively worlds with plenty of quirky charm around every corner. Scarlet and Violet just don't give that same type of satisfaction; it's more an exercise in speaking to the like five NPC's in a city with unique dialogue, and then wandering off into vast empty spaces to train your Pokémon before heading for the next plot point. That's the sort of RPG gameplay model we outgrew in the 90's. In 2022, and from Pokémon, I expect more.

Honestly I want to see another Pokémon Gold/Silver(/Crystal) remake. Generation II was my favorite and I want more reasons to doink around in Johto. (I actually started playing Crystal again recently and fell in love with it all over again. Gen II was brilliant. We need more like it.)

Social media stinks.

I'm stepping away from social media until humanity can get its act together, and I'm writing this post to encourage you, dear reader, to critically examine how you use social media, how it is affecting you, and if there is anything you feel you should change about it. I don't enjoy being a Negative Nellie, but with the prevalence of social media in everyone's lives nowadays, I think it's a topic that requires serious consideration, and more people need to speak out about how much harm it can cause.

I don't think I would label myself a social media addict by any means. I could barely handle Facebook once a day. I really only signed up for Twitter/X because I was hoping more people on there would be interested in my work than on Facebook. I even had an Instagram account for a period of time, but deleted it because the spambot comments on my posts were super obnoxious--and I got more of those than comments from real people. Suffice to say I already had a pretty low opinion of social media in general, but lately my opinion has just gone through the floor, and I've finally realized that the handful of ways I benefit from social media are not worth the heinous drawbacks.

I'm posting this not to expect you to sympathize with my problems, but because recently I have been made increasingly aware of just how toxic and detrimental social media can be, and I want to spread awareness in my admittedly small sphere of influence, because one never really knows who one is reaching and how it is affecting them. I'm writing this because I care about you, reader, and your mental well-being. I'm giving you permission to take care of yourself.

Social media is an open forum, and humanity can't handle those right now. In an ideal world, everything people say would have value and meaning. In reality, mental illness makes a lot of absolute rubbish come out of some people's minds. And one of the really unfortunate things about social media is how it gives the illusion that said senseless rubbish is on equal standing with actual intelligent reason. 

Just as bad, it gives mentally ill people the opportunity to connect with other mentally ill people, giving them a community where their insanity is validated, enabled, and normalized, which is probably the worst possible thing one could do for them. Mentally ill people often use social media to say and do things they could never get away with in real life, and even if you're not actively engaging with these people, it's still harmful to constantly be exposed to their insanity on a daily basis. And it's so pervasive and insidious that no matter how much blocking and filtering you apply, junk still gets through appallingly frequently. 

I'm all for freedom of speech to the widest reasonable extent, and I'm not saying we should (nor is it really possible to) turn the Internet into a dictatorship, but I'm really uncomfortable sharing the same website with the likes of conspiracy theorists and political radicals. If sane people usually try to stay as far away as possible from mentally ill people in real life, why are we being forced to come in constant contact with them on social media? 

No matter how many times I try to tell the social media recommendation algorithms that I'm not interested, crazy people's posts keep showing up in my news feed as "recommended", I have to read their comments every time I go to write a sane comment, and whenever I post something, I kind of cringe a little inside not knowing what kind of weird comments it's going to get. Social media platforms have a long way to go in the realm of actually caring enough about their users' safety to crack down on nonsense.

Social media ironically decreases the quality of people's social lives. (More like antisocial media.) Clinical studies have shown that social media usage contributes to increased feelings of depression, social anxiety, and low self-esteem in teens, but those issues definitely don't stop on your 18th birthday. Even though social media promises to connect you with millions of other human beings around the world, it actually enhances feelings of loneliness and isolation as your connections with people are limited to shallow "likes" and "lols". The Internet creates a horrifying virtual (un)reality that psychologically manipulates you into thinking your interactions and relationships with other users are meaningful, when in actuality they see you as nothing more than a name on a screen and some entertaining words.

Social media does not guarantee increased success in your career. I have written many, many, many posts about my failed attempts to find an audience for my work online. I tried for ten years. I'm exhausted and I have yet to regain all the money I poured into promotional and advertising efforts. When I wrote my first novel, I was given the impression that the Internet would make it easy for an indie author to find an audience--all I had to do was post on social media and the readers would flock to my work. Well, that couldn't have been further from the truth. 

What social media actually does is establish a system wherein users are attracted to accounts that post aggressively, competitively, and on-trend--regardless of what those accounts are actually peddling. Fast food corporations with savvy (and well-paid) social marketing teams have gobs of followers liking their entertaining daily memes, while nobody cares when an author posts saying they published a novel. The priorities of the social media collective simply do not align with the priorities of anybody who values quality over quantity, and if you're not willing to attempt to run that insane rat race of social media content creation, you're going to get mowed over.

So yes, there are some serious flaws with social media--flaws which I could no longer ignore because they were causing me massive amounts of unnecessary stress. I may post on Facebook and X now and again, but they are definitely no longer part of my daily routine. Or even my weekly routine. And again, I strongly urge you, whoever you are, to consider stepping away from social media and finding some better uses of your time. Go outside and touch grass, people. Hug your family. Bake a cake. Visit a museum. Rediscover the wonderfully superior offline world around you.

Truth, context, perception, and planets

Rather differently from my usual fantasy doodles and occasional opinionated rants, today I've got a bit of an art history essay to share.

I recently watched a very intriguing and thought-provoking lecture by Randall Rosenfeld, archivist for the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, where he discussed the late 19th-century astronomical illustrations of Étienne Léopold Trouvelot. (You can view a gallery of Trouvelot's lovely renderings here: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/the-trouvelot-astronomical-drawings-atlas)

At the crux of Rosenfeld's presentation was a question he had no satisfactory answer for: why are some of Trouvelot's illustrations almost photographic in their accuracy (such as the Orion Nebula), while others appear highly foreign and almost caricatures of their subjects' true appearance (such as Jupiter)? Trouvelot was a trained and very skilled artist, using the best telescopes of his time. When his lithographs were published, they were widely praised by professional astronomers who saw nothing wrong with the way he had depicted anything. Other artists before him actually rendered these subjects with more accuracy (you can see a good selection of early Jupiter artwork here), so what was going on?

Rosenfeld ended the lecture with the question remaining open. But as I was absorbing the information he presented, a hypothesis sprung into my mind and I wondered if it might not be along the right track. I emailed Rosenfeld but never heard back from him, so I'm posting the contents of that email here (slightly edited to read less like an email and more like a formal essay), in the hopes that maybe it will help someone along in figuring out the answer to this interesting historical conundrum.

 

Zoltan Arnyek, the darkness-aligned Halloween Kyrii battlemage from my Neopian Times series Shadow Play (the link goes to part 1; you'll have to navigate to subsequent Times issues to read the rest). I've actually also written him into a few other Neopets fics that I never submitted to the Times; I'll put them here on the blog eventually.

Zolt looks like a villain, but he's actually a goodhearted warlock who cultivated his dark powers and let the wild turn him into a Werekyrii in order to gain the upper hand against evil magic users that he spends most of his time hunting down in the Haunted Woods. He's an old associate of Isengrim's, and while at first in Shadow Play he's grouchy and distrustful, Terra's family helps him understand that it's okay to have friends, and while it's noble to put other people first, it's also important to take care of yourself so you can be there for the people who need you.

Zoltan has absorbed so much darkness magic that it quite literally flows through his veins and causes glowy streaks in his skin and mane. Between his mastery of spellcasting and his excellent swordsmanship, he's not somebody you want to be up against in a fight. He's also a great example of how none of the Neopian magic elements are inherently good or evil; it's got everything to do with the intentions of the spellcaster (Skoll, for example, was a rather nasty earth mage). 

Also, he's surprisingly good at embroidery; the designs on his cloak and vest are his handiwork. It's not just for fun, though--the designs are actually protective spells, which he uses in lieu of armor. Zoltan was a fun character to develop and I enjoy writing him when he pops up on occasion.

 

Another old sketch, some humans in Neopets wardrobe items. (I wish the Space Grundo outfit looked that good on Hyren, but his site artwork makes him so stubby.)

Some old Pokémon illustrations. I maaaaay have submitted something (not one of these) to the Pokémon TCG illustration contest last year. Would be cool if I placed. I guess we'll see when they announce the results later this year.

 

Here are some old sketches of anthro Neopets wearing customization items from the website.

I will be completely honest, I feel like the idea of allowing you to dress up your Neopets sounded fun on paper, and the old site artists came up with some really lovely clothing items (as evidenced here), but I think a lot of the clothes just didn't translate well into the fact that on the website, owned Neopets have much more animal-like physiologies than many canon characters. As a result, wardrobe pieces that would look really good on something shaped more like a human just come across as a bit doofy on, say, a stubby-legged quadruped or a cartoony-proportioned dinosaur.

For example, back when I still played the website, it annoyed me that the real(?) Blynn's pose had her sitting on her haunches, so any tops, pants, or skirts I put on her made her look squat and fat, when Zafaras are actually quite svelte. Clothes looked just as bad on Hyren, and it didn't help that the new Grundo artwork gives them even shorter torsos than before, when I consistently imagine Grundos looking like Gorix from the Return of Dr. Sloth plot. There's a huge discrepancy between how Neopets are portrayed in canon material and the graphics used for user-generated Neopets, and you can't just slap clothes on the latter and assume it'll come across the same as the former. 

I just feel like overhauling the pet graphics and introducing a dress-up system was unnecessary, somewhat devalued painted pets who used to have unique (i.e. non-palette-swap) artwork, and in many cases actually made the species designs less appealing (cough Zafaras and Grundos cough). Unfortunately, it was a decision probably made by the fact that offering wardrobe items for real money would likely be a great source of revenue, because plenty of site players aren't as pedantic about design as I am and just want to stick some shiny clothes on their virtual pet.

I mean, it worked, and that's where most of Neopets's revenue has likely been coming from since they introduced pet customization, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

At least it's better than (shudder) NFTs.

/opinionated rant

Character design for a story idea I've been tinkering with. Cyberpunk kitsune because why not?

 

Color study for Wix, the fairy knight from the story I'm working on. I've been having a lot of fun incorporating bits of Celtic, Irish, and Welsh mythology as well as medieval fairy folklore. This is in keeping with the fact that what we now call "fairies" actually evolved culturally from the Tuatha Dé Danann of Irish mythology, a race of highly magical supernatural beings who are largely cognate with Celtic deities. Which, honestly, I think is a lot more interesting than little butterfly-winged women sitting on flowers, in the Victorian tradition.

The book explores how the once-powerful Tuath Dé lost the British Isles to mortals and became reduced to diminutive, rarely-sighted beings, and what might happen if the fair folk ever decided to try to take the mortal world back. It also details a journey through Annwn, the otherworld, where time and space and physics don't really work the same way as humans are used to.

Also, in the book, fairies don't always have wings, just when they need to fly.

 

And more sketching from the Idaho Museum of Natural History. As part of their super fun timeline of Earth's evolutionary history since the Devonian, they've got a beautiful 3D print of a Dinogorgon skull, and I've attempted to do a life reconstruction before, but it keeps staring me in the face every time I walk past it and I just really wanted to try a frontal view. I feel like one sees an excess of side views of gorgonopsid faces in both paleoart and photos of fossils, and while they did have very lovely profiles, let us not forget that these creatures also had a front end.

I went for a bit of hybrid media this time--brush pen for the line work, put down some grayscale marker for the shading, and added color with colored pencil (and white gel pen for a bit of highlighting, but gel pen doesn't really play nicely with pencil).

Dinogorgon didn't have a fat face--it's got these wide flanges on its skull that likely anchored powerful neck and jaw muscles.

 

Finally got to doing another sketch at the Idaho Museum of Natural History. Here's their oviraptorosaur mount from a different angle because ovis just have the most lovely profiles.

(Also because - to my deepest shame - I only recently learned that scleral rings are actually located inside the eyball, not outside of it, and thus most of the eyes on my life restorations are actually too small. My hunger for scientific accuracy compels me to therefore re-draw every fossil mount with correctly proportioned eyes. Alas, this is the sort of thing that happens when one majored in animation in college instead of paleontology.)

You may notice that I don't usually restore a dinosaur the same way twice. That's because I don't really have a "headcanon" for how any particular dinosaur ought to look, outside of what's been confirmed by fossil evidence (for example, Borealopelta was reddish-brown with a lighter underside, Microraptor was extensively feathered, etc.). So I enjoy experimenting with different looks, including feathering extent/patterns, pupil shape, and the like. Honestly that's one of the fun parts about paleoart for me, is that there's a considerable amount of creative wiggle room.

 

I'm so glad the first two Golden Sun games were put on Nintendo Switch, because I've been playing the life out of them. I hadn't played them since they first came out, and now I'm falling in love with them all over again--the gameplay is well-thought-out and satisfying, and the plot and lore are great.

I just wish there was more Golden Sun for us to enjoy! Another game in the series is way overdue, and honestly, I'd love a Golden Sun MMORPG. You could pick your Adept element and then wander the wide world of Weyard, having adventures with friends or on your own, finding Djinn, learning summons... I'd sink so many hours into that.

Anyway, here's a random character design just because.

As a side note, I have no idea how I ever finished the first Golden Sun game without a walkthrough the first time around (that was in the Dark Ages before readily accessible online walkthroughs). I actually didn't get very far into The Lost Age because I reached a point where I just had no idea what to do. So it's been super fun to actually get further in the game this time and realize just how much I missed out on. I have no idea how they managed to pack that much RPG into one GBA cartridge, and I'm not complaining.

Hollyweird must go

Much of this blog post is based on an op-ed letter I sent to a newspaper, which didn't get published, and I'm not really surprised because I'm kind of a maverick. But it's mavericks who get stuff done. And I felt that the message was important enough that I can at least share it on my blog.

I write this with the full knowledge that it will shock and offend people. And I don't mean the kind of offensive that's morally repugnant. I mean offending people who have gone along with society's status quo and lulled themselves into believing they don't have to make an effort. Who prioritize money and comfort over integrity. They won't like what I'm about to say, because as a Christian, I follow a divine Master who is inviting humanity to rise from the slums of mediocrity and minimal effort and discover the joy, fulfilment, and potential of walking a higher path and not settling for the devil's destructive lies.

Christian leader Jeffrey R. Holland put it masterfully in this talk about what it means to truly be a disciple of Christ. It's not the easy or popular thing to do, but history has shown that what is easy and popular is never what is truly worthwhile. 

To accomplish anything with real meaning and impact, people have to stretch themselves, think for themselves, and stand their moral ground, and a prime example of where this isn't happening is the entertainment and media industry. And not just the creators and executives--I'm also calling out audiences for letting things slide.

Real talk: Hollywood is crumbling, and it's time for a revolution on both fronts.

The tired myth of the "Mary Sue"

Today, I'd like to discuss a notion that's been on my mind for a while now: the concept of the "Mary Sue" and why writers need to just let it go. I'd been trying to wait for a good opportunity to appropriately soapbox, but then I figured, there's no better place to soapbox than one's own blog. And yes, I look at the visitor statistics, so I know people are seeing this. Time for another essayrant (new portmanteau I just invented).

As someone who regrettably grew up doing a lot of writing networking over the Internet (I feel like no one should ever spend their youth doing any sort of networking over the Internet), I was quickly exposed to the world of fanfiction, and the world of people who read and discuss fanfiction. Both are equally terrifying in their own ways.

Fanfiction is exactly what it claims to be: original fiction pieces written by fans of a fictional work, purely for fun (or sometimes more for social clout in the fan community). There is no quality control much like independent publishing. I have read some very, very good fanfiction by talented writers that could easily be turned into licensed novels. I have also read some fanfiction that would only make the publishing cut with a lot of editing and much more skill development on the part of the writer.

But you know what? In fanfiction, an amateur labor of love for something you're emotionally invested in, writing skill doesn't actually matter all that much, in my opinion. What I really think is a bigger problem is when other fans read said fanfiction and proceed to critically tear it apart unsolicited--or worse, publicly denounce it and make fun of it. And nowhere have I seen more of this than attacks on what are perceived as "Mary Sues"--or, to put the issue in its real light, character shaming.

The first 35 minutes of the Thunder Girl audiobook are now available to listen to for free on YouTube! Now you can preview the book before committing to it. I love Benjamin Fife's performance here and I think he had a lot of fun working on this project.

As an aside, I'm still putting together plans for a sequel. I've been waylaid a bit by other stuff, but I have another fun story I want to tell about Cat and her motley crew, an eccentric Scottish vampire (I guess all vampires are a little eccentric), a reawakened Egyptian mummy, and Australian Pleistocene megafauna. You'll see how I tie all that together. :)

More old art. I was so worried I'd lost these, so I'm really glad I found them floating around my hard drive.

These are portraits I did for Blynn, Hyren, and Suhel (I guess that's obvious) for some profiles I did of them. I still like these pics despite their age, and now I can link to them in Neopets stories that I put here on the blog.

I just wanted to do a sketch of Financier Cookie and Clotted Cream Cookie from the Crème Republic storyline in Cookie Run: Kingdom, which was awesome. Financier rocks.

This picture is actually based off of this illustration which was posted on the official CRK Twitter account.

When the Crème Republic storyline first started, I was absolutely certain Clotted Cream Cookie was the bad guy. With that smug smirk and charismatic demeanor and super fancy clothes, I just knew he was hiding something. 

Okay, that's not the first or last time I've been wrong about someone being the villain. Maybe I have trust issues.

More old art. This is from when Pokémon Go first came out and I was so totally psyched to have a Pokémon adventure in real life.

Then I moved someplace that didn't have nearly as many Gyms or PokéStops, and that kind of killed the fun a bit. So I'm looking forward to Kingdom Hearts: Missing Link, which has a somewhat similar concept but the ability to actually move your character on the map independently of where you happen to be.

(Don't get me wrong, I still play Pokémon Go, just not as often nowadays given the circumstances.)

Updates have been kind of sparse because I've been busy, and because it's been really snowy here which has impeded my ability to get to the museum to sketch. And also because I am - I think understandably - a bit miffed that people don't seem to be paying attention to my work despite my best efforts, so I'm not exactly feeling super motivated to produce/post more of it.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there. I said I'd be uploading more old art, so here are a few pieces I submitted to the Art Gallery on Neopets. I can't remember which of them actually got in, and unfortunately the AG does not have a function to search submissions by username like the Neopian Times does, but if you're feeling really bored, you can go through the thousands of AG pages and try to find these. 

This is how Blynn solves the Negg Cave puzzle. She's not really interested in being normal.

A clever way to lose friends quickly.

Mostly I just wanted to have fun painting the Ghost Lupe's flowy ghost tendrils. Ah, the joys of obscure and underutilized canon characters.

Okay but when will that storm on Lutari Island ever end? (For those not in the know, this is the in-universe excuse for why an area exclusive to a dead mobile app can't be accessed on the website.)

Grey Neopets and Petpets are just not my thing at all, but Grey Day was coming up, so. Although, Millie Browning from my fanfics is a Grey Ogrin (albeit a non-emo one). And I did have fun incorporating the lore of Grey Faeries into The Spirit of Black Keep.

More sketching fun from the Idaho Museum of Natural History! They've got a Protoceratops mount in their current fossil exhibition about fossils from the Wayan Formation. While no fossils from the Wayan have yet been identified as Protoceratops, there are a few fragments of ceratopsian fossils that may have belonged to a close relative, as around that time there was a land bridge between Asia and western North America, and the fauna of the Wayan is very reminiscent of parts of Asia (including my homies the oviraptorosaurs).

I gave it whiskers because Protoceratops remind me a bit of pigs (in a good, cute way). It could have happened!

Another thing that's fun about sketching paleoart from fossil mounts in real life is that you can choose whatever angle you want; most photos of fossil mounts on the Internet are side views, sometimes face-on, but in this case I was standing right next to something about the size of a golden retriever and wanted to try drawing it from my vantage point looking down at it. I think the result actually gives more of an impressions like you're taking the family pet out for a walk; much more nonthreatening than dinosaurs are often portrayed. 

More sketching from the Idaho Museum of Natural History! Have I mentioned lately how much I love living five minutes away from a natural history museum?

This one was inspired by a chat with Dr. L. J. Krumenacker at a recent museum event where we discussed the mobility range of Oryctodromeus tails (pro tip, if you come give a paleontology lecture at the museum I will badger you with weird questions afterward). Oryctos, like most ornithopods, had tails that were strongly reinforced with tendons, limiting up-down flexibility (so no, no tail-dragging hadrosaurs like you see in older art), but Dr. Krumenacker said these tendons didn't affect lateral movement. I was seeking to understand how it is that oryctos had tails longer than their bodies but lived in burrows only 25 centimeters in diameter, and I suspect they curled up rather like this.

If you'll notice, a little friend is peeking in to say hello; fossil orycto burrows have indeed been found with much smaller burrows off to the sides, strongly suggesting that mammals co-opted the tunnels like a Cretaceous apartment building.

Why I'm not going back to Neopets

It's time for another highly opinionated rant, and with a provocative title like that, you know you want to read more. Actually probably nobody cares, but sometimes it just feels good to blog out my feelings, especially when it's a subject that I feel passionately about and has been a big part of my creative life. Besides, on the off chance that people actually pay attention to my Neopets work and are wondering why I no longer submit to the Neopian Times, am not pursuing a more prominent position in the fan community, etc., this post will explain it.

Spoilers: If you actually like the direction Neopets has been going lately, you will not agree with this post. You have been warned. I'm not trying to start an argument, I'm just feeling some feelings right now and want to air them for anybody curious, since at one point I was a mildly prolific Neopian Times writer.

Also, this is a long read, so buckle up. I've got several bones to pick.

A bit of costume design doodling for one of the novels I'm working on. These are the outfits Arun and Liu use when the Plainsmen winter over in Toba, a coastal desert city that stays nice and balmy in winter (which sounds really good right about now). In Toba, the Plainsmen go into vacation mode and dress up a little more than their usual lifestyle allows.

Also, that really is the size discrepancy between them. Plainsmen are huge, and the Xiaohe (Liu's ethnicity) are a bit on the small side. That's why Xiaohe don't ride kelenken--they're just not tall enough to get into the saddle. (Kelenken are about six feet tall at the hip.)

A few more concept sketches for that novel idea I've been tossing around.

Pashta is Arun's kid sister. High-spirited and a bit mischievous, she is curious about the culture of the simplefaces (the Plainsmen's somewhat derogatory term for non-Plainsman humans), and is excited to have a simpleface join the tribe so they can both learn from each other.

Liu is a most peculiar simpleface from a small, remote village who learned to read and write from traveling merchants, and is always hungry for more knowledge. She hated her life in the village, so at the nearest opportunity she joined the Plainsmen, and upon discovering that they transmitted all of their history and culture orally, she invented a writing system for them so they could keep things documented better. She wishes the Plainsmen and simplefaces could get along better, but perhaps the key to peace between them can be found in the mysterious origins of the Plainsmen.

I actually came up with the idea of Pashta and the Plainsmen waaaaaay back in high school. Back in my initial concept, Pashta was the main character, but I struggled to come up with a plotline other than "Pashta doinks around". It wasn't until very recently that I realized the sort of narrative I wanted to tell involved an outsider from another culture finding her place among the Plainsmen and helping them resolve centuries of conflict. It may have relegated Pashta to being a secondary protagonist, but her effervescence adds some levity to the plot and it amuses me when she messes with Arun just to see him squirm. She's a good little sister like that.

I've been tossing around ideas for a new novel and I couldn't help but do a sketch. The Plainsmen are a race of nomadic warriors who inhabit the Sogen, a vast steppeland. They ride giant birds called kelenken, and are distinguished from other humans not only by their larger and stronger build, but by the fact that they are all born with blue markings on their faces, with designs unique to each individual. The Plainsmen have an oral history that states their ancestors sailed across a vast ocean long ago and landed their ship on the Sogen, which is peculiar since the grassland is hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean. 

This is Arun, one of the main protagonists, and his mount Vy. While a formidable foe in battle, Arun is a super nice and friendly guy who is very devoted to his family.

(Also, I totally based the kelenken on phorusracids because I can't resist a good paleontology reference.)

More old art, experimenting with a more vertical format.

A lot of these older pieces were from two 100-picture challenges I worked on over a number of years. I challenged myself to create one finished piece for each item on both lists, so it took quite a while. That'll teach me to hop on the bandwagon of people doing things on the Internet. :)