Hiiii everyone!
In case you don't watch me on deviantART, I have put up the first chapter of "Forever Young" (third in TWC rewrites). http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2460903/1/TWC_3_Forever_Young
Please review! If you've never reviewed before this is where to start, and perhaps even end! This chapter has a scene I'm all shaky about and need some love. :)
Um, yes, I did indeed put most of this up here already if you go back far enough in the archives. So you might've read it. But it's OFFICIALLY DONE NOW! :D
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Darn you, fanfiction!
Why do you not write yourself?!
I swear, once I finally perfect that invention that attaches itself to my head and sucks all my fully-formed fic ideas out and then spits them onto paper, I will be just fine.
I swear, once I finally perfect that invention that attaches itself to my head and sucks all my fully-formed fic ideas out and then spits them onto paper, I will be just fine.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
The echoes in my head
So yesterday I put up a pic at deviantART that I wasn't really entirely happy with and by the end of the day I was so dissatisfied with it and the response it got that I took it down. ^_^;; I guess I just should not have put it up if I was going to do that (although honestly, if I didn't mention it here, no one would've noticed).
I've been really getting ticked off with my drawing lately... I have never really liked the overtly sketchy style of it, but it is very hard for me to properly outline and because of that I pretty much never ink anything (the width of the lines gets ruined when I ink anyway- it makes everything messier).
I'm also frustrated with my inability to properly colour anything. But for some reason I never do much in the way of shading, either. SO everything I put up is just big white space, all empty. At least, it looks that way to me... everything is unfinished, waiting to be coloured, but I almost never go back and finish it.
But you know, the thing that's bothering me the most is just that I can't seem to *draw*. I mean, just... things never look the way I want them to in my head, for one. There's that. Then also I can't draw Beth. Which is weird, I know. My problem is that I can't think of anything for her to do, ever. It's like in my head she only has three expressions and does one or two things ALL THE TIME. She's just... a boring character, it seems like.
I think some of this is telling me that I need to work on other characters. I dno't *have* that many but I should probably branch out a little and draw them. But it's so obnoxious in a way. I think I draw more for other peoples' OCs than I do for mine and the result is that I'm drawing all the time but not showing any improvement at all for Beth. But she's so resistant to my drawing her that I WANT to work on other people's stuff (no one is twisting my arm on that, so believe me, it's not what I'm whining about!).
I also know when I need to get over something and move on, but well... we all have our moments and I'm gonna vent about it here today, then hopefully feel better later. :) I feel a lot better about the picture I put up today, anyway, so at least that's somethin'!
I've been really getting ticked off with my drawing lately... I have never really liked the overtly sketchy style of it, but it is very hard for me to properly outline and because of that I pretty much never ink anything (the width of the lines gets ruined when I ink anyway- it makes everything messier).
I'm also frustrated with my inability to properly colour anything. But for some reason I never do much in the way of shading, either. SO everything I put up is just big white space, all empty. At least, it looks that way to me... everything is unfinished, waiting to be coloured, but I almost never go back and finish it.
But you know, the thing that's bothering me the most is just that I can't seem to *draw*. I mean, just... things never look the way I want them to in my head, for one. There's that. Then also I can't draw Beth. Which is weird, I know. My problem is that I can't think of anything for her to do, ever. It's like in my head she only has three expressions and does one or two things ALL THE TIME. She's just... a boring character, it seems like.
I think some of this is telling me that I need to work on other characters. I dno't *have* that many but I should probably branch out a little and draw them. But it's so obnoxious in a way. I think I draw more for other peoples' OCs than I do for mine and the result is that I'm drawing all the time but not showing any improvement at all for Beth. But she's so resistant to my drawing her that I WANT to work on other people's stuff (no one is twisting my arm on that, so believe me, it's not what I'm whining about!).
I also know when I need to get over something and move on, but well... we all have our moments and I'm gonna vent about it here today, then hopefully feel better later. :) I feel a lot better about the picture I put up today, anyway, so at least that's somethin'!
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Rules for Drawing Beth Webfoot
"Actually, it's more of a guideline than a rule..." --Dr. Peter Venkman
This would probably be more appropriate for my DA account journal, but honestly, I don't want to overspam there. So it goes here instead, and then eventually, I'll put it up over there. :)
These are, I guess, "Guidelines" for a few reasons - first of all, I love seeing people draw different characters in their own styles and I hate to say "do it this way and ONLY THIS WAY". If Beth looks a certain way in your head then I encourage you to draw her that way! However, if you're looking for guidance, here we go. :)
Another reason these aren't rules is becuase half the time *I* don't/can't follow them. :P
But I needed to set some things in stone, because certain things I have just never specified even though I do actually do them on purpose instead of just by mistake. ;P
So, with that in mind... Onward!
1) General features, ie, a colour guide: Beth has brown hair and blue eyes. (I didn't choose those colours because the combination was unusual, btw, she just struck me more as a blue-eyed gal; digression) Specifically, her eyes are a *light* blue, not crazy vibrant light but not deep or dark or "midnight" or anything either. Not like Elijah Wood, but still noticably light. Her hair is not light or dark brown, not strawberry blonde or anything, it's just your average brown. I apparently decided on a whim recently that it has red highlights but I think that's only when she's standing just the right way in the setting sun - general light and sunlight don't make her hair look anything but brown. Her feathers are that cream colour, lighter than Gosalyn's, but not white.
I don't mind if you gave her white feathers, y'all. Half the gift art I've ever received of her has her with white feathers. In fact, before I started drawing when all the art I had of her was by Lar deSouza, his first pic gave her cream feathers so I did that when I started aping his design of her. Then he came back and gave her white feathers. Then he went back and forth. XD So, bottom line - I give her cream, if you want to do what I do give her cream, but honestly... pffft. This is one area where I don't give a rat's behind. ^_^
2) Hairstyle: She wears her hair in a ponytail about 80% of the time. She usually only wears it down for special events, I think. Mostly this is for simplicity's sake. It keeps her hair out of her face, etc.
If you draw her with her hair down, more power to you. :) Again, this is not a hard and fast rule, it's more just how I visualize her.
Her hair is in a low ponytail, tied back at the nape of her neck.
High ponytails look incredibly cute on her though. *shrug* Again, this is something that I get about 50-50 of over the years. I honestly think it's a lot harder to draw a low ponytail so I can totally understand why people like to do the high one.
She has bangs, they're just the tiniest bit long, not enough to be messy but enough to cover her forehead and start to drape towards her eyes. She doesn't part her bangs but lets them fall towards her eyes. Think of it as kind of a shield that lets her avoid eye contact without being obvious that she's doing so.
3) Height and body type: Beth is quite skinny. In the early fics I intend her to be underweight; she eats very badly (like, not much) and is tall for her weight. She's not anorexic by any means, she's just skinny. I do think that once she befriends the Mallards and LP, she starts putting on weight a litlte because she's happier, and she fills out some. She remains tall and thin, though.
Officially her height is supposed to be right smack in between DW and Launchpad - I'm not officially sure what the "head count" is so I can't specify it. I'd like to say a head taller than DW and a half-head shorter than LP, but that's an estimate since I know Darkwing is about 3 1/2 heads tall(?) but I don't know for LP. Therefore, I don't know for Beth, but I usually aim for around 5 heads tall.
This is where I fall into "I am totally lying" city. I have never managed to give her a consistent height, due in part to my general habit of making everyone too tall (I've managed to get Darkwing's proportions right ONCE, everybody, JUST ONCE) and also due to just a general inconsistency. But, the above is what I would like to be true, and if you draw and figure things out by this manner, then there you go. :)Another point I'd like to make: technically, if Beth is underweight, she should look it and be a lot more bony and unattractive about it. I'm not able to go there. I don't want to make her utterly unappealing, so I'll never actually manage to draw her looking underweight. :P The biggest rule to follow is that she is beanpole lean, has more on the hips than she does in the bust, and has a long body. She's got a long torso but long legs, too, so there's not a disporportion effect. She's definitely a small bust size but I suppose one could say she fills out a little in that area when she starts putting on more weight. ;)
4) Physical characteristics: She dislikes wearing clothing that shows much of her skin/feathers, so she almost always wears either long sleeves or 3/4 sleeves (you know, like - to the elbows). This is also why she wears turtlenecks. She owns a lot of loose-fitting shirts but not all of them are, some are more form-fitting. But she never wears anything that shows much of her neck, shoulders, or arms, not because there's anything wrong with them, just becuase she is self-conscious. By the same token she pretty much always wears jeans, not often shorts or even skirts; if she did wear a skirt it would be a long one.
She doesn't always wear shoes, but that's not a hard-and-fast rule (it depends more on whether I feel like I can manage duck feet when I draw her *lol*). She has thin hands and long fingers. Despite her poor eyesight and thick glasses, rather than having squinty eyes like Honker she actually has large, wide eyes which tend to make her look either surprised or worried. When drawing her eyes I usually make the lids go up from the outsides (rather than up from the insides, which is the more femme-fatale kind of look). I also give her eyelashes towards the insides, depending on the angle, since this gives her eyes a more innocent look.
She has a DWD-style bill (rather than a DuckTales one like Launchpad). Her glasses are blue, if you feel like colouring them in.
That's about all I can think of. If there's anything you were curious about that I didn't touch on here, ask away, and I'll add it!
This would probably be more appropriate for my DA account journal, but honestly, I don't want to overspam there. So it goes here instead, and then eventually, I'll put it up over there. :)
These are, I guess, "Guidelines" for a few reasons - first of all, I love seeing people draw different characters in their own styles and I hate to say "do it this way and ONLY THIS WAY". If Beth looks a certain way in your head then I encourage you to draw her that way! However, if you're looking for guidance, here we go. :)
Another reason these aren't rules is becuase half the time *I* don't/can't follow them. :P
But I needed to set some things in stone, because certain things I have just never specified even though I do actually do them on purpose instead of just by mistake. ;P
So, with that in mind... Onward!
1) General features, ie, a colour guide: Beth has brown hair and blue eyes. (I didn't choose those colours because the combination was unusual, btw, she just struck me more as a blue-eyed gal; digression) Specifically, her eyes are a *light* blue, not crazy vibrant light but not deep or dark or "midnight" or anything either. Not like Elijah Wood, but still noticably light. Her hair is not light or dark brown, not strawberry blonde or anything, it's just your average brown. I apparently decided on a whim recently that it has red highlights but I think that's only when she's standing just the right way in the setting sun - general light and sunlight don't make her hair look anything but brown. Her feathers are that cream colour, lighter than Gosalyn's, but not white.
I don't mind if you gave her white feathers, y'all. Half the gift art I've ever received of her has her with white feathers. In fact, before I started drawing when all the art I had of her was by Lar deSouza, his first pic gave her cream feathers so I did that when I started aping his design of her. Then he came back and gave her white feathers. Then he went back and forth. XD So, bottom line - I give her cream, if you want to do what I do give her cream, but honestly... pffft. This is one area where I don't give a rat's behind. ^_^
2) Hairstyle: She wears her hair in a ponytail about 80% of the time. She usually only wears it down for special events, I think. Mostly this is for simplicity's sake. It keeps her hair out of her face, etc.
If you draw her with her hair down, more power to you. :) Again, this is not a hard and fast rule, it's more just how I visualize her.
Her hair is in a low ponytail, tied back at the nape of her neck.
High ponytails look incredibly cute on her though. *shrug* Again, this is something that I get about 50-50 of over the years. I honestly think it's a lot harder to draw a low ponytail so I can totally understand why people like to do the high one.
She has bangs, they're just the tiniest bit long, not enough to be messy but enough to cover her forehead and start to drape towards her eyes. She doesn't part her bangs but lets them fall towards her eyes. Think of it as kind of a shield that lets her avoid eye contact without being obvious that she's doing so.
3) Height and body type: Beth is quite skinny. In the early fics I intend her to be underweight; she eats very badly (like, not much) and is tall for her weight. She's not anorexic by any means, she's just skinny. I do think that once she befriends the Mallards and LP, she starts putting on weight a litlte because she's happier, and she fills out some. She remains tall and thin, though.
Officially her height is supposed to be right smack in between DW and Launchpad - I'm not officially sure what the "head count" is so I can't specify it. I'd like to say a head taller than DW and a half-head shorter than LP, but that's an estimate since I know Darkwing is about 3 1/2 heads tall(?) but I don't know for LP. Therefore, I don't know for Beth, but I usually aim for around 5 heads tall.
This is where I fall into "I am totally lying" city. I have never managed to give her a consistent height, due in part to my general habit of making everyone too tall (I've managed to get Darkwing's proportions right ONCE, everybody, JUST ONCE) and also due to just a general inconsistency. But, the above is what I would like to be true, and if you draw and figure things out by this manner, then there you go. :)Another point I'd like to make: technically, if Beth is underweight, she should look it and be a lot more bony and unattractive about it. I'm not able to go there. I don't want to make her utterly unappealing, so I'll never actually manage to draw her looking underweight. :P The biggest rule to follow is that she is beanpole lean, has more on the hips than she does in the bust, and has a long body. She's got a long torso but long legs, too, so there's not a disporportion effect. She's definitely a small bust size but I suppose one could say she fills out a little in that area when she starts putting on more weight. ;)
4) Physical characteristics: She dislikes wearing clothing that shows much of her skin/feathers, so she almost always wears either long sleeves or 3/4 sleeves (you know, like - to the elbows). This is also why she wears turtlenecks. She owns a lot of loose-fitting shirts but not all of them are, some are more form-fitting. But she never wears anything that shows much of her neck, shoulders, or arms, not because there's anything wrong with them, just becuase she is self-conscious. By the same token she pretty much always wears jeans, not often shorts or even skirts; if she did wear a skirt it would be a long one.
She doesn't always wear shoes, but that's not a hard-and-fast rule (it depends more on whether I feel like I can manage duck feet when I draw her *lol*). She has thin hands and long fingers. Despite her poor eyesight and thick glasses, rather than having squinty eyes like Honker she actually has large, wide eyes which tend to make her look either surprised or worried. When drawing her eyes I usually make the lids go up from the outsides (rather than up from the insides, which is the more femme-fatale kind of look). I also give her eyelashes towards the insides, depending on the angle, since this gives her eyes a more innocent look.
She has a DWD-style bill (rather than a DuckTales one like Launchpad). Her glasses are blue, if you feel like colouring them in.
That's about all I can think of. If there's anything you were curious about that I didn't touch on here, ask away, and I'll add it!
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
When you can't wake up in the morning, 'cause your bed lies vacant at night
So, everyone who actively follows me here is on DeviantART, but there might be some pop-ins from time to time... I dunno... just in case, I'm posting this here too. :)
Basically, there's a "10 Things About Your OC" meme that floats around and resurfaces from time to time. I did one for Beth back in October, and then everyone else did cooler ones for their OCs and I felt inadequate, so I've finally gone back and done a second one. *G* I think the only reason I felt inadequate was because I couldn't think of many things that hadn't already been mentioned in fics (mostly in All About Elizabeth, which is full to the brim of Beth's little quirks and secrets) so I felt like a lot of what I DID include was either too short to be interesting, or else just plain uninteresting.
Either way, I didn't post the original here so I'm gonna rectify that, and throw in my "Round 2" for good measure. This one is, I think, a little more engaging.
The first ten:
1. Despite constantly repeating that since her middle name, Marilynn, has two "n"s and therefore she isn't named after Marilyn Monroe, she actually is. Her parents are both film buffs and named all their children after classic movie stars; Beth is named for Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe.
2. Her birthday is in July. The date has never been specified, but it's sometime in the second half of the month.
3. She thinks math humor is hilarious.
4. She comes from a science and math background but is not at all mechanically-inclined; she gets the equation and formula parts but not the engineering stuff at all. She could probably kick some butt doing chemically-related stuff for Darkwing but he's more gadget-oriented and she is NOT.
5. She has a long, long list of things she's afraid of, many of which are animals/creepy-crawlies (spiders, bugs, monkeys, etc) and the rest of which are experiences. As a friend of mine put it, she's "afraid of everything" and hates to take risks.
6. She will forgive anyone anything if she gets a good enough explanation, no matter how many times a person has done the same thing to her over and over. There is no "last chance" with Beth.
7. She is a decent singer, a bad actress (and a pretty awful liar), and a godawful dancer.
8. She used to wear her hair short as a little girl, but grew it out after she noticed how much her mother enjoyed styling her older sister's hair.
9. She has contacts but dislikes using them, partly because of the way they feel but mostly because she uses her glasses as a kind of safety device to hide behind.
10. She got really into the idea of actually inventing time travel for a little while in the 80s.
Next ten:
11. She will read anything she can get her hands on. She doesn't really have a favourite genre, though in terms of fiction she prefers classical literature if she can get it; she doesn't like standard "Supermarket Checkout" novels but she'll read them if nothing else is around. The only things she won't read are horror, like Stephen King, Dean R. Koontz, Peter Straub, etc.
12. She actually doesn't get a lot of pop culture references, especially from the 70s/early 80s (when she was younger), because her parents didn't let her watch much television. She has since caught up on a few things, but she's still kind of ignorant of a lot of it, so sometimes references will go over her head.
13. One of the things she got into as a kid was Monty Python, although she was unaware of how ribald they sometimes got since she'd only heard their albums and not seen their TV shows. Once she did and she saw some of the racier material, she was a little put off.
14. Related to #13, she's kind of a prude. XD
15. She has really messy handwriting. This has been sort of hinted at in my fics but I've never stated it outright. Especially when she does something in a hurry, you can hardly read it. Drake finds this exasperating since it can slow him down; Launchpad likes to tease her about it.
16. She will never, never, ever be a superhero (or villain for that matter) because she doesn't like being involved in the action. On the rare occasions she has been involved, she's really not enjoyed it. However she will do whatever Darkwing or Launchpad ask her to do, so if one of them asks for her help, she'll provide it.
17. Her relationship with Drake actually gets very complicated since it's almost completely unstated. He does end up liking her, but still gets exasperated with her. However as time goes on he's increasingly fond of her and in the end sort of comes to see her as a sister. A truly exasperating sister he just wants to shake sometimes, but then again, most siblings seem to inspire that kind of thing. *G* But as is said, he never tells Beth he feels this way, so there's always a wall of misunderstanding between them.
18. She was almost entirely unaware of the Supervillains in St. Canard before she met Drake and Launchpad. She wasn't really much aware of Darkwing, either. (Oddly enough she knows all about Gizmoduck.) She knew of Bushroot, the Liquidator, and Negaduck but that was all. Mostly this is because she still doesn't watch much TV and when she reads the news she flips around to what interests her. She was interested in Bushroot's story because she almost joined the botany/biology department at St. Canard U. Liquidator couldn't be avoided after he turned all the water hard, and Negaduck... well, everyone knows Negaduck. She did NOT know much about the Fearsome Five because she was out of the city when they took over, and when she came back she only picked up the basics.
19. The OC she'd get along best with in Darkwing fandom is Ariana McCawber (DisneyPsycho's character). They did meet and hit it off but because of spoilers they don't hang out now.
20. Beth finds it very hard to believe in anything she can't see and explain. I haven't ever thought of religion for her but I suppose if I did, she might be an atheist or most likely an agnostic. As it is she can't believe in magic, ghosts, or unexplainable phenomena and she has a very hard time when confronted with these things.
PS: I've been wanting to do a "Tips for Drawing Beth" post for a while now (which is kind of a joke b/c *I* don't even draw her consistently, lol) so I might do.
Basically, there's a "10 Things About Your OC" meme that floats around and resurfaces from time to time. I did one for Beth back in October, and then everyone else did cooler ones for their OCs and I felt inadequate, so I've finally gone back and done a second one. *G* I think the only reason I felt inadequate was because I couldn't think of many things that hadn't already been mentioned in fics (mostly in All About Elizabeth, which is full to the brim of Beth's little quirks and secrets) so I felt like a lot of what I DID include was either too short to be interesting, or else just plain uninteresting.
Either way, I didn't post the original here so I'm gonna rectify that, and throw in my "Round 2" for good measure. This one is, I think, a little more engaging.
The first ten:
1. Despite constantly repeating that since her middle name, Marilynn, has two "n"s and therefore she isn't named after Marilyn Monroe, she actually is. Her parents are both film buffs and named all their children after classic movie stars; Beth is named for Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe.
2. Her birthday is in July. The date has never been specified, but it's sometime in the second half of the month.
3. She thinks math humor is hilarious.
4. She comes from a science and math background but is not at all mechanically-inclined; she gets the equation and formula parts but not the engineering stuff at all. She could probably kick some butt doing chemically-related stuff for Darkwing but he's more gadget-oriented and she is NOT.
5. She has a long, long list of things she's afraid of, many of which are animals/creepy-crawlies (spiders, bugs, monkeys, etc) and the rest of which are experiences. As a friend of mine put it, she's "afraid of everything" and hates to take risks.
6. She will forgive anyone anything if she gets a good enough explanation, no matter how many times a person has done the same thing to her over and over. There is no "last chance" with Beth.
7. She is a decent singer, a bad actress (and a pretty awful liar), and a godawful dancer.
8. She used to wear her hair short as a little girl, but grew it out after she noticed how much her mother enjoyed styling her older sister's hair.
9. She has contacts but dislikes using them, partly because of the way they feel but mostly because she uses her glasses as a kind of safety device to hide behind.
10. She got really into the idea of actually inventing time travel for a little while in the 80s.
Next ten:
11. She will read anything she can get her hands on. She doesn't really have a favourite genre, though in terms of fiction she prefers classical literature if she can get it; she doesn't like standard "Supermarket Checkout" novels but she'll read them if nothing else is around. The only things she won't read are horror, like Stephen King, Dean R. Koontz, Peter Straub, etc.
12. She actually doesn't get a lot of pop culture references, especially from the 70s/early 80s (when she was younger), because her parents didn't let her watch much television. She has since caught up on a few things, but she's still kind of ignorant of a lot of it, so sometimes references will go over her head.
13. One of the things she got into as a kid was Monty Python, although she was unaware of how ribald they sometimes got since she'd only heard their albums and not seen their TV shows. Once she did and she saw some of the racier material, she was a little put off.
14. Related to #13, she's kind of a prude. XD
15. She has really messy handwriting. This has been sort of hinted at in my fics but I've never stated it outright. Especially when she does something in a hurry, you can hardly read it. Drake finds this exasperating since it can slow him down; Launchpad likes to tease her about it.
16. She will never, never, ever be a superhero (or villain for that matter) because she doesn't like being involved in the action. On the rare occasions she has been involved, she's really not enjoyed it. However she will do whatever Darkwing or Launchpad ask her to do, so if one of them asks for her help, she'll provide it.
17. Her relationship with Drake actually gets very complicated since it's almost completely unstated. He does end up liking her, but still gets exasperated with her. However as time goes on he's increasingly fond of her and in the end sort of comes to see her as a sister. A truly exasperating sister he just wants to shake sometimes, but then again, most siblings seem to inspire that kind of thing. *G* But as is said, he never tells Beth he feels this way, so there's always a wall of misunderstanding between them.
18. She was almost entirely unaware of the Supervillains in St. Canard before she met Drake and Launchpad. She wasn't really much aware of Darkwing, either. (Oddly enough she knows all about Gizmoduck.) She knew of Bushroot, the Liquidator, and Negaduck but that was all. Mostly this is because she still doesn't watch much TV and when she reads the news she flips around to what interests her. She was interested in Bushroot's story because she almost joined the botany/biology department at St. Canard U. Liquidator couldn't be avoided after he turned all the water hard, and Negaduck... well, everyone knows Negaduck. She did NOT know much about the Fearsome Five because she was out of the city when they took over, and when she came back she only picked up the basics.
19. The OC she'd get along best with in Darkwing fandom is Ariana McCawber (DisneyPsycho's character). They did meet and hit it off but because of spoilers they don't hang out now.
20. Beth finds it very hard to believe in anything she can't see and explain. I haven't ever thought of religion for her but I suppose if I did, she might be an atheist or most likely an agnostic. As it is she can't believe in magic, ghosts, or unexplainable phenomena and she has a very hard time when confronted with these things.
PS: I've been wanting to do a "Tips for Drawing Beth" post for a while now (which is kind of a joke b/c *I* don't even draw her consistently, lol) so I might do.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)