Welcome lost traveller to my Livejournal!
This journal is not friends-only but if you would like to add me to your friend's list please comment here and maybe tell me a little about yourself to be added back.
I look forward to meeting you!

( A girl can dream )

My first ever livestream:

Took me a second to tweak everything and get it working, still a few things I need to learn but not bad for my first time. This video is of me inking my Harley Quinn sketch, I haven't quite finished inking it but I didn't want to go any longer than an hour for my first video. Still need to figure out how to delete things since my first two videos are tests made of fail because it kept disconnecting due to size issues.

My plans for this evening are undecided. It's the first Coven of the year but I have still yet to hear back from Erika as to whether she's certain on going or not. I'm so tired, went to my parent's last night after picking up my Bridesmaid's dress.

So I just read Marvel Heartbreakers and wow... I really don't think I have read anything so had in quite some time. (And I read Marvel Divas the other day!) To say that Marvel Heartbreakers stinks is an insult to anything that has ever stunk before. Marvel Heartbreakers is a compilation of short stories and a perfect example of all that is wrong with comic that write to a specific audience. (Or gender... *sigh*)
In other news, is this not the cutest shirt you ever saw?

Just made the biggest comment evar on celesse's post about marketable vs. non-marketable art. It's a very interesting topic. (Sorry for the epic post Cel!) X3

So I finally did it, last night I read Marvel Divas. After all the stories I've heard about it being terrible I expected something god awful, was a pleasantly surprised? Not really. One note though; I though the art was wonderful. Very crisp, great facial expressions and I think it really suited the style the writer was going for. The writing however was quite poor and it's a great example of how trying to market a comic to very specific audience falls down. One problem I have with comics like this is that they say 'hey this is a comic for women so we should include as many women's issues (whatever they are) as we can and we have to show strong, powerful women!' I have a real problem with letting marketability get in the way of a good story. One thing I love about Gail Simone is the fact that all of her characters are diverse and she doesn't feel the need to write to a specific audience because if the comic is good people are going to read it any way.
( Small cut since the end of my discussion involves spoilers about what happens at the end. )
Spent Sunday afternoon at Rowan's Mother's house. She leant me her copy of Jane Austen: the complete works so I can read the stories I'm missing. Currently reading Sense and Sensibility. Dave, Rowan and myself had Whitebox Noodles for dinner last night after work. While their food is amazing I always find myself feeling a little ill after I eat there. No more of their delicious noodles me I think.

Besides rolling around drawing all day (check my sketchblog for updates) I've been catching up on the new Batgirl series and reading all of the old Birds of Prey issues I've never read before. Even all the old painful Chuck Dixon issues where the characters seem to call each other 'girlfriend' far too often. I'm really excited about the news of the new Birds of Prey series and I'm not usually one for fan speculation but since reading Batgirl I have two guesses who the mystery character featured in the new Birds of Prey promo image may be. I think the new BoP team member will either be Cassandra Cain (having passed on the Batgirl mantle to Steph) or Wendy Harris. I may be completely wrong but those are my two guesses.

I am so inspired to draw some Oracle and Stephanie Brown fan art right now.

Updated my sketchblog, the bean_factory. I want to change the layout soon but waiting until I have a better coloured image. Besides finishing up the Black Alice drawing I tried on my bridesmaid dress for my brother's wedding today. It only need to be taken up a little because I'm short but it fits perfectly.
My updates as of late have not been that interesting mostly because my life has involved getting up, drawing comics until I get tired, then read comics and then sleep. Rinse, repeat. XD I cannot wait to show off what I've been working on but that will be up to Frank. Either way I'm sure he will let me show a couple of pages after The Wraith comes out.

Technically some day this week has been Rowan's and my 4 year anniversary. We haven't done anything to celebrate but we have been spending a lot more time together since he's had a few days off. He finished work next Wednesday and then will receive his redundancy payout sometime after that. We're still waiting to hear back from the University to see if he has been accepted but I'm sure he has, he just applied a little late.

I have bangs! (Or a 'fringe' for us Ausweegians, I just use the word bangs since I'm sure most people that read my LJ are Americaneeses.)

(This is what my hair looked like previously.)
I didn't expect straight-cut bangs to suit my hair since I have a side-part but it totally works. After I cut it I dried and straightened my hair so I haven't had time to play around with my new hairstyle much but I'll experiment a bit in the coming weeks. Gotta love how a new hair style makes you feel. MmmMmmm.

... you start having dreams about it. As much as I adore Angelic Pretty's milky-chan dresses one day I really want to get myself some DollscroPs little deer items. (I'd love it if they did produce replica deer coats and plush bags.)

Two nights in a now now I've had dreams deer-themed dresses. They plague my unconscious mind I say!

It's January 9th already. it seems the year is slipping away from me already! I have 2 metres of gorgeous wet-look latex I want to transform into a halter-neck dress before next Coven. I should make a pact with myself to get the sewing machine out next weekend so I get it made a little in advance and not do what I usually do and rush something two days before.

Usually when I get really bummed I do something new with my hair. I don't think it's the case this time but I do feel like something a bit new. I've been considering having Erika dye part of my hair bright pink or something but such a thing would require constant maintenance to look decent so I've decided to give myself bangs. After arming myself with Youtube tutorials and other assorted online knowledge I'm fairly confident I can do a nice job myself, I shall report back later in the day on the results. X3
Dungeons and Dragons tonight! I plan to show off my perhaps fail epic bangs there and I'm making a lemon meringue pie to take since I love them and I've never made one myself before. I'll take photos of it as well as my hair.

The mail came this morning and besides my February issue of Kera magazine I got my Hello Kitty ear muffs that I ordered at the start of December. I won't need them for awhile since we're in the middle of Summer but they were too cute to resist:

I really enjoyed my new issue of Kera as well, I noticed that the Lolita brand Chantilly also had a small spot in the magazine. I was considering cancelling my Kera subscription due to the fact that now Rowan's and my finances will become a little more weird since his redundancy (that's still 3 weeks away) but it's only $17 a month and I'll need something to drool over since I won't be able to afford any large Lolita items for a while. Rowan will get a large redundancy payout which will help keep us afloat in the coming months if things get bad but I doubt they will. Either way it'll be a nice nest egg.

I hate being so grumpy in the evenings because the neighbour kids are screaming at each other. I wonder if it would be rude if I stood in our backyard and screamed for awhile for no reason. I wish I were joking but I am so fed up with their behaviour that I feel like doing something really, really inappropriate.

What the hell is this shit and why did I have to wake up to it? More amusing that the entire discussion on Lolita-fying ones menstrual cycle are the people pushing it's environmentally friendliness, mentioning how wasteful the current disposable ones are. Even if this is the case I'm sorry but the Earth can take the hit once a month for my sake because the last thing I'm thinking about then is how I can make my life more 'eco-friendly.'

My Christmas and New Years has been majestic. I was really tired after all the family get-togethers but everyone adored their gifts from Rowan and myself and I spent the few days afterward flopping around with Rowan playing lots of World of Warcraft. Maybe not just a few days, it's basically all we've been doing for a solid week. New Years we had friends over to watch the fireworks because it was scorching outside and we now have our lovely air conditioner.
Speaking of WoW I have a few screenshots from my various holiday shenanigans. Christmas day, Rowan, Mark and myself joined a raid group of 40 to get the [For the Alliance] achievement by felling the opposing faction leaders and scoring our Black War bear mounts. For some extra lulz we transformed our mounts into reindeer and used the Holiday Gnome changer:

It wore off after the first Horde leader but it was fun none the less. We were successful on the run and I got my Black War Bear!

We all also did a few runs of Nexus so we could all get the adorable little red santa hats. From left-to-right, Mark, myself and Rowan. We all have mad-love for the sexy space goats.

One last screenshot 'cause I thought it was purdy.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!
It's Christmas Day here in Australia land, I hope everyone has a wonderful day! Rowan got me the Mustek A3 scanner that I've been drooling over for the past year. Zomg I'm so lucky!

I've about reached the end of my patience with my neighbour's kids. Any noise that is generated in their backyard comes right into our house and the kids out there scream for aaaaaaaages. I wouldn't care so much if whatever parental unit over there would put a stop to it but they seem happy to let the little ones play outside making as much noise as possible, there is even a baby which I hear screaming on a regular basis. (The kids don't scream 24/7 but when they start it'll last for about 20 minutes at a time.) I would confront my neighbour about it but I'm not good at such things and I saw her yelling at a visitor the other day, so she scares me. 0.0; They're also legally allowed to make noise during the day. I was really looking forward to working from home too.

In Christmas-related news all of my Christmas shopping is finally done! A large box also arrived yesterday for Rowan, I know it's my Christmas present because he told me it would arrive this week. It's sitting ominously under the Christmas tree puzzling me every time I look at it. Rowan's Christmas break starts tomorrow, they're letting everyone finish around noon which is great. Also:

Technically I'm not playing online games any more while I concentrate on my career but my World of Warcraft subscription doesn't expire until February so I log in every few weeks to poke around a bit. I decided tonight I wanted to hang out around in the Arathi Highlands killing spiders to get stuff to level my cooking and two level 80 horde appear. Rowan has just joined me on his Priest (we're both lvl 80, I'm a beast master Hunter) and we proceed to kick their asses over and over again. They had an un-flagged lvl 43 'scout' for them and keep an eye on where we were on the map and every time they both re-spawned to mount a new attack we'd still always pwn them so damn hard. I'm not even geared that well!

This evening was legendary. Rowan and I laughing our asses off as we kill opposing faction players together while their lackey watches me teabag their lifeless corpses. It's true love. <3

Just updated my sketchblog, bean_factory here.

Tinkered with my LJ layout a little since I've been randomly changing my banner a lot the last few weeks because it was bothering me. I'm happy with this one, I saw this image of the classic women of DC and had to do a Sex and City themed banner. Here's a link to it if anyone would like a copy and a friends only banner.

Nothing makes you feel the Christmas spirit more then finding some amusing Christmas_themed macro and laughing so hard you spray what-ever you're drinking at the time all over your work area.

And for New Years I must prepare my digestive tract for an influx of comics it seems. Speaking of digesting comics, am slowly getting through my Witchblade and Darkness compendiums. I'm half-way through the second Witchblade and the first Darkness. It's confused as hell though because Top Cow love series cross-overs and I find myself switching to the next comic just so I can read the end of a story arc.
I have to say, out of the two characters Sara Pezzini and Jackie Estacado; I relate to Jackie a lot more than Sara. Sure Jackie is a hit man mobster who is at times atrociously selfish and treats one of his loyal follows like trash but I can understand a lot of why he does what he does. He cares for very few people but at least he's very passionate about those he does have feelings for. I'm up at issue 62 of the Witchblade and Sara still seems to be totally unsure of what she wants, I doubt she even understands what she's doing or what her motivations are. Sure she's a cop but she doesn't seem to have a real moral code to speak of and if she does she doesn't seem to really stick to it and the one person she does have any sort of real emotional connection with is the girl she's supposedly looking after who she never sees because Sara is always 'too busy.' I swear Lisa is thrown in every 10 issues or so just so show that Sara isn't a dried-up husk of a woman who no longer feels the need for any form of real human interaction or closeness. Even when they do include Lisa, Sara is always saying something like 'I feel bad that I haven't see her for awhile.' Well who is to blame for that? Even worse is that Sara is currently aware that Lisa is living with a drug-using low life who is affiliated with the mob. First Born was the best idea ever, finally Sara has been given something to live and fight for because she really didn't seem to have it before. (I also love it because I'm a fan girl of the Jackie x Sara pairing. Sorry Gleeson.) Wow that turned into a rant quick.

TLDR; Jackie Estacado is hawt and interesting and Sara is as boring as cold toast.

Heads-up to all my female Australian comic-artist type friends. Alisha from OzTAKU is looking for submissions for an anthology to be titled 'Chic' and showcase Australia's all-female talent. Yours truly will be submitting although I have a lot of short stories in-mind and I'm not sure which one to choose.
If you're interested in submitting I recommend emailing Alisha soon because she's trying to gauge how much interest there is in the project and have a tentative list of submissions.

I had the most legendary dream last night. First Two Face and Joker had teamed up to do torture me or something, I think get Batman's identity. How should I know who he really is?! Oh wait, I do know. Damn Batman comics. Any way I'm all messed up and Batman saves me and takes me back to his Bat Cave where Alfred gave me lots of warm tea.
Then later in my dream I'm all recovered and I'm running away from this guy with a whip (I have no idea what that's about. :x) and a velociraptor shows up. The random guy then proceeds to hit the raptor with it. I tell him not to but it's freaking out at the fact there's a velociraptor there and isn't really thinking straight. I stand back and then the raptor proceeds to jump on him and eat his brains. Dude obviously wasn't prepared for a velociraptor attack which is why I may add that velociraptor awareness day exists in the first place.

Finally my dream becomes this weird Twilight mess and I proceed to tell Jacob Black how much I hate him while I jump out of very high windows and tell Edward to kick his ass.

Lolita meet this Saturday! Seems we're still ironing out the details but we're all taking an extra outfit so we can all dress each other in random shiz. I really want to see snoos_the_moose in my Meta gingham cherry dress. I'll be wearing my old Innocent World cookie skirt and new cream bonnet paired with a black blouse and a few other things.

I am so Dungeons and Dragons deprived. Our group hasn't had a session for a couple of weeks due to people moving and having relatives over. Hopefully the week after next we all have a Saturday evening free. Speaking of Dungeons and Dragons, I've been talking weddings a lot with my future sister-in-law because I'm one of her bridesmaids and she's happy to talk to someone that has a genuine interest because I'm slowly planning my own.
Although ours won't be for a couple of years (we'll have a tentative date when I get my braces on this year. Basically I want my wedding set for after they come off.) we still like gathering ideas and discussing things as a couple. We both know we want a very small morning wedding followed my a brief breakfast reception which will lead onto an afternoon / evening gaming session. We'd love to book a gaming venue like Nexus to have a huge LAN and console day. So where does Dungeons and Dragons come in? Well neither of us want to married in a church and we'd rather not have random strangers at our wedding so we really want to have one of our friends officiated so he can perform the ceremony.
We're going to ask our Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master if he wants to do it. He's such a friendly guy and an amazing public speaker, I mean his DnD sessions and fantastic because he's so wonderful with words. We also chuckled about the fact that we'd really like to have the traditional wedding ceremony vows but edited with as many Dungeons and Dragons / gaming references as we can. I'd also love to make little mana and health potions as wedding favours for the guests.
I've also mentioned for a long time about how I don't want a traditional wedding gown so I've been on the hunt for a dress and I'm 99% sure I've found it:

I think black and gold would be fantastic colours to use for the wedding. I'd love to have my bridesmaids wearing gold. Another thing Rowan and I have discussed is how we don't want members of our wedding party to pay for their clothes for the wedding. We feel that if we invite them to be a part of our special day then we're going to make the preparations to make that happen. Having said that we're not planning to spend that much on our wedding so a few dresses and tuxedos won't be all that much.


Remember to be aware of velociraptors my friends. They could be anywhere and strike at any time, even if your subconscious.

I had a very productive weekend. Rowan and I have an extra separate room behind our house that until yesterday was full of a queen size bed that was due to go to my brother's house well over a year ago. Rowan and I had always planned to turn it into my work from home art studio and now we can! I need to do some tidying and remove some cob webs, I also hope to repaint a little but it's perfect. It gets midday sun and have cupboards for my various art supplies and Rowan is going to put some speakers out there for my iPod.
Also went to visit my parents today. Dad is looking so much better since his time in the hospital the week before last. He finally has his appetite back and is regaining more energy every day.

When we got home Rowan and I flopped on the couch together and watched the first season of Big Bang Theory. Sheldon is so damn adorable. I have also just purchased myself a subscription to Kera magazine, I've wanted to for a long time but since I've cancelled my online game subscriptions I figure I deserve it.

I have a sketch blog that I'm going to keep updated! (Hopefully!) After coming to terms with the fact that I'm an LJ user and have been for nearly 10 years it made sense for me to finally make one on Live Journal. So without further ado, bean_factory.

Besides posting my drawings there I also want to use it as a place to vent my comic geekery. However I will geek out here quickly and share a link to a post by one of CBR's newest writers: Psylocke: This Is Not the Ninja You're Looking For. An article that hits home for me and I hope execs at Marvel and DC take the time to read.
In the comments to this article one person called Dave suggests that problems are not the comics themselves but people who seem to get their knickers in a knot about how characters are objectified and that men and women are treated the same in comics. Another commenter by the name of Chris Jones really takes the words right out of my mouth in a simple, yet brilliantly worded explaination:
'Why is it nearly always girls who have a problem with the way women are portrayed in comics?"
Well, Dave, let's take a second to think about this: Let's say I called you mentally retarded. Let's say I said, "Dave is a dipshit with a brain the size of a peanut." You get offended. I respond with, "Yeah, of course DAVE is going to get offended at being called a dipshit. Why is Dave the only person who has a problem with being called a peanut brain?"
Does it make a little more sense now?'

Either way despite what this Dave character thinks, I know it's not just women that have a problem with the way some comics are written and how female characters are objectified and I don't think that anyone's opinions should carry any less weight depending on what gender they are.