Re: TOKoR Artbook

[Tartra]

Dark lips and fire just work.

[Guest]

★ Strangled on a Phone Wire WIP

Alright, remember a picture ago how I was really good at keeping the picture a secret until the end? Yeah...

Alright here's a quick lil' peek! I can't help it! He's so cute! ^.^

[Tartra]

^___________^ Eric, Eric, Eric!

I love the little caption for the bottom half. That makes the entire piece. Oh, Eric, you're such a cupcake (which is now a term that can't be fully appreciated outside of you and me).

[Guest]

★ Strangled on a Phone Wire Page 1

★ Strangled on a Phone Wire Page 2

This is the scene where Rudy calls Eric and they "chat" for the first time. I thought I'd go with a comic this time instead of just an illustration of one scene because 1. I love visual storytelling and comics are about as close as you can get to a movie on paper and 2. because I felt this fit a lot better for this scene. Since they're on the phone, I needed to depict both of them in different locations but on the same page so that already makes "panels" necessary. And then the scene itself isn't just a simple smile or frown. It starts at one place and then ends up with a totally different tone and expressions. So, that's why, a comic. I also decided to leave it mostly black and white to give it that "comic" feel. And instead of quoting the role-play directly, I gave them new dialogue.

This is literally what went through my head when I read Tartra's return post after Rudy's "introduction" on the phone. Eric crooning makes me swoon. ^.^

[Tartra]

I have never, ever, ever seen a glare that I've adored so much. I don't know if it's because I'm caught up on the context behind it and recognize that it's such a change from him smiling or because it's got such a clear effect on Rudy and his whole 'yeah, I can talk my way out of this' plan or because it's just WIDNAFIOWANFAOBFUFEIBFAFTHAT'S SO COOL, but I am absolutely in love with it. That is one awesome, fantastic, sensational glare of promised death and it fits him... I don't know, what fits better than a glove? A super glove? A skin glove? A hand?

I almost feel bad giving it so much praise when it's only a seventh of what you drew (and only a third of that particular image), but it's just so damn... him. And the black and white? I LOVE IT. See? I even used bold to tell you, because italics just weren't good enough.

Rudy has the best expression in all three of his poses. I can't get over the cheery look he as at the start, the cocky-as-shit one he has in the middle ("bahahahaha, I totally talked my way out of trouble!") and the last one's screaming a nice "... Okay, so I didn't actually do it. And now I may die. A lot". I don't even have to read the dialogue on the picture or go to the post to know what's happening, and considering the entire point of art is to get a message across without words, the fact that you pulled it off and still delighted us with his text is phenomenal.

The big smile Eric's giving is the only bit that threw me off, but it's got more to do with it not fitting my idea of it than any actual problem in the way it's done. I can easily fix it in my head by saying 'It adds to the tailored response he made for scaring the bejeezus out of Rudy', but I had it pegged as a very light smile (which is pretty much the only 'serious' face he has) that could easily bounce back into his happy-sunshine-penguin-lollipop grin. It still works and it still looks great though, so don't think I'm say 'no' to anything.

...

I'm gonna start that hour of squealing I promised you. Damn that glare's good.

[Guest]

Eeeeeeee! I'm so glad you love it! It was so much fun to do and you hit the nail on the head with everything I was trying to do!

Although, the last grin was supposed to be more intense than his usual expression, because in my head, I mostly see Eric going from "bubbly smile" to "creepy grin" rather than toning it down when he's angry - and I think that's just how I personally imagine his character when reading your posts, I guess. It's a lot more visually frightening for me to imagine him that way because of how unsettling it is for someone to have an expression on their face that's the opposite of what they're actually feeling - especially when the emotions and contradictory expression are very intense. Like, "super fucking pissed" = "huge cheshire/joker-esque smile" is very eerie, in my personal opinion. The smile was intended to articulate murder, stretching and contorting his face to the point of being almost a snarl or a grimace. ^^

[Tartra]

Y'know what? I think that's going to be his Rudy-smile. The sort of grin he has in the second half of the first image has been the one I was thinking of, but I've got no problems with him having a custom tailored I-AM-GOING-TO-EAT-YOUR-SOUL set up. It actually makes a lot of sense. Plus, it frees me up in ways I'm going to hint at but not actually explain because I enjoy teasing you with what's coming.

[Guest]

You big tease! That's okay. I'll just take a "peek" later.

[Guest]

★ Rudy sketch

Really happy with this one. Now to go and destroy it for his "after" picture. Wish me luck!

[Tartra]

BRUISES! BRUISES EVERYWHERE!

Your description of Rudy has not led me astray. I'd recognize him even without knowing who he was.

[Guest]

Hehe, thank you!

★ Rudy Sketch After

Oh, God! This is freaking horrible! But I'm uploading it anyways, because I think it's funny, lol.

So, this is the "After" version of Rudy's sketch(put up next to the "Before" so you can see the differences better), what I plan for him to look like upon arriving at Charlton(also, with a bullet wound in his right shoulder, but it's not shown in this picture, obviously). Also, his wounds look different than the anime version in the comic with Eric because he hadn't yet gotten a broken nose when he called Eric, so, yeah.

And oh, my gosh! D: I'm such a wuss! I looked up pictures to help me with color references and I nearly passed out from looking over Google image results for "black eye" "wounded forehead" and "broken nose". Seriously, I'm such a big frigging baby. T^T and...my husband says he looks like a zombie... 8[

[Tartra]

Gahahahaha! Zombie Rudy! Well, thanks to Eric, we know zombies aren't so bad in this RP, but I'd panic like hell if I ever saw this guy walking around. How'd he even manage to steal the wedding car like that? Tricky, tricky...

[Guest]

He shot everybody, basically. There were only two guys there at the time, so I suspect it was fairly easy to approach them looking like a wounded kitten. But yes, it amuses me a lot to imagine him walking around town trying not to "set off any red flags". XD

[Guest]

★ Gwen sketch 2

**EDIT: All the linked drawings have been added to the first post and will from this point forward be added there. Updates will be marked by "red" stars for about a week for anyone who's keeping track of this other than Tartra and I.

★ Road Trip

This makes me LOL so bad! XD Alright, so this scene hasn't happened yet and I WAS gonna wait until it did, just to get the details and everything right, but this part of it is pretty much set in stone in my head so I figured, "Why not?" And I don't know why but everything about this scene - particularly the exaggerated differences between Gwen and Rudy's states of being upon arrival - makes me laugh. And that, in particular is what I wanted to illustrate with this and emphasize - the contrasts between the two of them and the very obvious "story" it tells about their road trip. So, Gwen is slightly disheveled with a few bruises from Rudy's rough handling of her, and dirty from crawling under the trucks at the rest stop and being dragged basically everywhere because Rudy is a big pussy, lol. And Rudy looks like HELL trampled on his face! XD *explodes in laughter*

I'm sorry... I'm sorry... hehehe, okay, I'm good now. *snicker*

Alright, also, I wanted to emphasize Rudy's height by putting him up next to someone other than Osono - who I see as being particularly tall and lanky. I made him shorter in the role-play than James Roday - the guy I chose to portray him - who stands at 5'10" and Rudy is at 5'2". Gwen stands a few inches taller at about 5'5"or 6". I thought it worked better for his character to look very juvenile and childish, which he is very immature in the role-play, so that's why he kinda looks like a kid/teenager here.

Also, her breasts aren't really big; the shirt he picked out for her at the rest stop is too small for her.

★ Obsessed Comic Page 1

★ Obsessed Comic Page 2

Just something silly based on my note earlier. The idea of me frothing at the mouth due to TOKoR withdrawal amused me. And Xander, ever ready to lend a hand.

[Tartra]

I woke up today at 11:00 am. Ish. That's the earliest I've gotten up in a month because I've been studying until 6 am and waking up at 2 pm that afternoon. Basically, I was not thrilled to have to get up so early, but I went through my usual routine and of floating through my inbox and blah-blah-blah - A MESSAGE FROM THE ARTBOOK?! HELL YEAH, this morning just got better! So I look at what's there and I see the first piece.

That is so incredibly adorable. I just love the look on Gwen's face - she looks upset, she looks uncomfortable, she looks - well, adorable, but I feel bad for mentioning that, but the full effect of what she's been going through doesn't come into focus until I see that shirt. I had a really good giggle and I had a fun time, as I always do (it's my favourite part next to seeing the art itself), reading your description for it. I love getting insight into what you're thinking as/before/after you're drawing it and my only problem is that it's short sometimes 'cause LET ME INTO YOUR HEAD. >_>

So then I keep scrolling. Then I see something else. It's in black and white, there's something going on...

I'm not known for having a quiet voice. If anyone has ever described me, by the time they hit their third adjective, 'loud' will be that word. So, at 11 in the morning, when I see your comic, I let out a howling shriek of laughter that proceeded to wake up the roommate downstairs in the basement. Basically, I was so delighted, my voice carried through my door, down the stairs, down the living room, through his door, loud enough to wake him up. Fortunately, he'd slept through his alarm so I did him a favour and, yes, it was my fault for being a hyena, but I wanted you to know that your comic was so good that not only did I crack up that loud, but you helped my roommate get to class on time. It's a magic comic.

Also, all of that happened. I'm... a little proud of it... which probably isn't the right emotion to feel...

Thanks for making this morning awesome, Time. It takes the sting out of me having to do somebody else's final project for the past three nights because her group was too stupid to help her. I'll - uh... also try to calm down in the future, 'cause - damn.

[Tartra]

Also: Thursday.

[Guest]

*squee!* So glad that you like them both! I drew the comic at around 6 AM after a night without sleeping, so I got worried that it wasn't funny and actually creepy. But it appears to have been normal fatigue-based paranoia. I totally agree about Gwen's face. I almost had in mind - especially with how she's involved with Rudy's appearance - that it had an bit of a "I didn't do it" cast to her eyes. I feel tempted to laugh, shake my head and wag a finger at her going "Naughty, Gwen!" XD

And I'll have to remember that about the art descriptions.

[Guest]

★ Benoit's Woe

Alright, this is another one of those scenes that technically didn't happen in the role-play but was mentioned IC. Eric states to Jason that he checked up on Madeline and Benoit and he laments the fact that the two weren't having sex like he'd instructed Benoit to do. But then he goes on to say that it "sounded like she was doing something horrible to him" and how he'd need to get a new playmate to torture, and it made me think that he didn't actually SEE either of them. And the thought of him only "hearing" through the door what was going on, put this lovely image in my head.

I thought it'd be funny if all the "horrible things she could possibly be doing to Benoit" were actually more extreme than the reality. So, Eric is imagining the possibilities as "Hm, chainsaw? Lasers?" and I WAS going to do a third thought bubble with her shaving Benoit bald with a razor, but it wouldn't fit. Instead, she's actually just going to put his cigarettes through the shredder, hehe. Don't ask me why she'd do that - probably just to mess with him - and don't ask me why he's not trying to stop her - probably because Agency women are like "bears", to use a Jason metaphor.

Translation of what he's saying:

"Oh, dear God, someone help me! She-Devil! Vamp! No! Not that!"

I figured in his time of distress, Benoit would resort to his own language while throwing in a bit of German to insult her directly so that SHE'D understand.

[Tartra]

I cannot believe this. I'm giggling into one hand and typing with other and wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. I don't know what I like more: the picture as a whole or the ideas Eric's got in his head. Honestly - those two bubbles are absolutely adorable and I'm one cupcake away from turning the laser one into my next avatar.

I adore Madeline's eyes. They're spectacular and her entire face fills me with such incredible glee. I also love the innocent look Eric's got on as he's listening in, like he's not simultaneously trying to figure out why there's no hanky-panky happening when he ordered it. Oh Benoit, that's all you need to make your week the worst it's ever been. All you want is some delicious cancer and evil Maddy's taking that away.

My characters are only worth reading about when you draw fantastic scenes like these.

[Guest]

I knew you'd love it! It definitely makes me giggle as well and although they're cute, those thought bubbles were a bitch to draw because everybody's heads are already the size of my thumb. So, they're really tiny and I could have screwed up with just a slip. I'm so delighted you like Madeline's design, because I love drawing her. We need more of her.

[Tartra]

Ohhhhh, don't you worry about Madeline. She's around. She's allwaaaaysss around.

[Guest]

★ Gary sketch

Without glasses

Guess who! Alright, let me explain the thought process that went into this, but first things first: my very first impression of Gary when he entered the role-play physically, was to cast him as Jack Black. With his pudgy appearance, slow-witted, yet energetic personality and all the "Dude"'s peppering his speech, instantly put me in mind of a lot of Black's characters.

But like everybody in the role-play, he was due for a sketch portrait and...it immediately occurred to me that unlike the other portraits I've done - where if you know the actors you could possibly tell who they were, but if you didn't then you wouldn't - there was no frigging way anybody would not be able to tell who I used to do this portrait. He has such a distinctive face and he's done so many movies, even if you haven't seen any of them, you'd have to be living under a rock not to know who Jack Black is and be able to identify him by sight - or at least as "hey, that one funny/weird/crazy dude".

This brought up a bit of a dilemma for me, because at the point of first planning this drawing, I had not yet revealed my casting list to Tartra and was still kind of secretly hoping I was getting away with, "these people are semi-unidentifiable" - a self-delusion that I practiced that made my embarrassing habit to cast actors in our role-play okay and normal. If I used Black for this, then that would most certainly bring up the questions to "guess" who the other people were and I was still shy about revealing their identities at that point.

It's not that I actually assumed I was "tricking" anybody about the fact I was drawing actors and actresses, but more tricking myself and letting myself believe that as long as I didn't directly identify them, then it wasn't odd that I was drawing them as characters in our role-play in the first place. It's...complicated how I thought about it and it feels stupid now that I've revealed them all; I cannot remember what had me so nervous about it to begin with. >_>

Another thing that I took into consideration is that I know several people in real life who severely dislike Jack Black and have a snobby disdain for all of his movies - so much that if a commercial comes on TV for one of his films, they'll immediately change the channel until it's over. Not that I assumed Tartra was snobby but that I accepted the fact that some people just don't like him. Not wanting to ask her if she was a Jack Black fan - and in a round-about way reveal the identity of the portrait prematurely - I decided to choose someone less recognizable. Thus, in my casting analysis in my archive thread, John Candy is the name I currently have up for Gary.

In a way, he still kinda fit for Gary being big, with a tendency to play slow-witted and funny characters. But there's a sense of something very old-school and "mature" about him that stops him from EVER saying "dude" in my head and he doesn't possess that energy that Black has. But I was willing to continue to imagine Gary as Black and just draw Candy to keep my little secret that's not really a secret, lol.

But then I faced a problem. John Candy doesn't wear a beard. As you'll see from the above picture - and I'll explain it more in a minute) when drawing super-realism, I do not do so good with "guessing". I do use photos of actors and actresses and I sit and draw exactly what I see. If it's not on the photo, then it becomes hard to add it so it doesn't look weird. So, I NEEDED to find a GOOD picture of Candy with a beard. Luckily, in scouring the internet, I found one of him smiling in that "bubbly" way he does, but the beard was a lot shaggier than I imagined Gary's as being. As a result when I started to draw him, he started to look an awful lot like Santa and I stopped and said "I'm just not going to be drawing Gary." :/

Then right around this time, I was bored and aching for some TOKoR, and I was in a particular state that I wanted to fill my archive thread with information. Thinking about the cast I had chosen for the characters, and my reasons for each, I thought it'd be another one of those nice little "peeks" into my head for Tartra, so, I put it up, pulling back the curtain of my little habit. And immediately after getting her reaction to it, I promptly forgot what I'd been worried about. 8[ So, that freed me up a little bit, but it wasn't until yesterday(or was it the day before? cannot remember) when Tartra revealed that not only is she a Pauly Shore fan(which is another one of those actors that most people I know hate him, but I adore him) - which is freaking AWESOME by the way - but she's also a Black fan! I took that as basically a go ahead to toss the Candy surrogate out the window.

So, he's Jack Black! Was not able to give him a blonde beard and I did not look at anything for his hair so it looks very crappy and pasted on, but overall, I'm happy with this and how it turned out. Was a lot of fun to do - Black has got an awesome expressive face and I'll probably draw another one of the photos I found...just because I like him a lot.

But anyways, enough talking about it, lol. Also included the sketch before I added the glasses(almost forgot to add them!!!) to show the details of his face better.

★ Cupcake

I actually had the idea for this a while back but kept putting it off for easier and more interesting drawings. However, this remained one of those "necessary" illustrations, especially with how ecstatic Tartra was one evening/early morning about the realization that her cute/menacing cupcake avatar was a representation of Eric.

Other than that, I'm not really sure what to say about this. I had meant to do a more overall shading to everything, but when I colored the shadow in marker on Eric's face, I put it out too far. *shrugs* It looks alright as is though. His smile looks off to me but I'm not really sure what to do to fix it - I tried editing it in GIMP to take out that upper lip and just make it a flat line, i.e., closed lips, but it looked dumb. So, I'm leaving it. Also, the background is pink to give it a semi-whimsical feeling, but the design is supposed to articulate menace. Hopefully I got the point across, lol.

[Tartra]

HOW LONG HAS THIS BEEN POSTED WHY DID I ONLY SEE IT NOW DAMN YOU GMAIL FOR NOT TELLING ME ABOUT THIS SOONER RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGEEEEE!!!!!!

I absolutely and truly commend you for choosing Jack Black. John Candy worked in a sense and I would've certainly been okay with that, but I saw Gary in a different way than I saw everybody else: I got his wonderful cartoon before his sketch so I was stuck squinting and thinking, 'That's definitely Gary, but I'm not seeing Mr. Candy in there anywhere...' Really, it was stupid for me to have tried to match it up considering the sizeable difference between, for example, Rudy and the actor you picked for him. ... Like two feet of difference, I think you said. It'd be the same thing for Madeline, I guess; because I've seen her cartoon before anything else, that's the Madeline I know and you'd be stuck trying to bend the actress to fit her rather than the other way around. ... Who'd be bending around the written description... Argh, this is confusing! Whatever comes first - the cartoon or the portrait - sets the stage! That's what I mean, and Jack Black definitely does it. Perfectly. Flawlessly. Undoubtedly, that is Gary. There is now no substitute.

And as for the second one - DO YOU SEE?! I told you it fit! This proves it with the most accurate visual aid anyone could've ever imagined and the only way it could've been more obvious that Eric is that cupcake is if you actually drew the little face on it, too! But you don't need to because Eric is already out there and therefore isn't the cupcake at that moment in time. I'm seriously giddy about this. I've been chanting 'Oh Em Gee (I pronounce acronyms... U_U) Cupcake. OMG Cupcake. OMG Cupcake' for five minutes. I'm chanting it right this damn second because it's so mindbogglingly seamless.

Eric = cupcake. We have proof.

I like the bottom one better, with his lips closed. That face? That exact face? That's what I was thinking about him using on Rudy before I got attached to the Rudy-Grin-Of-Death. That face is still synonymous with everything I feel about Eric. That face is the ultimate 'I'm evil' grin and, if not the cupcake, that face is him in a nutshell, which is great because that's the only thing he can take with him from body to body.

My all time favourite piece you've done so far is the one of Jason and Stephanie where she's half-gnawing on his lip. The art was great in that and it’s why it’s my number 1, but I adore it especially because it so fiendishly hammers down the exact emotional connection, mental idea and summary of everything that happened and is happening between them. It’s the core of who they are, and even as the RP changes and pulls them around, they’re fastened to an undeniable point that that picture proves. We can always debate about whether it’s wuv or more of the lust-only side, and even if that piece suggests that no matter what, Jason’s always going to be a little freaked out by her (which I’m so up for!) but at the end of this, I am not going to be able to separate them from that core. Riding on that reason, this has become my number 2, and only second place ‘cause – damn, I loved that Stephanie and Jason one. But thank you for doing your creepy psychic act and literally extracting this crystal clear image. This is Eric’s core, and I swear, every time I mention anything about him that I haven’t directly stated in the RP, I feel like I’m giving it away, but I cannot help myself with this one. So – uh... spoiler alert, but this is Eric through and through.

OMG cupcake. OMG cupcake.

New background, by the way. But tiled because I don’t want to stretch it. ... I should really make a mosaic sort of thing. AWESOME IDEA. I’m gonna do that now.

[Guest]

I'm ecstatic that you love it! I was a bit worried that the cupcake thing was a weird idea but I had to do it! I felt compelled. And after looking at it for the 50th time, I'd have to agree, I like the closed lips better too. ^.^

And I totally agree about the Stephanie+Jason=CHOMP! picture and might even go a step further that it's a perfect articulation of everything Stephanie is, in my mind. An overwhelming sensuality, longing to be close, that is drenched in a sense of dominant violence.

[Tartra]

It's absolutely perfect! That's why it's my number one! So hopefully you can take what you get out of that piece and use it to figure out why I think Eric's is so awesome.

[Guest]

Alright, some of you may remember how I did a mock book cover for Tartra's birthday ages ago. Before I drew it I had been going through a period where I lacked any kind of artistic inspiration. I hadn't drawn anything in almost a year and so when I got inspired to do the drawing for her, I was really excited to have found that "flame" inside again. Not only that, but I was REALLY rusty.

The original book cover is actually a bunch of separate pieces - each person and the title was drawn on a separate piece of paper and pasted together in the computer. I did that for several reasons: 1. because not having drawn in so long, perspective and things get skewed and trying to fit different sized people all on the same page and make it NOT look retarded is hard. 2. because it made it easier just in case I ended screwing one of them up - which I DID, several times on all of them before getting them to look right - I could just flip to a new page without ruining the WHOLE drawing.

It was perfect for a new start and a wonderful gift idea, but in looking back at it, there were so many mistakes with it and I edited it so much in the computer, the original scan where I pasted them all together is completely different from the one I have up now. I think there were 7 edits in all.

The original title that I drew is not the title that I ended up editing on there - the original title was really kinda warped and screwy because I suck at graphic lettering, and the colors came out too bright on the top half and too dull on the bottom. So the top was like "Ow. My eyes bleed when I look at this drawing." and the bottom was like "*squint* What does that say? It's blending into people."

Next thing about it is that because I was so rusty, I didn't know really how to draw everybody. I drew Alex, Gwen and Xander first, and they came out with a mixture of cartoony and realistic and I spent a lot more time on them. Since anime is so much simpler and easier to draw, and by the time I got to Stephanie and Benoit I was running out of time, I drew them in anime style just to get them done. So, it already ended up looking like a patchwork/puzzle, making the way it was put together obvious.

Another thing I was rusty with was GIMP. GIMP will allow me to do backgrounds, but it helps if you don't already have color. When you adjust the Color Saturation on a scanned drawing with a white background, it makes the white solid. When you up the Color Contrast, it makes the background transparent - because the Contrast makes all the light colors REALLY white and the blacks really dark. Nowadays, my default is Saturation-20 and then Contrast-10 - because my scanner is dumb and makes everything look washed out. But in the beginning for this very first one, I didn't know what to do. I must have adjusted the Saturation and Contrast 20 times - which, the higher the contrast and saturation, the brighter and more vibrant the colors look. Saturation AND Contrast 80 makes things look almost neon and very "Ow, my eyes are injured."

So, I scanned each individual picture and adjusted Sat and Cont to the point that the backgrounds were solid, so when I cut them out and pasted them together in a new document, the background was white, but everybody now had a halo of off-white color around them. Which looked retarded before I fixed it.

So, I didn't know what I was doing with the background, and left it the off-white. Nobody was drawn on the same page, so I didn't have a set way to fit them all together, and there's a bunch of empty spaces between them - moderately fixed by the Agency and Starbucks logos. Again, I'm not ragging on the gift I made, just trying to explain the limitations I had in the beginning, why I decided to redo the cover AND to explain why/how things are changed and how they are better in this new version.

(click picture for larger version)

The Other Kind of Roommate Mock Book Cover 2

The new cover: I had so much more planned for this. I was originally going to include Jason on the left side and have Stephanie as a silhouette behind him, her mouth open in profile and screaming. On the right, the stasis cell was going to be smaller in the background behind a smoking Benoit. Behind Xander I was going to put a Starbucks logo with clock hands over it - don't mind me, I thought I was being clever with the "running out of time/Starbucks will save him" thing. And I was originally going to have Alex holding a gun and pointing off to the right, with Osono, small, and in her fire form behind him. When I explained all this to Abram - who helps me so so much in making these things turn out alright - he said that sounded really busy and if he saw that book in the store, he'd feel either overwhelmed by all the junk going on or bored by it, but end up moving on and NOT reading it either way. Not that I ever actually think this'll be a real book and that THIS would be the cover for it, but the fact that it was "too much" did make sense to me. So, a lot was cut out from the original plans and changed slightly.

I would like you to first make note of the title which IS hand drawn and the placement of it at the top of the page, rather than in the middle like last time. I think last time, the title in the middle helped tie everything together and draw the eye along, but this time I decided it would just really get in the way of putting everyone closer together like I wanted to do.

Then I decided since I had Stephanie screaming last time, and I felt it was a lot of emotion for a cover, I decided to go for another emotion, namely sadness, instead. Gives her a kind of dignified look and I think it articulates in general what she is going through better than anger would have.

Eric was absolutely necessary for this and he was the first part of this that I actually had formulated an image for in my head. And he turned out exactly as I imagined it right from the beginning of the idea formation about a week ago.

The decision to take Benoit out makes me sad, but I really wanted to have the stasis cell in there as a kind of foreboding "Agency thing". Now, looking back at it, I'm not so sure it was a smart move and I think it makes the picture look a little uneven on that side.

And down below, Xander, Alex and Gwen all look pretty much the same as they did in the original except I updated their appearances to fit with the overall style and how I draw them now.

About halfway through coloring the background, I realized I was starting to make it rainbow - which is very immature as a design - so I altered Xander's to be purple instead of the red I had originally wanted.

Other than the adjustment of color that I do for all my drawings, the only thing I edited on this version was the powers coming from Xander's eyes. Normally, the power isn't visible, but I think it does better on paper with a visual aid to articulate what is happening. Well, there you go! Updated TOKoR cover! ^.^

[Tartra]

SERIOUSLY SERIOUSLY SERIOUSLY SERIOUSLY.

HOW THE HELL LONG HAS THIS BEEN POSTED FOR? NOVEMBER 27?! THAT IS BULLSHIT AND WIZARDRY AND I DO NOT APPROVE OF THIS AT ALL.

The update looks absolutely fantastic. I'd put a bunch of exclamation marks after that, but we'd be here for pages and pages going through them. I can't get over how well everything turned out, and this explains where your new/old avatar came from, because I was wondering why there weren't any updates (there were) because I'm used to seeing a full or larger picture added (always is, should've been sign number one, wasn't) so I can get the complete wave of glory.

I AM INCREDIBLY DISAPPOINTED IN MYSELF.

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww - no Benoit? But he's so important! I'm a bit more surprised there's no Jason. Too bad they couldn't've both been in the upper right. The stasis looks great, but if it was Xander (... or Charlotte? Except you drew her. ... Nathan?), then he technically gets two portraits. Portrait hog.

This looks great. It looks so, so good. And I'd like to think of this less 'as a replacement' for the first one and more 'the updated version to reflect everything that's happened so far'. Maybe... for page 7 and up.

NOVEMBER 27th. THAT SHOULDN'T EVEN BE POSSIBLE.

[Guest]

I was originally going to put a lot more - when I first put this up, I had a long indepth description up as well...but I took it down. It's still on the picture in my dA gallery, but I assumed it was just a little too much reading and self-consciously removed it. Sometimes I realize I just really like to type and talk...

I don't know why, because this keeps happening and I should KNOW better, but I always assume that you've seen whatever I've put up and just didn't have anything to say. Which is fine. Not everything needs a comment and I understand that some of these might be hard to say something about - "OMG! ANOTHER realistic portrait of somebody!" or "Wow! You drew Xander holding a gun...Again!"

Even so, I have difficulty bringing myself to say "Um...hey, lookit my artses." Feels a bit starved for attention to type those words out and I dislike that.

Anyways, I had planned to put Benoit, Jason and Osono on the cover but it turned out to be a little too busy. So, I had to scratch some things from the original plan. And yes, the stasis tank is Xander's. And thank you for your comments. ^^ I'm really glad you like it.

[Tartra]

See? PORTRAIT HOG. Damn you, Xander! Give other people a turn!

I'm pretty sure the email got lost in my massive inbox-jungle. With that said, PLEASE let me know if, for whatever crazy reason, I haven't seen a new piece in a week (and I comment to a) gush about how great you are and b) let you know that I've seen and it added it to my list of reasons why this RP is the most epically epic of epic RPs). Just 'new art', like you were postin' a link. This is the second time I've been late to see something because I didn't get a notice - and I'm watching it any everything.

Silly FOG...

I missed the description... I feel left out.

[Guest]

Alright, I'll remember to do that from now on. And, I put up the description again. Lottsa words.

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