Month: February 2009

J229 – Sketch-a-Palooza

Yeah, I should have something. My time management skills are in serious need of revamping though. So, sketching.

I’ve been drawing the Lesser Demon a lot lately, in her demon form. Maybe because I haven’t drawn her for a while? Anyway, it occurs to me that in my portrayal (in drawing and dialogue) of the Lesser Demon, she seems to have come across as “bitchy”. I’m not sure if that’s accurate, though (this has sort of become some form of mental guideline for me to go by though); I was thinking of her more in terms of “overworked retail worker” or something like that.

I was going for a sort of “cool” pose in the second one, but I couldn’t exactly get some parts of the pose right. (The text on the right reads, “Hips don’t lie. They tell me that I’m bad at drawing…”) The drawing with the date labeled on it was just an attempt at a different expression/style than I normally use.


My hair’s actually this long and messy now. It’s kind of crazy.

The title basically explains this one. Basically I’ve got a whole bunch of stuff cascading down (bureaucratic and academic) and I’m not managing it well at all. Sorry for the lack of actual updates on-time since December. Ugh.

dcomic 493

[090215]

So this is actually day 4 of the aptly named Suck Week, but apparently I have the time to write what should be a rather long entry, so it’s probably sucking a bit less right now.

I got two anime mousepads I bought about a week ago on eBay so that kinda made my day a bit better. I was looking for a replacement for an Dell mousepad that was wearing out and while I really wanted something old school like my “IBM Global Network” mousepad, you just don’t find many old school mousepads out there. But you know, anime pads are cool too. The monkey mouse is a PoS by the way. It’s PS/2 and ball.

Ok, some more BKS stuff. These are all pictures that have been posted before, but I can give a bit more detail about each after my entry two (maybe three now?) weeks ago.

[1]

This is a mine on Confederate League 53A. The A in 53 refers to the fact that CL53A is the most inner planet in the CL53 system. CL06C, the old senatorial captical world, is the third most inner planet of the CL06 system and also the home planet of the Natives. Most inhabited worlds in the League seem to be an A, B, or C. At any rate, 53A is typical of a “colonial” world sort of environment: it’s located in an out of the way system and only brought into the League for its mineable resources.

It was probably a relatively low-numbered system in the BKS era as there is a BKs-era space elevator on 53A and there aren’t too many of those in general. The technology on these kind of wild-west style worlds is generally the most entertaining to depict as you get a nice mix of old, new, advanced, and primitive. There is actually another picture of this same mine, but it’s sitting in some book, unscanned.

[2]

Older BKS ships look like… well, ships. We don’t really know why this is in the context of the Confederate League (the ultimate reason is because these are the most entertaining to draw), but older BKS-era space transport resemble old land and sea based trains and ships. These ships are floating out in some space junkyard somewhere, stripped of their BKS-era high-order fusion reactors. J and I originally called them “Mr Fuel” units after the namesake “Mr Fusion” reactor/generator from Back to The future.

The reactors are an example of a lost technology that is still being used in the League. Significantly more powerful than the typical low-order fusion reactor, they are quite valuable and cannot be produced with the League’s current technology. Their numbers are dwindling as only a few of the remaining Founders know how to maintain them. The League maintains stocks of decommissioned ships just for the reactors. They are mostly still found in government and military ships, particularly the super-heavy BKS-era destroyers (kind of like how we only have nuclear reactors in our warships).

These ships themselves are actually redraws of ships drawn when J and I were in elementary school. They have Confederate dates ID’ed on them.

[3]

Don’t quite remember the premise of this one. One of the worlds with a BKS space elevator. Probably 53A again. 53A probably has the most drawings done of it out of all the Confederate worlds.

[4]

I quote myself: This one actually joins TIAIIS and Starcrossed in CL2236. Fleet admiral Doughty is in the center, he was the vice admiral of the Enigma task force in Starcrossed – apparently he has been promoted. Virginia Wolf, on the left of Doughty, is probably the captain of one of the Enigma’s ships, as is captain Tzui, on Doughty’s right. Doughty will be promoted again to the military staff in a number of years, and captain Wolf will eventually be the fleet admiral in his stead – just before the events of TIAIIS.

The Wolf family is supposedly this long-lived military family (I think they might even have some Founder blood in there); the captain of the Commander Cecil (that’s the BKS ship that’s been showing up in the NW storyline) is supposed to be one of the earliest Wolfs, Jade Wolf. He eventually gets a Commander class patrol ship named after him (the Commander Wolf), depicted in a short precursor to Starcrossed in which Captain Tzui (of Starcrossed as well) gets the Wolf pwned by terrorists in 2228/2229. That’s another historic relic lost, really; the Commander ships should have been built in the 1900s.

Virginia Wolf is like a kid prodigy who becomes fleet admiral (basically the highest-ranking Confederate military position, kind of like a member of our Joint Chiefs of Staff, except there is only one branch here – the Confederate “Navy”) at a ridiculously young age and dies at a ridiculously young age due to who knows what – maybe her arrogance or something. I’d love to write more about Virginia, but it just doesn’t happen. There’s the brother Lloyd Wolf who’s always living under his sister’s shadow, etc, etc.

Speaking of which, Doug and Yuzuki of Starcrossed probably settle down somewhere after the events of SC. Here in 2236, seven years after SC, William Doughty, who was a mere ship captain is Fleet Admiral and Yuzuki is no where in sight (implying she quit, started a family with Doug). Doug is still around probably working to support aforementioned family. There is another Yuzuki who appears with Lloyd in TIAIIS; she can be presumed to be the daughter of SC’s Doug and Yuzuki.

This one has turned out to be really rambly. Oh damn, there’s one more I just found:

[5]

This is actually on 24 x 18. That’s why it’s a photo and kinda distorted. Bringing the Wolfs and the SC crew together again in completely different circumstances, we have the Confederate Capital in 22XX. You can see the 1885, BKS-era Comet in the middle right which currently acts as a sort of Air Force One for the Condeferate League. The two buildings on the left are part of the capital administrative complex and the building behind those is the capital building itself.

CL03 is actually reasonably densely populated and a major city lies just north of the capital. The viewer is looking at the capital complex from the interior of a major transport hub. I’ve got a 24 x 18 of a section of the northern city, but I’ll probably put that up later. That’s all for today.