Home Improvements

This has been an interesting month. Terrible for blogging and doing anything productive, online-wise, but still interesting. We're in the process of making a few home improvements - specifically, new vanity tops in the bathrooms and, for the big one, new floors through much of the ground floor. Seeing as I'm from a family of packrats and clutterbugs, this means a LOT of packing things up to relocate them during the installation.

Exactly HOW I fit so much stuff into such tiny spaces, I do not know. I'll have to take some pictures.

Anyways, my goal for today is to get one more finished pic up in my deviantArt gallery, so I snagged one from a recent sketch session to try and get that done. If not, I'll have a fresh pic for August, then.

I figured this one was a nice, summery one. Girl eating a Popsicle - nice variation from the typical girl-in-a-bikini pics that usually show up when someone wants to do something summer-like. It's half-inked right now... and outlining in Photoshop takes forever, but it gives me a smoother line than in MangaStudio. I'm still not sure what I'll put in the background, but we'll see what shows up!

Okay, back to work!

More Avatard Kit

And for all of you who have been wallowing in despair ever since M. Night's bastardization of The Last Airbender hit theaters, a ray of hope! Yesterday, Nickelodeon announced the greenlighting of an animated sequel series set in the Avatar universe: The Legend of Korra.

You can read the full press release and see the pretty promo picture here.

Now, normally I'd be worried about a sequel series, especially after what a certain director decided to do to one of my favorite TV series, but there is one very important aspect of The Legend of Korra that makes me really look forward to it: it's done by Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, the creators of the original series. They have proven to put the quality of the story and the characters at the top of their priorities list. Perhaps just as importantly, they are willing to listen to their creative team's suggestions and use them to craft the best story possible.

They also have an excellent track record with creating strong female characters . I'll admit, I had a twinge of doubt when I read the description of Korra. Well, less of a 'twinge' and more of a bevy of alarms developed from years of reading urban fantasy, which is filled with so-called "strong" female characters who can be described as "hot-headed, rebellious," and "independent." None of which are bad traits, mind you. It's just that in the hands of a lesser writer, "strong + female" translates into a genuinely unlikeable character you actually want to personally drop off a cliff.

Good writers, on the other hand, don't think of characters as "strong males" or "strong females." They just think of them as "strong," without trying to figure out how they can try to play with gender. At the very least, a character's gender is not that character's defining trait. The Avatar crew probably could write books on how to create strong characters with depth and fully rounded personalities.

It's one of the reasons Avatar was so popular.

In any case, I have high hopes for The Legend of Korra. With any luck, it will stand alone as a good, high-quality story with more great characters and not be a shadowy imitation of the original.

Avatard Kit

This past weekend, M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender opened in theaters. For those of you who don't know, it's based on the completely and totally awesome Nickelodeon cartoon, Avatar: The Last Airbender. The series took place over the course of three seasons, each with their own title (The Book of Water, The Book of Earth, and The Book of Fire) and, unlike most American cartoons, had an overlying story arc with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Add to that characters that actually developed and grew over the course of the series, romance, moral dilemmas, action, adventure, and a serious threat to the world, and you've got yourself a winner.

Oh, and can't forget the humor. Lots of humor... so I knew something was wrong as soon as I saw the previews of a dark, joyless world in the grips of angsty melodrama.

I haven't seen the movie, nor do I intend to in theaters. I know, I know, there are some people who like it, but I'm having a real hard time reconciling some of the changes Mr. Shyamalan decided to make to the actual mythos of Avatar. Cutting things out of Season I to fit it all in a less than two hour movie, I can understand. Drastically changing the plot and the characters' personalities to suit his own personal vision? Unforgivable. And don't even get me started on the names. -_-;;

In any case, I did find something to help ease the anger over some self-absorbed director mauling one of the best things in the past ten years in some quest to make it his own: the Avatar: The Last Airbender Artbook. I spotted this in the bookstore Monday and just couldn't resist. Mike and Bryan (the creators) talk about the development of Avatar and how they got it all together, which is fascinating for anyone who is creating their own world, plus discuss the characters and the process and provide plenty of development sketches and conceptual artwork to drool over.

Yeah. This has made my week. :D

As for the movie? Well... we'll see what happens when it hits DVD.