Right now, I can't wear costumes which is really frustrating to me. That is because the three different video projects I was working on before I had my surgery have costumes which are layered, which really wouldn't feel good with my incisions.
While recovering, I got the idea to do a dramatic reading of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven." I decided to record my voice only, and have my voice do the acting instead of my body language and face.
I thought it would be fun to try and capture what I thought the unnamed narrator's room might look like (the area where the fireplace is, and not the chamber door). I also ended up adding in sound effects. I hope you enjoy it (I had a lot of fun making it):
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------What's your favorite poem of Edgar Allan Poe's? What would you do if you met the raven from the poem?
Hello everyone, I have some very important updates to tell you:
Email subscription updates-
Since Feedburner went away, and I don't know how long my feed on that will continue to function, I decided to switch to follow.it. So, if any of you were subscribed via email to my blog before and get a message that says "Please confirm your subscription" know that this from me. The name may be "Advemture1359" or "Adventure Awaits" given that I claimed both feeds for my doll blog and this one. In either case, if you get an email from follow.it, know that it not spam.
This is what the new follow by email widget looks like:
If you're already subscribed or want to subscribe, you can go enter your email into the box on the sidebar
I'm also working on a way to import the emails of people who are subscribed to this blog into the new service, since Follow.it does allow you to do this. However, I may end up waiting to do that until the feed completely stops working. (Just so you don't get two notifications at the same time, because that would be very annoying).
If you, too, are a blogger on Blogspot.com who needs an email subscription service for your blog in place of Feedburner, I recommend checking out this post by Jen Ryland. It helped me find Follow.It, and if you need to decide what service to use, I found the article to be really helpful.
Page updates-
The Meet the Character pages are very outdated, and I don't have a lot of pages for the newer stories or characters. So, I am updating those, and so far I have pages for Phoenix, Oak, Sebastian, Elm, Riona, and Celtiere.
I also now have a FAQ page. So if you have any questions about this blog or my art that I haven't answered, please ask in the comments.
A while ago I mentioned that I finished writing the first draft of this novel. This July, I am focusing on editing it and working on the second draft, along with some world-building along the way.
For this project I started writing the first draft in 2018 and finished it in 2020. I made a lot of posts about this novel in the past, so if you want to check them out, here you can, or if you can to look at posts about the series as a whole here you can.
Synopsis-
Genre: Fantasy | Murder Mystery
Horatio wakes up from being in a coma, but he doesn't remember anything that happened before he fell into unconsciousness. All that he remembers is a name, "Annabelle!" Also... Detective Inspector Time finds himself having to solve a case without Lady Annabelle. Murders have been happening throughout many different kingdoms, and no one knows who exactly is behind it all.
Characters-
Here are the characters. Please note, many things have changed. Phillip, the dwarf guard character from the first draft moved to later book, given that the time-line changed a lot. (The dwarf and elf war happens much later). Also since Phillip is not coming in until later, I replaced him for now with a character named Angela. I had created her character for All is Not Lost For All Will Begin Again, but that setting and story changed, too. Angela didn't fit the story anymore, so I moved her to The Mystery of the Body Thief instead.
There are other characters who appear later in the story, but I won't be including them in this post. In this post, I am including the characters who have the largest impact on the plot:
Horatio
A servant who works in the castle, who lost his memory. He has a connection to Annabelle, but what the connection is, he doesn't know, but he longs to find out.
Ophelia
She is one of Horatio's few friends and one of the healers at the castle. She works with the Earth and Air Gods and learns her magic from them. She is a very sweet (but quiet) person.
Lady Annabelle
Lady Annabelle is a princess, who is in a coma, who fell unconscious at the same time as Horatio. Before she was in a coma, she worked as a detective and sometimes would work with D.I. Time and Marigold.
Detective Inspector Time
An old friend of Annabelle's, he is a detective actively working on the case of the murdered royals.
Marigold Time
Marigold is also working on the case of the murders of royalty, and is the adoptive daughter of D.I. Time. She also works as a detective in the police department.
Vonivera
Lady Annabelle's lady in waiting, she is a friend to Horatio and a frenemy of "Angie." Unlike the other ladies in the castle, Vonivera is a fairy and she finds it odd to be amongst elves and humans.
Angela "Angie"
Another one of Lady Annabelle's ladies in waiting, Angela is "a close friend" of Vonivera's (or at least that is what she tells people).
Soundtrack-
I compiled a playlist of music that I listen to while writing this story. I decided to make a different playlist for the second draft, because it is neat to look back and listen to music that I listened to when writing the first draft of this novel.
My Goal-
Since I'm on the second draft, my goal is going to be edit/rewrite at least 12,000 words. I made my goal smaller because, editing is really hard and I don't want to make myself stressed with a large goal. There are also a lot of things that have changed in the plot-line, so getting those changes into the story, along with the world-building is very important in this second draft. While it may not be perfect, I have the third draft to fix those flaws.
I was nominated by Maith at Maith's Musings, thank you so much for the nomination. I really like the concept of this tag. 😄Also I was tagged for it right before my surgery, so it made my day when I got it. 😃
3. Answer the question, which is a task to write a letter.
4. Now, nominate five bloggers who you think are worth it. Make sure they know that they are nominated.
The prompt:
Imagine yourself to be twenty years older than now. You have become what you always wanted to, and are living your dream. But suddenly, the 'current version of you' pops out of nowhere and asks for some tips. What tips will you give? Write a letter from the 'twenty years older you' to the 'current you' and tell how you reached your goals in twenty years.
You are receiving this letter from the future. Hard to believe isn't it? But I am you, just twenty years older than you are now. (Other differences from you-as-now, are that I am acting in and animating movies and a published author and illustrator...so more differences than just age, but that is beside the point).
I have advice for you:
If you're feeling run down or like you everything feels hopeless, you should know that you can get through it. It may be hard to believe while you're in the middle of the situation. But you will get through it, and once you get through it you will be stronger than before.
Don't worry about giving up on your dreams or goals. You never will (especially if you're scared about giving up on them), if you keep working hard, you will get to them. And if someone tells you that you can't do something, prove them wrong.
Also you don't need to (constantly) remind people that you are committed to something (for that very same reason). You know you what you like doing, and if you're scared that you're going to stop liking it or give up liking it, then (ironically) that means you're not going to give up liking it. You know that, deep inside, it brings you happiness to do, and that is important.
If you keep working hard on your dreams and goals, you will get to them eventually. It may be hard at times. Some days may be harder than others: some publishers may not like your stories, some animation studios or people may not like your animations, some authors may not want you to illustrate their books, or some people may not like your movies or some casting directors may think you're not the person for the role. But if you keep working hard and pushing through, you will get there. And you may find a publisher who likes your book, people who like your animation, an author who wants you to illustrate their book, people who like your movie, and a casting director who thinks you're the perfect person for the role.
Anyway, I hope my advice makes you feel better,
Sincerely should it be sincerely or love? Uh, I don't know, I'm writing this to myself.
-(Future) Quinley
P.S. I may have created an issue in the space-time continuum. Oops! But at least you have advice now, right?? But, I'm fixing this issue now! [Sounds of rumbling can be heard.] Alright everything's fixed. Also, you, um, may have something similar to Star Fleet in your future now...oops.
Click here to read the first and the second posts in the series.
While I don't normally post two drawing posts in a row, I wanted to share some more drawings connected to my last post. My body has been physically hurting recently, so it hurts to draw. Because of that I felt like I should post some of the drawings I did before my surgery.
In other news for this blog, I have a world-building post (for the Look Into the World series), which I am working on, and which I will post once I finish adjusting some parts of it and adding in some illustrations (after I feel better). Also, before my surgery, I entered in a world-building contest on World Anvil . You can read my entry here.
And now, since the updates are done, on to the post:
I decided it would be fun to practice drawing in different styles, and the drawing style the voters wanted me to do was The Cursed Princess Club (which is a webcomic).
I ended up drawing Oak in that style, and I really like how she turned out in the end.
This is a drawing I did of the air god. The voters wanted me to draw him in his temple. I really liked how it turned out in the end.
This was not a majority vote, but I thought it would be fun to draw Elm in the drawing style of the Cursed Princess Club as well.
The drawing above was also a majority vote. Voters asked for a drawing of Matilda in the style of Steven Universe. I decided to take it a step further, though, and ended up drawing Matilda in all different types of drawing styles, just to see what she'd look like.
And finally, the drawing of Felix in the style of Tim Burton was kind of a majority vote (I say "kind of", because there wasn't really a winning vote on the poll). And I just thought the drawing Matilda would be fun to do, even if it wasn't a majority vote.
I really like how they both turned out in the end.
Click here to read the first post in the series if you haven't already.
This post was meant to be published earlier. The drawings in this post were drawn in 2020, but the post got lost in the drafts on my blog, and I forgot about it until now. (One of the answers on the survey reminded me about this post).
Anyway, the basic premise of this series is using poll responses to create drawings, using majority votes to decide aspects of the drawing. Unless otherwise stated all these drawings came out of majority votes.
And here they are:
This is a good character turned villain. It represents the majority vote in this particular poll (where the choices were between Gletta and Tirfendiel). Gletta won and poll respondents wanted me to do an evil version of her like I had done with Phoenix and Annabelle. I wonder if her goth style made people think "oh she'd be a cool villain." I ended up changing her appearance as a villain and making it so Gletta is more aligned with what her parents wanted her to be. I imagine she wouldn't be happy this way and perhaps she would use her power (as queen) for bad rather than for good.
I notice people tend to like to see characters who usually don't dress in fancy clothes, wear fancy clothes. Oak, who is a huntress of Artemis, wouldn't usually wear something like this because she is in the wilderness and it would be bad to get her clothes dirty. Given that I drew this before I learned how to do figure drawings, I may decide to redraw it in the future using what I learned from figure drawing.
This is a drawing of my version of Ichabod from a retelling of TheLegend of Sleepy Hollow that I may decide to write one day. I did the poll for this a while ago, around Halloween, and the choice of him going out trick or treating in a halloween costume was what won the vote. However, in 1790s America (which is where his story takes place) trick or treating wasn't established as part of the celebration for Halloween. But even so this was very fun to draw. I also thought it would be fun to dress Ichabod up as a vampire, because why not? (I'm guessing that Aurinda (a main character in my retelling) probably convinced him to do it).
The poll that produced this happened around the same time. I decided to have Oak dress up as Medusa, but have everything she wears be made out leaves like her normal outfit is.
For this one I had people vote on what medium (digital or pencil) I should draw the picture in. Pencil won. Also, as with the drawing of Gletta, the option of drawing Oak as a villain won. In this alternate universe, I imagined what would have happened had she not joined the Hunters of Artemis.
Based on the same poll as Gletta's drawing, I ended up with a different result for Tirfendiel. The majority vote here asked to see him celebrating whatever winter holiday exists in his world. Since people in that Fantasy world are fascinated with the spirit world, it is common during the winter months for people to seek guidance from the spirits about the months ahead.
And though the drawing medium was not voted for on either the drawing of Ichabod or Tirfendiel, I thought I'd play around with using a photograph as a background while having everything else be drawn. (I also played around with the transparency of the layers).
I thought I'd get feedback from you (the audience) on what you want to see in the future. Of course I will still be blogging things that I want to blog about, your answers won't stop me, but they will instead will help me improve different things and there and help me figure out what kinds of posts to make.
But there are certain things analytics won't tell me, that a survey like this will. So I'd love to hear your feedback. 😉
Here's the survey:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------If you're a blogger, what are your favorite topics to write about? And why?
-Quinley
P.S. If you're subscribed by email to my blog, in July that widget will go away from blogspot.com. I will be working to find something similar to it, so that you can still get notifications by email. (If you know something that works let me know.) But if you don't get emails anymore from my blog in July, it's not because I stopped blogging it's because that widget went away.
