Using Polls to Create Art #4

                                                    Previous parts: #1, #2, and #3

Hello everyone, 

I have recently made some new page updates on my blog. There is now a page for the characters from Dolls of Wax, Eyes of Glass and The Lady Annabelle Mystery Series (there are still characters that need to be added to both pages, so they will be updated), and I also updated my author page. 

Now on to the actual post, I thought it was about time to show you more of the drawings from the polls I've created: 

Elm with her favorite animal, which is a bumblebee. 

I have been needing to update the cover of The Mystery of the Body Thief on NaNoWriMo for sometime (though it wouldn't be the official cover, this is only the second draft), so I used a poll to figure out how I should update it. Interestingly enough the majority vote ended up being a similar design I tried before for the cover, but never finished.

I feel that Ophelia, as a Tinker Bell style fairy, would be a mix of a garden talent and a fast flying talent.  On the other hand, you can only have one talent in Pixie Hollow.  That presents a dilemma, because Ophelia can control two different elements, earth and air, since she is a devotee of the two gods who give her those two different powers.

I haven't drawn Vinverva in a while, the last time I drew her was in this post.

So, I decided to do a poll where the pollers would decide between her and Odile. 

Vinverva ended up winning. In this drawing the pollers wanted her to wear fancy clothes, 

so that's what I ended up drawing her in. The only thing I found difficult in drawing her, was trying to make her not look like Oak, since both of them have short blonde hair. I tried to make her hair look a little longer and grayer. 

In this drawing I had pollers vote on what character I should do a figure drawing of (it was a choice between Angela and Reyvon), and a choice between whether it should be digital or hand-drawn and hand-drawn won.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Which drawing is your favorite? And if your character was a Tinker Bell style fairy, what would they be like? 

-Quinley 

Coding and Dancing: My Experience With Girls Rise Up

                                 (Images used from Pexels and Pixabay, though I did the doodles over them myself). 

 Hello everyone! 

One thing I have really wanted to learn for a long time is coding. I sort of know a few things: my website (not my other blog, though it is linked to it) Q's Creative Corner is where I do the most coding (at least in CSS and HTML). It is very much a work in progress and something I want to eventually finish coding in the future.  

The coding in Girls Rise Up is completely different, because it uses a combination of coding and dance. My group, Courage, is not representative of what the whole camp was like. Every group did something different that was related to STEM and dance. My group did animation and a bit of Python. 

 I had tried learning Python before with different platforms, but I didn't get very far into it. I believe this was due to the way that the platforms taught it. STEM From Dance, and their (virtual) camp Girls Rise Up helped me. I felt like I learned a lot more there, especially because of the community, which was very welcoming and friendly, and I didn't feel afraid to ask questions if I had any about my coding. 

An example of some of the Python coding I did; and no, I'm not that old 

Dance was also an important part of Girls Rise Up, because most of the coding we did was related to our dancing (for example we would have animations that followed us as we danced). We'd choreograph our own dances and come up with ideas of what we'd animate over top of it. The animation we did wasn't traditional animation. We didn't draw each frame; instead, we used code in order to do it. 

During the program, I was also introduced to new dance styles. For a while, I had just done Ballet, but in this program they introduced me to different styles of dance. Had I not done Girls Rise Up, I wouldn't have decided to try out these dance styles, so I think it is amazing that they introduced me to it. 

During the camp, we had different speakers come and tell us about their careers. (They either did STEM and dance, or just STEM, or just dance.) I thought was neat because it showed more options of what you can do with STEM, dance, or a mix of both. At the end of it, we had a showcase of all the work we did. It felt really cool, and given that we had such a limited time to learn the coding and the dance, it felt really good. And as someone who does multiple creative things (which people often don't think are connected or tell you "you only can to do one"), I loved that they showed how both of them are connected. 

The code I made. 

My group choreographed a dance to the song "This is Me" from The Greatest Showman, and I ended up choreographing the lyrics "I am brave, I am bruised, I am who I'm meant to be, this is me." I decided to do a spotlight animation over my dance, where the colors changed every time I did a movement. (They went from greenish blue to dark blue.) 

Before the camp, I would have normally done something like this with video editing. I find it neat that DanceON created a way to video edit using coding (with overlaying). And, even after the camp is over I have decided to keep learning and working with DanceON, because I feel it will help my coding skills get better. And I find that I will use them in my videos, even if they aren't dance themed. 

At the end of Girls Rise Up, people in the group were awarded with different awards. (My local theatre did something similar to this.) I was awarded with "The Tech Savvy Award" and "The Leadership Award." 

Another cool thing that happened before the camp even started was that STEM From Dance sent me (and the other people participating) a t-shirt, a mask, and a note-book, among other things that are themed around the summer camp, Girls Rise Up: 

This is a really cool mask

The note-book, I actually plan to use it for taking notes about coding 
even after Girls Rise Up is over. 

Me dancing while wearing the shirt
 (You may not be able to see it well because of the bright sunlight.)

In the end, I'd really love to do more with STEM From Dance because I feel like I learned a whole lot, and their camp was an awesome experience. And I would recommend the program to anyone who is interested in learning coding and/or likes dance, or likes both. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Which do you like to do: STEM or Dance? And have you ever thought of combining them? 

-Quinley 

I Wrote Two Original Songs

 

Hello everyone, 

I have been working on songwriting for a while, but never had any songs to share. Now I finally do. (I wouldn't say either of these songs are at the point where I would make a music video of them or post them on my youtube channel, but I feel comfortable with sharing them on my blog and BandLab). 

Here are the songs I've been working on: 

You can also listen to it here

This song is somewhat connected to All is Not Lost For All Will Begin Again, because it is about a shapeshifter, but no exact character from the story or world. For this song I was given the prompt of "Fantasy/things are not as they seem" and went ahead to write a song about a shapeshifter. There are still some things I want to change about it here and there (hence why I will post a second version in the future). 

You can also listen to it here 

This song firstly was inspired by a painting called Adieu by John William Waterhouse,

and when putting it to music was inspired by "Arms of the Ocean" by BlackBriar, and "Jolly Sailor Bold" in particular Ginny Di's and Ashley Serena's covers. I decided I didn't want a background track but wanted something in the background. I included the sound of waves and thunder, so that you felt like you were there at the ocean. 

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Have you ever written an original song? And which would you rather be a siren or a shapeshifter?

-Quinley 

Trying Out a New Animation Program (P. 3)

                                                           Click here to read part one and two.

If you got a post that was very short and all caps in your feed, and shortly after was deleted, that was because I was claiming my blog on Bloglovin'. Since it wouldn't allow me to paste the code to claim my blog on a page or somewhere else, I had to make a post in order to claim it. So you didn't miss any important posts, and that's why that happened. 

Anyway, onto the actual subject of this post. I have been working on animation, and doing more with Adobe Animate. I also tried some animation on Photoshop since that is a software that can be used for animation. In the end I found that Adobe Animate was the easiest for me to use. 

                    Keeping consistency 

One thing I struggled with in animation is keeping consistency. A lot of my older animations did not have consistency, and after a while you couldn't tell who or what the thing I was animating was supposed to be.  So, I decided to try it with this animation: 

Adobe Animate has the ability to easily copy and paste your drawing, which is something I did in this animation but something I didn't do in the other animation program I used. I animated a flour sack character, which is a kind of stock character, since it is used as a way to practice movement like walking and jumping. 

I felt like I figured out how to keep some consistency in this animation. Though one thing I wish I had done was to add more squish and squashing, which is something I find I struggle with in animation, and is something I feel I must improve in the future. 

This is another animation I did. I decided to move the circle and then animate the legs and ears later, it made the animation seem a bit more consistent. 

                              Squish and squash 

Though this animation was made before the other ones (and in Photoshop, which can do animation), I felt it really helped me figure out squish and squash. Though I still feel like I have a lot to learn. (If the animation doesn't repeat, just refresh the page). 

This one has a little less consistency than the other ones. This is partly because I was animating in a different program, and it wasn't allowing me to copy and paste at all. 

Overall, I have found that I have difficulty applying squish and squash to characters, but am able to do it with objects like bouncing balls easily. So this is something I am going to keep practicing.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Have you ever done a flour sack animation? If so, what did you animate it doing?

-Quinley 

The Raven | A Dramatic Reading

 Greetings everyone! 

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): 

You can also watch it here

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------What's your favorite poem of Edgar Allan Poe's? What would you do if you met the raven from the poem? 

-Quinley 

Blog Updates 2021

(Images used from Pexels and Pixabay) 

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. 

That's all for now, 

Quinley 

Announcing My July 2021 Project: The Mystery of the Body Thief

 

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. 

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Are you participating in Camp NaNoWriMo this July? If so what are you writing? 

-Quinley