#267: The Winter Soulstress

     I am now 15 years old! *zealous confetti-ing* *smashes plate* That's a pretty whopping development in itself, but get this: once the numbers are sufficiently crunched, you'll find that I've been running this blog for over one-fifth of my life! I'm also about five-sixths of the way to starting college and making/breaking my adult animation career, so it's crunch time, folks. Anyway, sorry for not posting the ♪6th Creation of Christmas♪ on Sunday while I was enjoying my pre-birthday birthday shindig. But we've still got a good 5-ish days until the big 'Mas and the 12CoC's epic climax, so I'll make sure to balance things out by then. Now, onto the post! Ladies and gents, the first character post of the 12 Creationz of Christmas: the Winter Soulstress! Super alpaca points to anyone who noticed and appreciates the lowkey punnyness of that name, but if you aren't one such person, fear not. This character goes deeper than just some snappy paronomasia. Of all the abnormal and eye-raising locales on JC-Earth, there is one in particular that's managed to thouroughly cement itself in myth, and for good reason: Jästus Ridge. The snowy Finnish mountainside has seen a bus load of eager explorers visiting over the years--but few leaving. This could be attributed to your textbook geologic hazard, but par for the course with the JC-Verse, the truth is much, much stranger. Jästus Ridge just so happens to be the home of the legendary, and ridiculously dangerous, Winter Soulstress! Originally a curious young witch born in the Middle Ages, she broke a colossal taboo by falling for a non-mage at the age of 16. Enraged, the elder witches and warlocks had her lover sentenced to death, and cast her out into the icy slopes of Jästus Ridge, assuming her a surefire gonner. Unfortunately for them, they did some serious underestimating. With nothing to loose, the heartbroken young witch eventually stumbled into another taboo practice: soulsnatching. This brand of magic allows any experienced witch or warlock to suck the very spirit out of another living thing, and harness its life energy to, if they play their cards right, live forever. And with hikers trekking now and then across the treacherous Ridge, she had enough souls at her disposal to give it a go. So, the young witch became the Winter Soulstress, luring strapping and unsuspecting explorers into her icy clutches and stockpiling their souls, sustaining her life century after century. (*inhales and exhales* Nothing like a good ol'-fashioned mystical European death mistress to get you in the spirit.)

(Version with more details coming soon (maybe))

THE AFOREMENTIONED SNAZZY LOGO

     I present to you the official logo for the 12 Creationz of Christmas! I initially planned to just add this puppy to the announcement post and fill today's spot with a certain character I've been planning, but things got a little off-track. Plus, considering the surprising amount of time it took to get the logo prepped and postable, I reckon it's as much a certified creation as any. Gentlemen, bring in the stamp! *stamps*

CLICK TO ENLARGE

FAN ART O'CLOCK (again) feat. Green Lantern (again)

     ♪For the 3rd Creation of Christmas, Jacob gave to me some heavily obscure DC fanart.♪ The lyrics could use a little finetuning, but they ring true nonetheless. It's fanart time once again! For the comic book casuals out there who may or may not be confuzzled right now, no, I didn't take some serious creative liberties in making this fanart. This is the incredibly old, incredibly different Green Lantern of the 1940s, AKA Alan Scott. Instead of policing extraterrestrials, this fella ran around with a dog and a portly cab driver, fighting giant swamp zombies and sky pirates. So, all-in-all, nothing new for this blog. Behold!

(by the by, that's Alan Tudyk as Alan Scott. Alanception, I guess. *Twilight Zone music*)

NOTEWORTHY THINGS

     Time for day #2! Well, technically still day #1, on account of the fact that I published the first day's post after midnight, but . . . you know, semantics. Anywho, since all the king-sized posts are currently scheduled for once I'm liberated from the shackles of schoolwork for three weeks starting Saturday, this one's gonna be pretty brief. But it's an important post nonetheless. Anyone by any chance wondering where the heck I was for the umpteen days after Characterfest? To be fair, it's not exactly a big "egad" moment anymore when I randomly vanish from the blog for a week or two--nothing will ever hold a candle to the Great "Oh Crud, I Haven't Posted in Six Months" Incident of '13--but some sufficiently noteworthy stuff occurred while I was away. Not even counting the Spider-Man Homecoming trailer. Which I'm gonna try not to start ranting about. *puts brain in a chokehold*

NOTEWORTHY THINGS

• I worked on the stage crew for my school's talent show. My school is basically a public school/homeschool hybrid, and I've done most of my schooling on the latter half of that combo since day one. Now that I'm in high school, I'm finally shedding my unofficial "official school hermit" image and getting familiar with the former half. It's been going pretty dandy so far.
• I saw Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Doctor Strange. November was apparently the month of New-York-based sorcerors in blue coats, not that I'm complaining. 1.8 out of 2 thumbs up.
•  I low-key mastered the skill of efficiently drawing snappily-dresssed older dudes from the torso up in large quantities, as you'll be seeing soon enough. Like I said, the king-sized posts are on their way.
• I continued un-hermit-izing myself by going to Teen Movie Night at my school last Friday. I got to watch Elf again, which I always consider a plus, given the fact that Buddy is my internal self, externalized.
• Lastly, this weekend I threw my accomplice/sister/on-hand representative of the fangirl populous Abby (AKA the Mustache Ninja) her Hamilton-themed birthday party. Throwing each other's birthday parties is an age-old tradition betwen the two of us. Our birthdays are 12 days apart, so December is essentially the Annual Housewide Birthday-Planning Championship for us. It would kinda be betraying the basic purpose of the 12 Creationz of Christmas if I left this post without something that qualifies as a creation. So, to fill that void, here are the half-and-half character headshots I made as decorations for the party. All-in-all, I think they turned out pretty snazzy. Enjoy!

  

  Alexander Hamilton

  
  

  

  Aaron Burr

  

  Eliza Schuyler

  

  Angelica Schuyler

  

  Peggy Schuyler

  

  John Laurens

  

  Lafayette

  

  Hercules Mulligan (with the decidedly slyest grin ever)

  
  

  

  George Washington

  

  Thomas Jefferson

  

  James Madison

  

  A very distraught King George

  
  

MARVEL EARTH 600 5: BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

     Alright, jolly ranchers. It's 12 Creationz of Christmas time. And to start things off I'm resurrecting an oldie. For those of you who weren't keeping tabs on this blog a bazillion years ago, Marvel Earth 600 was a headcanon that I created and posted about in detail a total of 4 times. It's basically the Marvel Universe, but every character has been flipped on their respective head. Click on this link if you want to dive into the depths of Archiveville and read those original four. But for now, without further ado, let's get into the Earth-600-ing of the character I promised all those eons ago that I would do next . . .

• Matt Murdock: after getting caught in the devistating crosshairs of a chemical spill, lawyer Matt Murdock was left blinded, burned, and teetering on the precipice of passing on. And given his moral choices so far, things weren't looking so good regarding where he'd be passing onto. But something shone upon him that day. A glorious, glowing being. It stood at the foot of his hospital bed, offering him a literally life-saving deal and a firm handshake to seal it. He accepted in a heartbeat. The only problem was, that being glowed red. And Matt Murdock had just given over his soul to a being known to some as Satan, to some as Mephisto, but who chooses to call himself "the Beast". Only unlike in the case of our pal Ghost Rider, Matt Murdock wasn't forced to run around settling scores on the devil's behalf. Instead, he was given two things: horns, and a watch. Two hideous horns, and a crimson-tinted watch that ticked and ticked and ticked down to the day he would 100% truly die. And every day Murdock continued living his newly restored life, those two things would remind him of what he had agreed to: that no matter what he did to change, once he finally passed on, his soul would contractually land in the hands of his putrid partner for eternity. There was nothing that ol' Matt could do at this point. So, luckily, he got some significant help. Taking pity on the poor lawyer and knowing the untapped potential that his soul was endowed with, an angelic being known soley as "Stick" was sent to recrute him into the earthly ranks of the "One-Above-All;" to allow him to fight alongside the angels against the fallen beings hat lurk among the living; to allow Murdock to maybe, just maybe find redemption and rid himself of the terrible debt he owes in the afterlife. So, just as desperate to reclaim his life as he had once been to save it, he said yes. Equipped a pair of battons embowed with holy energy, Murdock fights alongside Stick in the war against the dark spirits of Earth 600, as well as the Beast's human followers (known by the moniker of "the Hand")--and all the while working to once and for all save his soul. (Should I try to tie this post into Christmas? Should I make that connection? I dunno, it's past midnight and I'm too tired to function. You get the jist. Angels and all that good stuff.)

FESTIVE FESTIVITIES (Feat. An Announcement)

     Greetings and salu-stinking-tations, everybody! Look at that. Almost a week since the first Spider-Man Homecoming trailer and pigs are not yet flying, nor has H.E.Doublehockeysticks frozen over. The prophecies were wrong. Also, I didn't internally combust into flames upon first viewing, so, personal victory. Oh yeah, by the by, it's Christmastime!

And with this particular Christmas comes a stark realization. I've been the engineer of this cartoon crazy train for almost 4 years now. And in 2 out of those 4-ish years, I've celebrated December packing this blog to the brim with my own "12 Characterz of Christmas." It's been a pretty socko endeavor both go-rounds, if I do say so myself. But that being said, 24 characters is a lot. And there are only so many that you can make out of festive puns. So, to avoid having to scrape the bottom of of the merry barrel this holiday season, I've decided to significantly widen the gambit. Ladies and gents, put your hands and hooves together and welcome to JC tradition the 12 Creationz of Christmas! (Gone with the z branding this far, I've gotta commit.) Leading up to the big 12-25, you folks will be getting a brand new post *almost* everyday--only this time, those slots could be filled with anything. Fanart, fan theories, "About the JC-Verse" posts, even animation! Sometimes festive, sometimes whatever the heck pops into my head. Any genre of post this here blog has ever hosted is up for grabs--and it all kicks off tomorrow. It's gonna be holly. It's gonna be jolly. And if neither of those things, it'll at least be gosh dang weird.

(P.S. forgive this post for its temporary lack of an official "12 Creationz of Christmas" snazzy logo. One will be added soon enough. Please stand by.)

FAREWELL TO THE 3RD ANNUAL CHARACTERFEST

     Alrighty, ladies and gents. It has finally struck midnight here on the wizzity west coast, so that means that the 3rd Annual Characterfest has finally and officially come to a close. And with that, the Characterfest Totally Tubular Textpost Talley rests at:

• 7 posts altogether, which breaks down to:
•  1 intro post (duh)
• 3 character posts (containing 4 characters)
• 3 extracurricular posts (AKA any post that doesn't have a number slapped on it)
• 1 sufficently snappy shindig

So, there we have it. A large portion of me wishes I could've done more characters, given that they are sorta the name of the game here. But to my credit, it is getting harder to just crank out posts now. In past fests I could pretty much just whip up a design, give a quick coloring job, and scan it onto the computer flaws and all. Now that I have so much more at my disposal, I can't exactly get away with that. Regardless of all the statistics, though, I'm content. When push comes to shove, any day where I get to brighten up you guys' lives and do what I've loved for pretty much my entire life is a pretty dang good day to me. Thanks a ton to all you radical readers, new and returning, for participating. Stay snazzy, enjoy giving the heck out of some thanks this week, and look forward to some pretty big endeavours on the horizon around here. I'm serious this time. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've been on the computer so long that I might start smelling megabites if I don't get off promptly. Let's stick with the P&F theme and close this son of a gun out! Hit it!

FROM SAN JUAN SOSO WITH LOVE (SOME SPECIAL CONCEPT ART + AN UPDATE)

     I feel quite bad that I did not prepare any animation for this year's Characterfest. It would've been a nice step up from the usual "post a crud-ton of drawings" format. But while I may not have any animation, I do have a little something quite closely linked to it. Now, I was trying to hold back showing you all this for quite a while, but I don't currently have any character posts to concoct for the 'Fest's last hour, so what the hey. Ladies and gents, Mitch Turley, the star of a little show called "NightOwl"!

Not the most flattering snap of the guy, but he's never been too self-conscious about his looks. It should be fine. For those of you have joined recently, NightOwl is an animated series that I am currently working on. That by itself sounds pretty cool, right? Right. The only snag is that it should've been out approximately a bazillion months ago according to my announcement post. As I said at the start of the day, my time management skills are . . . lacking, to say the least. And this little project is one of the best pieces of evidence to back that up. Granted, making a roughly 15-minute-per-episode animated web series all by yourself at the age of 14 isn't exactly a walk in the metaphorical park. But regardless, I have let a lot of time slip away right in front of me, and that is something I'm gonna have to work on. But for now, I am pretty far along. I did have a finished draft for the first episode, but it eventually dawned upon me that said draft kinda sucked, so naturally I decided to scrap it. However, I do have the show pretty much outlined. I'm in the process of hunting down silver age comic books to devour as research for the show's tone (it's probably the comic era most compatable with the idea of a 22-year-old manchild fighting crime in a zip-up owl hoodie), and I'm gonna be starting the actual Episode 1 script pretty dang soon. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how long it takes, how many hours of Toon Boom I have to clock in, because I am committed to bringing the JC-Verse to life on screen, and I aim to do it in the most spectacular way a 14-year-old can. So, stay patient, my grasshoppers. Ol' Jakey McBloggerstein's got this . . .


. . . I think . . .


. . . No, yeah, I've definitely got this.