User blog:Sunshineandravioli/No, Seriously, I'm Alive



Yup, I'm back. Again.

First of all, let me sincerely apologize for my abruptly disappearing again. I did not think I'd be gone, let alone for so long, but different issues/committments/distractions kept piling up and keeping me from getting on the wiki. Unfortunately, both my schedule and my attention span can be relatively sporradic, so I can't honestly promise this won't happen again. However, I will be trying harder to get on more regularly, if only to keep up with what's going on around here. Based only on briefly checking my talk page before making this post, I know I missed a lot of admin-related posts, milestones, et cetera, and I'm very, very sorry for that. I'll try to be better, I swear!! (On that note, big, big thanks to Gideon for sending me links to admin happenings even during my hiatus. Without you I'd be even more lost than usual! I'll try to read through the blogs to see what I missed.)

I can assure you, at least, that my hiatus was not wasted. I spent the majority of it working on developing and improving my art, both digitally and otherwise. I'm learning how to use new brushes and tools in photoshop, and I've been trying some new real-life materials as well. I even recently started dabbling in animation, though I still only know the basics and I'm not very good, so for the moment don't expect to see me posting a bunch of awesome animations! ^^; Aside from working on my art, I've also finally immersed myself in the wonderful world of Doctor Who (I've watched both Matt Smith seasons in preparation for the new season starting this weekend, and am currently midway through the Christopher Eccleston series). And... I might've maybe possibly definitely played through all the Professor Layton games again. I couldn't help it...! (Thankfully game five will be coming out in the US soon, so I'll only have to deal with puzzle withdrawl for a little while longer...)

Aside from all that, I also used my downtime to finish up a few pictures I promised to people here a long time ago. (If I owe you art and it's not here, please remind me!! My memory is awful; if you remind me I'll be happy to get your promised stuff finished!) The most major completion was my piece done for the excellent one-shot Hope by OHF. I did two versions (a normal version and a darker "Heather bleeds" version), not sure which one you'd prefer. The art might be a little shaky as this is the first photoshop piece I've done without any lineart laid over the color and shading, but I wanted to make it special since it had taken me so long to do, so I decided to try it out. I hope this was worth the wait, OHF!



There's also this piece that I promised Brandon in commemoration of us actually talking and becoming friends after three years of awkwardly unintentionally avoiding each other. Full discloslure, I had to trace for the lineart... I know that's like the artist version of cheat codes, but... but robots are really hard to freehand, especially digitally... PLEASE FORGIVE ME. ;^; (Hope you like it in spite of my art-cheating, TDIwriter! :D)



Unfortunately, while I've been working a lot on my art, my writing's been more on the backburner. That doesn't mean I don't plan on getting some done now that I'm back, though - I have chapters of Total Wikia Pokemon, New Initiative, and The Process of Shattering in progress, and I intend to redo lost work on Total Sonic Island as promised. Furthermore, some of you might remember from before my disappearance that I was considering getting Total Wikia Elementary back on track, and I definitely want to do so now that I'm back, so you'll probably hear more about my plans on that in the near future. Also, though my fic writing hasn't seen too much progress, I've done several Stuff Sunshine Likes reviews during my time off, which I'll be posting over the next few weeks. Hopefully you'll enjoy them - on a couple of them I reviewed stuff a bit different than you've come to expect from me!

I'm very happy to be back, you guys. Hopefully you're happy to have me! :)

~ Love and Ravioli, Sunshine

(PS: I've also now seen the entirety of Total Drama: Revenge of the Island. Better than I was expecting, though there were some shark-jumping moments just like in Total Drama: World Tour. Thankfully there was still some characters I came to like and moments that made me laugh, which I feared there wouldn't be.)