I’m getting around to illustrating some of the characters that have, so far, not received much love from my pens. Here we have the three staff members of Topaz: eccentric Brian Smith of Engineering, kind-hearted Laura Clarke of Mathematics, and ensemble darkhorse/pyromaniac Lucia James of SCIENCE (making up for the rubbish rushed picture I did of her a year ago)!

UPDATE!
The chapter is finished, at last. A thousand-word scene, you say? Try two-and-a-half >_>
It’s been sent off for proof reading now, so I’ll put it up official-like when I’ve had some sleep!

First up: #78.2 will get released sometime over the weekend. To cut a long story short (unlike what I do with the actual story, oho!) I decided I had to rewrite an entire thousand-word scene from scratch, which is a good 4-5 hours work! I figure it’s better to have a late chapter than a sub-par one, however :p

Lance doing an admirable impression of British pop sensation Jedward. Maybe.

Also, due to the workload, and the holiday season, and everything else, I’m not going to make any promises on further chapters before 2011! #79 starts with some nice (hopefully colour) pages, so I figure that a good back-from-holidays point to start from. When I have a better idea of what work I have to do, I’ll make a concrete announcement. Keep checking back because I’ll post things like this to drum up some hype:

This is what the actual story pages will look like in the new design. There will also be 'wide' variations for illustrations, which will allow me to display them at a higher resolution than I do currently

This is part of the character database. At last you'll be able to view profiles on all the characters!

So there you go: an actual look at what this story will look like in 2011!

Here’s something from the next chapter, drawn with fancy dip pens I was able to buy thanks to funds raised from donations and the sale of that weird painting I did a few weeks back. Thanks again to everyone who has helped (and that goes to the regular posters and those who have recommended friends/liked on Facebook/all other such things too)!

Speaking of which, I’ve decided that, over the next few weeks/month-or-so I’m going to work on some art for limited run prints, so I can possibly try to raise some funds to put towards getting some proper, decent merchandise produced (because, frankly, my income hardly covers my living costs, so putting any money into developing anything is practically impossible!). Hopefully then I’ll be able to get on with some of the myriad things I’ve talked about producing over 2010 XD (and I ought to thank again those who have had the patience to stick by the site through all this – I’ve not really lived up to any of the grand dreams I spouted in the early months of this year, for all sorts of rubbish reasons!)

I’m enjoying writing about Titania so much, it looks like I’ll be getting several chapters out of her now! If you enjoyed the first two chapters, where it was all faeries and magical islands, you’ll be liking what’s coming up. It also contains a few references to events that will be covered in the expanded prologue I’m planning, which covers the events of chapters #1 and #2 in more detail.

Speaking of faeries, here’s the completed Freyr/Dionysus piece I previewed the other day:

Meanwhile, those subscribed to Farcebook may have already seen this, and I’ve been meaning to show it off to everyone else: it’s a new piece of fan art by the rather talented Krystal, whose deviantArt you can find here.

Finally, it’s the last day of the auction on that silly painting I did. So yeah.

Here I am, keeping you up-to-date on recent Phantasia-based happenings!

The break has proven to be a blessing, leading to some stuff I would’ve have written otherwise – mainly a chapter or two dedicated to Princess Titania in the form of some flashbacks, which will help clear up any confusion over why Awyr seems to have two/three names (among other things)!

I really should post something about the original plan, just so you can see how much things have changed… There was a time when this whole ‘Adonis’ thing was a single chapter in length! And it was chapter 27.

Tentative date for series start-up is September 9th. 4th if you’re really lucky.

Meanwhile here’s another preview image, from the flashbacks, featuring Princes Freyr and Dionysus:

Lots of art coming up over the next few chapters, so I’ve got my work cut out for me. Yeah, I know I have a thousand and one other things to do for the site too >_>