Now Morgan's standing in the forest, and the shimmering is replaced by a dappling effect thanks to canopy cover and the resulting shadows.
Note he has the most gorgeous blue eyes (that I have to draw better) and a white diamond-shaped blaze on his forehead. Of course that then contravenes the fact he's meant to have black stockinged forelimbs, but meh. I also realised that he's abnormally tall, especially around the legs, thanks to the entire lower limb part. It looked ok on Aeryn, but on Morgan, who isn't a short-arse, well...Also note (for the 3rd time in as many uploads) that he doesn't have any 'loose fur' esp around hooves. I said I was a stickler for anatomical detail- and I STILL suck at drawing horse heads. And shoulders. And everything else.
MorganİD.Ong,Jan2005

His figure shimmers through the sweltering heat...Morgan in his rather 'un-natural' home habitat: the desert. He's from the desert sector of the shadow people, and with that comes a whole new set of circumstances. Which I shall explain in yet another text document.
Actually I recoloured the reference sheet with pastels and put it through photoshop. This is as close as I can get to Morgan's colouration as a 'half-changeling.' Note the stockinged forelimbs (I got a thing for those :P). Also note that I'm a stickler for anatomical correctness, but it doesn't quite qualify as yiff. Should I make him wear something though?
MorganİD.Ong,Jan2005

I TRIED to resist the temptation, but I couldn't.

I thought those ipod ads were real effective coz I haven't seen a TV ad like that in a while. Like, ever. Which is a longish while.

So as you know, this is Aeryn, learning how to jive. I assume Xinoeph taught her...more on that later. And she doesn't have an ipod- that thing around her neck is her ID amulet. It should be attached with 2 strings, but that wrecked the composition.
I'm growing rather fond of Aeryn- she's what one might call a 'nice girl,' if only she didn't have such a strange strange upbringing.

GO FLOODFILL!!! I mucked around in photoshop for a goodly 3 hours before pressing one button to give the present effect.
Blah.
AerynİD.Ong,Nov2004

Why I haven't uploaded anything in a while.

Okay okay so 2 days isn't much of a 'while', but really I've got 4 requests in queue, and I haven't gotten underway on any of them yet XD . And I haven't got jacksquat to upload either.
More lineart, this. The fountain pen is supposed to aid me in making the outline surgically precise and even, but having eschewed drinks and a shower, and trying to do it at 3am in the morning gave me shakes to rival the DTs. This is just a preliminary stage and I wanted to preserve it before going on the fuck it up in various ways.
AerynİD.Ong,Nov2004

Another cutesy pic- I'm in this phase, partially due to my brother I guess. Also, this was the only thing I had time to do during my brief trip to Melbourne (bloody college applications).
As you can see, it's the macroped. Again. This time she's slightly wet, and off-balance trying to walk across the sleet.
When doing the pine trees (ignore the one on the right, that was a total fuck-up) and the clouds, I learnt the value of the WHITE pastel pencil. How could I be so ignorant?
Oh well nuts to that- methinks I shall go and learn CG- and get me a Wacom tablet :P
MacropedİD.Ong,Jan2005

Blah blah blah more crappy lineart with lots of dry verbage... But not to fear! I'm coming to the end of my old (and finished ) stuff, which you would notice is markedly worse than my NEW stuff (practise makes perfect as they say.)
The idea with Raine (the little baby dragon as shown here) is that he's a thought-experiment. Some kind of self-run hypothetical situation to do with the question of what defines a life. Because Raine has no physical senses- so what does he have? And how is it possible then that he can be breastfed?

More on this later.
AraelİD.Ong,Apr2002
RaineİD.Ong,May2003

This is my 'earliest' drawing on the VCL at the moment, being done sometime in December 2003. Despite that, this is still my favorite pic of Raine- another character from Metamorphosis (incidentally now a whopping 11 ppl have attempted to read my garbled thoughts on that project...I'm amazed.) Of course, since this is the first pic of Raine here, none of you would know what part he plays in this giant mess. Try reading the text- I'm in a rush right now and couldn't be bothered transcribing it here.

RaineİD.Ong,May2003

Another logo, done at the same time as the psychosis one. This was done before I knew the value of pens, textas and other implements of bold, even textural application. Looking back at these I feel a-bit-of-a-retard but hey, everybody makes mistakes.
The other thing is that I somehow insist on doing my own lettering, manually. What a waste of time.
RaelİD.Ong,Apr2002

When I was slightly younger, say year before last, I always thought that big swords were cool to swing around. Until I tried practising sword forms with a 5 kg clothes-line pole (about six feet long), lost concentration and whacked myself on the temple. It hurt. Nonetheless, Rael here has not one but 2 big swords that he's twirling around while whooping maniacally. What a psycho. I guess you could say this was a kind of logo- or simply a representation of part of my persona, and related concepts. You can tell this is an old pic since Rael's feet are still relatively human-sized. I wonder what would happen if I used the chrome effect in photo-deluxe...

Rael(ii)İD.Ong,Apr2002

Another macroped. Or rather, the same macroped. Unfortunately I messed up somewhat and made the legs too thin...it ain't a macroped if the legs don't occupy about 15 times the volume than the rest of it does. I also started struggling when finishing the background, coz it started smudging (I'm unco) and the H-tinted pastels tend to streak instead of blend. Overall I'd say it turned out pretty alrite- the colours balanced out and the new (for me) technique is off to a good start: the grass is actually done first by an underlayer of blended hues in pastel, then detailed on with studios. And I'm rather fond of my fountain pen.

'Where there's a macroped, there's always a rainbow.'

macropedİD.Ong,Jan2005 (the term 'macroped' credited to R.Bhandari)

Finally, another pic of the Alaskan_hound. Riding a wild lookin' cruiser thingy. Actually it's kinda like a mutated cross between Kanaeda's bike from Akira and a Honda Rune. It has a sweet 8 cyl 400kw engine with...ok better stop before I start. I have half a mind to take the armoured casing off the exhausts and show them like they should be: flared. Alaskan_hound is actually wearing his jacket (as opposed to going topless) and he's carrying his modified 21E 7.62mm (VERY heavily modified). And again I had to annotate the pic because that's me.
As usual, done with pencils...(why do I bother telling you that)
Alaskan_HoundİD.Ong, Aug2004

I call it a macroped :P (see LJ 28-02-05 for an explanation)

Have you ever seen those plush-toys with ridiculously huge legs? Like, larger than their entire body, irrespective of species? Ye, well, I thought I had like a +20 resistance to cute things like Pikachu and all that, but when I saw these, it was like 'awwww kawaiiiiiii.' So I did this at 2 in the morning. I was *trying* to 'realise' the plush toy by firming up the physical attributes (not that much can be done with stitches, cloth and stuffing), but at the same time kept some of the stich markings.
Technically this is a cutesy version of Aeryn (unicorn), but somehow she gained fetlocks, and I can't tell whether this is a filly or colt. Now that's out of my system, I think I'll do some more XD

macropedİD.Ong,Jan2005

Even if the original CS is 'offially' dead with the release of CS Source, there are still those players from the underground that remain loyal to the good ol' ver. 1.6. It just so happens that The Bunnygirl is abit of an online geek, just like your average person. Hence she uses a net-persona: hunny_bunny. And she likes CS. Of course, the pic looks really stupid, since there's no way that a skin like that would ever be used for CS, but what the hell. She's even got a stupid spray logo to go with it. Note that the head still needs alot of work...but I don't really want to move towards a more realistic rabbit-head though.
Hunny_bunny(c)D.Ong,Aug2004

More of the bunnygirl, still showing her panties, and still wearing that strange strange half-halter top half-shirt. Hence she is 'always dressed sensibly.' For a trip to the gynaecologist perhaps. Bully for every other heterosexual male (and homosexual female) around. Nonetheless, her head is still weird. I can only get better at it. I hope.
Hunny_bunnyİD.Ong, Aug2004

Lineart. Semi-on-topic lineart. I WAS going to do a background and proper rendering, but the way it looked I wasn't going to pass up the chance to scan it and immortalise it before I went and fucked it up, like I just fucked up my latest colour job. Again. Remind me NOT to attempt to substitute saliva for water on a watercolour job. One of these days I'm going to win a Darwin Award...
Anyhow, so this is more like what you'd see of Aeryn, should she have to change into a fully quadrupedal unicorn. She'd most likely be scared witless. And running like hell. What I really like about THIS one is the expression. Oh yeh, she's scared alright.
AerynİD.Ong, Nov2004

*sigh* more black and white crap I hear you say. Do not despair! I have moved on to a productive period of colors! Besides, this was done in May, 2004, which was ages ago. I still got about 50 old 2004 images to upload!
A quick pic I did when feeling a little down, the HSC (final school examinations) being what it is. I should have been studying, but then again even if I don't have time to do this stuff, I make the time, usually at around 2 am in the morning. Oh well the exams are over, everybody's happy so I don't mind if I felt like shit before. And I got some nice pics out of it. I liked the wings in this one. They're the hardest part to get, and the curve was just so it framed the head...fluke. And the foot looks funny.
Rael(ii)İD.Ong,Apr2002

Collapsed- unconscious- or even dead maybe? No, not quite. Because Rael never dies. He gets shot, beat up, loses alot of blood occasionally, but being harder than a brick wall, he has an unrelenting grip on life. Or at last his body has an unrelenting grip on what his mind thinks is life. Um does a soul come into this anywhere?
Actually I don't give a shit about any concept of a soul here.
This particular sketch will be used in part 4, upon Rael's returning to Sanctuary. But right now, he's baking on the desert floor. Hence the lack of any real background.
Rael(ii)İD.Ong,Apr2002

Because of Rael's elongated neck, I am forever unsure of how he'd adapt to actions involving interaction between his head and hands, such as scratching, cracking joints (in the neck...a habit he regularly engages in). The wings are even harder to get right.

Hence: A slightly adapted foetal position favored by Rael when sleeping. Also a position favored by those who shield themselves from an injury they know they will receive. But Rael is not hunted, so why would he be scared?

Quick pencil (0.5 pacer actually). I was intending to add some sunlight effects when I realised that there is no sun in Sanctuary. And so far about 7 people would know what Sanctuary is. But no-one knows why there isn't a sun there. More on this later.
Rael(ii)İD.Ong,Apr2002

This should be named 'I SUCK AT CHARCOALS.' Because this is my second attempt at using them, and it took me 3 reworkings (i.e. 10 hours) to get it half right. This is an extract of the 3rd reworking. I say extract, because I drew it at the wrong angle (about 17 degrees anti-clockwise from what I wanted it) and on a poky corner of the page. I also used some graphite sticks I had handy, but mainly the only thing I was happy with was the tail. Which had to be cut out due to editing and orientation and all that shit. Oh and Aeryn is actually colored like an Arabian, but this is nightime, in the middle of a blazing fire. Only you can't really see that either.
AerynİD.Ong, Nov2004

And voila; somewhat of a finished product.
From here the background looks like a right ol' mess, especially since it looks like a bunch of squiggles. Unfortunately, the inking part took 16 hours working time (or 4 days) and the digital moddying took 2.
A checklist of things to see if I've managed to balance the focus subjects as opposed to the details:
You should find 7 bodies, including that of X and A.
2 wrecked vehicles,
1 spent cartridge on the bottom left of the pic. This is actually the closest item to the viewer, but I left it 'redded out.' Did I do right?
Apologies for the terrible quality (i.e. MINIMUM), but it's still 214k as you can see :( It was 509k before.
Copyrights as applied to the other pandemonium drafts. (I cbf)

Utter and complete chaos. A black and white frame of Xinoeph (the kid with the bokken) and Aeryn 'working their way' towards the shadow hq.
The original size of this image is 1024x768. However, were I to make it that, the filesize would be 500kb at the lowest feasible quality. Not like you could see anything anyway, I realised too late that you can't lighten ink, but I tried anyway using a vinyl rubber. Not worth the effort. The texture is too thick and unbalanced towards the left, and the composition is cluttered...so some digital modifications were in order. (See sketches for process.)
AerynİD.Ong, Nov 2004
XinoephİJ.Young, Nov 2004

Yeah yeah I know that all the images here have been uploaded already...but here's a simple example of what an amateur can do with some images, and MS Paint. The text is just all the stuff off the character sheet, done using Paint. The real problem is that the contrast and brightness cannot be set too high, since the images are not strictly black and white. Hence I tend to spend 3-8 hours or so doing masking and cleaning the outline so I can paste the image in paint without unsightly extraeneous pixel crap messing up the whole image. (The same applied to Aerynwallpaper3).
This will probably be the last upload for a bit, since I'm astonishingly low on upload allowance now :( (and I'm working on an ink which takes ages.)
copyright info is on the image itself.

Yes yes I know this is off-topic (it's the first one, incidentally). But it's here for a sense of completeness. This is Aeryn, as a human, in full dress. It's a kind of casual military wear typical of her people. The boots and gloves seem to have alot of buckles on them...and the gloves look like they come from a HEV suit from Half-life. Especially due to the colouring (electric orange and gunmetal.) At any rate, I tried to do a good colouring job i.e. convey texture through layering...but I'm still pretty new at it. Pastels, and felt tip.
AerynİD.Ong, Nov2004

A quick, wispy portrait of Aeryn. Took me literally 3 minutes to do. It's supposed to be some kind of indication as to Aeryn's default expression, which is kind of vague or even vapid. When it comes to everyday things that real people take for granted, Aeryn can only be described as an ingenue. Done using fine markers, Stabilo felt tip (black, 05) and a HB pencil for the 'wispy' effect.
AerynİD.Ong, Nov2004

And one more before going to bed (it's 4am on a new year's morning...argh running out of upload allowance...I'm a loser) We have some slightly metaphysical, self-referential joke here: a computer generated character playing with a computer. WOW O_o ...and again that panty flash. I dunno what's with the shirt though. It looks way too starched. How does one type with 4 fingers in bulky gloves? (Very much the same way Strong Bad can type with boxing gloves on...duh.) And if you don't know who Strong Bad is, then you're missing out: www.homestarrunner.com .
Hunny_BunnyİD.Ong, Aug2004

Big boots, big gun, big gloves, big ears, big breasts...yup. That's a cartoon character if ever I saw one. Also note the panty-flash, which is a sure sign of a flirt. Or an exhibitionist, depending on how extreme she happens to be. This is an alternative set of clothing, perhaps a skin mod the bunny might use to play something like CS or something (have not played CS for ages, on account of using this piece-of-shit laptop which has a tendency to overheat.
Hunny_BunnyİD.Ong, Aug2004

Yet another counterpart...not this time, technically speaking. But it is another fictional character from that fictional MMORPG that the Alaskan_Hound plays a part in (and a whole bunch of characters I haven't bothered to draw yet.) Hunny_Bunny (as she called herself) was meant to be based loosely on Cream (that wittle kawaii rabbit from the Sonic seres (tm by Sega I assume)). But all you can see of that, is that for a head all I did was take a sphere and whack on a nose, and some ridiculous ears. Also, I decided to enhance the proportions slightly (nowhere near that of say Doug Winger or Mark Stretch), in keeping with the nature of the human character that Hunny_Bunny is a digital representation of.

Coz where there's a front, there's also a rear (or something stupid like that). Her presence has (or is meant to have) a certain element of sexuality to it :P This drives Rael nuts for reasons you would not think of *chuckles derisively* (again read text file...to be uploaded later). Also: Arael is actually white, almost translucent such that the shadow on her skin, if any, is a light gray-blue. The same applies to the wing membranes. I really should do a coloured version sometime.
AraelİD.Ong, Apr2002

A brief (and rather faded) pacer sketch of Rael's counterpart. Her name is Arael (wow). Actually the story goes that Rael lost his memory temporarily and simply took the 'masculine' form of the name for a bit- and it happened to stick (useless trivia). ANYWAY, Arael only has one variation: this one (NB: By variation, I mean from a human format). She's nice and comfy in this form, unlike Rael, who takes the opportunity to psychologically torture himself at every waking moment (hence his having 4&1/2 variations).
AraelİD.Ong, Apr2004

The other side of grumpy-green-dragon. Normally when you see him, I bet you think 'jerk'. Or 'wanker'. Being another character from another project, there's a good reason why he's always like this. It's because he used to be an eternal optimist.
A brief note about these (var x) suffixes: there are currently 4 types of 'morph' concerning Rael (read txt file for explanation.) The 2nd (the one with the reptilian breastplate thingy) is the most done. So I don't know why I called myself randy-blue-dragon. Meh.
Rael(var2)İD.Ong, Apr2002