Hello, and welcome to the Library! In recent years I've started branching out to try my hand at the various creative contests and spotlights Neo offers, so I decided to create this page as a general directory for the stuff I've made, drawn or written that TNT's seen fit to publish. It's a little empty currently, but will be updated pretty often... as long as I continue to have reasonable luck. x3
You'll definitely be seeing a lot of old, cruddy art here. While I'm not new at drawing, I don't do it often, and it probably shows with some of these pieces. Newer stuff is toward the bottom.
NOTE: Unfortunately, links to individual Neopian Times pages and stories don't seem to work. All of my Neopian Times entries can be accessed by punching in my username here or by clicking the Neopian Times trophy on my userlookup--but unfortunately I cannot link to them directly. I apologize for this inconvenience.
Vinqala the Jubjub has decided she wants only one thing for Christmas: a new owner--and she'll do anything she can to get one. Unfortunately, she's got to get the old one off her back first.
My first NT story! Published in the
Christmas issue of 2010. I don't usually do stories in a diary-type structure, so I'm not sure how well I managed
it, but it was loads of fun to write, and got a pretty good reader response. I first envisioned it as a
slightly-snarky subversion of "sad pound pet" type stories - a theme I'll probably revisit at some point.
A Brightvalian writer prepares for one of the biggest scholarly undertakings of the century - but it looks like it's not going to go as smoothly as he'd hoped.
I cooked this up especially for issue 500, as a tie-in for a much large series that's currently sitting around in the depths of my Writing folder. So if you're fond of Micah, you may be seeing more of him eventually!
To be honest, I was worried this wouldn't be a high-quality piece - I planned the whole
thing in about 5 minutes, and only worked on it for a few hours total. But it was published in a high-profile
issue and seems to have gotten a decent reader response, so perhaps I'm my own worst critic. Decide for yourself!
One night at work, the opening line for this piece popped into my head--and with that, the story went from first concept to final draft in 48 hours.
I have always loved Champions of Meridell and Battle for Meridell, and reading through them as a kid on a dated, buggy computer, one moment always struck me above all others. This is my humble attempt to capture that moment.
February 26, 2010
So I decided
to keep it up.
July 30th, 2010
Okay, not exactly my best work.
But it was still good enough to secure a second-place spot in the species division. I had better luck on my next
try, when I decided to try harder on quality AND give another of my pets a shot at glory...
and
Okay, Katenelle's entry wasn't very good, but it was good enough for silver. The other I'm much
more pleased with - I'm not a fabulous artist, but it was good work by my standards. The voters seemed to agree -
this earned Wezsley's second gold trophy. But now, I wanted to try something a little different:
February 4th, 2011
This is a real hybrid of traditional and digital. I digitally drew, then printed a fuzzy, crayon-like outline; colored it with pencils; then scanned and enhanced the coloring and added a background in Photoplus 9.0. I was actually rather happy with the storybook feel and the way the pencils meshed so well with the photoplus filters, but ultimately, it was only good enough for second place.
Side note; this was actually a remake of
Wezsley's pet spotlight picture below, which - at the time - hadn't been accepted and which I considered a failed
attempt.
This one was fully digital. I stuck a fairly-normal Wezsley inside a faux-painting style landscape; I was
going for a sort of surrealism. I'm not sure how well I succeeded, but it was good enough for another
gold.
Then I got bored:
I was getting a bit tired of drawing Wezsley so darned cheery all the time--prancing through painted fields, enjoying coffee, sitting next to a window, etc.; cute images, to be sure, but it was getting boring. So instead, this time I decided to draw him on the verge of a meltdown. Just picture Auroraflare screaming in the background and the image is complete.
I took some cues from a couple of experts on this one; it involved more steps than usual, but I think the
result was worthwhile. (Hand-sketched, scanned, resized/adjusted, printed off in blue, hand-inked, then
re-scanned and colored.) The lineart is a bit choppy due to inexperience and a dying Sakura Micron, and it looks
more cartoony than my usual--but also more fluid and believable, so I'm happy with the result. I was a bit lazy with the advertising this time around, but still ended up coming in at silver.
I didn't enter the BC again for quite some time, because it's easy to start feeling drained of inspiration when drawing such a simplistic character. However, being up until about 4am and playing way too much Mission 53 finally made something click, and I set out to do a 90's platformer pastiche.
However, this is actually a revised version of the image. The original version ended up rejected several times and I was told this was most likely because Wezsley himself was too small; I had to resprite him much larger. Personally, I dislike the result, and thought it looked a lot more natural when he was half this size. Still, this entry made a lot of people smile, and got Wezsley his fourth Gold!
Click and drag to see original version:
My first pet spotlight
entry + win. Katenelle wasn't very old at the time, but she had already captured my interest as a character -
enough for me to compose a short story about her. Not my best writing, and rather hideous art to boot, but I have
fond memories of getting that winner's neomail.
My second time in the pet spotlight. I thought for quite some time that Wezsley's entry had been rejected
for it's general meanness, but much to my surprise, it was suddenly accepted on Chia Day 2011. Woo-hoo! This is
also the first time Wezsley's oddball backstory and character shtick was really put up for all the world to
see--I was happy to find out that people seemed to like it.
I actually debated whether to put this one up here, but what the heck. Before switching to Breakingchains as my main, I entered from my then-main, now-side, Chibiplutopowerlives. I actually really like this piece; it got 2nd place, probably for not being neopets-themed enough, but I'm dearly fond of it. There's not much to say that's not in the image, except: good grief, you can find some AWESOME beads at Hobby Lobby.
One of these days I'm
going to put it on some stronger wire and wear it outside. Just 'cause.
I adored this sculpture. Unfortunately, it was way beyond my skill level - the finished product was unbalanced, showed exposed wire and foil supports, and was continually becoming detached from the base. I'm currently experimenting with various glues to try to keep it together, because I'd hate to leave it in a rattling box in the closet for the next ten years. (GORILLA GLUE HAS FAILED MEEEEE! *weeps*)
For now, folks, that's all she wrote. *brick'd* If you'd like to see more in the future, watch this space!
...And if you have comments on my work, or better yet, raging criticism, I need all the help I can get! (Especially with that piece. You know, that piece you totally hated.) So by all means, feel free to drop me a neomail if you have comments, questions, or threats. Thanks!
