Date: 2009-05-09 20:51 Subject: Pokemon, et cetera. Security: Public Mood: blah

I could make some really terrible joke about how Pokemon is good for the heart and soul, but I won't because that would be stupid and embarrassing. But I suppose I won't have to worry about my games getting corrupted anymore when next year occurs. When I first saw the confirmation of the Johto remakes, I was all giddy and excited, but then I remembered how uh... boring Fire Red and Leaf Green were, so now I'm not so sure about how excited I should be. Most of what I like about playing Gold/Silver/Crystal and Red/Blue/Yellow is the older graphics, the musical instruments on the Gameboy, and the nostalgia. But maybe Fire Red was also boring because I've played original Red a million times already... EITHER WAY uh... Pokemon. I love the Johto games, but I rarely play them because I'm afraid they'll get corrupted... (My Crystal version got corrupted a year or two ago and now I can't remove the cartridge from the Gameboy if I don't want any new game data to be erased...)

And uh... I haven't been doing much art or anything due to needing to get university assignments done, as I mentioned on my website and in some artist's comments on my deviantART submissions and uh... yes. I procrastinate a lot though. Procrastinate, panic that I'm not doing my assignments, procrastinate because I'm too busy panicking to work and uh... then actually work. I really hate vague assignments that make me worry about what I could possibly do that would be considered doing the assignment wrong though. "Make an animation with a purpose. It must include tweens and motion guides." I know what I'm going to do for the assignment though and might submit it to deviantART when I'm finished.

Date: 2009-04-05 11:28 Subject: Wow, look at that! Sketches! Security: Public Mood: melancholy

I got a Photobucket account a few months ago (though, annoyingly, someone already took the name "Firequill"... =_=) so I could upload sketches there instead of using up my website's storage space... I might also make an album thing for unfinished artwork... I worry more about doing that though because I don't like officially labelling my unfinished artwork as... unfinished artwork. It would make me feel less like something I'd want to ever finish even though I know I'm never going to come back to it anyway. o_O

That, and I'd need to actually go through my PSD files, resize them and save them as JPEGs. Bah. Effort.

Anyway, here's a silly little embedded, Flash-based slideshow thing to display my sloppy sketches.



I really can't say I like the look of Photobucket. It seems like such a... noisy, cluttered place in the way its layout is designed. I mean, compared to something simpler like Windows Live Skydrive, which I would be using instead to display digital sketches if it could upload things as effectively as Photobucket. Photobucket feels more "instant" in its uploads, whereas Skydrive feels TEDIOUS and uh... This really isn't a very interesting thing to be talking about at all. o_O

I should also resume work on that virtual pets website thing... I probably WOULD too, if I wasn't in such a terrible mood. Ugh. I feel like my image ideas are beyond my current artistic skill level and that I need to catch up somehow, but there's so much I need to improve on, I don't know where to begin... It doesn't help that my motivation is extremely nonexistent, so I just procrastinate or draw really uninspired things that are exactly the same as everything else I ever draw when I practice, so I don't really learn much from it. I keep feeling like a really incompetent artist too. What a state of mind to be stuck in. D:

Date: 2009-03-29 20:01 Subject: Virtual Pets Website...? Security: Public Mood: distressed

For the past few days or week or however long it's been (time is a blur to me since I don't DO anything with it), I've been considering making a virtual pets website. I say that, but "virtual pets website" probably makes people immediately think of Neopets when my idea is probably more accurately described as, "if Pokemon were browser-based." I'd be basing the game on the "paper RPGs" I used to play when I was younger. I'd draw maps of areas with circles representing different locations on the map with lines connecting them and you'd have to go to each location and clear it by fighting a monster before you could move on to the next... I'd probably have something similar as a system of exploring new areas, except that you might actually see some painting of the location or something and could click on different parts of it to possibly solve puzzles since fighting monsters all the time would be monotonous...? You'd be able to discover secret paths to different areas as well... HRM.

There would be a lot of quests that were based around exploring like that to find items or fight things... And you might discover new creatures to raise in your travels as well. Oh, and you could play "private games" where you could upload an image of your own to use as a creature to train, but it wouldn't be available to the public eye for obvious reasons. This would still give people the opportunity to use the system to train creatures of their own design for fun. I'd also like to make it so that uh... those more skilled at drawing could apply to be able to create creatures that would be usable publicly. I suppose such a thing would work similarly to the deviantART film stuff where you'd have to submit some example work before being allowed to actually have it on the site. Then people could have their own creature adoption centres or something. I really like that as an idea, but I keep worrying about how it would work out in the long run... I'm bothered about graphic inconsistency since nobody is going to draw in exactly the same style, but if people had to apply and be approved before they could actually have their creatures added to the site's creature database, then WOULD it even be a bother...?

Then there's the bother of deciding how it is I'm going to draw all the creatures. I want to be able to easily create variation in species (change their colours, add or remove features, etc.), but I'm not sure how to approach this efficiently. It would be really easy if I just drew everything in Flash, but that also limits how I can COLOUR things because of the way the program works. (It's harder to use soft shading techniques...) I could also do things in Photoshop, but lineart in that can take ages for me and I'd have to organise (guh. No, Firefox, organise with an "s" and colour with a "u" aren't spelling errors! They're non-American! =_=) my layers carefully if I wanted to be able to change colours by using things like gradient maps and the hue and saturation adjustment thing.



That's the result of me testing a drawing/colouring style for creatures... It took several hours, unfortunately, and I wasn't thinking much about layer organisation and the techniques used to shade, so I ended up with a PSD that doesn't make quick alterations easy. Ungh. There are so many little details that I hadn't even really thought about as being a problem until I drew that thing and I have a newfound respect for the artists at Neopets...

There are things like the final sizes of the creature graphics that I need to figure out as well and... uuungh! o_O

I've been feeling really stressed out about this too because I really want to get to work on this project and feel like I'm doing something useful with my time, but I keep putting things off because I have to figure out other things first (I've already started building the actual website, but I procrastinate going further with that because I can't think of what colours to use! o_O) and I end up feeling some form of miserable or panicky for the rest of the day because, "oh no! I'm running out of time! I'm going to have to sleep again in a few hours and I haven't made any progress today! D:"

Anyway, uh... Yes. o_O

I wish I'd find a ralts in Pokemon Emerald because my two Pokemon are already at least level 10 from all the level 3 poochyena I've encountered trying to find one!

(Hrm. I wonder how many Fig Hunter people read my LiveJournal. If they do, I don't want them talking about the things I mention in here anywhere. >_>)

Date: 2009-03-25 08:50 Subject: Things to remember when travelling... Security: Public Mood: indifferent

I'm writing this journal entry for future me and anyone else who wants to travel to another country because of my experience at the Manchester airport, which was SUCH A DELIGHT! o_O
Because I was detained when I reached customs, you see. After being asked standard questions about my reason for going to the UK, if I'd ever been to the UK before, how long I'm staying, if I have a return ticket and so on, I was also asked whether or not I had Pseudolonewolf's address, phone number, et cetera... I didn't have them on me, which was stupid. My MUM had them all the way back in Canada and I could have asked her for the information over the phone, but uh... the woman who was questioning me about things said something like, "and what if he's not here to pick you up?" and told me to go and sit down while she took my passport and wandered away to do things.

Some other guy who worked at the airport came to get me so we could go to the baggage claim area and get my stuff (he seemed friendly enough, but I was still really scared about the whole situation, especially since Pseudolonewolf was waiting for me in that very airport and I worried about him not knowing what was going on and... well! D:). We did that and then my bag was searched through (for drugs! D:) while I was being asked the same questions (by another man person) about why I was staying and for how long and also if I'd packed my own bag and if anyone would have had the chance to get into it and change its contents before I'd left (I said "no", but apparently my mum hid a Terry's Chocolate Orange in there for me, but uh... HE didn't know that!@1 It scared me though! o_O) which people ask when you're dropping your things off at airports anyway, but uh...

I was also asked things about how much money I'd brought with me and how much I had in my bank account (I think to them it might have seemed like I didn't have enough money to survive the month on my own if it turned out I had nowhere to STAY in the country for that month (even though I have relatives living in the UK, but I was in such a panic that I forgot about them entirely and I didn't have their contact information anyway))... I had to give those guys all my ID cards (including my three secondary school cards that I just happen to never remove from my wallet even though they're years old. o_O), my bank card, probably my Care Card and Social Insurance card thing as well. It could have been a WORSE situation though since they weren't really STERN or GRUMPY or anything and when asked about the contents of my pockets, I amusedly pulled out a crumpled tissue and said, "I have uh... THIS! o_O" and they kept asking me if I understood what they were doing and why and would have explained things if I didn't.

After THAT bit was over, I was brought back to the CUSTOMS area and told to sit down and wait (and that they'd come back later to get my fingerprints and photograph! They DIDN'T do that in the end though...) Eventually, the woman from before came back to ask me more questions about things like university and what plans for the future I had and then eventually asked, "what is there for you to return to in Canada?" I was distressed by that question because, in a situation where proof and legal things dominate, where I wouldn't just be able to say, "I'd never DREAM of staying in a country ILLEGALLY! D:", I had no REAL reason to return, so I didn't really know what to say... I can't even remember much of what I DID say, but it was probably incoherent or a feeble argument or something. Either way, this woman ended up talking with Pseudolonewolf and his mother (which was a relief because I wanted him to know what was going on so he wasn't stuck wondering if I'd just MISSED A PLANE or something ridiculous like that...! o_O), but it still took ages of them deciding whether or not I should be let through into the country or sent back on a plane to Canada before I could actually LEAVE (two hours, in fact). It was all because of my questionable ties to Canada. (Ugh, I was crying whenever anyone LEFT ME ALONE for ages to do things. Then, of course, I'd stop because I didn't really want them to uh... SEE me crying. It was a very distressing experience! o_O)

So NEXT time, I'll be sure to have plenty of contact information and documents that prove I'm enrolled in university and any other documents that might prove I have some reason to return to Canada! And apparently relatives keep commenting on how ridiculous it was for that to have happened to me in the first place...

Beh, either way. Travelling. Now I also have to figure out how to MOVE to a different country and whenever I think of that, I think of that scary experience in Manchester! D:

Date: 2009-01-27 17:37 Subject: I'm actually working on a non-digital painting! Security: Public Mood: tired

Gasp! I'd show my progress on it so far, but it's too big to scan and I don't want to uh... go and find a camera to take a picture of it until it's done probably. But uh... I've had these watercolour board things for a couple of years now (I have acrylic ones too, but I prefer working with watercolours) and it's taken me this long to think of something to paint on one. (Well, something I'm definitely going to FINISH, anyway...) The main reason I haven't used them is because they're *big*. I draw at a very small scale. Many of the sketches in my sketchbook are an average of maybe 7-10 square centimetres, so drawing on something that's like... 28x35cm is really awkward for me. But I managed to draw something I'm more or less pleased with, so huzzah or something!

Unrelatedly, I had a dream recently where I laid chicken eggs (mysteriously with my pants on) that were a bit long and also light brown and speckled. They hatched into chicks and I was quite happy about it, but the temperature wasn't right for them, so they died. By dying, they actually turned into green grapes. Later, I laid more eggs, but a chicken was supposed to sit on them to keep them warm this time. The chicken failed to keep the eggs warm however, and the eggs or chicks or whatever stage in life they made it to turned into grapes again. The deep, profound meaning this dream surely has eludes me. Also, earlier in that dream, I was banned from deviantART for asking in a comment on a news article for access to some sort of file that tells you why you're going to get banned (if you ever do), so by looking at that file, you could know what to avoid so you'd never get banned. It was upsetting to be banned from deviantART even in dream form because I spend most of my time on the internet there... o_O

Date: 2009-01-17 15:38 Subject: Ana's name is Tomy Security: Public Mood: anxious

After THREE WHOLE DAYS of not working on any new images, I've started turning something I drew in my sketchbook last night into what will surely one day be a completed image.



Bah, I'm not good at uh... chest anatomy of dogs. Because I'm sort of borrowing canine anatomy of that area to make my dragon. I have An Atlas of Animal Anatomy to reference, but uh... still! Hopefully it won't look *weird* in the end, anyway. Oh, and you can ignore those scribbly lines all over its chest and arms; they were just muscle "guidelines" I threw in there that are totally inaccurate and done out of mild annoyance at me not having an incredibly great understanding of muscle structure. And I'm trying something new with the decorating of this dragon with all those curvy, pointy shapes I'm using for the wings and that mask thing it's wearing, but it's a bit difficult trying to get them to look consistent. Which they aren't right now. The wings, at least.

On another note, I haven't been arting for the last three days because certain online university courses of mine (it's web design stuff, but I don't really think I want to be a web designer... I don't know.) started a few days ago and I've been focusing on them... sort of. I procrastinate with the assignments a lot because I tend to panic about them and about whether or not I'm going to get them done in time. Tsk though. I still have like... a week to get two simple assignments done and I'm almost finished the first one. (These assignments should really only take me about an hour each at the MOST, but emotions always like to get in the way and make actually getting around to working on them difficult.) I should just FINISH that first one right now. It's just a form, after all. A form about BEARDS!@1!

Date: 2008-12-26 22:12 Subject: Mostly Art Things Security: Public Mood: determined

HmmMMMmmm. With the completion of this thing, I'm starting to feel a definite improvement in my digital painting abilities...! Which is JUST LOVELY. I think the uh... dusty, cloudiness of my painting is less apparent in that image, which is nice since I was getting a bit annoyed with that. It made things that should seem smooth or clear seem uh... not smooth or clear. o_O

These last few months have been... interesting, artistically and mentally. I sort of feel refreshed and like I'm ready to try a lot of new things, which is showing in my art since I'm actually drawing full backgrounds now and trying to set some sort of mood rather than just thinking of creature designs to show. I never really had the patience for that before. And other than that, I'd really like to try and build a clock and learn to sew so I can make stuffed animals! Woo!

I feel like I've undergone some sort of mental growth though. Ideas flow more naturally in my mind and I can come up with a lot of things that appeal to me with some form of ease whereas I would have struggled immensely to come up with something I'd look at and think "meh, it's okay, I suppose..." earlier this year. I just generally feel more uh... mentally limber. o_O
Painting feels the same as well. I remember the days when I'd start work on an image and it would be this ridiculously long, tedious process where I tried to get everything looking perfect and I had different layers for shading, etc. Now I only add a new layer if I'm painting something over what I'm working on that would be really hard to "erase"... or fatal if it was a failure and I couldn't undo it. So hurrah! I'm feeling more determined than ever to work on improving my artwork and getting a couple of good art books for Christmas is a good start!

(Bah, I also really want to write some new tutorials and rewrite the old ones (even if the "old ones" are quite recent...) but I keep putting that off! "I'll do it today!" I tell myself, but I never do! D:
Though I wonder how many people actually visit my website often enough to care. o_O)

Date: 2008-12-23 14:26 Subject: Some dreams Security: Public Mood: contemplative

Usually I don't make dreams public, but uh... I'll make this time an exception because there aren't many particularly personal bits that I wouldn't want to mention. Or something.

Anyway, I'll start with one I had last night. I think it started with my dad taking me to a winter sports shop place somewhere for some reason, but instead of being at all bothered with any of the sports equipment that I sort of glanced at uninterestedly, I wandered over to a corner of the shop where some random child person was playing the new Tales of Symphonia game (which I haven't played yet...! D:) and I was just watching as the game was played. I think a girl I knew was there as well with some other random people who had no purpose in the dream other than to *be there*. I was bothered that I was watching this being played because I didn't want the plot to be ruined for me, so I uh... looked away. The child's mother came to get him and take him home just as he'd encountered a cut scene of some kind. I couldn't resist looking at the game at this point though, so I actually grabbed the controller (which wasn't a Wii remote, but some generic controller thing probably) and tried to go *backwards* in the game so I could get to the beginning and start from there. It wouldn't LET me go backwards though because there were *invisible boundaries* preventing me from going back to the location the characters came from.

The game itself was interesting... It was almost like... a painterly version of Wind Waker. There were islands in the big, vast ocean that you had to sail across in a boat to get anywhere. The water seemed more painted though than solid blue colour with sharp white bits for waves and such. And the sky and clouds were AMAZING. I was just staring at the sky for a while while the sun was setting, admiring the beautiful colours... Some parts of the clouds were really dark purpley reds (the dark bits reminded me of the shading in those speed paintings I mentioned in the last post) and other bits were bright pinks and yellows and uh... words can't do that imagery justice. Everything looked like it was part of a really nice painting though.

But back to the game itself, I had to go to some island place, but the only way you could get between islands was by selecting the island on a map and then getting into the boat, only allowed to follow a certain path to that island. You couldn't turn around and go back to where you came and you could only move so far to the left and right before it prevented you from moving further in that direction. I thought that was annoying because if you changed your mind and wanted to go back to where you started, you'd have to wait until you got to the island you just set out for and then sail all the way back! When I got to the island, the game started being shown from the perspective of Krusty the clown. For some reason, he was walking around in the streets of some city and like... a large centaur that... was more like if a minotaur was a centaur or something came out of nowhere and ran around stomping so hard that the ground was shaking. It was sort of scary. Supposedly, this centaurish thing had just come from a costume party as there were other things and people wandering around in strange clothing. All I can think of after this is vague imagery that I'm not going to bother trying to describe.

There was another dream after that about The Fairly OddParents?! Apparently Cosmo and Wanda got brainwashed by a race of strange, small, purple elves or something. They were CALLED elves, but I think they resembled odd bubbling spheres with arms. o_O
Anyway, I could tell they were brainwashed because they had blue paint dripping from their heads. So if anyone you know is brainwashed, the blue paint dripping from their heads is a dead giveaway. This was BAD because it meant Cosmo and Wanda would twist Timmy's wishes around to somehow do the bidding of the purple elves... I tried telling Timmy by like... YELLING to him (for some reason, I couldn't GET to him) but he didn't hear me... I had to use some SPRAY stuff to spray Cosmo and Wanda to unbrainwash them. I got Wanda first. She was EASY because she was actually disguised as a pair of scissors and didn't move when I picked her up and sprayed her with the stuff. I got Cosmo after that and then uh... I went to my bedroom and Timmy was sitting in my bed playing some game with the television at a really loud volume. I had to yell at him when I was in the room just so he could hear me tell him that his fairy godparents had been brainwashed, so I saved them. He so appreciatively responded with, "oh, okay." o_O

Oh, and then there was that other dream where I moved some pink potted plant and a hummingbird bit my eyelid because it was annoyed that I DID that. Unfortunately, those dreams I just mentioned aren't as amusing as many others I've had that I can't remember right now but uh... something.

Date: 2008-12-22 20:51 Subject: Gears and Feathers Security: Public Mood: tired

Eh. Here's something I was working on earlier that I probably won't continue working on until tomorrow...



I feel like I should make those heads smaller and necks thinner so there's actually some space between them as they coil around eachother, but uh... who knows how much editing I'll be willing to engage in?!?! WHO?! TELL ME?!?! OH, WHY WON'T YOU TELL ME?!?!

Or uhh... I've also developed a fondness for the speed paintings I've been doing today. There's a thread full of all of them here for any interested in actually looking at what I'm talking about! I don't know, usually I dislike excessive use of black in images, but I've been really inspired by the art in Okami lately (since I've been playing it for the 2.5th time) and somehow that managed to give me some sort of almost obsessive desire to be really *messy with black ink*. So to speak. I mean, I'm not using real, physical ink. o_O

I've also improved a lot at drawing wings this past year and have been making some significant artistic breakthroughs or something. My style has changed more this year than it has any other year, I think. I probably owe that to all the procrastinating I did when I was actually working on that game thing earlier this year. When I procrastinate, I basically just spend ages drawing quick 20-second doodles and erasing them. Though the doodles were generally wacky-looking in terms of anatomy, it increased my drawing speed and made me more comfortable with drawing. Not that I wasn't before, but the way I drew my lines and base shapes changed... And drawing quickly so often, ever-so-slowly gaining more anatomical accuracy made uh... slow-motion drawing easier! Ohyes! Thank you, procrastination, you helped to improve my drawing abilities!

I also started actually thinking in 3D some number of months ago. I'm still not great at drawing *whole bodies* from different angles, but I'm getting better with heads! It's interesting actually thinking like that though. I mean, a year or two ago, I would have thought that you'd need to practice drawing something from a specific angle in order to get good at drawing at... that specific angle. Now that I've actually started properly thinking about 3D form, I realise that improving that way of thinking is the key to unlocking ULTIMATE POWER!! No wait, it's the key to drawing things from any angle! Is it really? But I only wanted to improve my three dimensional thinking to gain ultimate power! What a let-down. I could have used that power to not lie when I said, "ULTIMATE POWER!!" in response to, "So, what did you decide to do with your life?" SIGH. Maybe next time.

And heh. For a while, I thought my 2008 gallery was going to be my smallest yet, but I managed to beat my 2006 gallery because of a burst of inspiration in the last few months of the year... Hopefully I can get one or two more pictures done before the year ends, but WE SHALL OCEAN. SEA. See. We shall look with our eyes and maybe something of interest will drift into view. It would be a more exciting experience if something did. Uh... Either way, this has been a good art year! Hopefully next year will bring even more uh... good.

Date: 2008-12-01 10:31 Subject: Of Webcomics and Games Security: Public Mood: blah

So HMM. I've never mentioned anything about something I've been trying to plan for the last year or so, but there's a tiny glimpse of it in the post below this one. Mainly the character featured in that image. Yes. I've been wanting to make a Flash RPG that that character is a part of, but now I don't know. I sort of have the plot *roughly worked out* (which really isn't good enough at all. Really. I need more detailed plans.) and I even started working on a game engine back in spring or something. I had random battles more-or-less working save for a few bugs and elemental advantages/disadvantages, about half of the non-sidequest areas made, saving worked, treasure chests openable and so on and so forth... I even had something to change the colours of the menus and things! o_O

But I stopped working on that a while back to instead focus on getting a job. Which I never actually got. Uhh... Anyway, I haven't gone back to work on that since because I feel like I'd rather start over and change things that are starting to make me cringe (like how the menus work and uh... stuff. And character portraits take too much time to make the way I have them now and there are mysterious bugs that I'd have to fix and I'm probably much less familiar with my code now that I've uh... not opened the file for months.) and I almost want to make it more of a sidescrolling thing with uh... *fun, colourful vector graphics* but I uh... lack the coding knowledge to pull that off and I don't know what I'd do about RPG elements that way. Random battles in a sidescrolling environment? Would that WORK?! I don't know! But I DO know that it's really annoying trying to make tilesets that actually make certain areas uh... look GOOD. Or rather, look like what I picture them to look like...

Anyway, then I thought that maybe I could just make a webcomic out of this particular story and save some *major game project*, if ever I undergo one, for when I have more experience making smaller games maybe... (Like something I'm working on now (which is sort of origami-themed in appearance?? Or uh... WILL be when I get far enough to GIVE it an appearance...), but it's taking me ages to get anywhere beyond basic controls with it because I'm so busy trying to figure out how to make some specific effect work... Aesthetics are important too! It would be fun to look at! And would probably look crappy without it! Not that you know what I'm talking about at all! Maybe one day! D:)

But uh... Yes. I've been replanning my story thing so it would work better in comic form and also to work out certain details since the latter half of the story is vague at best. I do have various concerns though as to how well something that requires travelling and a lot of dialogue will translate into a webcomic... And there are certain aspects of things that I've changed that make other, previously very significant aspects seem nonsensical and/or unnecessary. Which is annoying, because that also affects the sense behind the existence of one of the main characters and... so... it... the. I just need to get back to replanning though and work it all out. Change things that need to be changed, make sense of other things, ramble, et cetera. o_O

But uh... Yes, I'd need a lot of dialogue space... And travelling seems like such a nuisance since it makes me think of books like uh... Eragon where it's a lot of "lalalala, we're travelling, lalala! Some of the dangers we encounter here have little relevance to the rest of the story! How boring it is for us to walk for ages until we get to some little town thing somewhere!" You know. I'd much rather focus on the psychology of the characters, their relationships, how they interact, etc. than uh... how they got from place to place. I'd probably uh... *skip ahead* so it maybe shows that they're leaving some place, but then only show any of the travelling if they had something important to talk about at that time. I've never actually properly made a comic though, nor do I really read any, so I don't know if that would make the story seem at all *choppy*... Like, "but they were just at THAT place! Where are they NOW?? How did they GET there??" Things like that, I'd want to avoid... But yes. I have next to no comic experience and wouldn't want to end up making a lot of beginnerish mistakes on something I'd want to end up as a rather high-quality uh... thing. Can I deliver a story well in comic form?! Who knows. All the characters are birds though, which leads to plenty of fun puns and phrases and things. "Oh, I'd love to see him ruffle those feathers, if you know what I mean!" o_O

Date: 2008-11-24 19:46 Subject: Devious Journal Entry Security: Public Mood: blah

I never update this with public entries anymore... I always make "just me" entries instead, but maybe I'll not do that this time.

Instead, I'll post this picture that I started and don't know if I'll ever finish!



How magical. I should also work on website things though. Yes. Am I up to the challenge of resaving all my art thumbnails to reduce their filesizes though?! It would give me the opportunity to make my thumbnails some *exotic* shape like a RECTANGLE or something instead of just SQUARE... But would I take that kind of RISK?! Maybe. I'll probably take like... a month to decide and then I'll just sigh, tell myself I'll do it later and start playing games instead.

And speaking of games, I've been playing Animal Crossing: City Folk for the last couple of days, apparently. It's exciting starting a new life in Animal Crossing games... until you realise that there really isn't much to DO in a day after donating what seems to be most of the insects and fish available at that time of year except try to make money and you're only renting the game, so you KNOW you're not going to have enough time to pay off your 120,000 bell mortgage before your five days are up, so you don't feel incredibly encouraged when it comes to spending your time fishing for tuna, barred knifejaw, and red snapper to sell for hefty wads of cash... No, instead I just go around shaking trees, getting stung by bees, and talking to Tom the cat. And sending the villagers creepy letters that I wish I could read at will.

(I like the hourly musics in the first game better than Wild World and beyond though... The newer games just sucked the magic out of 8:00pm and 9:00pm entirely. And 1:00pm is hardly anything to look forward to. Where are my meowing kitties?! D:)

I do like looking for mushroom-themed furniture on the ground in the mornings though...! I hope I find a Mush Lamp...!

I thought I might have had something actually worthwhile to talk about, but apparently not. Oh, but it is my birthday on the 27th.

Date: 2008-10-21 20:52 Subject: Livejournal Themes Security: Public Mood: blank

Ugh. Is there no journal APPEARANCE that appeals to me at all amongst those available to us lowly non-payed-accountians? Bah. I'm only using this one because I never have the patience to really look for something that appeals to me and customise it... I find it much easier just to make something from scratch than to customise these journal theme things... I'm sick of looking at my old theme though and that's why I've changed it and since I've done that, I can't really go back to it. o_O

Unrelatedly, most of my dreams involving food seem to annoyingly result in that food tasting like... I don't know, like saliva if you sort of force it into the back corners of your mouth almost under your tongue. That but stronger. (I had a dream last night about having to eat a hamburger that was more... dark, lumpy ketchup than anything. And it tasted like what I just described.)

And agh. I've updated my website to a new, "widescreen compatible" layout, but I've been getting my files all mixed up while I've been changing the art section around and I probably had the main art page set as the "index.php" page of the main site area instead of my ACTUAL index.php page thing for some number of hours before I noticed. Annoying. Also annoying is that time where, somehow, I ended up half back in OLD layout mode. I suppose I need to pay more attention to what I'm doing or be a bit more organised while I'm doing these things, but it's not like a lot of people visit my website and uh... notice anyway. (It would be nice to at least have more females around the site though since an annoying amount of little boys seem to like to gather there even though they have little if any interest in, y'know... art. Sigh. o_O)

And speaking of art, it's also annoying or... inconvenient, I suppose, that it seems to be difficult to get artistic criticism. I used to be able to get a lot *back in the day* when I was like... 14 and that helped me to improve massively and I've been craving criticism a lot recently so I could have some idea of what I could work on or... have some short term skill improving goal. I know I do have a lot of THINGS I could work on to improve myself, but the problem with that is that a lot of the things I see wrong with my art are things that are so far beyond my skill level that it's like uh... trying to draw photorealistic people when you can only draw stick figures?! Like, I'll see something really amazing compared to what I can do and think, "wow, I could never do that! Yet. o_O" I can see the other side of the river, but not the stepping stones to get across. Yes. Uhh... Criticism would help me with small, gradual improvements I suppose. Or open my eyes to a new direction I can take to reach my goal or something.

Maybe I should select "advanced critique encouraged" when I submit things on deviantART. I probably WOULD if I made something that was uh... *the best I could muster* or something. My more recent arts fall short of that and I use shortcuts and try to get things done quickly because I'm just not motivated enough to get it done especially well... Unfortunate, but I haven't felt really motivated to do art in years... I still draw in my sketchbook regularly, but I rarely take a drawing far enough to be a *finished drawing*. Most of my sketchbook drawings are really *boring* though. It's probably dominated by drawings of dragons just standing there in profile, the purposes of which were to see if I could draw them any better that day. o_O

That or Pokemon. I've drawn a lot of THOSE in there. Lugia and the legendary birds especially. BUT NOBODY EVER SEES THOSE! I just like to see what other things look like drawn by me and I never seem to go out of my comfort zone because "oh, I can't draw it well! I should draw something I know I CAN draw!" but that's not a good attitude to have, especially when nobody is going to see these supposedly "terrible" drawings ANYWAY! But I wouldn't want to embarrass myself in front of ME!12!!21

I'd probably submit more art to deviantART if I wasn't so bothered about submitting images of *generic dragons*. I could probably do a lot of those, but they wouldn't be very interesting or original. I don't even like looking at dragon drawings OTHER people have done. Mostly. Eh. The more interestingly designed ones that make me go "ooh! I wouldn't have thought of THAT! That's clever! Or really interesting! Or both!" are all fine and dandy.

But uh... I didn't intend for this journal to be a long art rant...ish... thing. I just meant to type that first paragraph. And maybe the third. But I haven't really typed many of my thoughts in so long, I suppose it's a refreshing exercise. (But it's not like I don't mumble my thoughts to myself all day anyway!@11 But that's not the same as recording them publicly?!)

(I also haven't mentioned anywhere (except deviantART in linked image form) that I have Spore. My username is Firequill (gasp! You mean it isn't "Sweaty Pete"?! I can't handle these intense plot twists!) and I've made some creaturey things I've drawn before with that. Like the Valka and also "Gizzert" which is that yellowy fluffy insectish thing I painted recently if anyone's been paying attention to what I do outside this journal thing. o_O)

Date: 2008-07-14 12:45 Subject: THIS IS A NEW COMPUTER. Security: Public Mood: lonely

Well, it most certainly is! And I am making a note to myself that I got this fancy new computer on the 11th of July, 2008! That's CRUCIAL INFORMATION, of course.

Anyway, this monitor is amusingly large...! o_O

And I need to get back to work on my game now. Maybe I'll actually add something that gives your characters EXPERIENCE POINTS after battle today! What a breakthrough THAT would be!

Bah, I miss my old computer though. Oh, poor Serzax! I took such good care of that computer...! If anyone RUINS it, I'll be so upset...! It would crush me to see it running slower than snails like that OTHER computer...! All those years of caring so tenderly for that computer would be THROWN AWAY! D:

I bet it feels LONELY without me too...! And UNIMPORTANT because it no longer gets to do more IMPORTANT things like website maintaining and game making and... and...! Sniffle. ;_;

Damn my empathy and its being projected onto objects like my previous computer!

Date: 2008-03-01 12:02 Subject: "Bah" to customisation Security: Public Mood: Irritable

I don't much care for this journal theme. Maybe I should consider just creating a "blog" thing on my website so I can have full control over its customisation and what sorts of features I can use...

(Ugh, I hate weekends. It means CHILDREN are about... =_=)

But hm. I've been making significant ActionScript learning progress, so hopefully sometime "soon," any existing my-website visitors will get to see the fruits of my labour; however, don't expect anything grand. I'm still just learning and practicing. It will be a shortish... do-quests-rather-than-follow-a-story RPG thing, though.

The whole point of this entry was probably just so I could stick THIS somewhere:



It was just a quick scribblish thing in Flash... (AND it's inaccurate with its... missing head and tail feather things...) I only bothered to colour it because I HAVEN'T coloured anything since December or January. It was a vague stylistic experiment as well maybe. I like the wavy look to the colours and also probably prefer that to, say, *realism*. I want to be able to *imply* shading with flowing, unrealistic patterns and such probably... for a more stylised effect. Or whatever I'm trying to word...! o_O

Oh, and the forums is undergoing painfully slow modifications. I'm going to strip it of some of its features so I have less to fix/moderate/be complained at for and so on and et cetera. It will probably appeal to more people this way anyway.

Date: 2007-09-20 13:51 Subject: Socksleeves Security: Public Mood: tired

Nyes, it was a really stupid idea to keep socks up my sleeves, that was...

So apparently I haven't much reason to make a journal entry other than to show THIS to people who might not watch me on deviantART or my scraps:



Originally, I coloured it so the yellows in its skin were visible, but I decided that it detracted too much from the sketch... which is the part I wanted to SHOW, actually... but uh... I just can't resist shading things like that. o_O

UUHHHhhm... I should probably not procrastinate learning ActionScript, but it's such a put-off when you try and try again and keep failing to make things work. I COULD WORK WITH PHP ALL DAY, THOUGH (It's so fun because I UNDERSTAND things!)! o_O

Soooo uh... I don't really know what I'm doing with my WEBSITE right now... I have images with which to make that sketching tutorial, but I'm not going to bother with THAT until I have ANOTHER drawing sort of tutorial thing ready. But ah... I feel that working on my website is just me thinking up excuses to not bother with ActionScript... surely I'll have turned the thing into a virtual pet site before I make an actual game, all the while saying, "Oh, I'll get to ActionScript soon enough, I just need to finish adding THIS to my website first!"

Oh, if only the knowledge would settle in my brain and be understood by it! There is a small ray of hope for me, however; the little effort I DO put into learning it seems to be slowly but surely forming at least SOME sort of understanding or another in my mind.

Agh, I'm going to have to put up with that FOOT smell on my sleeve for the rest of the day, aren't I...? o_O

Date: 2007-09-14 14:34 Subject: DELETE DELETE DELETE. Security: Public Mood: pensive

Well, there goes many years of journal entry-ing. I'm rather disappointed in myself for letting my "???" entry get caught up in all the deleting, but uh... it was inane and I really didn't NEED it. For those who can remember, it was the entry where I couldn't decide if I was hungry or bored. I'm pretty sure I copied it and MSN'd it so it's in some sort of PSEUDOLONEWOLFIAN conversation history...

But uh... all sentiments aside, the only remaining journal entries are my most recent few and I'm fairly certain that they all relate to either my website or my annoyance towards my past self.

I really don't have anything else to say here right now, so I think I'm going to start deleting my older deviantART journal entries. (Ew, those ones are more plentiful than my LiveJournal entries! D:)

Date: 2007-08-20 14:41 Subject: Pertaining to new forums... Security: Public Mood: morose

(I really wonder how many people I don't know exist are reading my journal entries... Of course, I WANT all the complete strangers who visit my website (assuming there ARE any) to read my journal entries because, well... UPDATES AND INFORMATION and things, I suppose, but uh... IF YOU'RE A COMPLETE STRANGER WHO I DON'T KNOW OF WHO'S READING MY JOURNAL, you should totally yell "HELLO, BIRD LADY!" at me or something in my guestbook so I know you're there! It's like talking to an empty void if I don't know people are actually READING this! D: (Though I know you OTHER LiveJournal people read my entries, but well... I KNOW YOU EXIST. o_O))

UHM. Just a while ago, I posted a screenshot of the new MEMBERLIST in my repugnant phpBB forums for all to see, so if you don't actually VISIT that place and instead spend your time hoping to hear more from MEEEE (because I'm so GREAT, obviously), click HERE to get a vague idea about what the new forums will look like!

So yes... that's... all from me for today, I suppose. I could totally go on about how I'm brooding about my past self which I totally mentioned in my last journal and how uh... unwell I apparently feel because of it... BUT I WON'T! o_O (WHY DO I FEEL THIS WAY?!)

Date: 2007-08-01 13:47 Subject: An unode to the past Security: Public Mood: blah

Looking back, my journal entries were really rather inane. I mean, I mostly only talked about what I ate that day and how bored I was, with the odd website update thrown in to make it SEEM worth reading. So uh... I've been removing my old entries so I don't have to cringe every time I visit this thing, fearing that maybe someone out there is going through my journal and like... KNOWING THE SECRETS OF MY EATING!! I mean, the embarrassing misspellings and uses of lowercase I's.

I suppose this entry isn't worth much either. I just wanted to uhh... make it public that I dislike/am thoroughly embarrassed by my old ramblings.

On another note though, for those who may or may not be curious, the new forums are GETTING THERE. I only have a few things left to do before I can make them public... and probably some things after that to make the features more diverse... not that that would make much sense without an explanation, but... well. I speak of post colour schemes! I have quite a few to choose from already, but I pretty much have to multiply that by two... maybe add some other, fancier ones... but I won't bother too much with that until the forums have actually been released.

And I suppose I could mention something about using the Wii Shop Channel to buy myself Paper Mario. Sadly, I won't have it when I get my own Wii; you can't transfer purchased games from Wii to Wii and I bought it on my sister's Wii. I mean... PAPER MARIO! o_O

Date: 2007-07-19 13:03 Subject: Sabre's Sanctum Forums and little red x's Security: Public Mood: excited

Exciting journal title or WHAT?!

Well, as I JUST added as an "update" on my website, the Sabre's Sanctum Forums are currently being BUILDIFIED. Which is good. Ohyes. I'm rather enjoying it too, not that I've actually built any of the actual FORUM... but uh... the private messages thing is almost done (I just need to do some things to make the "sent messages" bit work), and I've done userpages and member list stuff.

So anyway, because NORMAL forums are so NORMAL... and since I'M making these new ones from scratch... I'm taking the liberty of adding some (supposedly) fun features for users to enjoy. HERE'S A LIST!

Classes: Like any old forum ranking system, only you have to fulfill requirements to advance in class, and you get to click a nifty little "promote me" button... I might make it so at some point, you get the choice of different classes like say Warrior or Mage, etc. just for uh... fun? Maybe I would add different post colour schemes JUST FOR specific classes... but who knows.

Level: You post so many times and you 'level up' like in any old RPG. Will probably have to do with advancing in classes.

Worth: THIS idea is from Pseudolonewolf's YALORTism forums... it's to encourage people to post NOT one-liners and is necessary for class advancements. You get negative amounts of worth if your post is too short and positive amounts for more lengthy posts. Also, that doesn't mean people could gain infinite amounts of worth by posting a reaaaallly long post; there will be a limit on how much can be gained from each post.

Money: And you earn money each time you post things TOO! You can use it to buy different colours that your entire post will display as and/or background images, etc. Maybe some other things, too, but it's difficult to think of what people could buy for use in a forum... o_O
Also, you would receive different amounts of money depending on your class... like... a Commoner would only earn say, 10 moneys for each post when a... Mighty Commoner earned 20.

HP: This just came to me a few minutes ago, but I thought it would be amusing if users could have HP and like... LOSE some every time they get negative worth for their posts and maybe recover some if they receive positive worth. If your HP reaches 0, you end up with the 'Corpse' class and can't make any class advancements until you probably buy something to revive yourself with. Of course, for people who don't CARE if they're dead, their "Corpse" rank will turn into "Zombie" if they post enough after "dying."

I can imagine these features getting out of hand if I end up with obnoxious members, but... well... anyone abusing the fancy features will be banned.

So yes. Those are my ideas so far.

Also, about the little red x's... apparently the little wireless networks icon in my taskbar is telling me that I'm not actually connected to the internet. Which is silly, because if I actually OPEN it, it says I am. So yes. It displays a little red x. EXCITING.

Date: 2007-04-07 20:49 Subject: A presentable layout thing Security: Public Mood: accomplished

So I've been working on this "new layout" for several hours now and I've got the art section worked out. HERE IS A LINK! It's an art section!
So yes. It feels WEIRD making such a radical change to my website especially considering how... "permanent" I told myself my CURRENT layout would be... But for the sake of that snug feeling I get with the current layout, I'll be building the main area of the site in the shape of the current... thing but with different colours. It will likely end up being that fancy teal theme I'm using as the default theme of the Oekaki and also as my deviantART journal theme. YEP.

Now to make... OTHER sections!