Fun With Wonder Woman... and More!

   Random Wonder Woman pic! Now I don't know much about her other than the basic story, and whatever I remember from "Ooh..  ahh..  Wonder Woman...." as a kid, but when my Dad suggested I draw her, I couldn't help but take a bash at it.

   After a google search, some image research, and about five minutes of staring at Lynda Carter.....  I tabbed to my tablet and drew this. I took a couple liberties with the detail on the costume, just because it seemed like plenty of other artists had done the same before me. So I figured..  what the hell, why not put away the microscope, improvise, and have a bit of fun with it!

   Oh yeah, also, I'd like to note that the invisible jet is in the picture too. *Nod*

   Enjoy! ^_^

   I'd also like to note that both Forgive my Rambling and Starsider Forever: Fan Art have been updated.

   The recent picture on Starsider Forever is of Arcturus Vyar (Left) and Faeneth the White Witch (Right). TOR has been on the brain lately, so to take care of the RP fix, a friend and I have started RPing as our soon-to-be TOR characters on an SWG server, pretending it's TOR-era. The actual roleplay was weeks ago, and I'm still groovin' on it. While I'm not sure what kind of RP enviorment TOR will have, I still can't wait to carry over to there and have a ball. After all, if we can make it work around GCW-Era Star Wars Galaxies, we can make it work anywhere.

   The post in Forgive My Rambling fails to update what's been going on, but it actually ended up tying into recent events pretty nicely. My character Nyx-Warda has had a long-standing banishment from Kashyyyk which someone recently played off of. I was giddy! So I decided to reveal a little bit more backstory. After all, I was sure that some people were dying to know exactly what did happen on Kashyyyk.

   The coming post in Forgive My Rambling will be a little bit behind current time, scince currently Nyx is attempting to get off the Gabaki, and rehabbing in hiding with my favorite sullustian P.I. Phnb Plo. Speaking of which, I need to get my @$$ online soon!

   Don't worry, I promise you'll get your update- I'll stop procrastinating later. XD

Concept Art and Character Development

 

    Concept Art is one of the most awesome character development tools in the box. There's nothing that brings a new toon to life like seeing him or her stare back at you from a sketchbook or computor-screen. Still, it's more than just the visual effect that gives concept art a unique value. There are all sorts of little things that add up to contribute to its value.

   You don't have to be a stellar artist to use concept art for character development. You can do anything from scribbling down your character in a notepad to using a character-creator or avatar-creator on the computor. Anything that helps put your idea into a visual form (even if you're the only one who can decipher it :P ) will go a long way to fleshing out your character.

   The most important thing about drawing up your character, is that it makes you think about him. You have to answer questions like...

• "What's my character's style?"
• "What kind of gear does he carry?"
• "What's his attitude like?"
• "What's his background/ethnicity, and how does he express his culture?"
• "How does his physical appearance affect his life, and vice-versa?"

 Questions like this put the concept in concept art.

I'm going to use my character Blake Breil'lya Turncoat (pictured left) as an example. Before Blake ever hit the digital world, I cooked up her concept in pencil and paper. The first question I had to answer was at what point in her life I was going to depict her. Now, even though I always intended to write her story from birth, for concept-art purposes, it was better to depict her as a small child. This is because her personality would be just starting to show through at that stage in her life. Regardless of where you plan to start your story, you should draw your concept art to depict the point in your character's life that excites you the most.    When thinking about what she might look like, I kept in mind her background. Scince she's the daughter of two existing characters, I tried to make her look crossed between the two to start with. I gave her her Lawrence's eyes and cheekbones..  Nyx's nose and lips (and lekku. Obviously.)...  and generally just tried to tie it all in together with something else that was uniquely Blake. Also, scince she's a halfbreed, I wanted to give her a little bit of quirky weirdness that I didn't explore with the other children. She's a mute, and one of her lekku is longer than the other. How does this affect her life? Well, I figure she'd be smart, but a little backwards, so I tried to give her a sort of inquisitive expression. I also gave her freckles (though they're hard to see because I couldn't scan the picture properly) because, overall, the picture I was getting from her was a cute-and-homely sort of sense. If something unplanned comes up in the concept art... roll with it! You could be surprised with how you like the result.    The clothing I threw on her was something that reminded me of another cute-and-homely character I remember from one of my favorite books, The Secret Garden. The character, Mary Lennox, was a lonely, spoiled English girl who wore prim, plain dresses in the beginning of the book. I thought it would be nice to draw a couple subtle parallels between the two, for anyone who would get the reference. Fun fact: Blake Breil'lya Turncoat's original working name was Blake Lennox Turncoat, until events in Roleplay lead her parents to name her after a recently-deceased friend and protector Sayon Breil'lya

One last thing before we go...

   Concept art isn't for new characters alone! It can be used to explore relationships between existing characters, new chapters in their loves or stories, moods, scenarios, or anything else you can think of. As long as you get yourself thinking, and asking yourself questions. Most importantly, enjoy it! When you like your characters, it's the first step to creating a story that others can enjoy, too.

It's Raining Fan Art!

   While transferring a new post from Forgive My Rambling to blog-form, I was inspired to finally transfer my art-thread into bloggy goodness. Sooooo   allow me to introduce you to my latest miniblog.

Starsider Forever! at StarsiderForever.blogspot.com

   I'll edit this post and link back when I'm feeling less lazy, but after all the repetitive typing from the project, I just really don't feel like typing. Anything. At all. After a while, the brain starts to typo things you've written fifty-billion times over. Wacom becomes...   sketchbook? Dubbya Tee Eff? o.O   ....and don't even get me started on word-verification. It's sad. I'm getting good at it. (Well...  except that time I read one pile of gobblygook as "Beskar'gam", but who's counting?) Anyway...  no more typing.

   Except this part.


EDIT:

Link to Starsider Forever

Link to my art thread

Forgive My Rambling.... In blog form!!

http://forgivemyrambling.blogspot.com/

   Well, I've been keeping up a story on StarsiderGalaxy.com for a while now. The story, titled "Forgive My Rambling" is a journal from the point of veiw of my character Nyx-Warda. I started logging her adventures in May of 2009, and today, I've tossed up the 100th post.

   Today, after much copy/pasting and word verification...  so much word verification....  I've managed to move the whole journal to its own mini-blog. It's a trend I hope to continue with IC journals in the future.

   If you're curious, check out ForgiveMyRambling.blogspot.com to see what we got!

The "Hello World" Post!

   Well, with good old Star Wars Galaxies going down on December 16th, I've found myself slowly migrating away from the game itself, searching for some other way to get my geek fix.

   Allow me to introduce myself- I'm Ninja AFK: roleplayer, fan-artist, gamer, and human being. In that order. Okay, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but let's face it people...  the internet would be a lot more boring if we couldn't exaggerate a wee bit here and there. I've been playing a character named Nyx-Warda on Starsider for roughly five years. It was my first MMO, and I've been roleplaying there scince day one. I've also been known to frequent StarsiderGalaxy.com, the roleplayer's community forum, and have (like many) posted several stories, journals, and arts.

   Oh yeah...  and bepurpled its pages with my lovely lavendar letterings.

   While I've focused mostly on Star Wars Galaxies these last few years as far as roleplay goes, with the game going where the good games go, I figure it's the perfect time to expand my horizons. With that, I welcome you to my lair..........   Well, maybe it's not too impressive yet, but with a bit of polish and some custom graphics it'll shine like the bottom of a fresh Playstation disc. I plan to use this blog as a sort of base of operations. Like a giant Katamari ball with all my nerd-ventures rolled up into it.

   So wish me luck, and stuff, and if you're interested stick around. The fun is just beginning.