Long day at the Round Up Centre, but such a blast. I ended up going to the annual Calgary Comic Expo with Alex and met up with Andre and Jason once there. I also ran into my wonderful friend Don who I love so much and his beautiful wife Augusta nearer to the end of the day. Good thing to because they only had passes for Saturday.

So, met Jewel Staite. I went along with Alex and she’s adorable and friendly and personable, totally lovely woman and far better as a blonde. Outside of that I caught glimpses of Edward Olmos, and Kandyse McClure and managed to get a sneaky picture of Sean Astin. Lots of people, lots of crowds but I was really there for the artists.

I showed my finished book to Stephen Silver and Sean Galloway. Both artists who I follow quite extensively online as I’m a huge fan of their respective styles. Both have, on occasion, slipped into my work, Silver more notably. Stephen said some lovely things about it as he flipped through it, but Sean’s reaction just made me day entirely. He flipped through it and with every page he got more excited telling me how much he loved it. He asked who did the layouts and everything, how long it took, etc. and was surprised to find out that I did everything minus the actual printing and it took just under 4 months. He smiled brightly and handed it back saying that I should pitch it to Nickleodean and see what they say. Animation studios may love the character designs and such. He seemed to.

It made my day. I have been feeling so discourage lately as I’ve gotten rejected from everything I’ve tried lately. Here’s to hoping things start figuring themselves out.

No art on the blog lately, and I apologize for that. I’ll get with it again soon! The photography has been full force though thanks to my photo class. My final assignment was a party for lack of a better phrase.

For those who don’t know me in any capacity it comes as a complete and utter shock that I’m not only a fairly hardcore gamer but also a giant nerd. I’m proud of this, but for most people, a girl who is considered “kind of pretty” and “nerd” don’t go together at all. Basically, I’m pretty until I open my mouth for most.  This trait is appealing to very few men so when I find someone who actually likes it, I’m happy. This random fact informs the next.

Saturday is Black Company day typically.  A variant campaign of Dungeons and Dragons, it runs on 3.5 rules, but has no magic, no god system and no monsters. So basically, some feats and skills cross over but that’s it.  Yesterday, our characters find themselves in another dimension.¹ After some crazy incidences which involve me almost getting eaten by a mind-control creature and being knocked out for the duration of combat, we manage to find a mine and decide why not go into it.  At this point we were looking for a metal which only one of us had seen and we knew was from another dimension.

We run into Mind Flayers.

But its alright because we manage to surprise them and kill them before they can telepathically attack us and devour our brains. They really are lovely creatures.

We eventually, quite by accident, ended up being dragged to where the source of their power is. This means that the floor of the cavern is actually a 40 foot wide brain that can affect any part of our brains. Most of us manage to inflict some damage onto the brain before it manages to attack us. It does this epically by affecting our ID reflexes and bringing them to the foreground of our thought processes. I end up wanting to fight, 2 others want to flee and the character who is my half-sister wants to just have sex. This would be fine except her target is me.

The events that insued had us all in fits of laughter as I tried to kill the man who was my sworn protector and had to fight off my half-sister at the same time.

Of course, the rest of the fight was just a hilarious jumble of everything going awry while still trying to kill the brain in the room. I don’t think I’ve played a session where so much ridiculous things happened. The good news is that my character doesn’t remember the incident. The bad news is, is that her sister does.

I think this is why I love gaming. How many other ways can you have ridiculous situations like that? Besides laughter is great and friends are even better.

I’m actually currently working on transposing one of our Black Company stories into an illustrated storybook for my final studio class. My only issue right now being the fact that I am having a font crisis. There is one font I want, but I can’t actually afford to spend $150 to buy a font to use for this book. Then a printer, but I’m not sure where to find one in this city where I won’t be paying an arm and a leg for a 20-25 page illustrated book.

In the meantime, a character concept of Kestrel.²

1. Fairly uncommon, but we still occasionally end up weird places↩
2. my character↩

I’ve been doing quite poorly at this keeping “The Blog” updated. My usual idea of updating three days at most into the future has turned into clearly more than that and is now running dangerously close to weeks. While maybe not unheard of for me, its certainly something that I occasionally feel guilty about but then I go off and have a social life and just like that the guilt is gone.

I had intended to go home this weekend to my parents since its Thanksgiving and usually spending it with family is a good idea.¹ However, on the day I was supposed to leave I managed to catch a horrible flu that left me pretty much down for the day and then to exhausted to drive back the day of our dinner. So I missed out, but got to play a fairly intense 11 hours of Dungeons and Dragons² and then had dinner with my friend’s family last night.  So I guess celebrating Thanksgiving with your gaming group and then a very large, very loud, family that you’ve never met before is as good a way as any to enjoy a holiday.

And besides, gaming groups make the world go around.

This blog too, is brought to you in a random spurr of downtime which I haven’t had much of in the last week and will be keeping up this week as well. Exam to write today, projects to finish and enough other things to keep me busy until at least Sunday next which is depressing to think about. All that matters is that I still love it despite being so busy I hardly have time to breathe some days.

And a photo from the other week. I desperately need a new tripod.

1. even if you don’t like your family↩
2. which I may discuss in detail at a later date when I have time↩