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Okay, as I promised Ana, the horrors I unleash on you all has spawned an art thread. Presumably this is so that she may point out all the inaccuracies and issues with my art work without conflating them with factual errors regarding my textual work. :P

Actually, I do have some other things I've been planning to put here, but I wanted to start with the fanfic asides, so I had to wait until that whole mess was finished.


Hands down, the line Kryss "quotes" here is my favorite thing that I wrote for the fanfic. It really says nothing, but is also very explicit with a little imagination (this version is toned down slightly from what it was originally in the fic). Unfortunately, it was pointed out that it wasn't appropriate for the character whose point of view we're following at that stage to use such flowery language. You can still find a stripped down version of that text in the fic, but I swore to save the line, and I did so by putting it here. You'll notice I quite foolishly drew everyone so that you can see their shoes. That's the last time I make that mistake. Shoes are very hard to draw. Though not as hard as Sapphwolf's sandal-things. I complained more about his outfit than anything else. You wouldn't realize it, but Kryss is also too tall (something I didn't always remember to remedy in the future either). It's okay though, if I hadn't mentioned that, you wouldn't have known. But according to kryss (the forumite), Kryss (the character) is much shorter than drawn here, and should be more like five feet tall. Sapphwolf is also somewhat too short. Sorry if the text flow is difficult to follow. If I'd been thinking, I'd have switched Kryss and Sapphwolf to make the dialogue easier to read. (Incidentally, if the quote bothers anyone, let me know. I'll gladly censor the image and provide a link to the real one. I'd thought about doing it proactively, but we have said worse things on here before, so I figured I might be able to get away with it. ;))


Yes, this is actually something kryss told me, more or less; it's paraphrased only slightly. I think the flippant part of the reply is also roughly how I responded. The more serious part of the response is simply true. ;) Actually, come to think of it, the whole thing's probably true.


This is also based on an actual conversation between Sapphwolf and I. I get to blame any inaccuracies in the gay bits of the story on him not telling me the right thing, and he gets to blame my ignorance on not taking him up on his offer of "research," so it all works out. :D


Unfortunately, this isn't an exchange that Verilidaine and I had; she really didn't give me much to work with for somewhat derogatory mocking one-liners. ;) Though I will admit that an adaptation of "Lube nuts?! wtf?! Why does Alaric have those in his office?! ...Oh, okay. Still…lube nuts??" would be a strong contender. This is instead a reference to her request that it be "drooling over Keith and Alaric" and that she played a big part in making sure I wrote Natani to the character. Every time I remembered to have Natani think of herself as a male, that's because Verilidaine reminded me that I needed to do it.


This is supposed to be Rock Band, only with magical, wireless instruments. I thought seriously about actually doing a real Rock Band-esque background (or taking a photo and blurring it), but I finally decided it'd be too busy. The song is one of them that I think is particularly befitting; it's a sweet, romantic sort of song, that for some reason, seems very homoerotic to me, although it's probably not supposed to be. If you search for it on YouTube, you'll find eleventy billion AMV's using it for the music. The quoted text is the chorus and the first half of the second verse. If I have to admit it, "Kiss and Swallow" by I Am X, and "Between Breaths (A XX Perspective)" by Blaqk Audio were probably more of an inspiration for this part of the fanfic, but "Melt the Sugar" had its influences. :P Actually, I'm planning to do one of these for every part of the fanfic, and I think "Between Breaths" is going to be the one for the next section.


After everything was almost finished, I realized I forgot to draw an aside mentioning that I was dividing it up. Sapphwolf's line had been planned for him since I decided to do the asides, only it was originally to be at the very end. Since I realized that I should break the fiction up into sections, I decided to put it here, rather than risk forgetting the joke. (Besides, I've scripted out a way better one for when the fiction is completed.)

Before you ask, yes, I have an anatomy book (it was decided by my artistic friends that I wouldn't be allowed to lean on ignorance as a crutch any longer ;)); no, I haven't managed to read it yet; yes, I do intend to do so now. I'm aware of a lot of my weaknesses, but feel free to point them out (or my strengths too, I wouldn't mind that :P), just in case I missed something. I realize that's inviting Sage to say something mean and shatter my self-worth, leaving me nothing but a broken and hollow shell of a man, but if a guy can't take a little nastiness, he's going to have a lot of trouble in life. 8)

:3 Actually, I think the artistic intermissions took away from the story. Killed the momentum by having to jump out of the narrative and into the creator's lap (so to speak).

Also, is "anatomy book" artist slang for "book of filthy pleasures?" Cause you can get that free on the internet...

Fun stuff. I skiped over them when I origionaly read the story, but i went back to them once I was done.

The expressions, in my opinon, need some work. Bu you know that. I won't hound you. I'm just here for the dialouge.

That's actually something I've been wondering. I've got this problem -- like Shakespeare, I have a terrible time keeping myself from making asides to the audience. I'd thought to mitigate this by making them images, but they ended up being larger and more imposing than I'd expected. So then, remove them entirely or tone it down? And if "tone it down," how so? Smaller? Black and white, to avoid the burst of color distrupting the eyes?

I think you've got a good point there, fastchapter. As it stands, I fear they tear the reader out of the narrative, ruining the immersion. Should I post an image-denuded version of the story?

Glad to see you on the Drawing Board, Av ^w^ And don’t worry, pointing out your artwork’s “inaccuracies and issues” was not my motive when I suggested you start an art thread. However I can, like you asked, point out your strengths and weaknesses without being as scarring as Sage ;)

Your attention to minor details is one of my favorite things about these drawings (besides the witty dialogue, of course). The Wiimote and laptop are nice little touches, and the tails of the characters look wonderfully fluffy :3 You mentioned that shoes were hard for you to draw, and I’ll agree with you on that (it’s why most of my characters walk around barefoot) but you drew them very well.

Like Spiffman said, the expressions need some work, but you’ve got a good foundation. I’ve found the best reference for facial expressions is your own face, so spend some time leering at yourself in a mirror. Sometimes, I’ll even take a sketchbook into the bathroom with me and sit on the counter in front of the mirror, pulling faces at myself ^^’ However, there's nothing wrong with your drawings that can’t be fixed with a little practice and by referencing your anatomy book.

I'm curious about your artistic process. Do you do everything from start to finish on the computer, or do you start with a pencil sketch, scan it in, and go from there? And what program are you using for the digital part of the process? If you did any of this with a mouse, I salute you.

I'm looking forward to seeing what else you have to show us. More silly, insinuative comics, I hope :P

No no. An anatomy book is just a plane anatomy book with none of the "bits" shown. Now, anything that's labeled "Advanced Anatomy" that's probably slang for "Book of filthy pleasures."

Arg Avwolf a wall of text with picture bonuses, I will read it later.

I wouldn't get rid of them - I would just make them smaller (barring making them illegible) and put them in the margins as an optional "here's my thoughts" part. That way you don't get a physical break in the text, so the reader can keep on chugging, and you give them the option to quick read the author's intrusion without seeming as if they're going through some huge shift.

I do have a Wacom pad, and haven't done mouse-only or mouse-primary work in many, many years. It might just be a little refurbished Graphire 4x6, but I love it very much.

Because I barely trust myself, the process is somewhat complicated. It goes something like this: pencil, scan, ink, scan, digitally ink, and digitally color. I cheat at digital inking -- I have a little open source vector graphics program, Inkscape, trace my lines. It's still sort of messy, but has been necessary. You see, all of this stuff was inked with my calligraphy pens. I really like them, but my hands aren't steady enough with all the ink they put out, so I'm going to be switching to inking with a set of very fine pens (I bought an assortment of 005, 01, 02, and 03 marker pens to find out what I would like). I haven't had a chance to try them out yet, but I'm very excited to do so; it should give me much cleaner lines. The coloring and shading are done with a copy of Photoshop 7.

I can't promise you'll see just tons of work out of me (though there'll be stuff dispersed every few days for a while, as I burn through everything I have and am willing to display ;)). The problem is that art is easily the most difficult thing I dabble at. I've got a picture (which you guys will see) that I spent three evenings just getting the beer bottle the character is holding to look right. I'm constantly impressed and awed by the sheer quantity of talent this forum contains, and I'm supremely jealous of you all.

fastchapter, thanks. I'll see what I can do. If I can get things tweaked well, I'll probably roll out an improved iteration of this one, too, as well as keeping that in mind for the others. This is sort of a grand experiment.

Quite the understatement for the straight guy writing the gay fanfic, :3

Well, I'm glad someone agrees with me. Especially since he hasn't written much of anything, let alone smut. And well refined smut at that. Oooo! Avy! Yous should come up with a story similar to the Anita Blake books, but better and from the male perspective. I'm sure it'd do well. ^_^

EDIT: And by the Anita Blake series, I mean the early books. Not the later ones... The ones with plot.

Didn't Penny Arcade just plug those books? Never heard of them until that strip came out, :P

Also, who knows what sort of dirty things Avwolf has been perusing prior to his attempt at this fic? Hoohoo!

Well, I have read a few of those books. I'm pretty sure it was three of them. None of the later ones after Anita starts manifesting sex vampire powers or starts doing the really freaky-deaky things with her lycanthropic followers.

This is beside the point, but I just got to play with my new .3mm pencil and marking pens. Sweet Lord, these are awesome. My lines look okay, they don't bleed all over the freaking place, and I can even do detail with the ink!

See. I tell you things are awesome because they were true, but do you listen? No.

I was sorely tempted to post up the little sketch I did to test out my new pencil and pens, but I'm not sure if I have time to scan it in or not, so let's burn through some of my other stuff first.

The tears don't quite follow the contours of his face, and if you could see how it originally scanned, the inked lineart was really, really bad (cleaned up, it's only pretty bad). Also, the expression is pretty so-so, but this being a picture drawn before the asides were finished, I wasn't able to go back in time and practice.