BJ @bj@xeno.chat

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Here's Febra laVender, the island council's expert in all things artistic. Her museum on the island is a multilayered one, with contemporary art on the upper floors (Febra has no great love of the classics; she likes art that lives and breathes and flourishes in the present) and then a dinner-and-dance hall in the middle. Febra is as much about music and food and everything rich and sensory as she is about visual art, and frequently invites guests over to share their creations.

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Sketchier than usual for my daily sketch journal, but that's the kind of mood I was in. Blit Bitkin is the common thread here. The top left one is him in his "kid at school with no idea what he's in for" youth, the ones along the bottom are casual (unarmored) Blit in a simplified style, and the big thing in the upper right… well, that's an initial design for something that'll come up later. There are parts I like and some I don't. It's not supposed to look like it has a kilt, at least.

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Julius Khryseos is the largest gryphon on the island; he's not as big as the picture makes him look, but a 4 meter height gives him a commanding presence, especially on stage in front of his favorite backdrop to tell tales of history. He doesn't just focus on great leaders and battles, but enjoys tales of bravery, cleverness, willpower, and everything else he finds admirable about people. Fitting the sun motifs, Julius hopes everyone can find an inner light of inspiration to greatness.

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The council of twelve has 5 male, 5 female, and 2 nonbinary members, and Ariel is one of the last group. The extra wings are for more than just looks; Ariel can fly at impressive speed. Their particular forte is communication - this covers everything from linguistics to media studies, but what Ariel especially likes to study is education. Ariel cares about being an effective teacher no less than a speaker or a listener, and loves to travel around to share what they've learned.

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Bonus sketch - it's been a while since I did anything with Delyria, so I felt like drawing a Harmakhian mystic. I still don't quite know what to do with that setting, but it's still kicking around for whatever form it needs to take. Tabletop RPG seems the most likely at this point.

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Novena Fiara is sometimes mistaken for one of the island's wildlife - maybe a fluffy puma, maybe a large fox, maybe something else - but she's no less one of the twelve leaders of the island. Her domain is earth science; under her beast-shaped exterior is a wealth of knowledge and experience related to biology, geology, ecology, and such. Her museum is full of terrariums with rare bugs, lizards, and anything else small enough to live in one. (1/2)

I've been planning out some of the areas of Lamppost Island. One of its most important features is the Museum Plaza, where each of the island's twelve main leaders has their own building devoted to their subject (Maya's garden, for instance). Twelve buildings arranged in a circle, the whole thing about a quarter mile on a side, with a big public square in the middle. If that sounds like a familiar layout, that's because I posted a rough diagram of it before.

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Maya Blue, another of the island's leaders, spends a lot of her time in her well-tended garden full of fountains and waterways, stone paths winding between raked beds of sand, and calming wind chimes. Her domain is philosophy, and she believes that calm contemplation and meditation are ways to stay in touch with the meaning of things beyond the purely physical or intellectual. She's well-versed in many historical traditions, which makes it hard sometimes to tell what she believes in herself.

And here's a tiny Vida sprite superimposed on a corner of that. (actually smaller than she'd be now that I measure it, but I wanted to get a colored picture of her for once).

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Getting some work done on graphics today. Here's the beginnings of a Lamppost Island tileset; I'm looking for something that's a little more abstract than realistic, but not quite as abstract as the checkerboard ground of a Sonic game. I think I've found a pretty good style for that, though I'm not very experienced with tiles yet. More to come later (at the very least I need some darker-colored backdrop tiles to give it a more three-dimensional look).

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This started out as a sketch of objects and tiles for Lamppost Island, but then I got distracted and added Vida, Blit, and Vidrio, all ready for the beach. Like its real-world counterpart (Santa Cruz island off the California coast), Lamppost Island is mostly surrounded by dramatic cliffs and pebbly shorelines, but there's a small sandy crescent near the dock where the ferries stop, and that's where they're headed.

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[⊠] I can't remember if I ever showed myself off here, but this's me. BJ Sutter, leader of Ringoid Labs (maker of the Dodec computer and XenoNet). My nephew is also named BJ, but our initials stand for different things; I'm Bartholomew Jason. The Corps have been interested in getting more people from other worlds able to experience Elseways, so they asked me to set up an interface between our own XenoNet and your Internet. That's what you're reading now: a window to our world.

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Yes, I'm still drawing Vida. I thought it would be fun to try out different outfits and expressions and such, and they came out well. It's a good sign that I'm onto something good with her design. Also, there's the code point for her particular ✼ symbol.

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Still focused on Lamppost Island as a setting - it makes a really good small place that I can figure out more or less completely, and of course it's part of the greater city of Elseways. Vida is going for a run along one of the many cliffside trails; she likes to stay in shape, and her body takes a little extra care than most. This would be Blit meeting her for the first time (he never met her back when she was Crystal, either) and getting to know her optimism and positive spirit.

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Just some quick sketches. Her name is Vida Greenlyte; neither I nor she are completely sold on the spelling there, but as long as it's pronounced right it doesn't matter. She's still that mint-green color, with the backs of her ears and the stripes on her tail (which I forgot to draw here) black, while her hair is white.
She's been picking pieces of an outfit out from places in Polyopolis and the Glenrock Mall; she loves that shirt and the shoes, but she's not going to stick to just one look.

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She keeps showing up. These are some refinements to yesterday's redesign of Crystal - back up to six arms, and a few test expressions. I still feel like she needs a new name, though. "Greenlight" makes a good surname, and it's the kind of thing she'd call herself, but her first name hasn't come to mind just yet.

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Late-night pixel art thing. Messing with a logo for the tower that Vidrio and Blit have been exploring, because I'm going to turn that (and more of Lamppost Island itself) into a test case for the game engine. It's a grassy place with an ocean backdrop, peaceful weather, and a cute village. Perfect starting zone.

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Something about Hop's design spoke to me, and I thought I'd play with it some by hybridizing him with Crystal. This might in fact be Crystal's new shape; she's from Polyopolis where they can do that kind of thing, and after the recent events there, she's feeling more free to be something that isn't largely dictated by someone else. Her coloration is leaning a little more light lime-teal, too. Like the third color in that thing from earlier.

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Randomly inspired to draw more Mobian noodle animals. This trio sticks together both for their names and their shared goal of finding shortcuts and hidden passages under, around, and through anything that gets in their way. Hop's speed and agility, Skip's augmented vision, and Jump's flight are all useful in different ways for this.

(???) Green
Blit Purple
Vidrio Orange