Wicked Initiations - Drawing Kyril

OK, that title is still tentative, but I'm starting to like it more and more.

The first draft of Wicked Initiations, which is the prequel to The Longevity Thesis, was finished a few weeks ago, and has been sent out to the first round of test readers. So far, one of them tells me it's "superior" to LT, and other described it as "much better".

This is encouraging, especially since it's only the first draft. I'm hoping to add about 30k words, and still think I could polish it up a bit more. Anyway, while I wait for the critiques to trickle in, I've been indulging in one of my favourite activities, which is to make some little graphics to promote the novel later on.

The first one I've done is of the character named Kyril. She is an Aragoth who does not die in the surface-underground war, and becomes a central player in the formation of events that eventually lead up to the "birth" of Antronos, who is of course the protagonist in The Longevity Thesis. Aragoths are not natural creatures, having been created in the Desert using a mysterious animation process for generating disposable and intensely loyal soldiers. As such, Kyril "eats" only on the surface, and has to absorb the elements of wind, water and Earth, in order to continue existing. This activity ties into one of the underlying themes of the novel, which is the proper direction of one's Qi (life energy) in order to attain a worthy state of existence that is relatively pain-free.

Of course, I'm using The GIMP graphics program and the Wacom graphics tablet my brother gave me last year.

I started off with a base sketch - pencil and paper - which I photographed and loaded up as a digital image. From there, I used separate layers for the base colours, light and dark shades, and the light that is supposed to represent the elements Kyril is absorbing. I'll eventually use this image in promotional bookmarks and on the webpage, once the novel is finished.

















I think I might redo her hand around the light bubble (which is actually another character in itself - won't tell you which!) so that the fingers bend around it a bit. I'd also like to change the background to a Desert scene and maybe put another character standing in the background. But the learning curve is steep, and that will take me some time.

Painting Caprio

Caprio, the God of Mischief in Jeanette Cottrell's novel The Shadebinder's Oath, is a little goat who "dips his cloven forehoof into serious affairs of mortals and stirs them up, just to see what happens." Jeanette is the lovely lady who puts out the Dragon Moon Press newsletter each month and promotes the rest of us, selflessly asking nothing in return. Because I'm very grateful to her, and because I really, really, really have fun using The GIMP (I love the GIMP, have I mentioned that? And consequently, I also have deep appreciation for all the open source programming Linux nerds out there), I made Jeanette a bookmark for inclusion in said newsletter (archives available).



I started out by Googling images of goats, and doing a composite sketch to make a mischievous looking prancing goat. The image I referenced the face from was a piebald little guy, however on seeing the base image, Jeanette told me Caprio was white, with a longer body and slightly shorter forelimbs.





















I'm not a professional artist, so I have a little trouble with proportions. But using the GIMP (such a lovely program) I quickly made these adjustments by selecting parts of the image and moving them around. I also cleaned up the image a bit and got rid of the piebald face.



















The next step was to add some light tones to the image. I overlayed a new transparent layer, and dotted on a few new colours with the paintbrush tool, opacity set to 30%, and smudged them along the angles I wanted them.



















Another new transparent layer was added, and with the opacity set to around 60%, I dotted on some darker shades, again using the paintbrush, and also smudged them in where I wanted them. I finally flattened the image and erased the surrounding regions to transparency so that I could overlay the goat onto the background template with all the juicy Dragon Moon logos and book information, etc.
















And here is the final product!!! Jeanette and I were both very happy with how it turned out.

Why Linux Programs are so COOL!!!

Well, perhaps against better judgment, I'm going to nerd out. I've been spending some time learning to use the Linux-based program, The GIMP. There are sooooo many good things about this program. First of all, it's free. Secondly, it packs a phenomenal punch. Thirdly, the online help is extensive. Fourthly, well, it's just so much fun! I first started using it to put together the promo bookmarks for The Longevity Thesis, which have been appearing randomly throughout my blog entries, and will continue to do so. I've also made some bookmarks for Nina Munteanu (on the left), and am in the process of doing the same for Connie Ward. (She hasn't approved hers yet, so I won't post any here.)

Anyway, as I go along, I'm finding out how to do more and more neat tricks with The GIMP. Check out this title thingy!

And this little longevity symbol that I've been playing around with:


It's amazing what this program lets me do. It's no slouch, that's for sure. The more I learn about Linux, the more tempted I am to make the leap over to Linux completely, instead of just toying with my Ubuntu live CD.

But . . . I'm still hopelessly addicted to Microsoft.

*Sigh*. Computers are almost as bad as anime. Just can't stop . . .