Please excuse the banding, jpg hates me sometimes. I sent this song to a couple of friends who were having a rough time, as it’s pretty uplifting and the lyrics seem to be about not giving up no matter what life hurls at you. TeamAustralia on steem is currently trying to fund a hayrunners truck, and the not giving up theme seemed appropriate there too.

I did the other two progblogs pretty much back to back and managed to forget that and thought I was doing 2 now but apparently I’m up to 3, getting old in my old age and a bit more sleep wouldn’t be remiss either. I still have a process/progress video for Embers but I’ve decided I’m way too lazy to edit it and just need to finish Embers because it’s already November next month and while I would love to make a tiny bit more steem for hayrunners I also want to progress all the other stuff (including the stuff I’m “supposed” to be doing! XD) and end of year stuff is ramping up so things are going to get busier soon. Fortunately the gymnastics end of year display didn’t clash with the dance end of year concert!

This weekend was busier than usual with 13yo and 11yo having states. Both of them did pretty well, 11yo got a silver on beam (level 5 is tough!) and 13yo got silver on pommel and rings and gold on floor and parallel bars as well as second in All Around. Now there’s just end of year stuff to go! 11yo has been busy at fornightly dance rehearsals as she’s in the opening performance for the end of year concert. Now I just hope it doesn’t clash with the gymnastics end of year display!

Only a very slight one though. This is the first of four panels on that rather large songpic that escaped from my head (that obnoxious white line on the left is the frame border). Think I’ve levelled up or at least gained a lot of xp with shadowing as normally I still need the lineart layer after light and shadow 1 but it’s currently off, guess dark scenes are good for something XD (or maybe I should just not be so afraid of the shadow layers in day scenes).

Small victory for having made all the progblogs last month! We’ve had awesome fun times with everyone in the house except me (so far touch wood aargh) succumbing to this rather awful gastro over the course of the week, so in fairness not quite as much done as I would have liked to do (even though I whined about my glacial speed at the time), but slow progress is better than no progress!

I needed a break from technical stuff, so I started sculpting Zara. I don’t know why I always start with eyebrows, I just do, so I did the eyebrows, but then deviated from my usual of going down the nose and doing the face and bounced over to doing the ears. Probably because hers are a bit pointy. The point is tricky as the Avians have an obvious point but their ears aren’t nearly as big as the Dragonkin ears. She doesn’t look like anyone yet but we’ll get there, hopefully in less time than it took to do Red as she’s got the standard amount of limbs and I don’t completely suck at retopo and uv unwrapping anymore (even though I still don’t like either of them XD).

Zul’jinn had seen the water fight starting as he’d been swimming in from his wingboarding lesson with Mu’tai, and it was in full swing by the time he got to his chosen vantage point, comfortably chest deep in the pleasantly cool turquoise water. Anyone could be easily forgiven for thinking there was a severe mismatch going on between the combatants; comprising of the whiplike Avian Saun’de with the pocket rocket half-Avian Zara perched easily on his shoulders, versus the intimidating bulk of the Dragonkin Kae’lin with the buff Damian precariously and awkwardly balanced atop his.

Obviously, I haven’t done uv mapping for a while. Last time was three years ago (jeez I’m so slow aargh it’s too late for me save yourselves). So while I remembered how they worked and seem to have gotten better at actually making/unwrwapping them, I managed to completely forget what they were. So when I was setting up the paint object, I automatically selected the largest they had available (16k), because in Krita I always paint on 16bit canvases.

Switch on the sky and the stars glow for you Go see the world coz it’s all so brand new Don’t close your eyes coz your future is ready to shine It’s just a matter of time before we learn how to fly Welcome to the rhythm of the night There’s something in the air you can’t deny… Owl City: When Can I See You Again Saving as a png ate my colours again. I really need a 16bit image format that browsers can understand.

This has been the better part of a week in the making. Almost full days because I stupidly thought that I would get it done next session. I now have headache-caused-by-terrible-posture and my neck is violently out again. Pro-tip: do not spend hours a day hunched over a tablet. And while I’m not completely happy with it I’m happy enough to post it. And obviously I need a hell of a lot more practice with dark scenes.