Photoshop

DeviantArt is a great invention, not just because you can share your work with other people, you can see theirs, you can search for particular topics, you can collect works, print them, buy merchandise, but you can actually learn how to become a better artist on it, let alone get inspired. So there was this one things someone posted giving tips on how they use PS to color/paint their drawings, so I read it and was fascinated to learn that I don't know everything about PS like I pretend to. Here are my first two tries with the new methods that I learned today.

from the film "A Dog's Breakfast"

the Master in "Doctor Who"

Prison Shell

I'm really good at writing pretty-sounding nonsense in the middle of the night and I'm over tired. So here's a freewrite that just sort of fell out.

Prison Shell (2/16/08)

Tiny drops of Drucudian Lape hang, lingering at gravity’s fingertips. Gravity, the old witch, reaches, stretches her withering hand blindly, like a child reaching for a cookie above on the counter somewhere, much too out of reach. Breeze, blowing strong but futilely, like a desperate whistler whose lips are too dry to make a sound, tickles the drop at the edge, elongating and thinning the fleck of moisture. A miniscule ruby stream, it becomes, and dribbles over the side falling into Gravity’s greedy palm after all.

Drucudian Lape lies on his back, the circumference of his blood increasing by the second. He blinks blearily at the crimson sky, the sky of his degrading vision where blood has found a place to squeeze between lens and ball. It pours down through the pupil holes, which contract in the sunlight, or the sunlight his faulty vision perceives.

Lape is not alone. Life sits by his side, curiously watching the young man hold on so determinedly to the spirit that was never really his. “Drucudian Lape,” says Life, knowing the boy can’t hear anything yet, “you are the shell harboring the chick. It is time to give birth at the minor expense of the shell. Hatch, boy, hatch.”

But Lape doesn’t hatch. He can’t see, can’t hear, not in the sense that doctors would diagnose him as a seeing and hearing individual, but he thinks he can. With this ill-directed belief, he thinks the spirit will remain in him for much longer. No one he knows died before age thirty, so it can’t be his turn yet.

“Where is the spirit, Lape-boy?” asks Life. “What have you done with it? You can’t hold it prisoner forever. There are rules about that.”

The last of Lape’s blood channels out the crack in the back of his skull, but he continues to smile up at the sky, thinking he sees clouds now, but there are no clouds. Not for Drucudian Lape. Cold burrows into his pores like a nest of ticks, causing his skin to rise with bumps. Hollow of ruby sauce, which now sticks to his straw-pale hair, the spirit within him soars through the body, no longer blocked by dams of arteries and floods of blood. But it doesn’t find an exit. Lape smiles because it feels like he has jumping beans in his chest. The spirit careens through him faster and faster, panicked, gasping for fresh light, the light of the outside world. Time to hatch, time to hatch, but the shell is thick and the spirit is weak. Lape’s heart pumps its last, but his brain doesn’t slow down. He thinks it will be a nice day if it ever warms up.

“Prison shell,” Life states calmly. “Less than neutral encasement, indeed. Sent to keep the spirit from the light? You’d better watch it or Death will come back for you, and he will make you live forever, but empty. Empty little shell drilled through the head, sitting on a shelf to be displayed forever more. Come see the immortal prison who holds no keep. Whose warden is his own. It’s what shells want, isn’t it? To be more than just shells? To live a spirit’s life? But sooner or later the farmer comes for all of you. If you will not be a chick, then you will be an omelet.”

Mostly Editing

1. Editing -- Riff


Here’s a list of some productive criticism that I’ve gotten for Riff that I need to take into account on my second pass…


Positive feedback:

Sticks in the mind

Easy to keep reading

Strong mood and storyline

Good first sentence

1st person narrative allows reader to catch breath

Good descriptions of characters and places

Parallel storylines weren’t confusing

Shows research went into the project

The wrong brother twist was unexpected



Things to fix:

The word violacious appears in the second sentence of the novel. Too confusing? Spell-check doesn’t like it. Get rid of it all together or find a synonym?

Needs more backstory.

Chapter 1 – moving from Matthew’s bunkmate to Janek’s roommate is confusing.

Needs more time with 1st person narrator. Her epiphany comes too quickly. More internal dialogue. How does she reach her conclusion?

You probably can’t unembalm a person like that without collapsing veins.

Explain better that the chicken farm is not slave labor. Many people in Thailand have chickens in their backyard.

More background with Matthew’s relationship to his brother.

Wintry’s fate doesn’t seem deserved.

Leonard’s identity was guessed from the beginning.

Hell’s souls are either crowded or absent – why? (because they all go to the ring they’re supposed to end up in)

Too much vomit.

Missed Truick’s intent for pushing the angel.

Must add thing about how Truick’s watch stops (my memo).

Wintry was too whiny in the end to make the reader care about her and too pathetic in the beginning.

Maybe make Wintry’s ‘turn’ on Leonard slower. At first she might try to convince him that he’s confused, but then her anger starts slower. Need to go a little further with the blood thing though, I think.

Coins on the eyes of the dead is a Roman tradition, not African.

Make the mental pull of Satan on Wintry stronger. (also get rid of "fortunately" in that scene)

Fix that confusing bit about how they got into the circus wagon.

What in the world is Sara-Jayne doing during the time Leonard is trying to help Janek?

Wintry breaks down one too many times.

What does the facade feel like? Does it tingle? Hurt? Warmth? Icy?

Make Heaven more Heavenly. Add animals. Some souls weighed down by evil, dragged down, take refuge in bodies, rejoice in being able to view reality for a short peroid. Other souls, pure and light, whip around Heaven.



2. Editing -- Haven


I haven't looked at it in a while, but I bet, despite how perfect I thought it was 1.5 years ago, it could probably do with another draft. One thing I thought I should do is change the first section (with the movie) to be more poetic than clinical because it's being told from the perspective of a poet. Also, it would make the agent like it better from the start. Right now, you have to fight your way past that part, not realizing it's a movie until the second page.



3. Drawings



I'm still working with the paintbrush tool in PS. Haven't quite reached the quality I want, but here's another practice of Sam Vimes from Terry Pratchett's Discworld.









4. Scrapblog

I found this cool site called Scrapblog, which I invented in my head a loooooong time ago, but I'm glad there's a free and sharable (sp?) one on the internet. It has some bugs, like it didn't let me save after 30 pages and such, but here are two examples.

My sketchbook:
http://www.scrapblog.com/viewer/vw_full.aspx?sbid=164892

Bowling Shoes and Murder picture book:
http://www.scrapblog.com/viewer/vw_full.aspx?sbid=166051