Starlite: An ACNL Aviary

I have now played too way many hours of AC:NL. At the time of writing this the game informed me that 500 hours is over 21 days straight. Wow. I have no life. Checked again at the one year anniversary and I was up to 600 hrs.

I am also very near to my goal of a town full of different bird characters. I am 9 for 10, with the last being a really flamboyant boy unicorn, who I am growing fond of. Might let him stay and call it a win. - Update on that... let him move to a friends town and almost got a penguin till some $%*& pig moved in onto the middle of one of my paths.

So to celebrate my almost achievement, I thought I would do a town portrait. 

I sketched out the characters in groups, and then put us all together. There is actually quite a bit of interplay that happens between the residents without you even being involved. Frienships form, rumors start, they hang out at each others houses and take walks together. It's there to see, if you look.

So the groups are: Miranda, Friga and Freckles

Me, Gladys and Phoebe

Peck and Joey

And the loner types: Ken, Julian and Avery

Cleaned sketch in Illustrator.

Miranda and Friga are friends because they have fashion and gossip to bond over... They have adopted the rather plain and frumpy Freckles into their midst as a protégé to train... but she's so innocent it never goes anywhere and now they like having her around.

Gladys and Phoebe have been with me from the start. They are my go-to girls.

Peck is the jock in town and thinks himself all that. When Joey moved in he found a "little brother" to protect.

Ken is solid as a rock and kind of the older down to earth resident who wanders around in his own world. He lives off by himself near the campgrounds.

Julian is in his own world of gossip, glitter and glitz. He's probably where Miranda and Friga get their gossip, but spends most of his time in the town square and looking mysterious at Stonehenge where his house was.

Avery is the newest in town. I feel like he could round out the Peck and Joey friendship with his quiet and strong ways, but he also seems like a bit of a loner at the moment. He has problems talking to people so we connected right off the bat.

Maybe I will color this one day... for now... nah. 

ACNL Doodle

I am sure this joke has been made a thousand times, but since today I actually did get a pyramid out of a tree in my town I wanted to draw it. So sue me. (Please don't.)

Probably should have done the first one, scanned it and used it for the background for the second, but oh well. 

4F pencil, sharpie pen, colored pencils, 30 minutes.

Vintage Animal Crossing

So, you might have noticed I have been playing a lot of Animal Crossing. Well I guess it is at least good for inspiration. Still working on my Blather's crochet, but it coming along slowly since I keep ripping it apart and starting over trying to get the body shape right.

I have created characters for my husband and me (see the last post): Cerulean and Grump. Well I for some reason wanted to draw them together in a formal portrait... Not sure where that urge came from, but like a family thing. So then I started thinking about poses... Both standing? One sitting? So then I thought about famous art... naturally... and thought about the painting American Gothic. I might have to revisit that idea and do another painting, seems fitting for Animal Crossing. Anyway I then thought about old daguerreotypes, because my dad used to collect them. So I found this one in particular which I liked so I based the pose off it.

Decided to watercolor it since I could use the black and white to get the grays and it might be a challenge to work in black and white. It was. Started off with a light gray wash to get the camera lighting kind of idea then started with the blackest parts. Mistake there. It was ok for Cerulean's feather markings, but not for Grump's jacket since then I immediately lost the ability to put in any details since I could not go any darker. I tried to pull some of the black back up with a wet brush and it helped a little. Then I could put down white for the buttons on top and it looked ok. But I lost the pocket so I cheated at the end an used a bit of black ink to crisp up some of the details that I could not paint in.

Overall it took me about an hour to do this. I can't help but think there is a fun idea here. Animal Crossing takes place in real time, so their world could have existed in different time periods... I mean imagine Animal Crossing in the Renaissance! Anyway, it could be fun to do more portraits.

AC Tumblr

Just a quick note here. Been playing too much animal crossing I think (especially considering the contents of this upcoming Friday's post). Anyway. I made a tumblr blog to put up all my pictures from in game. They will be of anything that I find interesting that happens, QR codes for new outfits I work on, etc. I will most likely post any fan art I do here as well as over there, but this blog is not the place for in game snaps.

Blog address is http://starlite-ac.tumblr.com/ if you want to visit or follow.

Speaking of fanart for the game, I drew my husband and me as animal residents. I am a blue jay, simply because I wanted to be blue like my hair and couldn't seem to pick an animal. Plus it helps that I have always wanted to be able to fly. For my husband, I had already made his likeness as a bear so it was only natural.

Cerulean and Grump

Also made this custom background for my tumblr page. It's vertically repeating.
Ask if you want to use it. :)

Happy Crossing!

AC:NL Fashion Designs

I've haven't been very creative lately. At least not in anything outside of work. I have also been playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf pretty much every time I sit down. AC is plenty inspiring, heck you saw my new icon design from the previous post, didn't you?

UPDATE: Visit Starlite with dream code 4100-2197-2605 :)

I do have a few things to share though, hence this post:

1. I have decided to work on a crochet pattern for Blathers.

If you don't know, he runs the Museum in AC. I have always loved his design. This pattern is going to be a tough one. Since I plan on writing it all out as I go along, I don't expect to have it out anytime soon. Plus I have already spent a few hours of head time trying to figure out the best way to go about making him look as close on model as possible. The body shapes are easy enough, but the argyle sweater pattern of his chest and some of the more specific details will be a challenge. He is going to be a lot of pieces and embroidery. 

2. Here are the QR codes for the two cosplay outfits I have made for my AC character.
Nausicca Dress Animal Crossing QR code
The first here is for the dress from the very end of Nausicca of the Valley of the Wind. I have noticed that a lot of the cosplay outfits that I see combine her first dress tunic with the gun shell holders with this dress from the end. Not right. They are two separate outfits, in fact this dress, when she gets it from the refugee women when she is captured and escapes, is originally pink and only changes to blue after it is soaked in the blood of the Ohmu.

Katara A:TLA Animal Crossing QR code
This second dress is Katara's Watertribe and bending outfit. It is when she starts wearing the skins of water on her back when they are in the Earth Kingdom and after.

 
Feel free to scan and wear them out and about, just share where you got them please if anyone asks. Thanks :)

Angela's New Leaf

While I am enjoying (to my surprise) Fire Emblem: Awakening for my 3DS, it is really a hold over until next month when I can finally enjoy Animal Crossing: New Leaf.*

Anyway, I have sunk countless hours into the game cube version. I specifically asked my husband to set the cube up for me as one of the main consoles to the projector, specifically so I can play the original AC. How many more hours have gone into AC:Wild World... I have no idea.

New leaf has been on my radar for more than a year now... I had it pre-ordered when its release date was October 2012, then January 2013. So needless to say, I am excited. I just hope they have added a lawn mower, although some part of me enjoys picking weeds after a hiatus from the game.

Been wanting to make a new icon for Twitter and other online personalities... So this is a good opportunity. And I should mention that I was inspired by this tumblr post by Steps Over Snails, whose illustrations I adore.

This was sketched on paper with a 6H pencil, then inked with 03 and 01 pens. Thn scanned and pulled into adobe Illustrator to get clean vectors. Then colored in photoshop.

*Just as an aside I am super annoyed that they have made a limited edition 3DS with animal crossing theme on the outside and that I did not know about it before when I bought my boring blue one a few months ago. Wish they had mentioned that when I reserved my copy last freaking year... Ok, rant over. :(