November 05. 2004 23:56

"Artistic achievements"

I forgot about writing yesterday until it was a bit too late to start. I almost forgot to do my homework, too. But even though I didn't write late into night, I started drawing and did that so that I didn't get enough sleep...

Ravie teased me yesterday about getting too drunk. Like he hasn't done it himself... The fact that I talk about things like that online just makes it worth to tease for, does it? Nah, everyone gets too drunk sometimes. Well, almost everyone. I did feel a bit more worried about it today when I went to school, because I could imagine that to mean "losing face" for the Japanese, but what's done is done and no helping it. Most people made fools of themselves by drinking too much during the festival, so I hope I'm not judged by it too much. (And I can always hope the "nothing done in a free-time gathering with workmates will affect you in work-time" rule goes for this one too.)

Anyway, on Thursday I tried to work on that NaNoWriMo graphic novel thing I'm doing, but somehow I lost all the inspiration during the weekend. I guess I spent too much time with the computer and lost the feeling. That's a shame, because I was so into doing it when it wasn't November yet, and now that it was and I had a whole day free, I couldn't bring myself to write more than two lines of script. Most of the time I spent searching names for the characters, and then writing html files with random facts of each of them. Today, thanks to school and an extremely beautiful evening sun, I was able to get back going, so now I have lots of script ready. (I should be doing my animation storyboard, to tell you the truth, but I thought this was a better use for the inspiration.) I might write some more now that I'm on it, but what I really need to do now is some page planning. I'm just a bit worried about sleeping (and that animation storyboard that should be done soon), and I really feel like writing more, so I'm not sure what I'm gonna do.

After failing with the NaNo yesterday I remembered that I had homework to do again. It's so strange to have homework again, we generally had nothing in Digital Arts in Turku O_o Though it was even stranger not to have anything when I started there, it's pretty hard to get back to doing it now that I have some. (Was that an understandable sentence?) I did some Japanese and worried about my unarranged grammar notes and then found out some (interesting) facts about Finland for an English presentation. (Though for some reason we never had English today...) In some way I like doing homework, it's at least something that's organized and has a point to it. All these big projects are so big they keep falling apart in my head, so I can't concentrate. What I'd actually need is a different "dimension" for each one so I can concentrate on one at a time until it's done...

After I got the homework done I remebered this, but like I said, I didn't feel like writing into the night. But I did take up my sketchbook. I wasn't supposed to do anything with that, either, but then I started drawing and got an inspiration and ended up colouring as well. I printed out some old drawings from my website a while ago so I could colour them with the markers, but I never got into inking them, because I can only use a light desk at school. Yesterday I felt like doing something, though, so I re-drew one of the images on clean paper so I could ink it there. It was really strange, re-drawing an old image. There were some points I was able to do better, though, so I like the final thing. Today I took a photocopy of it and coloured that with the markers, because I wasn't sure I wanted to mess up the original. Someone once told me that photocopy trick, though I think a photocopy looks a lot worse than the original drawing. Wanted to try it, though, and it worked out ok. It was supposed to become my new layout for the Labelled domain when I first drew the sketch, but I kinda like my current layout so I'm not sure if I'm gonna change it.

The other two drawings I've done during yesterday and today are layout pics, too. They're for the Yumegokochi site, my main site. I'm still not really fond of that baby-blue layout, though I think it's served its purpose. (Especially now it looks nasty because the laptop screen makes the colours brighter.) I've been thinking about doing a drawing for the top bar so I could change the layout without re-doing the whole site, but ever since now it's been too much of a bother to do a colour image. Computer colouring never was my thing, even though I love what people can do with it. Physical colouring is much easier for me and I somehow like the "live" feeling that physical media leaves. I think Open Canvas or Painter might be the programs I'm looking for for computer colouring, but I haven't been able to try them with a tablet yet, so I can't know for sure. Anyway, markers took all my troubles away and now I can make as many easy and neat colour images as I like ^_^

So, I did a couple of top bar images. The first was a boy and a girl sitting on grass, something I've been thinking about ever since I wanted to change the layout. (Well, the grass and the girl, that is, the boy came in extra.) You can't see their faces, but by the clothes you can see they're very much inspired by Van and Hitomi from Escaflowne :P I just wanted to do a red shirt for some reason. After I finished that I noticed the "heads above the picture" thing was kinda nice and wanted to do some more. I started thinking about the fall leaves in the trees and thought I'd finally make that seasonal layout pic I've always wanted to do. So I drew a girl in a kimono and a boy/girl (you can't see and I haven't really decided) in blue Japanese style clothes and it came out really nice. I especially like the girl's kimono, I spent 1/4 of a paper planning the pattern. And the blue in the other person's clothes is really pretty and goes well with the leaves in the background. And I didn't mess it all up with the markers! (They're sometimes difficult to use because they're so wet.) The only things I'm not totally satisfied with are the girl's hair and the tree trunk. Both are too dark. And the sky is a bit off-hue, but that's okay, I can work that out with the computer. Again, I love my markers! ^___^

Yah, that's it this time. Just before midnight. Hmm... I really feel like working some more on some of my projects, but I'm really staring to get sleepy... Aargh, why are there so many things I want to do at the same time!!