Y’know, I have to say… I think the DoA has probably the most hand-holding, lenient mods of any forum I’ve been on.  On the other (non-doll) forums I frequent, the mods will warn or ban people at the drop of a hat.  You backtalk, you’re banned.  You post in the wrong section, you get told you’re a stupid newbie.  Hell, I was briefly looking at a Tamagotchi forum and they are hard-nosed!

I guess that’s why I get annoyed when people say how “mean” or “scary” the mods are on DoA… and I just have no tolerance at all for when people publically backtalk about things like the Marketplace Access rules or signature restrictions.

I’m also grouchy today.

Workin’ the Woot Derby again this week.  I’m doing them as excercises more than because I’m trying to win anything… last week my focus was “Do ANYTHING just get it done.”  This week my focus is line weight.  I used to do really nicely inked drawings with varying line weights that made them much more dynamic… lately I just do pencil doodles or just lazily go over my pencil lines.  My typical inking lately is to do the interior lines with thinner strokes, then put a heavy outline around the edge of the whole thing.  It works for some things, but I need to branch back out.

So anyway, this week’s entries.  Vote on Woot if you feel like it, critique here if you feel like it.

Siren’s Song

I made this for you.

Self-critique - The cupcake one really has no concept or joke involved, it was mostly just drawn for the joy of drawing cupcakes and little skulls.  It’s rather dull, I’m not sure if the colors work well at all.  To the positive, I do like the linework itself.  I also like the high-key shading on the cupcake, but I think it might have been too stark on enticing swirlies… I should have done those with a paler red.  The little robot one makes me happy, but I was REALLY having trouble with color.  Mostly, I needed to be able to use one more color.  I’m not completely happy with the beige halftone around them, but none of the other colors were any better for the half-tone.  I had hoped to be able to use the body gray for the shadow on the whipped cream, but it just looked sort of gross. I think I’m going to try to do a little robot every week… I really enjoy drawing them.

Next couple weeks I’m going to focus on color because I obviously have no idea how to use it.  The six colors + shirt background is kicking my ass.  (Most likely no entry next week, though, because of the move.)

-  Another hour of work left.
+ Dinner with my brother who is visiting from California tonight!
+ Fun Shirt Woot Derby theme this week!
- Not much time to draw Woot Shirt entry tonight…
+ Almost done with two faceups!
- Ton of packing to do still.
- Consultation with oral surgeon did not go well.  Will need a bone graft(!) in addition to what I had already expected.
+ Cost of bone graft covered by having sold Puki Aang.
+ Palm-sized puppy is coming to live with us in October:

+Almost caught up on Accounting.
- Have to do someone else’s weekly mailinglist project. -_-

All in all, not sure if today is a good or bad day.  Leaning toward good, I think.

We found a breeder about 100 miles away… and we are thinking that we may have found our puppy!  The breeder seems to be very knowledgeable and pleasant and seems to care a lot about her dogs.

LOOK AT THE LITTLE TOES.  I’ve asked for the little golden boy on the right, but I haven’t heard back from the breeder yet.  Also asked for more pictures… so there may be future puppy spam.

If he is to be our puppy, we’ll get him around my birthday in October.

I don’t play with Ribbon enough… so he’s up for sale or trade.  If you want a (gorgeous) Liz boy, feel free to drop me a PM.  I’m also looking for a Maki, Tsukasa (LOL), or fullset Eden so if you want to trade please let me know!  And if he doesn’t sell or trade, it wasn’t meant to be and I’ll keep him. No, Ribbon is staying.  I just can’t do it.

Aang is up for offers.  Puki’s are too tiny.  I’m going to sell him and just focus on actually working on my Volks 1/6th Avatar cast… which is better anyway because then I can actually have all the characters I want.  (Pukis are too expensive to have a whole cast).

Okay, well, I failed at the “Do NOT work on a shirt woot submission” note on my other list.  I just really liked the theme for this week.
If you have a Woot account and like either of these designs, would you consider leaving me a vote?

Helium: A Perfect Valencing Act

Tin: The Element of Cute

I spent longer on the Tin one (the stupid valence shells took too damn long), but I like the Helium entry better.  Neither will win, but I’m happy that I entered.  I want to try to enter the Derby every week for a couple months.

I’m really feeling the time crunch… we move two weeks from tomorrow and there is so much to pack yet. The back bedroom is pretty much packed up (we just need to finish packing up the stuff on the bookshelves), but the other bedroom isn’t packed at all, and the livingroom and kitchen haven’t even been touched. It’s awkward, really. We can’t pack the kitchen or bedrooms because we’re still using most of the things in those rooms. We can’t just pack up all the pots and pans when we’ll still need to be cooking meals… and I can’t pack up my clothes when I still need to be wearing them!

I think Roommate and I need to sit down and make a detailed attack plan for the next two weeks to make sure everything gets done that needs doing.

Here is my personal to-do list, with tentative dates:

• OMG PACK (EVERY DAY)
  Call to turn off power 8/29 in current apaato (today)
  Paint Cathead’s pukisha face (today)
  Mail Yli heads, Yli, and Shiwoo (today)
  Bevel and sand Schneizel (8/17)
  Paint Kitsune (8/18)
  Paint Eleu (8/19)
  Mail card to turn on power 8/29 in new digs (8/20)
  Paint Miho (8/20)
  Finish Johnny (by 8/26?)

I have a corresponding list of things NOT to do before I leave:

• Do NOT buy screenprinting supplies
• Do NOT buy a pressure pot
• Do NOT work on new themes for DoA
• Do NOT enter the t-shirt Woot! derbies
• Do NOT work on Cog’s wings

New Archive has been ordered… I can’t wait till he comes! But it will probably be 12+ weeks. *dies a little* But hey, when he does show up it’ll be great! And I have a ton of things to work on before I could devote the time to him anyway, so it’s probably a good thing, really. My next bunch of commissions look pretty fun, so I’m looking forward to getting started on them as well. Lots of neat things coming up in the next few months.

Also have the Artist Retreat coming up in October! SO EXCITED. The list of instructors sounds pretty awesome - Patl for sculpting, Donn for molding, and Lilykoi for painting. NEAT. It sounds like the “flow” of the weekend will go sculpt basic head - mold and cast basic head - paint basic head. I can’t wait! The whole thing sounds fun, but I am most looking forward to Patl’s sculpting workshop. The heads we make probably won’t be anything to write home about, but I think I’m going to learn a lot. I’ve never taken a sculpting class, so just learning real techniques will really help me out a lot… much better than the trial and error methods I’ve had for however long now. And from one of my sculpting heroes! <3

Do you ever have days where you end up standing in the shower, realizing that you still have on both your glasses and your headband…?  And you wonder if it’s somehow it’s a metaphor for your whole life?  Then decide you don’t even know what that metaphor would be (and stop being so emo already), sigh, and just conclude it’s been that kind of day?

Yeah, it’s been that kind of day.

I’m tired and I’m eating the tops off of cupcakes at the moment. :)

The Shiwoo sold and will ship tomorrow or Thursday, and I am now free to order a new doll for Archive.  I had planned on a Zaoll Luv… the impetus for selling Archive’s Kiss had actually been that the Luv is now available in opaque urethane (rather than french resin).  However, between when I listed the Kiss for sale and when the Shiwoo actually sold, I had a lot of time to second-guess myself and decide that the Luv’s weird size (52cm???) would be too diminutive next to Burgundy on his SDF body… I don’t want Archive to look like a child.  He’s an adult, dangit, he’s a hundred years older than Burgundy!  So I’ve settled on a Narae 60 with the Mature faceplate.  She’ll get her boobs removed so as to be genderless… and Archive can actually look like the ambigendered magical creature that he is.  Hooray!

Otherwise, though, I am feeling like I just want to sell a bunch of my dolls and cut way back.  Unfortunately, all of the character stories are so enmeshed that selling one doll would result in selling pretty much everyone.  I have three dolls who don’t hail from the Stationboys storyline… but Rory is never getting sold, Percival is one of my dream dolls, and Aang is so small that selling him wouldn’t really alleviate any of the crush.  Part of the problem is that most of my dolls are either very hard to replace (i.e. Twist [Kanon Rui] or Cog [Pixydoll Sevy]) or they are just very very dear to me.  They all make me happy.  I guess I just feel restless because pretty much everyone is packed up at the moment.

Yesterday was gorgeous all day… then it hit 6 when I got off of work and it just poured the rest of the night. Amazing thunder and lightening!

We watched the last Avatar DVD… mixed feelings on the ending. I kinda felt like there was so much action going on that there wasn’t time for much of the comedy or the character interactions that I enjoy the most. I did like that everything ended pretty much the way it should for a kid’s show, and the way we all predicted it would. I love all the characters, but Zuko, Sokka, and Aang are still my favorite characters (in that order)… Toph is really close on that list though! Love Toph. Spoilers and questions for fellow Avatar fans, highlight to read:

I thought the episode about Katara’s ‘revenge’ was an extraneous nonsequiteur. Suddenly Katara’s got a bloodlust for the guy who killed her mom? I had hoped that with all of the heavy-handed OMG THIS GUY IS PATHETIC, there would be some… I dunno, explanation for the disconnect between the badass in the flashback and the pathetic dude with the veggies. It’s not like they needed him to have a sob story about realizing the error of his ways after killing an innocent woman, but SOMETHING would have been nice. I also think that the message that Katara got out of it wasn’t necessarily what she should have… and sort of re-established the FIRE NATION IS ALWAYS BAD mentality that the kids seemed to have been trying to lose throughout the season. Also… her unrepentent use of her peoplebending skill. WTF? What happened to the whole “I will never use this again” thing? She was perfectly okay peoplebending that general and didn’t really seem remorseful even after she realized it was the wrond guy… but she still wouldn’t use it in actual times of usefulness? (Bending Azula into a pretzel during the agni kai-gone-wrong would have been really helpful.) I feel like that episode was really unnecessary and I would have preferred that they would have used that time doing something that made more sense with the plot. Or had some comedy.

I have to admit, I ADORED the summary episode. And now I understand what the whole “Avatar State - yip yip!” reference everyone was making! NEAT. I usually hate the summary episodes, but I really enjoyed that one. “Did Jet just die?” “You know, that was very unclear.” I laughed.

I also liked that Aang was able to stick to his guns and not kill Ozai. I would have liked if he had done it with his cleverness and skill rather than a brand new, only-referenced-one-episode-ago spiffing Avatar skill. The addition of the Lion Turtle and the Mystic Whoosh seemed like a serious Deus ex Machina. Like the writers suddenly went “Wait. How DO we avoid Aang killing Ozai?” Not so keen on that, but I am happy he didn’t have to kill Ozai… I liked the overall “You DO have a choice” message of the series. Very nice.

I also thought that the sudden mental fracture of Azula was done really well. Throughout the series I had been wondering what they were going to do with her. She just wasn’t fixable. Even from the beginning, Zuko was very obviously going to see the light. But Azula was a sociopath, even in her flashbacks to being a little kid. They did a really good job of making her really creepy at the end when she had just totally lost it. Again, though, with the “I would have liked” stuff - I don’t really understand why she was still able to pitch the lightning. Wasn’t the Big Deal that she was able to do it because she was so cool and collected? Why was she still able to do it when she was completely, passionately unhinged? Also would have been cool if Katara had deflected the lightning - they had just emphasized a few episodes prior that it was a waterbending skill. But yeah, liked the crazy Azula. Wondering if Azula actually x’d out her mom. What happened to Azula at the end though? They showed Ozai in prison, but what the heck did they do with the crazy Azula? She was still really dangerous. Heck, maybe even more dangerous.

Oh, I also really enjoyed Sokka and Tsuki (Suki?) as a couple. They were really sweet. Toph’s crush on Zuko was also cute… and surprisingly, at the end I didn’t mind Mai and Zuko hooking back up. Even though they seemed like a really random couple at the beginning (You’re evil + I’m evil = We’re evil together), they did seem to actually work well by the end. Would have liked more resolution with Tai-Lee and Mai, though. I guess my biggest disappointment was that by the end, Katara had been such an annoying bitch for all the episodes on that DVD… I didn’t really feel as squeeful when she and Aang finally ended up together. It was still cute, but sort of meh. Especially after it had been SO cute when they’d kissed right before the eclipse. Oh well. I’m still an Aang-Katara shipper, so I’m happy. (Does anyone else feel weird rooting for a 13 year old and 15 year old to hook up?) Oh, can I also tell you how much I LOVE the Tsuki in her Kiyoshi warrior gear? It was a good detail for her not to have it after prison, though. And I still love Sokka’s Water Tribe fighty uniform too. Even better with the face paint, but I just love the design of that costume. So cute.

I know, I’m a couple weeks late… but what did you think and can you explain any of those things to me?

Okay, the Kiss formerly known as Archive is now for sale.

http://www.denofangels.com/forums/showthread.php?t=234095