Post ten thirteen (I can't count) pictures of your choice that you think are self-expressive. ( Durp. )

I was also going to do the one where you get five words, but then I lost all the words and couldn't be arsed about them. So instead, if you want some words, put "words" in a comment and I'll give you some.

Artslam post here. It is huge.

I also did some fanart for the comic Unity, which you should all read because I say so.

( Misc sketchery. )

Here is your weekly dose of Meccaita, and some random other arts under the cut.

( Cutcutcut. )

I can't be arsed to make an entry requiring thought or intelligence, so here have a collection of old art about Neverland.

( Huge post is huuuuge. )

Well apparently if I don't get this out of my head I won't get to sleep tonight, so . . .

sfemonster started this collaboration project thing in which the goal is to create/assemble a world comprised of all of your creative cliches and most-(over)used devices and make a fake 90's adventure game out of it. (Or a real one, but who has time for that?)

Naturally, this means Neverland. You're not supposed to use pre-made worlds out of it, but let's face it, Neverland is already just a huge mash-up of my favorite cliches and characters. I'm not counting Meccaita for any of this because a) Meccaita was too deliberately crafted, it's impossible to separate what I'm putting in there because I like it and because I think it "should" be there, and b) I'm already doing a huge project with it and I am not quite that masochistic.

So I went through a lot of old neverland-y pictars over the past few days and got my brain running on a few old gears again and man it has been great. The analogy to stretching a long-unused limb is mostly applicable, it just feels really fantastic. Working on the two at once is a good counterbalance, and my brains seems to work best in pairs against itself anyway. (I think this is starting to not make sense so here have some pictures I am really tired.)



It's Neverland in the age of the True Queen, which means there are a lot of "people" around but they are all a) monsters and corpses and b) messed-up in a lot of different ways. Some of this is the Queen's doing, some of it is effigy's. Most of the black iron stuff is effigy's. (Not that it really matters in terms of story, blah blah blah.)



That's the main character, Ssam. He belongs to sfemonster, not me. I want to give him some steampunk-y goggles at some point so he can see things that aren't there. Because they are neat.

It'd start off somewhere near the edge of the forest, he gets plopped in there rather roughly as they always are, and wanders around a little too close to some deadflowers (huge sunflowers with teeth in the middle, they eat anything that comes too close) and meets Tenchi, who warns him away from them and leads him around for a while. Tenchi can provide any needed exposition and directions. He refuses to go near the Queen's palace or the plains, though.

effigy will also show up at semi-random intervals to hurl insults and generally be unhelpful with everything, but she doesn't impede Ssam's progress and may offer (cryptic) advice at times.

Everyone and their moms are doing collages of what they want their world to look like so I did one too, by way of ganking a bunch of icons from basicbases. I know it is trite but anyway it is right here.

At some point there will be a masquerade ball at the palace (he will probably have to acquire a mask for it) and everything will be so wonderfully twisted and wrong. Like The Cell, but with more people, all wandering around all scary and confusing filled with fabric and metal and missing various bits of anatomy and all of their souls and blah blah blah then he gets captured by the Queen and tossed into the dungeon, where he learns from someone who really should be dead by now that one of the walls leads into a room of a huge creepy old house.

The house is on the plains. The plains are ruled by the sun during the day, and if he goes into them he'll collapse from heat exhaustion. Someone drags him back to the house before the sun eats him, though. He'll have to use something to put the sun to sleep before he can cross the plains, but once that's accomplished the house can be entered from either direction (plains or palace)

Neverland is pretty damned hard to get out of and once he's not busy being preoccupied with not dying or being captured or whatever, he'll have to figure a way out. There might end up being more than one way to exit, but regardless only two beings know how to get out: effigy and the Wonderworm. Since effigy has up to this point been spectacularly unhelpful, he tries to find the worm, but the worm has long since stopped giving out answers and holed up somewhere underground to be a mindless beast forever. Trying to wake the worm will probably be a dead end, but then he'd get the goggles so he could see effigy when she does the Cheshire thing and disappears, and somehow get her to get him to the exit.

The exit involves going back to the beginning of Neverland, as the original dreamworld Deadog, which was stolen from the mind of a dying dog. There's a spiral path in the center of the forest you have to be in a certain frame of mind to enter, and as you walk down it you re-live (backwards) the life of that dog. It's pretty bittersweet and I don't want to type it but you get the idea.

It's entirely likely this won't fit in with the rest of the collab stuff, being a rather horrible place with horrible things in it, but the main character slot is pretty non-specific and I can easily replace Ssam with a slightly older Mary. I know Neverland isn't something I'd wish on anyone else's character.

I could babble about this stuff forever. :/

Moar arts.

I'll just link to the artslam post this time because copypasta is ridiculous.

( Two doodles. )

I've been drawing like a furious bastard all week, thanks to joining artslam, a drawing-a-day community focused on Getting Shit Done, like world-building or character design or skill advancement. It's pretty cool. My focus, of course, is Meccaita. Most of this is copy-pasta from the post I just made to artslam, with a couple of non-Meccaita sketches at the very end.

( This post is X-BOX hueg and full of tl;dr. )

Collected enough sketches for an art post: ( I am running out of things to put in this line. )

I am too lazy to reply to everyone individually when I can just make a post to say -- thanks for all your well-wishes, everyone. I seem to be doing better than I'd thought I would. Having family around makes a huuuuuuge difference.

Art posts should resume in a week or two. Downside to living here is, it's crowded, and I'm tetchy about having space to draw in. But I've made a few doodles which will hopefully increase as time goes on.

UHHHH HI guess I haven't made one of those "in real life" posts in a while, but it's getting pretty relevant to everything so: today I leapt on a plane and left the life that had involved a husband, dog, wonderful in-laws, and all that other American Dream bullshit. (I'll be getting the dog back eventually.) I have moved back in with my family to try and make new roads, but for the time being all I can do is look at the road I just stepped off of and bawwwww uncontrollably.

In conclusion, thank you for being my friends, internet. I don't reply as much as I ought to but you guys are pretty great and you get me through hard times. Group hug. C'mon. Group hug.

Sketchdump! ( blah de blah. )

This is mostly unfinished and dumb but I want it off of my to-do list.

Back when the elder gods were still alive, there was a time when the first son of the All-Mother lost his mind and became Rage, and when His first son in turn was driven mad. The Son of Rage transformed into a terrible monster, larger and more wicked than a man, with teeth and claws that put the strongest knives to shame, and a hide that seemed to burn forever. As a monster he was banished from the gods' courts, and ran off into the wilderness where he was not heard from for many years.

When finally he did re-emerge, he was feral and mindless, living only to eat and kill. He had set up in the countryside near a small village, and first ate all of their livestock, and then all of their farmers, and then all of the brave young men they sent to kill him. It seemed that at any moment he would appear in the village square and eat everyone else who remained. The village had called for monster hunters and heroes, but none of them had ever returned. They are hopeless enough that, when a quiet woman they have never seen speaks up and says she can stop the monster for a price, they agree to it. She enters the forest with no weapons or armor, only a loaf of bread and canteen of water. Many villagers shake their heads at this, but no one is in the mood to laugh.

It doesn't take long to find the monster. The smell of death leads her to a small clearing, where he has felled a deer and is tearing into many pieces. She finds a comfortable spot at the edge of the clearing and sits down. The monster, spotting her, roars and growls and makes a show of tearing the deer into a great many pieces. When the woman is uninterested, he moves closer and redoubles his efforts, growling and shaking the prey in a spray of blood that covers her from head to toe. She is still unfazed. Frustrated, the monster walks right up to her and roars, blood and spit and bits of deer and other animals splatting into her face. She winces slightly at the noise, but makes no move other than to wipe away the muck from her eyes.

For hours this continues. The monster tries everything, destroying the deer entirely, breaking and felling several nearby trees, roaring until its throat burns, tearing up the ground around her, throwing meat at her, on and on until it is too exhausted to stand. Panting, the monster lies down next to woman. The woods are remarkably still as she reaches into her pack for the bread and water and tears off a small piece to eat. She tears off another piece and offers it to the monster. He is confused, but eats the bread and seems to regain some of his strength. She offers him the rest of the bread piece by piece, and with each the monster seems to grow smaller and smoother, until the bread is gone and all that is left is a man with deer in his teeth.

Later, after extracting her price from the villagers, she and the tiger-man are wed and spawn a family of tiger-men whose line persists today.

Ear worm!

http://www.manamanadoodoodoodoodoo.com/

Moar drawin's. ( Derpy doo. )

Hey guys, just a heads-up. I guess I've got the social anxiety thing pretty hard right now, 'cuz even the internet is scary. So to you guys who commented at me over the past few weeks, it was very much appreciated and I mean no ill will by not replying. Peace out, brah.

So here is a ton of sketches and things. Also, page 8. ( Stuff. )

Art stuff. ( lolololol. )

Ok srsly, it is dumb that I have to announce this, but I'm (obviously) not working on the comic right now. Or indeed have not been for the past several weeks. The problem seems to be that the only thing keeping any particular creative project from crashing into the ground the minute I come up with it is momentum: as long as I keep doing something productive with it, I don't really have the time to sit back and think about how much it stinks. Of course now that I've had that time with the comic, I can't really even look at it without wanting to throw the computer across the room. So anyway I guess:

THE SHORT VERSION:

Comic on hiatus until I get my head on straight. I mean, I know you knew that already, but maybe by making a Big Announcement of it I can stop worrying about it for now and pick it up when the dust clears.

Very frustrating.