dubiouslog

Spark Needle

( March 9, 2010 - 12:57 pm, filed under fanlistings, websites, tagged as , , )

It’s been more than a year since the first time I wrote in this weblog that I wanted to make a website revolving around Volkner and Flint from Pokémon. Today, that website is finally ready. Its name is Spark Needle, and is the largest shrine I’ve ever made.

Writing these lines give me an incredible feeling of accomplishment that can only be compared to the one I got when Angeltower’s Frozen Truth Version was released back in 2007, and it’s also a bit like reliving the day after the first kiss or after the first time making love. It also saddens me a bit that I will no longer have to nurture this website; I think it could be the same feeling a parent gets seeing their children growing up and leaving their house. It’s a mysterious thing.

Putting aside this emotional stuff for a moment, I can say that Spark Needle is my biggest feat yet, both on the personal and technical front.
With the death of Internet Explorer 6, the web is finally ready to bestow the true potential of PNG transparency and fixed backgrounds applied to elements other than <body>. Spark Needle’s layout features four types of fixed tiled backgrounds with the same pattern in different colors; when scrolling the page, the eye is tricked into believing the background is always the same with only the colors changing. The top looks very simple, but it features scrolling elements on a fixed background, and this is where trasparent-background PNGs come into play. The text on the navigation buttons has a trasparent background as well, and the hovers are pure CSS: there is no other part of the image, it’s just the background color changing into red. This makes the layout lighter and the coding cleaner.

For what concerns the content, the fact that there are 21 information pages should say everything. If gedit isn’t failing me, the total word count for all of these pages is around 14,000, and I was being concise. Other than a lot to read, there are also game pictures, artworks and screencaps from the anime.  308 screencaps, to be precise. Scary, I know.

Most of the fanstuff section has content you should have already seen if you’ve been following this weblog, but there are also some new things: two unpublished fan arts - which would be the suggestive fan arts I was talking about in my last artwork post, mind -, one short fan fic which is really about their friendship so you have no excuse not to read it, and 13 icons I made yesterday. There is also some submitted material :D

and now I can sit on my butt and feel accomplished.

5 comments

post-DP166

( March 4, 2010 - 11:29 am, filed under none of the above, personal, tagged as , )

I accidentally exploded in front of the computer.

Edit (and a spoiler)

4 comments

what the

( March 1, 2010 - 10:23 pm, filed under artworks, graphic designing, tagged as , )
  • Mom: Will you ever leave that computer?
  • Me: I have stuff to do!
  • Mom: But what, if you’re not attending university? Can I see?
  • Me: *nervously hides all Volkner and Flint pictures*

ICONS!
I actually made these on Thursday, I meant to release them together with the shrine but
I CAN’T WAIT ANYMORE

flint-01.pngflint-02.pngflint-03.pngvolkner-01.pngflint-04.pngvolkner-02.pngvolkner-03.pngvolkner-flint-01.pngflint-05.pngvolkner-flint-02.pngflint-06.pngvolkner-04.pngvolkner-05.pngvolkner-flint-03.pngflint-07.pngvolkner-flint-04.pngvolkner-06.pngflint-08.pngvolkner-07.pngvolkner-08.pngvolkner-09.pngflint-09.pngvolkner-flint-05.png

:D

Last Friday I was at Irene’s. Irene has a glass with The Flash on it. Combine all of the previous with the fact that my mind tends to be pretty one-tracked as of lately and some drawing materials:

flint-flash-01.jpg

then we laughed till it hurt

4 comments

so tell me, are you lonely?

( February 28, 2010 - 7:32 am, filed under personal, websites, tagged as , )

I’m sorry! I can’t shut up about Volkner and Flint lately. Even though I can see how someone may want to smack me in the face just to make me stop, you have to understand that I’ve been through some very rough times as of lately and these guys somehow managed to give me the strength and to bring a smile to my face. I feel really thankful towards the people who were involved in the making of that episode, and I wish they could know to what extent their work affected my life.

Anyway, I’ve been spending these days working restlessly on the shrine to them. I missed working on a website so much. I never thought I’d ever say this, but when I’ll be finished I’m going to miss working on it as well. This website also made me rediscover one of my passions that I’ve been neglecting in these last few years: writing. How much time has passed since the last time I wrote a long page about something? And what about fan fictions? I don’t even know if people will read them, but at least I’ve had fun writing them, and I think I will keep writing fan fics for this website for a long time. And then I will make some fan comics, too. And at least one AMV; yesterday I’ve come across this song whose lyrics relate very much to their relationship for how I see it and I just have to make something with it. Right now the play count is at…138 D8 if you’re curious, the song is Emptier Still from Dark Tranquillity. One of their “lesser” songs, but I find it to be amazing. Anyway, I’d also like to animate something myself, but that could be too much for me. I should at least try, I don’t know. And then I want to make a figure with them, but I have no idea as for what I could use to make them. I suck at modelling stuff with water, but I’m good with wax-based materials…too bad that most of them never really dry and get covered in dust after a few days. If anyone out there knows what I could use…

I really hope for this website to attract the fans. I really want to exchange mails with other people following my same shipping, since I seem to be the only one caring here. :<

(no one needed this entry to begin with! what am I doing?)

3 comments

two years after

( February 25, 2010 - 12:03 pm, filed under none of the above, tagged as , )

I just watched the ep. The one with Volkner and Flint. I’m sweated, shaking all over, I still see the pictures behind my eyes.
It was so beautiful. They were just as I always imagined them to be. Their story was the one I imagined for them. Their voices were just as I expected them to be. Even the way the moved.

Continues under here, spoilers

6 comments

THIS IS IT

( February 13, 2010 - 2:25 am, filed under artworks, tagged as , , , , , , , )

GIGANTIC ARTWORK POST!
still without laptop, but since I’m currently at Jacopo’s I can use his awesome computer and do stuff! yes!

daevion-xivilai-01.jpg

This was made at the same time as the Xivilai painting, so we’re talking about stuff that’s already two months old. Oldest joke ever, but still cute. For me, at least. :>

daevion-08.jpg

stop complaining, you’re just 257 and that bedroll was pretty comfortable too

daevion-09.jpg

playing with pencil shadows. naked because he looked silly with underpants.
…lol I forgot the chair
HE’S LEVITATING ON HIS MAGIC MAGIC BUTT

daevion-10.jpg

I don’t even know why I made this

isaac-clarke-01.jpg

Isaac Clarke from Dead Space
well this could really be anyone else with a RIG, but since I used his figure as a reference we’ll say this is Isaac

riviera-01.jpgriviera-02.jpgriviera-03.jpg

then I played Riviera yet another time and wanted to find a way to draw the characters in my style, and this is what I got. Here we have Serene and Cierra. In case you were curious, the note on the second page is the name I wanted to give to the shrine to Serene I was planning to make, but as you already know I ended up falling in love with Malice instead.
I’ll never stop repeating it: drawing in anime style is
SO BORING

uxie-test-01.jpgmesprit-test-01.jpgazelf-test-01.jpg

These are the artworks for the test I’m making for Angeltower Page. The space on the left is where the text will be.
I think they turned out great 8>

rachel.jpg

Now to something completely different. This painting is a gift for Cercatesori and was inspired from the song Rachel by Klimt 1918. It’s a very moving song written to a true story, you should really listen to it. The painting was based on these lyrics:

Death is down at the end of the street, it brings me on my knees
But I live in a world where nobody loves, nobody hopes
“Please hold me now, don’t let me fall” She says, her skin dirty with mud
“I hold you, love, like a wounded bird, I won’t let you fall!” I scream with pain
Rachel knows her blood still runs, the ground turns red so close my arms
I see the sun going down her eyes, she won’t forget to sleep with me tonight

The blood in this painting is actually not paint, it’s my blood.

pelipper-01.jpg

Now back to something less intense. When Cercatesori came, we spent part of the evening drawing silly stuff. Here, have a Pelipper.

octillery-cercatesori-01.jpg

After that Pelipper, crack ensued.

azurill-cercatesori-01.jpgchingling-cercatesori-01.jpg

Chingling is useless, hence this pic

hoothoot-cercatesori-01.jpgwooper-cercatesori-01.jpgmantine-cercatesori-01.jpglopunny-cercatesori-01.jpg

penises and bowties make everything better
Mantine’s cry is hilarious
also check that sexy Lopunny out

snorlax-cercatesori-01.jpg

hi, I’m the Left Hand Snorlax

carnivine-cercatesori-01.jpg

Carnivine’s Platinum sprite is silly

wingull-cercatesori-01.jpg

tiny wingull

sexy-whitney-spoof-cercatesori-01.jpg

Cercatesori asked me to make the opposite of this infamous pic
I’m so going to hell

cyborg-lady-01.jpg

Back to my head

sheila-03.jpgsheila-04.jpg

Sheila makes a comeback with a new design. I think she’d look great in a digital work, but NO COMPUTER HURR HURR
For a few days, I toyed with the idea of actually making a comic with her as the main character but then scrapped it because I couldn’t make any other characters in her same style and because I really don’t want for this to be my first “serious” comic. I don’t want to give people the wrong impression about my work, since Sheila is my only anthro character and I don’t really care about furries and such, if you catch my drift. Well. Sheila lives on, though.

daevion-11.jpg

there’s no such thing as not enough Daevion

daevion-12.jpg

Classic!

daevion-13.jpg

this is really for my own amusement
you could say it’s fanservice, except this is not a fan art so I don’t know
I left a blank page after this one so that Daevion can cry in there when I’m not looking

daevion-14.jpg

At this point, Daevion is not a derivative character anymore, so it wasn’t fair to keep drawing him with the Oblivion outfit and to have his backstory fit with the Elder Scrolls canon. He’s really my own creation, so I wanted his outfit to be my creation too.
This is Daevion’s final design. He no longer lives in a fantasy universe; he now lives in an alternate present. Alternate, because how else could he still be an elf then XD I still have to write his new backstory, but he’s the same as before as for his personality. I’ll have to draw a better reference picture with colors, but as you can imagine his sweater is crimson and grey, his trousers are grey and his shoes are black. As for his necklace, the actual design is the one under his right hand.
He looks so elegant :> I like him even more now.

hydride-01.jpg

This is Hydride. Here we’re talking about another alternate present in which people are beginning to modify their bodies using cybernetic parts. Hydride - which is not his real name, of course - modified himself so to enhance his physical capabilities. He had a very strong reason for doing so. I don’t know what this reason is yet, but I know that, since he implanted a cyber hand on his dominant right, he had to learn to write with his left hand. The wires on his upper body don’t allow him to wear anything on his torso anymore, thus why he’s half naked. The rest of his clothing is very practical. As you can see, the upper part of his trousers is a bit larger than how it should be so to not rub against the wires down there, but they are also very tight on his legs and tucked into his boots so they won’t fall down. One could ask why didn’t repair his eyes so to stop wearing glasses, but he likes them, and that’s all about it.

hydride-concept-01.jpg

Concept sketches. The colored sketch is his very first concept; the glasses were added later. I spent a good day working on his design, in case you were wondering. The first idea was to make him into an enemy for Sheila, but that was very silly since he’s a human and Sheila is an anthro fennec. This idea was dropped for good right after sketching him here.
I should really write a more detailed entry about my creative process, but know that for me is very important to understand how a character feels into his skin and to have his design making sense rather than being just pretty. For this, I even spent a few days wearing wires all over me to understand how does it feel. One would think that all those wires make walking hard and tripping easy, but I found out that’s not true and that after a while you end up considering them a part of your body. I also found out that people is more prone to notice someone who walks in a weird way than a person covered in wires. How else could I have made these discoveries?
But I’m getting off topic. Anyway, Hydride will probably be something like an evil guy in his universe. He seems to be such an important character, so I’m taking my time to write his story.

margareth-01.jpg

Margareth Stone belongs to the same universe as Hydride. She’s 31 and works in a cybernetic parts research center. She’s not brilliant at all, though; she just makes some components and that’s it, the big projects are in the hands of her superiors. Margareth is very average in everything, actually, and she’s not a beauty either. Her fashion sense is also questionable.
Her husband left her a few years ago because he realized his life was boring and that he could have much more. He was really one for adventure; he married Margareth before he could understand that part of himself. Margareth even let him have his way with other women without objecting, but in the end he couldn’t cope with this lie anymore. The problem is, he left his wife alone with their three-years-old child. All that’s left of Margareth’s family is her old mother and a sister who lives far away, so she had great problems in taking care of the kid, who had in the meanwhile become her only reason to live.
Luck turns to her side when a project for enhancing the brain’s capabilities with the help of technology comes to the human testing phase. Offering herself as a test subject, she has the right to work a lot less and be paid a lot more for only being in the project, with the downside that of course it’s her brain, so if something breaks down she’ll have to run to the center and get fixed as soon as possible. But even like this, the risks are not very high - she was also among the people who made the parts for that project, so she knows how the whole thing works.
So, she undergoes surgery and the top of her head is changed with a metal dome that can be opened to check what’s going on. Because of that she can’t have hair anymore, but since she doesn’t want to freak out people she always wears a wig. Now that she’s a test subject she has got enough time and money to take care of her kid, but she’s also become a lot different from before; she can now memorize and learn everything without effort, retrieve information from any part of her brain at any time and think a lot faster. So, her way to see the world changes as well…
And that’s when her backstory ends and her story begins.

You’re going to hear a lot more about Hydride, Margareth and their universe. There will be new characters and new details. For the time being, every post in which I’m mentioning this alternate universe will be tagged as “unnamed saga”. I’m going to rename the tag in the future, of course. It’s just a placeholder.

volkner-flint-08.jpg

LOOK WHO’S BACK
this didn’t turn out as planned but well it’s still cute
There would be two more pics with them but they’re suggestive so I’ll be posting them in another entry, another time.

Phew, I’ve finally finished writing this epic entry, to bed now

8 comments

you talk too much

( January 31, 2010 - 8:54 pm, filed under personal, websites, tagged as , , , , )

I’ve been feeling really depressed as of lately. My housemates won’t let me use the table, so I cannot draw nothing but sketches on my legs, which means that I cannot make illustrations for school, which means that I’m behind with my classes, which means that I’m getting more and more worried. I really tried to draw on my legs, but my back acts up after about thirty minutes. I need to buy a foldable table, but I also need help to carry it home, and people is busy, not their fault.

I don’t want to be with my housemates anymore, they won’t understand that being sociophobic is not something I can overcome by just being with people, and even like this I’m not the talkative type anyway. They think I’m just being an asshole to them while I just don’t find anything to talk about with them. Plus, I don’t want to be in the same room with them because they’re always smoking, doing drugs or cooking smelly stuff. Strong smells make me sick. I need to move alone, but this takes time. Plus the laptop is still under repair so I can’t work on websites or talk with friends as often as I want, and without a computer I can’t look for houses either.

Plus I won’t be able to see Jacopo for another two weeks. :<

BUT BUT BUT

the ep with Volkner and Flint has been announced for February 25 and I’M SO HAPPY
I just want to see them together doing stuff and teasing each other and I want to hear their voices and asfghjkasdl
The best part is that I know that even if I find them to be a bit different from how I imagine them to be I’m not going to be disappointed :D I just have fun shipping them and love their characters, that’s it

This also comes at just the right time, since I was already planning to make a shrine for them. It’s about a whole year I’ve been wanting to make a website about them and I’ve been working on it behind the scenes, but I was never satisfied with the result. It never seemed to live up to my expectations, yet I wanted to make something for them SO badly. After all, they are the only shipping I ever supported.
Then there was something that gave me the kick I needed to get started and finish everything with a strict deadline…which happens to fall after February 25, so I’ll have enough time to make the layout with a screencap from the episode and put a screencap gallery online and and and 8D

Talking about shrines, I’ve been playing Riviera: The Promised Land again. The idea was to write down Serene’s lines and make a shrine to her, but while I was playing I discovered that my favorite character in that game is really Malice. So…expect something about her in the near future. She really is a very interesting character.
The website will be named “No Future” and the layout will use this wonderful artwork of her. I still have to decide if I want this website to be a shrine or a fanlisting plus shrine.

Have a meme. Stolen from Irene, but since she skipped some questions I looked for the original and answered to some of the ones she left out, then followed her template, then got bored.

(more…)

12 comments

anything with “integral” in its name is women food

( November 9, 2009 - 12:55 pm, filed under artworks, tagged as , , , )

I had the swine flu and it was underwhelming at its worst, thus proving that the media can really manipulate people down to their very fears. It’s not a revelation, but it’s also not an unfounded lament from a black Myspace. I only have to think about the conversation I had with one of my housemates. When I said I had the flu, she started going on about how I should go to the hospital as soon as possible. Well, I can just imagine the face of the doctors if I told them that I wanted to get hospitalized because of a few lines of fever and a sore throat.

Anyway, let’s get to this entry’s real reason. The other day I was archiving my artworks and, among the other things, I came across a number of forgotten Volkner and Flint sketches. They were either unscanned or left unfinished, but still too adorable to never see the light of the interwebs.

volkner-flint-unfinished-01.jpg

Judging from the looks of it, this must be about a year old. I don’t even recall drawing it, but it melts my heart already. The anatomy makes no sense, but Volkner’s expression is just awwwww.

volkner-flint-unfinished-02.jpg

This one should be from February 2009. I think I couldn’t get Volkner’s face right and gave up in frustration. Now that I look again at this one, they also have no nipples. :o Why was I drawing this, anyway? Looks like an excuse to draw naked man torsoes, but uhhhhhhhhhh it’s not like you wouldn’t expect that from me. 8D

volkner-flint-unfinished-03.jpgvolkner-flint-unfinished-04.jpg

I had big plans for these, but lost interest somewhere during the process. The second one was even on watercolor paper, so figure that. They are still somehow cute.

volkner-flint-unfinished-05.jpg

A PHOENIX WRIGHT/POKÉMON CROSSOVER. WHAT HAVE I DONE. Although I must say that it almost makes sense. I’m sure that Gumshoe and Flint would get along.

I could say that these sketches re-ignited my love for this pairing. Sorry for the awful pun but there was really no way I could avoid it. Do you know if there’s any English speaker out there who has made some decent fan art of them? I am so isolated that I almost feel like I’m the only non-Japanese to care about them :(

In the meanwhile, have some random stuff:

cute-fennec-01.gif

No complicated animations, just a tiny blinking fennec that could kill you with its cuteness.

daevion-meta-01.jpg

You just know that I’m becoming obsessed with a character when I start posting meta like this.

On another note, yesterday I finally built up the courage to scan the Myuutsuu no Tanjou booklet. It’s a rather delicate item so I feared to cause damage, but it seems that it went better than expected. The intention was to put it on I AM², but this got me to think about what I really want to do with that website. As much as I love Ai as a character, my real object of interest is the complete Mewtwo saga. So I may turn that shrine into a full tribute to that arc and leave the fanlisting go. Too bad though, I kinda liked the name. Hmm.

no comments

I knew it all along!

( October 13, 2009 - 5:53 pm, filed under none of the above, tagged as , )

Quote from Volkner in Pokémon Platinum:
“My relationship to Flint? There’s no love lost, that’s for sure.”



THUS MAKING THEIR PAIRING CANON. END OF THE STORY
I am as amazed as you, believe me

hey I’ve not been giving those two enough attention as of lately
I gotta fix that

2 comments

I’m a douche

( June 7, 2009 - 5:58 pm, filed under artworks, random, tagged as , )

volkner.gifflint.gif

in-game palette except for two extra tones, pixelover is mostly accurate (Volkner’s eyes and chain are different, Flint has some extra details)

may make Spenser with Fearow later just for kicks, and maybe the Go-Rock Quads too? I had lots of fun with these, so if you’d like to see a pixelover of any official picture or of a fan art you made, go on and ask me, I’ve got some time to waste

9 comments