Today's writing notes:

Working on: The Voyage of the Kaus Media 2nd draft

Or, to be more accurate, I finished the second draft! :) It took quite a while because I've been busy with other stuff and there was a lot I needed to change and add, but I think it's looking a lot better than the first draft.

It's now at nearly 112,000 words, which means I added about 20,000 words... wow.

As for major edits near the end, I added in a scene where Angela and Captain Saixaphas have a good heart-to-heart, because Saixaphas is a great guy and I wanted to make sure he got his due recognition and some character arc closure. He becomes Angela's surrogate father, and I wanted to make sure that relationship got the attention it deserves.

I also ended up greatly expanding the Peren section of the story to give Nir a better character arc and make that part of the story make more sense. It also helps the latter portions of the story to not feel so rushed. I admit that by that point I had run out of ideas and just wanted to get the plot finished ASAP, so it did start to feel more like a bare-bones checklist of plot points to tick off. That's why I appreciate both the opportunity to let the manuscript sit for a bit so I could think about what I wanted to do differently in the next pass, and my editor's feedback.

I think this additional material is also great for giving a more comprehensive look at some of the characters' personalities and dynamics, such as Angela's and Radnama's strong, solid friendship and Nir's ridiculousness. Nir is fun to write because she is a very flighty 16-year-old, but she means well and she doesn't back down from fighting for the things she believes in.

This new material also gives Saixaphas more character development, and I think he's turned into a really likeable character. We can see from his actions now that although he appears stern at first, he is really warm, patient, and gentle, especially with more sensitive types like Angela, Berenice, and Nir. It's said in the story that he has a daughter around Angela's age who is very similar in terms of personality, so he understands Angela like few others can, and knows how to comfort and encourage her. It's these traits, coupled with his steely determination and sincere caring for everyone under his jurisdiction, that make him the great captain he is.

Also this new material includes a new character, the admiral of the secret Pereni skyfleet, and her automatus, because you can't go wrong by adding more giant robots, right? :) My excuse is that her appearance helps the big battle at the end of the book make more sense too.

More painting! I picked Zoltan as my next subject because he's got all these fun glowy effects going on, as well as a nice range of textures. I'm quite fond of how his design turned out. I seem to make a hobby out of creating good guys who look like bad guys... although that's also a component of Zoltan's character, that he likes to allow rumors about him to flow unchecked, so people will fear him and thus leave him alone to do his job which is fighting real bad guys. Except, Terra and her family don't go for that silly nonsense and they feed him pizza instead. :)

Nerd moment: Zoltan is actually named after Zoltan Levay, the recently-retired visualization expert for the Hubble Space Telescope, the individual largely responsible for why Hubble images have turned out as breathtakingly awesome as they have. I find it ironic that Zoltan Arnyek works with shadow magic, while his namesake's profession deals with the manipulation of light data.

If you're wondering about Voyage of the Kaus Media, yes, I am still working on it! It's been kind of slow going because I have been busy with family stuff and other jobs, but I am slowly but surely getting through the second draft. Already it's looking a lot better. I took the liberty of making Princess Nir even more ridiculous, because she is a teenage girl after all. I also added in a scene where Angela, Saixaphas, Berenice, and Radnama play charades while they're stuck waiting somewhere, because what else would you do in that situation, really? :)

More paintings!

I'm having so much fun with painting now! And yes, of course Nemegtomaia could smile like that. :)

I HAVE FINALLY FIGURED OUT DIGITAL PAINTING AUGH

I HAVE BEEN DOING IT WRONG THIS WHOLE TIME

To be fair, this is not something I ever learned in school; my classes focused on animation and concept sketches, not painting. I'm actually kinda embarrassed about how long it's taken me to figure out how to make painting not a terrible pain.

But here's the secret: underpainting. Put down the big color underneath your sketch so you don't lose the shapes and details of your image. Then, paint further on top of the drawing, and you'll actually be able to see what you're doing and not lose any important information from the sketch! No wonder my previous paintings always turned out blobby and wonky and took way too long.

I decided to see if I could make use of this technique in openCanvas, and

this happened! I feel like it looks sooooo much better than any past painting I have ever done, and it was much more fun, too!

I feel awfully silly for taking this long to discover this, but the important part is that I figured it out, right? :)

(I guess I can't get enough of "Shadow Play" Terra being epic. I feel like that story is really where she starts to come in to her own. And gets a magic sword. Gotta celebrate the magic sword!)

Today's writing notes:

Working on: Voyage of the Kaus Media second draft

Updates may be a little sporadic, since I'm still busy with family stuff. I feel like I've ironed out most of the biggest wrinkles in this manuscript, though, so I'm feeling quite pleased about that.

I did quite a bit of retooling on an important conversation between Janus and Angela that I can't say much about because of major plot spoilers. Hopefully I've developed Janus's personality more, and also given sufficient hints to what seems to have happened early in his life to have made him such a sociopath. I don't find that a pleasant subject, so I purposely did not go into too much detail, but I wanted to paint a picture of someone who had a rough youth, and instead of choosing a higher road like Angela and retaining his sense of compassion and empathy, he just gave up on humanity and decided his research was the only thing he cared about.

In lieu of getting very detailed, instead I added a bit of conversation between Radnama and Angela where they discuss how Janus's background - and his reaction to it - must have produced the sociopath they are now dealing with. Hopefully that will help underline the point of his overall character development without having to fully spell out his backstory.

Also, the manuscript is at about 104,000 words now, and I still have quite a bit to add. I love when my editor's feedback gives me ideas about how to expand stuff. :)

More playing around with my digital Copics that never run out of ink and can be whatever color I want! :) Here's a portrait of King Radnama from Voyage of the Kaus Media.

Whoooooops.

I really didn't mean to go AWOL for a month. So at the beginning of October, I went on a social media fast. I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the Church's president, God's prophet on the Earth today, invited the women of the Church to participate in a 10-day social media fast. I'm an overachiever who refuses to miss out on any blessings that come as a result of following the prophet's inspired counsel, so I decided that included blogging, too. And then I had family in town, and lots and lots of work, which are both awesome, but those things combined do not exactly leave me very much free time. :)

So I apologize for not posting sooner, but here's a doodle to make up for it!

I was fiddling around with the brushes in my art app on my tablet, and I think I made a brush that emulates Copic markers quite nicely! Which is awesome, because those things are expensive. I also made a brush that looks a good deal like a brush-tip pen, that seems like it'll give me some really nice line work. I decided to test them out on a doodle of Angela Marten from Voyage of the Kaus Media, doing her glowy psion thing. Actually I think she gets glowier than this, but seeing as the whole point of this picture was to experiment with the line art and coloring, I didn't want to drown that out with fancy effects.

Speaking of Voyage of the Kaus Media, I have been making good progress on revising the manuscript! I am a little over halfway through it now, and I ended up pretty heavily reworking most of the beginning of the book, trying to make Angela's character arc make more sense. Hopefully this doesn't make the first part of the book seem too morose, but it just wasn't realistic to have her kind of forget about everything going on and have happy fun times with her friends, especially when she was still struggling with low self-worth, lack of self-confidence, and severe trust issues.

I also greatly expanded her conversations with Radnama in the middle of the book because they're just really fun to write together. I guess I can justify it by the fact that Radnama was Angela's first really close friend after she decided to start taking better care of herself and truly letting the right people into her life, and after a lifetime of dysfunctional relationships she needed to spend a lot of time enjoying a healthy one. Especially because after that, Janus enters the picture and Angela needs a lot of mental and emotional stability to deal with him properly.

Also, the manuscript is now over 100,000 words and I regret nothing. It's going to get even longer, in fact, because there's a section near the end that I need to expand substantially.

So, fun stuff! Not really sure when I'll be done with these edits - and after that, I need to pass it to my proofreader - but I am making progress when I can, and I am definitely still planning on publishing it when it's ready!