I'ma be out of town on choir tour from tomorrow afternoon (Wednesday) to Sunday evening.

I was thinking about bringing my computer (they even said our bus is gonna have WI-FI and stuff) but I have packed too much other entertainment and food to cram my computer in alongside. So, see you all later, I guess. XD

Anyway, that's why I'll be mysteriously vanishing in a bit. XD

Hopefully will be posting something tonight, though I'm kind of behind schedule on that. XDXDXD

Hey kids!

Guess what?

If you have a quick-heating tea pitcher, clean it properly. Don't do what I did, and put dish soap in it and just let it boil.

BOILING SOAPY WATER PROJECTILE-VOMITED EVERYWHERE.

As if to mock me, DIRECTLY, in white, foamy spurts, into my backpack, that happened to be filled with a library book, two books borrowed from my drama teacher's cherished collection, a couple of text books, and the sketchbook containing all the hand-drawn pages of Something Fishy.

So yeah. I have the entire comic, including the new page, laying out on the floor right now, trying to dry it off.

Luckily, the water only really got into the bottom edge of the paper, and it isn't touching the ink on most of the pages (thank God for super margins.) Plus, Sharpie pen is really good ink, and it doesn't look like anything's running *knock on wood*.

But yeah, definitely an ideal situation. The books didn't get it too bad either (they're old school, and really quite hardy, it looks like), but I'm worried that it's probably enough to worry about. :( There's a dissolved notebook-paper mark now in the library book.

Anyway, don't be stupid like me.

In case you didn't know. XD

 Contact

http://www.contactcaffeine.com/

These folks are amazing. I've been buying their caffeinated soaps for almost a year now, and they never disappoint. They are always super prompt about responding to your order, and they are unbelievably sweet about things like altering your order after it's sent in (I was purchasing Christmas presents, and forgot one of the soaps I wanted-- I noted them about combining the close orders in order to save shipping, and they were totally cool about it.)

Clearly there's a lot of love, passion, and professionalism here. And ALL of their scents seem to be like... geniusly good. You'll have to smell it to believe it. Plus, the suds this stuff makes... basically shaving cream consistency. No lie. It's wonderful.

Anyway, I was getting their buy-5-get-1-free deal to stock up on soaps for the next year. XDXDXD

So I get the box (unbelievably fast!) through the mail, and not only does it have the six soaps I ordered, but a huge handful of samples, complete with a little post-it saying "EXTRA SAMPLES!!"

They usually give you one. I got five. I am... all kinds of happy. XD

So my cache included:
Big soaps:
Applejack (Apple Orchard) http://www.contactcaffeine.com/prod.....-apple-orchard
Rarity (Fresh Roses) http://www.contactcaffeine.com/prod.....ty-fresh-roses
Twilight Sparkle (Black Magic-- they describe it as "hippie shop") http://www.contactcaffeine.com/prod.....le-black-magic
Bamboo Grass http://www.contactcaffeine.com/prod.....p-bamboo-grass
Ruby Dragon (Melon/Mint) http://www.contactcaffeine.com/prod.....ap-ruby-dragon
and Sex Panther (MANLY!) for my brother XD http://www.contactcaffeine.com/prod.....ap-sex-panther

Scent Markings (their solid perfume sticks-- quite lovely) in Applejack and Rarity

and samples of

Amethyst Dragon (Lavender/Amber)
Beerhound (Um... beer, I guess?)
Curly Tail (Chocolate Espresso)
Yuzu (Smells happy, like Sweettarts)
and Painted Dog Pumpkin

MASSIVE CACHE OF CONTACT IS MASSIVE XD

If ya'll are addicted to my writing (worst addiction ever, I guess, since you'd never get your fix...),  Gryphon_Wings has put up an RP we did together: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/7582334 in which I play a borderline insane, mildly traumatized Hiccup. Yup.

LOL MY INTERNET SUCKS

Here's a video Malus found:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5xkZVUyU5Q

I think this is the scene that preludes the Kill Ring.

THE FLYING GRONCKLES MAKE MY LIFE. Like, seriously, best thing ever.

Otherwise... this is hilarious. XD

Well, this is what the video is about, as far as I can tell:

A bunch of young Vikings are breaking the spirit of a wild Nadder through the power of group dance, high kicks, and cheesy remixes of John Powell.

And they succeed.

It is truly a testament to the discipline and dignity of Viking culture.

*snorts milk*

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3235537/

All I can say is EEEEEEEEEEE! :D

http://vimeo.com/37271316

This is an Australian TV special I saw advertised on the show's Facebook (speaking of which, here it is: http://www.facebook.com/DreamWorksDragonsLive I can't believe how annoying the comments are. XP)

Obviously, I couldn't watch it on TV. XD But this is via Creature Technology's own video feed, so you can watch it AND a whole bunch of other media on the Spectacular there.

This is mainly introducing the Nightmare, which while having its wings attached differently, is quite gorgeous-- the eyes are very expressive.

Plus there's Toothy running. XD Kinda goofy looking, but really shows off the tech.

http://i853.photobucket.com/albums/.....ayru/mac11.jpg

LOL these are my festivities: macarons (an almond-meringue cookie with filling) made by a French student on campus.


I'm still working on my Valentines drawing, but no way is it going to be done before midnight. (and it's quite scary, anyway! XD Viking love is horrifying. XD)

Speaking of which.


I've seen this movie COUNTLESS times. And it's only just now, has the full gravity of just how RAUNCHY the LOVE ON THE BATTLEFIELD joke was, now that I'm using a few stills from it as reference (it's got a good view of Astrid's axe. Shut up.)

http://i853.photobucket.com/albums/.....tNayru/UNF.jpg

I mean... UNF. The strategic placement of the weaponry is a nice touch.

Either it just looks worse in stills, or I've been on the internet too long.

Probably the latter.

I'm baffled this hasn't been exploited anywhere.

Not that I've been actively looking. XP

http://my.deviantart.com/messages/#/d42e91l

Sadly, this is better than any animation I have ever attempted. XDXDXD

 Malus22 is probably getting annoyed at me reposting everything he sends me, lawl.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?featur.....;v=EDPMkLv-TLU

WITH MUSIC (in case you weren't humming it anyway:) http://youtubedoubler.com/?video1=h.....ame=meahwahwah

But here's a pretty sweet test run of the flying Toothless. Hahah, right now, he looks like the FIRE BREATHING NIGHT FURY action figure I use as a scanner weight, since his feet and head aren't animated yet-- but once this thing is fully rigged up and has some projections that exaggerate the speed and all that stuff, I could really see this looking pretty awesome.

This has been available for a long time, actually, but I figured some people might be interested who haven't found it yet: http://dreamworksdragonslive.com/DR.....t-A4_d10-1.pdf

It's a media package, and basically contains all the details on the actors, number and types of puppets and other juicy little things, if you're into that. :)

Two new updates for you!

First, a new trailer from my friend :iconMalus22), that shows Toothless in all his... rather derptastic, pink, fat glory? LOL WUT (though the gesture looks kind of sweet)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HElJ_dd0r4U

And second, a 20-minute sneak peek TV special from Australia, recorded, edited and posted by my wonderful buddy  Crimson4fa.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LG79bpPFeLc

HOLY

FREAKING
HOlYFREAKINGHELLHOLYHELL

first impressions:

BOTH Astrids are AWESOME

WHERE DID THEY GET ALL THESE INCREDIBLY ATHLETIC FLYING VIKINGS WTF (turns out whoever I labeled as Snotlout long ago was actually one of the twins)

BOTH HICCUPS PART HAIR ON WRONG SIDE (is that how they do it in Australia?) XD

Gronckle's... exploding anus? WTF? The smoke rings are like... amazing, though.

TOOTHY'S WINGS ARE SO SHORT

THEATRICAL
EFFING
MAGIC

Huge animated awesome projection-screen-thingies

HICCUP RUNS UP A WALL FOR THE ENTIRE DRAGON RAID SCENE: JUST BECAUSE THEY HAVE THE THEATRICAL MAGIC AND CAN

also Astrid in particular apparently has the ability to leap into the sky and fly for no apparent reason.

Toothless is a technological masterpiece. The sumo Gronckles are dumb and pointless.

HICCUP'S COSTUME CONTAINS A TOON LINK BELT.

NOT SURE IF WANT!!!!!! IS THIS A FANGASM OR BAFFLEMENT????

or lack of sleep?

WHARGARBLE

For my interterm Intro to Performing Arts class, we'll be traveling to New York City next week to see a bunch of shows on Broadway. I already have tickets for Lion King, Anything Goes and Warhorse, but I get to decide the rest ( ones I really want to see include Avenue Q, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Godspell, Seminar (with Alan Rickman), and possibly Spiderman). We'll also be doing the standard Ellis Island stuff, touring several museums (I missed the Natural History museum last time I was there) and getting to go backstage of the Metropolitan Opera.

Since Monday is Chinese New Year, we'll totally be hitting Chinatown that day-- You have no idea how excited I am for that. Like, no idea.

Anyway, if any of y'all have been and know good places to go/things to see, I'd love to hear your stories. :)

I'll be gone from this Sunday afternoon to the following Sunday.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15521212/storyboard.pdf

(intense loading. I actually had to try it at a different computer)

Courtesy, once again, by my good friend  malus22, who apparently trolls for this stuff all day.

OMG CHASE SCENE

HOW CAN STORMFLY EVEN COMPETE WITH A NIGHT FURY IN THE SKY

OH WAIT, SHE BELONGS TO ASTRID, WHO WOULD PROBABLY TRAIN THE HECK OUT OF HER

and um... who is Heather? Why do I get a LOL MARY SUE OC vibe right now? XD

Hopefully we'll be pleasantly surprised.

Heather is a pretty eh name, as far as Cowell's universe goes, though. Though I guess it IS the name of a plant that's extensively mentioned as growing on Berk... so that WOULD technically count as a series tie in.

Performed a factory wipe on my computer, and now everything seems more or less peachy and sparkly clean. I've got all my programs put back on, all my files restored from backup, and some better defenses put in place.

I'm back in business, and hopefully will be getting actual stuff done soon. XD

Thanks so much to all who offered advice to help me fix this thing. :)

Nope, we couldn't fix it.

We're probably going to have to do a system wipe, which means all my programs and files go kaput. Luckily I've saved most of it on an external drive, hopefully intact.

I have no idea when I'm going to do that, as I've lost the original OS packet and stuff, what with other people living in my house, and continual moves back and forth from the dorm.

I'll probably be rendered without any of my art programs, and without use of a scanner (I am NOT going to be scanning fandom stuff, especially vore, on public scanners, which at my school are reserved for graphic design students, which I am currently not.)

So I have no idea when you'll see me again.

on the bright side, I guess I'll get some stuff done. XP

what a wonderful Christmas gift.

http://httyd-fanarts.deviantart.com.....ATE-272799873?

bring a wad of DA points if you've got 'em, and duke it out at auction.


also my computer is fixed now. I've been fighting viruses like for weeks. XP

LoneWolfDragon passed me these links, one a preview for the arena show that exposes most of the character designs, as well as some short segments with Hiccup and Astrid in costume. (We've seen the Hiccup bits in other ads, but Astrid's looking... quite sharp. O.o; ).

The other has the two actors for Hiccup and Astrid taking a short tour of the technical side of the show. Really cool "voodoo" tech and puppetry.The Hiccup guy was somewhat mysterious to me, until I saw the overall rhythm and style of his gesture- he does the "small home repair Vikings" gesture naturally in a conversation, 'nuff said.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU2H.....1A03MbGI8cVV3Z

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVET.....oi1HSR2u6GHWKA

http://httyd-fanarts.deviantart.com.....EGIN-272799873

Go donate your points.

I hope I have time today to watch it.

I'm going to crack "Book of Dragons" right now just to get the silly stuff out of the way so I can savor GOTNF later.

BUT OMG YAY

EDIT:

Here's some review-esque bull- nothing too revealing, I don't think, especially since, as Malus says, NO SPOILER BECAUSE NO PLOT.


Well, that was actually pretty fun. Given it was like, 60% old footage with voiceovers and stuff.

It was cute, and far more palatable than I was expecting, though the way it's put together, flip flopping between old 3D renders, new 3D renders, old concept art, and like three styles of 2D animated segments , is really kind of jarring.

A la "Boneknapper", the clip is mostly 2D animated segments (far more stylized than Boneknapper's), mostly cartoony gags about Bork, the Viking who first compiled the Dragon Manual.

Bork is... conceptually, almost identical to Hiccup of the books, aside from the fact that he's a full-grown hairy man. He even has a helmet with one horn missing, and some of his misadventures are fairly familiar (such as a Darkbreather (here, a Scauldron) eating his boat).

So I was pleased with the Cowell-esque air that remained. There are blatantly horribly misinformed scenes with corn (apparently Nightmares like corn??) and chocolate: American foods- which COWELL TOTALLY WOULD'VE DONE.

Funnily enough, there was also a gag with A NADDER STEALING A SANDWICH FROM PRETTY MUCH THE SAME ANGLE as one of the drawings I have posted here. There's also some stuff that will reaffirm the suspicions of some friends of mine- and some stuff about brushing a dragon's teeth, which is obviously relevant to my interests.

There's even a short, comical vore gag with slimy vomit. Yay.

Most of the dragons are just references to the actual ones used in the movie, or those mentioned/depicted in the movie's dragon manual. Overall, there's technically not a whole lot of new material here- just some random tricks like OMG THEY LIKE THEIR BACKS SCRATCHED: THIS IS COMPLETELY FUNCTIONAL KNOWLEDGE FOR YOUR LIFE RIGHT NOW.

There's some new music, which jars with the old stuff a bit because it's obviously synth and not orchestral, but it puts up a good fight and does a decent job of blending in with Powell's precedents.


EDIT: Gift of the Night Fury

Oh man, what to say about this one...

Too short! They crammed probably at least 40 minutes of story into 22, so the storytelling is really rushed and rough. Which is a shame, really, because it's a cute, even touching story- there's just no time at all to savor it. The long, meditative moments and profound montages of the original movie are pretty much lost here, and pretty much every second is jammed with either characters jabbering away like there's a time limit- nearly all of it "I HAVE TO SAY THIS TO THE VIEWER SO THEY UNDERSTAND WHAT'S GOING ON" dialogue- or quick and to the point action, and the impact of the plot suffers for it.

Pretty much every issue I had with this was the glaring fact that they needed to SLOW THE FRICK DOWN and give us more material to help us identify with the characters and the situations taking place.

If you've seen the trailers and such, you have a decent idea of how the plot goes. It's not incredibly surprising, save for one bit at the end.

Malus, the end is probably going to piss you off. XD

So the plot did suffer immensely from OMG GOTTA GO FAST. They also ripped nearly the entire soundtrack from the original movie- which isn't entirely bad, except that some of the tracks really don't go with the scenes they're paired with. Of course, that might just be my uberfan-know-the-soundtrack-backwards-and-forwards ears talking.

The animation is pretty decent, for what this is. There are a lot of really adorable physical comedy bits with Hiccup- it's always refreshing to see your screen-friends pulled into some new expressions and poses (he falls over a lot XD). Occasionally the characters look oddly bug-eyed, but all in all they're fun to watch.

I don't know if I'd recommend you see this for the plot. But if Hiccup/Toothless (or general dragon/human) fluff melts your heart, they managed to squeeze in some really adorable moments to make you squee. Like that free-fall at the end... they didn't show all of it in the trailers- but holy hell it gets like WAY cooler/cuter.

ALSO THERE'S A BIT WHERE TOOTHLESS ENGULFS HICCUP'S HEAD WITH HIS MOUTH.

and it is quite slimy.

(and wetness and wet hair is really hard for animators, so it looks sketch- but REALLY exaggerated.)


So no, it wasn't as good as I expected, but yes, there are some good times to be had here. The plot is blah, but there are several scenes worth squeeing over again for sure.

I'll just leave this all to  Malus22

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/2887701/

I personally think that the end of the first (Hiccup on, basically) and sixth ones are really pretty spoilerish (the fifth one... kind of), but the others aren't much new material if you've seen the trailers already.

Book of Dragons appears to be full of suck.

But holy crap GOTNF looks like hella fun and rainbows.

Lawl, I had a flashback about this, so I dug it up.

Here's an honest-to-goodness elementary school writing exercise, that was linked on Eka's in a thread once. I can't recall if I've posted it here on FA or not (it doesn't seem like it's still in my journals if I did...) but, hey.


I think we should all fill it out

http://aryion.com/forum/download/fi.....&mode=view



Here's what I wrote for it when I first found it:


I got in the usual way. I mean, the dragon opened his mouth and...

Well, you get the idea. He can be quite sneaky when I'm working on something important. It's... slippery. He has the courtesy to pull in his teeth first (thank Thor), but it does result in some strange pinching around the middle with those gums of his as he funnels me down.

It is, of course, really dark in here. Cramped as I am between his ribs, heart and lungs, no light seems to be able to reach me through his hide (though not all dragons are this dark inside. The Monstrous Nightmare's fire-sac gives her insides a sort of glow).

It's small. Really "cozy", I guess, if you have to put it that way. If I was much more of a Viking, I probably wouldn't even fit in here. But then, maybe he wouldn't think to eat me, either.

That'd be nice. As it is, I do more laundry than the rest of the island combined.

Underneath me... There's something slippery. It smells like mackerel, maybe, though it's hard to tell.

I don't blame him. I'm probably a light meal.

As always, he's pretty proud of himself (because, you know, sneaking up and eating me is incredibly difficult to do- it's not like absolutely any dragon larger than a sea lion on Berk could do it or anything). He's purring, and the walls of his gut are pulsing in on me. His lungs are above me, which means he's on his back, and I think he's rocking on his wings.

Happily, he gurgles and nudges me. I sigh, and bury my hands in the wall to acknowledge his victory.

Nice one, Bud.

stole this from  DatoMaruko because bored

Yes, I know all I draw is HTTYD vore. PRETEND OTHERWISE. I guess you'll have to be really specific. XDXD

I ONCE DREW A ROBOT VELOCIRAPTOR. SO SO THERE.


PROS
01. I like when you draw: ___.
02. I wish you drew more: ___.
03. I wish you drew more fanart of: ___.
04. I wish you would offer this kind of commission:____.
05. I wish you drew a comic about: ___.
06. I wish you made a tutorial about: ___.
07. My favorite part of your work is: ___.

CONS
08. I dislike when you draw: ___.
09. I wish you drew less: ___.
10. My least favorite part of your work is: ___.
11. You could put more work into: ___.

This silly story I'm writing about winter

and camping

and dragons

and awkwardly cramming teenagers into tiny hot living spaces

is over 9000 words now.

Yay.

It's been exceptionally easy to write, I guess, because my room is freaking cold right now, and it's all too easy to want to envision thick, oppressive, fishy-smelling humid air and blankets of lovely hot slime.

Of course, my usual "screw this" point seems to come up at like, 14000 words, it looks like, so we're not out of the soup yet.

BUT HEY

*continues to waste life*