Can you remember you cartoon crushes from when you were a kid or a teenager?

Possibly the most tedious thing ever to draw, and they're industry standard, so why do they even need them? They KNOW that's how it's going to be built, do they just need to know that you know how to build it?
At least when I've done these I can hopefully copy-paste them onto other projects in future.

Sorry, just needed to let that out of my system, being trying to finish these all morning but it's hard to focus. Really must get down to it and finish them this afternoon, they need to be sent out tomorrow at the latest.

Okay, back to it then.

If Super Mario Brothers 2 was just a dream...

...why do characters from it (like the Shy Guys and Birdo) appear in later Mario games?

Looking at "DeviantArtSecret" lately, I realise depression is a serious thing and this gives people an anonymous outlet for their emotions, but I'm not sure it helps.

Similarly, inspirational quotes are all well and good, but do they really do much? We all know we should be ourselves and think positively, but do we really know what that means?

So here's an idea:

Inspirational posters... but ones that show useful things you can be doing to help feel positively. Stuff like taking up a hobby, thinking about the future, volunteering for charities, helping your friends, finding their talent, all sorts of stuff that is useful to do and also gives people some direction or just makes them feel better about themselves. Essentially I'm thinking little snappy sound-bites of common sense and positive thinking advice in the form of a poster with aesthetically pleasing visuals made up of bold typography and stylised illustrations.

Would anyone be interested in trying something like that?

Edit: Why is it whenever I have a good idea someone else is also thinking of the same thing? Turns out there's a thread on the Discworld official forums developing ideas for Caroc cards and there may even be official cards coming out from the Discworld Emporium, which is a shame as I'd hoped to pitch the idea to the guys there when I made the cards.

Oh well.


Anyway:

So I'm going to go to the Discworld proper big convention, DWcon, next year, and I was thinking about quite an easy cosplay to do -- Igneous Cutwell the young wizard from "Mort" in his dressing gown (as he was when he answered the door to Princess Keli). Saves buying robes, just need a hat.

Now, one of the things that Cutwell does is fortune telling, and he has a pack of Caroc cards, the Discworld version of Tarot cards, so I was thinking about making my own.

I know that the Caroc deck has four suits: Turtles, Elephants, Wands and Octorgrams, and that it has a major arcana.

Cards that are known from the major arcana are:
Importance of Washing the Hands
Dome of the Sky
Pool of Night
Death
The Star
The Moon
The Sun
The Ruler

...but that is only eight cards out of twenty two.
For the other fourteen cards I was thinking of drawing:
The Witch (Granny Weatherwax)
The Wizzard (yes, with two zeds, and obviously that would be Rincewind)
The Merchant (Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibblah)
The Watchman (or possibly "Justice", Commander Sam Vimes)
The Priest (Brutha from Small Gods)
The Fool (Verance II when he was a jester)
The Beggar (Foul Old Ron)
The Assassin (Lord Downey, head of the assassin's guild, or possibly Mr. Teatime from Hogfather)
The Thief (Here'n'now the world's worst thief)
The Sweeper (Lu Tze)
Fate (Fate)
The Lady (the Lady, possibly with a wheel of fortune reference)
The Lovers (either Carrot and Angua... or possibly Cassanunda and Nanny Ogg depending on how humorous I think that would be)
The Disc (the Discworld itself)

Now, for anyone who knows about Tarot cards or Discworld who thinks there are better choices for the major arcana please leave suggestions. I might consider chaning one of the cards for "The Tower" so I can make a reference to the Unseen University's Tower of Art, and I also like the idea of having The Librarian (who is an orangutan) as a card, but I suppose there's no reason I can't make it a 24 card Major arcana since eight is the magic number of Discworld and 24 divides by eight, then again it might also be nice to have a card with Terry Pratchett himself on with "the creator" or "the writer" on it, and of course there's also Leonard DaQuirm who could perhaps be "the thinker"...

Also, it would be nice to include some characters as the king, queen, knight and knave of each suit, but I'm not sure who would best fit.

Any thoughts?

...and I think I know how I got it.
Sneezing Big Issue Man!
No, really, a Big Issue seller sneezed at me earlier that week.

Anyway

So I went up to Windercomb on Friday... I'll be honest, it's sort of like a slightly grubbier version of my hometown, and no bookshop, what's up with that? but all the event-goers were very welcoming and I got to meet and chat with Rob(Feyd), Amber(Nudge), Faith(FaithfulJewel), Robin(TallGabriel) and... well, David(NarcoCynicalist) didn't actually talk much but he was there... and they were all great, Amber and Rob are really wonderful, Robin has an amazing brain and Faith is pretty much exactly as I imagined her, which I was also glad of, and David was quiet and lurks in corners not eating much, I suspect he may be a vampire.

Anyway, they were all fun, interesting and generally wonderful and we all made a lot of bad puns at eachother, being the nerds we are. I really hope I haven't given them all my cold. Amber also gave me a cool little purple dragon made form polymer clay... but its wing broke on the journey back and I need to superglue it back on I'm still a bit sad about that, I wish I'd brough a proper box or something to put it in it's a lovely little dragon, hopefully it'll fix up alright but I feel bad that she went to all that trouble and I couldn't even get it home without breaking part of it.
I would have liked to stay longer but I just felt sicker and sicker as the weekend went on so I came back this afternoon. I did at least get to see Sir Terry Pratchett in the flesh though, and meet some great people and I generally had a fun time I think, it's a shame the hotel I stayed in was a pub so kind of noisy, and the beds were a bit... soft and uncomfortable if you know what I mean, and people smoke right outside the door (I have a bad reaction to tobacco smoke), so if I go again I think I'll have to book early and get a room at the travelodge where the others were staying, but yes, good people there, especially the couple running the Discworld Emporium itself, from which I bought several souvenirs including a Dwarvish butcher's apron, a dried frog pill tin and some stickers and stamps and such.

One very notably interesting person at the event was Charlie, and elderly gentleman who played the part of an Igor over the course of Firday and Saturday, he had various scars, gave me a stamp that glows under blacklight and showed eveyone his suitcase full of organs in jars, which was nice.

He wasn't the only one in costume either, Rob actually walked into the bar the first time I saw him in a tunic and chain mail, Robin donned an outfit inspired by "Monkey Island" the next day (it was a sort of piratey thing I think) and there were various people dressed as thieves, assassins, barbarians, seamstresses, lords, ladies, old fashioned soldiers, etc.

There was also of course Terry himself, he seemed very approachable... but not quite approachable enough for me to actually approach him, maybe another time, I probably would have given him my cold anyhow.

I unfortunately didn't get to see/meet Stephen Briggs or Bernard the Cunning Artificer, aside from a glimpse of Bernard in the Emporium's back room before I left, and I'm not sure if I will go to the Hogswatch do but I am thinking of going to the big Discworld Convention next year, which will be, well, bigger, with more to do, and might be Terry's last due to his declining health, but I need to think about it a little.

Right, I'm going to go and take some jollop or something, but point being I'm back, and I had fun, sort of, but I'm still sick.

TTYL
- Ross.

Hey guys.

So, off to Somerset for the Discworld Emporium's spring event tomorrow but I'm feeling a bit sick -- sore throat, a bit congested, hopefully it won't get too bad, I'm taking my vitamins and such, should have got some of that anti-sceptic mouth wash but I haven't had time.
I'll be seeing a few people there who I've known online for a few years but have never met in real life, which is the main reason I'm going, so even though I'm feeling a bit ill I don't want to let that spoil the weekend, I'll just have to try my best not to give everyone my germs... assuming it's not hayfever or something, I hope I'm not developing hayfever now...

Anyway, point being I won't be back until Monday so I probably won't be answering messages until Monday/Tuesday (though I've been a bit slow answering them anyway so you may not notice )

See you next week.

Best wishes,
- Ross.

Do you think it's a good idea to write out what characters say in their speech bubbles in the description of a comic on DA?

I just realised, when looking at a Spanish comic and having to translate some phrases on google, that it might make it easier for people who speak other languages to translate what is being said using Google translator if all the things being said in the comic are also written in the description and so can be copy-pasted into the translator. I sometimes feel that because so many people speak English we can be a bit unfair on those who don't by not thinking of these things, especially when we ourselves can get kind of annoyed when we can't read comics in other languages, and of course we also would increase potential audience by making our work more accessible in that way.

What do you think? Is that something I should start doing? and do you think you would do the same for your own comics?

So I went into town today to get some stuff to take with me on a trip to Somerset next weekend -- just basic stuff like extra soap, wet wipes, deodorant, toothpaste, pencils, paper, lactase tablets, you know, the usual. First time I've really been away by myself, I'm going to the Dicworld Emporium's "spring fling" convention, fairly small event for fans of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, I'll be meeting some friends from online there for the first time so wish me luck.

I've also been posting some sketches to my scrapbook lately, check those out if you want to. Sorry again for lack of finished artwork lately.

While I was getting the stuff for my trip I also went to the post office to pick up my last ever package from Rooster Teeth store today.
Why did I have to pick it up?
Because the Rooster Teeth store doesn't let you add VAT and other international customs charges to packages when you order them so I had to pay those charges plus handling fee when I went to collect it.
Why last ever?
Well, aside from the inconvenient charges I have to pay every time I get something from RT store...

The first order I ever got from RT store came in a nice cardboard box with packing around fragile stuff like CD cases, and although other orders have come in envelopes instead all previous orders from Rooster Teeth usually had at least some kind of packing around the CD cases and stuff like that with the exception of when I ordered one DVD on its own and it came in a paper envelope without even any bubblewrap but I figured it was because it was just one thing and the DVD case was just a bit scuffed so it wasn't too bad, but this time I ordered a few DVDs, some CDs and other bits and bobs and all the stuff was just stuck in a big card envelope. I was expecting a proper box since I'd ordered several CDs and DVDs and a few other bits this time, but nope, just a card envelope. Thankfully there wasn't any significant damage to the stuff apart from a slight scuffing on one CD cover and one of the DVD cases was a tad bent but nothing unfixable, but it just seems kind of stupid to send stuff like that between countries in such flimsy packaging.

Not really going to be a problem in future since with the end of the Project Freelancer series I'm not going to be following RvB or Rooster Teeth's other shows anymore, so that's the real reason this is my last package from RT, but I still feel a bit annoyed at the way it was sent.

I also didn't get the Grifball DVD (which is meant to come with the Recollection DVD set), as it was apparently out of stock.
Ah well.

Hopefully when I eventually get my Twokinds books they'll be shipped in something more substantial. At least books don't get extra tax on them... I think.

Anyway

So yeah, that's my rant done.


<sub>Incidentally the reason I never talk about more serious stuff that's happening in the world in these journals is:
1) That's what the news and newspapers are for, this is my personal journal for personal things.
2) I don't like to put people on depressing guilt trips just because something bad is happening in the world, there are always bad things happening and we cope with life by trying not to think about them too much. We give to charities, we help more directly with anything that happens in our area, we get on with our lives.

So just in case anyone's wondering why I haven't mentioned certain events that have happened recently: I've spoken to people I know who they may affect, they're fine, anything else is sad but it's on the news and in the papers or at the very least on a news website somewhere.</sub>


Well, I'd best be off, got some work to get back to.

Have a good weekend, folks.
Have some tea.
TTYL.

P.S. Almost forgot to post this, it's been ages since I originally commented on Otar's journal that had this in [link] completely forgot about it.
Anyway, comment and in my reply I will:

(1) Tell you something I learned about you by looking at your DA page.

(2) Tell you a color you remind me of.

(3) Tell you what element I believe you belong to (e.g. water, fire, air, etc.).

(4) Tell you which one of your OC's is my favorite.

(5) Ask you a question, and you must answer.

(6) Tell you something I like about you or your art.

(7) Give you a nickname.

(8) Tell you what am I doing right now.

(9) Tell you what food/ flavor/smell you remind me of.

(10) Tell you to do this in your journal too, if you haven't already. Apparently. But you don't have to do it if you don't want to.

So every now and then I post my thoughts on films I've seen lately, this is one of those times.

The Amazing Spider-Man
I know a lot of people liked it... but I didn't think it was any better than the previous Spider-Man films. Just like the others great liberties were taken with the story, including unnecessary changes to the characters, missing out great chunks of plot while adding in stuff that was either never in the comics or wasn't in them until much later, and... well, I was disappointed after how much better everyone who'd seen it seemed to think it was.

Mulan
I liked this film but I think many elements of it could have been done better -- the villain and his army of "huns" were somewhat underplayed (and did the huns even invade China? I thought they rampaged over Europe and the Roman Empire), they just didn't have the same... punch as previous Disney villains. I do like Mulan as a character, and the songs were mainly pretty good, but it just lacked something, can't quite put my finger on it, I think it might have been a lot of little things that just added up.

Brave
This one... well there were good and bad things about it. Again, historically kind of questionable, the idea of "how a princes should act" seems more of a medieval Norman concept than anything from Celtic Scotland, and I don't think this was really about a girl proving that she can do anything a boy can do, it was more about teenagers and their relationship with their parents, what is expected of them etc.
I feel like a lot of elements of this film are recycled though -- the queen is turned into a bear, much like the hunter is turned into a bear in "Brother Bear", the princess doesn't want to be treated like a prize to be won, a lot like Jasmine in Aladdin.
The animation was brilliant though, especially the animals, I really love the way the horse is animated and I think he could have been a bit more of a character (but I suppose that was done already in Tangled). One character I do like is the witch: she's not a wicked witch, she did was she was asked to do and she specialises in bear spells, it wasn't her fault that Merida wasn't more specific about what she wanted, and she was reluctant to offer her witchy services to Merida because of having "too many unsatisfied customers" in the past. There's also lots of genuinely funny moments in this film, so overall I think it was a good film but again I think it was kind of lacking and borrowed a lot from previous Disney films instead of trying be its own thing, much like Tangled in that respect.


Anyone else seen those films? Let me know what you thought.

So I noticed the little "Deviant Heart" tag on the top of DA's homepage today...

I'm suspecting that it's an April Fools' Day joke.

It seems like kind of a cruel joke though. I mean, toying with people's hearts for the sake of a prank?
Come on, that's taking it a little too far.

It does remind me though of an idea I had once, that April Fool's Day would be a great day to tell someone you love them if you weren't sure they loved you back, because if they said they didn't love you back you could say "april fool!" and pretend you were joking, but then I thought about it some more and realised that could go horribly wrong if they thought you were joking and they pretended to love you back and then said "april fool", or if they loved you back and were saying they didn't and then were about to say "april fool" and confess that they really did love you but you'd already said "april fool"... and of course it could also just make you look like a jerk, so basically after I'd considered it properly I realised that it was a terrible idea and you should never, ever tell anyone you love them on April Fools' Day.

Anyway

I was considering doing something for April Fools' Day... but I couldn't be bothered, and the only things I could think of were to either pretend to be leaving or to draw a picture of one of my dragons and put a thumbnail on it that said "<insert name> NAKED!" because, well, some of them are usually naked anyway, but both those ideas seemed kind of dumb and liable to create negative backlash, so I figured I'd skip it.

Any of you guys pull any pranks and make an April Fool out of anyone?

Anyway, it's past midnight so I'm going to bed.

Happy April 2nd.

First off, sorry for being slow to reply to messages, e-mails, notes, skype and all forms of communication lately, I'll try to get on top of that.

Also, really sorry I haven't been looking at people's artwork and journals as much either, I've been neglecting Deviant Art in general it seems, I'll try to catch up soon and leave my thoughts on at least some artwork over the course of the week, or possibly next weekend. I do have about eleven thousand messages and other alerts though so I may have to skip a few.

Now, speaking of artwork...

One quick mention, some people may have noticed I've removed or put into storage some of my pictures. Now, some of them were just old art I wasn't happy with anymore but a few I've removed because I'm re-evaluating the way in which I depict certain characters.

I've removed a couple of "sexy" pictures of my dragon girl Helen and my charizard girl Charlotte because... well, I hadn't really intended them to be as "sexy" as they turned out, and when they were being added to favourites folders like "dragon babes" and groups like "sexy dragon anthros" I felt... kind of violated on their behalf. An anthro dragoness striking a confident pose and a charizard girl dipping her feet in some lava as if at a spa were just ideas I had that I put down on paper, things I drew for fun, but I invest emotion in these characters too, apart from which I don't like to think of myself as sexist, so while I may draw them "sexy" I'm not comfortable with making them sexual objects.

Now, I've already by coincidence been gradually making Helen more dragon-like and less humanoid to fit more readily into the urban dragons universe (which, yes, I'm still working on) because I want to include her in that world, not only because she and Dunan make a cute couple but more because her own personal story would add some depth to the story as a whole and add an important alternative perspective to that of some of the other characters, but  Charlotte the charizard is staying an anthro, so I suppose I'll just have to endeavour to depict her more "tastefully", I'm planning an origin story comic for her soon and hopefully that'll help with that.

It's quite possible that I'm being paranoid here, or maybe the feminist* vlogs I've watched made me start thinking more about things like this, maybe it was the vaguely misogynistic comment I got a while ago regarding an picture I drew of an actual flesh and blood female friend of mine, or maybe I just feel a bit "dirty" when I see what collections my artwork ends up in, but that's just how I've come to feel, so I'm going to try to be a little more sensitive to how I depict my female characters from now on.

*(and I mean feminists as in egalitarians, not female supremisists, before anyone starts)

Anyway.
Moving on.

I still owe a LOT of artwork, I think I owe something to pretty much everyone, and I do intend to finish it all but as it piles up it's taking some time, and I'm genuinely sorry that some of it has taken me as long as it has to get done or find time for. A lot of it is down partly to finding the right inspiration and partly down to motivation, I can't seem to get down to drawing much recently. I feel that's going to change as we get into spring though and I'll try to dedicate some of my weekends to getting gift art done. I will also be trying to get some of my own ideas done too though, so maybe for every two gift art pictures I do I'll release some Urban Dragons art or some sketches or fan art or something.

Speaking of Urban Dragons I think I know where some of the story is going, I'm going to start writing some scripts up, get feedback from friends, and see how it goes from there.

Going to try to get a bit more variety in my sketches too, I'll post them mainly in my scraps if you want to see them.


Finally, can anyone recommend me a good video camera? A web cam for vlogs, skype, etc. or a portable camera for taking basic footage, or better yet one that does both.

Shetland pony.

[link]

Doesn't make me want to buy a new phone, but there are so many things about that ad that I love.

Snow!
In March!

There are only two possible explanations for this:

1) The pegasi are angry about the horse meat scandal, so are sending us unseasonable weather.
2) The universe decided to do something improbable for Douglas Adams's birthday.

Seriously though I know it's snowed in March or even April before, though I've never seen it in my lifetime, so to me it's still got a "what on earth?" factor to it. Not just a flurry either, it's settling thick.

At least it waited until after (English) mother's day.

How's the weather where you are?

You forward thinker, you.

Let's not forget though, another forward thinker whose birthday was a few days ago on the 17th. Copernicus was the first to suggest a solar-centric model of the universe, but an even more radical thinker who was born a few years after Nicholas Copernicus's death was a Christian Friar from Naples named Giordano Bruno.

Bruno proposed that the stars were all in fact other suns and that the universe may be infinite, so not only was the Earth not the centre of the universe but it may be nothing special at all, that the universe may be full of other worlds with alien life on them.

This hypothesis ultimately resulted in Bruno being burned alive with a spike through his tongue.

Thankfully, we live in more enlightened times today.
Well... mostly.

Since it's infoced romance day I thought I'd give you all a little run down of how I came to be twenty five and a half years old and have never even had a "first kiss".
This is a littler personal... but, well, something I felt perhaps it was time to share.

When I was in infant school I was friends with a girl called Deby, we drifted apart during Junior school because girls and boys aren't meant to hang out at that age though, I'll come back to her later though. During Junior school I asked out a few girls without really knowing what I was asking them out for and got turned down, but the story really starts more with secondary school.

When you're in secondary school other kids, especially the girls, want to know "who do you fancy?" and when I said "no one" no one would believe me, or they'd think that meant I was gay, so to avoid being called gay (not because there's anything wrong with that, just because I didn't want to get picked on) I faked crushes... and occasionally I faked them to the point I convinced myself they were genuine, but if I'm honest with myself they weren't and even when I talked about celebrity crushes I was lying. See, I was what you might call a "late bloomer", and that lead to me trying to say things I thought someone my age would say and always saying the wrong thing, and I was becoming more and more of a nerd, and getting kind of fat from being bad at sports and my tendency to eat more when feeling down, I was not having any luck with asking girls out.

So back to Deby, she had been placed in different classes to me, so I didn't see her regularly again until we were about fourteen, and she, well, she was an early bloomer, let's just say. I think this time around I genuinely had a crush on her, but she was always with someone else, and when she broke up with someone I'd "give it some time" before I considered asking if she'd be interested in perhaps going out somewhere nice, and then I'd leave it too long and she'd be with someone else. I gave up after a while because, well, it wasn't getting me anywhere.

Second actual crush I had in secondary school that I could say was probably genuine was on a girl called Lucie. How she was someone I thought I had a good chance with, but when I did ask her out she turned me down. I still had feelings for her well into college, I'd even try to subtly test the waters when we met for lunch and stuff to see if she might reconsider us dating without actually directly asking her but nothing ever came of it.

Another girl at the time who I genuinely liked was a girl called Priya, she was way out of my league and so I never even tried to talk to her, but one day at the end of exams she came up and talked to me, it turned out she remembered me from infant school, she'd changed a lot but I hadn't changed at all, but she was with someone by then and in any case I'm fairly sure she would have turned me down either way. I think she's still with that same boyfriend, actually, so obviously he was the right guy for her. We became friends at college for a while, occasionally I see her around town and say "hi", there's no residual feelings on my side though since it was really just a crush so I'm not losing any sleep over the whole thing.

Incidentally, college in the UK isn't the same as in America, it's like the last two years of highschool for American kids, students are aged 16-19 and take more specialised courses like A-levels or B-techs that will take them on to work or university.

Now, in my second year of college I had a friend called Becky who had a friend called Michelle who had a sister called Katrina who was also at college with us. Katrina was creative, artistic, she kept rats, she was maybe not stunning but quite good looking and I really liked spending time with her, but I had the same trouble with Deby in that she would be with someone, break up, I'd leave it too long and she'd be with someone else. Eventually I plucked up the courage to actually ask her out but jut before I did she said she's met this great guy... and so I kept quiet. I think she's still with him, they got engaged even.

So, after that my confidence was shot, there were a few girls I kind of liked in university but I never perused them, I was far too out of shape physically to have any self-confidence in my looks and I didn't consider my personality all that great, I wasn't smart or even particularly responsible, so I gave up.

Finally, I knew I was doomed to stay single forever when I took a course a couple of years ago now to learn how to use Autocad and draw technical drawings and that sort of thing, and the course shared some lectures and lessons with a surveying course as some of the subjects were the same, and that's how I met a guy called Ed and his friend Jenny. Now, Jennifer was a nice girl, she was pretty, she liked Disney movies and she kept being really friendly towards me. She was also a very... huggy person, and she would listen to me talking about stuff and I'd ask something like "am I boring you with this?" and she'd say something like "it's okay, it sounds good in your voice" or something, and, well, it confused me, I wasn't used to this much attention, let alone from a girl, and I just couldn't tell whether she was just being friendly or something more, but she was completely out of my league, and also she has a similar name as my sister (Jenny) which would make a relationship kind of weird, so, well, I chickened out, I actively tried to avoid her and in the end I asked if she and a friend of hers (another girl) were a couple, basically to try to put her off, and that was near the end of that year, I didn't take the second year of the course because I'd got what I went for, and I never saw her again. Shame I didn't see Ed either though, he was a nice guy, I just couldn't handle the whole Jenny situation.

I think this perhaps shows that, if the idea of someone liking me scares me... maybe I wasn't really looking for that kind of relationship after all.
Recently I found out that, as well as "asexuality" (like the opposite of bisexuality, where someone is attracted to neither sex), someone can also be aromantic or anamorous, meaning they don't feel the need to form relationships. Maybe this was like those faked crushes, maybe I felt that because we're always taught that happy-ever-afters need the prince and the princess to fall in love, that I needed to do that to be happy too... and maybe that wasn't true for me.

Other crushes I've had I just haven't perused, some of them have even been on online friends which makes it awkward because of distance and not being able to read their emotions and all that, and I think I've come to the point now where I've accepted that I am likely to remain a bachelor and I think I'm okay with it. I was perfectly happy not having a girlfriend when I was too young to really know what it meant, I think I'm a bit asexual when it comes to, well, the sexual side, and I just don't feel the need to be part of a couple anymore, and 'm not sure if I ever really wanted to be in a couple or whether I just felt I should be. I like to see other people in couples, I like to see people happy with eachother, but I'm fine being on my own -- and I'm not really on my own after all, I have friends, I have family, I don't feel like I'm missing out... except on Valentine's day when you're made to feel like you're doing something wrong if you're not in a couple! but this year I actually didn't feel so bad...

To be perfectly honest I have realised something
I was never really looking for love in that way, I was looking to be accepted, and I was looking for someone to care about and who'd care about me
and I have that, and I need to appreciate that more.

So, there you have it, why I am single and will likely continue to be. I'm not saying I'd never give romance a chance, but I think I'd be okay if I never get the chance again.

Happy some-saint-who-no-one-knows-what-he-did and probably-based-on-a-pagan-fertility-festival-anyway day.

Edit: It seems that Saint Valentine was a Christian martyr who was executed for illegally carrying out Christian marriages in a time when Romans were persecuting Christians. Well there you go.

My sister's birth year, as it happens.

I am working on a Chinese new year picture but it's running a bit behind, I'll hopefully post it later today. Well I didn't get it done that day but here is is, just posted it: [link]

I also think this would be a good time to start making my brief guide to various snake peoples of the world (naga, lamia, moura, etc.) and the differences between them.
Oh, and Simkraf on youtube/minecraft game me an idea for Chinese style snakes and ladders, though I'm not sure how long that would take to make... but an interesting idea and I can think of some interesting ways to do it with perhaps a stepped hill.

Any happy Chinese new year, have a good one.

... but wow, this was beautiful: [link]

So... yeah, thick snow outside.
Got work to get done today but might do something with it tomorrow if it stays and doesn't go hard in the night.
Anyone else get a flurry today?

Some of you who have known or watched me longest will remember that before I started on the "urban dragons" comic idea I was working on a sci-fi-fantasy type written story called "Chronicles of a Modern Dragon".

It was about a girl who finds out that her mother's family are dragons and she must conceal her identity, etc. etc. and it's a world where dragons can take on human forms.

Now, I scrapped that story because I couldn't quite get the plot to work, and the whole shape-shifting thing was starting to seem a bit too magical for my liking, and in the end I scapped the project, although Owen and Nadine, human characters in Urban Dragons, were originally the protagonists of that story. Helen was also going to be in it, with a similar backstory to the one in the chapters I posted, but when I "recycled" the characters into Urban Dragons I made her a dragon and Nadine a human because that's how each of them start their journey.

Anyway

In the paper this week was a review of a book called "Seraphina" by Rachel Hartman, about a girl who is half-dragon. It has many of the same elements as the later versions of Modern Dragons -- shapeshifting dragons, a shaky peace between dragons and humans, wise elders.

Not sure what my point is here other than "nothing's new", and I'm not bitter about the fact that I scrapped my book project, I'm actually glad that someone has made a world like that work, it gives me a bit of hope that if I keep trying I can get Urban Dragons to work.

I also want to see if the book is any good, it sounds like it has a much more serious take on living as a dragon-human hybrid than other stories of similar content.
Has anyone read the book? what did you think of it?