Creativity Hour works thread

[gkscotty]

I was stuck for ideas so just sketched a Casual Allison

[c_nordlander]

Looks very nice to me! Not bad for being low on inspiration.

[Meteorite]

This'll be a more casually updated story, but here's a sequel to my last story. No title or proper opening yet, but here's what I have so far.

[c_nordlander]

You know I like this! Very cute and sweet, but that's appropriate for people newly in love. Some good details, like Meteorite not wanting to be more ravishingly beautiful than Rarity.

[c_nordlander]

Decided to draw my character, Grunthilda, from the Trollbabes tabletop RPG that Pat DM'd once when we were at the meet-up. Good times, good times.

Her backstory: Grunthilda was found in the forest as an infant by a human couple and raised as their own daughter, until she hit age thirteen and certain subtle signs (her tusks, her horns, her ability to bench-press her own dad) made it clear to her that she wasn't human. She left home, changed her human name Brunhilda to something more trollish, and went wandering until she found a tribe of her own people, but since she mostly only knows about trolls from fairy tales and books, her attempts at assimilating to troll culture tend to come off as pretty cringe to her fellow tribespeople.

Feel free to con-crit if you like. (I know about her left eye.)

[gkscotty]

Looks good and trollish to me!

/me still remembers his fake cleric

[SirMustapha]

That looks really convincing, Chris! Other than minor little things (like the one you mentioned yourself), I can't see anything to concrit here. It's a good portrait!

[c_nordlander]

Thank you both! We all got good characters out of that game.

@Beb: So yeah, it's no Dragon Friends fanart, but it's pretty close.

[c_nordlander]

An AU version of Elan from the webcomic Order of the Stick. In case you haven't read the comic, Elan is the team's sweet-natured, dumber-than-a-post bard. My drawing is of a persistent mental AU I have where he stayed with certain... toxic influences from his past (oh, whatever, we live in a post-Star Wars world, is his family situation even a twist any more?) and became an overlord-in-training.

Con-crit very welcome as always.

I realise that evil makeovers usually include more spikes and sadistic lightning-gauntlets, but I ran out of time and besides, sometimes less is more.

I'm certain it's narratively required of the evil dictator's handsome son to enjoy a glass of red wine while playing lazily with a riding-crop at least twice a day. And just because you've gone evil doesn't mean you can start ignoring important tropes!

[SirMustapha]

That looks quite nice, Chris! I like his expression, and you did a good job with the hand holding the glass (that's one tricky thing to do properly). I think his cheekbone may be a little too pronounced (though it could work as a stylistic choice) and his right hand looks odd, but hands are the devil and we all know it!

Other than that, it's really fun when you managed to get an idea out of your head and into paper. I'm glad you did that.

[c_nordlander]

Thank you! I agree about the cheekbone, that seems to be a persistent problem with my drawings. On the other hand, I quite like the baby-faced look it gives him. (Since OotS has such a simplistic art style, you can't really say whether the picture is on model, the way you could if it were a picture of Marge, for example.)

Funnily enough, the glass was something I came up with while drawing, because I realised I needed something for his left hand to be doing. Of course, one of the perks of becoming a villain is that you automatically know the correct way to hold a glass of red wine.

[c_nordlander]

Just wanted to inform you that I will not be able to attend the next two Sundays. I'll probably whip something up in my own time to make up for it.

[SirMustapha]

I've been working on my solo songs during the weekend, and I took the creativity hour as a chance to try to record vocals for a new song I wrote. I guess the recording works as a demo, and anyways, here it is: Small Round.

The title is a literal translation of the name of the beach where my family spends the Summer since I was a kid, and the lyrics (all in Portuguese) are a series of recollections from different moments of my life. It's a very emotionally charged song (though the vocals may be a little dull here, as I was holding the mic in my hands and focused on not making extraneous noise). The long instrumental stretch at the end is a placeholder for a flute solo.

The piano part is all played by hand. I recorded the notes via MIDI on the PC, and only fixed the glaring errors (I tried to preserve the spontaneity of the playing as much as possible). This is quite probably the take I'm going to use in the final recording, once I get the vocals and flute properly done.

[c_nordlander]

Very good melody. Obviously I don't understand the lyrics, but from what you said, they sound like an interesting idea, and I found your voice soothing. Nothing wrong with the sound quality, as far as I could tell. Also, pretty impressive to write a song this long. (It felt maybe too long, in fact, but like I said, I don't know the lyrics, so they length may well be warranted.

Great work, thank you for sharing it with us!

[c_nordlander]

Belated creative hour-work: a vampire princess. She's the daughter of a Dracula (not the Dracula; I imagine it as being the honorary title of whoever is the current supreme leader of vampires). Not very scary-looking: she's meant to be quite innocent and young, but still ruthless of course.