Yay!! Finally finished with chapter 0! :D
Gonna get it all queued up to post on SmackJeeves.

Now I can turn my attention to chapter 1 and chemistry.

pilgrim_comic and http://pilgrim.smackjeeves.com

Hurrrr....

Last Wednesday went to Omaha for a concert, The Police, which was very good. :D
Ate something that disagreed with me whilst down there, though... x_x

Friday went to see Barack Obama speak in Sioux Falls. Exciting. :D
And his security detail was very impressive, there must have been at least 25 secret service agents in addition to the more local stuff.

I was sure that this entry had a point... Eh. maybe not-so-much.

Or was it something about finally being able to relax?
...Yeah, I think that was it. Be laaaaazzzyyy!

But, I need to draw more pages so I can put Pilgrim on a bi-weekly update schedule so I can cover some ground this summer. Done sketching chapter 0 at least. :B

I went to the Koffee Klatch, which is pretty much an end of the year art show the high school does. It's always really fun to see what everyone has done for their projects, but it's kind of depressing too.

Whenever I see a really good composition, I automatically wonder if the person who did it actually came up with the idea themselves. 
I'm sure some of them do, but when I took those art courses back in the day, it seemed like whenever we started a new project, everyone would head down to the library and start looking for their "project" on the internet. Find a picture you like, print it out and draw it. Or paint/scratchboard/watercolor/make a print of it.

Maybe I wouldn't mind so much if there was credit given to the source/original creator, but I don't think anyone bothers. Not only do I have issues with infringement of copyright/intellectual property, it really seemed like a cop-out to make the course passable for the people who were only there to get a graduation requirement done.
There were a lot of people in the low-level courses who obviously didn't give a fuck about what they were doing. It would have been awesome to stick all those guys in a separate class hour, or at least put all the people who were serious about art together.

And when you just have the students copy a picture they got off the internet, it doesn't teach much. All the work has been done, the lighting, colors, anatomy, perspective... all taken care of. So when I see those truly beautiful art projects, I wonder if the students behind them are awesome artists, or just really good at copying things. =/

Not to say that I wasn't guilty of it myself...but I was never really proud of those pieces. Even if they were better than some of the stuff I did 100% on my own, I still thought less of them. When I draw something really shitty, at least it's my really shitty drawing, and not a copy of some really shitty drawing from the web.

I could gripe about the lack of drawing-from-life projects, but that's a whole 'nother rant. :P

However! There were a lot of really nifty sculptures (metal work was new), photos, and various other projects. Lots of pop culture stuff, some anime/manga characters, and even a few pictures of Presidential candidates!

I do enjoy going each year to see what everyone has made and get myself some inspiration. C:

Oh!! And they get to paint on canvasboard now, the lucky bastards! :I

Yay! I'm done with school! (for three weeks, then I'm taking chemistry all summer. >.> )

pilgrim_comic is updating regularly now, I have pages queued up to post on Saturdays. :D
http://pilgrim.smackjeeves.com

making me take 5 quizzes/exams BEFORE I take my finals...
college is trying to kill me!

...and I've still got years to go! T.T

also a reminder to all that pilgrim_comic will start on the 17 (the chap cover will likely go up the week before)!!
It's exciting to be doing comics again! :D

Only 7 more days of classes (*_*) and then finals.

Then three weeks off until my summer class starts, chemistry at 8am 4 days a week, and labs twice a week, plus working as close to full time as I can.

And working like crazy on Pilgrim_comic, both on pages and concept art/illustrations. :D
It's almost May, and I've only opened up Photoshop to paint once this year ;_;
THAT is pretty sad.

I was watching all the birds down in the water (cuz the gulls were making a huge ruckus and woke me up extra early), and there was one gull that had a little fish. It had pulled the fish up onto the edge of the ice and was very busily defending it from all the other gulls. Then this pelican comes swooping in, lands right in the water next to the ice and grabs the fish right out from under the gull and gobbles it up.

Oh man that gull was pissed.

Now that it is April, we are finally having ourselves a proper Dakota blizzard. ;P

EDIT-
Still had class on Friday, the worst bit of the storm went east into Minnesota.
My Chem lab on Thursday was actually canceled, but 7 of us showed up and the TAs were there so we did our experiments. We played about with a Styrofoam calorimeter, boiling/ice water, a brass block, and HCl + NaOH, crashed the data-collection software and generally had a good time. ^_^

I feel very blah. blahblahblahblahblah.
I cannot afford to be feeling blah right now, I've got studying and coursework to do.
But... blah. -_-

I think I will sit my blah butt down in front of my drafting table and see what happens. No, I should force my blah self to lay out some panels, if nothing else. Then to studying.

Blah.

http://pilgrim.smackjeeves.com/

I don't know how smart hosting a non-BL comic on SmackJeeves is, but while looking through hosts some months back, its layout struck me as the most intuitive.

Nothing really there yet, except the 'coming soonish' picture most of you have probably already seen. :3

pilgrim_comic has a ton of sketches up.

Comics by Elftowners

Pimping my wiki. =3

If you've got a comic, be it complete, updating, on hiatus, dead, or getting ready to start-- ADD IT!!

All formats, genres, and ratings are welcome! :)

Dang. Now that I've got a ton of people visiting my house because of being featured artist, I really wish I had something new and shiny and colorful to post.

Even though I'm on break, Priority #1 is to rest and recharge, I was quite close to burnout last week. 17 credits isn't bad, but it's the labs that are killing me. Only 3 more chem labs, 4 more bio labs +exam, and 6 more wellness labs. *phew*

Anyway, I'm going to eat, and play a little Sega Genesis, and then sketch and color and whatnot. The roads are still icky from heavy wet snow and I'd rather not drive to work today. -_-

Spring Break!! 10 days off! =D

Yay, my quest for a pale yellow Prismacolor marker has finally ended! There is actually a place in town that has a pretty good selection, as opposed to driving 45 minutes to Hobby Lobby. Paying the extra 30 cents for them locally is better than what it costs for the gas nowadays. -_-

So now I should be able to properly render blonde hair instead of drawing obnoxiously bright lines with Canary Yellow. :P
The colors I got are Creme, Wheat, and Tulip Yellow; the two former because I realized I didn't have any warm colors to shade white things with, only cool grey and blue.
And because I can't buy only one damn marker at a time. >.>

Also bought white India ink. I am hoping it will work better than white acrylic for highlighting comic pages / marker drawings.

And, I've finally gotten the last 3 volumes of Rurouni Kenshin. ^_^
It will take massive amounts of self restraint to not read them all at once. Like when I get a new Shonen Jump, I tear it open right away to read Bleach, I'm such an addict. >.>

One more week until Spring Break, then I need to do all my homework that weekend so I can relax and color with my markers~~

Just two more weeks until Spring Break! *_*

If I were to make some prints of my art/photography, would anyone be interested in buying them?

I deleted my Elfwood accounts, because I haven't updated in ages and do mainly borderline art now,

and removed everything dealing with my OCs/comics from DeviantArt. Their ToS/copyright policy irks me.

In the summer, I'm going to build my own art/comic site.

Ugh.

Spent 3.5 hours at work cleaning up after an eye-wash station leaked all over a pile of map transparencies. Of course, the additive that kept the water from going bad made a big sticky mess out of everything.
Luckily, none of the maps were damaged.

Bleh.

Time for homework.

Every time I see this picture, I just bust out with giggles. xD

http://www.icanhascheezburger.com

Yesterday it was 40 F. Today it is -35 F. Yet they still hold classes. 

My computer is fixed now, but it needs a sound driver and more fonts. I want that glorious Old English-style font that I use to watermark my art back! ;_;

I started playing FF7: Dirge of Cerberus, which I bought like eight months ago >.>;;; today. I really, really suck at FPS. Vincent looks so cool in the cut scenes, and then I do his character no justice at all while I run around trying to target things and not get my ass shot off -_-'

Speaking of Final Fantasy, I finally got the Advent Children soundtrack, and the Kingdom Hearts 2 soundtrack. ^_^ I now have 3/4 of a gig of Final Fantasy music on my MP3 player. *bweee*

I ended up being lazy and not doing too much of anything over break, but I guess that I am pleased with what I did accomplish. At least now I feel that I have recovered from my first semester of school and that trip to Utah. Somehow I managed to get on the Dean's list. I was so sure I would wind up with at least one B, so that was a pleasant surprise. School starts again on Thursday, and I have an 8 AM class MWF. Joy.

Anyway... Webcomic progress report.
I really, really, really want to start penciling. I told myself I would finish the storyboard for chapter one first, though. It's almost done, I'll likely finish it tonight. And I'm glad I'm redoing them too, I originally had 15 pages of prelude, now pg 15 is the final scene of chap. 1. I was putting more panels on each page, but not speeding the pacing up any. After all, this story is (in theory) supposed to be the length of a one-shot. 
Foo. I worry that my art/comic ability has gone backward because I (almost) stopped drawing during school. And it's been something like 18 months since I was last doing comics on a regular basis. This webcomic ought to get me drawing on a regular schedule again. It worked in high school, so it should work in college too.

Anyway. Back to storyboards.