Hullo again.
Just wanted to pop in and say that while I'm not actually, say,
getting anywhere with the creation of the next comic, I am now over my hyper-short creative depression and ready and willing to draw again as soon as I get the time, which comes down to "as soon as I get through the mailman job I was stupid enough to accept tomorrow". It's incredible how much my mood can swing in just 48 hours. Probably has something to do with the fact that I still have ten days left to be a teenager in. Hormones want the last piece of the fun. ^_^;
Next week, though, I'll be back to being a jobless pest on society, so I'll probably make some comics then.
Oh, and I got an appointment to be fitted for contact lenses about ten days from now. That's right, your part-time artist is going to be able to see without glasses! And yes, I'm probably only going to ever use them for cosplay, but it will be a major improvement to actually see where I am
Hi everybody, sorry for the update that isn't there. Thing is, I've been unusually busy this week because I got a one-week job out of the blue. Now, me getting a job is generally a good thing, but this one requires me to work in the late afternoon and evening, which is, coincidentally, the time day where I am usually the most productive and creative. It ALSO makes it possible for me to sleep in, which results in me not having a lot of time to do much in during the day, and since I'm pretty finished when I get back from in, I can't be bothered to draw after work. All in all: not a lot of time and energy for this. Sorry. At least it's only for a week, and the next job I get will hopefully have less bizarre hours.
Also, due to reasons not related to this comic, I'm feeling particulatly sucky and un-creative right now, so I'm not sure when I will get the next page done. Hopefully soon.
...well, from me, anyway, since I'm pretty happy to have a page done finally. No, wait, screw that. I'm hyper-impossibly-amazingly-of-the-wall-crazy-ecstatic to have a page done. And if I wasn't still ill enough to use that as an excuse NOT to do the exercise running that my mother the expert jogger has tried to make me do all day, I would probably be bouncing up and down right now. I'm doing that in my mind, though.
About this page: Yes, it's all Mariam. And all shoujo-ai. Depending on your viewpoint, I suppose that is either a) interesting because I've been severely under-using this character so far, b) boring because Lisa isn't there (to which I WOULD say that you need a longer attention span, but then again, I'm the one who hasn't updated the main storyline since May, so missing her is justified) or c) icky, in which case you're probably a homophobe and probably won't like a good deal of the rest of the comic either. Go somewhere else. I
could recommend you some conservative christian comics, but I don't really like any of those, so what I'll recommend you is therapy. With Dr. Shizuru. Yup, cures all homophobes.
Ahem.
ANYWAY, this page is also, apart from being something I can apparently wax poetically on forever, a one-shot and a narrative interlude, which is not the best way to return to a story, but that's the way things turn out. Actually, this page was supposed to go between Crossover Wars #6 and #7, back before my exams turned that scene into the chaotic mess it ended up becoming, release-wise, but of course as things turned out, I had to focus on just finishing the crossover piece without wasting time on things that would really only further my own storyline. Not to mention that I was stressed like hell - and stress does not good shoujo-ai make. ^_^;
So, anyway, the page is here and done now. I might slap a 'meanwhile, elsewhere' on it and move it to between CW #6 and #7 at some point, but that depends on how the whole sequence reads once I'm done with the next scene.
Other things about this comic? (By the way, please forgive my rambling. I was up 'till almost four in the night coloring and my mom hauled me out of bed at half past eight, so my brain isn't working particularly well... ^_^;) Quite a few.
First: Ida, please remember to actually INK your lines instead of leaving them to be done on the computer later. Coloring that blanket using sketchy lines took about four times as long as inking it properly and fill-flooding the colors would've taken. Don't do this again. Please.
Second: Another factor to slow down the making of this page was that my computer continually, outright REFUSED to color the background in the last panel.
Both today and yesterday. And with a restart yesterday as well. PSP just kept crashing every time I tried to color that particular panel, while I had no problems doing the kind of things that USUALLY kills my computer, like text and shading. It was only the background. In the end, I had to make a new, separate layer just for that (I usually work with as few layers as possible because many layers is another one of those things PSP doesn't like me doing) and color it on there... <_<
Third: Max Havelaar (with the 'aa' bastardized into an 'å' on Mariam's shirt, so I don't get sued) is
this guy, though what the shirt is a reference to is the danish
Fair Trade organization of (so far) the same name. The logo is my crayonish take on their nice,
original logo, which was a few years ago replaced with the butt-ugly washing powder/pictogram standardized Fair Trade logo. Did I mention that it's ugly and doesn't make one associate to fair trade with third world countries in the least?
Did I?
...
Uhm, sorry. That's just my knee-jerk reaction to soulless standardizations. Living your entire life in the EU does that to you. ^^;
Anyway, the old logo is justified since...
Fourth: Mariam would very much like me to inform you that these are her
relaxed clothes, that they are
old and that she would
never wear them in public. Which I, kinda, just made her do. Ooops.
Fifth: I haven't abandoned the crappy ol... GOOD old white lines - it's just that this page didn't end up with any of the gaps between panels left white, whatwith the colored 'background' panels #2 and #5. ^_^And finally...
Sixth: I can't believe none of you have so far commented on
who the 'fantasy-ANT'. I suppose I really suck at drawing other peoples' characters...
Well, that was that. No more comments from me on this page (which, considering the length of this post, probably isn't s bad) for now, though if I don't go to sleep now, I'll probably be spamming the tagboard with more
enlightening commentary on it (as well as Nanoha Strikers 17 and Ultimate Spider-Man, which are, sadly, the only two other things I can see myself talking about right now. Yes, I probably need a life. And sleep.)
Next scene starts next week, though if it isn't up exactly on time, that's probably because being so late with
this week's comic has made me late on
next week's comic (which I should, according to plan, be sketching now, but quite obviously ain't), so it might be a bit late. It and page #104 are completely scripted, though - and yes, a written script from my hand is a rarity...
Finally, if anyone still wants to participate in the
Design Lisa's Awkwardly Fugly Dress Contest (TM), this is a short reminder that I need your submission at the very latest next Friday, though the sooner the better. Also, just to repeat myself, the winner gets a commission from me - whether that's something anyone would actually want is up in the open, but considering how broke I am currently, it's really the only thing I can give. If there are no submissions, I'll come up with something myself, but I can guarantee that it won't be as fugly as what you could've cope up with - so if you want fugly a little more than a week from now, get those sketches done! ^_~
Yep, that's all. I think this post is longer even than my Japan post will be once it's done, and this post was about absolutely nothing. I need sleep.
This will be short. It will probably be pretty disjointed as well, considering how much my head is spinning right now, but here goes: I'm ill. Yeah, bloody perfect timing, I know. It's nothing serious, just the usual cold I always get at the change of seasons (though this one was probably magnified by how much I've been freezing since I came home from Japan), but that doesn't stop it from pulling my activity level below zero right now. Yes, all I did today was lie on the couch, watch daytime tv and feel generally miserable (on top of the misery that is inherent to watching daytime tv). Worst ting is, if it wasn't for these
&%#//¤ vira, the comic would probably have been up yesterday - I managed to ink it yesterday, but because I was aready far under the weather at that point, doing so took me the same amount of time that inking AND coloring normally does. And as stated, I've been about as effective as a cartoonist today as a bag of potatoes would've been. So, hopefully, I'll be feeling better tomorrow, and even if I don't I'll still try to get that page that's lying on my desk right now colored. Because no way in Hell is it NOT going up this week.
#¤%&/@ virus...
