Buffing up!

Yes, it's "take a picture of the drafting table" time again! While this may not be thrilling to you, it's thrilling to me. Precocious work is going along at a nice pace right now and, should I continue with the momentum, I will build quite a nice comic buffer! Nice for me right now is a week. That's not much, really, but considering recent events that's glorious!

Sigh, how I mourn for the days when I was a full month ahead. Of course, those were days in which I scripted the full storylines AHEAD of production, not by the seat of my pants. With a month of scripts, a month of comics is easy to make. Scripting ahead is a blessing, but I am at the mercy of the muse. Right now, the muse is being kind. I'm scripted two weeks ahead and, lo and behold, I can easily produce those strips. If I was good, I would finish hashing out the next month of strips sometime, but who said I was good? (I'll get to it!)

Time sneaks up on you

Time is a nasty monster. No matter how fast you run, it always pursues! You can't outrun it. You can't out maneuver it. It will get you! The only way to survive is build a lead and keep your pace. For a daily comic, that means HAVING A BUFFER!

I came to DC, a place that's not so conducive to working, with a four-day buffer. That's the biggest buffer I've had in a while... and it's disappearing at the speed of time! I gave myself a few days to settle in, but now it's time to take on the next set of strips - especially since Sunday's strip is MASSIVE and will take as much time to do as this entire week of dailies. (Stupid Sundays.)

Bigger problem than a massive Sunday? No script! Can't start catching up if I don't have scripts from which to make comics.

Good news! I finally got the script done! It only took half a week to formulate! That means no more time for pouty writer's block. Time to get some strips in production! Aww, man, that means I have to work now! I miss you, procrastination!

No takebacks! (Or are there?)

It's time for more experiments with a pen! Once again I'm sketching without a net! If I make a mistake, it's there. Nothing can erase ink! Ink owns all!

Ok, fine, I can still photoshop out some screwups - namely the right Max and Roddy, which were the first two sketches done, of course. It takes time to warm up! That's how it works for all of them. On the right is my first pen attempt, with the follow-up on the left. (It's a left-handed thing.) As you can see, just a bit of practice and I did get better. Go me!

I like these sketches because it's always fun to get into the Precocious supporting cast. Scripting is underway for the next big storyline, and these things give everyone a time to shine. (Bonus: I also FINALLY have next week's strips scripted. I cut that awful close.) Now I'm ready to start churning away at the strips, ideally building up a buffer - but there's a big difference between having the next 14 strips SCRIPTED and having them DONE. Motivation, I chose you!

Please?

No time to rest!

I'm in DC with the grandparents until Thursday, and priorities are shifting. I got my comic far enough ahead that I don't have to think about it during this stay. That's great, right? Problem is, in order to get the comic ahead, I had to put off everything else!

I owe a ton of people emails. I need to get back on some message boards and be a good productive member of my webcomic collectives. I need to get Precocious scripts in order for the next few months. Basically, I gotta write a lot. I suck at that! And I have to, y'know, be a family man for a while. Busy week! Oh, and I have a few paintings to finish. (It allows me to blog with pictures!)

Build that buffer!

(Picture shrunk to hopefully hide spoilers.)

I'm getting ready to head back down to DC on Sunday, so I have to make sure my comics are done to cover that stay. This means working the proverbial butt until it falls off. Proverbially.

Things are progressing nicely, with the dailies almost done and Copper Road readied for its inking. The one hold up is the blasted Sunday strip again. I am completely out of ideas! Well, good ideas at least.

I know a few of the dailies I'm going to do in my free-form September, but Sundays have been lacking. I have a Sunday for the NEXT week in my head, but this week I am forced to choose between two rather weak ideas. Forgive me if end up going with one of 'em.

I'm looking forward to this DC trip because I'll have no pressure to get the comic done - and I haven't felt that freedom in a while. The plan is to get my butt scripting, so I can look to September with a little more confidence. I don't even have to script September's strips! October is when the next Precocious story begins, and I want to have that bugger knocked out so I know how to fit it into the grand scheme of things. If I touch on some ideas in the October story, I can use the September strips to remind the readers such themes exist. For example: Autumn really hates Max. That's been covered a grand total of ONCE so far. I either have to reintroduce that topic or scrap it from the October tale. (It's a throwaway gag there, not anything important.)

A few good scripting marathons can really give me a peace of mind, provided they are effective. But first, I gotta get this buffer properly built up. I'll be in a panic the second I get home from DC, as my buffer would be only at two days then, so productivity during the trip is vital.

So much for painting

This trip was supposed to be all about painting. Well, screw that. Let's do everything else!

My comic buffer only went until Saturday, which was fine for my initial plans of coming home, uh, tonight. Obviously, that's not happening. Instead, I'll be heading home on Sunday, which means I have to do strips here in DC. Unfortunately, DC is not the best place to make strips, so they take a bit longer to produce. Thus, painting time goes bye bye.

This was a productive evening, though! (You know it's a productive day when I have no extra sketches to show you in the daily blog.) Aside from sketching out enough strips to justify a mass inking, I also had a breakthrough with the scripting of the next storyline!

This current arc isn't getting much love, so plans to extend it have been scrapped. (I think it'll read a lot better in the archive, when you can burn through them all at once.) Baseball fun ends on the 10th, and then we launch into a special story I whipped up FOR YOU FANS! You guys reminded me that I've been neglectful about some stuff, so this is me coming back to remind you why you read Precocious in the first place.

This next story will run for four weeks, and I'm quite proud of what I have so far. 21 of the 24 scrips are done, and I know what I need to cover with the last three. Yay inspiration!

While I'm talking about the future, I'm hoping to get a bit more varied in presentation after this, going gag-a-day for a week or two between stories. I have some loose plans for the next few months, but there's lots of open space for me to drop the storytelling and go wild!

And somewhere along the line I'm doing some painting. I have commissions, darn it!

One down, four to go

While I flailed away on the others, Moreh's painting went in all the right directions. It is DONE. It is SIGNED. (I took the pic before the signing, as I had yet to paint the border then.) I rarely sign paintings due to the "I need to do more!" complex, but this one fills me with contentment. Is it perfect? Hell no. It is, however, in harmony. Moreh emerging from the shadows looking condescendingly amused fits her character nicely. She's glorious that way.

You know, if you look at the three painting updates, they feature what might be my three favorite characters from Maquette. All of them happen to be the ulterior motive, manipulator types. Moreh is the agent who hasn't met a government figure she can't corrupt. Annelise is the compelling bitch who manages to cross just about everyone's paths during the epic. Sebastian is not as epic as the other two. He's just a gossip with a pathological desire to know about everything around him - but such dysfunction eventually wedges him deep into the story. I just love characters that are so textured. Their flaws may be on display, but there's something about them that makes them at the worst feel like them at their best. These three all cause trouble, but you love that they did it!

I'm going to focus on getting the other two done next, so wish me luck.

Unlucky number... 12?

Production has begun on the parents prequel arc! I have four weeks to get this stuff produced and uploaded to the archives before my buffer runs out! This is my dedication! I could have five weeks of strips to add to the buffer, but I'm sacrificing it all for the good of my INCREDIBLY SHRINKING fan base. By the time March arrives, I doubt I'll have anyone reading at all. THEIR LOSS! I shall remain quietly awesome and all of you can regret life when you realize what you missed.

There has already been one casualty with this arc. No, it's not my sanity. That's long gone. This time it was the unlucky strip #1312. For your viewing pleasure, I present you a sketch of the doomed strip. It's full of deleted scene goodness!

Why was it cut? For one thing, the punchline depends on knowing the coloring of my characters. While color would certainly help connect dots for this arc, that's a boatload of effort for a mere archive booster. If I went with color, I would have to regain my sanity just so I could LOSE IT AGAIN! Color aside, the strip just isn't strong enough to justify its addition. It doesn't add any new plot elements and its deletion has zero impact on the story. In a group of strips more expository than humorous, we don't need any extra clunkers gumming up the works.

Anyway, I now have the first 18 strips scripted - and the last 9 strips scripted. The strips in between? I dunno. I've never been good at the brief connective tissue stuff. I prefer to leisurely play in tangents and let the plot slowly creep back into frame. I hope the missing strips number less than 10, but I have a lot of not-that-interesting stuff to cover in that space.

Update: The full arc has now been scripted! It will run a total of 35 strips, and those strips should manage to offend just about everyone! I have a bad habit of showing my characters at their very worst, don't I? All my early strips make Autumn look like a petty she-demon. Bud has done some pretty petty taunting (as in the first two strips next week). Sky is either shown stressed to her limit or never far from a bottle of wine. (She also threatens violence in future strips!) As for Bud's mom, Sydney... holy cow! There needs to be a note at the top of her strips that reads, "WARNING! This is a DEEPLY sarcastic woman." This is the stuff that *I* find funny, but I fear losing the few readers I have! My soul is DARK. Now no self-respecting syndicate would have me!

I've also started scripting what looks to be the next in-continuity story, which ties in nicely with the parents arc. It starts with a PTA meeting about a bake sale, before quickly devolving into a situation where Bud puts a curse on everyone and the aforementioned Sky violence is threatened. It also introduces a new classmate in Kaitlyn! Awesome! She wasn't supposed to appear for another month or so, but this brief cameo doesn't spoil anything for the future.

Sleeping all day and staying up all night turned out to be a good idea! Not only have I been writing well, but this Federer/Nadal tennis Australian Open final has been unbelievably awesome to watch. I think Federer is an unearthly demon. No human being could be that skilled. Nadal is like a human miraculously putting in constant superhuman effort, but Federer's skill can only come from dark forces. He's like that Lugia in Pokemon Battle Revolution that has infinite PP. He doesn't play with human limitations or rules! I don't trust him!

I did something! REWARD PLEASE.

Our long national nightmare may soon be in order. The final strips of the first arc have been scripted. Drawing can no commence! If I somehow gain superhuman strength, I can have the strip ready to officially launch for the new year! FOUR MONTHS LATE! WOOHOO! The arc will end up 62 strips long, which is frighteningly close to my original goal of 60. If I hadn't added strips 11 and 32 to the script I would have been dead on. (Both are clunky attempts to introduce more aspects of the Precocious world, but I figure it's best to get the clunkers out early when I can get rookie forgiveness.)

Like a jerky boyfriend who just had sex, after this minor triumph, all I want to do is roll over and fall asleep content - totally oblivious that doing someone properly involves satisfying both sides. I can be proud of finally finishing the writing, but without the drawings to go with it the relationship remains unfulfilled.

Tossing that creepy analogy aside like an abused girlfriend's self-esteem, we turn to the sketch! I've been on a roll with sketching this week and I have lots of well-done-if-generic sketches of various characters. Problem is, I'd have to stretch to find a coherent theme needed to justify a post.

Since this post was more of a happy declaration than a sketch analysis, all I wanted to find was a nice companion sketch. At first, I was going with a cheerful and adorable Autumn sketch, but then I found this one of Deirdre. What is often said when someone completes a task? "Good job! You get a cookie." Well, there you go!

This sketch was part of a failed attempt to draw Precocious parents at a dinner party thing. The only one that came out well was a bored Sydney Oven holding a glass of wine. My Sky Et sketches had eye issues and I still can't draw danged Harvey Linkletter right. Deirdre here was also a reject because I felt bad for her. Not only did she get an unflattering outfit (it's her style, but still...) but the sketch was an experiment in drawing her body type. Deidre is more curvy than the rest of the moms, but that's hard to capture at this point. She either ends up with the generic adult share, or I go overboard and chunk her up to Soren levels. Thanks to the miracle of Photoshop, I was able to digitally thin her down at bit. I'm not saying this is her correct size, as it's more of a Lisa Simpson's fish stick thing after Photoshop, but it's good enough. (I don't need to clarify that, do I? Burned on the outside and raw on the inside = balance through extremes.)

The View From the Ivory Tower

This post was supposed to show up yesterday. (In fact, I can leave it with its original time stamp for the 29th if I so desire... which I ended up doing because I forgot to fix the time stamp before hitting the post button. Whoops.) Problem is, I'm stealing the internet! He who lives by pirated wi-fi, dies by pirated wi-fi. No connection meant no posting.

The other delay came from my grandmother and aunt playing against type and shopping lightning fast. These two are grand masters of social shopping. "Talking to the wonderful people in line is half the fun!" said my grandmother. (I'm paraphrasing, of course, but trying to be as accurate as memory will allow.) Thinking they would be gone for hours, I sat down to write an essay and have a long chat with my aunt's partner, a kindred spirit in the anti-shopping mindset. Thinking I had hours to meander around before getting to my point, I launched into a back story for context. Didn't even finish with that before the shoppers were back. How rude! Anyway, by the time I got back to the laptop, wi-fi was dead.

And now... LOTS OF WORDS AND NO PICTURES!

One criticism I am sure to face when I unleash Precocious on the populace will be the justified accusation that it's all just too negative. Another will be that the strip is unbearably elitist. This would be when I giggle.

An artist can't help but project themselves into their work, and Precocious is very much the dark and twisted workings of my head on display. I like my humor like I like my coffee - intensely dark, then corrected with cream and sugar!

My characters are mean, violent, snotty, inconsiderate and foolish. The nice and redeemable characters either have their good natures abused or are treated like an outright enemy! What is wrong with me? People, please! Conflict is funny.

Precocious was created when I was around 11, and the underlying theme remains the same: It's all about classism. Not only do we have clear divides among economic brackets in the elitist-sounding Gemstone Estates, but we have intellectual elitism on display with the children attending the incredibly elitist-sounding Poppinstock Academy. Who are the worst enablers of this? My main characters! They outright ignore those not like them, down to pretending the other side of their classroom doesn't exist!

That would be the intensely dark coffee mentioned before. The cream comes in the form of the treatment. I'm making fun of myself via proxy with this strip. As much as I like to let my pride prop me up, doing so means I miss so much in life. If you take me out to a bar, I'd likely embarrass myself because I've always dismissed bars as being a home for the base elements. No, in reality the bar is just another social gathering place for all types! I think Dana's amazing story of love and happiness can prove I'm a damned fool.

The reason my kids come off as negative is because their attitudes are foolish. Autumn keeps getting her comeuppance for her competitive streak. Bud is decidedly warped because of his tendency to isolate himself. Jacob's desire to be a part of some grand design often ends with him spending energy on pointless endeavors. Tiffany's space cadet nature can also be seen as a consequence of pure self-indulgence. If I had made my children sweeter, that would imply their intellectual isolation was a *good* thing. These kids satirize the faults intellectuals can have. Intelligence is a wonderful thing. Knowledge as a weapon (the tagline of my strip) cuts both ways.

The character of Max is vital to Precocious. He's a saint and, aside from some blind optimism that strays from realism, he has no personality flaws. My official character biography calls him "history's greatest villain." Max is the control character that needs to pop in every so often to confirm that it's *my* kids are whacked. Later on, the other side of the classroom will also contribute. Kaitlyn Hu is fully sane and perceptive; she's the good Bud. Vincent Iddenstein and Yvette Nutely have their quirks, but they're also good at heart - it's Tiffany and Jacob with creamy souls! Quincy Wozwax is overly competitive, like Autumn, but even he's remarkably social with his nerdy world.

Now for the sugar in this equation. While my characters are often seen as irredeemably evil, there's no way a strip like that can persist without suffocating under its own darkness. The main kids *are* redeemable and they do have souls. Their elitism is the tragic flaw that causes their downfall time and time again; not something that will doom them to a lifetime of evil. They talk big and talk bad, but it's more dark humor than pure evil. They are "haters" that bandy about insults and harsh words freely - but it's not so bad because they all understand the rules of the hater's game. As I've always put it, they hug by hitting! They're normal, but this version of normal is skewed into the darkness.

A Calvin and Hobbes strip once had Calvin remarking how a little bit of antagonism could make any boring conversation into something exciting. The final panel had Calvin beaten into the ground, claiming his point was proven. That's what I'm going for!

For this pilot episode, I've done my best to throw in subtle clues to this. Bud remarks that their conflict is the "current" war, implying they do this all the time. The kids spend more time arguing semantics (and writing official documents) than actually fighting, because the challenge in building a grand scheme is more important than the negative fighting. When it's all over, they walk off content, wondering what they should do for fun the next day. In the end, they just wanted a water balloon fight - but they had to set it up in their way. Just like me, they can't tackle a normal task without doing something foolish to turn it into an epic event.

Even so, the redeemable aspects of my main kids might be *too* subtle. This is where Dionne, Suzette and Roddy enter the fray. If I have Max and Kaitlyn on one end, showing the contrast between my kids and well-adjusted people, I need to have some negatives on the other end to prove my children have sweetness and innocence in them as well.

Dionne is wonderful for that. She is fully aware than my kids talk a good game, but could never fully devote themselves to the path of evil, and she is delightfully malicious in exposing it! Dionne plays the evil game better than anyone, and she'll always win.

Suzette is the big red "Do Not Touch" button personified, always a risk to fly off the handle. She may have *small* point in claiming she's a victim of circumstance, but when she gets worked up her fire burns bright and hot. Again, while my kids scream at each other all the time, none can match the fury of Suzette.

Roddy's role as the outsider helps put my kids' quirks into perspective. He is usually right in pointing out how their attitudes and behavior are unhealthy and unkind, but his bitterness over the whole thing constantly makes him look worse. Roddy doesn't understand the "hater" mindset is another way to have fun, so he's eternally frustrated. Roddy is also my concession that this strip is far from normal. His frustration is fully justified, but he'll never be able to win until he understands of the insular bubble created by the Sapphire Lake kids.

I like my coffee as the intense dark roast, with double cream and one sugar. Get it?

Awkwardly painting is not the same as painting awkward

I am still slugging away at my genetic freak characters.



Annelise is coming along well enough. Every single thing in this painting need to be retouched, but that's in line with my earlier description of her character so I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm just happy to present a step with more accurate colors.

She is decidedly less blue for this step, which is a positive. Whenever I use blue for initial sketch, I am inviting disaster. Blue made sense for Dania and the other painting. Blue made NO sense for Annelise. Still, when doing the basic layers I use whatever paint I have at the time, so blue it was! With this painting, I am glad to see the blue almost entirely eradicated. Annelise's compliment color is GREEN. I felt the need to hammer that home by tossing in that bit of background. Green good. Blue bad.

When I abandoned the painting on the easel last night, her eye color was still blue and the one on the right was missing completely. When I woke up, the first thing I saw was a one-eyed chick looking directly at me. Creepy. The eyes have come a long way since, but they're going to look a bit disjointed until I go back to add more color to the face. More flesh tone will anchor them in place - particularly on the recently-added right eye - and the thick black line under her eye will be muted dramatically. When doing these touch-ups, I expect to make her lips a bit fuller as well.

Even with this progress, I may be tabling this painting for a bit. It's all because of that damn necklace. In the story, the necklace holds a great deal of significance. Once Annelise receives it, her character really takes off. And I mean that more literally than figuratively. There's another key item that comes into Annie's possession when she gets the necklace: An ornate jeweled knife.

Since I like where the painting is going, I am going to aim high and include that knife. To do so, it requires me painting a fairly complex pose with her hands - and my record with hands is not stellar. Anyone want to be a hand model for me?



Painting Dania, on the other hand, has been a struggle. It was only in the most recent pass when I finally started to think I could pull it off. Once her lips and the eye on right are pushed back, I think the real Dania will finally shine through.

The implant/crown-thing and dress are still on step one of treatment. Like the lace trimming on the dress? Dania's introduction has her wearing an ill-fitting babydoll/nightgown dress that only emphasizes her physical abnormalities. (Instead of lace the dress was ruffled, but I felt that wouldn't work with the composition.) I'm not going so far as to make it *really* awkward, as that would make the painting suck. I just want to *hint* at the real Dania (and Annelise, for that matter) while making a painting that can stand alone with its quality.

Edit: Because I'm too scared to continue with painting for now, I want to talk about backgrounds.

I've been looking over the paintings and contemplating my decision to depict the women based on events inside the story. If I wanted to be really accurate, I'd match up the backgrounds as well.

For Annelise, there is only one possible moment when she would turn to someone, wearing the necklace, and show off the knife. It would be during her final goodbye after her resignation. She is given the necklace the morning of her departure, along with some important advice on how to use the necklace. Armed with that knowledge, Annelise would return to her boss' office and "borrow" the knife. As she exited the office, she would pass by the original owner of the necklace, stop and briefly flash the knife. This scene will not appear in the story, as it is redundant. We already know the motivations from the necklace scene. We know she went back from the knife because she pulls it out later. Still, the scene does happen, so I can paint it!

OK, so Annelise is in an office space at the time of the pose. The background already started is a textured green. That's a problem, right?

ACTUALLY, I managed to luck the fuck out! You know that office space? It's designed to resemble a forest glade. THE WALLS ARE PAINTED GREEN! Woohoo! Yay for prescient artistic choices! The idea for the forest-themed office was to have the walkways in the office space made of blue carpet to resemble a stream - implying those elite enough to enter the office actually walk on water. Incidentally, this means Annelise is facing southwest for this pose. The northern wall of the office is painted green. The southern side is a progression of windows with potted plants. I love that I know details like this!

For Dania, putting in an accurate background would require a change. The circle thing was meant to hint at the mandala-like discs she creates as part of her "summoning" - I won't bore you with details. Anyway, the scene I am depicting in the Dania painting is one of the few I've actually written out. Here it is:

On first impression, most who meet her find her to be striking—which is not always a compliment. Physically, she was extremely thin, which was only highlighted by her height. In truth, she was no taller than your average woman, but the width was simply not to scale. This disparity was quite apparent today, thanks to her high heels, periwinkle skirt and an ill-fitting sleeveless ruffled tan top. Her outfit provided a stark contrast to the administrator, who was wearing his long official rob, deep blue as a base and embroidered with maroon and gold. Reaching Gar, she stopped abruptly, causing her loose curls to bounce, and stood formally waiting for the administrator to turn from his window, looking like a very polite ghost.

With the angle shown in the painting, Dania's background would be the windows of the hallway. You know, those windows are very doable. Sweet!

This means Dania is facing northwest in the painting. It also means the scene takes place around 5:30-6pm. Heh. If the painting extended farther down, you'd see a loaded clipboard in her right hand resting against her skirt. Another note: When I first conceived of painting my characters, I was going to use this exact scene - but with Gar Strickland as my focus instead. Then I realized painting dudes was not as much fun.

Back to the easel

For some reason, I'm on a painting kick. When this happens, one must not fight it!

These paintings, while still consisting of chicks, makes a new direction that, frankly, scares the bejeebus out of me. I am painting fictional characters. MY fictional characters.

One of my long-term goals in life is to get my act together as a writer. I have stories of all sorts in my head - even in several formats! I have movies, novels, short story collections, graphic novels, plays and TV shows all bouncing about inside my brain. (Oh, and a comic strip, but you might have known that already.) Scariest part: If given the chance, I could tell you everything about them. My problem is that I never learned how to write. In hindsight, it makes sense due to my broken brain - but even with medication the best I can do is write a few pages before I wander off to pace around the room/yard/whatever. My writing folder is filled with documents that are a page and a half (10-point font, single spaced) and often end mid-sentence. How pathetic is that?

I'm a verbal creator. I talk to myself as I pace. I work things out this way. When I sit in front of a computer, the best I can do is throw out whatever I have on the surface-level of my brain and write until something distracts me. (Sometimes, like in this post, I write my distraction and hope the point eventually gets in there.) The problem isn't the same with art, as I am free to get up and bounce around the room as I work. I can flip the canvas/paper, move myself around to work from a different angle or even sprint around the studio to get out excess energy - while keeping my work in the corner of my eye. Writing is...sitting down and just writing. Weird.

Let me tell you that these posts often go through several revisions. (You'll when I *don't* go back to revise because the post is full of typos and makes little sense.) The joy of blogger is that editing doesn't show in the timestamp. Woohoo! Also, blogs tend to favor unfocused rambling. You'll note everything I've written outside of the first four sentences was not something I intended to write. I do this all the time. Only sometimes do I have the proper sense of shame to make me delete the blather.

Anyway! With me and writing, I know my stories inside and out. My tendency is to juggle several fully-formed characters, allowing their personalities to move the plot. This means that, if allowed, I can talk for HOURS on end about some hundred or so characters. Yeah.

My grand piece of writing is my most ambitious: Maquette, a story I call my opera! The characters in the paint sketches below all hail from Maquette. While they will hardly be definitive portraits - as with my painting the style is the main thing - I will do my best to capture what I can of these gals. It's weird to not that the first two characters I decided to take on are both noted for having physical abnormalities. Guess I just like to make things hard for myself.

You can also see more of how my paintings develop, as each painting is at a different stage. The first has had three passes to start figuring out the details. The second is on its second pass, starting to tweak the weakness from the initial sketch. It's still raw as hell and makes me cringe to share it. The last is the very first pass, showing how awkward and awful these things can look when I start 'em. You know what, I'm not going to show that last painting! It's not looking good, it may be scrapped, the character isn't a physical freak like the other two and - most importantly - showing that this character exists would be a *major* spoiler for my story. Those close to me already know the gal, but I have to think of future readers here.



This is Annelise Ellen Rose. Yes, she *does* introduce herself to people using her full name. In her defense, the Rose surname in insanely common in her area. She lives in the city of Rostelmain, in the territory of the same name. Rostelmain's name came from the merging of three towns: Tellersburg, Main Crossing and Roseton. A third of the territory is called Roseland. If you're a Rose - heh, A. Rose - you've got to do *something* to be memorable!

As noted several months ago on this blog (I'm sure you remember) I always want to put librarians into my stories. Annelise is my librarian on steroids - she runs the Maquette Archives, home of just about every bit of information the land has to offer.

Increasing the pressure: She's one of my all-time favorite characters. The woman is a force of nature. She is aggressive, ambitious and unrelenting in her pursuits - with a sharp sense of humor and no patience for weakness. When describing her personality, most characters would liken her to a wild animal. One would think a fox would appropriate, given that she's a striking redhead - but the general consensus is that a more vicious class of wild dog is needed. You know, she's a bitch. I love her. Underneath her tough exterior, she's... well, she's still a bitch - But a complex and deep character nonetheless!

Annelise is loosely modeled on Julianne Moore with a heavy dose of Kate Walsh. (I imagine Annelise speaking with the same cadence as Walsh's Addison on Grey's Anatomy.) As for the aforementioned physical abnormalities, the common description of Annelise is that every physical attribute of hers is out of proportion - but since it's all out of whack it somehow evens out! She has a slightly larger frame than normal women - just enough to be noticeable - with a strong bone structure supporting her. Her shoulders and hips are too broad. Her arms are more muscular than they should be. Her face is slightly out of sync, but not in a way one can explain. She wears giant, clunky corrective shoes that throws off her gait. Still, what could be a Frankenstein's monster thing still leaves her fairly attractive, if somewhat awkward. She has big honkin' glasses, yet they seem to be the key to make everything come together and look normal. This type of description gets imaginations going when put in novels. When I put MYSELF on the line to depict it? Fuck me, I'll do the best I can.



Next is Dania Koren, director of the Wizards School. (Yes, my characters are magical. Shut up!) In my world, on of the great saints, Charlotte Maquin, is quoted in the scripture as saying the more power a human has, the less human they become. The more ability a person has, the less humanity they exhibit. Dania seems to be a living example of this.

To an outsider, one would not believe Dania is a real person. She looks like a doll; with oversized eyes, porcelain skin and a disturbingly-thin frame. To add to the artificial look, she has a cranial implant that wraps around her hairline, looking somewhat like a permanent (if modest) crown bolted in place. She talks in a soft voice, almost in monotone. She *never* shows emotion, and her huge eyes seem to look right through you. It's like she has so much magic inside her that no room remains for humanity. And yet, she's loved by most around her. What gives?

Just because it's muted, doesn't mean her personality isn't there. Once people get to know her, they are no longer frustrated with her flat nature. Instead, they savor every hint of personality Dania can offer. Eliciting a slight smile is a victory. If she raises her voice at you, it's terrifying. The day she confirmed her place as a beloved figure was the day she embraced the students' nickname of her - "The Ice Queen" - and showed up to work with her white hair dyed ice blue. On her most recent birthday (she's 44) a large group of students dyed their hair to match. (I should note that in my stories there is a genetic quirk with some mages that causes some or all of their hair to grow in without pigment - so students often dye their "silvered" patches various wild colors.)

I really struggled to find a model for Dania. Trial and error has shown that launching into painting without *some* picture reference tends to end in horror. The final painting might not look at all like the picture - in fact it shouldn't, since the work has to be my own - but it's nice to have a reference for proportions. To find my model, I scoured the internet for over an hour. I looked for skinny models. I looked for porcelain dolls. I looked at anime characters, since Dania definitely has an anime look. No good. Nothing had Dania's signature ringlets hair style.

And then I smacked myself in the face. You know whose hair is similar to the style I want for Dania? NUMBER SIX FROM BATTLESTAR GALACTICA! You know, the show that has consumed my life for the past few weeks. Shesh, Chrispy! The model was right in front of me the whole time.

Damn, I can yammer on. I know I've said it before, but blogging is like having a conversation without have the other person there to tell you to shut the fuck up because no one cares.