Phew, a lot can happen in one week! Where to start...

I spent pretty much all of last week reading through 'The Stand' for science fiction/fantasy literature class, and finally got the dang thing doooone! Woohoo! *does victory dance over 1100+ page friggin' novel*
And to celebrate, I naturally had to do a bit of fanart from it:



Naturally, I had to draw Randall Flagg, because he scares the living crap out of me. Supposedly, Flagg or "The Dark Man" shows up in a ton of King novels (the only other one I've read for class, The Eyes of the Dragon, also had Flagg in it.) So here is as in The Stand, complete with lots of crows, because guys turning into crows = awesome.

And since Flagg has the knack of making everyone's life a LIVING HELL, this obviously was an inking nightmare. Stupid friggin' spot blacks and stupid friggin' texture on the corn...

*runs away from Flagg, waving arms and screaming*


Last Friday we went to go see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on the opening day, woohee! Needless to say, it rocked and I can't wait to see it again. The dragon fight and the underwater scene were both awesome, and the maze was sufficiently creepy. Most importantly, Cedric = HAWT. We need more Hufflepuff love! I nearly cried at the part where he died, especially after Harry gets back to the tournament after battling Voldemort, who was creepy as hell. (Rather eccentric, too?) Death Eater costumes could've used some work (KKK much?) but whatever.
Other awesome things:
- The Weasley twins had me roffle-ing all over the place, and I love them both to pieces!
- Ferret!Malfoy also had me roffle-ing. I nearly exploded when he somehow ended up in Goyle's pants. o.O
- Fake!Madeye Moody in general was a great character. I never liked Moody in the book itself, but I liked him a lot in the movie.
- I'm glad they didn't bother with the S.P.E.W. subplot; it seemed pointless in the book, too.
- I loved both Fleur and Viktor here as well. I think I appreciated Fleur even more after reading HBP, so I can't wait to see more of her.
- The Yule Ball was both sweet and hilarious. Go Hermione! (And poor Ron for getting stuck with those robes!)

A few things I was annoyed about: I wish they'd done more with the Quidditch World Cup. I had kind of a non-sequitor jolt when one minute they were introducing the two teams and it was awesome, and the next all the tents were on fire. (And what happened to those people being tormented in midair that I seemed to remember from the trailer?)
I also wish they had explained Rita's whole animagus deal. If they were going to include her at all, they should've included the whole thing about her beetle alter-self. The scenes with her in them were hilarious, but sort of pointless without that ending bit, plus it would help buff up the next movie on how the Ministry (or anyone else for that matter) is not taking Harry seriously.

But overall, they did as good a job they could considering how frelling LONG the book is, and the constraints they had to work with when making it a workable movie. Loved it, all must go see it!


Manga Babble:
Been buying a ton of OEL and other manga lately...I'll need to rearrange my shelf space so they can stop being sprawled all over my room! I was really happy to find Mark of the Succubus AND Psy-Comm at Borders Express on Sunday, woohee! I'm probably gonna take them with me over Thanksgiving break to read so that I can enjoy them over a long period of time, aaaaand not-so-discretely-suggest-to-my-relatives-that-drawing-comic-books-is-a-viable-way-to-make-something-resembling-half-a-living-*cough*. XD
Also, I am now COMPLETELY hooked on Deathnote. I just picked up the first one last week 'cause I had heard good things about it and was curious, then I actually read through the first one in a fast sitting with my eyes glued to the page. And when I went to buy MotS and Psy-Comm, I snatched up the second Deathnote, and read that, too! XD I need to read moooooore...I was seriously not expecting to like it this much. I love the whole battle-of-wits storyline, and find it fascinating that the story almost forces you to root for the mass-murderer. (We'll see if that changes in future chapters...)

KH2 Babble:
Holy cow, so much new information is coming out now I don't know where to begin! Two new trailers and they are both frelling GOOOOORGEOUS! (And also make me tear my hair out on not knowing what context certain scenes are in!) And...and Stitch as a summon! (ZOMGYAAAY) And Yuna and Rikku! (FFX-2 versions, but OH WELL!) And Seifer and Raijin and Fuujin and even VIVI from FFIX! And a plethora of new Organization members! And tons of new scans of the Tron world! *explodes from waiting for game*

Speaking of Tron, we finally watched it on Saturday since xanmuse happened to have the DVD, and I'd never seen it before. Holy cow, it was full of extreme 80's dorkiness! It was also full of plotholes and never seemed to have a central character, but it was fun if for no other reason than to see the oldskool CGI graphics. Now I want to play this world even more. XD We also watched the Family Guy movie, which naturally was friggin' hilarious and An American Tail, which I had never seen the entire way through. Ahhh, hooray for childhood animated movies. And I never even noticed until now that Don Bluth used rotoscoping in that movie...I think maybe I'm just overly sensetive to it now. But the characters are adorable, and I still pine for the loss of 2D animation.

Even though I've still got a few more things left to do for school, I feel that I've gotten most of it out of the way and am ready to go into relaxation mode. Senioritis kicking in, perhaps? In any case, I am more than ready for Winter Break to start.

Operator status: A little busy, but at least it's no longer Registration.

Serenity puppet show completion status: 50% Holy cow, yes! The script has been finished, and I also finished off making all of the puppets yesterday! If I am fortunate and time's on my side, then I should get the show up and on the site before Thanksgiving! If not, it won't be until after this weekend. That's basically my plans for today.

Drawing: That Flagg fanart took a ton of time, and the puppets was what I did yesterday. Now...not sure. I should work on some more practice stuff for Artifactory characters and/or portfolio junk.

Writing: I guess what I should be doing is working on my science fiction essay, since that's basically the last big thing that will be due. But I want to take as much of this week off from schoolwork as I can, so I'll probably just put it off. I got an A on the last essay when I essentially BSed it, so I can probably BS this one, too. XD