Month: April 2014

Character Survey: Vahaadi

1. People don’t behave the same way all the time. In fact, they generally have a mask for every social group — friends, family, business. Sometimes they have a different mask for different groups of friends. How does your character act around different people? How does their personality shift and change?
Vahaadi acts very differently depending on who he’s around. To his friends, he’s playful and casual. He usually manages to maintain a suave, bad-boy air, but at the smallest show of affection he’ll melt. His gaze is warm, his touches are petting, and he tends to be more expressive in his body language. People he doesn’t like get treated with a passive-aggressive snarkiness and even cruelty. He uses touch to harass and subtly threaten. Around men he’s attracted to, he’s submissive, coaxing and serious. Smiles are rare and eye contact is carefully calculated. The worst state to see him in is when he’s strung out on aphrodisiacs, which is his go-to coping method for depression and loneliness. He becomes very sexually solicitous (though not aggressive, since he’s found he gets more attention from playing the lapcat), slinky and raunchy. He usually only lets himself be seen this way by whoremongers and clients. When caught in this state by people he knows, he’s deeply humiliated.

2. Your character has been brought to a party and promptly ditched. They don’t have a ride back home. How does this work? How comfortable are they around all of these strangers? Do they interact?

Freaking Took.

OK, I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: Took is really easy to write, but really hard to draw. I thought I’d figured him out in these pics:

tookstudy tooktraditional

But I almost think he’s too cute??? I dunno. I was thinking a longer face might be better, since it would make him look more like Lanthriel, but Lanthriel gets his “longness” from his mom, so…uh. I’m not sure.  I just don’t want him to be cute and generic looking. So here are some sketches and notes! Also, noses. The weird expression in the bottom right was me trying to explore how extreme his faces are.  I think this might be a little too much but it’s funny. XD

 

tookmuses1

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I don’t know what’s happening in this picture but I think Took is at work? He must work with other sorcerers and engineers occasionally.  I didn’t really care to figure out what he was doing so I just left the first one as body boxes.  The dialogue came out of nowhere.

tookmuses2

P.S. The Took drawing for your birthday is still in the works! Right now your birthday Took has the long face look pictured above. It’s not quite as angular-cutesy as the face I gave him in the traditional study and the 2011 expression study, but he does look a little more…suave, with the long face? For what that’s worth? It used to be important to me that he looked like a teenager, but that’s not a priority to me, anymore…especially now that I’m much closer to his age (AHAHAHAHA weird thought).

I think I’d like him to have a sort of Disney villain look to him, where he’s not generically attractive but his design *works.* My problem now is that I don’t know how to incorporate the elements I’ve noticed Disney uses to “uglify” their villains (extreme cheek bones, long chins, bags under the eyes, long upper lips) without him looking WAY too old. Quandary >/

Andrayia’s Crush

Evie | My characters rarely surprise me much anymore, but Andrayia definitely got an eyebrow raised when she confessed to me she’s got a crush on Vahaadi but she doesn’t want anyone to know. She’s never met him but she’s seen drawings of him and knows about Loose Canon and she’s glad that he’s going to belong to Spark. She thinks he’s so handsome and best of all he knows how to have a good time, something the people in her world are seriously lacking. I told her LOTS of girls have crushes on Vahaadi as soon as they see him and he’s not interested. She said she knows, but she just had to tell somebody. So. There you have it.

CallyAnn |  Aw. Awwwwww. D: I am surprised, too! But maybe kinda not? I guess my level of surprise varies depending on her level of crush. XD

 I drew a reaction thing but the art isn’t great and I know she doesn’t want anyone to know, but would you be interested in seeing it?

 

Evie |  of course! I think she doesn’t want anyone to know because she thinks Van would be angry and Spark would be jealous, but it’s actually sweet, I think, and I think both Van and Spark would be understanding. But for her sake I haven’t told them. I think it’s okay if you and your characters know, but she wants me to keep it from mine. She figures she will never meet Vahaadi anyway, so it doesn’t matter if he knows. She doesn’t think Took has his heart set on her affections so she doesn’t think it’ll matter to him and she barely knows about Lanthriel and Kala so it’s not really an issue. I think in her mind she kinda believes all of Vahaadi’s far off tales and put together with what I said about lots of girls having crushes on him she thinks she is just one among many (like a belieber– ugh, I just typed that. horrible.)
she thinks Vahaadi looks extremely handsome and she’s never seen anyone so striking that has such a short stature and “I bet he never scowls” and he looks like he knows how to take a compliment and give them too. He also looks like he’s not afraid of anything and …he’s just dreamy. (I’m laughing? But that’s rude to her, I know. She feels so self conscious.) I’d say her level of crush is “twitterpated.”

 

CallyAnn | 
andrayia_crush_1
andrayia_crush_2
. . .
. . .
. . .
andrayia_crush_3
(Like this is somehow Vahaadi’s fault XD but Vahaadi wouldn’t put it past Van to blame him for stealing the heart of a girl he’s never met)
andrayia_crush_4
(Vahaadi has a knee-jerk reaction to apologize when Took yells [reminiscent of his Sahin days D: ] but these apologies tend to be less than sincere and a little backhanded hahaha )

Evie | AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

WHAT DO YOU MEAN THIS ART IS FANTASTIC

hahahahahahahahah

AHHHHHHHHHH

I JUST LOVE EVERYTHING

I haven’t even shown Andrayia I just love it for me

haha I hope that isn’t bad

I think she’d be very apologetic too

now I will have to draw something in return

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHGRAHIGHSABIGOU(UWNHHHHHHHHHHHHH i just love this

I love the little !!! lines in front of vahaadi

if this is what happens when you watch a lot of anime I approve

andrayia_crush_5

andrayia_crush_6

andrayia_crush_7

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CallyAnn |  Of course if Van did find out about Andrayia’s crush and confronted Vahaadi about it, his (bad) response would be,

andrayia_crush_9

 

Evie |  hahahahahahahaewwwwwwwwwwwwwww

XD

And Van will be like “WHY DID I EVER COME HERE”

andrayia_crush_10

((WEIRD REACTION FACE GO HAHAHAHAHAHA sorry this is so ugly I just couldn’t help it. Van, why are you always the butt of the joke. ))

Canon of the Guardians II

“We can light it
Up, up, up
So they can’t burn it
Out, out, out

We can light it
Up, up, up
So they can’t burn it
Out, out, out–“

lightitup2color.png

Mood Music 😀

http://youtu.be/CGyEd0aKWZE

It would seem a stupid idea to start throwing sparks at the moon to make it glow, but according to the books the man in the moon kicks up the moondust that has settled on the surface of the moon in order to make it glow. If it stopped glowing, I’d imagine they have to shake up the surface again.
((And just because I like how it looks, here’s a black and white version. I think I like this because in the novels all the pictures are in black and white so this looks like it came out of the book ^_^))

lightitupblackwhite.png

Canon of the Guardians

My kids have been so in love with William Joyce’s “The Man in the Moon,” that I’ve kinda gotten a bit head over heels for his world of the Guardians myself. I started reading his chapter book series that goes into much greater detail and characterization than the picture books (in some ways) and have fallen in love with the characters of The Man in the Moon, Katherine (the future Mother Goose) and Nightlight (the guardian of The Man in the Moon when he was a child. After a battle with Pitch Nightlight has no memory of who he was/what he meant to the The Man in the Moon but still finds himself on the side of right and has ‘moonbeam powers.’) He is the one holding the staff in my picture. For as much as I love these characters, I rushed through drawing them to get to the real HEROES of this post: Spark and Vahaadi. FORGIVE ME FOR THE HORRIBLE FIRST PANEL XD… T_T It’s only there for the general idea.

After CallyAnn decided to send Vahaadi permanently to Loose Canon and Spark fell apart with glee I honestly found myself a little lost. So much of my feelings and associations and understanding regarding Vahaadi had to do with his life in Ashen Shard. I didn’t know how to approach him or where to find much inspiration about him, despite how over the moon (sorry the pun was too ready) Spark felt about everything. I went back and re-read what CallyAnn wrote when Vahaadi told Lanthriel goodbye and was struck by his gladness concerning becoming a hero. This made me very happy! I got to see Vahaadi with new eyes all of a sudden and became really, really excited about the path that Loose Canon is going to take with his character. So I couldn’t resist sending him and Spark to the realm of the Guardians to show off a little bit (okay, a lot.) I figure this takes place well into his relationship with Spark ((Well I mean it isn’t actually taking place, this is still OOC, but if it DID–)); he has long since shed his aloof demeanor and bitterness and has taken to saving worlds with a passion (in his own sultry eyed way.) He looks so confident and dazzling and UGH HE AND SPARK JUST CLICK LIKE OH MY GOODNESS. This was too much fun to draw. I’m too tired to work on it now but the last panel will be in color so that’s why it says “to be continued.” I’ll post it when I can but in the meantime I had a lot of fun drawing hero Vahaadi. He pretty much makes my day. <3 sparkvahaadilightitup