Ava-Dolls Game WIP

This is me as an Ava-Doll.
Yes, I dress this badly!

Ava-Dolls!

Sweet! It only took about 100 tutorials, but I finally found a way to upload my work-in-progress game to Blogger! I haven't uploaded it anywhere else yet — except I guess those very sketchy looking SWF host sites that didn't work....

The game isn't done, but there are only so many years something can sit unshared on your computer. The art gets sad when it is neglected, and I start to wonder why I spent so much time working on it for it to just sit in a poorly organized folder on my dying computer. The game still has some buggy code, there are a ton of items/hairstyles I've made but haven't added yet, and I STILL can't get the loader bar to work, but eh, you can play it now! I just haven't had any time to work on it for the last few...er...several months. ;_; Very sad. _________________________________________________

My sis on the left, her friend on the right!

Anywho, these are my Ava-Dolls (c)! I started making this game for these twins I used to babysit, but then I wanted to see how many of my friends I could make with the game, and I never stopped adding to it.

I want to have enough customization that it can eventually be a digital avatar maker. Yes, if you have read my book, you may have noticed I have an obsession with customization.*wink*

I think some of the Avas would be great DOLL dolls. If they were in better quality I would take them to the next Licensing Expo. I really want to get some of my artwork licensed.

Wow, this post sounds very dull and dry, doesn't it? I don't know why I'm not good at blogging. I love writing so much. It's what I want to do for the rest of my life, but dagnabbit, I am not good at blogging, or at formatting a blog!  Look at the oddly placed pictures and forget my boring words!

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Hermione, Luna, Ginny, Cho, Pansy

Yes, I made it so you can make some of the girls from Harry Potter! I deactivated the "Wizard" button, so you have to work to find the Hogwarts-esque clothes! I have some more Witchy awesomeness that I haven't added yet.=)

Other combos!
The 2nd doll from the top is my BWEFF!
Check out her photography here!

Screencap!

On to the game! Like I said, it still needs a lot of work, but if you play it, take a screencap of the Ava-Dolls you make and post them in the comments!=-)

....I think you can post photos in the comments? Oh, well...guess we'll find out!

Ok, so you can't post photos in the comments on here, but you can always tweet screencaps of your dolls at me "@DreamOfFire" or post them to https://www.facebook.com/IndiscriminateArt
I will make an Ava-Doll gallery!

Stay tuned! I sometimes do giveaways where you can get your own custom Ava-Doll picture + your favorite clothes added to the game! I also do commissions for them for 20 bucks!=)


Game WIP! After a dozen tutorials, I still can't get the loader bar to work, so it takes a minute for the game to pop up. It's a fun 2 minute distraction, so make some Ava-Dolls!=-)
Any suggestions are welcome! I think the eye/hair colors need to match up, and the game needs more hats, bags, and hairstyle choices. ...Gods, that is the girliest thing I have EVER said.



End Test.
NOTE: I apologize for the terrible formatting of this post. It makes my eyes hurt to look at it too, I just can't get things where I want them. Blogger mystifies me.

My 15 Minutes of Sorta Fanart Fame!

Stare at the glory of my illustration skills! Do IT!

Ok, so a year or so ago I typed "Boy with the Bread" into Google because I am a HUGE "Hunger Games" fan, and Peeta is one amazing character ("Boy with the Bread" is his nickname). I was scrolling through the images...and WHAT THE HECK, I saw a fanart  I drew in 2011 on the bottom of the first page of Google Images. I counted and it was like 48th or something. Anywho, I thought that was super cool.

I forgot about it for a couple months, and when I typed it in again it was 23rd! I was so excited, I started checking more often. It was 14th for forever, and then BAM, number 6--JUST outside showing up in the top 5. It stayed there for months. I thought this was my proudest achievement EVER.

Then...I checked again a couple weeks ago. DeviantArt changed the way it was hosting the original image, so clicking it no longer went straight to the image. My picture moved down... and down... and down again...
.=-(
I was very sad.

What did I ever do to deserve this sadness?

I sighed and decided my little 15 minutes of "sorta fanart fame" were up (if I ever had any sorta fanart fame to begin with...I mean, only 1 person stole my image! The higher the volume of thieves, the more successful the artist, so yeah, I'm not famous yet. :-) ). I decided to move on with my life and just forget about it ever being in the top again.

Depths of despair pictured above.

But...

I have crazy OCD. I can't leave things alone. I used to do the whole light switch thing and everything. I even thought about taking all the clothes numbers off the doors in a dressing room to match them up with their appropriate numbers last week. HOW DARE you take 5 articles of clothes into the 3rd dressing room! What is wrong with you?! Anyway, yes, I am crazy, so I checked one last time and WHAT!?

Pictured: proudest moment of my life!

My illustration broke the top 5! It's number 3 right now, which means it shows up on Google results before you even click into images!!!!!!!!! I never thought anything of mine would make it anywhere near the top! I don't know how or why it got there, but I am so happy!

90% of gifs lazily obtained from same source.

WHO KNOWS! Maybe Suzanne Collins herself has seen my drawing! AHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

End gloat!

I hope someday my writing will make it, and people will draw fanart of my characters!:-)


------Process!

GifTASTIC!

If you want to see the WIP, click this post! http://writingrevelations.blogspot.com/2013/08/still-boy-with-bread.html
If you noticed that Peeta's sword disappears (kinda like his other leg...I shouldn't draw attention to that...), congratulations! You win a prize! I forgot about it, but its ghost remains!!=-P

-----PLEASE vote for me!

If you want to vote for me to be Hunger Games' Fan of the Week, click here and give my drawing a "spark"! http://www.thehungergamesexplorer.com/competitions/onsite/Fan-Of-The-Week/hge/2648/

----- OWL GIVEAWAY!

If you want to enter my shop's Egglet owl giveaway, there are still a couple of weeks left to enter (commissions are always available too)! Go here!
http://writingrevelations.blogspot.com/2013/10/custom-eggletowl-giveaway.html

Custom Egglet/Owl GIVEAWAY

The writing world is filled with amazing contest organizers, blog hosts, slush zombies, critique-rs, and participating agents. These wonderful people have given me the warm fuzzies for contests.

So... I thought I would do a contest of my own!

My shop Fairies&Finds is doing a giveaway.

Details:

This will be a random drawing, so no stress for entries! 
Enter via the Rafflecopter widget below. You will have until November 18th to enter.
All the Rafflecopter extras are optional. Liking my page/Twitter through it will give you extra entries!  
    

The Prize?
One (1) custom Egglet (owl) from my shop! Egglets are wooden, hand painted, egg-shaped owls around 3-4 inches tall. They are all designed, painted, and signed by me.
---Note:
The winner is going to have to pick the theme they want. Anything from "I want a purple owl," to: rainbow, cowboy, doctor, Frakenstein's monster, African animals.... Yes, basically anything you can think of, so get your creative pants on!

Secondary Prize?
People can pitch their owl "theme ideas" via Rafflecopter, FairiesAndFinds' FaceBook giveaway post, or in the comments below. A second winner might be chosen if enough themes are pitched!
(Comment example: YOUR NAME:___ Theme: BALLERINA)  Get creative! =-)

Note:
Egglets take a while to create, so winner(s) should expect a week or two for their Egglets to be made.

Please like my shop's FaceBook page for updates! https://www.facebook.com/FairiesAndFinds !


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Dreamcast!

It was all that jazz!

These last 2 weeks or so have been mental. Working until 3a.m. + getting up with the sun? Ahh! NO! 

I haven't had any time to relax or do anything fun. ...Ok, I did go see "Chicago" so the "no fun" part is not entirely true.  I basically have had no fun, and this tendinitis in my right shoulder is making typing painful, and me miserable. I'm a masochist though, and although I have a ton of work-related typing I should be doing, I'm going to blog instead! Take that, world! I'm taking a break from this week, and I'm going to blog, AND I'm going to create a new board on Pinterest! Go me!

Ok, on to the subject of this post. I've seen several other writers do "Dreamcast" boards for their novels, so I thought I'd start one too! I haven't been able to give it a lot of thought yet, but I've at least found a couple of actresses who would be great for my heroine, and honestly...I actually already had Sendhil Ramamurthy in mind when I first introduced my MC's godfather. Sendhil  was just so cool in "Covert Affairs."

PINTEREST LINK:    http://www.pinterest.com/dreamoffire/dreamcast/

[edit] DREAMCAST for my book! Woo!

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Fayten Lena

Alia Shawkat

Picks for "Fayten Lena," heroine of my MS.

I just saw my first episode of "Arrested Development" and I thought this girl looked familiar. One IMDB minute later, my suspicions were confirmed. Alia Shawkat played in one of my sister's all time favorite shows: "State of Grace."

While looking at Alia's IMDB page, it suddenly occurred to me that she looks a bit like my sketches for Fayten. That's actually were this whole "dreamcast" thing started.

Isabelle Fuhrman

Isabelle Fuhrman played "Clove" in "The Hunger Games." She seems like an awesome actress, and she fits Fayten's description really well!

Fayten is supposed to be a tough cookie, and both of these girls look like they kick butt!=-)

Kyran

James Gaisford

Why James Gaisford? Because he was amazing as young Haymitch in Mainstay Pro's Quarter Quell mini-movie.I will put a link to that later. He's talented, and he already has the glare thing down.

Rian Vance

Roomie!

Oh gosh, another cute boy. Now it looks like my story is a romance.... It's not. It's an adventure, baby!

Ok, so this is not the most prepared of choices. I don't even know what this guy's full name is, or if he's even an actor.... but I do know he's a Swedish singer called "Roomie" and when I was laughing my head off at one of his awesome videos last year, I decided that he looked a lot like my character Rian. Rian is a genius hacker, but he's also a musician, so I thought this choice was appropriate.;-)

Robbie Kay

I am loving Robbie Kay as Peter Pan on Once Upon a Time, so now he's also on my dreamcast list for Rian too!

Roy Rangarajan

Sendhil Ramamurthy

Sendhil Ramamurthy would be my pick for Fayten's godfather Roy, the leader of the Unplugged. I would write more about how awesome Sendhil is if the tendonitis in my shoulder wasn't throbbing so much! Owww!

Jenna Tack

Zoe Kravitz

Ok, so I was looking for an actress who looked like they could kick @ss, since Jenna Tack spends most of her time in combat training. I also wanted to find an actress that I'd seen in at least one movie (I'm really bad at remembering actor/actress' names...except for the cast of Harry Potter...) so I knew they were talented as well as pretty. Zoe Kravitz is all those things rolled into one!

Yay! And I found a picture of her with short hair! Now she fits Jenna so perfectly, and I'm even more in love with my pick!

Wow...I only just realized Lenny Kravitz is her father! I'm such a dummy! American woman, da-duhn!

Catrina (aka, the Red Witch)

Evangeline Lilly

Catrina is the captain of the Freelancer ship, the Trickster, and she is one of my favorite characters. She's a sexist jerk, and I totally love her! Finding an awesome dreamcast actress for her was fun, and ended with the amazing Evangeline Lilly! I can totally see her as the man-crusher!=)

#PitMad

Created a tab for PitMad info! Yeah, and then I deleted most of it! Woo! http://writingrevelations.blogspot.com/p/pitmad-excerpt.html

Still the Boy with the Bread

I've always wanted to do one of these "illustration process"-things. This is one of the few drawings where I did save jpgs throughout my time working on it, so yay! Now I can! If you click to expand the first drawing, you can click through the slideshow and see the changes applied.=)

This is my TRIBUTE (pun heavily intended) to Suzanne Collins' wonderful "Hunger Games" series. It's one of my favorite series, and this is one of my favorite drawings too. If you type "boy with the bread" (Peeta's nickname) into Google images, this drawing actually shows up on the front page! How cool is that?

1: Sketch!
      Katniss is the "Girl on Fire," so I've always felt like Peeta was the water to Katniss' fire. <3
      Rue, Cinna, Prim, Gale, and Haymitch were originally going to be inserts on the left side, but I
      won't put up a jpg of that since they didn't make the final cut.

2: Lineart!
           Cleaned up the characters with ink, and extended/added detail to the background in pencil!

3: Colored characters!

4:Laying in colors!
              Never really painted trees, so I kinda didn't know what I was doing! These were the original                         colors, and yes, they are quite horrid!=)

5: Final Version!
         Blurred the background elements, added some plants, and darkened everything.

6: Space reserved for possible Future Final Edit!
            I do still occasionally  edit things that bother me.=-)

Licensing Expo 2013 (Favorite Photos)

Licensing Expo 2013!

Since writing is my thing,
I had to get a photo of the Penguin booth before opening!
I actually saw a nice editor I'd met at a SCBWI!

Ok, so I got asked to assist my friend (who is an incredible artist!) at Licensing Expo 2013 in Vegas, and, for once in my life, I didn't overthink things, bought my ticket, headed to Las Vegas... and had the greatest experience of my life! I learned trade secrets from artists whose work I have unknowingly encountered for years, and had my mind opened to new possibilities and new inspiration. The Expo was like everything good in this world, combined and wrapped in a tortilla with extra guacamole on top! The only way it could have been a better experience, would have been if I could have attended Licensing University, and the Expo, at the same time!

The Expo was chock-full of every major company/brand you could think of (Disney/Cartoon Network/ Nickelodeon /Mattel/Hello Kitty/Lamborghini/Penguin Publishing), each competing for attention with mind-blowing visual displays that often trailed down (or climbed up) to the 3-story tall ceiling in the Mandalay Bay convention hall. I saw everything from Macy's Day Parade-esque balloons, to giant sculptures of popular characters and massive banners. The "booths" showed off new merchandise and exclusive giveaways, while important looking people from all over the world discussed business.

One of my drawings! Yay!

The Expo also had a smaller area specifically for artists looking for (and finding) licensees.

 I loved working for an exhibitor, although I'm not sure how much I helped. It was hard not to wander off, lost in displays that more than rivaled the Vegas Strip. It was incredible to get this "behind the scenes" look at the global world of licensing (and to be surrounded by global brands, celebrities, and artists!). I'm still searching for an agent for my novel, but I'm hoping to find enough time to develop some of my art concepts, and to invest in a booth of my own next year. With a bit of luck, and a lot of work, it might actually be possible to have merchandise made from my drawings!!