Doodled out some ideas for a sequel to Ravenscrag. It would take place about a year after the first novel, and I was toying with the idea of the narrative starting with Tam's high school graduation (and then she irresponsibly decides to spend her summer in a fantasy world instead of prep for college). Carrie and Saturos would attend the graduation, and by that point, they've figured out a shapeshifting spell so Saturos can assume human form and do stuff on Earth with Carrie's family without, y'know, causing mass panic because of his real appearance. So of course I also had to draw Carrie as an oncor.

(As a random aside, Saturos is a tall creature compared to humans--probably about 7 feet tall or so. That's why one of the first things Carrie and Tam notice about Arthabasca is that all the furniture and architecture are weirdly scaled up from what they're used to. But I kind of imagine that Saturos is actually on the short side for an oncor--it's just that with him being the last of his kind for the past tens of thousands of years, there haven't been any oncor to compare him to, so he seems tall by most other creatures' standards.)

Also some design sketches for Nayzak, who is a supremely fun entity to write. Nayzak (whose name is the Arabic word for "meteor") is a sapient space probe built by an unknown (and implicitly extraordinarily ancient) civilization. At some point in its interstellar journey, its programming went awry and it started to believe that in order to most efficiently carry out its directive to gather information on the universe, it needed to dismantle planets and use their raw materials to create copies of itself. In fact, it's totally unknown whether this Nayzak is even the original construct or a copy, as all Nayzaks appear to act as a hive mind and share information.

Nayzak's actions and its effect on the history of Arthabasca play a pivotal role in Ravenscrag; in the sequel, Nayzak is out wandering the stars again (benevolently this time), but it has left a fragment of itself with Saturos in order to stay in contact with him. That fragment bonds with Travis, Carrie's awkward ex from the first novel, who has accidentally found his way into Arthabasca and finds himself accompanying Carrie, Saturos and Tam on a real adventure that makes his D&D campaigns pale in comparison.

Anyway, not sure when I'm going to get around to writing this, but these were fun to draw.

 I'm not really sure how many people are actually interested in my My Little Pony doodles... but I had fun with this one. I know I'm not the best pony artist out there and I'm in awe of people who are actually good at drawing ponies. But I've just been having a lot of fun with this fic I've been working on and I thought this concept sketch didn't turn out half bad. I know probably nobody is interested in this sort of thing, but I guess I just didn't want to leave this floating around on my tablet hard drive. 

If you couldn't care less about cartoon doodles and just want to see paleoart, I advise that you just click that handy "Paleoart" link on the top navbar and it will just show you everything tagged as paleoart. But hey, I'm interested in other stuff too. I love paleontology but it's not my entire life.

At any rate, here's mirrorverse Emperor Sombra without his armor. After absorbing the evil from Mirror-Celestia and Mirror-Luna so they would turn good, Mirror-Sombra became an even bigger and badder Big Bad than regular Sombra, turning his Crystal Empire into a desolate wasteland overrun by umbrum oppressing their pony underlings, and heightening his dark powers until he has started to look downright demonic. Now the emperor and his evil forces are locked in war with Mirror-Celestia and Mirror-Luna, and neither side can manage to gain the upper ground... but all Mirror-Sombra cares is that regular Celestia is safe.

Except, she decides to return to the mirrorverse and save Mirror-Sombra from himself because she misses him too much. Friendship is magic!!!!

With this design for evil!Mirror-Sombra, I tried to really distinguish him from regular Sombra to show how much more power he's accrued (which is also evidenced by his title of emperor rather than king). It was also crucial, story-wise, that he look significantly different from regular Sombra, because a reformed regular Sombra accompanies Celestia to the mirrorverse, and it would have introduced too many complications to the plot if he'd gotten mistaken for Emperor Sombra. (Which, yes, in itself would have been interesting, but I felt it would have unduly shifted the focus away from the main thrust of the plot which is Celestia trying to help Mirror-Sombra find a different solution to their multiverse dilemma.)

 I designed a qilin gargoyle a few years back, but I was never quite satisfied with her; the proportions were off, plus I accidentally used the wrong brush for the line art and it just didn't look quite right. I've recently acquired some free time, though, so I thought I'd put it to good use redrawing her. I'm happier with this version. Qilin manes are so fun to render.

 Did some doodling last night for a novel concept I've been working on. I kept trying to draw these characters in my usual style, but they just didn't look right until I switched to more of an anime style. Which makes sense as this whole story concept is like an 80's cyberpunk anime that never happened.

Kitsuko "Kit" Nonaka is a 370-year-old kitsune living in late-21st-century Kyoto and working for the city's Youkai Defense Forces. She usually works in the IT department, but also helps on youkai neutralization missions because, kitsune and swordswoman. After a devastating human-youkai conflict a decade ago, Japan became divided between human-inhabited cities and youkai-inhabited wilderness called the Nightlands. However, sometimes youkai make their way into cities (either accidentally or malevolently) and need to be apprehended and returned to the Nightlands.

Kit left the Nightlands a few years ago because she's always been fascinated by human culture and wants to be a part of human society, and her friendly, easygoing demeanor has earned her many friends in the YDF, despite a lingering distrust of youkai in general in the city.

When not at work, Kit can be found in her apartment playing online games where nobody has to know she's a youkai.

Kit's usual partner on missions is Kaede Mizutani, a snarky and blunt ex-soldier with amnesia still trying to adjust to civilian life. She empathizes with Kit as they're both outsiders trying to find their place in their society, although Kaede still has to contend with her own past being more complicated than she assumed.

Together with the rest of the YDF, Kit and Kaede have their hands full managing the fragile balance between humans and youkai... and things get more complicated when a new youkai-battling organization crops up, this one spearheaded by a vengeance-driven part-youkai antihero, and whose objective is not to keep humans and youkai safe from each other, but to eliminate youkai entirely.

It's a story about understanding and having compassion for those who are different from you, about the importance of forgiveness, and how conflicts are not truly resolved unless all parties' needs have been addressed.

 One last FFTA2 sketch!

Vasily is a cantankerous, unsociable middle-aged bangaa who used to run his own courier business before joining Clan Excelsior after they helped him out of a jam. Aside from his skills as a Cannoneer, he's also an excellent airship pilot and knows his way around machines. He's extremely emotionally attached to his ship, a mid-size freighter named the Juggernaut, which he treats like his baby (since he didn't really have anybody else in his life before he joined the clan). After he joined Clan Excelsior, they lived on the Juggernaut and used it as their home base for a while. Eventually Qrrog secured Worgen Island for them and now they all live there, but still regularly use the Juggernaut to travel around Ivalice.

While generally cynical and blunt, Vasily is a decent guy beneath all that grousing, and he's very committed to the clan and always has their backs. In canon material, most bangaa have Scottish accents, but Vasily has a Cockney dialect because he just popped into my head that way. I dunno, maybe he's from a different part of Ivalice or something. He still has the usual bangaa habit of hissing his S's, though.

There are more characters who join Clan Excelsior in later fics, but I think I'll save their portraits for if/when I ever get around to revising those.

 I can't stop drawing Clan Excelsior portraits, but I had so much fun writing these characters; they each have such strong and diverse personalities and dynamics with each other that, like my Neopets cast, it's fun to just come up with new ways for them to interact and show different sides of themselves. My FFTA2 cast was really one of the first times in my writing that my character development was personality-driven--before then, most of the characters I wrote didn't really have much to them and basically just existed to fill a role, not be interesting in their own right (a lot of characters in Skydwellers had this problem, especially in earlier editions).

Plus, I've been re-reading those old FFTA2 fics and enjoying them despite their age. I've been dealing with a lot lately and those fics are a good happy place. Nothing like a bit of lighthearted fantasy brimming with quirky characters to take you away from your stress for a bit.

Qrrog Squallhammer was the first person to join Clan Excelsior after its initial three members; his recruitment involved piracy, being eaten by a sea serpent, and one of the wildest "how I met my spouse" stories ever. But it all worked out in the end.

 More FFTA2 OC sketching! (I know, the proportions are kind of off. I draw these late at night when I'm winding down and I'm like "yeah this looks fine" and then in the morning I'm like "no no it's all wrong" but I don't feel like going to the bother of fixing it because it's just a sketch, and here I am overexplaining everything again when I should be eating breakfast.)

Anyway. This is Tara O'Donovan Squallhammer, the main character and first-person narrator of all the fics. She started off as an overstressed, exhausted college student from modern-day Earth, who was beginning to question what she was doing with her life when she found a Grimoire in a used bookstore and it transported her to Ivalice. At first, her adventures followed a path similar to Luso Clemens, with the Grimoire recording her escapades so it could return her home when its pages were filled.

However, as Tara grew accustomed to Ivalice, made friends for the first time in her life, and realized that her job as her clan's White Mage was way more fulfilling than being on the fast track to the rat race, she began to dread returning to Earth. Finally she made the decision to destroy her Grimoire, ensuring she could stay in Ivalice permanently (or so she thought, but that's a story for a later fic). 

 It's been a while since I drew the members of Clan Excelsior and I was having so much fun that I just had to do more!

Saskia is another of the founding members of the clan and its leader (because I wanted to break from the FFTA tradition of the main character arbitrarily being the clan leader). She's a taciturn, aloof, pragmatic viera markswoman who is a terror on the battlefield with her stealth, speed, and arsenal of arrows tipped with quick-acting poison. However, she is also a loyal and caring ally who is pretty much the mom friend of the clan.

She and Coele have a sisterly bond, as Coele was the first person to befriend her when Saskia was living in hiding in the woods. Saskia used to belong to a wealthy, prestigious, and totally corrupt clan who framed her for a crime when Saskia tried to expose them, so the viera escaped far to the south and became a forest hermit for over a decade--until she met Coele and started to come out of her shell. During the first fic, Clan Excelsior has an unexpected run-in with Saskia's former clan and they become tangled up in another of the clan's nefarious schemes--which actually turns out to be the perfect opportunity to bring them to justice, clear Saskia's name, and score a new airship.

 I was sitting around and doodling last night, and I ended up drawing one of the characters from a series of Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift fanfics I wrote during and after college. I loved the original Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and played it to death*, so when they released a sequel, I was over the moon. When I learned that the world of FFTA2 is actually the same as that of Final Fantasy XII, it drove me to research the overall lore of Ivalice and I ended up incorporating a sizeable amount of FFXII stuff into the fics (not the least because Basch fon Ronsenburg is best pony and that's why he makes a lot of cameos), so they're sorta a little bit FFXII fics too? But I haven't bothered to keep up on any new Ivalice-related stuff so you won't see any of that in the fics. It's complicated arrrgggh.

Sat and doodled for a bit last night! Nothing like chilling to classical music and just drawing whatever comes to mind.

Expression studies for Saturos. Although he can come off as imposing, once you get to know him he's actually kind of a goof. He's a real foodie and a voracious eater (although I imagine reality-bending magic does require a lot of energy). When the situation commands it, though, he is capable of becoming a demonic creature roiling with unleashed power--but he actually really hates doing this because he's worried it scares people. The only time he's had to let out the full capacity of his power was when he fought the Erdunn (but back then, nobody was really around to see it). (He actually only gets into one fight in the plot of Ravenscrag, but he was intentionally holding back because he didn't want to hurt Tam.)

 And a concept doodle for a novel I've been brainstorming for and would like to get around to writing soon. Valdovas is a millennia-old dragon from Eastern Europe who is arrogant, aloof, and disdainful toward humans--but that changes when he is forced to accept help from a family living on the American frontier, and he grows to realize that not all humans are enemies, and that some of them need his help, too.

Valdovas was inspired by Smaug and Tolkien's treatment of dragons in general--I love the man's writing, but his dragons are always irredeemably evil spawn of darkness. I've loved dragons since I was a kid, and I feel like they deserve better than that. I also haven't written a novel with dragons since Voyage of the Kaus Media, so we're way overdue for more dragons. <3

Not sure I did the best job rendering it yesterday, but Valdovas has black iridescent scales. He also breathes poison. He's a zmey from Slavic folklore (but a one-headed variety, because multiple-headed dragons means more characters to juggle).

 More costume design for Ravenscrag. Tam wears her clothes from Earth throughout her journey to unseal the Erdunn, but at the end of the story, she spends some time at Castle Ravenscrag and Melly (the resident giant spider seamstress) makes her lots of new clothes. Melly crafted mostly elegant gowns for bookish and intellectual Carrie who spends much of her time studying magic with Saturos, reading, and playing the harpsichord, but I imagine the more athletic and tomboyish Tam would need attire better suited to romping around the woods and using Smaragdus to fuse crystal armor onto herself.

 Costume design for Ravenscrag, which I just can't stop doodling things for. Not sure when I'll ever publish it, but I sure had fun writing it.

This is Carrie's outfit when she and Saturos go to a northerly locale for Important Sorcerer Business. (Castle Ravenscrag is located in the mid-latitudes of its planet's southern hemisphere, FYI.) I based that setting off the island of Svalbard, which is an incredible, beautiful place that I'd probably only ever visit if I made sure I got a really, really warm hotel room. But the landscapes are stunning.

More sketches!

I've always loved the idea of centaurs that are other things besides half-horse.* So here's an epic jaguar-woman warrior.

Miscellaneous character designs; I was looking through a very old sketchbook of mine (from junior high) and decided to redraw a few of my archaic character designs.

That girl on the top totally looks like a Mega Man fan character**, and although back then I was really bad at adding any sort of context to my drawings, I have vague memories of seeing ads for a new Mega Man game and thinking the character designs were interesting and wanting to draw my own.

 Couple of Hyren and Blynn doodles because they're so fun to write. Looking at my oldest sketchbooks, I'd forgotten just how long Blynn and Hyren have been around. I created Blynn and adopted Hyren (the real ones on the website) when I was 14 and drew some (badly rendered and not very funny) comics about them that were way too unpolished to get into the Neopian Times. Back then, Hyren's character was drastically different than how he's portrayed in my Neopian Times stories--he was quiet and shy and bookish, and actually a lot like how Pharazon's personality turned out. Pharazon hadn't been created yet, though; in fact, Meridell hadn't even been discovered yet, and yes I am very old.

Back when I first adopted Hyren from the Pound, I toyed around with various sorts of mysterious and dramatic backstories for him. I think at one point he was a former pirate. I found a comic that shows him undergoing some sort of weird werewolf-like transformation under moonlight into a warrior Grundo very similar to Ghi Pharun. None of these ideas got very far. It wasn't until Worth Fighting For that I solidified Hyren's past and personality.

Blynn, on the other hand, has just always been Blynn. She came that way.

Her doodle is a reference to the on-site description for Flouds, which says to never feed them carrots but doesn't say why. Perhaps the reason is just too unspeakably horrific.

*This may have something to do with the fact that horses kinda scare me. I don't know why, but I get along a lot better with carnivores than herbivores. Not sure what that says about me. I'm gonna go fangirl some theropods.

**This is not to be confused with the terrible Mega Man fan design I referenced in a post a few days ago. That one was totally different but arguably worse, because bad fan art by a junior high student is at least a little more endearing than bad fan art by a pimply, overly-emotional teenager.

... Maybe I'm a little too hard on myself.

 I decided to do something I haven't really done in a while and just sit and sketch. I used to sketch prodigiously when I was a teenager and in college. Unfortunately, 99% of what I filled my sketchbooks with in high school was absolute rubbish, mostly janky anime-styled lame character designs from before I learned how to draw, and doodles from franchises I was largely into just to try to please a friend who frankly didn't care about me nearly as much. 

For a while I kept those sketchbooks because of the presumed importance of an artist keeping a thorough record of her work, but finally a few years back I decided I couldn't stand to look at them anymore, and I threw them all away. If that makes any of you cringe, you're honestly not missing much. I really doubt a pencil drawing of an awful Mega Man fan design with terrible anatomy is of any relevance to anyone. It makes me sort of sad that I spent day after day in high school churning out that sort of nonsense instead of actually taking the time to learn to draw and have better friends. Oh well, live and learn.

Right, about the sketches--these are some concept doodles for a novel manuscript I've been working on. I wanted the Plainsmen to have facial features reminiscent of the Middle East and southwest Asia. They're loosely based on the Rigvedic Indo-Aryans, but also take inspiration from the Tocharians of the Tarim Basin. Also a portrait of Jawwad because he's great. I really enjoyed writing the Quo Qu--they're intellectual, numbers-obsessed, and slightly unscrupulous, which is an entertaining combination. But Jawwad comes through for Arun's family in the end.

 One last character design, for Yonwin! He was so fun to write in Earthkeepers and I think he probably had the most compelling character arc. After (spoilers) helping save the world and becoming the second-youngest Graling in history to earn a warrior's title, Yon has grown from a shy, insecure teen hiding in the shadow of his famous aunt, to a confident warrior, now quite famous in his own right, and secure in the fact that he loves both combat and technology. The Apparats made him a fancy high-tech spear and shield, but I imagine when Yonwin competes with other Gralings, he uses old-fashioned equipment to keep things fair.

It's not really mentioned clearly in the books, but Graling warriors train to specialize in two weapons, generally a long-range and short-range, respectively. This gives them more versatility on the battlefield, and also ensures they can keep fighting if something happens to one of their weapons. Fraa's weapons of choice are a long knife and a throwing club.

Gralings sound like terribly violent creatures, but they're physically hardier than humans and can take quite a licking with no lasting repercussions. That may be part of why they find combat fun, and make a point of organizing battles that are inversely proportional in scale to how serious the issue is that the battle will decide.

 I just had so much fun creating a design for Miette for the novel I've been brainstorming that I wanted to create a design for Kieri too. A few years have passed since the events of Earthkeepers, and Kieri has been keeping busy acting as a political liaison between the Apparats and the surface and sky nations--a job she finds she likes because it's basically just about making friends, which is something that comes naturally to her. As a young adult, she's mellowed out a little bit since her rambunctious youth... but she's still Kieri. And she loves having powered armor that allows her to fly.

I'm pretty sure Miette, Kieri, Yonwin, and Zuben will be main characters in this book, since they were just so fun to write in Earthkeepers, and play so well off each other. (I love writing Fraa too, but a larger cast gets hard to juggle, so I think she'll sit this adventure out.) I have no plans for writing further about Rohui or Wilder, who were supposed to be the two main characters of Skydwellers, but honestly turned out extremely dull. You can definitely tell by the end of that book that I was having more fun writing Miette, Kieri, and Fraa. 

Perhaps it's not surprising, considering Skydwellers was my first novel, and when I was writing the first draft, my focus was more "high-concept science fiction with a suitably professional air of emotional detachment" and not "I want to enjoy writing this". There's a lesson in there, I think.

 A bit more playing with markers. This time around I wanted to challenge myself to only use marker and no colored pencil. It was a little tough because I don't have nearly as many marker colors as pencil colors, but I think I made it work. Also, Prismacolor's brush tip markers are a pretty good substitute for Copic. Unfortunately I only have a handful of brush tip colors. I'll need to fix that when the budget allows.

As far as the subject--I've been tossing around ideas for another book in the Azhnarroth series, about Miette, Kieri, Yonwin, and Zuben having adventures in space. In Earthkeepers, I teased the mysterious disappearance of the Flammarion Commonwealth eight thousand years ago... now it's time to solve that mystery. And of course black holes will be involved.

As Miette, Kieri, and Yonwin were named stewards of Great Engine at the end of Earthkeepers, I thought that by a few years later they'd look the part. I imagine the Apparats probably made them some nifty powered armor.

I decided to test out my Prismacolor markers after several years(!) of not really using them, and to my surprise most of them still work great! Back in college, I used to really enjoy working with a combination of Prismacolor markers to lay down some good solid flat color, and then go in with colored pencils for detailing and shading. So I decided to try that again with better art skills. It was a lot of fun, and I'd like to do more if I have the time.

As much as I'd like to get a set of Copic markers, they're a little out of my budget at the moment (definitely not because I'm saving up for Pokemon Legends: Z-A, cough), but honestly I find I'm perfectly happy with my Prisma markers. Yes, they smell (don't worry, I turn on a fan and open a window when I'm using them*), but they have the distinct advantage of being already in my possession. 

Anyway, my subject this time around was Marlowe, the leader of the thieves' guild in the fictional MMORPG Heroes of Avonell in my novel Pixeldust. Marlowe was designed to be the quintessential lovable rogue with questionable ethics, but in a twist of irony, she is the only one of the faction leaders who does not turn against humanity - thanks to the friendship of a couple of player characters - and ends up helping them and the game's "villains" save the day.

*This may present problems in the winter when it's like 20 degrees F outside where I currently live. My favorite thing about winter is that it ends eventually.

 This took quite a bit of time and effort, but finally it's done! This is concept art for a novel I've been working on. The Quo Qu are a desert-dwelling species who love numbers and mathematics almost to a point of obsession; a common farewell benediction among them is "May the numbers calculate in your favor". Because of their strong mathematical bent, they are also keen businesscreatures, and their coastal city of Toba is one of the largest commerce hubs in the world. However, their love of watching numbers can sometimes make them a bit conniving and willing to take advantage of others to get the sums to come out just right.

This particular Quo Qu is Jawwad, a prominent businessman in Toba and old friend of some of the protagonists. While always looking to swing a business deal in his favor, deep down he is a kindhearted person who regrets that his kind's avarice has put the Plainsmen in a difficult position, and tries his best to make up for it.

The Quo Qu are derived from an idea I originally had for the Plainsmen back in high school--the idea was that the Plainsmen lacked the cognitive capacity for mathematics, and had a mutually beneficial commensal relationship with the Quo Qu, who lived alongside the Plainsmen, because the Quo Qu did all their math for them, and in return were provided for and protected by the Plainsmen. When I got around to writing this novel, I decided that wasn't really what I wanted for the Plainsmen (they have a rustic and nomadic way of living, but are really highly intelligent), but the Quo Qu worked perfectly as the denizens of Toba. In their original design, the Quo Qu had flat faces and large ears, but since moving to Idaho and becoming the one-woman fan club of the Idaho Museum of Natural History, I just kept picturing the Quo Qu as resembling Oryctodromeus, so I went with it. They were really fun to write.

 Actually, here's one last thing from school--a character design from my Flash animation class. Our final project in that class was to make a short animation about someone who gets abducted by aliens. For my alien design, I wanted something really otherworldly and definitely not carbon-based, and also something that would be fun to animate in Flash with a lot of moving parts (for example, I used plenty of looping animation for the head components).

I no longer have the actual animation, but honestly it wasn't really something worth showing off, in my opinion. The gist of the plot was that a businessman is commuting down the highway in his gas-guzzling car, and he gets abducted by an alien who tries to preach environmentalism to him. The guy doesn't want to hear it and walks out, and when he shows up at the office, he explains in a very jaded and exasperated tone that he's late because he was abducted by aliens. There are some messages in there.

Part of the class was learning how to insert voice acting into an animation, but the students had to do their own voice acting, so I'm kind of glad the video no longer exists because it means I don't have to share my super cringey attempts at voice acting.