YOUR FEEDBACK IS NEEDED: Help Me Improve This Blog.

 

Greetings Travelers, 

 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. 

The Mystery Blogger Award

 I was nominated by Maith at Maith's Musings and Vanya at Chirps of a Forest Bird thank you so much, Maith and Vanya. 😊

                                                                    The Logo: 

The rules: 

1) Display the award logo on your blog.

2) Mention Okoto Enigma, the creator of the award.

3) Thank the blogger who nominated you and provide a link to their blog.

4) Answer 5 questions from the blogger who nominated you.

5) Tell your readers 3 things about yourself.

6) Share the link to your best post.

7) Nominate 10 – 20 bloggers and notify them that they are nominated.

8) Ask your nominees 5 questions of your choice, including 1 weird or funny question.

9) Continue the chain!!

Three facts about me: 

1. What inspired me to start writing Fantasy was Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, as well as Nesbit's writing. And what inspired me to write Gothic Horror were the authors Washington Irving, Mary Shelley, Shirley Jackson, and Oscar Wilde. 

2. I've been drawing and creating stories since I was little. I used paper dolls to play out story-lines. The paper dolls would usually be princesses or mermaids, and I drew them myself. 

3. My favorite Greek goddess is Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, and my favorite Norse god is Loki, god of mischief. 

My Best Post(s): 

I'm going with the posts I had the most fun making and am dividing them into categories. I've done this because my favorite post is different and wouldn't really show the whole blog itself, but instead just a part of it. 

Acting and improv: 

But Soft What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks? and 

Phoenix and Annabelle Get Interviewed For a Villainous Job 

Reviews: 

Play Review: Frankenstein 

Animation: 

Pandora's Box (Animation Project): Scriptwriting, Storyboarding, and Concept Art.

Writing: 

The Fairies or the Faylena (short story). 

Drawing: 

Using Polls to Create Art #1 

(Though singing and songwriting is a thing that I intend to do on this blog, I do not have a post featuring it yet. However, I may have one in the future....) 

Maith's questions: 

If you could travel back in time, which era would you visit? 

(Image from Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenon#/media/File:Akropolis_by_Leo_von_Klenze.jpg)

There are many many different eras in different parts of the world I'd love to visit--way too many to include in an answer to this prompt. But I'll go with a single answer for this: I'd visit Ancient Greece. And I probably would visit the Parthenon and other ancient temples if I went there. 

Which superpower would you like to have and why? 

I've always wanted to be able to shape shift. It just sounds like such an awesome power to have. I mean, I could shape shift into an animal and do things I wouldn't be able to do as a human. 

Also, I may have always wanted this power ever since I read a book about a prince who was cursed to turn into a bird at the most inconvenient times. While it may have been a curse for him, it would be a gift for me. 

What is your biggest and greatest achievement till now? 

I'd have to answer with two things: First, finishing my first draft of The Mystery of the Body Thief, and second, getting into a theatre company that helped me learn more about Shakespeare and acting in general. 

The one book you could read over and over is _____. 

(Images from Goodreads, here and here)

Two books fit this perfectly. One is Igraine the Brave, and the other is The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I have read both books many times, over and over again, because they are both so good. 

Which artist would you never get tired of listening to? 

Erutan and Karliene. That's two answers, but I usually listen to their music when I write. Their songs are usually covers of music from TV shows, movies, and video games, though they do write their own original songs, which generally have a Fantasy or Gothic feel to them. Also, Karliene writes about women in history. 

Would you rather experience the formation of the universe or the end of the universe? 

The formation. It would be neat to see the Big Bang happen and see the planets form. It would be such an exciting experience. 

                                   Vanya's questions: 

                       What are your all time favorite books?

This is a very tough question, but I'll create a list of books that are my favorite: 

Fantasy- 

The Voyage of the Basset 

Igraine the Brave 

We Goddesses: Athena, Aphrodite, Hera 

Lord of the Rings 

The Hobbit 

Gothic-

Frankenstein 

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow 

Coraline 

We Have Always Lived in the Castle 

The Picture of Dorian Gray 

Epic Poetry- 

The Iliad and The Odyssey

The Journey to the West 

And there are others, but I decided not to include all of them.  Because that would probably take up most of the blog post. 

                                          What is your biggest dream ever?

I long to open my own film company and make my own movies that way. That will be difficult to do, but I think it would be really neat.  I also want to act in my own film version of Hamlet, as Hamlet, and I want to make film adaptations of my novels--acting in them (as one of the characters) and directing them. 

                             What is your favorite thing to do in free time? 

I do acting, singing, songwriting, drawing, animations, and writing--pretty much everything I blog about on here. I also do yoga, mediation, doll customization, and photography. 

                                                     Who is your inspiration?

(Image from Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gates_McFadden#/media/File:Gates_August_2016.jpg)

For acting it has to be Gates McFadden (who acted in Star Trek: The Next Generation as Dr. Crusher). She was the person who inspired me to do acting. 

(Image from Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_William_Waterhouse#/media/File:John_William_Waterhouse_001.jpg)

John William Waterhouse inspires my artwork. And Cartoon Saloon (the creators of Song of the Sea, Wolf Walkers, etc.) inspire my animation. 

Erutan, Karliene (who were mentioned previously), and Johann Sebastian Bach inspire my music. 

And the authors who inspire my creative writing vary depending on the genre. 

Would you rather spend a day in home without doing anything or in some old fort?

   Is the fort haunted? What time period is it from? And what area of the world is it in? Either way, yes I'd go to the old fort and go ghost hunting in it. Maybe stay in it over night and see if I'd see any ghosts. 

I nominate: 

Meri Greanleaf 

McKayla

Maya 

Jasmine 

Jan 

Annika 

and anyone who wants to do it. 

My questions: 

1. Would you rather be a mermaid/merman/merperson for a week, or a fairy for a year? 

2. If you could meet any fictional character, whom would you choose to meet? And why? 

3. What's your favorite song to listen to right now?

4. Would you rather spend a month in a house that is haunted, or in a village that is haunted? 

5. What inspired your current project(s)? And how different or similar is your project now from the thing that inspired it? 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Who inspires you to create art? And would you also like to spend a day in an old fort? 

-Quinley 

Trying Out a New Animation Program (P.2)

                                    Click here to read part one if you haven't already 

 

Having had used a bouncing ball as a test, I decided to apply what I learned by trying out layers for the first time in Adobe Animate. The program allows you to have a lot of layers. 

In this project I ended up using four different layers: one layer for one of the figures, one for the other figure, another for the background, and the last one for color. 

A lot of the animations I made prior to this were not colored. I only used one layer and redrew the background each time I drew a frame, which was very tedious and at the end didn't make it look very good.  Which is why I'm glad this program allows you to have more than one layer. 

I also did an animation of Elm and animated her hair moving in the wind: 

I really like how it turned out. I used four layers for this one: one for the color, one for the hair, one of the figure, and one for the background. 

In the future I plan to post animations that are longer than a few seconds. For now doing animation consistently and doing short animations like this, helps me get back into the habit of animating.    

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Of the two animations I made which one is your favorite? 

-Quinley

Figure Drawings & Fan Art

Hello everyone, 

I thought I'd share some figure drawings of my characters I did along with my other drawings, since I recently have been working on drawing human figures. 

Let's begin:  

This is a full body drawing of Oak, I really like how it turned out in the end.

She doesn't have her scars in this drawing, because this is long before she joined the Hunters of Artemis. 

This is a drawing I did of Ginny Di's D&D character, Aisling. I really like how her hair and ears turned out. (And after drawing I realized I forgot her freckles, so I decided to edit them in.)

This is a figure drawing of Elm, it was really fun to draw her dress and hair. 

A drawing of Ginny Di's Tiefling bard, Clio. I decided to draw her because I thought the horns, and the freckles looked so cool on this particular character. 

A figure drawing of Chirara, I really liked drawing her dress. 

A figure drawing of Phoenix, it was fun to draw his wings. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Which drawing is your favorite? Have you done figure drawing  before? If so, who or what did you draw? 

-Quinley 

Announcing My April 2021 Project: Dolls of Wax, Eyes of Glass.

Hello Adventurers, 

 For this Camp NaNoWriMo I am going to be writing my novel, Dolls of Wax, Eyes of Glass. And this is my goal for it: 

At the moment I only know one narrator's telling of the story (that being Matilda), but in the future I know I will know more about Felix's. As for what I am going to do in July, I have plans to do my other project: The Mystery of the Body Thief, and work mostly on editing it and writing the second draft. 

As for my inspiration for  Dolls of Wax, Eyes of Glass, it came from a very detailed nightmare I had about wax dolls, which I decided would be a perfect starting point for a novel. And from there I just built on from it...

                                           Synopsis 

Genre: Gothic Horror | Historical Fiction Series: it's a stand alone. 

Maltida Moore was found dead at the castle, her brother, Felix, is missing. No trace of him was found except an eyeless wax doll made in his likeness.  What happened at the castle is unknown, but it is as if something evil is lurking within it...something evil is causing these terrible events to happen. 

                                   The Narrators 

There is a third narrator, but they only narrate a small portion of the story. And instead of including all the characters (some of which may or may not even exist), I thought I'd show who is going to be telling the story to you, and who may not always be reliable in their telling of their story to you: 

Matilda Moore 

Matilda, is a rather quiet person. She tends to sit and read books, and does not enjoy social situations all that much. She would much prefer reading books, than talking to other ladies of high class. 

                                                       Felix Moore 

Felix is a very social person, and thrives in social interactions. He also dreams (silently) of being a romantic hero, and also has a hobby he spends some of his time doing: hunting. 

                      The Soundtrack 

You can also listen to it here 

Here are some songs that I will listen to when I am writing, and I have listened to them lot when I have been plotting the story. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------What is your favorite Gothic Horror or ghost story? What are you writing for April's Camp NaNoWriMo? 

-Quinley 

Trying Out a New Animation Program (P.1)

Since people gave me positive feedback about my post  describing plans for my future animated short film. I thought I'd tell you more about the animations I am working on, and how it is has been going. I am trying a new program (Adobe Animate) for animation. The animation program I was using before (SketchBook) wasn't working for me (if it works for you that's awesome). 

Since I am trying out the new program, I have had to play around with it, so here is what I did: 

                                          Step 1- Getting it to work/Trying it out  

I decided as a test to do a simple animation technique, the bouncing ball.  From here on, these are my notes that I captured as I was animating: 

Given that I don't fully know how the program works, I thought I should start with something simple and move on from there. I figured out that Adobe Animate can in fact be used for 2D hand-drawn animation, and not just puppet animation, by doing this simple test. Though I did run into things that were bother-some.

This was very annoying to deal with

 Adobe Animate makes it difficult to add a frame for some reason, and I had to draw and then press delete in order for the program to understand that it was a new frame. This made it very tedious over time: to press add frame and then delete over and over. 

Why is it selecting this? 

When I first started using the program, it would just highlight what I was drawing but it didn't do that when I moved to advanced mode instead. These are just some annoying starting points, which is  what happens with every software when you do it for the first time. 

                               

                                                 Step 2- Making a coherent animation 

Now that I know how it works I decided to make a short bouncing ball animation (which is also a thing that you do when you're a beginner animator): 

This is definitely not an animation I'd upload to my YouTube channel or one that I feel super proud of, but it is a very good starting point for animating something simple when you don't know the program that well and are trying out a new animation program. 

Step 3- Color! and a Background!

One thing I wanted to do, that my other animation program made difficult, was to do color and a background. I figured I'd try it out with Adobe Animate (as a test, like before), so I used the same bouncing ball animation I made and this time added color: 

It worked really well, so then I added a new layer (it allows you to have many layers) and created a background (though I did have to move the layer down and copy it in order to do so): 

And it worked. 

Since this is going to be a series, the future posts you will see regarding it will not be test animations (though there will be a few here and there). Instead I will show you what animations I make with the program. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Have you animated before? If so, what animation program(s) did you use? 

-Quinley 

It's My Blog's Anniversary! (+ Drawings)

Greetings Travelers, 

Yesterday (March 9th) was my blog's anniversary, and while I will be doing more posts like this (videos of me drawing digitally) in the future, I thought I'd introduce this new style of post through my blog's anniversary. 

You can also watch it here 

In the last post I shared a drawing of Phoenix that I was thinking of turning into a water color. I ended up not doing that, because I was worried I'd mess up the drawing. 

So I instead decided to color it digitally. 

You can also watch it here 

While I didn't include this drawing in the last post, I thought I would recolor the drawing of Annabelle (above) that I thankfully had taken a picture of because the drawing got messed up. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Which of the two drawings are your favorite? Have you done drawing digitally before? If so what software did you use? 

-Quinley