I thought it would be a nice idea to answer some of the questions that I get publicly, so here I go with the first one from my post ‘But Why Are the Horses Brown?!’;
paramundus said: Nice to see Ki laugh for once. Noski seems rather polite to him. Respectful of his blood?
A: There’s a combination of reasons behind Noski’s politeness and method of speaking with Ki.
- First of all yes, he is being extremely polite because he’s a foreigner in Sloveniskan soil and not all Sloveniskans are particularly happy with Taurin visiting, even though Taurin is Sloveniska’s ally. Drakoon are naturally suspicious of other nations, even ones seemingly connected to theirs and in Sloveniskan, there actually is no word for ‘friend’ because of this mass distrust. They have reason to distrust their own kind - drakoon are much more treacherous than the analogous snake. Noski here is taking pains to show Ki that he is an ally and not his enemy. I would definitely say that he is also being respectful of Ki’s blood but that is only a small part of his behaviour.
- Noski is self-taught at speaking Common Fallan and though he seems to be doing pretty well, he’s also learned the language from scrolls which have probably told him to only speak in a very prim and proper, formal manner that is flooded with respect. Occasions where drakoon get to speak Common Fallan with actual native speakers of the tongue are extremely rare, but usually when they do meet such a person it’s an important event where such politeness and properness is demanded, like in the middle of a war, so that’s why the scrolls Noski would have learned from only teach grammatically correct Fallan speech. Common Fallan is Rimer’s trade language between species and as such it’s very formatted, probably with a lot of rules that everyone has to follow. However, it does have slang - Noski just doesn’t know any of it!
- Noski, being an upper class citizen of Taurin (and I mean, waaaay up if you catch my hint) speaks very formally in public, saving informal speech for private although part of this speech manner comes from his own personality; Noski’s a stickler for neatness and being proper. At home, he loves to clean, which is a rather strange habit of his once you understand his rank. I should note here that Trebeck (also known as ”Beck’) and Gayl are more laid back, though they’re both pretty proper too. My most basic description of Trebeck, Noski’s boss which I use for myself when I’m writing him is that he’s ‘uber nice.’ Which, of course, is insanely weird for a drakoon. I really need to draw all three of these guys and I find it odd that I haven’t, seeing as they are some of my top favourite characters in the trilogy.
- I could talk about Noski, Gayl and Trebeck for a long, long, time. To clarify, the other character that I mentioned in the excerpt, Dane, is Trebeck’s horse. Gayl and Noski also have horses but I doubt it if I ever fully mention them. Either Noski or Gayl has a little tabby cat named Pretty who is completely ridiculous and nonsensically adorable. She’s quite useless and I’m honestly not sure if she survives the trilogy, but I hope she does, because she’s a window to what the Taurin trio are like inside - surprisingly honest, nice guys. They could be saints. (Which yeah, is pretty damn weird for drakoon but these dudes have absolutely no ulterior motives unlike most of the rest of the pack.) Their sheer nicety makes them interesting cast members, since many of the characters are fairly rough and immoral, though even these nice guys have their flaws.
- Trebeck was named after Alex Trebek, aka, the Jeopardy guy. (His last name just had a nice ring to it.)
Explicit Ki-uteness (lol, lame) because he’s such an annoying/fun character to write. Hopefully not a repost. Still not feeling good enough to write yet but I might get to draw or colour today. (Wouldn’t that be nice?) My mind is returning! XD Still sick.
In this excerpt in which Ki is speaking Common Fallan, (he can’t speak full Sloveniskan yet) we get a sense of how unworldly most drakoon actually are about the other continents of their planet as Ki has his first conversation with a trio of young contemporaries from the country of Taurin. (Country name subject to change.) Ki, however, in comparison is only a little better educated than they are because most of Rimer remains unexplored, even in his time (approximately three hundred years after initial colonization) because his society lacks the technology to have more thoroughly examined everything. However, that little more that he knows is still a lot and in this part he finds a moment of culture shock amusing.
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“You had a horse? Why is it not here?” asked Noski.
“Not a drakoon horse, a normal horse,” said Ki. “His name was Snip. He didn’t talk. He was a retired message carrier.”
“There are horses which do not talk? Are you quite sure?” asked Noski like he thought Ki might be severely mistaken. “We thought that all horses talked.”
“Gaian horses cannot,” said Ki firmly. “Humans are dominant over their horses and they choose where to go, not the horse. They’re not the same kind of smart as drakoon horses.”
“No wonder your horse was not imported here if he was not smart,” said Noski. He switched to Sloveniskan to address Trebeck. “’Beck, Vininiska says that there are horses which do not speak! He had one!”
“Impossible. Really?” asked Trebeck, amazed. Ki nodded. “Well! What will Dane think of this?”
“Exactly ‘Beck, it is so hard to imagine!” said Noski.
“Vininiska, what colour was your horse? My Dane is black.” said Trebeck.
Ki grinned and addressed Noski. “Snip was sorrel, but he was the family horse. My horse was a bay mare named Griffin and my brother had a chestnut named Sprite.”
“Sorrel? Bay? I must apologize Vininiska, but I do not know these words, could you elaborate?” asked Noski, struggling with the words. “Are they human?”
“Yes. A sorrel horse is a brown horse with a pale mane and tail. A bay is brown with a black mane and tail,” said Ki, laughing at the shock on Noski’s face. “Chestnuts are pure brown.”
“A brown horse?!” yelped Noski in Sloveniskan, as if such a thing was utterly unthinkable. “Marl, are there really brown horses?!”
“Meow!” said Marl, Noski, Trebeck and Gayl looking almost horrified.
“But why - why are the horses brown?!” cried Noski.
“Densyni Spiira is gold with a white mane and tail,” Ki pointed out to him in Fallan.
“Densyni Spiira is a sacred horse! There must be something wrong with these Gaian horses for them to be brown!” cried Noski, making Ki practically choke with laughter that the drakoon could find something so ridiculously normal so obscenely bizarre. It was so funny that he had to gasp for air, laughing harder than he had done in years.
Kind of a preview. I have an ink of Marl too but I should really do a drawing of each of EB’s important elven cats… which is unfortunately quite a long list of magic sentient kitties.
Would have posted this coloured (with the kitties seperated) but I’m too stuffy in the sinuses to think right now. Yesterday my translation of a phone message concerning our lawn mower which had been fixed went something like; “Mower lawn… lawn cut… grass cutter… lawn mower ready! Savoy!” Luckily my mother understood my sick-person gibberish. (What makes this more impressive is that at the time I had almost no voice at all.) Today my voice is a little better but it lapses good and bad and my head feels generally ill. I’m very tired; last night was my first almost full night of rest in three days because of how sick I’ve been. I’m going to be missing work tomorrow to try to get better so that I can work Sunday. Hopefully my cough will loosen up by then!
Part of a scene in KC which was scrapped (but which I’m still planning to illustrate anyway, as a way of forcing myself to practice forest backgrounds, since mine are cheesy and lame for someone who spends so much of her time in actual forests.)
There’s a another sketch to this but it might get redrawn because I don’t like it. (I need to practice humans again. And Hunter. Hunter is never my forte when it comes to drawing my characters - Keel and Ki are much easier to draw - but I must endeavour to draw him anyway. At least he isn’t Sukra. I can’t draw frigging Sukra at all. Unless he’s a dragon. Yay Sukra, as-dragon you’re generic! Well, sorta. I love drawing Alkane. He’s big and hilarious and lovable. (Sometimes.))
Mystaya and Missy. Two white animals and a dude who gets his head lopped off by Sukra Alkane at the end of this scene. The horse lives. (Obviously.)
So my computer updated - and then photoshop decided to like me! Yay!
Enter the massive quantities of motion blur. From what I wrote on deviantART:
“This actually started as an illustration of the design changes in falcolfian dentation (teeth) which have occurred as a way of better anatomically linking falcolfs to their more draconic looking cousins. (Falcolfs are technically, if you go far enough back in their evolution, a type of Rimarian dragon and only look dog-like because of parallel evolution.)
Basically, falcolfs now completely lack molars. They do have some shearing incisor-like teeth (‘scissor’ or ‘shearing’ teeth) but for the most part their teeth are now conical like a dragon’s (er, theropod dinosaur’s) which means that when they eat they pretty much just hork food back into their elastic throats, swallowing it whole without chewing (because they can’t. All they can do is rip it into smaller pieces before they try to swallow it.) Also, as you can see on Kayoss here, I’ve also tried to link them to their more reptile-like relatives by giving them back their forked tongues. (Note, they’re only slightly forked - think of them being more like dog/gecko tongues with a notch in them.) Giving them back their forked tongues? you ask? Why yes. Falcolfs started out with forked snake tongues. Now that they’re dragony again, it makes sense to give them their damn tongues back!
This is more proof that NOTHING in Rimer is ever truly scrapped. All ideas come back again, someday!
Interestingly, in the first concept art of falcolfs (which is either lost to time or just thoroughly misplaced somewhere) they were pretty darn reptillian and barely looked canine. You don’t want to see that art. I drew it in like grade 4 or something. Modern looking falcolfs appeared when I was in grade 6. That’s also when I changed their species name to ‘falcolf’ from what they were before.
The best part about this is I get to design some ‘missing link’ ancestors and other animals lol… I love the falcolf evolutionary family. They keep getting more and more ridiculous and amazing. (I seeeeriously need to make an evolutionary chart for all my creatures someday.)
Inking was inspired by the gooorgeous artwork in the Star Wars KOTOR comics about Zayne Carrick. (Brian Ching and Michael Atiyeh are gods of comic crafting.)
Character is (probably mortal) Kayoss Calmbreeze. (To tell the truth he looks exactly the same as an immortal and as a mortal but the cheap quick background feels like his ancient forest to me.)
OH OH AND I ALWAYS WANTED TO ABUSE MOTION BLUR! A dream has become complete. Now to abuse it some more. MOTION BLUR ILU. (First my love was gaussian blur. Now it is motion blur. What next? XD)
Uh yeah this was inked traditionally with Pilot P-500 ink.
PHOTOSHOP, YOU WORK WHEN MY COMPUTER UPDATES ITSELF WITHOUT MY PERMISSION! AH YEAH!
Now I need to go to bed. YAY MY WORKPLACE MAKES ME WORK ON CIVIC HOLIDAYS, YAY! FML.
OH YEAH AND I EXPERIMENTED WITH COLOURING TOO! I LIKE CAPS LOCK.”
Basic translation of that:
- Falcolf teeth are more badass now.
- Falcolfs can’t chew because of badass teeth so they hork their food. (Hork is a funny word.)
- Falcolfs have notched gecko tongues that look vaguely forked but not really. They’re still very dog-tongue-like.
- Brian Ching and Michael Atiyah are artistic gods. (KOTORRRRRR!!!!)
- I’m very tired. And there’s an overly warm and limp purring cat on my lap right now who does not seem aware of the fact that she’s making me slowly overheat. (And feel claustrophobic.)
- Smoky (said cat) spent her day lounging alone outside and meowing loudly at us whenever she was inside. She detests being inside in summer. She does not seem to want to hang out until evening and enjoys making me overheat. But alas, she is cute so none of that matters!
- K, bye. Enjoy the picture! :D
Here’s a scene that people who have read AOH may be familiar with. Though the perspective is really exaggerated here, these are the massive cliffs with the dodgy path that they use to get back up onto the steppe with Mo and General Ryjah. Zack and Sarah are seriously wishing they would have known about the stupid trail before they risked their lives climbing down the cliffs with no ropes!
I inked this so that I’d have something to colour which is pretty much all my laptop is good for I’ve discovered. It’s too slow to actually let me draw in Photoshop. (Yet for some reason, I can draw in Artweaver.) This is why I think I’m going to start saving up for a proper super powerful desktop rig… not that I have any place to put it right now but I’ll be able to speedpaint again and that will be amaaaaziiiiing! Also. I really want a cintiq! Even just a puny one…
Mountain Gorse (new Rimarian species), designed by Naomi and Rosanna P. Brost (me.) NEW ART!
Attributes of this species are as follows;
- Gorse will replace unicorns on Rimer - because unicorns make me squeamish for some reason. (Thus, Andromeda will be a gorse, which may make his characterization more amusing than it was before, seeing as he will now be an animal that is smaller than Kayoss and one which at least one god may have trouble remembering is not prey - and that god is not Kazik.) Unknown yet what effect this will have on AOH, (Uri) but gorse are too small to be ridden, so it is likely that Uri will either be cut or changed into a horse. (Or possibly, though improbably, a hynorse.)
- Gorse, like all ‘deer-horses’ (derse) of Rimer (except for ‘Rimarian horses’), have three hooved toes which they put weight on. Gorse hooves are ideal for mountainous environment.
- Gorse colouration is much like the colouration of a bighorn sheep or elk in summer - as in, brown or grey with a white rump - and the colouration of a mountain goat in winter - as in, pure white. Summer colour design mostly undecided still - will have mealy muzzle.
- Gorse fill same ecological niche as mountain goats, bighorn sheep, dall sheep and mouflans - their survival tactic is to live in high elevation areas and upon cliffs. Their primary predators are glacier wolves, which fill the same predatory ecological niche as snow leopards but which hunt in small packs. Starfers also share gorse habitat but they rarely prey on them, preferring larger Rock Derse which come down lower off of the sheer sides of the mountains.
- Again, gorse cannot be ridden. They cannot be domesticated.
- In spring, humans living in mountainous areas (such as Outpost) make part of their livelihoods possible by collecting the long fine hair that gorse shed during this time which is an excellent fibre for weaving. Gorse are exceedingly hard to hunt. They use their sharp horns for self defence and possibly for courtship battles. Males can be extremely aggressive. Females may or may not have horns - this is undecided but they probably have them in this species because horns are also used for scraping bark off of sub alpine trees and whatnot for sustenance.
- Other subspecies and closely related species are possible but have not yet been designed or conceived. A scrub version has been thought of.
- This species is so far found in Escavia, but may also be present in Thundarica and possible Tarn.
That’s it so far! Lots more new art coming atcha guys this week!
…your computer isn’t at all speedy. Hello again Photoshop, why are you so slow? Speedpaint fail. Sadness. (Have a cat picture.)
