It's been a long yet unproductive summer

[celticheavens]

It's been a while. Oops. Nope, I'm not here to post the finished version of Katsuya's birthday piece because I forgot about it OTL. I didn't really get to touch my Pshop much during the previous semester since I was doing presentation after presentation, and writing paper after paper. Surprisingly hectic for a semester I'd originally planned to be "relaxing". Figures huh? At least I managed to pull my CAP up by quite a bit~ :D It was only after the end of my semester did I have time to fiddle around with the program, courtesy of Beck who suggested the idea of a redeemable e-voucher for Karrot's birthday. :D And since well, me being the incredibly lazy and uncreative one, Beck supplied the general concept and idea, and left me to the freedom to do up my own design.





So yea, the entire thing was basically my take on Beck's idea: the whole USS thing to tie in with Karrot's comment about wanting to get this student pass special that allows unlimited access during a certain period, the Hunger Games inspired tagline at the back that ties in with the redeemable items (with her picking the items of course since well, ultimately she is the gifter, not me :P), and adding in semi-realistic coupon details like the cut-out portions and the terms and conditions.

This was originally meant to be one-sided, with the USS theme at the top followed by the cut-outs, and finally the terms and conditions pasted into the email sent to her (less work for me too). But knowing how I always end up severely underestimating my ideas, I had to split it into two sides, resulting in the inclusion of the terms and conditions inside the design itself. The images used in the front are all courtesy of Google Images (from left to right: x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x) and touched up to make the colours stand out a little more, and the screen tone brushes are from here (because I felt too lazy to do my own screen tone effects -.-). (Yes, that segmented map thing is a very bad judgement call on my end; I blame it on lack of sleep and post-exams euphoria. I should have just left it in one piece and altered it to look like an actual map instead.) Everything else is pretty much a product of basic brushes, and overuse of the smudge tool and what not. Likewise for the back, similar screen tone brushes are used, and everything else is hand drawn. (I just realised I forgot to align the images for the 2nd coupon to be in the centre -.-.) I originally wanted to do the breakfast set for the gang, but 1. I got lazy, and 2. I had to start packing since I left everything to the last minute again, so I just reused the alcohol set I did last time~ And no, believe it or not, that fine print is not me taking a jibe at Beck, but rather a willing admission on her end on her... Artistic skills. (And I'm sure Karrot will support her on that too~) The part I enjoyed the most was not the drawing or designing the front, but instead writing up the terms and conditions :D. Most of them are modifications of real life ones I've seen before aided by my rusty knowledge of local laws, and written in a neutral tone to give the illusion of realism until you read the final clause of the last item xD. So yea, overall great fun to do albeit rushed in one night, and also for sparking off a reason for me to use my tablet and Pshop again!

Another thing I managed to do before the move was create an original character for Marvel's X-men~ I've toyed with the idea for a while now, and since I didn't feel like drawing any fanart (especially after not touching my tablet proper in nearly half a year), why not do something different for once?


I've the entire character background and concept created, but her design's still rather tentative (she looks too much like Betsy for my liking... T_T I bet my love for her unconsciously seeped into this design). I wanted her to be more covered up (it's more practical for heaven's sake, and also because it's easier to shade fabric than skin :P), while not going over the top or lose the whole superhero effect. The colour scheme is well... I originally picked purple but that'll really be pushing it a tad too close to Betsy's outfit, white because other more ostentatious colours don't fit her personality while black will make her overall look too bland, and trimmed in orange because I flipped a coin between that and gold :X. (Tells you a ton about my creative process huh.) She's not a regular in the X-men (if anything, she only trained with them for just over a year as a teenager), but has instead been coerced/recruited into MI:13 by a certain Pete Wisdom :D~ I thought the latter is more fitting given how her power is elemental manipulation, and she is an alchemist. :D (Her backstory gave me good reason to read up on this ancient art and man, it is an incredibly strange concept to wrap one's head around, but still utterly intriguing.) I'm not really sure how I'm going to tell and expand on her story but meh, it's better to have all the separate pieces ready for when inspiration strikes than to rush and create everything from scratch and risk losing the spark midway eh?


On another note, I don't think I've mentioned it here but I agreed to contribute a fanfic in January or so to my club's Hetalia Anthology project alongside daemon_angelus and bulletthestars for our upcoming Minnacon event. Several reasons for me taking up the offer at that time: I honestly thought it would be a much less frantic semester than my previous ones, it was a good way to finally give myself an excuse to finally write a Hetalia fic, and I felt bad rejecting the offer since I was an obvious choice and they needed one more person to pair everyone up. After an hour or two of animated discussion, we sort of came up with the general concept for the book before each of us had to leave for dinner and whatnot. The lack of updates subsequently made it fade from my memory, until received a text enquiring about my progress when I was in Melaka for a road trip did it come back to me. Although I was incredibly peeved at the last minute sending of details and lack of communication to reinforce that the project was still ongoing, my artist and I managed to pull through with a sliver to spare. Thankfully I'd crystalized the general concept much earlier in the semester during a casual dinner cum drinking night with picseanenigma, so at least I had a vague framework to work with when the deadline drew uncomfortably near (especially since I could only do it after I returned from my trip and I wasn't really willing to let work invade my short timeout). After numerous all-nighters of painfully squeezing words out since I'd already filled the days of my week prior to my trip, I finally finished it! Got some of my lovely friends to read and edit it for me during the last day before final submission, and thanks to them the unpolished rock is now a bit closer to becoming a small little gem. :D I'll rave and rant more about this after the event (which is also when I'll post it up on my other LJ and my other writing portals), so for now, I'm more than happy to just use my free time to laze around on my bed with my laptop~ I'll probably work on the long overdue profile graphic thing for my writing LJ in anticipation of the event too~

Until post-Minnacon or something! (Wow, this is a long post huh? xD)

PLEASE DO NOT USE ANY OF MY GRAPHICS/ART WITHOUT OBTAINING PROPER PERMISSION FROM ME.

~Mystickal





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