Windchaser

Memento Mori, chapter 19

2012-01-21T21:30:00.001Z

Click here to get to chapter 19 In which the Library discuss where Blink might have "sneaked away" to, and Blink finds that she's not precisely in the company of friends any more - although precisely how much trouble she is in, right now, hasn't quite sunk in yet.

Bit of a long chapter this time. (Almost 8000 words; I've been trying to keep to around 5000 for ease of reading, but I got carried away, haha. At least it's not like last time, where I divided a chapter because it was getting too long and it ended up 3 chapters.)

85407 ♥ 100000

Word Clouds

2012-01-10T17:16:00.003Z

I've been playing around with a word-cloud generator. At lunch, I ran the reporter on our enquiry database, pulled all the titles of the enquiries we've done in the last 2 years, then punched it into the cloud generator, just to see what would happen.

I originally wanted to find a tutorial of some kind to explain how to do those pictures where you have a shape that is made up of lots of smaller shapes - where for instance, you have the silhouette of a person's face, but instead of just a flat solid fill, it's filled with flowers, but they don't overlap, and don't go off the edge, just get smaller and smaller to fill all the gaps. It looks like hard work, and I wondered if there was a shortcut. (I can't find an example, now, but it's close-ish to this)

...and I found this instead. I'm having lots of ideas, but I'm not sure how I can work it into my art, as like a background or an element or something.

Then, of course, I had to run my fiction through it. ¬_¬ You should be able to guess which is which.

I seem to quite like the word "little", for some reason.

Memento Mori - Part 1

2012-01-10T08:03:00.003Z

A new year, a new post (at last!).

I know. I haven't posted here for a while. I should confess, I haven't really had much TO post, as I'd been busy getting ready for NaNoWriMo in November, and battling a zombie desktop PC (...and then, of course, WRITING said NaNo.)

I planned on linking to each chapter of MM I wrote as I uploaded it, but the icons were on the dead PC, and by the time I got up to chapter 15 and still hadn't linked to any individual one, I thought it was about time to stop planning and get to doing. Thus, "chapters" 1-18 are now posted as a PDF on my website, and can be accessed by clicking the picture at the right. (It's just over 2Mb, and about 80k words. Should download fairly quickly.)

I am still going to be uploading the individual chapters to the Memento Mori LJ as I go, if anyone is interested in following along from there. Comments/critique/useful nitpickery welcome. :)

Lastly, I have an account on Dreamwidth now. I hope it'll be a fraction more reliable than LJ.

Future Tense, chapter 9

2011-07-14T19:07:00.003+01:00

It's taken me a while to write this, and it's sadly a bit of a "nothing-chapter", but at last, I have some more of this story to upload. (All right, actually I uploaded it last week, on the 8th, I just neglected to update this.)
At long last, Skywarp gets over his little tantrum, and is finally allowed home from hospital. Not that it feels terribly like home...

Artpost

2011-07-12T08:05:00.001+01:00

Bees! This is "Busy Bee", weilding a hammer, and "Bee-autiful", with a flower. D'aww. They're sort of a "cute"-reworking of my Danata, just for the sake of being cute. ^^

This of course is Mirii. I'm not 100% satisfied with the picture - it's another of my book cover attempts. You'd think finishing editing the thing would be a better idea, right?

I need to strip the thing down to its bones and rebuild it, essentially. Mirii's story was mostly fluff - weird for weird's sake? - with a lot of parts that didn't really seem to add a lot. I might use the "record cards" type technique, it might be easier to visualise where I'm taking it.

The MegaDiary

2011-07-12T07:53:00.000+01:00

    This is my "mostly work but also other stuff megadiary; as in, I'm useless at keeping diaries, BUT I can just about cope with a month to a page so... voila. I designed the pages myself, got it printed, then cut, punched and spiral bound it. I covered it in fabric to protect the spiral bindings, when it's getting bonked about in my work bag, but it still opens flat.

    I was thinking of offering these as like custom sketchbooks, or "art journals" (with lined paper and stuff in) - so people can have a mixture of different papers to play with. You pick your types of paper, number of pages, and your cover, corners, decorations etc, and I put it together. Opinions? I'm putting a webpage together with the details.
    Incidentally, yes, it's not JUST a diary; there's a "Nanowrimo" page for me to record my word-count in November, an adresses section, a page for mandatory training (as there's so MUCH of it now, I can never remember when I've done it all) and a place to write down when I've been on-call. I used fairly good quality sketching paper so it was a bit more durable.

"Beasts of Yore" on sale now!

2011-06-28T14:24:00.002+01:00

It's been a long old haul to get here - would you believe the project began somewhere around 2005? - but finally, the Beasts of Yore portfolio is finished and published! A full colour portfolio of art of mythical creatures, from 12 different artists.

See what's included...

Order Now!

My contributions:
Ammut
Cockatrice

Alien-Mayan Creatures

2011-06-26T14:29:00.000+01:00

"Mayan" beasties!

On the left is a zochi'coatl, or "lotus born". They look lizard-like but they're actually mammals, with scaly armour like a pangolin. The crest slowly unfurls over the course of the first part of the year. like a fern. The Qii consider them to be spiritually connected to plants, because of their looks - they're hard to spot and even harder to catch, but easily tamed if caught as a griz and hand-reared.

On the right is a nut-foot (I need to think of a Qii name for them). "Nut foot" refers to their little hoofs. They're a semi-intelligent semi-domestic species - capable of a small degree of abstract thought, but not very clever. The Qii use them for a variety of purposes - guarding, hunting, and eating, mostly (although great care has to be taken on the latter, because their skin is highly poisonous.)

They're contorted into odd shapes because I was trying to fit them into a circle, so I could get them printed as stickers. XD Plus, it goes with the whole central-American theme, I suppose? I'm working on a few more, so they'll probably crop up over the next few day.

Toccata and Fugue, chapter 17 (and 16!)

2011-06-11T12:52:00.004+01:00

This SHOULD have been posted on the 6th, when I actually uploaded the chapter, but I forgot.

Alone in the abandoned corridors of the derelict Surkea Hospital, Blink finally works out that nothing she has yet come up against is what it seems...

Edit: In fact, I just noticed that I didn't post chapter 16 when I uploaded it, either. *slap wrist*

Danata - "beeople"

2011-06-09T00:34:00.000+01:00

Early concept-y working stuff that I need to get on paper before I forget it. I'll probably change a lot, as I usually do, but eh. XD. Because bees are awesome.

The danata are one of the species I hope to feature in my Nanowrimo this year.

This is Duskwing; she's a danata worker naiad, which means she's an adolescent, sterile female danata, an alien species that evolved from an eusocial insect like a bee on the rim-world of Hesger. Yes, she stings (although in her case it's not lethal to her), and can make honey; woo, insect vomit.

Her anatomy is... eeenh, wonky. I'm not sure how it ended up like you're looking down on her, her head is mahoosive and her legs were a lot longer when I started. Somehow I only really noticed it once I'd inked it. ¬_¬ (Although in real life that wouldn't be difficult, she's barely a foot tall - to preserve the ability to fly.)

The top right image is closer to how she SHOULD look, with the exception of those widdly little wings, although I'm still not 100% decided on the whole legs-on-the-abdomen thing. I originally went for that with the idea of greater flexibility in the upper body, but I could probably achieve that just by adding some more joints to the thorax and it'd make the abdomen less awkward? Buuut then equally I suppose if she had that waspish petiole/waist, she'd be carrying a lot of weight (she's got all her gut in there) that would just stick out behind and and not really be supported very well. Hum.

The little "vents" on her sides are her spiracles; she has small, efficient lungs and a complex multi-hearted circulatory system of "haemolymph", which enables her to extract maximum oxygen out of the air, which she needs to fly. She also speaks through them; her language is a clicky, squeaky one.

Her crop and pharyngeal glands are in her upper body; her stomach and intestines in her abdomen. A "queen" (who I need to find a better word for) has a larger abdomen as she has her reproductive organs in there - Duskwing is non-reproductive so she's smaller. Drones also have a larger/broader abdomen.

She lives in a reasonably large colony of about 200 individuals (mostly workers of various castes, with one queen and a few drones) in the stinger forest on the coast; her colony overlooks the sea, so they used a lot of stone in its construction. Nearby colonies in the forest used more wood and reclaimed plastics. They are a computer-age society, although they didn't develop it themselves; most of their technology they bartered for. Their "mead" was a very popular (and expensive!) drink that they used to sell to offworld traders, but with the advent of Hah'zeepti haemorrhagic fever and Hesger's current quarantine they lost their primary sales route. They're not too bothered about it; they're pretty self-sufficient, and now they "recycle" materials that the warmbloods left behind when they all died.

They're a relatively stern species; not very emotional, very busy and logical. Their art and architecture tends towards highly geometric designs - yes, hexagons are a theme, and there's an egyptian-ish stylisation to a lot of it (the Egyptians were very maths-oriented in their art, it seemed to fit). Young danata don't really play - the only age at which they're not either working or in school is when they're very young nymphs, after their first (and only) true moult.

They hatch from eggs as small, white, soft-bodied versions of the adults; most are females, and depending on diet, they develop either into workers, or reproductives. (Workers do have all the right "equipment" to lay eggs, but its growth is stunted by lack of a particular hormone). Workers and drones get only small quantities of the "royal jelly"; queen nymphs are fed mostly on this substance, which contains a hormone that stimulates ovarian development. (Thus, if the queen dies and leaves no successor, a worker COULD conceivably lay eggs, but this is highly uncommon.) The small white nymphs are soft bodied to allow for rapid growth - essentially, they are little more than eating machines, and an individual can double its body size in a month or so.

After moulting off their infant skins, the nymphs are about half their adult size; they are greyish in colour, fluffier than the adults, with small leathery winglets. This is the only time in their lives that they "play" (although it still doesn't much resemble mammalian "play" - it is very "learning-oriented" playing). Their exoskeletons are still soft, and it grows slowly over the next five or so years until they attain their adult size, at which point they are considered naiads. Naiads take a further couple of years to reach adulthood; they are adult size, but still greyish-yellow in colour, and weak fliers with small wings.

Worker naiads are intensely schooled in this period of transition, with the aim of selecting the best adult role in the colony for them - some become guards, nurses, teachers, foragers, etc. Reproductives (drones and queens) are also taught their adult roles, although there is less "determination" done for them.

*flop* OK I think I got the basics down. XD

I plan on drawing her again, but with less screwwy anatomy. Now I have the basics of how I want her to look down, it should be easier, I hope ¬_¬

Did I mention bees are awesome? Almost as awesome as butterflies. Yay bugs.

Sapere Galaxy

2011-06-04T15:58:00.000+01:00

I was tired of not knowing where all my places were in relation to everywhere else, so I decided to map them out. (click to enlarge the image).

The pale green blob designates Coalition territory.
Vulpecula and Ondra are the two founding worlds; home to the Vuls and Ondrai respectively. Vulpecula is very earthlike, albeit more heavily forested, whereas Ondra has very large oceans and is quite marshy/swampy over a lot of its surface.

Cethys is a binary world, only one planet of which is occupied. The le'Trai and DuSkai (both colonising species) live here.

Xanu is the oceanic Xniki homeworld, and Zaaros, another temperate, earth-like planet, is home to the Zaar.

Tas-umskel is a recent addition (both "in world" and in my workings); I don't know a lot about the place yet. I've called it "dry and dusty" in one book, and the umskel 'speak' through touch as well as verbally, but that's about it.

Unseria, above and to the right, it a mysterious planet located considerably "above" the plane of the galaxy, and home to the unser. It's in the grip of an ice-age, and is mostly either ice-cap or taiga. The unser themselves are rumoured to be non-native.

Hah'zeept is a so-called "Rim World"; it is primarily desert, but colonists have done a fair amount of terraforming. For a far-flung world on the outer rim, it's a popular holiday resort.

Hesger is another Earth-like world, but has been ravaged by Hah'zeepti Haemorrhagic fever, and is under heavy quarantine. The pink circle designates the restricted area. It is also the planet of origin of the lepuuri and danata.

Tejiva and Telluvia are worlds owned by the Laima Salire; Tejiva is the laima homeworld, Telluvia is a "colony". Telluvia was originally inhabited by the ruta, however the laima accidentally brought a respiratory virus with them that killed a large proportion of the population. The majority of the remaining ruta are in slavery.

The pale blue blob is the Kiravai Imperium. Highly xenophobic, the kiravai are quite ruthless when it comes to keeping other "animals" (they do not consider other sentient creatures to be their equals, just animals) out of their territory. ia'Vai is their homeworld; ia'Maura and ia'Daavi are science colonies. (They have other colonies in this area - Sei lives on a colony-world - I just haven't decided on their names, or where they are.)

"Honeybee", coloured

2011-04-11T08:04:00.001+01:00

Click to enbiggen!

Blink, in her "honeybee" guise. Ohhh the puns, they kills me. XP

She became "Bee" first of all (Whites says "well, we could hardly call her 'Blee', could we?"), and after Lance said "Bee, honey?" a few times, well... it stuck.

Disclaimer: Lance has no idea what honey is - or bees, for that matter - even though Whitesides tried to explain. Essentially, he knows honey = affectionate diminutive sometimes used by humans, and bee = small, busy insect, and felt like both were appropriate.

I'm reasonably pleased that she looks somewhat human, even though her anatomy is, ah, wonky? The wings are just me playing along with a theme.

NaNoWriMo 2011?

2011-04-09T19:16:00.001+01:00

Just working on some little things. This is something I threw together which is sort of becoming this year's "theme", I suppose? Yellow and orange, hexagons, trees, old broken things, and so on. I'll try and come up with some sort of blurb for it eventually! XD

Blink, laima

2011-04-05T22:29:00.001+01:00

Quickie drive-by arting as I have the desktop turned on for once. (Well, I had to, I needed to scan some things - this being one of them.)

This is Blink/"Bee"; she's supposed to be looking back over her shoulder. She'll be dressed eventually (hopefully). XD

Ordinarily, she's a mechanical life form - not android-like, but about 14-15 feet tall and fairly obviously mechanical - but in order to save her life, Frond (a member of a species I am currently calling the GOK - aka "God Only Knows") had to change her into a biological creature. The GOK are essentially a species from a parallel universe where normal laws don't apply; she's not omnipotent, but still fairly powerful anyway. Saving Blink was Frond's last act before she died.

Soo, here is Bee the laima; she's fessine, i.e. a "low female".

I'm going to upload a profile of the laima eventually; they're a digitigrade, three-gendered humanoid species descended from a small social omnivore that looks slightly like a fossa. (I never realised how HARD it was to design something with three genders that was biologically plausible. I thought designing a species with plausible hermaphrodites was hard enough. *bonks head on desk*)

I'm always planning on turning her back into her original self, eventually. I just haven't worked out HOW yet. I'm uploading this mainly because I really like how her face turned out.

Arts

2011-03-10T18:46:00.005Z

From "Thunder Daughter":

OK, so these are MOSTLY just coloured doodles. I need to tidy them up, properly ink them and nudge the colours a bit before they're "book worthy", but this gets the point across I suppose. :) (And yes, the little brown-skinned ones (which have recently (finally) got their species name: Qii) are meant to have strange anatomy - all creatures on their world have an extra joint in every limb.)

And some other bits!

Edit number... I lost count: One day I will find a way of doing this that does not require me to FIGHT with Blogger to lay things out the way I want. ¬_¬

Little bit of artpost

2011-02-01T08:10:00.002Z

Happy 2011!

2011-01-01T00:37:00.000Z

2010-12-27T15:25:00.003Z

The bookwyrm. I think he lives in the pocket that library tickets go in? This one clearly needs a better glue.

Madame Brushfoot, the missing lepuuri monarch from my Nanowrimo in 2010. I'm still not entirely sure how she ended up IN the bottle. I think Dolorous may have had something to do with it.

Marker, ink, punched paper (the spikey branches) and photographs of bottles printed out on overhead projector paper.

Tsu scatters dried fish across the surface of the pool; hopefully, to keep the hungry sacred sun-marked eel from nibbling on her when she next comes past.

Tried to give it a vaguely egyptian style, to compare with the more Mayan / Aztec influence I gave the other folk. Drawn in pencil on normal drawing paper, scanned and adjusted digitally to emphasize the linework, then printed on papyrus paper (a batch of which I had printed up a while ago) and coloured in markers. I would have drawn directly onto the papyrus paper, except it was really hard to see any pencil work on.

(Crossposted from my "Storybook" journal)

The Blue AU continues...

2010-12-10T19:53:00.002Z

OK I'll tidy this up in a minute... XD

At long last, I've POSTED the first 50,000 words of "Toccata and Fugue"! I got them written back before the ahem, "interesting" trip to Munich, but hadn't actively posted all of them. I have a couple of thousand still in reserve, so... we'll see how long before I get it finished! (Getting snowed in in Germany seems to have temporarily killed my creative drive, but never mind. It'll pick back up. *crosses fingers*)

Toccata and Fugue at Livejournal
Links to the chapters, in tidy little clumps: Part 1! | Part 2! | Part 3!

Plus! At last! Have a chapter of Future Tense. I had this 99% written back in mid October, but NaNoWriMo barged it out of the way, and (of course) a certain teleport was misbehaving.

I hope to have some more Adverse Camber finished at some point, too, but before that, I really HAVE to get my Xmas cards finished. I already know I'm going to miss the last post for sending things abroad (...as it's this friday, and I still haven't finished the cards. Heh. ¬_¬), but I'd like to at least have the cards in my possession before Christmas!

"Toccata and Fugue" - WINRAR!

2010-11-25T00:47:00.002Z

Woohoo!

Thus far: 50,179 words (according to the NaNo website, MSWord pegs it as a few less.)

Still not finished, though. XD I'm guesstimating... maybe 150,000 at the end? It'll probably end up like "Screaming Blue Murder", to be honest XD. (Which took me by surprise at 200,000)

And so, ON I GO...

"Toccata and Fugue" (part 3!)

2010-11-19T20:27:00.009Z

Plus! As of today, "Toccata and Fugue" on LiveJournal has a usericon! HURRAH XD We can has butterflies.

"Toccata and Fugue", Chapter 11

2010-11-17T16:49:00.001Z

As well as me announcing I have a new chapter up! This is also an experiment in how things come out on my journal when I use the "Share This" button on LJ.

Chapter 11

"Toccata and Fugue" (part 2)

2010-11-13T16:15:00.005Z

Blurb "Diary Experiment!"

2010-11-11T15:04:00.000Z

All right, THIS is the reason I was getting all antsy about when the FedEx man was FINALLY going to deliver my parcel yesterday (and partly the reason I got off to a poor start with my NaNo): at the start of November, I had a 25% off code for Blurb, and I've been itching to see exactly what quality their books are, so I made a book!

No, it's nothing I'm going to mass-market. XD As it's just my "blog" (well, after a fashion) from University - so it's essentially something nobody in their right mind would be interested in.

The quality IS pretty good! It seems well-bound (I've heard stories of Blurb perfect binding not being quite SO "perfect"), the image-wrap cover is tough and well-printed, and all the inner pages are exactly as I wanted. It's also "bigger than I expected" - ok, so it's exactly the size I selected, at 8x10, I just pictured something smaller in my mind's eye.

Is there a reason for this, aside from "vanity press publishing"* my university diary?

Essentially, yes. I wanted to see what I was getting for what I paid, because I wanted to see if it'd be an option for when I (finally, ha ha yeah right) edit "Thunder Daughter" into something I wouldn't be ashamed to try and self-publish.

I just think that at £33.95 (before the 25% off) for just over 100 pages? And that's with me electing to use a fairly smallish font, Thunder Daughter would undoubtably need a bigger font-size and goodness only knows how many pages it would end up being... It'd have to be pretty special for anyone to want to buy it, and I'm not sure my art/writing is THAT good.

Oh well. I DO still plan to self-publish - sure, I'd love to be a "proper published author", I just don't think I have the time to devote to my hobby. (Or the dedication to hunt out a publisher for what is probably a VERY niche market.)

* is it still classed as "publishing" when you're only ever going to print one, for yourself?

"Toccata and Fugue"

2010-11-11T00:26:00.001Z

The NaNoSaga begins? Aude Sapere #4, "Toccata and Fugue" at Livejournal. (Please, no comments on the spelling of the LJ username. All the ones with "Toccata" spelt correctly were taken XD)

Either visit the main livejournal and navigate at your leisure, or else click on the images to go to chapters one to five:

The Suffolk Fundraising Cycle ride

2010-11-03T13:46:00.001Z

I keep forgetting to post this. Not art, but something to be at least a little bit proud of, anyway! "Team Tina" have been in the hospital "Discover" magazine - we have in fact raised quite a bit more than £1,500, now. (Click the image to enlarge. I'm the turquoise-y blob "hiding" up the far end.)

Silly art!

2010-09-16T23:31:00.003+01:00

Hey, would you look at that. She is pocket-sized.

Celerity
Strangely-proportioned blobby markerwork. The "wings" in the background I planned to finish in Photoshop, buuuut I need more practice with that at the moment! XD

Mirii
More blobby markerwork. XD

Three Chapters!

2010-09-15T19:10:00.004+01:00

...All right, two chapters and one short. It's the same difference!

This has been "mostly written" since the end of July, but because Skywarp is a speshul snowflake with an overblown sense of entitlement, it's taken me this long to get it finished enough to post.
Rasa's little group are still busy slogging their way North to Stolica-Sostine; Slipstream and Mirii have little better to do than "get to know each other a little better". (Or, try and fend off awkward feelings that might get them into trouble.) Wen, on the other hand, in the Nuori-Deuchainn Pit, is beginning to let her true colours show through.

All right, this has been uploaded for a week or so, but I wanted to get another couple of things together to post with it!
It's really not fair to just expect someone to want to jump into the operating theatre after missing such a big chunk of his life - especially when the surgery means you might not be able to go home so easily as you want.

"Study is Overrated"

Poor Pulsar. She should have known that the prospects of getting any study actually DONE while there was a Skywarp in the house were going to be fairly slim... (Just some silly, Mary-Sue-ly fluff! WITH GIANT ROBOTS, woo. XD)

Last post of August

2010-08-30T19:33:00.003+01:00

...and the first proper post for this little blog!

At last, I finished the clock for my wall:

I promise it DOES have all its hands! The shine from the decoupage glue I used to paste the "pebbles" background down means you can't see one of them very well. ¬_¬

See? All three hands! Incidentally, it DOES work - I made it from a clock mechanism (that I've had in my "box of junk" for months) and a circular "pre-stretched" canvas. The numbers are a shade wobbly, but eh. It works!

And lastly:

Chapter six is FINALLY done and uploaded! (Certain characters *cough*Warp*cough* thought it'd be fun if we made a play on it being "Chapter ~~Sex~~ Six" but I nixed that one in the bud.)

Now I need to work on getting that next chapter of Adverse Camber finished. ¬_¬ It'll be November soon, and even though I know I'll never get AC finished before then, I can at least try and get a FEW more chapters out of the way.

"New" Blog

2010-08-22T21:25:00.004+01:00

Sooo I decided maybe now was the time to start USING this blog, as I have it. My last "testing" post was back in April LAST year, after all. XD And my LiveJournal is full of nonsense, so I could use this for "proper" things - or rather, "more notable" things? - like when I upload new art etc.

...I give it a week before I forget about it again. *adds dashboard to homepage so she might remember to use it every once in a while*