Derrotic Ruins - Hank and Caeser in Spring 2011

In middle school, I discovered anime fan sites and all the stats they contained about characters. I was obsessed and drew Sailor Moon fanart (all thrown away by now) in the seventh grade with their stats beside them. Some of my classmates teased me, saying it was like stalker info for cartoon characters. Finally I decided to make stat-sheet drawings of my own characters.

These are no longer "canon" and the boys are 14 because I was 13 and I thought the boys should be older for what I guess were societal reasons.

Old-school Xerxes (formerly Hank.) LOL, that middle name. He was like a teenage form of Han Solo and Captain Kirk for my middle-school self to adventure with (I may have made Mary Sues back then, but even I knew it would be strange for a 30-year-old man to travel with a barely teenage girl. Unlike other Mary Sue authors I've encountered.) His birthday is still the same, but not much else from the stat-sheet.

Old-school Caeser. I embarrassed a guy in my class when I told the class I was inspired by him for this guy (i.e. the fashion sense. I thought it was cool... I wasn't making fun of him!) And the traits part is so false now. Xerxes and Caeser are supposed to be best friends. Also, I eventually (in the eighth grade) made Caeser Australian instead of British. And now he's an alien (maybe still with an Australian accent?) And now he's a sleepy, lazy bum, not hyper. He used to be rich and that's still true. Oh well, this was one of the first real drawings I drew of Caeser (if not the first.)

These were both drawn sometime in the spring of 2001, toward the end of seventh grade. Eleven years ago. That's over a DECADE.

Derrotic Ruins - Power Warp in the Spring of 2004

When I was in tenth grade, I went through a stressful period. Power Warp helped me cope (if you read through the novel version of it I wrote at the time, it is painfully obvious it was just me escaping from parallel problems.) I drew an awful lot of it as doodles in preparation for the webcomic I started drawing in the summer (fun fact: I had about 10-15 pages drawn that spring during school, but redrew them all that summer because I thought I could do better after completing Drawing I.) I doodled a lot in class, after finishing classwork (or saving the class work as homework, if possible.) And thus, these.

An early sketch of Jenn I doodled in Algebra II. Her outfit was so generic. I actually don't know how I'm going to fit her into the current story yet. But I do want to incorporate her somehow, because I do like her. Maybe a rival? I don't want her to be part of the main crew this time, though. She wouldn't make a good outright villain either, though. She's too happy and... bouncy.

I think I worked on this one in French II. I was so proud of the composition on this one, I think. (At least, I'm patting my 16-year-old self on the back for it right now.) This one actually has a date: 3-10-04 (March 3). So eight years ago, wow. I was a sophomore in high school eight years ago... Anyway, this is Derrot with the Chedaa Demon (which I now think looks too much like Tenchi Muyo's cabbits. Shame.) And note the signature. I don't think I ever used that again. DRK does not mean "Dr. K", as some people have thought (though that does sound cool), but "dark", because I'm The Dark Illustrator of The Dark Writers.

This was also the only time I recall giving her a bandanna cap.

Derrotic Ruins - Hankumarasha and Isotamitorizuro

Prince Hankumarasha

Princess Isotamitorizuro

No date, but I know these were drawn in the seventh grade. My English teacher told me to put them away, I think? I don't think I was even drawing them in class, but I did have them in my binder (I had a clear white binder that I slipped my drawings into as covers.) One of my classmates was upset because he couldn't read the katakana (it's so fuzzy, maybe I didn't tell him they spelled the same thing as the Roman letters, minus the Prince/Princess bit. I made a mistake in the last characters, though. The "ya" should be smaller in Hank's, but I was clumsy and Derrot's (Tori's at the time) reads "ko" instead of "ro", which actually makes more sense.) But yeah, the classmate told the teacher and she despised my love of Pokemon and anime (and all cartoons, it seemed), so I was told what for.

Their names were picked out from a combination of their English names and "random cool katakana."

Their outfits were inspired by Princess Mononoke, I think. I think I watched it around that time? I remember liking the guy's hair in that movie. And the outfits don't look like real kimono, but I was 13 and a fairly new fan of anime and Japanese culture. And even then, I liked the pop culture more than the traditional stuff (it's the same with me today.) I became a fan of Pokemon at age 11, but I think it wasn't until I was 12 that I began to understand what anime was and 13 when I started to actively search it out, thanks to Toonami and my mom renting Ranma 1/2 randomly for me because it looked like the Toonami stuff I watched and she thought I might like it. I LOVED IT.

End history lesson of me.

Derrotic Ruins - 2006 Derrot and Hank

After I moved over half a decade ago, I planned to get back into drawing my webcomic, Power Warp (which you can still find through Google. Just be careful of the ads from Comic Genesis.) I used to draw so much related to that comic. Then school got to me (it wasn't hard, but I was somewhat depressed at that time) and the website that hosted my website lost my account info in a server move or something, so I was locked out of my website. So I began to develop ideas of restarting it, and began drawing new art for it, but couldn't fully commit (it was the last semester of high school.) Even at university I didn't have the time, but at university at least I developed the brains to make the comic less Mary Sue-ish. And that is where I'm at now, reworking the comic into something that is not just self-insertion. Derrot is now just another alien crew member (not the main character) and quite a different personality with more pronounced flaws. Anyway, back to 2006, when I was drawing new art for a revamp...

Dated 19 February 2006. Derrot in a revamped costume that was never seen again except in sketches contemporary to it. I wanted these illustrations to be like cards, so I went crazy detailed (for me, at least) with the background. Earth, Lighting, the Power Warp space ship, and crumbled columns (representing the ancient civilizations the crew meets on different planets, civilizations that influenced early Earth.) All of these represented the old Derrot and her adventures while trying to get back to Earth. Now she's not from Earth, I think I'm ditching the over used past civilization thing, the ship looks lame and needs a redesign... only lightning binds old Derrot to new Derrot (and actually, old Derrot was supposed to be psychic, so that might not even be lightning in this drawing at all. So yeah, different. Except for the hair.)

Also, I started to color this, but I didn't have a tablet and the mouse was terrible with a ball (I didn't know I could shade with selections at the time either.) I only used the bucket tool to color, but when someone on deviantART told me I should shade my stuff for more depth, I felt ashamed and didn't know what to do and just didn't finish it. It stayed on my computer like that the entire time, even though I later figured out how to slowly shade with a soft, less-opaque brush later (until I got my tablet.)

I was actually proud of this when I first drew and inked it.

Oh, and it's all green because of her iamge color. Probably a poor choice. Only the background should probably have been green.

Dated 20 March 2006. Xerxes/Hank. This one didn't even pass the inking process. Probably because I saw I wasn't ever going to finish coloring the first one. A pyramid with a sun at the apex is in the upper left corner. I don't know what the square dots and tree trunk things at the top were supposed to represent. Data? The rest is self-explanatory.

WIP - Buggin the Reindeer

Missed these? I was actually up to date with these for a moment, but then fell behind again...

Okay, so there was one more QT Crawlies picture I drew... the Promo Poster. Even though I like the poses, the anatomy is awkward and therefore needs to be redrawn. This was the first set of six I intended to release in print/card format.

One of the monsters from Toilet Spawn. This more qualifies as a sketch since this was the first drawing I ever did of the series (back at the end of 2010.) But I do like it, so maybe it's all right to just jump in and ink it? It's supposed to be a warrior reindeer, with thick, bushy eyebrows.

Sketchbook - Stacey and Eladore

Stacey from my Minervellas novel. At this point I was starting to feel very uninspired and frustrated. Why when I make a main character of a story and draw her, she turns out looking somewhat like me?! Maybe I should draw more guy leads? Though, it's not entirely true that all my main female characters look like me. The protagonist of Toilet Spawn doesn't look like me, but maybe because she's a satire of girly-girls that use the toilet all the time. But any character I identify with ends up looking somewhat like an idealized mirror.

The antagonist from Minervellas, Eleanor, a.k.a. Eladore. I finally emerged from the aforementioned rut and sketched my cutie devil character. Even though she's quite evil in the story, I still think she's adorable. I have to work on making her funnier, though.

I know her left (our right) eye is wonky. That wasn't meant to happen, but this was just a sketch. As long as I keep drawing and sketching, the more I'll be able to avoid such mistakes in the future.

Sketchbook - Doctors and a Homerun

This was supposed to be a weekly installatation (like most of the columns on my blogs, though some are monthly or bi-weekly.) Now I'm playing catch-up. I'll start with some semi-old, semi-recent sketches.

11 in a hairbow and Homura with a shrunken head. These are both fanart spawned from random conversations with Meshia.

Three's Company

As is this one. I'm so shameless. Anyway, even though I put strategic bubbles on The Doctor (it's supposed to be a G-rated scene, and I thought it was, but...) apparently they weren't strategic enough. (According to someone who saw it with wide eyes. X-Ray vision?) So here's a cropped version.

State of the Projects - April 2012

What is this?! Another month of nothing but sketches and commissions?! (Sorry, this isn't an April Fools joke. I really was this unproductive in the art department of my goals again.) Only a bit of blog writing, too, though it's coming easier. If I can just make a breakthrough on one project (i.e. finish something), things might start tumbling together and get on a roll. It's just hard right now. But at least I still get the stuff of the utmost priority done (commissions), so I have to put myself in that mindset for these projects, too. Help me!

Major Projects

1.) Hellhoney - Nothing.
2.) Minervellas - Nothing.
3.) Power Warp - Nothing.
4.) Toilet Spawn - Nothing.

Minor Projects

1.) QT Crawlies - Nothing.
2.) Optimizzy - Nothing.
3.) Random/Silly Calendar - Nothing.
4.) Hobo Story - Nothing.
5.) Zodiac - Nothing.
6.) Super Popcorn - Nothing.
7.) Mervscorn - Nothing.
8.) Birds - Nothing.
9.) Plush Owls - Nothing.
10.) Pin-up Calendars - Nothing.
11.) Random Original Art - Nothing.
12.) Pantheon - Nothing.
13.) Playing Cards - Nothing.
14.) Tunnels and Elevators - Nothing.
15.) I'm a Bug?! - Nothing.
16.) Tutorials - Nothing.

This is depressing. When will I have paragraphs of progress reports and the all-hallowed green text of completion?!