Ouen! Dai! Sei! Kou!
I did it! I did it! I clocked Hard level!
Anyways, yet another fangirlism to add to the list. Here are Clarys and Zephy celebrating my success by way of awesome cosplay.
Nope, the outfits aren’t wrong. It’s a combined cosplay of Ouendan AND Ouran!
Lineart — Colour me!
Okay, so as you might have noticed, one of my weaknesses (besides anatomy) when it comes to illustration is — COLOURING! I fail at colouring, although I am starting to figure things out a bit. But in any case, what I would really love is for someone to colour my fails stuffs and show me how it’s done. So here is desperate attempt for lessons #1:
My stuffs. Click to download the high-res version from dA:
Rules: credit and link back to either my profile on dA or this blog. Use whatever colour schemes you like, create whatever backgrounds, just keep it clean (strictly PG — sexualise my characters and I kill you) and don’t remove the copyright text. kthasall. I’d be really grateful to anyone who can teach me a thing or two about colouring!
Chapter Three — Kid Liquorice
‘I’m sick of this, Father. Can’t we do something else?’
‘On your feet, Kiki, come on.’
Kiki let out a growl of irritation as she heaved herself up. ‘I’m not even better from the last time,’ she complained, clutching her arm. ‘One of these days you’ll kill me with your training — and then I can think of some people what will be sorry for some things!’
Callimachus sighed. ‘If you’d only hit the stone as I told you, you wouldn’t have got hurt.’
‘And don’t bury me somewhere manky,’ Kiki continued. ‘I want somewhere with flowers, somewhere nice.’
‘Sure.’ Callimachus picked up another pebble. ‘Hold your dagger properly, come on, don’t slouch. Now for the last time, Kiki, please hit the blessed stone! Ready?’
She nodded.
Callimachus threw the pebble.
Kiki side-stepped.
‘I’m going inside.’
Chapter Two — Better than a Dream
I am very lucky, thought Callimachus as he watched Asteria at her spinning wheel. I have a beautiful wife, a whole island to myself and a flock of sheep that keeps growing and growing. I have everything I need, and no troubles at all.
Except maybe for Asteria’s fiery temper. Sometimes it took only the smallest thing to rile her — but that was a small price to pay for her companionship.
He’d heard in Skyworld that happiness was often hard to find for Overworlders, but he knew, and they were wrong. I am very happy, he thought. Very happy.
My AD&D Characters
As you will probably have guessed by now, I’m really into AD&D at the moment (did I mention D&D 4e is PANTS?!?!?!?!). Sad loser that I am, I have no one to play with, so I’m stuck making campaign worlds by myself 
Anyway, it does mean I have more OCs to play around with, so I present to you Silver Arrows’s AD&D 2e Character Portraits of Awesome Fail Chibiness!
Ferys – Feralian – Thief – Chaotic Good
Gone all chibbeh!
Clarys – Seraphene – Paragon – Lawful Good
(There’s a better shaded version here, by my friend PrimroseMoon. She did an awesome job! yAy!)
Zephyr – Half-elf – Mage – Neutral Good
Rivan – Human – Fighter – Lawful Good
Kiki – Angel – Troublesome little sister – Chaotic Good
Hang on a sec —
Suffering from NERD-RAGE!
Can I just say first of all, D&D 4e is absolute PANTS! I’m still waiting for my AD&D 2e Player’s Handbook to arrive, but luckily as I have Baldur’s Gate I have a good deal of info on it anyway.
*tee hee hee* I drew handsum!
He is actually the brother of my AD&D player character. Heh. He’s the leader of his mercenary band and a difficult character to be around; he tends to look down on his rookies and have a laugh at their expense (hence the low charisma), but actually he’s a big softie deep down and really loves them all.
His pencil-and-paper stats are actually different from what I got in BG, which was just lucky. And his race is Winged (Dark Type), not human.
- LEVEL: 1
- STRENGTH: 16
- INTELLIGENCE: 9
- WISDOM: 7
- DEXTERITY: 18
- CONSTITUTION: 14
- CHARISMA: 5
- HP: 5 AC: 4 XP: +10%
I’ve started designing the basics of a campaign setting, but this was done using a mishmash of the D&D Basic Set rules and what was described of the AD&D 2e rules from the Baldur’s Gate manual, plus a couple of races and a class that I made up myself. If I come up with anything good, I’ll chuck it up for anyone who’s interested.
Nerds FTW?!!?!?!?
PS Did I mention that D&D 4e is absolute PANTS??!?
PPS I hate school.
Back with more scribblin’s
I haven’t given up on the art lessons yet ARGH! I still feel like I’m stuck at the same level and not getting any better. Meh. Faia Emburemu style is too hard for me
Well, you can kinda tell who they’re supposed to be, right? Right?? Uhhhhhhhhhh
Chibis are easier. These came out better:
Bodies still look lame though. C’est trop difficile pour moi. Waaaaaaaaaaaaah!
Writing and Scribbling
If anyone is actually reading my Dreamsong story — and they might be you know, even if it’s just to laugh — I have finally got both chapter 2 and 3 written and — yes! — typed up. Unfortunately, a) there are probably at least 3 more chapters to go and b) it’s going to take me even longer to illustrate them. Now it’s very tempting for me to say, never mind the pictures, we’re all grown ups, we don’t need illustrations, but you know, the whole reason I even came up with this nonsense was to give me a context for my drawing lessons. Anyway if you are curious — and you might be, you know, even if it’s just to laugh — here are two pics that I have so far. It’s not much, my colouring lets me down big time.
From Chapter 2 — Clicky for big
From Chapter 3
And here are some more random pics since I haven’t posted anything interesting on here lately:
Me in Faia Emburemu Rabid Fangirl mode 
It’s Ray 
From Harvest Moon
Sorry about the shadows, I should have put them on a different layer. Full pic with chibis here
I do think it’s safe to say I’ve got better since chapter 1, but it’s also safe to say I have a way to go yet. I need to stop being so lazy and drawing chibis. Anyway what it means is I don’t know when the chapters are actually going to be posted because I have soooooo many pics to go I’m losing my mind help!??!!?!
Paint packages, adopted brothers and moar anime!
I’ve decided – I am not going to bother finishing Twilight Princess. As I said before, action games are not really to my taste, and anyway – I can haz new game!!! The game I am playing right now is called Faia Emburemu – Radiant Dawn. It’s full of yummies!!
But seriously, it combines two of my favourite game genres ie RPG and strategy (my other fave is platformers – Commander Keen and Kid Icarus baby!). I’m playing on easy level since I’ve not played any previous titles, and I’m not doing too badly. I’m playing Ike’s mercenaries at the moment (IKE!! Oscar!! Geoffrey! And all the other yummies! ). I’ve already killed Ike’s sister twice. When do I get to go back to Daein?? I miss my sweeties ie Eddi and Reonarudo. They’re soooooooo cute I can’t stand it!!
Stop drooling, Silver, stop drooling.
What I am saying is, it’s an awesome game.
The only thing that’s spoiling it is something I read on a character profiles site, ie that Micaiah is going to marry Sothe who PS is her adopted brother. That’s just… wrong.
Moving swiftly on, a friend recommended watching Naruto. Well technically, I asked her about it because I keep hearing that Read the rest of this entry »
I can haz art lessons?
Wo0o0o0oh0o0o0o000! My books have arrived and I am starting my manga lessons yay! The books I have are: Manga for Dummies, and How to Draw Animé and Game Characters Vol1.
Anyway as you know, one of the things that I have trouble with is profile views. Unfortunately, Manga for Dummies has little to no advice on this All you get is how to draw the basic shape for the profile of the face, and the wire frame for a full body profile view, but that’s it really. How to Draw Animé does have tips on facial views but again, hardly anything on full body profiles. So it looks like I’m on my own here
The good thing is though, apart from what I said above, each book fills in the deficiencies of the other, like ie for example, How to Draw Animé doesn’t break facial structure down to basics, but Manga for Dummies does. MFD hasn’t much on different eye styles, but HTDA does. So the two together are pretty much awesome.
Anyway I still don’t have a decent pic of Apollo for the Dreamsong story. Only the one profile view (flukes FTW!) but I want a front view. So I thought, armed with these books, lemme give it another go.
Needless to say, I failed. So what started off as Apollo turned into a shojo manga style man. Well, kinda. I don’t like it.
Since I did the man, I thought I might as well make a lady to keep him company – and failed even worse! Like the bloke, I followed the tutorial in Manga for Dummies on drawing shojo – I don’t know why, I can’t imagine I’m ever going to make shojo manga, but I suppose it’s a learning experience anyway – well here she is, but I warn you, she’s not pretty!
Kiki FTW!
I’m in love (again)
I’ve been trying out this new program of Paint Tool SAI, which is an awesome paint package and I am absolutely totally in love with it. It makes increeeeedibly smooth anti-aliased lines, which you can’t get in Paint Shop Pro, and also it’s great for paint effects which is utterly brilliant if you are the kind of person who makes lots of mistakes and also can’t afford to buy real paints and paper. The problem is it is only a 31 day trial, what I am going to do when it runs out I don’t know.
Rabid fangirl is rabid! 
I am also feeling quite utterly disillusioned with Paint Shop Pro at the moment. Firstly, if I use the graphics tablet, even on another application, I can no longer use the mouse to paint. I don’t know why, nothing happens, although the airbrush tool still works. So I have to exit and reload the application, which takes a while. Also as well, I am sick of it always crashing. Thirdly, you don’t get smooth lines like you do in SAI. I still think PSP is awesome for vectors, especially when you need to do precision stuff and might need to resize and tamper with lines a lot, but I hate the way the ends of the vector line are so blocky, you’d think they’d at least have a way to smooth the edges, but you can’t have everything I suppose.
Would anyone like to donate £40 so I can buy SAI?
What happened was, my How to Draw Anime book which I ordered last month, seems to have got lost in America somewhere – or something – anyway the upshot is, I can’t be bothered waiting for it, and £15 crumbs! So I’ve cancelled that, ordered it second hand and also ordered Manga for Dummies, which in total together, cost me about 12 quid.
Sooooo, hopefully in 2 weeks or a bit longer I should have my books, and by then I hope to be able to produce some new work and say What an improvement!
Chapter One – Where Angels Fear to Tread
I always dream myself to somewhere else each night / I dream in colour, cos I live in black and white / I know I dream much more than other people do / But I can’t see / How anything can be / Better than a dream…
~ Mike Batt, Better than a Dream
Despite life being good, Callimachus always found something to dream about.
Aside from the squabble between Palutena and Medusa, things had been quiet in Angel Land lately. Callimachus was off-duty a fair bit these days, which gave him more time to spend at his woodwork. Right now he was carving toys for the younger angels at the Children’s House, which always earned him some brownie points. It was nice that Angel Land was at peace. But one needed some adventure.
Of course, there was always Pit.
Ever since their captain had gone missing, the Icarus Army had Read the rest of this entry »
Moar Pit yeeeeees!
*simper* I drew Pit again
Pit
Can you guess who that is supposed to be? Yeah, it’s Cal. You see what I mean about men’s bodies? I wish my book would hurry up and arrive!
The rabid fangirl has made it
I drew Pit! I drew Pit!
Doesn’t it suck?
There’s still over two weeks before my How to Draw Anime book arrives 
Profiles and Squirrels
I’m so utterly bored of the chapter on how to draw trees – not just because I was finding it a leeetle bit difficile I dunno how it is, sometimes my mind is just a blanket and I can’t seem to get the pencil to do what I want. I drew a squirrel instead:
And also!!! I am getting better at profile views!!
It’s not finished, I still need to shade it and suchlike, but hey hey hey! It’s better than my previous one which I was so proud of at the time.
(Clicky for finished pic)
What I’m doing now is digitising most of my paper-based pics. This needs fixing for one. His hand looks… wrong somehow. I haven’t finished shading of course, and that’s something I need to work on still. It’s not so easy for me
Anyway as well I’m about 2/3 through the first draft of chapter one. yAy!
Back to the Drawing Board
Il faisait beau aujourd’hui. It’s surprising how much better one feels when the sun is shining. In any case I’m feeling happy enough to start my drawing lessons – as my regular readers (all one of them) will have noticed, there’s been a bit of a hiatus in the drawing lessons department. Anyways, I’m having another go. So let’s see what wonders I’ve managed to come up with!
This is the assignment that caused me to give up on the drawing lessons in the first place. A bit iffy, hmm? He didn’t give many helpful hints. The mountains totally spoil the picture, don’t they? I didn’t get that bit (and in fact, I’ve erased a few of the worst bits so the real thing looks actually worse). And it seems I’ve forgotten how to draw water
Anyway, I am still on the lesson of trees. Here’s one I made earlier:
yAy! Groovy!
Moar: well also besides landscapey things you know I also want to be able to draw decent anime-style peoples. Profile views are still a pain for me – the pokemon style is the easiest but not always what I want. Anyway what I have found is a super tutorial by Crysa on deviantArt. However when it comes to drawing profile-views she just says, ‘this is how side views look’ and leaves it at that. Helpful! So I’ve been doing a bit of… um… investigating! for want of a better word and discovered something:
Because the way I’ve learnt to draw is, always break everything down into its component parts and then construct the picture. So that’s what I did – I traced Crysa’s sample face and broke it down and you can see my amazing discoveries for yourself. My Kid Liquorice underneath is the result of these discoveries and was drawn utterly freehand using only the basic shapes and lines as a guide (ignore the crappy hair that was done roughly cos I was concentrating on her face).
So start with a circle, note down the radius, then at eye-level, draw a vertical line equal to the radius length to get the length to the chin and the length of the nose. Then from the base of that line, draw another line at a right angle, again same size as the radius, to get the position of the front of the neck. Super fantasticness!!
That’s me trying to draw Apollo cos he crops up fairly often in Dreamsong. Hmm, back to the drawing board I think!
Anyway whenever I try to draw a new character it ends up looking too similar to one of my existing characters. Sooooooooo, I’ve splashed out (£15 yes) on this book of How to Draw Anime and Gaming Characters, Vol1. I’ve looked at the e-book and it convinced me to bankrupt myself on buying the actual in fact real book. But I’m hoping it will be a worthwhile investment because…
I can haz commission!!
Baby Kid Liquorice
Kiki when she was a toddler.
(ETA: Clicky for actual in fact finished version)
No she isn’t nakie, it just looks like that cos I haven’t got round to drawing her clothes yet. Needless to say, the picture is not finished.
But I’m getting better, aren’t I?
ETA: No you’re not. If that’s good, then I’m a dancing banana.
Stoopid hair
Whose daft idea was it to give Kid Liquorice psychedelic hair?
Everyone else: YOURS.
Damn.
Cutesy Pictures
Moar pictures:
Click the images for full-view
They are based on stickers from an old toy teaset. I’ve always though they were utterly cute so I’ve reproduced the images and made a few changes. Took me about 2 hours for each picture, from the initial sketch to the final digital image. *sigh*
I’m working on two more at the moment, when I should be in fact finishing the pictures for chapter one of Dreamsong, but that’s me all over. Always starting and never finishing. *another sigh*
