NaNoWriMo 2009
Adverse Camber
Robots and aliens and monsters, oh my!

“We are not what we are made of, but what we choose to make of ourselves.”
                                             ~ Wen
( Plotty bumpf )

Sorta kinda bouncing ideas around for what I want to write about this year. I know, I know, it's way early, but I hardly prepped at all last year and it SUUUCKED. So I'm prepping earlier this year and it might NOT suck as much. :)

Thus far I have the following ideas:

• Mirii and Sei? (I'unno, they seem to be my main NaNo pair :P)


• Slipstream (grown up), Celerity and Fred - no Seekers (apart from abstract mentions), because that way I can use the story without worrying too much about copyright-y issues. :)


• Chameleonic aliens - the enemy, omg. These might be who the spider!Kitties were fighting? Or something.


• Invisibility


• Shapeshifting?


• Alien deserts (like Libyan desert) - opportunity for flashbacks! (As in, Seem refuses to cross it.)


• Cities with giant towering skyscrapers


• Car transporters


• Alleyways and sewers and low broken undergroundy levels of cities

Until November (when it all starts off), I'm accepting ideas from people, the weirder the better. Pictures, phrases, words, concepts, whatever.
( The ideas board! )

( Example-y flashback bit? )

( And some DOOODLES (pics under cut) )
Whee.

"Like Clockwork" Forgot to post this yesterday. Doodle with GIANT HANDS OMG. *grumps* Need to decide if he needs wings or anything - supposed to be a very stylised doodle, like something Tora is thinking about, but I'm not sure if I can do that. :P "Stylised" isn't so easy for me, I just want to go OMG UBER-DETAILED ATTEMPT AT QUASI-REALISM all the time. :P Puh. Going to add some real watch parts/cogs, later. They'll be the "flowers" in his hand. Looks "grey" because it IS drawn on grey/thready paper. I hoped it'd look suitably "industrial", but eh. Whatever. (Click to enlarge)

To come: been making progress with my cover. Vectors, watercolour and pencils, and "real media" (cogs) (when they arrive) (grr). Might post pics later.

My art makes my brain hurt, at the moment. *sigh*

Edit: Typical, stupid in-house ElJay code stuffs up and breaks my journal.

( Dull art is dull. (pics under cut) And some ideas, and stuff. )

And there ends your art-dump for today. Dull art is duuuuuull. *grump*

I'm calling this my belated thing-a-day from yesterday. Being on-call often smushes my creativity. Oh well!

These are little things which I'm calling "part of my planning for my second NaNovel", but actually were an excuse to play with a garden designer. I apologise that they're a bit wide, partly for which reason I've put them under a cut (and also because there's nothing worse than a monster huge long China's Great wall of Text that is far tl;dr cropping up on your ElJay-watch page).

( Anyway, without further ado, housens! )

And now, back to editing! WHEE.

Peevish Oops. I wonder what Bor said to him? There'll be a better scan for later, but eh, this is good enough for now. :) Disclaimer: No, I didn't write the quote. It's actually something Siddhartha Buddha said - although I originally thought it was Gandhi, until I re-looked it up. Still. Both appropriate theologians for little Sei, no?

Bwahaha. PRINTY.
( This is a great feeling. )

AT LONG LAST! ''Thunder Daughter'' is finished
Total count: 102,775 words.

And NOW... the editing begins!

PS I haven't uploaded the full ending to the "Thunder Daughter" journal as it's NSFW. I have that available on friends cuts, though. :)

OMG *spazzes out*

A WHOLE YEAR OF LOVELY NANO'ING. Wheeee.

And lo, the NaNovel is almost finished! And-... crikey! It'll be 100,000 words when I'm done, or thereabouts. HOLY CRAP HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?

And now, to edit! EDDEEETT

Sun-Marked River Eel Acrylic ink painted on that wonderful, friendly substrate: sandpaper. Well, it's supposed to look a little like a "here be monsters" sign (eventually), hence it's a bit stylised and... yeah, anyway. RAR. GREEN TONGUE. Click for larger image.

( Why, poor little Sei! Poor, poor Sei... ) What a terrible mess he is in. And what terrible danger...! I can but hope and pray he escapes before Yannis has time to bring his wicked plans to fruition...

I'm sure he'd be terribly grateful to anyone who might rescue him...

Poor little Sei. I wonder how he'll do, spending the rest of his days as a big battery?

( And so... it begins...! )

Unrelated musings: Channel Five has been doing articles on paedophilia on SecondLife, and has managed to shut one "playground" with virtual child porn down so far (hurrah!). But what's this? They find another such "playground" and run into the security staff... who happens to be a furry. *facepalm* I wonder how long before the major big outraged discussion appears throughout furry fandom like that CSI episode caused?

Several attempts later, I finally get the look I want (at least, close to it) for my little Sei:

He looks rather dashing, if nothing else.

...although I wish I'd made him blue, or something, instead, now. *grumble* "Oily, velvet black" is very hard to carry off in real media, and not lose all the details.

Anyway, that's probably going to become one of my ElJay icons, when I get to posting the story. Whee.

I think I'm going to make some Moo Stickers to go along with my other bits and pieces, and I can use my little pics I'm going to use as thunderdaughter's ElJay icons. Hurrah! ART TO COME LATER PEOPLE. :)

Sidenote: Sei is a pain to colour. *grumblerumble*

Sei's Pinboard It started out as his place to put blueprints, partly so they were all in one place and partly so his friends/employers/whoever could peruse them, but I think he got a little sidetracked. The curly squiggles are Kiravai handwriting, and down the very lefthand side under the stick-Mirii going "hurrah!" with a conical flask is Sei going REALLY sidetracked and writing poetry. (Well, trying to. I'm debating ACTUALLY trying to write it as a bit of poetry from him.)

And this is Tsu and her pet. Tsu is one of the "People of the Gleaming Lily" (read: NOT one of the "People of the Stone Mountain", aka the "Aztecs"), and is Mirii's friend, after realising the tall female is lost and needs help. The thing hasn't got a name yet, it's just big and lumpy. LUMPY. (Edit: Oops, messed up my hutmuls)

Wasn't going to post this picture since it's not finished, but eh, I'm quite pleased with the linework so far. Aww, smoochies.

( Picture under cut )

Yes, Sei HAS had a haircut, and Mirii has beads in her hair - may be more obvious when I've coloured it.

In other news, I have a new scanner (woo!). I haven't installed the thing, yet - still haven't taken it out of its box, to be honest - because I have nowhere to put it (anti-woo). My PC desk is only just big enough for the little old scanner I have on it right now (which is only just A4 in size). BUT! I may soon be able to scan things WELL, and (fingers crossed) not have to worry about futzing up the colours to get it to register the more subtle tones, and so on. So yay. :D

NB: I ADORE this CD. Inspires me in a dozen ways.

Mirii with Lotus Drawn and coloured with markers on Bristol, then with vellums for the flower, steam, and hair/feathers/whatever. This is actually my second attempt at getting this pic to work, as the first time I spoiled the paper and had to start over. Thank goodness for lightboxes. Whee.