Another commission, a Leafeon.

This was a commission. It's another pokemon. One I've never heard of before, actually. I only know the first generation ones, mostly.

Finally I had time and beads to do the IceBeast! He goes with the FlameDog I did earlier, of course.





And since apparently the scale of these has not been obvious, here's a helpful photo. (My expression looked very "hur" so I removed it, but you still get the idea.) IceBeast is 68 pixels long, and about 14 inches.

This one was a commission. :)

I had (still have, actually, it's floating free on the internet) a tutorial on how I draw dragons. I made it back in 1997 or so. And until this year how I did it hadn't changed much, but this year I've done a lot of innovating, plus I've just plain gotten better, so I thought it was time I do a new one. This is as far as I got tonight. It'll probably have around 8 steps. Eventually I'll be putting it all together on a webpage, but for now I'm just posting it to my various galleries/blogs/etc. as I go.

( Big images and some text under here )

More to come tomorrow, probably.

Just a little sale, offered here on my livejournal only.

I'm looking to invest in silver again. The price, as of the close of market tonight (Feb 4th) was $15.33 per oz, which is the lowest it's been in quite a long time. I'd just go out and buy a few ounces, but I have no cash on hand, and can't really afford to pull anything out of the bank, what with it being rent day. Thus, I offer a sale. Or a trade, rather. One Loonakit for one ounce of silver. If you have silver already on hand, this should be quite easy. :D Since most of you probably don't, I highly recommend buying in person at a local coin shop. Nearly all towns have one, check your phone book. Expect to pay around a dollar markup to the shop, so $16.33 or thereabouts per ounce.

You can also buy silver closer to the actual spot price on line, but I have never done so, and I can't give you any specific recommendation, you'll have to find your own seller. I'll say that ebay is not really a great place to look though. :P You'll want to buy your silver right away to get that price, though the price is just as likely to drop further as it is to rise, honestly. Put it off too long, however, and it's guaranteed to eventually go back up, silver always does. You can check the current price here.

Anyhow! There is no limit on the number of Loonakits you can purchase this way*, and I will make any kind**, including things like the platypuses, that normally sell for $30, at this price. I would expect the silver to be shipped to me first, and then I would make the plushes. If you have any difficulty with this arrangement, something else might be worked out. But you can ask any of my past customers, I'm quite reliable. I've been late on occasion, but never failed to deliver.

I am also willing to do bead sprites and drawings for silver. :) You'd get several sprites/drawings per ounce. Just FYI. I might also consider taking a limited number of larger plush commissions at a similar discount, particularly if they were things I could make on existing patterns.

You can find an extensive gallery of past Loonakits I've made here: http://www.sparkcostumes.com/gallery/index.php?cat=18

Drop me an e-mail at spark.costumes@gmail.com or comment here if you're interested.





*Seriously, no limit. However, large orders may take more time to fill. If you order 100, I'll let you. But expect to be getting them made in small batches for a year or more, in between my other projects, before I get them all done.

**Within reason. Really super-duper complicated things I reserve the right to simplify.

Because apparently people don't know this.

When somebody asks you to pay through paypal and send it as a gift so they don't have to pay fees... well first off, hello! They are telling you that they are competely okay with ripping off somebody, because they are ripping off paypal. Admittedly paypal makes out like bandits on fees, and they are a faceless corporation, which most people don't mind ripping off, but it's still a red flag.

That's not the big, fat, dangerous red flag though. The big problem that should be staring you in the face but most of you apparently haven't thought of it, is that a gift is a gift. It cannot be disputed. I mean what are you going to say. "Hi, paypal? I freely gave somebody a gift, but now they're not giving me anything in return, so give my gift back please."? Yeah, no. You send that money out and you will never see it again, no matter what they person you're paying that way does. They can take the money and run and you are left without any form of recourse whatsoever. And remember that just by asking you to do this they've already told you they don't mind a little fraud. What's to say they won't mind defrauding you too?

So unless you're willing to write that money off as an actual gift and get nothing in return, don't pay somebody with a paypal gift. Seriously, don't.

(And you artists asking people to pay this way, firstly shame on you! And secondly, good luck if paypal should notice you're doing this, they can and will shut your account down for fraud if they catch you at it, and what are you going to do then?)

I'm not sure I can explain it. It was done as a favor for Bob, who I owe bigtime, and this is what he wanted. :D It's apparently going to be a decal on his tank, or something like that. (I assume this is an in-game tank, but honestly given Bob, you never know.)

Yay, pretty ponies.

Drawing a pretty pony.

Mini Flareon:



Size comparison with regular Flareon:

I just discovered that all pokemon have teeny-tiny sprite versions. :D This particular one was made for a trade with somebody. These little bitty guys are like... $3 tops to make too. And even the pokemon whose normal sprites are HUGE have teeny tiny sprites that are not much bigger than the rest, so I can make anything at all, even ones where the normal sprite is too big for my pegboard!

Made this just now, as a present for my husband. His character, the Admiral Jordanis Jackal, done as a bead sprite.



Edit: Also did another quick one for a friend, here's Loweko:

Just leafeon and jolteon to go. I keep forgetting about jolteon. I have to order more yellow beads for both of them though.

I'm really pleased with the one. The original game sprite was... well, the later generation ones have better color schemes, but they all have boring poses. I liked this pose, but it had horrible colors, with lots of dithering, which I just didn't like. So I basically entirely re-colored it with better shading and the appropriate greenish markings. I think the end result is kind of awesome.



Just two more to go. Though once again I've run out of a color I need, so Leafeon will have to wait. I might do Espeon today, maybe.

Finished a Mario set yesterday, and this chocobo today. :) The Mario ones were a commission. The chocobo I did just for fun, it's from the Card Saga Wars gallery.





Deciding what I want to do next. Another eevee evolution, I think. Vaporeon or espeon, probably. I'm out of colors for leafeon. Need to order yet again!

The customer decided he didn't want these, so they're looking for a new home. Ideally I would like to get $100 for them, but I will consider all offers. :)

I have a SMALL amount of matching fur I can include, if you want to make ankle pieces or matching hands. There is not enough to make a tail, arms, or anything else though.

Do please note that these are costume feet, and although they are quite comfy they are not meant for everyday wear. Scales are craft foam, claws are painted resin. Soles are hard-soled slippers. (Size men's 11.)