Twitter user @sfried0, from Florida, gave me my first commission since 2009. I offered him the same rate of $2/hour that I charged back in the day. His request was to draw his original character, the Aria-esque heroine Mayumi, in an art gallery demonstrating her Relm/Harold-like ability to bring her pictures to life. I committed 25 hours to not only draw the picture, but to describe my process.
A brief history of my NIS America art contest submissions.
NIS America Winter Art Contest (2006)
Game: “Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories”
Submission: “Wizards of Winter”
Result: Consolation Prize
Prize: Prinny and Ledgem stuffed toys.
Embarrassment: Low. Stuffed toys are socially acceptable.
Ar tonelico 2 Art Contest (2009)
Game: “Ar tonelico 2: Melody of Metafalica”
Submission: “Melody of Metafalica”
Result: Winner
Prize: Jacqli dakimakura.
Embarrassment: High. But at least it wasn’t Cocona.
Firefly Diary Art Contest (2014)
Game: “Hotaru no Nikki (The Firefly Diary)”
Submission: “Search for Tomorrow”
Full image
Result: Who knows?
Prize: Hopefully, a limited edition version of the game with my entry printed on a canvas.
Embarrassment: None (whether I win or lose).
I’ve run out of jokes for Lotus Cobra is Evil. Of course, the logical thing to do is start upgrading all the old strips. But whenever I try to do that, I get bored really fast. The mark of a professional is to forge ahead and do your job even when you don’t feel like it, so I’ll have one upgraded strip for you next week. Since the upgrades take less time to do than the new ones, I’ll have spare time to draw the stuff I feel more like drawing.
I’m sorry for not being able to keep my promise to give you one new strip and one upgraded old one every week. I’m no better than a politician or a sports league commissioner.
This week, you get an intermission with stuff from some other card game. My hope is that I will get my motivation back eventually.
Shion and Silk are from Tanto Cuore: Expanding the House.
For some reason, these two are my favorite characters from the first expansion. Maybe it’s because they have that heroine look to them. You can totally see them flying down the corridors of some mansion, dodging the knives thrown by some enemy maid.
So the Theros expansion block of Magic the Gathering was about Heliod, the sun god, recruiting the planeswalker Elspeth Tirel to be his champion. Xenagos, a planeswalker who had found a way to achieve godhood, was sowing chaos across the universe as a new god of destruction. Heliod’s godly power and Elspeth’s planeswalker power were enough to defeat the planeswalker god, and Theros was saved.
And then Heliod killed Elspeth. The official statement was that he was afraid that Elspeth might want to become a god too. Heliod is such a jackass, it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that the official statement is a total lie. Heliod’s true reason is much more detestable.
It’s been said that God hates Cleveland.
That’s totally not true. Any city with Bill Watterson and Mike Polk cannot be hated by the Judeo-Christian God, or any other gods.
Now as for Cleveland sports…
well, some gods hate Cleveland sports.
Today would be the perfect day for Diamond Faerie and her mother Frost Titan to debut on Lotus Cobra is Evil. But unfortunately, I was unable to come up with a satisfactory joke.
Instead, today we commemorate the demise of the Ship creature type, which now exists only in the joke set Unhinged.
When Jace was younger, he would sometimes dress in a non-traditional manner for fun. But now that he’s the Living Guildpact, a government official tasked with keeping the peace between the diverse guilds of Ravnica, he’s a lot more concerned about his image…
Color Pie is the term used to describe the limitations of the five colors of magic, both for game balance and flavor reasons. If every aspect of magic is baked into a pie, each color gets only a slice of that pie.
A color can’t do everything well. For example, Green, the color of plants, can easily erode an unnatural artifact, but has problems killing creatures outside of head-to-head combat. On the other side, Black, the color of death, can effortlessly snuff out the life force of most living things, but struggles to deal with artifacts.
A balance has to be struck between using more colors to cover up their individual limitations, and using less colors to make it more likely to have the right lands for your spells.
Official art by Chase Stone
I immediately snapped up 4 copies of Yisan, the Wanderer Bard when M15 came out. I built a deck where Yisan’s function is to search out a Satyr Wayfinder and fill the graveyard with creatures for Nemesis of Mortals and Undergrowth Scavenger. The other creatures in the deck are those that sacrifice themselves, like Renowned Weaver and Wall of Mulch.
The deck turned out not to be as strong as my current Standard deck, which is a G/W Aggro list with 4x Voice of Resurgence. In the death-filled world of today’s Standard I don’t think Yisan can be counted on to search out one creature, let alone two. This means Yisan isn’t getting to Verse 15, like, ever. Even in my imagination.
