Sunshine Award: The Deuce

Hannah here. Am I ever going to get a post up that is not about an award? I admit it doesn't look likely, but really, I'll do it. 

Thank you very much to 

Joannah from 

Writers Who Need To 

Talk To Other Writers    

 ...who nominated us with the Sunshine Award!  (Déjà vu? Nay, this one is slightly different.)

Rules:

1. Thank the blogger who nominated you and link to his/her blog.

2. Nominate other bloggers and let them know on their blog.

3.Answer the list of ten questions given. 

4.The Sunshine Award must be posted on your blog.

1. What is your favorite Bible verse?

My go-to favorite verse is Psalm 119:115 - "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." But I have lots of others that I like. 

2. Would you sacrifice your life if it would save that of a stranger's?

Yeah. Not any stranger, but for the most part, yes, if it came to that. Most likely though, I'd be trying to save their life and accidentally kill myself. I'm like that.

3. Given the chance to swim with dolphins...would you accept?

Right off the bat. Psych myself up to frolick and jump right in.

4. Are you more "fascinated" by light or darkness? Why?

Light. Because this:

 

 

5. Can you speak in a different accent?

British is my best, then I can do Scottish, Chinese, Southern, Valley Girl, a tad of Irish, some French, German, Spanish, Australian, Romanian, whatever accent Davy Jones from Pirates of The Caribbean has, and a spot of Cockney. (I need trigger words/phrases for a lot of these - "Sort of loose" is my French trigger.)

6. Would you rather be disliked or forgotten?

I'd say disliked. In the words of Winston Churchill, "You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life."

7. Has the ocean ever filled your dreams?

Recently there was this weird kid in my dream reciting a poem about the ocean and some guy named Rinykim, and then previously an octopus-kid saved me from drowning. But I've only ever seen the ocean in person when I was around two years old, and I was terrified of sharks at the time and wouldn't get in, so it's not really a large item in my mind.

8. Assuming you have one, how often is your journal put to use?

About once a year. Twice or three times if something special or remarkable happens.

9. What is your favorite fictional character of all time?

Hm hm hm. Heh heh heh. Hahahahaha!

Yeah, okay. Umm... I'm thinking it's either Robin (the Dick Grayson version, but when he wears pants instead of a leotard) or maybe Halt from Ranger's Apprentice or Hatter Madigan, or, I don't know, one of my own fictional characters, or Sirius Black or Fred Weasley, or... or... 

10. What is your favorite hymn?

It's a toss-up between I See The Lord; Alleluia, He is Coming; or It Is Well With My Soul.

Sarah's go:

1. What is your favorite Bible verse?

Possibly Matthew 28:20 "I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Though that isn't the whole verse, that part is very comforting to me.

2. Would you sacrifice your life if it would save that of a stranger's?

I've thought about it before and figured I would because I'm going to heaven and they may not be, so better for me to die sooner and go to heaven than for them to and go to hell, better to give them another chance to become a christian. But then in real life I may not be capable of such clear thinking and we all hold our lives so dear so in a split second I may not. I don't know. I'd love to say I would though. 

3. Given the chance to swim with dolphins...would you accept?

Yes, but I'd be super nervous-cited.

4. Are you more "fascinated" by light or darkness? Why?

Darkness, because when the lights go out I think people subconsciously think of darkness as a semi-solid thing and it gives people that cautious, slightly suffocated feeling in the dark, when darkness is just the absence of light and there is no actual atmosphere change that makes the darkness seem to blanket everything. But when God made so many animals to be able to see in the dark and hunt silently it is pretty scary. I'd say that's darn fascinating. Though I like the light because it's safe.

5. Can you speak in a different accent?

Yeah, but not well enough to fool anyone who actually come from there. I'd probably need to spend time with someone to be able to mimic their voice properly.

6. Would you rather be disliked or forgotten?

To be remembered as someone nobody liked is pretty sad, but to have made no impression whatsoever is...also pretty sad. To have people say:
" Hey, remember Sarah?"
"Oh, yeah, pfft, I hate her."
or
"Hey, remember...whatserface?"
"Who?"
"You know, she was, uhh... she kinda looked like...well she was kinda... oh well. She doesn't matter."
A bit hard to choose. Disliked, I suppose, but not hated.

7. Has the ocean ever filled your dreams?

Not really that I can remember, but it sounds cool.

8. Assuming you have one, how often is your journal put to use?

Probably whenever I'm feeling lost and down, I just write out all of my problems and pray about them. I don't want anyone to read it though because it would make me seem like a super duper depressed person. In all maybe once a month.

9. What is your favorite fictional character of all time?

I kinda have two, and I know Hannah's gonna tease me about it.
Briana O'Toole and Mikkel son of a mighty chieftain of Aurland Fjord.

10. What is your favorite hymn?

I don't know the name of the last one, Blessed Assurance and I could sing of your love forever, I really don't know this title unfortunately.

Dat's all the questions, so nomination time. We're going to nominate:

Ajax Cochrane from 21st Century Renaissannsanance Man (congrats on being able to spell that properly, by the way, Ajax).

Siani Delaney from Writing & Wanderlust.

Bekah Joan from Found and Cherished.

To God be the glory,
Hannah and Sarah

Hatter Madigan

Again, it's Hannah. Fear not, I assure you Sarah shall be posting again! But for the moment, my fan art is piling up on the back order. And so it's a coin flip between the two that I did a whole bunch of stuff - hours of computer time - on. 

This is my best rendition of a legendarily epic fellow named Hatter Madigan. Seriously epic. Like, on the same level as Batman, Halt, and Pinkie Pie. You might not think that the last one's that awesome, but you just don't know Pinkie. 

Anyway, Hatter is a character created by Frank Beddor in the Looking Glass Wars series, which I would recommend to you if you like fantasy or sci-fi or period drama or awesome things or chocolate chip cookies. He was, in fact, so cool that he got his own spin-off graphic novel trilogy. Hatter is loosely based off of Lewis Carroll's Mad Hatter from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass, except with several big differences - Hatter is a very somber, very sane bodyguard; a skilled fighter known as a Milliner.

I based his appearance rather strongly on another character from the Looking Glass Wars, Homburg Molly

(http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/41/81/77/418177ef00288cb24d4a8999671a7e5b.jpg).

Hatter began as a sketch: 

So I put it into Photoshop and quickly realized I'd need to stretch him out considerably to keep him from looking short and plump.

So I took the original and added several virtual pounds of paint. When I was reading a book on writing by Gail Carson Levine, she stressed the importance of making several copies of my documents (she often had several hundred files at the end of a book, I believe) so that if you change your mind about deleting something, you don't have to recreate it by memory, you can just go back to an older draft. Since then I've done the same with my word documents and my Photoshop documents.

This is what my Hatter M file looks like now that I'm finished. Something I like to do is page through all of the files and see how it got from beginning to finished product. However, these files get so large and numerous that I have to move it to my secondary drive to keep it from overloading my computer's memory, which did nearly happen with one of my last projects. See, I still prefer to use Windows XP instead of the more recent versions Vista, 7, 8, and whatever else have you, so my family bemoans my very sluggish computer (that's one of the reasons I keep it - no one else wants to use a computer that takes ten minutes to start up and five to open a browser, even when it's Google Chrome!)

In any case, I worked on the sketch for several days and it came out like this:

As you can see, not the same as the finished product. For example, he looks like a zombie, his overcoat is missing it's fancy-schmancy decor, he's short with a hint of a potbelly.

Okay, so he's taller and thinner...

...And now with the help of the Liquify tool, I've given him a chiropractic adjustment. I called this de-hipping, just 'cause I made it look like he wasn't being all feminine and sassy. But he still looks positively ghastly in the face, and that's because I tried to follow a "painting a photo-realistic face on Photoshop" tutorial on Pinterest. First of all, this picture's not supposed to be photo-realistic, second of all, the person who made the tutorial was working off of a real picture, not a fuzzy idea in their head, and thirdly, I stink at following tutorials without skipping around impatiently. So I just went back to the original sketch, made the drawing's skin a tad rosier than white, tossed on a handful of brass buttons and heart appliques, and voilà!  

So this wasn't exactly a Photoshop tutorial on how to fill in a sketch. I kept a whole lot hush-hush, mostly because it's way too boring to write down step-by-step. When I do it, I just sort of feel my way around, making faces at my computer screen and erasing stuff and covering it up and finding references on what metal actually looks like and stealing the designs from people's boots and consuming large amounts of salty snacks and getting advice from my siblings and playing around with colors and freaking out because I thought I ruined everything and making teeny-tiny recalibrations and adjustments and basically spending a long time acting like I know what I'm doing until it looks okay. If you really want to know something about Photoshop and how to edit stuff, go ahead and ask, but all I can really say is that it helps a ton to have a mother and older sister who have absorbed the program and it's capabilities so much that they can do all sorts of freaky photo adjustments without going "Oooh, I wonder what this button does!"

Lastly, as far as I can tell, Vance Kovacs was the concept artist who made the Homburg Molly picture, so apologies, sir, for filching designs. I only did it because yours were awesome. 

Is that everything? Good, good...

To God be the Glory,

Hannah