Ah, what a weekend. AVCON, the Adelaide anime and gaming convention went off with minimal hitches and was a lot of fun this year! I met a few fun people, including the lovely  mixideer at the Wacom booth -please check her out, her work is gorgeous, btw. I also got me some fun merch in the form of a pair of shirts, a full MLP FIM Season 3 boxset and a Pop vinyl figurine of Fluttershy! So cute!

Some glorious cosplay was scurrying about, including some fursuits which I believe I saw last year, and as always the rather amusing blokes in cosplay totally not suited to them.

Still, am looking forward to having a wind-down before getting back into life; will attempt to throw together some artwork, hopefully recreate a piece I made at the convention.

As always, have a great day.

-Zero J

As someone who is under 25, is studying, and is having difficulty finding a job, I would like to say a few things to Abbott and his fucking stupid cronies.

Firstly, I would like to congratulate you; never before has a country been so royally fucked so quickly as under you.

Secondly, your ‘budget’ idea is a fucking disgusting, un-Australian, self-serving piece of fecal matter. What people from the PUBLIC did you actually talk to about this? Oh, let me guess, Gina? Murdoch? One of those other fuckwits who earn billions of dollars a year doing fuck all and who run this country behind your backs? Yeah, good job you slimy pieces of shit.

Thirdly, and this one is a good question for you; as someone who is unemployed, I would like to ask where these jobs that we, the unemployed, are supposed to be coming from? No, really. Do you know how hard it is to get work while on full time study? I can tell you. IT’S ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE.

You have NO IDEA what the FUCK you’re doing. You’ve taken Australia and cut it into bits for your billionaire friends. Those jets we don’t need? THE FUCK ARE YOU BUYING THEM FOR? Why is so much money being spent on defense? Have you honestly pissed off our neighbours THAT MUCH?

And who the FUCK let you knight people? I thought that right was reserved to THE FUCKING QUEEN. YOU’RE not royalty. If you were, we’d all be wondering who lowered the bar that fucking far.

I’m offended by you. Australia is offended by you.

You should be ashamed.

How to avoid earning the ire of those you trade with: STOP TRADING BUNNELBY.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIWHMb3JxmE

GG Australians, you done goofed. You've voted in the SITH. FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

My tablet has decided it wants to work again, however the scare was enough to remind me of how borrowed my time with it is.
I am still going to save up for a replacement, but for now I can rest easy.
And draw. Holy sh*t am I going to draw.

My tablet, a Wacom DTF510, has finally died.
Oh, sure, its colours were always off and it had a strip of 'dead' screen down the left side, but... it served me well, y'know?
Sadly this means that ALL of my artwork must be suspended until I manage to replace it, but with my money being as in demand as it is lately, I will have to downgrade in size to a 13" Cintiq, and the earliest I can afford it is next week, though even then I might even have to hold off for another fortnight.

So, for now, my artwork is to be shelved.

Played through Dust: an Elysian Tail today, and I have only two things that I can say about it that sum up my general feelings about it:

Holy f*ck.

Sequel motherf*cker!

I loved the game from start to finish; the art, the game play, the story -oh the delicious story! I can see why it has such hype, especially since it was all produced by one dude -'cept the bits he needed help for obviously, but since those are mainly the sound bits, I'm willing to overlook it.

Laughs were had -mainly at Fidget's expense, rage was felt -some of those treasures NNGH, and glorious man-tears were shed at the ending. Oh such a delicious ending. This is what games should be like; great game play backed up by FANTASTIC writing. Who cares about some power-armored space marines if the story is sh*t? Who cares about the great story if the game itself is a pain, it's taking too long to get it and we can wiki that sh*t? No, Dust is a fantastic amalgamation of the two, and it's going into my 'best games ever'.

REALLY hope a sequel happens, I really do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVY-cpV2h1I
'Nuf said.

I've been doing a renewal on my Certificate 3 in IT (networking tech) and, I gotta say, it's been a rather bumpy ride.
Not that the work has been hard, more... frustrating.
Especially when it comes to the Microsoft Access database stuff. GAAAAAH.

If any of you are an expert on this program and get paid to work it, I f*cking salute you. GOD DAMN.
It's like grating my head against a wall of broken glass, I swear. It's just SUCH a painful program to use; not to mention that the course material has almost no details on what it wants me to actually accomplish.

CISCO is just as weird as I remember it being, with the questions as confusing as always, though I'm not doing too badly.

Don't get me started on the sustainability stuff. "Can you recycle?" is a very... annoying subject to have to do a case study on.
Especially when the case study has nothing to do with I.T. at all.

I've had my stories on the back burner until the semester is out, then I'll see what I can do to hopefully plow out one or two. Maybe a chapter of Children if yer lucky.

Until next time

Yesterday, one of the greatest minds of our century passed, and humanity is worse off. I may not like Apple products, but what Steve Jobs did for the computing world will be felt for generations to come, and he shall be missed.
Farewell, Steve.

Hey, thanks for reading again, like always.

Just a few things to get off my chest, one of which is simple.
What the fuck is 'Apple' in the Mammal species list? People seem to be just posting random ANYTHINGS in there, and it makes no fucking sense to me. Maybe I'm just uneducated, but it seems to simply be a species tag for any species that hasn't been represented in the list, in which case, isn't that what the 'other' one is for?

Second, I know I've not been posting my stories lately, I've gotten tied up with most of them (I.E. buried in the work and unsure of which one I should work on first >.<) I'll get around to them, eventually, but it'll take a little while.

Heyahs all, J here again. Thanks for taking the time to read my journal, provided you're reading this of course. Not many read Journals, and I don't post very many.

So, yeah; the Paladin comic. It's something that's been niggling at me for ages. I've been wanting to continue, but at the same time I've been unable to do so. Lack of effort/want/skill keeps blocking me at every turn, and, in truth, I'd much rather be posting it as a story. I do love to post artwork, and I've got future designs for all characters sketched and everything; I just lack the effort to make a long-term comic. I'd like to say I'm sorry.


But I'm not. :3
Instead, I'd like to salvage what I've done already as a sort of prequel/prologue to the story and continue from there. Any objections/complaints can be sent to me through PM (or jut as a comment here, I don't mind.)
Your input is really valued, I like to know what people think about my work.

Cheers.

Okay, a short one this time, but all the same, thanks for reading.

Children has reached almost 60K words at the end of chapter seven. What does this mean? Well, it means I've been writing for a very goddamned long time. No, I'm not thinking of packing it in, but if I were to add all of the words from all of my stories together, I'm more than likely to be over 100K, which is a massive thing for me. What's even more massive is that I've enough story left in Children to probably hit 100K. Hell, chapters six and seven are over 10K each.

I'm not going to upload six until I've well and truly gotten into eight, sorry, but I want to stay ahead of you guys so that you've always got something to look forward to.

Now, Hellborn has hit a snag, and that'll take a while to untangle *coughwriter'sblockcough*; the Scyther story and Gisele have also been struck by this tangle, so don't expect them for a while.

Thanks again for reading.

-J

Okay, to put it simply, Hellborn is LONG.
To put it in more words, it's gone for over 11K words, and I'm worried that I'll have to post it in chapter segments. I'd love opinions on this, as I'm more tempted towards the latter at the moment. If I run it like that, chapters one and two of Hellborn are already finished out of a possible eight to dozen.
I know that people are usually incredibly reluctant to read lots and lots of story all at once, which is why I post in chapters, but I don't want people to think that I'm not working on Children; I've got seven chapters of that written up already, and now I'm trying to fill in backstory before I post important bits. Any opinions on this'd be great.

Here we go, yet another journal. Again, I thank you for taking the time out to read this, as I know that most people wouldn't bother reading a journal and would go right for the funbags and dangly bits.


When I was but a wee boy, I first learned about the Australian marsupial known as a Thylacine (commonly called a Tasmanian Tiger/Wolf), and I was intregued. Enthralled. Hell, I fell in love with the animal, and I remember telling myself that I'd grow up to study it; but then I went on to finish the book and, well, when I read that the creature had been hunted into extinction I was terribly upset. However, recently -if you've not noticed- I've been making alot of my characters based on the creature. My fursona -if that's what the hell they're called, y'know, me as a furry- is an anthro Tazzie Tiger, Terry, the little robot from the Children series, is based on one; hell, even Hazard from the children series is based on one.


Last night, I had a dream; a wonderful, awesome dream in which I discovered a Thylacine puppy. I remember feeling its soft, warm fur, her weight, even the breath on my face when she would growl at me. Needless to say, I was wonderfully happy that I'd gotten my hands on her, but when I awoke from the dream, I was... kinda upset. I'd had the first LIVING Thylacine in roughly 100 years and then it'd been taken from me. I know it's kinda sappy, but it's my greatest wish to be able to get my hands on a living Thylacine, of any age, and this had been, well, literally a dream come true.


Now, like all journals that I write, this needs to be somewhat productive, so I'll be blunt. The three competition stories have been mostly written already (boredom hits hard on a lazy Sunday), and I really WANT to write this dream as a story, so it'll be my next project. Spellbreaker was based on a series of dreams I had once, and now I'm going to write another dream story, don't hate me, but for the sake of my own morale I've gotta do this; this gives you guys more time to come up with superheroes or whatnot for the competition. Please no adult suggestions, I don't do adult stories.


Thanks again. -J

Yeah, hello ladies and gentlemen, it's me again; back to torture your eyeballs with another journal entry, only this time, your comment is highly valued!



Things are going well, chapter four of Children is almost ready to be posted and my artwork is sorta steady. Now, however, I have a proposition: I'll give you guys the choice of what you'd like my next random story to be about, and I'll work on the winner. The candidates are:

Another Pokemon story; not in the Vaporeon's New Life story universe, but also not of the Anthro stories, being about your choice of: A Lucario love story, the female Scyther that I've already drawn, or something involving a Raichu. Please don't suggest a yiffy story, as I don't do that sorta thing.

Or, Gisele's backstory, with your choice of Superhero who brings her down! It's actually a large role, despite what you may think, so please give your suggestion of Hero, again without any adult ideas. My head is crammed full of good heroes already, but I'd like for you guys to have a chance to get yourself into one of my stories, and here it is!


Most replies for type (pokemon or Gisele) gets the winner, best suggestion for hero wins, most votes for topic of pokemon story wins. Good luck, guys!

Okay, first off, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to read this, I know that alot of people are all about the pron and to hell with the author/artist's opinion, but that's no reason for me to also be like that. Now, let's get down to business, shall we?

Children.
My main storyline, been working on this for quite a while and so far only chapers 1&2 are up in a sort of bundle. You might be wondering when chapers 3, 4, & 5 will grace the intarwebz. well, wonder no longer, as chapter 3 will be up very, very soon, on Saturday the 9th of January, 2010. That gives me just under a day to get it into the right formatting and shove it on the net. 4 and 5 will follow suit soon after. I wanted to skip christmas as a time to post it up, because it'd be flooded off the page by everyone else's work, and I think I've delayed long enough.

Reapers: God of Death.
This one is on temporary hiatus until my writers block with it goes the hell away. Yes, it is a sequel to Reapers, and I'm kinda happy with it so far, but the dramatic conclusion is taking a little doing, and so I've shelved it for the time being.

Vaporeon.
This story is, currently, also on hiatus. I'll let you guys stew with the current latest *Rose, Electric Fever* for a while before I get back into Pokemon stories. It's not dead, not yet, but I'm a little dry for plot, so don't expect it any time soon.

A Pokemon story.
This series was supposed to be little short stories that I'd post randomly, and I'm going to keep it that way for now. No deadlines are set, no plots are written, it's jsut supposed to be nice, random Pokemon anthro stories.

Hellborn: This is essentially a prequal story to the main story, and it has also hit a dead end while I run through the plot. I'm still working on it, and it follows a timeline before the Family Reunion story, which is Rose's history.

Hunter's Guild; the Hunt: This one is Michael Starfury's history, the entire Argos Crater incident in more detail that had been gone over in Family Reunion. Set after the events of Hellborn, I hope to introduce another character to the world through this one, even though I've not started it yet.

Ties that Bind: Yet another that has not been written, but is in the works. This story is another in the history of Children, and is set hundreds of years in the past. It chronicles the Second Cataclysm, and will be released after Children, so that you can get a full grasp of the history and stories as a collective work in chronological time.

Against the Flow.
Undine's story, currently in the works. It'll be uploaded soon, and I'm almost halfway through it.


I'm working on my artwork constantly, and that means that I'll be posting on a near-regular basis. Several pieces of work from FA are going to be posted here soon, so look forward to them.

They are indeed, and I'm hoping for a fair amount of critique, too. These chapters have gone through a fine tooth comb many times, and I've -hopefully- flattened out any kinks or plotholes, though I'm sure another will emerge eventually...

I'm uploading it in chapter batches because you guys'd never sit and read the WHOLE story all at once if I posted it like that, mainly because it's already quite a few chapters long, but also because it's the longest thing I've written to date -and I'm still writing it.

Enjoy the story, I've had fun working on it!

Okay, let's put it like this;

I had a whole week's worth of work open. I had only just SAVED a whole week's worth of work. I went to bed, and the power decided to go out during that time. My computer, in all of it's AWESOMNESS, decided not to remember anything I saved and thusly I've lost EVERYTHING of my houndoom story, a good amount of my main story and even some stuff from some other little pieces I was working on, including artwork.

I'm very unhappy right now, particularly that the power company can't keep electricity a constant, but mainly that EVERYTHING I worked on in the last WEEK is GONE!

Houndoom will be late.
Children has lost an entire CHAPTER.
My art program lost five images I was working on.

Here I sit, yet again in the dark of three in the morning, with a sudden burst of inspiration to darw and no time to do it. Oh well, mayhaps it'll carry over to tomorrow and I'll do something cool with it all.

Thought I'd at least update my journal so that all that negativity is off my main page and maybe tell you more about my current workload like everyone and their dog does...
I'll start with my Authoring;

Children: This is Cibbie's story (the almost legendary main that I blab about every so often), and I've got writer's block. It's not progressed much this year and I think I know why. You know that bit that everyone finds boring? Y'know, those everyday mundane life bits? Yeah, I got caught up on one and sorta look at it and go 'where do I go from here?' It's really distracted me from the major plot and caused me to write a whole bunch of other little stories that few pay attention to.
*By legendary, I mean it's a thing of legends. Y'know, nonexistant but talked about anyways.*

Hellborn (Sharp's history.): This is essentially a prequal story to the main plot, and it has also hit a dead end while I run through the plot. I'm still working on it, and it follows a timeline before the Family Reunion story, which is Rose's history.

Hunter's Guild; the Hunt: This one is Michael Starfury's history, the entire Argos Crater incident in more detail that had been gone over in Family Reunion. Set after the events of Hellborn, I hope to introduce another character to the world through this one, even though I've not started it yet.

A Pokemon Story: These ones are for fun, don't expect them to be regular.

Ties that Bind: Yet another that has not been written, but is in the works. This story is another in the history of Children, and is set hundreds of years in the past. It chronicles the Second Cataclysm, and will be released after Children, so that you can get a full grasp of the history and stories as a collective work in chronological time.

*last one*
Cursed with Life: My incubus story that's not been written yet, either. It'll happen, but as you've noticed, I've got a pretty full plate already, eh?

Artwork.

Most of my images are done on the spur of the moment, and my style is slowly progressing. I'll never stop drawing; I do it whilst raiding on WoW (in a visual art diary, obviously). Cibbie and her brother will be drawn as often as possible, and I'm working on the other characters, but with so many it'll take a while to get around to them all so be patient.

Comments on any of my artwork or stories is greatly appreciated, especially constructive criticism. I didn't fave  Ilovecritique for nothing you know.

It's recently come to my attention that people are either completley ignoring that there are Sketch artists out there or that people have really not heard of it. Here's the basic rundown of what I reckon a sketch artist is.
You like to draw, but are not very good at colouring and shading, and such use a single colour (usually black) to make an outline image of people/characters or objects. These sketches can be as detailed as photographs or as basic as rough line drawings.
Personally I like to think that I sit in the middle of the skill bar, hell, I tend to think that I'm lower than one-third way, and a completed image for me is something that, whilst others may not think it is anything special, looks good in my eye. Frankly, I don't have to colour any of my images, I do because I told myself that I'd try to have at least one in every six or so images fully coloured. I may not have succeeded, but that is because I don't push myself to do it. I do artwork because I like to, it's my escape from the real world and it gives me something to vent my frustrations on (which is why some of my images are more moody or depressed). I like comments that are helpful, but I don't expect them; it's nice to know what other FA artists and denizens think of my work and how I might improve upon my style. Criticism is important in any developing style or artist, if there was no critique, we'd all still be scribbling bulls on cave walls. Again, there is no pressure for anyone to critique or comment, though I do like to know your opinions. Negative critique is encouraged at all times, knowing what you think is crap is important, but there is only so much that can be divined from "Uh, is garbage." I'm sure we've all heard it before from our peers: If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all, in this case is only half true. TELL me what you don't like, I'll take it on board, I don't ignore criticism, I welcome it, but if you don't like my work because you don't like the fact that I don't colour an image, or 'complete' work; remember that I'm a SKETCH artist, I don't colour things in as a rule. Being told my work is garbage because it's 'incomplete' to your standards makes me go: "Hm, if this is shit, and this is how I draw, maybe it's all crap and I should stick to playing WoW and find a new way to get rid of my nervous tic?"
Sorry to rant and rave, but I've had a really shitty day because of that last statement, I really have. Furry artwork isn't something I do because I can't draw anything else, on the contrary, I draw it because I want to, I love to do it. I can just as easily go back to drawing human charaters and remove all my work from FA and the other places I have posted it.

Okay, I know I've been posting alot of story work lately, work that is obviously getting my main futher and futher behind in schedule, but my main is always a constant work and it's... Long. I'm probably about 20,000 words into the story and it's only 1/3 done. It's not a story that'll be finished in a year, as I've been writing it for almost that long already.

Anyway, I digress, I wished to point out some things that people do wrong when writing stories; hopeful that it might get people to stop making these mistakes (though I doubt it.)

1/ Don't write EVERYTHING into one paragraph. Conversation should be done on new lines for each individual speaking.

2/ Stop writing more than one person speaking in one line. Like I said, it should be a new line for each person in the conversation.

"Hello" He said.
"Hello" She replied.
"How are you" He asked.
And so on.

3/ Get your words right.
I know that almost 1 in 3 writers does this, and there are LOADS of people out there trying to fix it, so here I am joining the ranks.

Here (Location)
Hear (as in Hearing sounds)
There (Over there! Location)
They're (they ARE doing something)
Their (theirs, they own it.)
Your (this is something that YOU own.)
You're (You ARE doing something.)

I know it seems a little petty, but I do read alot of stories from the fandom and these mistakes are the most common of all; and they get really irritating after a while. Which brings me to my final point:

4/ Proofread!
Spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes and words that are from #3 can be fixed quite well if you go back over your stories before you post them. Spellcheck exists for a reason, as do online dictionaries. I know I ain't exactly innocent when it comes to this one, but I tend to re-read something I've written after I've posted it and go 'God F**king dammit, I got so much wrong it aint funny!' Mainly because I pride myself on my English language more than my artwork or I.T. knowledge.

Sorry to rant and rave, but if at least ONE person reads this and goes 'I've been doing that all along! Maybe I should look back on my previous stories and fix them...' then it ain't all in vain.

So, I'm trying to get through my main storyline when another pops into my head. Sure, I just push it aside on the backburner, I'll write it later I thought. Sadly, I got writer's block with my Main because this new one won't bugger off out of my head.
This is where it gets fun.
My main storyline focuses on the future and technological science, this new one uses magic. The problem is that I'm finding it easier to write this new one than the original!
Sure, magic in a furry comic ain't unheard of. It's almost rampant. The problem is that I don't like to use magic in my stories, it's too convenient a scapegoat.
I'd love to hear if you think I should continue to write this new story or just wait my writer's block out and get back to the other as soon as possible, and if somehow shoving magic into my original storyline wouldn't make it tacky.

Oop, I accidentally had this finish while there was nothing written.

Anyway, I was happily writing my story when I got a sudden nagging feeling that wouldn't go away no matter how hard I tried.

I'm worried about the length of my current story, almost panicked that it'll be too long and no-one will bother to read it. I know that ten megabytes is a fair amount of writing, I also know that I'm likely to hit ten before I finish. Hell, I'm likely to make it much bigger, so I've got to ask, how long is a story before you guys'll stop reading? I'd love input on this, as it changes whether I post what I've got already as the first part, or wait until it's done.

You heard me, MEH!
I'm pretty much out of inspiration/Draw, meaning that I'll likely be drawing crap for a few days, so I'm trying to keep myself busy by practicing drawing armour.
If I do manage to draw something good, It'll end up being scanned in/redrawn and posted, despite of how uncomfortable it would probably be to wear.
Don't expect much though :/

Laters!