Reboot

My heart feels like it’s going to burst out of my chest at any moment; there’s just so much to do and so much to remember to do right now. I’m excited and anxious and thoughtful all at the same time. My first class of the semester is in three hours or so, and the beginning of a new semester is just as bad as New Year’s for regrets and hopeful glances at the future. It’s a good time for backing up documents, for cleaning my room, for hurriedly completing unfinished work. It’s also a good time to take stock of current projects.

That the school year is a poor time for creative projects has been proven to me over and over again. I can promise that I will dutifully work on a project, but between homework and last-minute get-togethers, my own work tends to suffer. This semester is going to be especially tough, as I’ll be working on my CS capstone on top of the usual craziness.

It’s a safe bet that I will not be trying NaNoWriMo this year.

Here’s where I’m at with my open projects:

Areopagus, Strength of the Fallen, & Spyder, Spyder – All are awaiting revision of first drafts. These are on hold.

Cathy, Queen of Evil - Never made it out of embryonic stage. This project is effectively dead. World-building and character development from this project will be incorporated into Multiversed.

Past, Present and Probable Future – Also awaiting revision of (second?) draft. It is on hold. The main characters are being used in Multiversed. Multiversed occurs after the events of this novel, and thus will have spoilers, so I might discontinue work on this project.

Multiversed – Now has its own project page! Work continues on concept art.

Mark Two - My CS capstone project? TBA.

***

This semester I will be working on Multiversed concept art; Mark Two planning and execution; and The Mad Scientist Wars. Unfortunately, work on Multiversed may lag, since keeping up on the other two is especially important. Finishing homework, getting a job, and retaining sanity is also important. I make no promises in regard to the last item, though.

Toll Booth Ninja part 1

The exam went okay. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but I still didn’t finish. Spent too much time making dumb mistakes involving Bresenham’s Algorithm. *sighs* The next two days will still be difficult and labor-intensive, but at least my brain’s back.

Anyway. Up next is a portion of a story I wrote last semester. It was written as part of a short story workshop, but I’d had the idea for a long time. In fact it’s within the continuity of “Cathy, Queen of Evil.”

Actually, I’m still not sure what to do with the concept of “Cathy.” My art has significantly improved over the last three years, to the point where I could probably start a webcomic and be happy with the way it looks. However, this story made me interested in pulling off “Cathy” in the written word instead. Despite the fact that it’s difficult to pull off a good written superhero story. None of the those I’ve read so far have even come close to being good. I think it can be done, though, and I’m willing to keep trying. Should I ever decide to try this method, I’d probably use a format like a series of short stories, sort of like a collection of comic issues. Since Cathy’s story interacts with those of other supers (Gatekeeper, Pyrobelle, and of course, Toll Booth Ninja), there would be ‘issues’ which follow those characters as well. The idea makes me happy, but again, I realize how hard it is to pull off good superhero prose.

Without further ado, here’s part one of “Toll Booth Ninja.”

QSPage: Fun times, fine wines

Arg. I am exhausted, which I shouldn’t be. It’s Fall Break! I’m back in Chicago! But I’ll be heading to Des Moines again tomorrow, and I don’t have any energy to do more than poke around the internets.

I was hoping to try doing a 24-Hour Comic today, then sleeping it off on the bus. I felt guilty when I didn’t wake up in time, but considering how listless and apathetic I am right now, such a massive undertaking probably would not have been a great idea anyway. Still haven’t made up for all the sleep I lost obsessing over things… *sighs*

Here’s the next Quick Sketch. Actually, it’s a page of them:

Top left: Jeremy, my favorite character from one of my fave webcomics, The Tao of Geek

Top right: the beautiful Angelbetty

Center: the kick-ass Jade Macalla

Bottom left: random guy in GQ ad

Bottom right: Cathy, Queen of Evil

Most successful, I think, is the center image. While the proportions are all messed up, I like the stark contrast of the shading. I should really try to do that again at some point. ^^

The Council of Superhuman Activities

Back in the day (like 2003), I had a blog on Xanga, with the user-name “hawk_iris.”  I’ve just had the site shut down, but as I was archiving the posts on my computer, I came across some items that have been lost or forgotten.  Poetry, doodles, small snippets of wisdom or snapshots of my life…  I was amazed.

Here’s part of a story I was making up as I was growing ever more addicted to superhero comics.  It was imaginatively called “Superhero,” and many roots of “Cathy Queen of Evil” can probably be traced to this origin.  It was abandoned, as you could probably figure out – I knew I wanted to do some story about superheroes, but couldn’t yet figure out a good plot for one.  And now that I’ve read so many comics, I know that the world I outlined in this fragment is too similar to a lot of superhero premises.

Click below to see the story…

Breaking the fourth wall 2006 & 2007 (belated)

These should have been posted last year. As in 2007. Why? Because these are pictures for the project “Breaking the Fourth Wall,” a supposedly annual undertaking in which I draw my characters all together, interacting. It’s supposed to help me visualize my characters, as well as judge how my artwork has changed within a year.

Here’s the first one, made in 2006:

From right to left, the characters are:

• my avatar & evil side; an evil spider (from an unnamed, scrapped story)
• Character-Ashley (from “3PF“)
• a minotaur (from the same unnamed, scrapped story as the spider)
• Mr. Scotese (from “Sing a Song of Scotese” and real life)
• Dominick (from “the Four Friends” and not a stick figure in real life)
• Mr. C (from “Adventures in Spanish 2 with Mr. C” and real life)
• Jessica (from “3PF” and not a fan of Scotese in real life)
• Cathy and the Gatekeeper (from “Cathy Queen of Evil,” though currently in different forms)
• Annabelle (from “My Homeland Chicago“)
• Janet (from “My Homeland Chicago“)

Here’s the “4th Wall” for last year, 2007.  Half of the characters were drawn during the summer; the other half weren’t drawn until 2007 had just expired.  Even though I was drawing them this year (effectively cheating, I feel), I decided to ink them the old way, with the regular Micron pens instead of the brush pens.  So I wasn’t cheating too much.

The characters from right to left are:

• Stick Figure Dominick (“the Four Friends”)
• Annabelle (“My Homeland Chicago,” another early story that got scrapped [that's why she's so sad!])
• Good Cathy/’Angel’ (“Cathy Queen of Evil“)
• Jessica (“3PF“)
• Ashley/my avatar (“3PF“)
• Mr. Scotese (“Sing a Song of Scotese“)
• Evil Spider (unnamed, scrapped story)
• Mr. C (“Adventures in Spanish 2 with Mr. C”)
• Erica (“Areopagus“)
• Kyle (“Areopagus” [he's not blind, but is blindfolded so he won't accidentally see anyone's sins in their eyes])
• Minrei (“Strength of the Fallen“)

Huge difference in art styles, huh?  I can’t wait to see what I come up with later this year!

Emoticon fury

“Cathy, Queen of Evil” is a story idea I’ve had for a webcomic. It would be a purely story comic, closer to the superhero genre than to the one-shots I’ve been doing for the Drake Times-Delphic. The main character Cathy is a supervillainess who was once the celebrated heroine Angel, but whose moral conduct took a sudden turn to evil after an accident caused her to take a long look at her life. Her power is empathy, or the ability to sense and control emotions. Here’s an early sketch of her in her current incarnation (in her earliest form, Cathy had slightly Hispanic looks and was supposed to be a pixellated character).

Cathy’s arch-nemesis is a man called “the Gatekeeper.” Like Cathy, his morality alignment took a drastic turn – though for the better, in his case. He and Cathy were once lovers, drawn together despite their moral differences. Then an accident changed both their lives forever… Here is the Gatekeeper in his first incarnation under that name (at first he was simply called “Good Man,” and had a fairly one-dimensional personality). I still really like his hair, but it’s too complex for me to draw easily. The picture also demonstrates his two abilities: the manipulation of dark energy and the creation/control of portals.

Finally, a current picture of both the Gatekeeper and Cathy. The Gatekeeper is now pretty much bald, and Cathy has a slimmer body and less emphasized boobs. I like drawing curvy women, but I don’t want Cathy to be a clichéd, overly-sexualized superwoman.