Stablehand: Red

Allow me to introduce you to Red.

She's the main character's mount, and happens to be a dragon that looks almost exactly like a gryphon. Nothing weird about that, nope.

I somewhat literally amazed myself with this. I am not joking.

New: Featured Quote from the Nonsense Dream Team

As you might or might not have noticed, I've added a section to the bottom of the blog that shows a periodic featured quote. As you might also have noticed, this featured quote is just a little more bizarre than anybody else's featured quotes. Why? Because it comes from the combined wisdom of Cleverbot, Answers.com, and Bad Translator.

Just imagine a story entirely based around this stuff.

Seriously. I'm going to make it happen.

Layout update!

I finally got around to making that final background graphic, and I'm not even sure if I like it. But whatever. It's there now. The layout is complete. Hurrah!

As of now, Sangkara is best viewed at a width of 1280 pixels or more, though this new layout will still scale down to 1024 pixels decently. I will try to fix it later so the graphic doesn't get as squashed, but for now I think it's fine.

31/12/14 edit: images of the layout I took later, for reference.

Levels of Chayavana Abstraction

Oh lord. How long has it been since I actually posted something related to the Tyrian project here? x_x

This was a little concept drawing for Tyrian that would take a lot longer to explain fully than I really want to right now. Basically all you need to know is that there are these things called Chayavana, and they're sort of like gods or something in that they have their own realm but they can manifest into the tangible world. They have several levels of abstraction, and generally become stronger defensively but weaker offensively as they go upward. However, with a little practice, they can gain many more abilities as they become more abstract (such as the birdy here going from standard wings to feather fingers), and their lifespan and overall endurance greatly increases as well as they gain the ability to rise to higher levels.

I imagine it being easy for Chayavana to switch between abstraction levels once they have the ability to, but hard for them to initially learn how to abstract themselves to a higher level. I also see it as something that many who know about the process (which are relatively few really) are reluctant to do because they don't like the idea of becoming a shadow of themselves.

That will probably mean little to nothing to you right now, but it will make more sense when the story actually gets somewhere. Just enjoy the pretty picture and trust me on this one. XD

Oh god. Is there anything truer?

I was messing around with Bad Translator putting some basic Tyrian-related stuff into it to see if any of the translations were good enough to use in Stablehand, and...

Good lord, it gave me this.

If anything fits the image of metaphysical subjectivism and "I reject your reality and substitute my own" as I envision it for Tyrian, it would be online translation.

This is probably one of the best translations ever.

Stablehand

As you might already know if you've seen my deviantART recently, I'm thinking about starting a new story centred around a guy known as Stablehand. The basic idea is that this will combine the weird and random genius of Cleverbot, Bad Translator, and Answers.com to create an unusual and original story. You can read more about it there, though, because I don't feel like typing out the same thing twice. XD

As I said there, it will be hosted here, in a manner somewhat like I put together the Dinostuck page. It won't be in a Homestuck-type format, though, because it really won't have anything to do with Homestuck other than maybe echo a couple of things mostly unrelated to Homestuck that Cleverbot spat out when it was supposedly telling me about Homestuck.

...Yeah. XD

Anyway, stay tuned.

Dinostuck!

I'm proud to announce that there is now a mirror here for my Homestuck fan adventure, "Dinostuck: Cretaceous Square". You can get to it through the link at the top. There's really not much more to say since the about page should tell you just about everything you want to know about it.

Homestuck

Okay, this is really not that Tyrian-related, but I made another fancy linkback button. You see, the other day I was on Charahub, and noticed that Homestuck seemed to be misspelled on the main page where they have links to all the popular fandoms. I Googled it just to make sure Homestuck was the proper spelling, and in doing so, stumbled onto the actual story and started reading it. And then I became a fan, and made a nice linkback button of deappearifying pumpkins.

(Wait, did I just say pumpkins? That must have been a typo... I'm pretty sure there never were any pumpkins. ;) )

So, yeah. I'm thinking about drawing up some fan commands, which I'll post on my deviantART, and who knows what else. Or maybe I won't draw up any of that, and will actually focus on my own stuff again for once. Only future me knows! ;)

Political Map and the Bao Zodiac!

I didn't think I'd be able to sit down and do a political map this soon, but somehow I did! Or at least I got started... it's about half done right now. XD

I've also started working on a zodiac for a country called Baoguo—as you can guess, it's somewhat like the Chinese zodiac, but a lot of the animals are different and accordingly have different stereotypes. For example, instead of a tiger, there's a snow leopard, and in addition to the other farm animals, there's a duck.

The next post I make in a few days will have some finished drawings and descriptions for both of these. Erm, I guess not! Whoops.

New linkback buttons

Yesterday, I wanted to put a Subeta linkback button on this blog to honour the best virtual pet site ever. But it seemed kind of out-of-place on its own, so I decided it needed a friend or two. The two most obvious ones to put next to it were Valenth and Charahub, two other projects by the same company. But I couldn't make just one Valenth button—I had to make six!

And then I couldn't decide on a single one to use, so I had them rotate via javascript! Take a moment to refresh the page or look at some of the other pages on this site, and you'll see what I mean. Isn't it cool?

I also made the Charahub button (though not the Subeta button). Maybe I'll make a Sangkara button later for anyone that wants to use it!

Gingivitis?

Okay, I just managed to find something in my traffic stats today that one-upped the last one: somehow, somebody got here from one "getdentalimplantsinfo.com", under the tag "gingivitis". What the...?! o_O

I could not even find a link to this blog on that site, not even under the tag 'gingivitis'. Talk about labai keista.

o_0

Keista, Labai Keista

Okay, looking at my traffic sources, I found something really, really weird today: somebody on Lithuanian Google found this blog by searching for a reference sheet of one of my characters that I'd posted before. I'm not sure where else they would have found the image to put it into the search bar (other than maybe my deviantART, or some sort of weird photobucket cross-reference), but somehow they did, and ended up back here. Now I am totally confused.

If you are said person in Lithuania, would you please explain to me what you were trying to find? Because I frankly think this is really weird, and will probably wonder about it for weeks or months if I don't get some kind of solution to this mystery. And maybe, just maybe, I can help you find whatever you were looking for when you searched for this image. Perhaps? o_O

The image that started it all

The Voltaria Leijonörn

Yup, I've been at it again, doing everything but drawing my actual characters. But hey, this time I made a fairly cool design: the Voltaria Leijonörn. It's the emblem of the Voltaire family, used as a heraldic charge among other things, and I meant it to be a sort of fierce-looking lion-eagle without being a griffin.

I didn't think about whether these were its "proper" colours or not when designing it, but I'd assume they are since they don't neatly fit the narrow set of heraldic tinctures. When actually using it as a charge, the entire thing would probably be just be recoloured grey and black like this:

Argent, a Leijonörn displayed ash-grey, maned and queued sable.

I'm quite satisfied with how it turned out.

Smudge Maintenance

I'm currently fixing the smudge so it will always be in the same place at all screen resolutions (well, at least most screen resolutions), so if you see two smudges or any other weirdness, that's what's going on. I'll probably have it fixed within an hour, at which time the weirdness will cease. So don't worry.

(Edit: the smudge has finally been fixed. My apologies to all of you with 1024px-wide screens who must have been wondering why I put that smudge in such a tacky location! XD)

Next to come will be a little something to spruce up the background in order to complete my original vision of the blog's appearance.

Tyrian World Map

Whew, it's been a while since I posted, hasn't it? I'll use the classic generic excuse that I was busy, and hopefully you can forgive me. I know, it's pretty unoriginal compared to all the stuff I'm coming up with for Tyrian, but you'll just have to bear with me. Stuff happens.

Anyway, today I went and drew up a pretty elaborate world map complete with different biomes and major rivers; the equator and the two tropic lines are also there if you look closely. I guess I could have done a little bit more, like adding mountains and whatnot, but for now I think it's more than enough. I may put the mountains on another map, using the outline from this one as a base, though I don't think I'm quite ready for a political map. I don't have all the countries worked out yet. XD

So, there's the world. (What a wonderful place!)

It probably will end up with more little tiny islands later, but I thought that was plenty. After all, islands are like pepper—you don't want to go randomly shaking them all over everything and ruin the main course. And yes, there's a tundra at the equator... you're not imagining things. It's the Artifices' doing.

Feel free to use this as a desktop wallpaper, though it'll probably work better if you tell Windows to put #a6a5ec behind it considering the irregular size. Or your favourite shade of indigo/violet. Whatever you like.

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