Yay kids.

I find myself having less and less to say about my drawings. Oh well

No Drawings Tonight

A really bad cold kind of took me out of commission.

Expect regular updates to resume very soon.

The Doctor and the Elder

Who are they? Only time will tell.

Stylin' again

I went a little overboard on the bags under his eyes.

A sign of the end:

I attempt stylized anatomy.

Filler

I was going to wait until I re-did the background before posting this. Turns out I haven't been in much of a drawing mood lately, so you're getting it today.

Just... super WIP

It's going to be a promotional image for Blur.

You may think it looks a lot like a retooling of that picture with Muffin and the girl(friend). You would be astute.

It still needs tweaks and a background...

But Lily's almost done.

Her "vigilante disguise" gets flimsier and flimsier with each new version.

Just gonna leave this here.

The Internet Is Magical

I know this for a fact because I'm posting this on Sunday. But it won't be visible until Monday at noon! At that time, I won't even have access to a computer! Magic, indeed.
EDIT: Ok so I messed that whole future thing up. My bad. Sorry for removing the magic.


In celebration of magic, have a more up-to-date WIP of the Xylem people. Ideally this will be my last WIP of them; I'll continue work on them while posting other stuff in the future.

Works in Progress

A friend got me thinking about Ethera again, just when I was moving to Blur and NMC, too. Oh well! I won't be doing weeks but I still will be drawing my Etheran characters.


This was going to be a simple "These are the races of this particular species as far as coloration." Then I got anal and added some ones that have significantly different physical features. Then I got even more anal and started drawing outfits that matched the various seasons. Long story short: I didn't get it finished. Perhaps tomorrow!

A boy and his dragon

His seeing-eye dragon, to be exact.

If I ever get back to Ethera, I'll explain that in detail.

Back to Lily

...Or her weaponry, at least.

Back to Blursics

A second character appears!

I need to add links to the blog--but if you really want to follow the adventures of Muffin Blueberry, you should probably visit blur-mirror.site50net. You can also get updates via My Twitter.

Re-doing References

...For Nightmare City. And I'm doing totally new characters too!


Lily is up first. Trying with something more movement, even if it is a little cliche.

Bad News/Good News

Bad news first.


I am really, really not motivated to do Ethera race weeks right now. It's an ordeal even getting myself to draw a couple of otherworldy dudes and dudettes. So I'm going to put them off for a good long while. I hope to come back to Ethera eventually, but right now it's the last thing on my mind.

Good news.


I'm not interested in Ethera because I'm very interested in other stories right now. Blur has resumed after an unfortunate hiatus, and I've taken an interest in Nightmare City again. I want more time to dedicate to these projects. And as a result, you'll probably see a lot of Blur/NMC stuff here in the future!

Today, we have two characters from NMC: Ethan Boyd and Hal Monroe, respectively. They're reacting to E3.

Caloric Week: Day One

Now onto the fire race: The calorics!


They're the glass cannons of Ethera. If it were a tabletop game, they'd be well-suited as thieves, assassins, and martial artists. They also have a notably high offensive magic ability, so while they wouldn't be the best squishy wizards in the game, that could be a cool concept to play.


They also have the most furry appeal of any of the races, and look the most like Na'vi.

Their bodies are covered in fur, which ranges from slightly dark red to nearly black-red; the hair on their heads and the tip of the tail tends to be very light shades of brown, red, or blond. They're a nomadic people located mostly in the desert, but their high mobility means that they can be found all over the world. Dimorphism is about average; what you'd expect in humans you'd see with them.

Intermission

Today I really wasn't in the mood to work on Ethera. So I worked on this instead.


Regularly scheduled race weeks to resume on Monday.

Cetacean Week: Day Seven

The engineers and doctors of Cetacean communities are proverbial elephants in the room; while people definitely appreciate their skills, they go against everything their religion stands for (namely the fact that they remove all the webbing from their hands and the way they turn from magic) and thus tend to be looked down upon. The people in these professions fully understand their place, and often try to conceal as much as their body as possible (with unsurprisingly unconvential clothing).

They do loosen up sometimes, though.

Above is Maya. She's a doctor and Samuel's best friend under the sea. I don't think she would play a huge role in any Ethera-based plot, but she's an important flavor character.

Cetacean Week: Day Six

Samuel is my sort of main cetacean character. He's the son of fishermen following in his parent's footsteps. While he enjoys what he does, he loves learning new things and tries to befriend the doctors/engineers of his hometown to learn about all the new SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY being discovered.

He ends up siding with their newfangled anti-religious theories. If Ethera had a story, he'd eventually become so vocal as to get in trouble and be exiled. That's how he finds dry land and the other races (Which most cetaceans, including him, never dreamed of). It would sort of be a literal fish out of water story! Haha, I kill myself.

Cetacean Week: Day Five

Other stuff I'm doing tonight, so the post is a quickie:


A cetacean politician. Early depictions of their goddess had her bald--even though she later got hair, it's a tradition for important people to shave their heads. They also get the heaviest clothing.

Each city is ruled by a single Cetacean. They receive help from a hand-picked group of people who represent the various populations of the city. It's important to note that the Cetaceans are pretty ambivalent when it comes to gender, so female leaders are just as common as males.

And... that's about all I can be specific about tonight. See you tomorrow!

Cetacean Week: Day Four

This is the patron goddess of the Cetacean's biggest religion. Legends basically say that there was once both land and sea, but a flood covered everything underwater. This goddess saved a handful of ordinary people and, using her magic, enabled them to live underwater.

Even if a Cetacean does not practice religion, this story is taken more or less as history. Those who practice the religion also practice magic and believe that a Cetacean should keep his or her body "pure," free of modifications (such as webbing removal). After all, why fight it if they were destined to live underwater?

Cetacean Week: Day Three

Today I want to talk a little fashion.

The two designs you saw on Day 1 were bottom-lower class (the particular Cetacean was a fisherman) and a surgeon. Generally the lower down you go on the class scale the more "normal" the style of dress gets. Also, the Cetacean are rather fond of patterns--much clothing utilizes some sort of patter.

Above on today's post is a nobleman. They tend to dress is rather thick, heavy clothing; it's cold underwater and they don't need to leave to swim too much. Unfortunately no one has yet tried to make shoes for the cetacean's flippers, so wrappings are about as high class as it comes.


This is another higher ranking member of society, although she would be affiliated with religion. Her official title is oracle. Before Cetaceans moves underwater, they wore light, flowy clothing that could easily come off when they needed to jump in the water. Cetaceans affiliated with religion or magic tend to wear this sort of traditional clothing, but most people do not.

Cetacean Week: Day Two

Today: Architecture!

Although the cetaceans can easily breathe underwater, they prefer living in a dryer habitat. It makes it easier to do things like cook and talk and...anything that isn't swimming. They still like living underwater, away from the other races, so that limits their options.


When available, Cetaceans prefer to build homes and cities in underwater caves that contain dry air pockets, pictured above. Their building style tends to look pretty natural; they carve their homes quite literally into the rocks, and if there isn't enough space their engineers can figure out a way to build a stone house that looks like they found it. They've also found ways to siphon oxygen into these little pockets so they don't suffocate.


failing natural air pockets, they'll cut their homes into anything they can find and build "air bubbles" around them. This naturally takes more time, but it works just as well. Above is probably a cheap apartment complex. Nicer ones are built mostly on the same level and have a bubble surrounding the whole thing instead of just each living space.

Cetacean Week: Day One

So, it looks like I hit 300 posts yesterday! Woohoo! It just so happens to coincide with the day I decided to dedicate an entire week to one elemental race of Ethera.

I will start with my favorite and the one I know most about: the Cetaceans, also known as the "water people."


First, let's take a look at that stat hex I made, shall we? An explanation of the stats if they were used in an RPG:
STR - Physical strength. This would calculate into attack power and probably stamina/HP.
DEF - Physical defenses. This would factor into defensive power, of course, and would probably play a bigger role in calculating stamina/HP.
SPD - Speed. Factors into evasion and how often the character would attack.
INT - Intellect. It basically boils down to magic attack and would also be used to determine when a character learned offensive spells.
WIS - Wisdom. Basically magical defense and also used to determine what healing/support spells a character can learn.
SKL - Skill. A kind of odd parameter, think of it as a magic parameter FOR SCIENCE! It would probably add a little to evasion or something, too.

So, as you can see from the hex above, the Cetaceans are pretty fast and technologically advanced, but magically challenged. Their basic str/def is about as close to average as they can get with this system.



Two cetaceans, a boy and girl. More on their characters later--today it's all about biology. As a fantasy world, Ethera has a tendency to look the other way towards common sense, which is why the Cetaceans--largely mammals--have both gills and lungs and can switch between the two with ease. Most of them live in underwater cities and are fully equipped for it with double eyelids and webbed hands/feet. Surgery can be performed to remove the webbing from the hands of infants and children--this makes it much easier to use tools/work. Over time cut webs have come to symbolize lower classes, and simply showing your hands can be a sign of status.

Cetaceans, notably, have the least sexual dimorphism of any race.

Common skin colors are blue, green, and grey; hair colors are dark variations of those plus purple. Some more fishlike birthmarks such as stripes are uncommon (but not unheard of).

Hey, it's him!

What happened to him, anyway? Two seconds ago he was on the blog every day...

Uniforms for that Dating Sim

The school's a bit lax with uniform requirements.

To say the least.

Oh Crap

Oh crap I totally forgot about this blog aaaaa

Well, today... I "statted" the races of Ethera. I don't want to post them all yet, so here's a preview of sorts:


I have a surprise for you all Sunday. Please look forward to it.

Return of the Elements

Right: Genderflipped version of yesterday's wood person.

Left: Matt Smith as The Thing, or a very, very early concept for my Earth people.

Elements Revisited

This is the wood element guy. His race is known as Xylem. It may also need a redesign, as though his race is fairly obvious from his color scheme, his race was mixed up twice by two different people (one put him as air, the other fire) when he was just a sketch.

Also new coloring style? Just don't expect to see it often.