Crystal kifu - progress 2

[pyraxis]

More progress on the super sculpey project. It's at a rough finished stage now. I need to do a final pass to fix some issues with proportion in the face and head, more realistic folds in the cloth, more finely-boned feet, and maybe some changes to the mass of karnwood roots and uza coming out of the kifu box. And of course I have to add the crystal itself. I have translucent white sculpey for that and I'm hoping it will bake compatibly with the super sculpey.








I'm planning to finish it with a combination of acrylic and ink wash. It's going to be a fun experiment to see how realistic an african skin tone I can get by layering brown and red washes on the super sculpey without losing the awesome subsurface scattering effect, like I would if I just painted over the skin with plasticky acrylic.

Oh! Forgot to say! Any and all critiques are welcome. I want to make this as good as I can.

Comments

Sculpture. (Freddie)

[lige2431.livejournal.com]

Wow, we are *really* liking this.

Re: Sculpture. (Freddie)

[pyraxis]

:)

[jimnightmare.livejournal.com]

Whoa. I don't have any critiques but I just want to say that your art skills are kinda mind-blowing to me. I don't know how anybody would even start making something like that. I kind of want to try sculpture sometime but I think I'd just end up with like... a little lumpy clay dude.

[pyraxis]

And yet I'm still working a purely technical job because I can't get my head on straight about it. ;_;

*cries*
*summons an imaginary wall and puts her fist through it*

[pyraxis]

Don't forget we chose this path. You wanted multiplicity badly enough to let your art be the stakes.

[pyraxis]

Why the hell did that need to be the choice anyway?

[pyraxis]

Because you weren't making it on your own. You were either crippled by fear or unable to work with other human beings.

[jimnightmare.livejournal.com]

We've been thinking about the whole art and multiplicity thing, too. I don't really know how to say it. It's like... if you put too much energy into one, it sometimes takes it away from the other? It was kind of freaking me out for a while. But sometimes they seem to work together good and really help each other? We need to figure out how to get that all set up right, because otherwise we're totally screwed.

I was just thinking maybe one thing we could try sometime is to give each other art challenges. With like, maybe no deadline so 47 doesn't die if she needs to do Space Explorer instead. I know you guys are super competitive and maybe it would help make sure we all have at least part of us really stuck on art? We need to do more art brain lately, too. If you want to take it, we dare you to write some kind of little short story that goes across the fourth wall in a multiplicity kind of way. About you and Daria, because she's awesome. And not just in a livejournal "Here's what we did" kinda way, but in an art writing way. It would be kinda cool to hear something about what it was like back when you were a kid and you were writing Shapechangers, or maybe something more recent from with shashigai, I dunno. It just has to have something happen on Earth, and something on Karn or in the dreaming, and they work together. You like multiplicity, you like Daria, just try to load it up with all the stuff you're really into and go nuts with it.(47: Yeah, I'm still thinking about your post here http://pyraxis.livejournal.com/3111.html talking about a fourth-wall-crossing novel. I'd love to see you experiment with that, just something short, to see if you can pull it off.) Yeah! Man, I just realized that if you ever DO do that novel, you're going to give the people in the bookstores the absolute worst headache not knowing whether to put it in the fantasy section or the non-fiction autobiography one. XD They're gonna have to make a little section in the middle that says "Both" just for you.

If you want to do it, you get to dare us to do a little comic or write a short story about anything you want to see from us. About my world, spacerobot stuff, Ra-Has, Space Explorer, the Evil Club, IRL, whatever. You could tell me to do fanart of Daria out of marshmallows and toothpicks. Whatever the hell art challenge thing you think we should do. No deadline, because 47 needs to do Space Explorer and you guys need to finish your kickass sculpture.

[pyraxis]

And not just in a livejournal "Here's what we did" kinda way, but in an art writing way.

Hm, if not for this criterion, I could give today a shot. The past couple days have been pretty grim in terms of managing autonomic arousal and observing just how much it interferes with doing the things we would need to do to develop our career. The only solace and validation we can find is to watch Daria getting mobbed by speritu, fighting for her life, while I continue to write code and retarget animation files and listen to Pk's fretting about how my behavior is not outwardly assertive enough.

But I am no fiction writer. Maybe with this long weekend coming up, one of us will be able to get in touch enough to turn something into creative output.

[jimnightmare.livejournal.com]

Well you could write something like that too, but I don't know if I can say it counts unless you write it creatively because the point of this that I'm thinking of is to try and get Pk not to explode about freaking out about art. And I know 47 would completely die of angst if she stopped doing so much art. So this is an art challenge to help get the artists to not die about art.

"Autonomic arousal" means feeling freaked out, right?

[pyraxis]

"Autonomic arousal" means feeling freaked out, right?

Yes, it means the sympathetic nervous system getting stimulated, aka fight-or-flight.

[yonjuunana.livejournal.com]

I get that a lot, too. It's strange because it varies a lot with me- sometimes in overloading situations around people I'll get a major fight/flight reaction even when things seem like they should be relaxed, other times I'll get a numb-calm or be perfectly fine and it can be hard to predict. It will be really interesting to see what happens when we meet IRL. I hope we don't freak each other out too much. XD Ah, the joys of the autism spectrum, worrying that meeting someone offline will make communication more difficult.

[pyraxis]

:P Great. Now I've got folks wanting me to shut up and quit making out like it's so terrible. This competitiveness thing? Sucks the big one. I've got to deal with this; it can not be healthy to always be obsessing over who's more badass.

I suppose it's an emotion-split thing. I discovered yesterday that the kid has rather awful self-esteem. This should not have been a revelation to me. XP

[yonjuunana.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, well, competitiveness does tend to improve badassness, at least in some ways. :P

I guess I'm not so much worried about me freaking you guys out as I am... I suppose I'm really excited about visiting you guys, but at the same time a little nervous because I have absolutely no idea what my brain will do, hahahaha. I've never really been in an environment where I can be open about dreaming/multiplicity stuff and have other people get it. Sure, I've been uncloseting to friends, but it's still in an awkward anxious still-learning-how-to-speak-each-other's-language-and-communicate phase. So I have no clue if I'll be nervous and having to wrestle with the autopilot and emotion-split, if Jim will be stuck imaginary-friend-style and frustrated, or if he'll be able to kick me out of the way the second I step off the plane. Whatever happens, it'll be interesting.

[pyraxis]

Man, I just realized that if you ever DO do that novel, you're going to give the people in the bookstores the absolute worst headache not knowing whether to put it in the fantasy section or the non-fiction autobiography one. XD

Hahahaha!

Okay, you're on. One fourth-wall-crossing short story. I don't know if I can pull it off, but no risk no reward, huh?

And, we want to see a comic page about the Evil Club. Daria's all hooked, now she's found out that she, Bryn, and Celesty weren't the only people who got stuck scrounging for food in a forest somewhere. :D

[yonjuunana.livejournal.com]

Ha! Well, I can give you 15 comic pages right now and you can challenge me to do something else if you want, unless you want more info about them. XD A friend back in high school (who I really need to track down somehow- she's never been that into the internet- she has some crazy-strong connection to the dreaming) and I did a short-lived collaborative comic attempt. One of her characters, who was a tengu (if me = robots and you = shapeshifters, she = tengu), got stuck living with my guys for a while. Got 15 pages in before abandoning it.

I know I've got it around here somewhere, so I'll go dig it up and post it on my lj.

[jimnightmare.livejournal.com]

Hey hey hey, Pk... isn't it like, stupidly hard to get a good art job right away? You'll get there. People would have to really have their head up their ass to not hire a crazy creative art person like you guys. What sort of art job do you want, anyway? Like what is your ideal thing?

[pyraxis]

People would have to really have their head up their ass to not hire a crazy creative art person like you guys.

It's easy to say this but in practice it doesn't work that way. :/ A lot of people don't even realize I'm an artist, they think I'm a tech geek and get surprised when I mention painting or sculpture. I still have enough blocks that I can't talk about it the way I ought to. And while I've applied for lots and lots of art game jobs, I can't hold onto the focus I need to build a really specific kickass portfolio and present it in the kind of driven way that would break me into an actual offer. People can smell passion, and I can't show it.

What sort of art job do you want, anyway? Like what is your ideal thing?

The formulaic answer is a job at an RPG or strategy game studio as a character artist or environment artist. But I don't know if it's even true, because when I think about it, I lose any desire for it, and I've been procrastinating even writing this much. This is hard to talk about adequately, because I think it sounds like I'm just whining, and it's easy to blame it on environmental factors like what you said, that it's hard to get a good art job. But I'm 100% certain there's more to it than that. All I can do is say it in Ua terminology - I have some deep wards round this, and I'm not the one who set them, so I don't know how to break them.

[jimnightmare.livejournal.com]

People can smell passion, and I can't show it.

Well, you totally can online! :D I don't think you're just a tech geek, I think you're a lizardwoman who can shoot fire out of her eyeballs and be a pretty kickass art person.

I hope you and j-t and 47 can get some time to just chill and hang out and draw stuff and have fun with it.

[pyraxis]

:D

Yeah, I'm hoping for some good mutual hang-out-and-draw time too.