Finalized character design for Lord Saturos, the antivillain of the novel I've been working on. Saturos is a millennia-old immortal demigodly sorcerer--although as he explains in the book, he has the ability to manipulate the universe on a quantum level, but he just calls it "magic" for the sake of convenience. Despite all appearances, Saturos is a kind, compassionate, friendly creature who enjoys music and has a sweet tooth, and wants nothing more than to see the world he rules thrive peacefully. Unfortunately, he also holds quite a bit of disdain for humanity because of how xenophobic they are towards him whenever he crosses over into our world--and in his underestimation of what humans are capable of, a stubborn teenage girl unwittingly uncovers the dangerous secrets of his world's past and the reason why Saturos is the last of his kind. With an unexpected ally and friend in the girl's brainiac older sister, who possesses the same sort of powers as him, can Saturos stop a misguided heroic quest before it's too late?

Saturos is basically me poking fun at and deconstructing every cliché evil wizard character ever. Not that I'm consciously trying to fangirl villains, but often I find I'm just more interested and emotionally invested in the highly intelligent, misunderstood fellow with phenomenal powers, a posh castle, and a retinue of quirky underlings, than the dusty peasant lad who just happened to pick up a magic sword or something. And it drives me crazy when the former just exists as a plot device to make the latter look cool for defeating him, which I kinda feel is some thinly-veiled wish fulfillment that I just don't connect with.

Saturos himself complains about this at one point in the story, and maybe it's a bit too meta, but the entire plotline has a tongue-in-cheek subtext of the characters being very aware that they are basically living out a D&D campaign.

Also, I know posts have been a bit sparse lately. I've had a lot going on and haven't been feeling super art-motivated. Also I've been replaying Pokémon Sword on a Switch account I made under my cat's name and being reminded of how much I hate the ending, which mostly consists of mercilessly crushing other people's dreams one battle at a time for the sheer sake of fame and glory. Can't we all just be Champions, guys?!

P.S. Goat eyes are adorbs.

 

Some doodles from the Idaho Museum of Natural History. Oviraptorosaur foot study, wee orycto, and a species of fern actually found in the Wayan Formation.

 I drew this illustration to commemorate a new and updated edition of my unnecessarily long Neopets fanfic Worth Searching For! I had already uploaded the previous version here, but parts of it still weren't sitting quite right with me, and I finally decided to just give it a total overhaul.

The most crucial edits here were to erase all vestiges of Isengrim's narcissistic sociopath personality from the first version, and really help Terra come into her own as a strong heroine whose kindness, wisdom, and courage inspire others to change for the better. In addition, I added a somewhat significant conversation between Isengrim and Suhel to tie Suhel's character development together a bit better than in previous versions; when I originally wrote this fic, I didn't go into much detail with her because I simply wasn't planning on doing anything else with her, but since then she's actually become a main part of the cast, so I figured she needed her due in her introductory story. I also took the opportunity to tighten up the prose, since it had been a few years since I'd last visited this story and I've somehow improved a bit as a writer since then.

If you've never read the fic, there's no better time to do so (but for Sloth's sake don't read the version that got into the Neopian Times, thankfully it's very old and you'd have a difficult time finding it, so just spare me the embarrassment and don't go looking for it).

 More museum sketching! They have an adorable little mount of Citipati that was just begging for some attention. I love that the Idaho Museum of Natural History is all about celebrating oviraptorosaurs right now!

Scrambled Circuits

Here's some original fiction for once! Sometimes I write short fiction, and then forget about it, and then rediscover it several years later and discover it actually wasn't half bad. Maybe I should post more of it here.

This is one of those. I was just having fun writing from a space probe's point of view. You've got to wonder what a computer experiences during a software glitch--what if it's like digital schizophrenia?

What I'd like to see more of from Pokémon

With it now being more than a year since the release of The Indigo Disk, and still absolutely no new information on Pokémon Legends: Z-A since the very vague teaser trailer back in March, as well as my recent various rantings on what Scarlet and Violet could have done better, I figure now is an opportune time to reflect on what I like about Pokémon as a franchise and a game series, and what I hope to see from it moving forward. (Also, happy new year and such.) (This post is rife with spoilers. You have been warned.)

 A random tablet doodle that turned out surprisingly well for how tired I was last night. I was just experimenting with oviraptorosaurs having plumage more like an ostrich and being adorably fluffy.

One of my paleoart pet peeves is when artists under-feather dinosaurs, as if they're begrudgingly painting a token thin veneer of drab integument onto the scaly dino shapes they grew up with and can't seem to shake. I love seeing artists get more creative with dinosaur soft tissue, because the more we learn about these incredible creatures, the more we discover that they were just as variable and visually interesting as modern animals. Most vertebrates actually look quite different from what their skeleton alone suggests, so it's silly to suppose that dinosaurs were the exception. It's the 21st century; let's move on from shrink-wrapped skin and noncommittal feathers, and start depicting dinos as real, functional biological organisms.

/rant