Sketchbook

It's December! Do you know what that means? Perhaps Christmas trees and shiny lights, and madly rushing to gather gifts. Perhaps ceaseless snow outside and incessant christmas songs inside. Perhaps so. But do you know what the most important part about December is?

Candy cane donuts are back at Tim's!

They are my favorite.

Here are some sketches from today.


And also a Shadeywolf from not today.

Happy Patch Day!

Oh and it might be American Thanksgiving, as well. But Patch Day has always been one of my favorite holidays.

Will this patch save FFXIV? Here's hoping, I suppose, if I ever want to fill this little sketchbook.


This one is definitely Seyrr's fault. I don't know what the guy thinks he is going to do with 200 blocks of fish glue.


One more, and the last one in the book unless I get drawn back into the game. Kind of funny, since chronologically, this ought to have been one of the first pictures. To the best bro I never knew. Stand tall, Elflad, you were an elf among elfs.

Please Stay

Panya and Salamanders.


Took an old sketch and painted over it, to kind of play with technique. No matter how I try I can't quite seem to get rid of lines entirely... I was not able to complete this as quickly as I had hoped for (one sitting), but it still went pretty fast compared to how some of my paintings can end up.

Sketchbook

More sketches!
Things are getting a bit better.


As of yesterday, when we went from no snow to nearly a foot of it, it is now, officially, WINTER in Calgary. I am sorry guys, I kept it away by sheer force of will as long as I could, but nobody can hold out forever. At least Boo is happy.

El Forto Adventures - FFXIV

Don't let this happen to you.

Haven't drawn much in the last few weeks. I'm not sure how that happened, but it did. Now the pencil feels fumbly and awkward, and nothing is turning out quite right. I'm like the fat guy on the treadmill. So, please enjoy some sketchings as I work to get back into shape.


Starting to feel better about it though.

In other news. Much like going grocery shopping while hungry, one should'nt visit the library after being book starved for a few days. Especially if you have to carry it all home in a messenger bag. Oooof.

Picked up some fun things though. Got Nine (9?) and The Maiden Heist on DVD. I am especially excited about the second one, because it is Morgan Freeman (!) and Christopher Walken (!!) in a heist movie (!!!). Epic!

Also grabbed The Dark Victory which is a retelling of some early-days Batman stuff. I flipped through it and saw a panel of the Penguin with a mouthfull of tiny sharp teeth and was sold. There's also Robin / Two Face / Catwoman / the Commish so it looks like good times!

The rest was a large stack of fantasy/scifi novels, but I think I will start with the comic.

In theory this will one day be updated as I complete pictures.

But for now I still have a big backlog to go through. So enjoy the image dumps!

This whole being able to wear gear at any level, but it not being -optimal- until certain levels thing.. creates certain quandaries.

I like hats.


Does not everyone?



This is crafting in FFXIV.


Yes for real. AND I missed a couple of steps at the end (wood chips to logs, water to muddy water). Yikes!

I confess.

I have been playing Minecraft.



It is pretty fun. And by pretty fun I mean "oh hello 2am, when did you happen?"

I made some character skins today. Possibly this is WORSE in terms of fiddly "just let me get THIS right and then I'll stop..." than regular minecraft.

I had been feeling intimidated about making my own skin, because the file they give you to work with looks like this:

But eventually I got tired of being Vincent Valentine, and they didn't have skins of any of the female FF characters I really liked (no Celes?). So I gathered my courage, and took someone's Terra skin and colored at it until it looked more like Shade and less like Terra.


Then Jay wanted a skin so I made one of Ammon~


He has a pretty bow.


But now my Shadey skin looks crappy compared to this one, so I went back and fiddled with it for hours to make it better. I even eventually sort of figured out how the second head layer works.



Anyway, just to confirm, in case you needed my own judgement on it, Minecraft is indeed awesome. However, I recommend you do not purchase it, even though it is an incredibly affordable $15, because you like having free time, don't you?

New to you content!

Have you ever met my good friend Seyrr?


Now you pretty much have.

Fiddly bits are the hardest part of making things.

So, I can't quite figure it out... They're both basically me, and maybe its the heavier use of dialogue this time, but while Seyonne was mostly quietly earnest, mithra-Shade seems to be getting all of the lippy retardedness.


It's the perfect plan.

I figured Botany would be a good way to suplement Carpentry. However I found that I could not maintain the required focus.

I spilled water on this book yesterday, and was sad. Luckily only the inner cover was really affected. All of the regular pages are pretty much fine.

Good Fucking Design Advice

Okay this is apparantly old news, because I found it through an old entry of Mandy's, but I am in love.

Good Fucking Design Advice (it's dot com!)

Picture unrelated.

El Forto Adventures - FFXIV

The little sketchbook is perhaps the most fun thing about the game right now.


My brother is playing! Or he did!

For like a day.

Harder than it looks....


Double plus HQ.

I started playing FFXIV in September.

The collector's edition came with a little leatherbound notebook. But imagine my surprise, the pages are not lined. It is a SKETCHBOOK. Glorious.


After long long hours of remaking characters and staring at the screen in beta, I had finally decided to be a catgirl, and not an elfboy, in official release. Enter Shade Salahar, newbie adventurer supreme. She kills lots of marmots.


I really like the LS crests. I wish you could see peoples' LS names when you check them though. Maybe it'll be in the miracle patch.


I got a free hat with CE too! ... and immediately, desperately began the search for a different one.


Lightning reflexes too, I'm sure.


So, the game still needs a ton of work. But I am having fun filling up this little book. I've done a bunch of pages already, I will post more later.

Beaches and Ruins

Sketchbook