Grinding Away At The Princess Charming Art.

Grinding away at the Princess Charming art.

I always need some kind of noise - preferably a movie or tv show - when I’m working on art. But in order to not be distracting, it can’t be something I haven’t seen or something that is too interesting. (Crime procedurals are fantastic for this purpose.)

When I started working on finishing Princess Charming art, I started re-watching Buffy on Netflix. (I’ve seen it before and the snappy dialogue keeps me entertained without needing to watch it.) Since the KickStarter ended, I’m up to Episode 9 of Season 3. Considering that Buffy has 22 episode seasons, I think that’ll tell you how much work I’m putting in on this.

Okay, saw your Sarkeesian thing, and couple things- One, that is the single weakest collection of strawmen I've ever seen, and two, disagreeing/having legitimate criticisms of someone =/= trolling. And don't give me that "Dudebro manbaby" shit. I'm a guy, but I think the whole 'fighting sexism in the game industry' thing is a worthy cause- when it's not being led by a plagiarist who calls for people who disagree with her to kill themselves and then plays the victim when she's called out on it.

Seriously? Are you for real?

First, when and where exactly has Anita Sarkeesian told people who disagreed with her to kill themselves? Primary sources only, please. No "well this dude told another dude who heard from this third dude". Frankly, I find this claim pretty hard to believe, given that Anita has been so goddamn classy in dealing with the mouthbreathing neckbeards who vomit hatred at her on a daily basis that she is my role model of how to put dudebro trolls in their place while keeping the moral high ground. FOR REALZ.

Second, so you're against the "fighting sexism thing" but you think that someone speaking out against the LITERALLY THOUSANDS of rape threats she got is "playing the victim"? Because if that fucking bitch is going to HAVE AN OPINION ABOUT SOMETHING IN PUBLIC, she totally deserves to have people tell her that she should get raped. AMIRITE?

Yeah, no. So congratulations! You're a misogynist.

*mic drop*

Just passed 20K!

I've been doing a lot of writing to avoid my feelings about some family bullshit I'm dealing with right now (people making their opinions about my gender my problem), which means I've been progressing at a fair clip and this project is starting to feel more and more like "a real boy". Both meet-cutes are done (yes, both) and this afternoon I passed 20,000 words, which puts me at nearly a quarter of the way through what I have outlined! Something that I'm learning from the reactions of the one friend I've had the courage to show my first drafts to is that the more specific I make my ridiculous wish fulfilment, the more people respond to it. People responded so positively to Our Traveling Home, which was a game I wrote almost entirely for myself. So with this fiction project I'm leaning into that, trusting that the magic of creativity will transmute my extremely specific fantasies into Very Relatable Content. (I mean, truly, who hasn't wished for a friendly poltergeist named Dennis that wants to do your chores for you?)

Art Update:

Well I certainly meant to be posting art more frequently. But toddler-induced plague put our household out of commission for a few days, which put a cramp in my style.

At any rate, this is the first “finished” spread for Princess Kadri. (Obviously it’s important to note that text and image placement might change, colors might change, etc etc.) You’ll notice that this is a different style from the previous in-progress update that I posted. While the painterly style was lovely, it proved too time consuming were I to use that style for all of the illustrations.

Thankfully, I’m still pretty happy with the new cel style shading. It has the added effect of brightening the colors, which will be great for our youngest readers (my own daughter included).

The Starlit Kingdom

Many, many centuries ago, the people of Earth co-existed with the people of the Moon in peace and harmony. This might surprise you, as the Moon queendom was a place rich with beauty and full of wonders, not the least of which were its people, who were bles...

It's been a long time in the making, but#TheStarlitKingdom  is finally finished and available for purchase. The Starlit Kingdom is a game about magical girls struggling against tragic fate, and is inspired by Sailor Moon, but you don't have to be a fan of anime or magical girls to appreciate this game. This game tells beautiful, sad stories about the fall of a magical kingdom full of beauty and wonder, and your doomed efforts to save it and the people you love. It is MCless, and runs 2-4 sessions with 3-5 players.

(If you want to pick it up in print, you can get it on Lulu here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/anna-kreider/the-starlit-kingdom/paperback/product-22426269.html)

I posted some more updates over on the Princess Charming tumblr.

I’ve been sending in-progress updates to Josh with the status of spreads as I complete them, so I thought this would be a good example to show a bit of my process. Before any shading happens, I lay down all the flat colors. This way I make sure that the colors look good in the whole image before getting bogged down in the minutiae of lighting.

…although now that I look at these, I notice that I forgot to turn the cobweb layer back on in the final image. Drat! There’s always something.