Yup, I did this for SGVY for Valentine's Day. It was a bit late, but I'm happy with it. I was inspired by Japanese marker illustrations. You know, the handmade ones you find in stores and cards. I always liked them.

The news is depressing today. I'm not even going to pay attention to it. Back to work.

Two is working for me.

Kita, my Forum Mistress, wants to make a widget for SGVY, so I whipped this up this morning. I've heard comments ranging from "cute" to "precious." It is cute. Much cuter than my other idea of Loki holding a slice of a living apple-animal that is bleeding all over the place. That would have been weird. I'm not sure if I made the right decision though.



It snowed! It didn't stick, but it snowed today! For five minutes! Cacao, my dog, did not like it, though. Too cold!

Valentine's is tomorrow. I suppose I should do something for SGVY.

It's been seven years.

Working on SGVY right now. I'm to the inking stage right now and working hard for my corporation. Let's go!

The new Montrose Academy page is up! This design is called "Montrose Rainbow." I first had the idea sometime back in July. My inspiration is the Seventies/Eighties barrier when rainbows ruled the land. Ah, big hair and ELO. Harry Lime is responsible for the code, which works in every browser! And every resolution! Damn! I think this may be the first site I've designed since the first "A White Room" that I really like. When I spend time staring at a design for a while, I know I like it. Ahhh...

I need new music. I just got the Mario Galaxy soundtrack, but it's not really work music. I need something fast and chirpy.

Back to work!

I guess it's true.

Welcome to the new Montrose Sketchbook! Here I, Kittyhawk, will put my ideas, sketches, and photos. I don't really know what else to say except that I'm very happy that Harry Lime and I were able to make this new site in just a week. Woo! Now we need to get the store up...

I thought for the first sketch I'd show the original sketches of the little characters you see on the right side of the screen:


I chose five characters that I though symbolized Montrose (read: I like): Yuuki, Rowan, Jessie, Makoto (and Bunny-Mech), and Takepon. While Rowan has never appeared in anything I've done and Takepon belongs to CLAMP, I thought, "What the hell?" Rowan appeared to me in a dream, and I know I have to write his story one day. I love Takepon, and he did appear in the Jar. Hell, if CLAMP can have a JoJo's Bizarre Adventure character in their Wonderland, then I can have Takepon on my site. (Yes, yes, I am aware he was their doujin creation, but still.)

Hmmm... He could be Kenpi and Takepon's son, Kenta. Yeah, that's not Takepon. That's Kenta. Yes! I've saved my ass from nothing again! Hahahaha!!

Anyway, moving on, here's the finished color characters:


Makoto and Jessie's heads had to be flipped during the inking stage because I can never remember which way their hair parts. I know they are opposites, but it's hard to remember, especially since I don't draw them often anymore. Being able to fix such things is why computers are awesome. Though had I been working ye olde fashioned way, I could have flipped the sketch over and traced it just fine. But then again, you can make mistakes during the inking phase on the computer with no scream-tacular moments. Just ⌘z your mistake, and whee! Fixed! Computer wins over ink!

To make the site, send a design with rainbow characters to Harry Lime, who is a web magician, and voila! A random repeating background tooled for your screen resolution. When the splash page is finally up, you'll see the true majesty of the new Montrose Academy site. That should be in a few days. (Magic takes time.)

This sketchbook is just the first part of the site to go up. In a few days, the index will change from the "temp" site that is up right now (2 days!) to the new "Montrose Rainbow" design. I'll hopefully have my new gallery up soon as well. The gallery will host finished pieces of art and design. If you click the gallery link on the left right now, it will take you to my four year old "A White Room." It's an OK design. I liked the previous one better. You can still see it here. It was just a very pixelated photo of my head with Epoch, but it worked.

So stayed tuned for more changes here at Montrose! I'm already working on plans for the next redesign of SGVY. Let's head into the future, yeah!

Before I leave, I'll show you this which I did a while back. I think the face on the right is supposed to be Sheppard Smith, but I can't remember. Anyway, I present: Wolf Blitz-tan.

What do you say at the beginning?