UPDATE 2016/06/19: Information on this post is dated. Please refer to the "Formes" page! I told myself I'd be studying tonight. I think the rest I got today will help me with tomorrow, though.
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#DamingTime? Not really, I'm just doing this to make up for the scant updates on this site for the last few months. Some people are aware that I'm trying to trim down a few members of my cast for the umpteenth (read: third) time, and hopefully this will be the last time I have to do this.
Though I would have liked to work on every project at once, I simply do not have the time to work on =everything=, so I decided to just work on what inspires me, before I forget all about a good idea I had. That said, it seems there will be more Schwanengesang and Phiem-related updates over anything else for a good while. Schwanengesang One of the writers for the Schwanengesang script offered to do a few pages, so a few collaborative/guest pages may be likely! At this rate, I suspect the guest pages may be completed before I can begin doing linework for the third page. As the artist in question primarily works traditionally, we eventually decided that I would reline their work, for the sake of keeping the format consistent. Phiem The Ironbane Update allowed me to introduce a bit of Phiem's lore, including the deities Rakha and Ghysar. I created Rakha in the days prior to the update (albeit without a character design.) Ghysar, an antagonist of the Ironbane arc, is a resortment of Ghis, the malevolent force that fuses with and corrupts The Second Ning (of Chain of Curse) to form the planet-destroying monster named Reghis. Ghysar remains to be a deity in Phiem's lore, but newer aspects of the story allow me to touch a little more on Ghysar's background. Although I have not made a proper update for this yet, I believe I should mention that Rakha has an angelic court. Most her angels have pink hair (just as herself,) and equally pink wings. She does, however, have one angel with long, white hair and black wings, instead. This was Ghysar, one of Rakha's most beautiful angels. Her appearance deviated from the norm for a reason -- she was second-in-command to Rakha. Later, down the line, Ghysar asked Rakha for one thing -- she wished to be male instead, reasoning that the greater strength of a male will allow her to protect Seneria better. Rakha granted this request, and Ghysar used this to flirt with the women of Ordale. He would use the powers bestowed to him my Rakha to manipulate his appearance and make himself more attractive. It was at this time that Rakha forbade her angels from consummating relationships with anyone who was not of the court. This did not stop Ghysar, who fathered many children. These descendants of his became the ancestors of the Dil and Naz. Rakha was very displeased at Ghysar's behaviour. She stripped Ghysar's status as one of her angels, and exiled him to Ravan, which was a wasteland at the time. In her anger, Rakha irrevokably removed magical abilities from all of her angels, except for him. Ghysar used this as leverage and urged entire species, including the Adali, to learn of magic, which was forbidden by Rakha. The more people called upon Ghysar and relied on his magic, the more powerful he became. However, Rakha managed to control his influence and limit it to Ravan, thus turning the wasteland into a noxious continent where all its people, flora, and fauna had mutated to unrecognisable forms. The dead whose souls wound up there similarly became mutilated. Rakha was understandably not approving of this, and eventually, she removed Ghysar and his influence from Ravan, allowing Senerians to settle in the area. The only remnants of Ghysar's legacy are the "original peoples" of the continent, who are significantly different from the rest of the planet. From then on, Ghysar sought to destroy any people faithful to Rakha. I intended for Rakha's main colour scheme to be pink, yellow, and silver, while Ghysar's colours would be purple, brown, and black. I initially wanted to assign black to Rakha and white to Ghysar to invoke the "Black is Not Evil" trope. We'll see what will happen... Xin nian kuai le! My CNY is rather lazy, but I'm trying to make myself a bit productive. In particular, this might begin a new era with some of my creative work, most especially Phiem. :)
Schwanengesang I was very frustrated when my original sketches for pages 2 to 4 of Schwanengesang were corrupted. I'm thankful it happened, despite losing what took me 2 weeks to work on, because I'm going to redudantly save composites of my progress from now on. I currently have sketches for page 2 and 3. Fortunately, Peng helped me reconstruct the second page (with just my descriptions of the original composition,) which actually made it look considerably better. Only after finishing around 80% of the revamped second page did I realise that I still had a composite of the original second page lying around in my Recycle Bin. All I salvaged from the original third page (using every non-shady, free PSD recovery tool I could find online) were two panels, which I guess isn't so bad. As soon as I finish a histology worksheet, I'll work on sketching the fourth page (maybe.) The running script for Schwanengesang is also at least 85% complete (that is, I finished transcribing the original text, making some edits for grammar.) Some dialogue may be added or omitted when it is rendered into comic pages, for the sake of clarity. Phiem I think I had some thoughts about Phiem again starting yesterday or the other day. I have a clearer picture of what I want Phiem to me, but it would be too much of a spoiler for me to say it here. I ended up typing it on a Notepad document because I'd forget about it otherwise. The updated lore for Phiem ties in with the lore I have established for the Adali, and I will share it here once I believe the time is right. Understandably, a lot of this lore centers on the roles of Rakha and Ghysar as the deities of Phiem. I also touched briefly on Sky Galah, a relatively new character who may play a potentially critical role in Salvo. Synchronisation It's a given that this site is considerably behind the updates I have on Toyhou.se in many respects. I will not work on adding new character pages and updating blurbs on this site to match the ones on Toyhou.se until I have trimmed down my cast / sold/traded/given away designs belonging to characters I have scrapped. Hopefully it won't take too long until I can finally make a decision. There are only a few things I still need for my stories before I can safely retire from buying adoptables altogether. Those would be one of Raehei's Kamimaru. The only other closed species I cannot make on my own that I still want to obtain are MADoptables' Naipes (I already had one, but I was hoping to get at least another 1 or 2 of the other 4 that were made.) I always struggle with decisions involving letting go of some character designs I accrued over the years. Even if I still love the design, sometimes, the character simply does not click with me anymore. While I get most of my designs for a character I have previously conceived, there are a few designs I obtained simply because I liked them. As a result, I had to create personalities for them out of scratch.
It's no secret that my cast is rather huge (and there are some characters I absolutely cannot give away because they are part of completed stories,) and that's part of my problem. I want to minimise the number of characters I have in total, but for every character I scrap or incubate, I seem to create 2 more! BM is one of those characters whose design was hard for me to let go of. If you read his page, I have a bit of a story about him. Since the last update on OMEN's roster displays that he was excommunicated for violations of OMEN's Code of Conduct (specifically on his drug legalisation stance, which I should update on that profile when I have more time,) I can redesign him and take him out of the incubator, should I decide that he should play a larger role in Salvo. I ended up deleting Xia's page since I didn't have a proper bio for her. It feels odd to keep her in Shin-ya's story if I got rid of her, though. Xia was supposed to symbolise sunshine with her light colour scheme, with Shin-ya symbolising the night. Maybe I can modify parts of the story when I have more motivation to do so, since I forgot my original plans for their conflict. I've also added a progress tracker to the main menu, showing my progress through creative endeavours. It's mostly for my own reference, but it'll also give people an idea of what I plan to do with some of my time! |
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For April 2015 (Casa Macoto) and July 2015 (Viatralles/Vitrialles.) For April (Operation May) and July 2014 (OMEN.) |