Hidden Melody

State of the Site(s)

It seems that H-M has been down for a good week or so.

I’ll try to keep on blogging, at the least twice each month as it has been since over two years ago :)  For those who have continued to visit, I thank you.

That time off that I’ve had with Hidden Melody has gotten me thinking about the future, and I believe that in the upcoming months, I will be seeing a transition from Hidden Melody, which with all of the combined periods of being hosted by different places, have been at least four to six years, and even before that, it’s been probably five to six years since I’ve started having my own website, and about five since I’ve started coding HTML and CSS, which I do say, have been pretty much hand-coding my little projects since that time, which would mean that I was 14-13 years old.  Of course I’m just guessing, although I do recall that I’ve never did any WWW-related stuff on windows 98 SE, and only after getting XP I started. :3

Well, I think that I should stop rambling on now, and just have to do a little self-promotion of sorts:

My remote development server that’s hosted by a friend is at http://azuretan.mine.nu/; Quite possibly if you visit it right now you might see my upcoming personal site.

Which now brings me to another rant, after the jump.

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Drawings to Websites to Novels

Looking at my latest drawings (that I did tonight) and the drawings that I put on my ‘door of least-crappy drawings’ (I forgot what I named it when I put those drawings up there sometime last year,) I have noticed a great improvement, particularly in how refined my drawings are now. 

Now, they aren’t that refined, but it’s a great improvement.  For one, rather than just being singular, forced lines, my lines now seem to be more fluid, even though most of them are still not exactly touching each other.  Also, my hatching skill has improved too — I am able to create soft shading in the whites of the eye(s), and mid to dark shading in the iris. 

Proportions seem to be (somewhat) improved. I’m starting to get used to drawing hands, legs, breasts (still getting there though), however, one thing that REALLY needs improvement is, *sigh* profile and front-side.  I think that would be the next step for me, so then I can do a larger variety of poses other than my normal ‘left-front-side’ (Please tell me what the correct term is[?]) and turning the body at a certain angle and drawing the hair dangling off, which I think is a nice pose, but I’ve been drawing a bit of that lately (relatively, I haven’t been drawing too much lately, although I am getting back into it again.)

Still on the topic of ‘next steps’ (hah,) I think that I should have a mascot/’flagship’ character to use when I finally finish that ‘new’ website that I have talked about in the past (Which I’ll probably not get done unless I can get an actual design on screen, which will probably be… *pulls out calculator…* … okay, let’s just say whenever it gets done, okay?)

I am still wondering what I should name it though, I might just go with my name (Mark Seymour) or go with something that I have sitting on my hard drive… However more than likely the domain will be http://markseymour.ca/ (I will be VERY pissed if someone decides to swipe it just to piss me off, there is no reason for someone to domainsquat a website domain that is a person’s name.)

Hm, another topic… Well, I’ve been attempting to get ideas for a novel that I want to write. (Light novel? :p)  I guess you could say that it’s based upon yoshitoshi ABe’s story "Haibane Renmei," which itself was derived from an older work of his "The Haibane of Old Home."  I did try to start on it a couple of days on the bus ride home from Truro, but however… well let’s see, an 18-year old Canadian Nova Scotian male writing "I was floating…" in a self-created text editor (NOT releasing it), in ~19pt green Courier New with a black background, with the window transparency set to ~85%, with a picture of Hatsune Miku in the background.  If I had the two seats to myself, then I would be doing it, but it was cramped (Imagine sitting next to a person  correcting papers on a tray in a Acadien Lines bus.) And for the record, my previous story, "Tsubasa," I only got ~2 paragraphs done.  And this was some time ago mind you.  I think that this story will be more fulfilling to me, knowing that I am doing something that could possibly be sold to a publisher and then bought by a lot of people.

And then I thought of something as I wrote that last sentence (in the previous paragraph [lol, past tense],) "What about the artwork?"

Well, I was thinking of using some self-drawn illustrations [in my preferred style, of course,) and maybe, possibly, get one or two other people to do art(work) as well, either in my preferred style (but not in my specific style,) or in whatever style that they're comfortable with.  I already have a feeling for what the overall feeling is going to be throughout the story, so the challenge would be to capture that either in full color illustrations, or typography.  It can't be anything generic (Times New Roman, anyone?) or too fancy (Gothic calligraphy would be too difficult, and would turn a lot of people off.) I want the cover, Front/spine typography, and overall colour scheme/illustration to catch people's attention, but not in the bad way (For example, someone picks up the book, and it has crazy, CRAZY fonts and abstract art.  This would definitely NOT appeal, and it definitely NOT give the overall feeling/aura of the book.)

To be blunt, I want it similar to Haibane [Renmei,] but not LIKE it, in other words, trying to make it my own.

I thank you a lot for reading this far! I would appreciate it if you comment on anything here down in the comments, the only way for me to get feedback is by you, my reader, to give it. :)

Writing stories

For some time, I’ve been wondering whether I should try to write a light novel (or even a short story for that matter.) A couple of years back, I started to write a story called "Tsubasa," and as usual lazyness insured, so I never wrote anything past ~4 paragraphs.  And the idea was pretty good (even though it was a little cliché, mind you,) basically the synopsis was that a young girl who possesed a gem/stone that was passed down from generations, was eventually passed down to her from her aging grandmother. Basically the legend of that stone is that when the possesor’s life was in danger it would grant that person the ability of flight (the reason why I named it "Tsubasa".) I still have that file kicking around somewhere on my computer converted into Word 2007 format.

Lately, that thought has gotten stronger, and now I feel like I should try to write about something.  I am not too sure what it’s plot will be, or what genres/clichés will be present, but maybe… if it is good enough quality maybe, just MAYBE I might attempt to get it printed, or try to find someone who would be interested.  Time will tell.