He wasn’t a leprechaun until I showed Ryan and asked him what the outfit sans vest looked like (Five, from Umbrella Academy) and he said the Lucky Charms leprechaun so now I can’t unsee it
But anyway his Pocket Gay is pretty cute
I was thinking about the Andrew doll and it occurred to me tonight that I was thinking about a really old Danyil/Erik/Eripmav doll and so I dug it up out of my drive and it turns out THERE WAS ONE OF MICAH TOO
After spending a few months doing soft airbrush lines that I would generally cover up, I switched things up when I made a Micah character sheet. I’m teaching Super Stories again this summer and I wanted to give the kids a bit more they could do with their character development. I made them a pencil version too, but I finished a version for myself.
This is what I wanted to make to compare him to his old era of staff fightings.
Here are some old ones of this adorable trio
I’ve also been thinking about this intense one from approximately the same era for a while haha
but also i don’t know how he can be so delicate, so yesterday i spent the day studying him and actuallly ducking traced him like i’m a fucking 10 year old to try to understand his weird wonderful anatomy better.
It’s been a vast and varied holiday season in my house, so it should come as no surprise that I ended up with several drafted Christmas illustrations before ending up with one I was happy with.
So that means you get lots of bonuses – the finished one I’m very happy with; IT’S SO COZY – and the drafts for the other versions.
I’m trash so I wanted to make a parallel kiss pic to Andrew and Micah’s forest kiss from Lilydale. I’m not quite as squealy, over the moon about it as I was about the first one, but I am into the TONGUES hahaha
It gives major Cirrus/Syracrus vibes from that picture I did of them in high school which is hilarious because Cirrus is The Ultimate Badguy in the 3rd Heartwood book. Really there’s visible tongue because MLM manhua has taken over my brain
I had the first flash this day talking to the receptionist about books where I’m like, excited to have some more brain space left rather than terrified of finishing this all-consuming trilogy.
But I feel like I’m trying to emotionally prepare for it. Good news is there will be plenty of edits ahead of me I’m sure teheh. And it’s gonna be extra tedious since I wrote both of the last two parts without editing!
But I love them all so much and I’m sad already to be moving toward the first of the last two (large) scenes
Which of course culminate in A WEDDING EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Gotta throw in one of the OG couple pics of Andrew and Micah from Code: Compromised
An unexpected scene led to Andrew getting a concussion which was very goofy but potentially insensitive to the seriousness of concussions
Well…the worst case scenario has happened. My dad planted the idea in me to turn Lilydale into a series and…well, that’s working out.
So that’s most of the art that I’ve been doing lately, but honestly what art could I possibly need to do ever again tbh, they’re perfect
And THEN…I was getting underway with it and the anthem band for MicahxAndrew, All Time Low, released a new single and IT. IS. A SPIRITUAL. EXPERIENCE for me.
I literally told Ryan that the fact that this song came out while much of the plot of this second one was planned and the new single matched the theme PRECISELY…like something about that is so unreal and implausible that…that’s the shit that moves me.
So here’s an image dump of illustrations since I started Superior.
Don’t worry, this part of their story is only TWO OUTTA THREE hehe
Yeah so it’s been done for like six weeks at this point but I still can’t get out of the Lilydale brain rot. I did two revisions myself and now my dad has it! And so far his comments have been totally what it’s needed.
I have a good feeling about this project. Even my supervisor asked about it yesterday haha.
So it’s me so I’ve always toyed with the idea of illustrations in my work and I was thinking how much I usually like it when content I like has candids of the characters. And I realized the likelihood of the characters taking photos of each other on their phones is pretty high, so I did a bunch of sketches to varying degrees of completion around this.
I suppose I need to acknowledge in writing how OBSESSED I am with Micah right now. I’ve been on a two month All Time Low kick because Alex’s vocals match Micah’s voice and a lot of the tone in a lot of his songs is very Micah. Fortunately they’re songs I’ve heard after the fact so I know I didn’t accidentally inject them into Micah haha. But yeah, and fortunately this book would be published with my last name VanAlstine so people don’t start going Micah Stillwater…Mary Stewart…are they…the same Because yes, and no.
Oh yeah so I got really into mandalas after I discovered the symmetry tool, only the funny part about them is I’m not proud of any of them after the fact. Except this juicy orange.
I can’t believe it! Three weeks later, I’m done with Lilydale. It rounded out around 45,000 words.
I think it’s my favorite conjunction of characters forming new relationships. I literally didn’t bother coming up with any new characters except for Sam and Micah’s evil faerie mom. Micah and Ingrid are half-siblings now. Ingrid and Andrew both slept with Erik, but he’s dead for the whole story haha. Lucienne met Ingrid in Lilydale and kind of likes her? But it’s very understated. She’s a badass archer. Also Micah/Julian’s cat Fadil is a fun throwback to that being Julian’s original name, back when he was Andrew/Bakura’s adopted kid he found in Egypt. bahahaa
Micah and Andrew basically don’t have any relationship problems for most of the story cuz I’d say the main theme ends up being Micah’s identity crisis. Andrew isn’t asked to change a whole lot mostly because he started with a very mild animosity with faeries but as soon as Ingrid and Andrew realized Erik fucked them both up, the get past it.
So I have a lot of WIPs for Lilydale art and rather than waiting to post about this being done I was just going to post them all now.
I probably also have to make a page in My Mental Breakdown pretty soon too.
So one of my other 12yos saw the kissing picture as my phone background and asked if I was going to post my story anywhere. Honestly it got me thinking, once I finish some revisions, just to put it out in the world myself and see what comes back.
I don’t know.
We’ll see.
Regardless, I’m really happy with how this story worked out. I think it does faeries justice, and it honors everyone’s histories as characters. Except Erik, who was pretty much a dog.