Something I've always liked about the Tales games are the cut-ins that appear for every character with a Mystic Arte. Since they've appeared, the artwork they do per character has only gotten better, with the characters in more active poses ready to kick butt.

I think they're excellent examples of perspective and pose. I want to be able to do this, too!

Some examples:

Tales of Graces: http://oathkeeper9918.deviantart.co.....t-in-186090448
Tales of Xillia: http://chloec01.deviantart.com/art/.....t-in-511951284
Tales of Zestiria: http://blademan729.deviantart.com/a.....nder-510208673

Original Journal: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7432821/

Congrats to  anubiis_werewolf who won with 58.440001247!
Proof: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qkjhbspdy.....Proof.png?dl=0

For everyone else, please try again next time! I will try to make a habit of doing these commission giveaways more often. Maybe even once a month or at least every other month, if I can manage it.

The winner will be contacted as soon as I post this journal.

Honestly these won't be as exciting as I want them to be until more people join up in them.

To celebrate Spring Break and me finally opening for commissions, one lucky user on either FurAffinity or DeviantArt will get a basic $30 commission from me.

Cost: Nothing!

Method:
- Every entrant will put into a list with a real number from 100 to 0, going to the billionth decimal point attached to their name. I will be using a computerized number generator. The person with the number closest to zero wins!

To Enter:
- My commission page goes over all of the nuances. Just go over there and read what you're getting plus the Terms of Service. http://www.furaffinity.net/view/19326305/
- Then come back here and reply to this journal entry saying you want to be in!

Deadline for Entry: Friday, March 11th at 11:59 PM PST.
Time of Drawing: Saturday, March 12th at 4:00 PM PST.

Don't tell me who you want drawn. We don't know who the winner is, yet! Me and the winner will talk more. The only restriction I have is please keep it down to anthros.

Spread the news! Or maybe don't, because your chance of winning goes down with each person who enters. Haha. >_>

I look forward to working with one lucky person!

Hello, everyone who bothers to watch what I do. Here are my plans for the next 3 weeks or so.

- Final exams are coming up soon, so I will be out for awhile. This term is a bit difficult for me in particular. Two of my final exams require me to use my digital art skills for a grade, so I will be pouring all of my time into that.
- I have one more piece I hope to get up soon. After that, you won't see anything coming out of me for a week and a half or so.
- When Final Exams are over and Spring Break rolls around, I'm hoping to get my commission prices up. Don't know if anyone will bother, but I probably should have done this a long time ago. I hope I will get to work for some of you!
- I want to try and squeeze a free piece of art into Spring Break. If anyone hasn't noticed, I've been using these free art thingies to prepare myself for real commissioned work. More details later.

As always, please send me a Note or comment on this journal if you have any questions.

I also hit 2k views on DeviantArt. After 7 years! Woohoo!

Thanks everyone!
~JLIS

Check it out! http://modestmedusa.com/comic/guest.....omic-john-lee/

Considering I only had one piece of paper and about two hours to come up with a panel layout, a joke, then pencil and ink everything, it turned out pretty nice.

I can't draw Jake for the life of me, either. Haha.

What a punk.

He called me Johnny Boy and Jeena, too. Those were old names that my siblings used to call me when I was a kid. lol

He's even planning to re-upload all of the art of him I made over there! He said he wants a more "manly" page than what I have. Or he's just a selfish jerk who wants more screen time he couldn't get on my profile page. He also said my profile is for kids since I don't favorite or post pr0nz on my page. He wants adult art on his page. Fine, do whatever you want!

He's kind of right, though. Oh well... I guess I can't stop him. I have to live with this guy, too. See what I have to deal with?

Serious Talk: I made a separate page for Kamal so I could post adult art on his profile and not mine for reasons stated above. When our comic Me and Him comes out, it will be posted on my profile. If you like adult pictures and pr0nz, Kamal Steel is there. Every comment, journal, and response done on him will be done in his persona. I plan for Me and Him to be a long term project and I need to practice getting his character down really good. He can be a jerk and he's pretty naughty (in the I-want-you-in-bed kind of way), but we still love him.

I don't want both of us using the same avatar pic. Until then, I've relegated myself to using Seth as a stand-in.

I'll link it as soon as I remember how. lol

 KamalSteel

Super cold in Portland this weekend. I guess it's not so bad because layers of clothing and staying huddled in blankets keeps me warm, but good luck to my fingers when I'm using the computer. There's not much point in using the gas heating in my apartment since the apartments I live in have horrid insulation. I don't have a personal heater in my room, either. Don't want to buy one. It isn't often too cold in Portland.

I'd draw more often this whole month, but I volunteered myself to cover shifts at my workplace because a lot of staff went on vacation for the holidays. I don't mind it since I like where I work, but it means less time to draw. The cold weather freezes my fingers off as well. Choices, choices.

Winter term starts this coming Monday. Should be fun. I'm taking classes with topics I'm genuinely interested in.

Final exams are over, Winter Break is here. Huzzah! Video games! Clothes! Art!

I'm holding free art slots open to a certain number of individuals. What you ultimately end up depends on various things, from how simple or how complicated the piece is, to how much time I currently have, to how I'm feeling at the time, etc. I can only promise as much that you will get the quality of art seen in my ad. I will not promise you that you will get anything too specific.

Here's a link to the Summer ad: http://ignitedstar.deviantart.com/a.....ions-554494629

Eligibility
- All users on FurAffinity are eligible.
- Users who have watched my profile prior to December 1st, 2015 will get bumped to the front.

Proper Submissions
- Your "submission" should be done as a comment on THIS journal. Don't e-mail me. Don't contact me on Skype. Or Steam. Nada. ONLY HERE.
- I will draw ONE character of your choice. They MUST be your own ORIGINAL CONTENT.
- Give a brief description of their personality and a few facts about them, like their job, their hobbies, what they consider for vacation, etc. This gives me an idea of what your characters could be doing and may significantly change what I will be drawing them doing.
- A reference link MUST be provided. I won't create something from scratch.

Stuff You Should Know About The Free Art
- I will be drawing 2-3 pieces, based on how simple/complicated I end up making the pieces.
- I know I titled this as "Holiday", but none of the art is going to be holiday themed. It's going to depend on who I'm getting. Unless you want it to be holiday themed.
- I decide who gets drawn one art piece at a time. I don't decide ahead of time, so it might be awhile before I say anything about your submission getting picked. I haven't forgotten. Stuff like this takes time.
- If you do end up getting picked, I'd like to stay in contact with you for many reasons: To let you know what I'm doing, how the art progresses, and any additional questions I may have about your character. Feedback is recommended, same thing you'd do with most commissioned art. Can be through notes on FA, Skype, e-mail, or anything so long as I know it's you.
- I'm going to try and challenge myself to do something more complicated than what you see in my gallery.
- All submissions are subject to my approval. Zero exceptions.

Stuff You Should Know About Me
- I will always treat your character with the utmost respect.
- I tend to shy away from action poses because they take quite some time to draw, but I need to practice them.
- All content created through this session will always be Safe For Work (SFW). I will not create NSFW material.
- I don't have time for drama. If a needless dramatic fuss starts getting caused by stupid little things, that person's gonna get nothing and I will move on to someone who probably is more respectful.

Other Stuff
- Plagiarism is a crime. Do not claim my work as your own. Do not alter the original image in any form under any circumstance without my written consent.
- No one is allowed to sell anything that comes out of this. That includes me.
- If you don't agree with anything I've written, you probably shouldn't participate.
- If you have any questions, please ask.

Huzzah! Thanks to everyone who views my work. And the commissions that involve my characters. Huge thanks to Flammars for finishing that commission of Wani and Kamal flexing together. That made me hit 1,000 views faster than I could acknowledge. If you don't know what I'm talking about, here's the link: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/18386302

Final exams are next week for me, but they should all be over by Monday. That gives me about a month of free time. I'll be picking up more hours where I work throughout December.

Personal life stuff aside, I want to have another Free Art thingy. Two people (MAYBE three if the first two are easy and fast enough) will be selected to get free art from me. It will be similar (albeit less complicated) to my old Free Art thingy I did this summer. Here's a link to it: http://ignitedstar.deviantart.com/a.....ions-554494629

Since this is about reaching 1k views on FurAffinity, only FA users will be eligible. All watchers who watched me BEFORE this journal will be prioritized.

Thanks for all of the support. I sincerely appreciate it.

I've wanted to draw other peoples' OCs for awhile now. I should always ask if I can draw someone else's OCs— I know I know, but this becomes rather problematic for a few people on FurAffinity (and by extension other art sites) where I cannot get into contact with the creator since they check their accounts infrequently. Someone in mind hasn't posted anything in months (and before that, YEARS) and there's no way to tell the last time they logged in (if there is, I would love to know).

In the case above... should I still do it? It feels kind of wrong. I promise I won't draw anything NSFW. I can't even do that for my own characters, much less for someone else's. The reason why I want to do this is because well... there are some characters I REALLY wanna see new art for, but the creators are doing something else now or don't post new art as frequently as they once used to. Would I be offending anyone this way? That's what I'm afraid of. I don't want to offend anyone.

For example,  MANLYSHARK has in his profile it is totally okay to draw SFW material. He has essentially given permission right away. Most others don't do this.

Why don't I just tell the people who are frequently around? Because, it wouldn't be a surprise anymore! Half the fun is gone when someone knows their OC is getting free art and they know it! Also, it is my way of saying thanks, because some of these people have not only inspired me, but I aspire to keep creating art as they do (or once used to). I envy a lot of them, too. That envy puts me down as much as it pushes me forward.

Let me know what you think! Please.

Manga Studio 5 EX crapped out on me this evening. Thanks a lot. I've spent about the last two hours troubleshooting everything from my tablet to the program. It definitely has something to do with the program. Look, I like you Manga Studio, but... this is a freaking waste of time. I already had to reinstall MS5Ex a few months ago because it crapped out on me before. And another time before that. As they say in baseball: Three strikes and you're out.

I'm not gonna bother to try and fix it any longer. I'm moving over to SAI. I've been playing with it for an hour or so and it isn't all too different. No problems so far. I just have to get used to the mouse scroll being inverted compared to Manga Studio. I wonder if I can get SAI's inverted. I will also have to try and get the pen pressure and pen speed settings similar to what I was using for Manga Studio, as well.

UPDATE: Aaaaaand right after I post this to vent out my anger, Manga Studio miraculously fixes itself. Why. Oh well. Now I can use SAI in conjunction with Manga Studio, if I want to. Might be a good idea, but it'll be awhile before I can weigh the pros and cons and see if I can get the best of both worlds.

I like my classes this term. My teachers are very... eccentric, but they're not bad. It's also because all of my classes are in the humanities. Writing is something I'm actually good at and not something I wanna be good at. Every week so far, I have had to do about a hundred pages worth of reading, re-reading, and more re-reading. Then I have to write about it. It is tough material to read and it takes time to write something good, but I'm enjoying myself.

I beat Dark Souls 2 and unlocked New Game+, but I have to trek through the DLC stages before I move on. Elyum Loyce (or however it's spelled) was a cool place. Did not understand the chaos pit until after I was wandering around and accidentally found one of the loyal knights. Brume's Tower sucked. I think the Iron Passage says it all. And my character is currently sitting at the first bonfire at the sunken ruins place. The name escapes me at the moment. I have ~150 deaths, last time I checked. 80% of those deaths were because of trial and error. The remaining 20% were due to really dumb things, like forgetting how to jump when my character is already running and beyond a ledge. Or getting hit by things I totally saw coming and just didn't care to dodge/block. Or trying to fight a bunch of enemies at the same time. That last one would probably work if I went for a mage character.

Best news this week: Digimon Cyber Sleuth's release date is next year, February 2nd. I'm very excited! We haven't had a console Digimon game come to the United States in a really long time. Rumble Arena does NOT count... I'm trying to pretend that game doesn't exist... Ah, I grew up watching Digimon. Great times. Wargreymon is my childhood hero. And Guilmon is absolutely adorable. Never watched the fourth season, but I heard it was mildly disappointing. Haven't watched the fifth season either, though I heard that one is good.

I am slowly working on pages for my comic. The problem with doing the first page of the second chapter is how I have to create an establishing shot for the manor AND for Edison's room, which I did not do in Chapter 1 when I first introduced Edison. I need to remedy that, but establishing shots need to be drawn properly, which means I have to do a lot of perspective drawing for the interior of a room with objects inside the room. We also have not seen the courtyard behind the manor, nor have we had accurate depictions of the other three buildings that surround the courtyard. I am in the process of constructing all of these buildings that we will be seeing many times. There will be slight revisions in the future (inevitable given my medium of choice), but I want it done as well as possible now so I regret less later.

The term starts tomorrow. Anxious. Excited. Sad. I've spent the last three weeks or so doing nothing but playing the entire Mass Effect trilogy. I deserve a break— I practically spent my entire Summer doing NOTHING except working on my comic. Now that I'm getting back into my comic (and college), I feel just a tad rusty.

Beat the ME trilogy in 10 days. I binged. Hard. It was like chugging alcohol by the bottle (and I don't even drink). My sister gave it to me to play a long time ago, but I initially was just not interested. But man, when I got in, I got sucked in. It was a lot of fun! Enjoyed it a lot. The ending for ME3 was dumb, but I didn't know about the free Extended Ending DLC which cleared up a lot of the problems I had with an otherwise lame ending to a great trilogy. I started the series out playing as male Shepard, but his voice bored me to death. He felt so disconnected from most of the things that were happening around him. I was fascinated through the teeth. So I started off ME2 as female Shepard. Things panned out better.

And I hooked female Shepard up with Garrus. No regrets. Too cute together. I'm such a sucker for this kind of stuff.

I'm currently playing Dark Souls 2. My first death was falling into some water as I was trying to find out how to jump. Twice. Hmmm, reminds me of Mario games... Then I died the third time going the wrong way. Heide's Castle? Oh, not the right way? I'm sure I can fight these giant knights— nope. Well if I run passed the first one— nope. Well, I guess I can't sequence break and survive like I could in Final Fantasy 12. Problematic.

The difficulty of Dark Souls is pretty much like playing Monster Hunter. Not that different. Though I did hear the first Dark Souls was far more difficult. Though whether that was because of bad game design or bad skill from players (or both) is something I don't care too much for.

As for other things... If anyone remembers that Free Art thing I was doing, I've had this crazy idea that I wanted to do... but I need participation from other characters from other people to do it. It wouldn't have the same impact, otherwise. I think I'm crazy for wanting to do it, but I've never seen it done before. I've heard people usually say and tell me that "everything has been done before". So why can't I find anything like what I want to do? I'm intentionally being vague, because it's a project I'm not sure I want to commit to and I don't want anyone stealing my idea, if it is as unique as I say it is. It's a project with an overall positive message, but... I don't know. Do I really have the guts to go up to people and say, "I have this project and I want your character/OC in it. Would you like to participate?" Not really. Not at this time.

Wow. It's been more than year since I made my account at Fur Affinity. Has it really been that long already...? Well, I've had my DeviantArt account for 7 years and I never used it until some time late last year.

The first anniversary for Denying Seposition is November 23rd. That was the day I finished drawing my very first page of Chapter 1. I wish I had more to show after all of this time... 40 pages. And lots of character design practice. I've been doing my best to remove unnecessary panels and squeeze large panels with other large panels into smaller spaces. The pages I work on are already a bit big, too. If only my life composed of my comic only. Who knows, might get there one day, yeah? Can always dream.

I have some gift art in mind for a few people here at FurAffinity who have done some nice things for me over this past year. It'll be quite the surprise for some people. Or maybe it won't be. Even the smallest act of kindness is a wonderful thing. Especially since I seem to go unnoticed practically everywhere. I also don't try hard to get noticed— I am quite the timid person. I don't think I deserve attention unless it is well deserved, so I don't go around advertising my comic shamelessly like I probably should be doing and have been told to do by some artist friends of mine.

For all current watchers: Here's a very big THANK YOU. Thank you for watching. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your time.

I need to get as many pages done as possible before the Break is over... but I don't want to KILL myself. I have 62 pages to get out. That's going to take FOREVER, whether that's one page a week which isn't possible due to other obligations. If I do three pages a week, that's still hella slow. I'll get done in like... 21 weeks? That's a good 5-6 months. That's way too long.

Just.. need to keep going. Thinking about it is daunting.