This is a bit late coming out. Usually I jump on these down-time events early on in the month and share some WIP artwork or sketches. What should have been a month that started out happily with an anime convention snowballed into personal financial stress of the kind I am not inclined to go into detail as that's a can of worms best left off of this site. I have contemplated trying to expand my reach and see if there is a way to tap into a niche demand. One thing I noticed at the local Anime Matsuri event is alot of artwork is very similar with very few standing out.
You do get the odd person selling unique hand-made merchandise. I picked up a leatherbound sketchbook made by Poetic Earth and sold through Misty Mountain Gaming. Can't go wrong with more sketchbooks and I just love the cotton-fiber paper with fuzzy edges. I tried calling the guy who makes them to ask how much it would cost to get a custom emboss featuring a Celtic cross but he was half out of his mind with sleep and went off on a tangent how he was the first to do "tea-stained paper" twenty years ago and now everyone is doing it. At any other point in time I'd be more than happy to throw money to get something custom made but given current circumstances that'll have to be postponed.
"Mr. Stephen's Retirement Fund..."
Celtic Cross #1 by Mardrena
Celtic Cross #2 by Mardrena
I've been making use of the downtime to aggressively work on vectorizing sketches I'd done earlier in the year. Most artists specializing in anime-themed work aim for a highly realistic/stylized effect or lean heavily on airbrushing. I prefer cel-shading to mimic the old 90's era style as closely as possible. I've been examining possibilities for expanding my reach, but given I still do not have my nice Linux rig, I'll hold off on my plans and just focus on drawing for now.
Formation Dedicated to Guarding
I've already mentioned how I can count on two fingers how many military formations exist in my world. I almost wonder if I should've used the MF template for the
Metraind instead of Organization but then again there's very few of them to begin with and they are supposed to be very powerful so maybe it's not too bad. I originally didn't plan on pushing Diamond but given I had unexpected time off in the beginning of July I figured why not push as much as possible, so I finally made my first
formation. When it comes to the OAS I suppose the JSDF could be categorized as a military formation, but given they are often considered loot pinatas for the bad guys, they would probably be a poor example.
AmelieIS always knocks it out of the park and every article seems to go outside the box. I love this format its extremely compact but detailed and shows how much is possible without the standard template setup.
Callyxtus' artwork is always wonderful to see. Last year's entry had one of the most comprehensive intricate self-drawn pieces I'd seen to date, always comforting to see!
A long time ago someone wanted to a crossover with my stories and WinX Club... I never responded. Glad to see some writers show fairies can be badasses too as well as literal absolute units.
Evil Spirit or Divine Antagonist
One thing that bugs me about major challenges is the pitiful ratio of Character-based prompts to other prompts. I've tried using off-month challenges to work on
minor characters but there's a LOT of characters in AoD. Mythology itself is fairly commonplace in the world, but in my current story season, the guys have come face to face with
very real gods including a
particularly vicious one. I binged some Warhammer lore videos from Arch a couple months ago and it's always interesting to see how gods can interact in primarily sci-fi settings as well as fantasy.
Jo's style is incredible and eye-catching, and another example of thinking outside the box the story does the talking rather than the template. "I'd rather not fuck with the primordial embodiment of fear." Says it all!
Gods can be grey as well as straight-up good or evil. Sometimes perspectives are misconstrued and sometimes primordial forces tend to FAFO...
Another example of letting the story speak. Not terribly familiar with Wordi's fantasy world but always interesting to see new things.
Storyteller or Bard
Last year I bit off more than I could chew aiming for full-color artwork for every entry. This year I did a little better and most of the pieces I did were redrawn straight from the thumbnail. For my
storyteller I thankfully had a piece of pre-existing art from an earlier competition that I could use. Landscapes, locations, and items are easy to hash out, but for characters I try to put a lot more effort. Alot of my character artwork on WA is the first I'd ever done of those particular characters. With each year I strive to improve not just technique but workflow.
Not everything falls into place with categories and prompts but sometimes things work out that writers can tie things together such as with this stunning entry.
A panelist at AM goes over the real history behind Yu-gi-Oh! and last year's panel covered the efforts to scrub a very unpopular pharaoh from history that was only relatively recently rediscovered. Scary to think how much history is lost!
Some entries go outside the box when it comes to the template. Others dropkick it outside an airliner so it gets sucked into the turbine gloriously, and it works absolutely perfect!
Character that Changes
Have I mentioned I like characters? There's quite a few characters who go through
literal physical changes but change can be more, it can be personal views, goals, life experiences. A
guy can go through life full of piss and vinegar only to get a big bucket of ice cold reality dunked on his head. I've made it a point to showcase articles with self-made art, and to cap off my Summercamp Reading report, here's this stand-out entry.
Another example of how not everything needs to be filled out in a template. Some entries take a minimalistic approach and others choose to focus on a few key elements. I noticed when tinkering with tables for my storyteller article there was a option to disable the "dice roll" from the table. I almost wish there were a way to disable certain sections of a template so they don't become distracting when writing a particular subject.
Closing Thoughts
Some time ago a controversial change went out in WA that ticked off alot of people. For me, being able to post my writings, thoughts, and artwork under my control is far more valuable than a simple pricetag. I got my start in the olden days of the internet when fan-run archives were the to-go destinations for specific genres. Two sites in particular were the largest and most frequented. Sadly one shut down completely and the other remains active in a purely archived format. The loss of so many personal fanpages at the turn of the century was sad because that meant alot of writing got lost.
The site that closed down was the only site I had ever posted artwork in the past. The owner had very specific rules that seemed kind of silly, but it was their site, they made the rules. One rule that rubbed me the wrong way was the rule against supplemental writings such as author's notes, teasers, breadcrumbs, or upcoming previews. I started noticing this individual had been aggressively scrubbing my chapters of anything they didn't like. This included background lore for characters. They effectively gutted my chapters, and as I said they owned the site, they made the rules, but I started to get more than a little aggravated. I used to post my writings there all the time, and when Theria's YST Archive moved to archive-only, the other site was the only page that had my complete writings. When Fanfiction.net came online I began posting there as well and I was able to not only rewrite my chapters and update them but add in the little lore bits and pieces I'd been unable to previously.
I ultimately stopped posting new chapters on the previous site completely because I noticed this individual had been going through my chapters and editing them behind my back. If it were a simple typo or grammatical error that'd be one thing, but they were deliberately rewriting parts of my chapters without my permission. My Vanguard character Tanya Sanada is a bit of a pottymouth, but you never know exactly what she is saying. I bleep her out most of the time even in my thoughts because personally I tend to laugh more when I don't know what is being said. Think Yosemite Sam when he falls off a cliff and starts swearing incoherently. You don't have to know exactly what he's saying, just that he's falling off a cliff.
This individual began uncensoring Tanya's garbled F-bombs, effectively tampering with my writings. The last straw for me came when they rewrote a word completely disregarding my creative vision. In a scene during Cataclysm War Ch. 5, Kento is training with Ita Tarmvun, the lone Nobeyl Dame of Bak's crew. She lashes her tail like "the swirling skirts of a Folklorico dancer". For anyone who's been to San Antonio or is familiar with Spanish culture, Folklorico is a performing art where ladies wear voluminous colorful dresses with pleated skirts they swish around spectacularly.
This person decided to rewrite the word into "folkloric". THAT. IS. NOT. WHAT. I. WROTE!!! Even though I used the right word to convey MY vision, they decided THEY knew better and decided to tamper with MY writings. So when they ultimately shut down their site not long after FFN went live, I lamented the loss of older writings I have not seen anywhere else since. As for the site owner themselves, I used to be on speaking terms with them a long time ago before dropping out of contact, but when I tried to look them up recently I noticed they seemed to have gotten it into their head that they are the end-all, be-all arbitrator of what is and what is not acceptable writing.
I've seen fanfics where Talpa plots with Pinky to take over the world, where the Dark Warlords get addicted to a gaming console and Sehkmet oogles over Lara Croft's low-poly boobs, where Ryo is a contestant on the Price as Right, AU settings with the guys in a futuristic cyberpunk dystopia, and straight-up parodies where a literal Mary Sue invades the world and the guys shove her back through a portal before stomping on her magical amulet and asking "how the heck many of these things ARE there?" The idea that any one person gets to lecture everyone else how to write is just ludicrous. I've since given up on trying to reconnect with this individual, and to be honest, I've done much better nowadays focusing on my vision and artwork than trying to appease unsavoury tastes. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
So ultimately
that is the true value of platforms such as World Anvil-and maybe someday SubscribeStar and Cara- that I can publish MY works as I envisioned them without tampering from anyone else. That is the true value for me, more precious than food even, because writing is food for my soul, and artwork food for the mind.
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