Half a Story

Classes at SCAD begin on the 10th of September and I am nervous and excited!  Soon, Pixar, DreamWorks, Disney, Cartoon Network, and other animation and/or broadcasting studio will know my name!

Sorry, there's going to be no sketches today.  Instead I'll share an excerpt from a short story I been working on earlier this week.  The story is still very early in its development and it is subject to change. (following excerpt is copyrighted to Amari J. Harkness)

Anyway, here we go:

The Shades seem so out of place here in Heaven.  Their dark hide, their unusual tallness, and the way they...flock together, darkening the celestial skies of God's kingdom.  Their darkness is not of evil, evil was almost nonexistent since Jesus' return to Earth and Satan's banishment to the Void.  Their darkness was of sorrow and pain only the Shades can feel and the angels can sense.  The  righteous, children of earth, are somewhat spared from their gloominess.

I pity them.  These creatures really don't belong here but God allows them to freely room about.  They don't have their own homes or careers, no friends or family, not even a pet to care for.  They live in these large flocks but they have yet to recognize each other.  The Shades stand alone in their own space, even when they are close together they will never acknowledge each other.  They seem so lost and alone and fearful of their own existence, cursed to live in eternity in never ending sorrow.

I want to help them.  I want to redeem them.

But...my king, my Maker told me "For these creatures to be redeemed they must face their memories of their past and conquer the uncertainties of the future.  The process will be emotionally and spiritually painful.

"They missed out on  life, not just due to laziness or any of their own sins, but thanks to those who negatively influenced their own lives.  The Shades are actually people who become the embodiment of their own regrets, fears, and shame.  At one point of their life, they became desperate and someone took advantage of them.  They were deceived, broken, and hopeless; they were stolen from me.  I remember when I judged them, every single one of them, and it breaks my heart and soul to see them not even review their own lives.  It's like they knew they were doomed, but it wasn't until death and judgement when they realized it.

"They accepted their fate and became the creatures of pure sorrow.  You don't know how much I want to save them, too."

The King's Father wants him to wait before reaching out to the Shades.  Almost every day, if there are days in such a timeless place like Heaven, the King would appear before his father about this issue but the answer had always been the same, "Wait, Son, Wait."

The King have been doing this for over 900 years and his father still says, "Wait".

But I intend to help them.  Today, I will approach one Shade and I will help it to face it's past and future.  I don't know what to do if I become successful or not, but I'm going to do it!  It saddens me to see the King so heartbroken over the centuries.  But once I get the Shades seeking redemption, I'm sure he'll be happy...

......................................................

Yeah.  Loosely based on Christian theology, but there will be time-travel, angelic eldritch abominations and paradoxes (maybe).  The story takes place in the last few years during the 1000 year reign of Jesus on earth and before Satan breaks out from his chains (Revelations 20:1-10).  I don't have a name for the protagonist yet (well except for Metatron or maybe cough*Lucy' power*cough).  I do have some interesting ideas for the main character(s), some of which may involve the aforementioned madness. 

Some Very Good news!

I went on a very nice tour at SCAD (Savanna School of Art and Design) in Atlanta, Georgia.  I had their tours before, my first was five years ago when they first moved into Atlanta and another two or three years later.

So much had changed since then. SCAD now have a few buildings dedicated to certain majors: one for animation, video recording, and television communications, another for sculpture arts, and more. Back then, they only had their main campus building. All their buildings, except for sculpture building, were originally owned by other companies.

Also, SCAD students are really stepping up their game. Their art is phenomenal. A combination of artistic talent, developed skills, and a strong determination is very obvious in the artwork they create. Not only that, this is also like a competition, your going up against hundreds of artists, each one with a unqiue style, imagination, intelligentance, and wit, and almost all studio, film, animation, and communications
 companies are looking for that one artist that stands out of that crowd.

SCAD  makes me feel at home, a place full of color, artistic passion, and spontanious creativity.  A school that not only teach you art, but it push you to create art. Make something, do something, draw, dance, sing, color, create. It naggs when you first enter the building and it continoues to nagg when you leave for home.

Thank you, SCAD, for accepting me into your school.
And thank you God, for giving me the artist's bug and for my crazy imagination.

Character design and Development

Many years ago, my imagination was bursting with creature of all forms, people from unknown cultures, and lands filled with an abundance of life and freedom.  This was a world filled where adventure was at every corner, lost ancient ruins dotted the land, and kingdoms and grand cities rise over the canopies of the untamed majesty of the great forests.  Civilizations on different planets and in different dimensions stayed in contact though magic and science.  I, traveler and Guardian Legacy, had traveled these amazing places and discovered an entire beautiful and glorious world of...Johnovia.

I made stories in this "Johnovia" about world travelers, adventures, wizards of magic and science, masters of time and space, and God, the universe's greatest engineer.  A million chactacters and creatures populated the world of Johnovia and I followed every signal adventure they get themselves into.  My character was a famous ruler and explorer of this world; her fame had inspired many people to become world travelers.  She touched the most distant of stars and planets and explored the most powerful of kingdoms.

Legacy was not alone in her journeys, she had friends and families to aid her in difficult situations such as wars, natural disasters, and terrible enemies who sought to bring down the peaceful and chaotic world of Johnovia.  Her friends and families came from distant worlds that were also full of amazing things.  Things like flying airships in the shape of living dragons, vast underground cities, clockwork angels and steam-powered robots, talking mailboxes, and flat planets. 

I still have this imagination of Johnovia and all of its amazing majestic beauty and power, but now it's more mature in its form, story, and originality.  This year I’m working on a real story in comic form based on the same ideas I had when I was younger.  I’m delving deeper into the unknown reaches of my imagination and rediscovering my childhood dreams to build a world for world travels and adventurers.

To put it simply, this story is set in worlds within a world within a world, a Multi-Verse, one of the rare dimensional anomalies existing in a never-ending energy ocean of Existence-Itself.  The story is called The MULT in bold golden letters with a mysterious faded background of the face of God.  This will be a long tale of adventure, power, faith, imagination, good and evil, order and chaos, and possible and the impossible.

It might take me a year or more to get this together.  It will take guts, my artistic skills, my imagination, and help from my friends and family to take on this task to create the most original and amazing concept the world has ever seen.

Anyway, after all that epic writing, here’s what I have so far:

Some concept art…

World Traveler Briell Fetcher/Vistalgia, the main character of my comic.  She is a shapesifter who is both human and dragon, this is her in her human form (World Traveler Briell Fetcher). She's a black female character with a careful and timid personality. She perfers reason and critical thinking to blind random destructiveness.

Experiment with Briell's hair and head shape.

Taking on the 25 expressions challenge by napalmnacey  in these two pictures. Only twelve expressions to go!

Briell Fetcher/Vistalgia in her dragon form (Vistalgia). Vistalgia is a beautiful dragon with a violent and reckless personality

A male shapeshifter character who's a friend of Briell Fetcher/Vistalgia. This is his dragon form. And if your wondering, yes these shapeshifter characters have two personalities, but they live within one body; I'll explain later what they are.  Also, not all of them are dragons.

A male alien (not a an elf). I do not know what his role is yet.