THINGS LEARNED IN DREAMS: Jesus Christ's second coming happened approximately five thousand years ago (I KNOW, but it's not so strange when you realize there are people who seriously believe the Earth is only slightly older than that), at which time he delivered his Cup to the Native peoples of America to keep it out of the hands of the evil-doing Europeans. The Grail was filled with truly amazing salsa- not too hot, not too bland, and just the right consistency- that "spoileth not." Apparently, finding and eating of the Cup's contents is pretty much all it takes to win one's High School Debate Club finals:

"President Bush's policies have done more for our country's stability and security than any other president since Lincoln!"

"Oh yeah? CONDIMENT OF CHRIST BITCHES *homph arrrf mmf smak*"

Finally managed to put that last commission behind me. Shortly after telling me that it was wonderful and just perfect, Andrew emailed me back and asked if I could add some emphasis to her eyes and maybe some lipstick. Told him it wouldn't be a problem at all, since I'd completely forgotten all about the buttons on the neck of Lieza's cloak ANYWAY, and needed to do some touch-up work to other areas. He cancelled the lipstick order, though, claiming it took attention away from the eyes, which were supposed to be the CENTER of the pic to begin with.

Y'know, "important areas to be emphasized" would be one of those things that it's generally best to tell a guy BEFORE he starts on your pic. Ah, well- Andrew likes the finished pic, and I guess that's all that matters.

So! One fairly draining commission behind me, and two big ones looming on the horizon. Y'all know what that means: more Peachy PerilDistressed Daisy!

Click for cloud-shocking ACTION.

Man what IS it with not allowing text tags in LJ-cut tags.

Figured I'd give Peach a break this time around and give Daisy a shot (THAT'S A PUN FOLKS) at dangerous dilemma. She does tend to be my Princess of choice these days, and goodness knows how many hours I've put into trying to make sure the fifty dozen people who have promised me Peach pics over the years know to draw Daisy instead. Anyway, it pretty much had to be her since, before this picture, the last time I drew her was almost eighteen months ago in the July smutpic, which is just unacceptable considering that I've drawn Peach... jeez, SIX TIMES since then.

The scenario here is actually the very first I came up with waaaaaaay back when I was still tracing pictures out of Nintendo Power. I blame it mostly on an old Garbage Pail Kids card I had- Google turns it up as "Dyin' DINAH" (a scan of which can be found in the listing here).

...Gah. Looking over some of these cards, I think any number of my current twists and quirks can be traced directly back to my old GPK collection.

When I started planning scenarios for the renewed series about a year ago, this was pretty much all I could come up with for Grass Land- the place is just NOT that threatening. It's the standard Miyamoto "learning level"- it's designed to teach players most of the skills they'll need in the other seven worlds of the game, so they make it relatively easy on you. Then I realized that it actually works both ways- sure, aside from the auto-scrolling 1-4 and some of the tricky jumps in 1-6, the world itself isn't that dangerous, but since you learn all these skills through trial and error, there's a million and two ways to twist any one of them. So hey, now I have far too many ideas for World 1.

This is still pretty much the only one that works as a quick one-off pic, though. SO HEY LET'S GET BACK TO IT

Hey, dig that Raccoon Suit! Looks familiar, don't it?! Think I'm gonna want to go with the girls' Tennis/Golf outfits for the ol' Raccoon Leaf- they're really neat little outfits, and fun to work with. I mean, Daisy wears the orange hotpants and sleeveless top number you see here, and Peach actually wears a little miniskirt. Completely impractical for flying, but so are raccoon tails, if you really look at it.

I still struggle with the basics of two-point perspective. It's something that'll get better with practice, I hope. Really, though, there wasn't a lot to perspect apart from the Bullet Bill, which I'm reasonably happy with; everything else could look like utter crap (AND IT DOES!) and still come off okay because of that radical blurring effect in the background. SPEED, PEOPLE! Can you feel it?!

I got the idea to Radial Blur the background from this pic over at Andrew Dickman's DA gallery. I've always seriously dug the pic- love the Paper Mario look, but I also like the sense of movement in the background, though it kind of gives me a headache if I look at it too long. I think it's due to the fact that the Plant's vines are inked, so I went with my usual minimalist approach with the background.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Though really, it's because these Peril pics are supposed to be inbetween-project fillers, to be done in a day or two. Daisy here took four, but only because I spent Friday night out with friends and most of Sunday running spur-of-the-moment errands for Mom.

Anyway- showed blurred and un-blurred versions to a sample group of friends, and without exception they chose the blurred background. However, all but one also added one bit of feedback- it'd look even better with SPEEDLINES. I remember Keiiii had a Speedline tutorial up not too long ago, but damned if I can find the thing NOW. Turns out they're crazy simple to half-ass:

SHAX'S HALF-ASSED SPEED LINE TUTORIAL:

1) Go to Layers, create a new layer between your foreground characters and your background.
2) Select Line Tool. Check the Work Path button in the Shape Type menu.
3) Draw hell of lines radiating out from your vanishing point (which, ideally, should also be the target of your action.)
3a) IT IS IMPORTANT TO DRAW THE LINES FROM THE VANISHING POINT TOWARDS THE EDGE OF THE PIC.
4) Select Brush tool. Give it a hard-edged brush of about 3 to 5 pixels, 100% opacity/flow.
5) Go to the Paths menu and right-click on the Work Path. Select "Stroke Path", stroke from Brush, and check the Simulate Pressure box.
6) Enjoy your ghetto-azz speed lines, you lazy hump.

They could probably use a little tweaking, but they get the job done.

More Daisy to come in the immediate future- she's in Andy's next commission, though I seriously doubt anybody but him will see that. Aside from that, I'm planning to do a matching Daisy pic for last year's Armorpeach pic for Otakon. And shoot, wouldn't be surprised if she ended up in another one of these breather pics before too long.