Secondlina's Panels

To resume the bedbug issue : my friend Fauve hooked me up with a website saying that according to Montréal law, extermination of certain pests where to be organized and paid by the landlord himself, the list of pests included bed bugs. So despite what them concierge told me, I contacted my landlord directly and voilà, my apartment is going to be hosting an extermination team on Friday. And I don't have to pay for it.

Before the exterminators show up, me and Link basically have to clean EVERYTHING in the apartment and wash everything and anything that may be composed of fabric, even in the rooms that are not the bedroom. So, my apartment is gradually becoming cleaner then it's ever been, ever. Not that i'm usually messy, but DANG, THIS IS REALLY ANAL CLEANING.

I had to toss out a few things, pillows and Megatron, the giant carnival tiger plushy. I'm a little sad about that.

So, I guess I was lucky in my bad luck. Still, we have so much work ahead of us (about 70 loads of laundry. I kid you not).

Art of the day! This one is for putri-nih. It's her own original characters from a comic called "Changeling". I really like her characters because the one with the floaty scarf? That's a kid that is part-fairy, based on the "Tennin" legend.



Tennin can fly thanks to their colored or feathered kimonos, called hagoromo ("dress of feathers"), also represented by something I like to designate as "Floaty wavy scarf of awesome". In some legends, tennin are unable to fly without these kimonos (and thus cannot return to heaven). In a Noh play called Hagoromo, tennyo come to the earth and take off their hagoromo. A fisherman spies them and hides their clothes in order to force one to marry him. After some years he tells his wife what he did, and she finds her clothes and returns to heaven.

Yes, this is similar to the story of the Muses in Greek legend. And the story of the swan maidens in western fairy tales. And it was used in the anime "Ayashi no Ceres". It's also really awesome.

- Isa

 A creepy version of Snow-White :



Snow white is like... some kind of necromancer and she's taking control of dwarves, a prince and defeating her step-mother.

I love her fairy tales can inspire different imagery for so many, ranging from nice and clean to outright scary. Fairy tale motifs are just... amazing to play with.

I,m really in the Halloween mood *laughs*

Birthday sketch for mirai17  (better known as avatarmirai on deviant). She and I share the fickle fanartist gene. Whenever we fall in love with a series, it temporarely pushes the other series out of our vision for a least a few months. She just go into Hetalia. So Hiccup is suffering.




Aside from that, not much to report. I,m going to be out and about again today. Should try to be home on Thursday and Friday to get drawing done. Whew. Getting tired already and it's only Wednesday. I seriously wonder where my time goes.

Got to eat at a fantastic restaurant with a good friend yesterday though. 

- Isa

Why is this so fun to draw? I don't even knoooooow. It makes no sense!

When Vladimir Nabokov wrote "Lolita", I bet he wasn't expecting to inspire Japanese fashion movements.

I'm pissed off. My carpets are now all smelly. Due to the leaking, yellow water. I want to go complain to my landlord and pin the cleaning bill for the carpets on him. Oh, my beautiful middle eastern carpet! Noooo! I'm really hoping nothing is dripping on my drawing table while i'm away. My fury will be limitless. Link thinks the elak is due to them emptying out the radiators upstairs and doing a half-assed job. Awesome.

In funner news, i'm going to go see Inception this weekend.  Seems like a good trippy movie. I want to see it.

In just occurred to me that, since I don't have cable, I won't be able to watch the new Futuramas or the new Avatar episodes when they come out. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

I think there's a few places I can find them online, but most of those places don't allow you to watch if you are in Canada. *sniffles*

- Isa

 

Just a little fanart I did while I was lying around today. Today I was really tired and sickly. Bright new levels of Isa zombirism. Oh well.

It's Rue, a character from the anime "Princess Tutu". There's a segment in the show where she's swallowed by the villain, a giant crow. Now, this is where japanese people are strange. For some reason, when you reach certain levels of badness, there's weird things in your body. In this giant crow's body, there is apparently room for a barren wasteland covered in dying plants and dancing skeletons. I mean, obviously.

The prince eventually comes to save here, shedding a tunnel of light right before his entrance. It's a cool scene. I like it.

Yeah,t his resume makes her sound weak, but she's actually quite the strong character. I was talking to putri_nih today about how most of the strong women in cinema we can think of (REAL strong women. Those who are feminine as much as badass) are all animated. The worse cases of "save me i'm in trouble" girls are also animated. Talk about that.

Going back in a sickly ball now *curls up*

- Isa

 Some of you may know (I wrote about it a few times), i'm working on expanding and creating a webcomic based on the idea behind the Oziad jokes I did a while back. The webcomic project has started, and i'm hoping to have the whole thing up and running by the end of the year. 

The webcomic would be a mix of fairytales and the fact that characters can travel to one or another. The story revolves around two sisters, Emma and Elaine, and the powers of names. A lot of characters got added and the story expanding a lot from the original joke. But fear not, the Wicked Warlock of the West still made it to the final cut (his name is not Link anymore though... But I kept his design. I liked it too much!)

The webcomic got a name "Namesake". And I have a delightful partner in crime to share the burden of starting a project like this.

I'll expand more on the story when it will be more concrete. Actually, I'm gonna keep the story a secret I think. But you guys will get to see development drawings.

I was spending a lot of time trying to find a style for "Namesake". Unlike the Oziad, Namesake is serious with jokes thrown in rather then a big joke with serious thrown in. So at first I drew very serious designs for the characters.



Yeah. It's a similar style to my printed comics like ROSE. It didn't fit quite right.

Then, under the encouragements of my partners in crime who loves the Lj's artstyle, I decide to try out a more "cartoony" or "animated" style that can be detailled and serious if needed. I like this result. Things are more flowy. Plus you know... Internet. It's a place of crazyness and fun. A webcomic needs a style that suits the medium. Plus I can really work their expressions this way.

But I really like both styles in a way.... Deciding is HARD!



( More sketches of various characters in various styles... )
I'm getting excited about this. Are you guys?

Also, would you prefer serious drawings or cartoony-er?

-Isa

 Tomorrow - ISA HITS TORONTO! HARD! LIKE IT'S MADE OF PLUSH!!!!!!!!!!

WOOOOOOO.

Also, no work until next tuesday starting tomorrow night! :) Mini vacation of doom. My boss made me work for it though.

All you anime lovers, remember the Last Unicorn movie? I so need to find the DvD of that. all I have is the VSH and it's dying on me.

Have a last unicorn fanart, just for fun...



- Isa

p.s. lycorne . You. And your Tutu fanart. Damn you. *dies of fandom*

I have so many pages to scan and photos to post, i'm at the point where i'm performing triage. I think I should just upload the whole thing and update a little everyday. I really think I should tweak my scanner's settings a bit and clean it's window, poor thing. It suffers under my rule.

So yeah, got a few projects done, and finished my last shift yesterday. Whew. I feel good about that. I've been feeling like i'm living in a bookfort lately. I'm reading far too many boring things. Now i'll hopefully have more straight drawing time  (aka 5 hours of it without interruptions! Yippeee!) and time to see friends.

I actually saw my friend tama the other day. Although she's not in the greatest moment of her life right now, she seemed well and it made me feel happy. She even mentionned picking up writting again. Me and Tama have plotted often in the past to create comic stories... Maybe she's got a few storyboards in stores for me!

At home (which is only metaphorically a bookfort), there's a big change a-coming : we are getting rid of our pool. See, we have a in-ground pool at my house. Here's a tip, when you buy a house, avoid those with in-ground pools. Round out-ground pools are easier to manage. In-ground pools...basically if you don't care for them almost everyday they crack and break and become disgusting. Due to my family's rather hectic schedule (and to the fact that me being gone to Toronto for two months didn't make me very available to swin & clean in the said pool) our pool cracked. Turns out it's cheaper to fill it and buy another then fix the in-ground pool. So yeah... Never buy a house with an in-ground pool. Unless you have a pool boy.

My parents emptied out the pool today. Tomorrow, people will come to fill it up. I poked my nose out of a book to go take a walk in my pool....


Aside from that, I finished my neverland cup. For the character of Wendy in my lost girl theme, I designed a "mother" cup that will contain a miniture of neveland "floating" on green tea. The set comes with a green tea pouch I designed. It's very cute I find:


The cup is obviously a reference to Wendy's victorian setting. The mother word represents how she is a mother for peter but also how she leaves Neverland to be able to be a real mother. Neverland becomes some sort of escapism, lost in her usual routine (the 5'o clock tea).

Gah, all this thinking for lost girl projects makes me want to read Lost Girls by Alan Moore depicting the meeting of Wendy, Alice and Dorothy. Unfortunatly, the graphic novel, no matter how much of an important book is it for comic artists, also happen to be erotic. I've got no problem with the erotic part honestly. I own several borderline erotic graphic novels that I purchased because they were rose stones of graphic art. I mean, if everybody tells you you have to read something because it's part of comic history, you just do it. Besides, reading european comics made me quite used to graphic nudity and sexuality (the french are quite generous in that department). So, it's erotic. That's stil la problem though, because I can't buy it. It's 80$ and since it's erotic, it's impossible to find in a local librairy. To boot, i'd have to order on the web because the comic book shops here don't have to connections to order the book (because it's UK based) and/or can't order erotic materials because they are family oriented. Looks like I won't get to read that for a while. I don't think it's necessary for the evolution of this year's project, but it's definitly something that would have been interesting to check out.

I also rented out a million fairy tale movies and disneys to watch as I work. :)

-Secondlina