Creative Corner

@micahjaguar I can't see myself owning more than a couple of them, but it's nice to have something new to look at! I hope it's not two years until we get another breed again.

This keyboard's space bar isn't very sensitive. I keep looking at the screen and finding that I've typedreallylongstrings of words.

The Bogsneak is perfect to work into my pinkerlocke, but I can't stand the thought of possibly needing to exalt one, not yet anyway.

I don't think this is what they mean by "kill your darlings"!

Guys, I know a few people have wondered what happened to Baldwin's Pearl, and I just found out. O_O When you're on the page to create new items, on the shelf in the background, his pearl is sitting on a cushion. He's still kept it, even after becoming a Bogsnek. That's somehow really precious ;v;

I can't believe it's almost the end of the month and I haven't come back here to talk about writing! Well.....I suppose there's a valid reason for that. Mainly I was running around preparing for my school's Talent Quest and having to set up everything, as well as control the entire sounddesk (I also had an assistant). Thursday was exhausting from setting up, but Friday, oh man, Friday was absolutely exhausting. It went well and I'm super happy that it went well.

Monday was a bit of a grumpy start. Had a hour's worth of sleep and had to order my classmates around to help pack up the stuff from the previous week. Ended up doing a majority of the work, which was rather.....annoying.

As for writing-wise, well, I did start writing and posting chapters to Wattpad of the Nothing to Lose series, Book 1 is called Shattered Childhood! It does deal with some themes not normally talked about, but that's part of the plot, heheh.

Except I have been stuck on writing for Chapter 3. I want that song to work properly to the writing, darn it! Then a friend suggested I write out the plot first for the first book so I could then go back to writing chapter 3. So far, it's worked!

I've been on and off writing a few more bios out for my dragons, and now I'm going to have to incorporate Baldwin's recent breed change into the mix for all of my alchemists >_>

@LadyRowyn
I'm not usually writing in 1st person unless it's roleplay-based, but even then, it's both a pain and a journey of excitement to go through! I hope I don't accidentally skew to 2nd or 3rd person. That'd screw me up as well as the readers. >_> that'd also be something funny to enjoy, but we can't have everything, can we? :P

Aside from that, how have you all been?

@Karika Of course we're friends we just wanna plaaaaay!

Seriously, Light flight is all sad that Ice doesn't want to contest dominance with us. ;__; The dom organizers went to all the other flights too and everyone said NOPE and Light is all aww man what're we gonna do nowww?

Besides coli, that is. Because you can't keep Light flight out of the coli. -_-

Clearly we gotta get a couple of flights to team up against us or something.

@VioletWhirlwind I want to be excited about the new breed but ... no. Slug-lizards.

It's kinda cool that it was a Baldwin scroll, because it made for a different access of gold rush from the other new scrolls. I've converted some of my stockpile of materials into gems by selling a couple of scrolls, so that was nice for me.

But when I made my first scroll, I previewed it on a few dragons and I was just ... no. Not gonna do this to any of my existing dragons. I mean, an ancient demongod that slaughters dozens of dragons, or a war against Plague that kills some of my oldest and strongest warriors is one thing. But you gotta draw the line somewhere.

@micahjaguar Now that the festival's started I'm not sure if I want to do my usual MAKE ALL THE CURRENCY or grind away at the scroll components while the scrolls are still profitable. Baldwin is the most annoying mechanic. -_-

*pats your crazy pie critter* I think he's pretty!

*doesn't buy him because too many dergs already*

@SadariEvenstar He's pretty cute for a Bogsneak. n_n

I hope it's not two years for the next breed, too. Sigh. I'm sure that's why they were looking to hire an artist, though -- so they'd have someone to redraw all the apparel for new breeds. So hopefully that'll speed things up.

@AlphaRaposa Editing is the worst. v_v

@NjordGal Heehee! Don't worry, in a few months Bogsneaks will be going for exalt prices too. :D

@MawkishMuse Oh gosh! I noticed the pearl there but didn't think about the implications until you pointed it out! That's so sweet. I was horrified when I first saw Baldwin without his pearl! Like, even more than by the rest of the transformation. Which was, granted, also pretty horrifying.

@Neroelysium I switched my written roleplay style to 3rd person almost two decades ago, so I rarely slip into first or second anymore. But one funny thing about RP is that I tried to switch to past tense and both myself and my partners have a really hard time not slipping into present tense. RP always feels so immediate.

Glad to hear the Talent Quest went well! \o/ Exciting stuff.

*

So this week. UGH. I feel like I've been totally useless. I spent a lot of time working and re-working the cover for The Moon Etherium and hopefully it'll work because it's what I'm going with. So done with this book. BOOK STAHP. But I still have more bits and bobs that I have to wait on other people for so I can't actually kick out the door and I sooooo want to kick it out the door.

I had done such a good job of not letting "But last book isn't out yet" stop me from working on other books but this week: NOPE. Written maybe 3000 words the entire week. I am trying not to beat myself up over this but it's hard. Doesn't help that I feel stuck on the current scene. x_x

I ordered business cards finally. From MOO.com. Hopefully they will look adorable. I uploaded every piece of art I've done and liked in the last two years so I've got like 70 different designs for a hundred cards, it's pretty funny.

MOO tried to upsell me on a frame for displaying MOO cards and GOSH TOO CUTE. "Arrange up to 20 tiny cards in this frame!" I resisted somehow.

Anyway, my goal for today is Do Laundry and that's about it. I might write the launch post and the update for my website. And maybe make an updated banner for FR.

Other than that, I am disappearing into the coliseum so I don't have to think about anything. -_-

@LadyRowyn

Yay for friends!

Ice does want to battle Light, but we voted on it and we can't afford an all-out-no-rules war against you guys when it's so close to our Gala. We're hoping we can challenge you guys sometime next year instead :3 I think it'd be fun to compete with Light, giving what a powerhouse of a flight you've got there.

You can't keep Ice flight out of the coli either, and I love every minute of it.
I actually made a new exalting record during our profit push last week. I was competing against a friend and managed to level and exalt 1,484 levels in one day. My friend since got over 1,500 but still, I was impressed with myself... My next goal is 2k levels in one day.

*hugs*

You're not useless, you'll get back into the swing of things again. 3k is still a lot of words. And congrats on resisting the business card frame. You'll have to show us some of your cards when your card designs when you get them. I bet they're cute <3

@Karika Good heavens 1484 levels in one day? ! O_O Girl you crazy. :D

Hey dragon writer friends, I have returned.

I've decided what my next major project is going to be:
*drumroll*
...a webcomic.

I'm going to be using an original concept for the story. In a nutshell, it involves three siblings with superpowers trying to live normal lives while the world goes nuts around them.

I'm currently working on developing a basis for the world (mainly: How are superhumans treated here, and why?) and fleshing out the major and minor characters. I have the three siblings pretty solid in terms of personality and motivations, which will of course develop through the course of the story, but I do want to flesh out a few minor characters to add to the story. Namely the director of the big agency, somewhat like SHIELD from the Marvel Comics, who's in charge of protecting the superhumans from those who would want to exploit or kill them.

I'm also, in the technical department, figuring out how I'm going to approach script-writing. I don't know if I'll start with a short-story format and then convert it into a movie-script-style piece of writing, or if I'll jump straight into writing the script with no prior conversion material. I'm also unsure whether I'll draw the pages digitally, traditionally, or both, and if so, if I can use a program that I already have or will I have to buy, like, Clip Studio Paint to more efficiently draw the comics. (I downloaded the Clip Studio trial version to see if it would work for what I want it to do.)

I've gotten advice from other comic writers who say that it's best to slowly build up a reputation on a comic-sharing website like Smackjeeves or Comicfury before opening one's own website, and to also wait a year or so to build up a fanbase before making advertisements. Fortunately domain names aren't expensive - no more than $10/yr - but I want to be able to get comfortable regularly posting comic installments before I go and get my own website.

The comic artists also suggested having a few back-up pages - 4 weeks' worth or so - so that if anything happens that may affect the pace at which I draw new pages, I have enough put aside to upload regularly until whatever IRL event blows over.

If any of you people on here are writing or have written their own comic series, I'd love pointers or any general advice on writing or drawing for a comic format.

@LadyRowyn

Nah, I just like a challenge. :) It's how I started writing so much each day, (though that's fallen through again for now). Once I set a challenge, or someone else challenges me to do something, I tend to go into overdrive. It works better if it's achievable short-term though, because I don't have the focus to stick to things very long, and I burn through my energy quickly when I'm hyped up heh.