silvercat17

communal_creators

smallweb

• finishing my display case
• dice re-inking
• RainbowFic tumblr
• two planned blog posts that I've meant to do for ages.
• I started re-doing my Neocities site and I'd like to make progress on that.
• project in progress on rainbowlists to get the lists into proper HTML (and archive text versions in google drive) and add links to some of them
• get Writer's Salon going again, but at writerscafe

As I said before, I’ve gotten into papercraft models. I also decided that as much as possible, I wanted to do a custom for each model – thus the Papercraft Challenge!

I showed the WIP of ex-tyrannomon before which I only need to build now. (It’s the pink thing to the left up there)

I finished a simpler one first and here it is:

It’s based off the voodoo model from MadeinPaperland.ru (site is in Russian).

I altered the template in Adobe Illustrator and I think it’s adorably creepy. Because the Made in Paperland said for personal use only, I kept they’re label on it and I won’t be sharing the template.

Mirrored from Shenanigans - Curiously Lydean.

I’ve wanted a captain’s bed¹ for a while now, but never bothered because I had a perfectly good futon and no money. New ones go for hundreds to over a thousand and the ones I found cool take up a lot of space.

I had never thought about it, but my parents’ bed is a captains bed – my dad had built it and they had moved it with them from Ohio to California and through three house’s there. (It comes apart into three pieces, so that helps).

Once I moved back in with my parents, I was using their futon which has free floating drawers underneath. But the cats loved to sleep in the drawers and I was afraid to let my rats run around in my room because I wouldn’t be able to get to them behind the bed. Mom was also getting frustrated with the cats always sleeping in the drawers where we couldn’t find them, so finally she said she’d buy me a new bed at Ikea.

I started looking for Ikea Hacks to make a storage bed, then figured, if I’m looking, let’s take a look at Craigslist. Which is where I lucked out!

I don’t have a pic of the ad, sorry. The pictures were awful. It was shoved into a corner, with two much stuff so you couldn’t really see much. But it was a captain’s bed, for 80 bucks, that could go from a full-size to a queen,² so why not go take a look? So me and my dad went off in his truck.

It was beat up, but made of real wood and the guy accepted my offer of 60 bucks. Score!

I figured I’d fix it and repaint it and be good. Yeah…

When I started taking a look, it turned into a bigger project than I figured. Some of the drawer fronts were beat to hell. The hinges were all either busted or frozen. Worse than that though, was the body of it, which seems to be made of the cheapest, splintery-ist, knottiest pine plywood the builder could find, held together with staples, half of which missed their mark. And I didn’t want my dad to help, because he’d take over and end up doing all of it.

I removed all the hardware and decided I would try it without any handles so it’d be lower profile. So I started filling holes. And sanding. And patching. And sanding. And patching. And sanding.

Two weekends in, I’m still sanding. (Part of this is getting started late in the days and taking breaks, but still).

Did I mention the quality craftsmanship? Because look at this:

And a ton of the staples on the body stick out a half inch from the wood (as seen in the two pictures above). Which means anything put in the center space – which closes with a door (sorry about no real before pics) – would snag. So I cut those off with wire cutters, then used my rotary tool to smooth them, then covered them with wood filler.

But mostly I’ve been working on the drawers and doors. I have most of them done now. There’s three drawers left to do, all of which have been puttied and sanded to some extent, and then the two body pieces.

But look at this poor wood!

I’ve still got plenty to do (finish sanding, prime, paint, put hardware back, figure out how I’m handling the mattress surface), and Mom wants me done by Saturday so she can have her garage back, but as long as my bosses don’t expect me to work five days this week, like last week, I should be able to get it done!

1. also known as storage beds, chest beds, or cabin beds [↩]
2. I have no plans of ever having anything but a full-size bed, but, y’know, features! [↩]

Excerpt from Silver Does Stuff. See it all (Why not post it all here? -Because I always forget to put in a cut and then long posts flood people's friends pages)

I keep a wiki of notes and info about the world of the White Knight. While I’m still working on the character writing prompts, I thought I’d let y’all choose some stuff to see. Some of the entries are just a sentence or two, some are very long. A bunch of them are completely disorganized, […]

Mirrored from Shenanigans - Curiously Lydean.

Hey, a project that didn’t take me four months to do!

Full display

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from Shenanigans - Curiously Lydean.

Hey, how about an excerpt? No context necessary.

Many came to visit Conya when she was free, for the witch woman wasn’t needed to heal often. She passed her time preparing herbs and collars, sharing stories with anyone available to listen. When they drank, they were merry. He had seen fights spill into streets in the Empire and the fighters hauled away by armored police. He had seen wealthy men drinking, staring sullenly into their glasses.

This reminded him of home, of drunken warriors holding trials of strength in firelit rooms or dark fields lit with wavering touches. Or of hearing the songs of farmers weaving their way home from the fields and homekeepers singing in front of their homes. The Thurzin were free people, free from the Empire’s laws. The homekeepers and farmers worked long hours and rested equally well, while the warriors fought in the Rajah’s wars to keep them free.

He wanted to go home, to his mother’s warm kitchen, where his grandmothers helped her cook bread-wrapped meat and the thick stews that kept the warriors and farmers working. To the longhouses of the warriors, where it smelled of steel and leather and wool, where there was always the clang of weapons and curses. To the trees where the young warriors would perch to watch the farmers work and trade stories of their training and compare wounds.

He could go home. If he was strong, if he was brave, he could go home. They would conquer this place, sell it to the Rajah or build warrior longhouses and family roundhouses here, and he could go home. Even with no honor, ever if he’d be reduced to a farmer or homekeeper, when the Thurzin conquered here, he could go home.

I reduced my goal to 15k words, but I’d still like to make it to 25k. My current count is 5k, but I have more to get typed up today.

Name: Aaron McKay, aka Gimmick Hair Color: Reddish-brown Eye Color: Grey Skin Tone: Reddish-Brown Gimmick is one of the more subtle Name Criminals and a great deal of his fame is self-promotion and bragging. He’s a classic bully and narcissist, and somewhat of a loner, choosing to spend time with very few people. He has […]

Excerpt from Silver Does Stuff. (Why not post it all here? -Because I always forget to put in a cut and then long posts flood people's friends pages). See it all

Mirrored from Shenanigans - Curiously Lydean.

Name: Leon Smith / Lenxoli, aka Swordcat
Hair Color: Red
Eye Color: Yellow
Skin Tone (fur): Gold

Leon Smith was a fairly ordinary man. Divorced with shared custody of his daughter, Melinda. He preferred to spend his time camping, hiking, and fishing, well away from people. It was on a camping trip that he found a strange sword in the debris from a recent landslide. He made the mistake of picking it up and found it had a personality of its own, Lenxoli.

Lenxoli had gone somewhat mad after the destruction of its home planet, floating in space for countless eons, and laying buried on Earth for millions of years. It wants nothing more in the universe than to recreate the civilization it came from. The first two steps, in whatever order necessary, are to destroy the hairless beasts and uplift the felines, the creatures that are most like its makers.

It meant to completely overwrite Leon’s mind, but didn’t quite succeed. An unexpected side effect was for Leon to change from a grumpy misanthropist to someone who wanted nothing more than back scratches, good food, and a nap in a sunny space.

The sword itself grows  from dagger size to full-length sword. (The two swords as drawn are in scale to each other, I believe). Lenxoli’s mind is connected to the sword which is usually kept in the mental institution freezer, which helps quiet Lenxoli. The staff otherwise find Leon quite pleasant to deal with, especially compared to many of the other inmates.

Swordcat is a villain for my comic series, The White Knight.

I was trying to find a way to make him look fuzzy without having to draw lots and lots of hair, because I’m don’t draw that fast and I need ways to get out pages of the comic (when I make it) without each page taking forever. I use Manga Studio. With Swordcat I tried using the Brush Pen which has a little bit of texture for his skin. It showed up better in the giant version (duh, I know). It wasn’t a successful method from the time saving stand point either, because to preserve the texture I had to paint in all the blacks – without completely blacking them in – instead of using the Fill tool. Oh well, I had fun.

The swords on the bottom were drawn several years ago, which is why they’re shaded. I’m trying to get away from that shading style because, again, it takes too long. And, yes, the eye on his back is correct. It shifts to stay upright. And it’s watching you.

Mirrored from Shenanigans - Curiously Lydean.

Vermilion

Real name: Donald Boyd Jr. Goes by Ronnie.

Hair color: Black

Eye color: Brown

Skin tone: African American

Ronnie heals twice as fast as normal with no scarring. Aside from that, his supersuit makes him nearly invulnerable. He was given an old, worthless but pretty blanket by his archeologist uncle. When he wrapped himself in it, it transformed to a rubber-like suit that acts as a second skin. He added boots, a belt with pouch that holds essentials, and goggles with night-vision capabilities.

Ronnie is from a so-far untitled superhero romance I started in October. No idea when it’ll be finished, but one other character from it will be showing up for this. It’s been kind of frustrating, as my friends have heard, because I’m not going to do anything major with the story – I might put it up on the web somewhere, but that’ll be it. And yet it wouldn’t leave me alone when I should have been preparing for NaNoWriMo.

The images were made in Poser 7, using Michael 4, the free Nadino Mask, various other props, and a custom texture for the suit. Which isn’t perfect, but I ran out of patience to fiddle with it.

Mirrored from Shenanigans - Curiously Lydean.

Mick Adler is unarguably the most financially successful inventor of the last century. He graduated from high school at 16, college at 18, and patented his revolutionary battery at 20. He started Future-Tech with his three best friends, Paul Gaziani, Stuart Ashbow, and Delia Troy (now Burton). His idea was to convert all vehicles to electric power, and with his battery and a freely released conversion manual released a year later, that dream was accomplished. The last gasoline powered car in the AMY was shipped five years ago. All ‘gas’ stations now sell exclusively Future-Tech fuel cells.
Adler is an admitted pervert who will flirt with anyone who doesn’t say to stop (but will stop at the first sign of discomfort). He is also big-hearted and generous to a fault. He relies on his friends to keep Future-Tech running as he works, sometimes for days, in his workshop. He can be over-trusting, but since Delia Burton is in charge of all financial decisions and Stuart Ashbow all personnel that hasn’t gotten the trouble the company in trouble in quite some time. Adler’s personal life is another story…

Mick Adler is a secondary character for my comic series The White Knight. I’m working on Stuart Ashbow right now and I may do Paul Gaziani. Delia Troy Burton (aka the White Knight) won’t be showing up for the 30 Character Challenge as I’ve already done her design and that would be cheating.