A couple short excerpts from an earlier CW story this year (One that's only 4.25 pages rather than 16):
( Right here! )

For my CW class, I wrote a short story involving Howie's (does anyone remember Howie?) girlfriend Shelby and her room-mate and best friend Anderson. The entire story is 16 pages, and anyone who wants to is welcome to read the whole thing if they ask. Otherwise, I've included a few little slices of it below the cut. If you only have time for one of them, feel free to pick and choose.

( A few excerpts from my story about Anderson and Shelby )

Hi everyone,

Andrea Wilhelm, a friend of mine from Miami University, just found out that her $23,000 loan for the school year wasn't renewed. Without it, she can't afford another semester's tuition. One of her friends has set up a website to collect donations to help her out, and he's asking all of her friends to donate a dollar and then spread the word to their friends and family.

All that we ask is that anyone who can afford to do so donate a single dollar to the cause. If we get enough people, she might have a shot at staying in school. I can personally say that Andrea is one of the most dedicated and hard-working students I've ever met, and a really lovely person all around. She's juggling two incredibly time-consuming majors with a slew of other activities, and she manages to stay on top of it all in a way that I doubt I could ever manage. If any of you would be generous enough to donate a dollar and help her out, you would have my infinite gratitude.

I figure that most of the people who read this (or my emails, facebook messages, twitter posts etc.) won't respond or donate, but if just one helps out, then it's all worth it. If you're willing to lend a hand, the website is: helpandreastayincollege.blogspot.com

Thanks again, everyone! Hope you've been having a great summer, and a great life.

-Jackie


PS: That website one more time:

helpandreastayincollege.blogspot.com

I decided to do a few Ghost Story sketches, because clearly the best thing to do would be to sketch for something I don't even intend on starting for at least another 4 months. Obviously.

No Orson or Deb, because I already did a few of them a month or two ago for refs. The others are just catching up. PS: It turns out Myra/Portia/whatever-I-name-her and Jephthah are hard to draw. Also, I'm still fiddling with Seth's design, which is why it's a bit different (though not hugely so) than the last one.

I finished my LoM trade! I've already posted it on DA and in the League, but I'm cross-posting it here in case anyone here doesn't visit/watch me at either place.



This is Raydark/Ketari/Jes/hawaiibobtailsquid's character, Clammy Cudweed.

I think I just made the worst mistake I have so far in my life. As most of you probably know by now thanks to Twitter, I got sick while in California and flew home. Now, after sleeping for 11 hours, I feel better, but I honestly wish I didn't. Knowing that it was a 48 hour bug makes me realize that if I'd just stuck it out, I'd be in California right now having a blast. I saw that there was only one flight home from San Diego all week, and I panicked because I didn't want to be stuck in somebody else's house in 90 degree humid weather if it turned out to be a 7 day flu or something. So, instead of taking that chance and finding out that all was well after one more day of illness, I let my anxiety and fear get the best of me, and I paid $450 ($700 if you add the initial plane ticket and my Comic Con ticket) to go home, sit alone, and cry because I knew I made the wrong choice. I wasted a month's paychecks to let my panic get the better of me and bolt at the first sign of trouble. Also, now I know that I'm the type of person who can't keep a clear head when things go wrong, and I know that I'm somebody whose response is to run away to what seems safe and familiar when things get tough instead of taking a risk that might have better rewards. I blew it, and I also took a week of fun away from Jenny (and abandoned Jes and Celeste for Jes's surprise birthday party. Everybody loses because feeling sick makes me panic and I can't keep a clear head and tough it out.

I apologize for all this angst posting. I just feel emotionally wrecked right now, and sometimes you need to get it out because holding it all in is suffocating.

<3 to you all.

Guess who flies to California today?

I was going to do the "photos on your hard drive" thing, but it turns out that I deleted all my saved images that weren't either A. Somebody's art or photos that I know (including my own) or B. Ref images I still need.

So much for that meme :(

To make up for the days I missed in doodle a day near the end, here are some sketches. The digital ones started out as practice with being loose and simple, but eventually just turned into me being ridiculous. Oh well.



All but the middle two are from Tabula Rasa. Those two are just a random couple.


A quick bit o' Renerra. Brian kind of took over the page. Brian is a special individual.



Here is where I quickly stopped trying. THEY'RE SEXY, NO?


P&C Collab! "Real" Kae and "UnKae," which is the one Ssam is around most of my "level."

Just some coloring practice on Photoshop with Ros.

I know this is kind of cheating as well, but I decided I'd rather practice Photoshop coloring while my free trial is going on, and that took up my doodling time. As such, my "doodle" for today is the flat coloring on Ros:

Obligatory new haircut pictures:



( More below the cut )

I downloaded a trial of Photoshop CS4 to see if it's worth buying (I can get it for $200 with a student discount), and I'm now thinking that the answer is "yes." I'm discovering the wonders of controlling brush hardness, tablet pen steadying, and pressure sensitivity, and I'm not sure I'm willing to part with it now that I've caught on. It'll take a bit to get used to these new capabilities, but it's already making a definite difference. Photostudio is crap for line art, folks. I thought I was just bad with line art, but it seems that a lot of my issues were really Photostudio's fault. As such, my first line art with pressure sensitivity:



I know her head and shoulders are completely disproportionate to each other, but this is primarily just practice anyway, so I don't particularly care. I don't think the lines on the chest and shoulders are varied enough, but it's not too bad for my first drawing with pressure sensitivity.

The doodle for the 25th is sort of a cheat, since it was drawn on the 26th and it's just a program comparison, but you all with have to just deal with it.



Make sure you look at it full-sized to see the difference. Can YOU tell which comes from which program? They involved the same amount of time and effort.

Okay, a make up doodle for the 22 and one for today. Both of these are for the Point and Click collab, because that's where my attention has been lately.




I'm still messing around with Kae's design, since I'm not quite happy with it yet.



Izzy, Ssam, and Kae, staking out Uncity central. WITH SCENERY. I'm a surprised as you are.

PS: Gah, I love "world music" so much. For some reason, it's often more inspiring to hear people sing when you have no idea what they're saying.

I know I haven't done yesterday's doodle yet, but I'll just have to do some catch up soon. Here's today's, at least:



The magical lantern shop described in my P&C Collab Collage post, along with it's proprietor. To the few that might notice, yes, he's an AU version of Chris. He tends to show up in a lot of my storyverses in some shape or form, whether only vaguely similar or almost the same, so he's practically a cliché for me now. I didn't set out to include him in this, but the lanterns/glass-globes had too much of a character tie-in for me to pass it up.

His name is a little too dull for my P&C world, so I may have to come up with an alternate OR ELSE use his actual full name which never gets mentioned anywhere (it's Christias, by the way, and yes I know that's a weird name).

A little more detail about the Point and Click version: He'd run that lantern shop for several years, both making and selling them (along with various other glassworks, and a few other odds and ends. He'll occasionally put up a painting or something). He ended up stuck in his home-city along with everyone else there when the unpeople moved in and isolated the city. Since then, the unpeople have been gradually overrunning the city and stripping the people of their memories and identities bit by bit while they're helpless to escape or prevent it. Recognizing this, Christias improvised a bit of magicking and found away to store a memory inside a lantern for safekeeping (when activated, the memory will light up the lantern like a flame and none will be the wiser). While a memory in lantern storage is temporarily gone, a person can access it again while holding the activated lantern. He then began secretly letting people store their most precious memories in his lanterns (free of charge, because that's just how he rolls) so that the unpeople can't steal them away for themselves. Christias himself had already begun to be leeched upon, so he now stores most of his memories that have any personal significance in lanterns, and put the knowledge of how to activate the lanterns in one special lantern that always stays lit. This, of course, has left him a little bit confused and scatterbrained a lot of the time, but as long as he periodically touches his personal memory-lanterns, he can keep his wits about him. Unfortunately, Boeboe the klepto steals the crucial lantern that lets him access the rest, so he ends up something of a jumbled, dismayed mess that's of little use to anyone. Hopefully Ssam can figure out a way to retrieve it for him . . .

Bandwagon jumping, because the collages you folks have come up with look brilliant.

Under the cut, I have bunch of pictures (mostly drawings/paintings/renderings, with some photography) that give the vibe of what I'm thinking for my collab world. I'll go into more detail when it's not past midnight and I have more than 3% battery power. I made two separate collages, one for the "normal" parts of the world, and one for the parts that have been taken over. I couldn't get exactly what I wanted for the latter, but if you combine the style of the first collage with the warped look of the latter, you'll get the gist. None of these images are mine. Most came from DA.

( Collages be below! )

For today's doodles, I did concept sketches for Sfé's glorious Adventure Game collab. YAY!

I had to take a bunch of photos and cut them up, because you couldn't get decent detail on everything in one shot. I already posted this in reply, but for those who don't read other people's comments like a creeper of my caliber, here's the basic idea for my world: Ssam arrives, finds the piece to the portal almost immediately, and solves the puzzle to get it. BUT THEN! An evil being of some sort arrives, steals it, and then turns into a slightly-warped version of Ssam. UnSsam then takes Ssam's most precious memory from him, and tosses him in a prison cell. Some time ago in this world, a little girl accidentally lifted a magic seal that kept this other world locked away, and now these beings that lack their own firm reality or identity are taking over my world, turning everything into slightly-off versions of itself (crooked buildings, blue plants, etc.), and stealing people's memories/identities and leaving them lost and confused. Surely there is a resistance movement. One of Ssam's companions will be a fellow prisoner, and the other will be Izzy, a 10-year-old hyperactive wannabe resistance fighter who springs Ssam from prison. They then go on a quest to retrieve the puzzle/key/whatever piece along with Ssam's most precious memory. I'm sure at some point they have to get something from Igor and Boeboe (pictured below), and Sam will have to outsmart UnSsam at some point.

So, without further ado:


Boeboe and Igor, old characters of my sister and myself (respectively). They live in a little cottage together. Boeboe's batshit crazy in an amiable way, whilst Igor likes nothing more than biting everyone and anything he can get his teeth on. He never brushes his teeth, and he's a bit disease-ridden, so it's not good for your health if he bites you. In order to get something he needs, Ssam will have to present Igor with "the perfect bite," something (or someone) that gives him the greatest pleasure possible to bite. In practice, this means trying scads and scads of items on him, and mostly getting silly responses and obnoxious replies of rejection. If Ssam is savy, however, he will notice that there is a bookshelf full of poetry labeled "for insomnia." While Igor and Boeboe have a "look, don't touch" policy for visitors, if Ssam returns to Sfé's world and borrows Francis's book of poetry, he can put Igor and Boeboe to sleep and just STEAL what he needs. God help him if he ever crosses their path again, though.


This is Izzy and Kae, Ssam's companions in my world. Izzy is the sunniest and most enthusiastic kids around, and he originated in my old "everything goes" mega-world, so it's only fair that he show up here. Kae's full name is Kayama, the name of a character from a long-aborted story. This Kae, however, carries on the long tradition of me creating species that vaguely resemble norns; anyone who's seen my Effini drawings can attest to this fact. Kae is one of Ssam's fellow prisoners, OR SO HE THINKS! In actuality, she's one of the Unpeople, sent to keep an eye on Ssam by posing as another captive. OH NOES! She might have an agenda of her own, however . . . Fun fact: The original Kayama came from a secret society of people who lived underwater, and was transformed (for nefarious purposes, naturally) in her infancy to look just like a girl they abducted while she was waterskiing.


Tiny Ssam and Izzy!


UnSsam! Dun dun dun!

6/20For today's drawing, I drew a bunch of the characters from Norm the Norn, staying pretty much faithful to wee-Jackie's designs.

As a kid, I was nearly obsessed with all the Creatures games, and I once made this story that was supposed to be "backstory" for the games. It was the legendary story of Norm the Norn (I was such a clever kid), and I threw in everything I could think of to make it the most gosh darned epic story ever. This includes: invulnerability, psychic powers, alternate worlds, magic crystals, tragic deaths, super-powered grendels, gratuitous violence, tragic love stories, the loss of a child, mistaken identity, a conspiring mother, a look-alike kid, a nice but oh so unfairly judged grendel, and about 20 offspring for the titular character. It was really something else.

I will now share some of it!


TITLE PAGE: Norm the Norn--From Egg, to Cradle, to Memories. I couldn't say death, because it had a mysterious ending. Did he live? Did he die? NOBODY KNOWS!!!!!

( More below the cut. Come on. You want to look, don't you? )