I Have Returned, and Bear Tidings!

Okay, I just want to straight up apologize for not having attended to this blog for so long; stuff has tended to get in the way so much, it's absofreakodiculous. But now I'm here to put an end to that. Let there be much rejoicing among my brave and few followers.
 Quite a bit has happened this past week alone; for one, my birthday came and went this past Wednesday, so now I am officially twenty-two! It was a good birthday; nothing big or fancy, I just went out to dinner at Applebee's with my family and had a good time (and for those curious in presents, one was a brand new iPod Nano. Thanks, Mom and Dee).
Obviously, Halloween came up right after that, and this time I got around to dressing up after two years in a suit and tie. The result?

 ...Eh. I'll admit, I was really lazy this year, and just took a sharpie marker, drew a couple of patterns, and attempted to throw a blanet on and call it a cape; the Grey Rider, I called myself, but it lost its novelty. Sadly, I did not go trick-or-treating, but I did briefly attend a dance here on campus. Personally, I'm glad the sharpie came off.
I've also discovered this hilarious channel on YouTube: Glove and Boots, a series of vlogs hosted by Fafa the Groundhog and Mario, the odd little red guy with a beard and a deep voice accented like Peter Lorre, with occasional appearances by an ape named Gorilla and others (yes, they're all puppets, in case you're wondering). They are pretty random, but all in all, very hilarious. Go check them out if you've got the time.
Updates: I'm still plumbing along with the script for my graphic novel; I've made a few changes from the original narrative to make the characters more believable, but I am considering more changes. How to fit them into the story at my current rate of progress is still to be seen. Progress on illustrating the kid's book has been stalling, however. My mom suggested that I try to get the attention of some publishers with a sneak peek and make it so that they would PAY me to finish it. That's a good strategy, but first I believe I need to get an agent first, and I have no idea how much that would cost. Well, I'll never know until I try, right?
I'll bet you're saying, "Alright, enough of your personal life, now how about some art, buddy?"  And that, my friends, is an excellent question, and thankfully, I've got some new ones up for you:

Ah, the start of a new sketchbook; nothing quite so exciting or as frustrating. This sketch embodies all that I've got in store in the coming days.

 Earlier last month, I discovered that the bookstore had started selling brush pens, and BOY, I did not wait to grab one of my own. Brush pens are cool in that you can create a line of varying widths almost effortlessly; you just have to be very precise. Brushstrokes are actually something that I've been attempting to replicate with technical pens for a good long while, but it is so satisfying to actually work with an actual brush. You can see how well it worked out; I'm still practicing with it, but thus far, it's been treating me well.

This is the second sketch to receive the brush stroke treatment. FYI, that's Snow White in the center of all those dragons. Believe it or not, there's actually a variation of the Snow White tale (from Albania, I believe) where she hangs out with FORTY DRAGONS. Holy smack. Just imagine how epic a film THAT would be (if the original tale weren't so already rife with bloodshed. Seriously, even Snow has her hands dipped in blood at some point!). For the purposes of this sketch, I reduced the number of dragons to seven, in keeping with the original story that everyone's familiar with. If there's one regret I have, it's not sticking in an Oriental dragon to the crowd. That would've upped the diversity level quite a bit.

As I understand it, the BYU-Provo museum has a far more interesting museum than we do here in Idaho, but we've still got some pretty cool stuff here, including this Allosaurus skull that I sketched from real life.

This is one that you may have found on Deviantart before I pulled off, and I feel that I must explain the background for this one again; back in the '90's, there was a Gatorade commercial where a pair of Velociraptors from Jurassic Park went up against a basketball player (I'm pretty sure he was from the Toronto Raptors), and ohmergawsh, it was so COOL. Years later, I had to draw a basketball-playing raptor, with some scientific accuracy thrown in for good measure.

I'm just going to come straight out with this; this piece was directly inspired by The Lord of The Rings, along with this other obscure short film that I've seen online (I'll give credit when I can figure out what it's called). When coming up with new creatures, I'll often imagine them playing a certain role in a movie and try to shape them from there on paper. For this one, I went with a giant demon rat, the result of hideous magical experimentation.
 This is normally the part where I close off the blog, but first I have to bring up an idea;
For those of you who may not have figured it out, I love Pokemon. And I have been excited to see some gameplay footage of the latest generation, Pokemon X & Y; the 3D graphics are really unique to see for a Pokemon game, though I miss the 16 bit sprites from the previous generations, and they really give a new dimension to gameplay, no pun intended. But I've got to say, I'm pretty sure the battle mechanics could be better.
 Here's my proposal: what if, when battle started, you literally started to control the Pokemon you've put into battle? Not just select the move to use and watch the results, but to actually play the game like you would in a legitimate fighting game like Street Fighter and the like? For a point of reference, I remind my gamer audience of Super Smash Bros. Brawl; one of the characters you can play, the Pokemon Trainer, has three Pokemon, Charizard, Squirtle, and Ivysaur, that go into battle, and can be switched out quite swiftly to take advantage of their differing elemental powers.

 Just imagine that applied to a legitimate Pokemon Game; in battle, the A, B, X, and Y buttons on the 3DS can be used to unleash different moves, and increasing the speed of play, which would require faster thinking on the part of the player. To use items or to make other decisions, you could pause the action mid-battle and freeze time to allow you to make your decisions. I'm pretty sure internet critic Linkara has expressed similar sentiments regarding the games.
 To justify this, you could say that scientists have finally perfected the means to allow the minds of trainers and their Pokemon to link when the Pokemon is released from the Pokeball and let into battle. I'd think it would certainly justify the fact that this is basically legalized cock-fighting we're talking about; instead of trainers shouting from the sidelines, the partners would share each others' thoughts and feelings psychically, leading to a stronger bond.
HOW COOL WOULD THAT BE??
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