#Found this abandoned in my drafts oops D:

[jicklet]

Megamind + Roxanne in Megamind Rules! 🩵

[tiny-feisty-gay]

I saw in one of your tags a mention of a novel? As someone who is enjoying your Chaggie fics (they're really good!) I'm curious as to what you write when fandom isn't on the brain :D

First of all thank you for enjoying my fics! I love engaging with fandom and the fact I can contribute creatively to the things I love brings me a lot of joy <3

Fair warning there is so much under the cut here oops, you gave me an opening to talk about my original shit and now I'm running with it lol

I have several projects at the moment, but the one with the most traction and an actual finished first draft is an urban romantasy following a chronically ill werewolf and the suffocated coven heir vampire with PTSD (and a service Hellhound) who she falls in love after an abandoned new vampire stumbles into her job, confused and bloodthirsty. The major throughline is a combination of found family, romance and going against what's expected/socially acceptable to find happiness and self-worth.

The one also has the most art!

The MCs from that one are Marie and Alex <3

I have a few other stories set in the same universe as this one ^ Including a hunter/vampire story (Daisy and Vel, feat. Eidolon, Vel's mount, who is my interpretation of a kelpie)

This one was originally inspired by Reinary's song May I Have This Dance and then I just ran with it lol

And a witch/werewolf story (Amaris, werewolf and Raelyn, witch); follows a werewolf collar tech (Raelyn) and the werewolf she met as a child, before she realized what was really happening (her family trains werewolves as guards -- I'm still working the plot of this one because I've had a hard time balancing it in a way that isn't harmful to actual people, and it might end up scrapped or reworked into something else, but I love the characters so they get a mention lol)

I also have a multitude of others, including (another) exes-to-lovers between a muralist and tattoo artist who dated in high school; the muralist bailed after high school in an effort to run away from home/family troubles and left a lot of hurt feelings behind.

Then I have a siren/selkie story where the siren's voice has been stolen by a now-popular singer, and the (chaotic) selkie finds out and wreaks havoc trying to free her.

Irie (top, siren) and Anchor (bottom, selkie)

And most recently, a platonic succubus and the grumpy/intimidating witch she falls in love with while trying to figure out how to navigate and hold onto meaningful friendships.

The first one is obviously my most fleshed out, but basically I write a lot of sapphic romance/romance-adjacent and primarily fantasy.

There's a few other ideas I've shelved temporarily while I figure out what I want to do with them too. One is a full rework of the novel I wrote when I was eleven, which was very much Mary-Sue princess goes on quest to save the kingdom lol. There were dragons and unicorns in that one xD

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to ramble about my original works! I love talking about them but obviously my fandom content is more popular lol

[whichstiel]

I made this art for the 2019 Dean/Cas Tropefest. (HUGE thanks to the mods, Jojo and Muse, for being amazing!) As soon as I read through the summaries, I knew I needed to try to grab the DRAGON STORY right away. I just...really love dragons, okay? This story is delightful and unexpected, with lovely world-building, rich side characters, and a beautiful romance between Dean and Cas. I really enjoyed reading it and working with zaphodsgirl! You can read Shadow & Storm by zaphodsgirl now! You’ll love it. <3

Here’s the summary:

One night, a mysterious visitor appears in young Prince Dean's bedroom, and he suddenly finds himself transported to an abandoned replica of his home in an unknown land. He learns quickly that the borders are finite, and none may leave without incurring the wrath of the guardian: a dragon the people call Storm.

Left with no choice, Dean adapts to life as the others have, tending to the animals and working the land to survive. As he grows up, the life he knew as a prince seems more and more distant, until a new person arrives that he remembers from his childhood. Shaken by this arrival, Dean’s desire to escape returns anew, and he discovers more than he wanted to know about the Shadowlands and its occupants -- especially about the mysterious guardian of the castle, Castiel.

Continue reading for some insight into the process and drafts behind the art.

Reading this story, I was struck by its lovely fairy tale vibe, which inspired me to make some kind of story-book art. I’ve always enjoyed pop-up books, so that seemed like a fun thing to try. My first step was to learn more about pop-ups. I turned to the internet for ideas, and found recommendations for: Pop-up design and paper mechanics, by Duncan Birmingham. This was a really useful book (I got it from the library - and you can too!) It gave me some basic structures and some general rules of thumb for how things fold and work when opened. I stuck with the simpler forms, given the short time period before posting.

Tools & supplies:

Cardstock paper

Watercolor paper (for the folding pages/backdrops and some stand-ups)

Watercolors, colored pencil, sharpie markers

Glue (I really like this scrapbooker’s glue pen for paperwork. Dries FAST and mostly doesn’t warp.)

Scissors, precision knife, ruler, protractor

Bone folder for pressing seams

Once I had some broad ideas of some of the rules of pop-up creation, I started to sketch out some quick ideas. I always like to start with the cover image, since that’s the main image people see when they’re browsing a story list. I did a few basic sketches on paper, but I decided the easiest way to develop these pop-up pieces would be to do what Birmingham called “paper sketching.” With paper sketching, you just...eyeball the pieces, attach it to a folded piece of paper, and cut away whatever paper you don’t want. It’s sort of like working with negative space in that way. Paper sketching was invaluable for helping me figure out things like: how tall should the mountains be? How high are the wings? What can fold together to lay flat? (Because I wanted this to be a functional book.) How long can I make that flame spout? (Not long, as it turned out.)

Here are some paper sketches I made of the cover image. A few of these were before I re-read the story and realized that the castle was built INTO the mountain. Oops. Building drafts helped me to realize that the concept was possible. Once I had some general structures under my belt, I could start to do the finer work of cutting out the final pieces. Draft work was typically done with sketchbook paper or cheap cardstock from Walgreens.

(Left: first draft; Right: Oh my god maybe this will actually work)

I wanted the cover to convey the full expanse of the lands surrounding the castle. I made my author draw me an actual map and diagram of all the agricultural lands. Thanks, zaphodsgirl! I chose black paper for the cover for REASONS you will discover when you read the story.

(Left: background watercolor progress with marker details; Right: taping in a quick test sketch to see if it will fit with the dragon and to test the angle)

Behind the scenes

For each design, I started by painting a watercolor backdrop, making note of the center where I’d need to fold the page. Watercolor paper was a pretty good choice because it��s thick and you can really crease the hell out of that middle joint - and the page stays strong. The cover is the most detailed. For the others, I went with more imprecise watercolor washes - mostly in the interest of time.

Finding a good backdrop is always a challenge when photographing art, and was a big issue for the cover since that dragon really gets lost if there’s too much in the background. I decided to go “Maria from Sound of Music” and pull down one of my curtains as a backdrop. That, plus desk lamps for light made a pretty good set.

This piece features Castiel fading into the dragon. I suffered from proportion control for this project but chose to forge on ahead, anyway. Sometimes the dragon is huge, sometimes it’s small. Oooooh well, it’s a dragon, anyway. :D The little Dean torso is intended to be a manually-opened inset, more to show his reaction than anything else. The dragon is 5 pieces - tail, head and forepaw, wings, and body. Castiel is a single piece; his fold is attached to the dragon and there’s a little paper accordion behind his head to keep him upright.

(Top left: I hate concept sketches; Top right: Cas coming together. I made him too tall! Oh well, I’m gonna roll with it)

Behind the scenes

This next piece was actually the second one I did, because it was the most complex and I wanted to get it finished so I wouldn’t fret over it. The red light is from a bicycle tail-light that I’m holding in the air with one hand while taking a photo with the other. I just really liked that little shadow claw on the ground!

This dragon was somewhat inspired by a Game of Thrones popup my author shared with me. My dragon isn’t as complex, but it still opens wide and closes flat, so I’m happy. It’s basically built as an upside down triangle, cut into a folded piece of paper. The fold is on the bottom. You can draw a line from the fold in its snout to a fold on its torso. The spines were cut out and glued on after the fact because I completely forgot to add them!!!

I was having some trouble with the wings attaching properly, so my test models had the dragon at various stages of height or angles from the ground. Too high and it would pop beyond the book pages. Too low and it might as well be sitting on the page completely. The dragon body has built-in tabs to which the wings are glued and the forest cutouts have this as well, for max strength. This is one of those cards where I went through enough drafts that I resorted to tape as a quick-hold option to figure out things like height and angle and how much dragon could fit in the folded pages. I ended up using an actual tool with (gasp) measurements to finally get the angle of the forest inserts right. Folding the test dragon into the card, I actually just sliced off the excess wing and tail that peeked out from the edges, then used that space when I was cutting out my final dragon.

For each of these, it’s best to get your pattern pieces as close as possible and then use that to cut your final pieces. The angles and length of everything needs to be fairly precise or what worked in your draft won’t fold well in the final version.

(Top left: So many draft pieces, so little time; Top right: Use math, kids!; Bottom: Dragon open and closed)

Behind the scenes

The last piece is modeled after a simple folding animal style. Its feet are glued symmetrically over the fold.

It’s essentially a folded piece of cardstock with an animal cut out of it. The head is attached separately, as are the wings and Amara. I had a star hole punch, which made it easy to add some stars to Amara’s gown as well as on the page. I’d wanted to do a big fold-out window arch here, but realized that it wouldn’t fit over the dragon or the Dean/Cas fold. Ah well. Please imagine it, instead.

(Top left: concept sketch; Top right: Paper sketching is a great reality check; Bottom: Amara astride Storm)

Behind the scenes

The final step was to turn this into some kind of book. At first, I planned to stitch the pages together. I’d never bound a book before, and I was cursing myself for putting down all those layers of pop-up inserts if I was going to have to stitch through each page. Then I looked at some pop-up books and realized that often just the edges of the pages are glued, leaving the middle to float as necessary. This was good, because it was a way easier option! (Also the dragon in the forest came out a little tight, so the float was very helpful there.)

I glued the page edges and, since they were a little curly from the watercolor and popup designs pulling at them, I weighted them with books to dry for a while.

I found an old book cover that would work (from a very outdated technology textbook). I sliced out the original pages, recovered the book with black paper, and glued in my new book pages on the front and back. It was a perfect fit!

I finished with time to spare, so I added a little watercolor and paper cut-out picture and frame to the front and back to add some flair. Please enjoy my terrible glue job. (I forgot to smooth the paper.)

I used a hair tie cut in half to hold the pages down for photographs (or display). I clipped two wedge-shaped bag clips to the underside of each tie to weigh down each side, and hold the book open at a slight angle.

This was a fun and challenging project to work on, and I’m so grateful to zaphodsgirl for all her effusive words and gifs of encouragement. You’re going to love this sweet story. Go read it now! Shadow & Storm on AO3.

(And if you feeling like tossing a comment my way, I’d love to hear from you here on Tumblr or on my art post on AO3.) 

[orgroarts]

D&D Dream Campaign Drafts

I had a dream yesterday where I was DM’ing a group of friends and some images and ideas were vividly stuck in my head so I spent half the day drawing them. Here goes 

Full front of the page. That giant knotted-up fish thing above the abyss is what I remember most, however weird that may be.

Here it is. In another part of the dream you could enter the monster-thing somehow (does it even exist within D&D-lore?) and enter a whole different realm. There was nothing more in that room apart from that little crooked stone platform, the crumbling wall and that... Thing. Now that I think about it that thing is kind-of like Jabu-Jabu from Ocarina of Time but different. And a bit more grotesque.

(don’t mind that Sten-quote at the bottom I was watching something)  Temple-scene, which is mostly empty apart from a statue/altar in the middle. Three hallways are seen from the main hall, one door for each wall other than the entrance. And apparently the left one had a green dragon in it? (you can see it if you look real hard) 

A hidden pathway somewhere at the beginning of the campaign, where the party had just defeated some kobolds. The broken twigs and trampled leaves betray where it is.

‘’You realise you are a character in a game created by others for their amusement.’’ -‘’What. What?!’’- I might be a mean DM. Does this mean something?  -The reason for me not adding detail to the characters is to make it more personalised, by leaving it blank one can imagine their own character on there- Or maybe I just forgot the details of the other players. Oops. 

The kobold kamp at the end of the hidden path, surrounded by bushes and trees with a large pile of treasure from previous victims in the middle. A chest, on which tops of candles are standing, is seen at the end. The tents seem to be abandoned, but there might be more Kobolds inside...

Part of the dream-campaign which I kind-of inspired from the rounds of D&D I’ve had with @toonyoshi123. But there it was three people, not four. Just so happens my D&D-interested friends are with four total. Oops.  Here you see them driving the mine-cart into the unknown beast’s mouth, off to new adventures. 

What would a campaign of mine be without any gnolls?  ‘’A stagnant smell of rotten eggs and raw sewage fills your nostrils, mixed with old clotted-up blood. However, whatever it was you smelt, it probably noticed you far, far earlier. Roll for initiative.’’  I have a suspicion I might be good at the storytelling-part of D&D, not the actual DM’ing. XD (Also a base idea? Probably. Use it at your leisure, honeys.)

The map. Must’ve been a small campaign. There’s the village, the forest, the temple on the right, a lake down below and far into the distance a dark mountain-range. 

There was a halfway-broken chest found near the lake, with some perfectly intact scrolls inside. I asked the party to roll for perception, and so they did.  Failing rolls = Funny rolls.  I might do something with this. Now that I’ve posted this I feel kind-of obliged to. XD Hooray, even more stuff to work on. Good gods, I love D&D.