Over on LJ, rachelmanija and lady_ganesh have created a fandom auction in support of marriage equality. Short version: people sign up and offer fan works or miscellaneous items, bidding occurs from July 1-15, and the winner of each auction donates that amount to the marriage-equality charity of their choice, and then enjoys their winnings. Similar to the sweet_charity concept, if you're familiar with that, only without the central fund-gathering function. For more details or to ask questions head over to livelongnmarry.

Date:	2007-10-06 00:47
Subject:	First springkink picture public!
Security:	Public

As it is officially October 6 where I am, I've posted the first picture I created using a springkink prompt over in that comm.


Bleach (Renji/Rukia)
Title: Untitled
Artist: telophase
Rating: R
Warnings: Artistic nudity, implied sex
Prompt: Bleach, Renji/Rukia, hands - "She seems to disappear beneath his hands."

Right this way...

(Crossposted from my LJ. The numbers refer to my LJ numbers.)


As I posted in my previous entry, SixApart is issuing $30 gift certificates to use at DonorsChoose.org as long as you email them by 5 PM Pacific on Monday.

On this LJ, I have 226 mutual friends and 192 others who have friended me*. That makes 418 people. If all of you - or even half of you - managed to email SixApart and get the $30 gift certificate, that would be a huge chunk o'change to give.

Bearing that in mind, I've just created the Manga Matsuri Challenge on DonorsChoose ("matsuri" means "festival"). I found three proposals to purchase manga for the classroom, to tempt reluctant readers and to help kids who are desperate to read more manga but can't afford it, and put them all on the challenge. The total amount of money needed is a hair over $1200, but anything you can donate will help. If the half of you I mentioned above only donate $10 - one-third - of your gift certificate to this challenge, we will raise all the money needed.

You can choose what projects you want your SixApart's money to go to (help SixApart fund future fans! XD), and you don't have to donate all or even part of yours through this challenge, but I hope you consider it. And if you have a hankering to donate some of your own money in addition; why, that's even better!

And please publicize this! Far and wide, on LJ or off. Link to this entry or to the challenge's page, but I think I did a better job of pleading the case here. :)

"Careful," he murmers in her ear, his strong hands covering hers on the hilt of his sword. "That's my soul you're holding."

"Oh," she says. "That makes sense. That's why it feels like you."

"Hm?"

"Off-balance. Like standing on shifting sand. I have to hold on to something when you're close by, to keep from falling over."

------------

Later, much, much later, when he wakes up one morning and she is gone, along with the sword, he does not much mind. She can't lose herself, not completely. He's got her feathered robe.




(Fragments of a dream. Not fanfic.)

I've posted a fanart meme over on LJ - it boils down to: people request art from one of the fandoms I listed, I pick 5 by roll of the dice, and post it, but in turn you need to produce a pic from the same fandom (Stick figures OK!) for me. XD Comment over there, please, so I can keep track more easily.

It's only open 'til 6PM Central time today (Monday), but any requests posted after that will go into my General Inspiration File and may or may not see life.

...anyone want to write up a SHORT SHORT Bleach story so I can draw a (short!) doujinshi? I wouldn't be able to start real work until after I get back from Japan, however I'd like to start as soon as possible afterwards, since I'll have to be doing other projects near the end of the fall semester.

Just backed up some LJ posts here - they should be mostly friends-only ones, and mostly concerned with art or comics or doujinshi I've done. They should all be backdated so as not to screw up your f-lists. :) Will try to repost some more of the art ones when I get around to it.

(because I just updated the generator with a few more media and a new sentence structure)
( It includes tacos and alchemy. )

( cut for picture. )

I am fast coming to the inevitable conclusion that I desperately need to practice psinting fabric, especially gathered, pleated, folded, etc. fabric. Do any of you costumers/cosplayers out there have any good pictures of yourselves in lush costumes with lots of fabric, especially with big sweeps of gathered/pleated/folded fabric, like with bustles, trains, skirts, of the Victorian and Edwardian eras etc? (I'd ask for wedding dresses, but I really don't want to paint white right now. XD) Costumes need not be of the historic variety, as long as they have what I'm looking for - biiig areas of fold, wrinkles, pleats, gathers, etc. (And how many more times can I say fold, gathers, pleats, wrinkles, etc.?*)




* I believe I'm repeating that over and over mostly to ensure that no one says "Sure!" and gives me a picture of them as, say, Sailor Moon. Which does have some soft gathers in the skirt, yes, but not the huge areas I'm looking for.


ETA: I failed to make it clear why I was looking for pictures of people on my f-list: because I want to paint a copy of one of them for practice. I don't really want to grab a picture of a random person off the Web to do that, because I'd need permission to post it to DA and elsewhere online and I'm uncomfortable with asking a total stranger if I can do that.

Now this prompt might be quite a challenge: Portray a sense of shyness with a fight in a stairwell and a bacchanal.

And this sentence structure still makes me giggle: Create a portrait of someone who is not an assassin. Use a Gothic style. And it seems easy at first, but then you have to think ... how do you portray someone who is, most definitely, not an assassin?



(Checking my stats this morning, I discovered the Art Prompt Generator managed to garner 320 hits yesterday from the Mario Fan Games Galaxy forums. Interesting!)

Still tinkering with it, as I'm not particularly satisfied with the elaborate prompts I've got so far.

http://www.magatsu.net/art/

This isn't yet ready for release, which is why this is under friendslock. Released now, so unlocking the post. Play with it a bit and let me know what you think so far.

( Examples so far )

The one section I'm really having a lot of trouble with is the Challenge section. I wouldn't use it very much in the promtps, but it'd be nice to have a lot of variety in it, still. :/

( Read more... )

Just to show you guys the sort of categories I'm coming up with so far.

( Read more... )

And now to drive home!

OK, so I'm thinking on a suggestion by vom_marlowe for an art prompt generator. I think I'm going to have to offer the choice between simple (i.e. one word or short phrase) and elaborate (more description and elements) prompts, because there's lots of people out there who seem to get better inspiration from shorter prompts than I do. (e.g., something like "Years" or "Blue" as opposed to "What we do not regret. Blue, melancholy" or "The forest at noon. Happy")

The simple prompts are easy enough to do: giant list of single words and short phrases, pick one at random. It's the elaborate ones that are more difficult (especially because you need to take things like grammar and capitalization into account). I'm thinking they should be something like: The picture is mostly green and features two characters in elaborate clothing. Elements include a mask and wind. "The time when we cannot meet." Yeah, it sounds a lot like my fic generators. Deal.

What I need from you are various prompts like that - I made the fic generators by creating sample prompts, then generating structures and rules from them. Don't worry about grammar and capitalization: I'll worry about that. They don't even have to be original - just pop down short descriptions of pictures you like if you can't come up with anything. They're all going to end up with different words plugged into them anyway. :)

(er, just to make it clear - I don't need examples of the sentences below with new words plugged in. I need different descriptions. :D)

More examples: "The portrait has a sense of melancholy. The person is looking off into the distance and has blue eyes."

"The landscape in the picture is mountainous and bathed in morning sunlight. The characters in it are in conflict. It is a pre-modern setting."

"There is an air of menace in this black-and-white picture. The theme is 'the promised land.'"


(Gah. Why do I get the feeling that this will be combination fic and character generator?)

Thank Providence for pencil pieces - when you're making prints and your color ink cartridge just happens to run out of red (I have no earthly idea why it would do that), you can just switch to printing stuff originally drawn in pencil until another of the colors runs out, instead of changing the cartridge and wasting all that ink. (I've gotten about 20 prints so far without the red XD)

While I was making prints tonight, I sat down and finished inking That One Wot None of You Ventured a Guess On a week or so back. If I don't get a chance to sit down and work on it before the con, I'll take it to the con - I want to try out this marker technique that uses watercolor pencils under the marker on it. I've tested that on small bits and bobs here and there, but enver done a full piece with it.

Remind me to transfer Vincent to a piece of paper using the lightbox before I go to A-Kon. I'm not getting him done before the con, so I might as well get him done while at the con.

( Read more... )

I made the Four Bishounen of the Apocalypse into keychains! Here's a photo of them, with my usual spokesmodel.

( Read more... )

I'll sit down and work out who actually won in a day or two; right now I need to get started on Vincent and do MUCH MORE PRINTING.

( Read more... )

WORTH EVERY PENNY I PAID. It picked up EVERY mistake detail.

( ONE-WINGED ANGEL. SEPHIROTH! (cue choir) )