Your prince is in another castle! XD

( Behold my pencil vomit! )

I'm back on my low-carb diet... I haven't been feeling too hot lately, partly because of lazy eating. :( But after 3 days, I feel worlds better than I have in a few weeks. The only draw back is ...no sugar, bread, or fruit (for a while at least). T_____________T I really hate my Fibro sometimes, but at least I can minimize the pain pretty easily--it's sticking to it that's hard. (For those who don't know, for some reason, going low carb reduces my Fibromyalgia pain dramatically. Don't ask why, I don't think anyone knows.) What I do like about the diet is that I can eat tons of things I usually avoid, like tons of ranch dressing on salad and cheese (I am a total cheese lover)!! Yay!

So far, fighting my inner-editor is hard. My goal is to reach 12,500 words by Sunday, or I won't be able to make it thought the month. T_T Geez.

On the brightside, my inner-fangirl has been reignigted by a book a friend forced on introduced to me--The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong. XD I avoided it like the plague because of the cover. It made me think it was a cross of Gossip Girl and Harry Potter, lol. But, I gave it a chance and I read the book in one evening. The next day I ran out and bought the next one because I couldn't wait to borrow the second one from her! The only down side is the excruciating wait for the third and final book in May 2010. D: I'm not gonna post a synopsis or anything (the link does that well), all I have to say is that Derek rules! End of story.

It feels so good to be excited about a book again. It's been so long. -_- The author is going to be holding a fanart contest (i think) for an advanced reading copy of the third book in January and I'm all fired up!

6099 / 50000 words. 12% done!

The first draft of anything is shit. - Hemingway

I must keep this in mind! XD Keep typing and never look back!

1992 / 50000 words. 4% done!

Bleah, I ended up skipping class for the sake of my wrist... First time, but I can't shake the guilt! :( :( Gah! Oh, well. So, my rule of thumb when I skip class is to make the day as productive as possible, not only to ease the guilt, but to catch up on things I neglect during the week.

I went to Book-off (to drop off books, I swear! XD Not to have fun and buy manga! *cough* >_>) and found the entire Miki Falls series there for $16.00. W00T! I've been wanting to read this for AGES, but I could never find it in stores! ;_; I'm sure many people wrote it off as another "animu" amerimanga piece of crap, but it's REALLY GOOD. I swear! The art is so expressive and this guy actually went to Japan and learned about the enviroment before making this (His wife is Japanese from what I hear), although his characters act VERY un-Japanese. It does irk me a bit, from what I gather, that he seems to think that his comic HAD to be set in Japan because of the art style... >_< Gah. But, dispite all I've said, I still recommend it! :) You can find excerpts on his deviantART if you look.

And now I'm stuck at Longo Toyota for about 2 hours as I write this (on my cute little netbook *feels techie-like*). I went to get my oil changed and it now turns out that I need this belt-thingy replaced...for $165.00. My dad went into fits when I called to tell him. OTL But I guess it can't be helped. GAH. Longo is like it's own little city. They have wi-fi, a Starbucks, Subway, and an awesome bathroom where everything is motion activated. You never have to touch anything! They even give you a little page/buzzer so you know when your car's ready! o_o I always love coming here.

I can't wait for Nanowrimo to start! :D I wonder how far I'll get? I haven't written anything past 50 or 60 pages so it's going to be quite a challenge! I'm glad I have something to take my mind off of drawing right now. I had a scare last week with my wrist during my animation class. It cramped up so bad, I was worried I was getting carpal tunnel! But after a few days of thinking about it, I remembered I brought in a 5 gallon jug of water the day before. My dad's back is bad, and either me or my mom have to bring the water in now. -_- I must've pulled something... and I guess I'm just creatively tapped out atm, too. OTL I hope it passes soon. I think it's another case of drawing puberty, and it's twice as bad as the last.

Also, I also just bought a 10' netbook! Yay! It's so cute and pink (and I have no excuse for Nanowrimo now!!)! XD My old laptop was nearing the end of it's life. Although I still need to keep it for scanning and photoshop.

Don't really have any noteworthy doodles to post right now. D: Anyway, I found a version of the comic I'm making that I had written in February. ...It's 10 time better than what I have now. Why the hell did I forget about it?! It's enough now that I think I'm going to merge the two together. T_T

Also, anyone planning to do Nanowrimo? I'm seriously considering it.

Someone brings this over to the US!!!

I love my psycho characters! <3 He's changed a lot since his first appearance. I finally got comfortable drawing his face!

Just some random crap from my sketchbook from the past week or so. (Drawn mostly in class *cough*)

( An actual picture! :D )

I just drew some stuff right now and it looks so CRAPPY. UGH. I'm not being emo or anything. It happens twice a year and I call it "drawing puberty." D: Basically, I've noticed over the years that when my style starts to shift/improve it gets really awkward in the transition. It is beyond frustrating sometimes though. Some of my characters look really off. T_T I've noticed my drawings have gotten a lot more angular, which I like, but I have to figure out a way to draw the eyes to fit the faces better now.

To change the subject, I've recently dug through my closet and pulled out all the old paperbacks of my youth. I've been chasing after my childhood all summer (and now fall) and rereading books and comics that have influenced my writing greatly. Among them are The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Fire Arrow, The Abhorsen trilogy, The Immortals quartet, The Silver Kiss, Goose Chase, Watership Down, The Sight, The Dark Angel trilogy, Stephanie Plum, The Meg Langslow mysteries, and more recently, the Wind on Fire and Noble Warriors trilogies. You may notice that I mostly read YA fiction. LOL. I read a massive amount of books when I was younger, so these are the ones that stuck with me.

My Chrestomanci and Abhorsen paperbacks are almost falling apart. T_T I'm a little sad, because I'd hate to replace them. The Abhorsen books have beautiful covers, and so do the Chrestomanci books. I recently saw a reissue of both and while the Abhorsen reissue is okay, the Chrestomanci covers are HIDEOUS. Ugly, ugly cartoony CG covers replace the beautiful fairytale-esque ones. Why?

And what's with the imitation Twilight covers?! I finally bough a replacement copy of The Silver Kiss because of two extra short stories included in the reissue. The cover is ugly. The book is a classic in YA fiction. It's in a different league than Twilight. :( :(

So today, we didn't have a model due to the stupid California budget cuts, but we made due with drawing trees and volunteering to model. I can't volunteer to model because of my condition so I kinda feel left out. :(

( Giants and bikini girls )

I had a really shitty week. My dog of ten years passed away on Sunday and it's been really lonely without him. I like to think he's playing with my late grandfather and grandmother somewhere in the sky now. I really miss you, Pepper.

Aside from the usually gesture drawing yesterday, we tried our hands at character/object designing from 5 minute poses.

( derp )

SO....I started the first page of my comic.

LET'S SEE IF I CAN STICK TO IT. :B

I need to work on the dialog a little more, but I keep putting it off for that reason. -_- I just have to start drawing it!

...Life drawing for animation is tomorrow. Nooooooooo... It's interesting, but 6 hours of gesture drawing really burns me out. A lot of people in the class are so talented. *feels inferior*

Here's a 15 minute drawing exercise we did last week (sorry for the messy drawing. It's on 11x17 paper and my scanner's not big enough. :( So I took a picture and cropped it. I adjusted the levels as best I could) The perspective is wonky due to free handing it standing up.:



I've always wanted to do a music video about an actress who finally makes it to New York. And what better way to express your excitement than to break out singing New York New York! :D

So, I had a very busy, but productive week. On Thursday, I went to the House season premier (red carpet and the whole shebang! o_o) and the next day I got to meet Eric Goldberg and get his autograph. :D

Art History is boring. :E

It took 10 hours, but I finished them in time for today. =_= I didn't scan the muscles... *lazy*

( Witness my Dee Dee skeletons!! )

I was a nervous wreck getting these done since my professor is SO VAGUE about the assignments for life drawing in animation. I think he likes it that way so he can see how we interpret it. However, it is very bad for me, since I take things waaaaay too seriously and usually put 300% more energy required into a piece than nessesary. (This is a good trait to have...but not if it burns me out early!!)

Overall, I'm quite proud of them and he liked them a lot, which is enough for me. *passes out* T_T

Here's a random doodle I drew between breaks in class:

Just some sketches for my life drawing animation class. These were originally drawn with non-photo blue. :)  We're supposed to create a skeleton from an existing cartoon character. I WAS gonna draw Dexter, but I realized it's really hard to find a lot of angles of him. D: Deedee's a bit easier to draw to boot.

I sat down with my professor for my Life Drawing in Animation class to discuss my major. I was having problems deciding if I should major in animation or illustration. I loving drawing meticulous pictures and working with watercolor and pen & ink. From what I could gather, I wouldn't be seeing any of that. In fact, one girl told me her draftsmanship really took a dip as she got deeper into animation (!!). Another factor is that, while I enjoy watching 3D animation, I have zero interest in making it--2D all the way, plzkthx (much to the chagrin of my professor, haha). He pretty much confirmed my suspicions as he answered my questions. So I'm pretty sure when I delclare my major next semester, it's going to be illustration, and I'm going to take all the 2D animations classes on the side for fun.

I feel a lot better now that I have that out of the way. It was a real monkey on my back and I didn't want to charge blindly into something I might regret later. Here's a couple of gesture drawings from my animation class:

( clicky click )

These are just a glimpse of the crapload of gestures we crank out in 6 hours. The model was a ballet dancer, yay!

My comic is on hold... T_T Stupid workload!

My very first art assignment is pen and ink! Yay! =_= After tomorrow, I get to sleep in! I neeeeed sleeeeep... I want the weekend to come by faster! D: