zondag 29 mei 2011

Royal Destiny 5th cover!

So I decided to dedicate my first "real" post on this blog with a scoop: a wonderful piece of art that Lunacat has recently finished for Royal destiny. If you don't know Lunacat, she's the artist who drew all the ponies (and much more) for Pony Island and the author of Worlds Apart, an amazing piece of MLP fiction. She's also the artist who drew all of the illustrations on the Royal Destiny site such as the cover pictures on top of each part. She'll do some amazing other drawings soon as well, but those will remain a secret for a bit longer!

Anyway, as I am close to finishing part 4, I asked Lunacat to draw the cover picture for part 5, The Daylight Star, and she outdid herself once again!

I absolutely love it. The ponies are, of course, Caleantha in the background and Asteria, Firian and Meran in the foreground. Now I won't go into detail about this particular scene yet (considering it would spoil a lot), but I chose it for the cover drawing because of the symbolic meaning. I'm sure it'll be clear in time what I mean by that (and if you read RD, I'm sure you can figure out some things already).
This might actually be the only cover that is not an accurate picture of a scene as I'm not sure if things will be like this in the story (in fact, I'm pretty sure they won't be), but I felt it was important to put it in one picture like this anyway (it's more like a combination of two scenes).
I especially love how Meran looks in this picture. It's so accurate compared with how I picture her in my mind, I couldn't be more pleased. Not that the other ponies aren't accurate, because they are; Lunacat's ability to capture my characters is simply amazing. But when I saw Meran for the first time in this picture I immediately thought yes, that's my girl.

I'll upload the drawing to the website soon. Don't worry though, this won't be the last piece of art related to Royal Destiny for sure!!

zaterdag 28 mei 2011

About this blog

So, first post on my new blog! Why a second blog, you wonder? Well, I wanted to have a bit more clarity on what my blogs were for. The other blog was so obviously about two different subjects (the city I live in/work/photography and my toy collection hobby/related writing) that I decided to just split it up for clarity.

So here it is, my toy collection blog! What will this be about, you wonder? Well, first of all, of course, my toy collection. I am really passionate about both vintage and modern toy lines, and I love to talk a bit about them, so I'll be reviewing toys in my collection here (or things I really want but that aren't out yet/ I can't afford/ whatever). Toys that I collect include My Little Pony (all generations really), plush toys of all kinds, Pullips (and related lines like Taeyang and Isul), Moxie girlz and more recently Monster High toys. Of course this doesn't mean I won't look at other toy lines, but these will be the core of my blog.

Second, I will use this blog to write about my story, Royal Destiny. As that story was completely inspired by toys, I figured it'd fit in better here. I will also post here about my picfic The Magic Chronicles which can be read at Pullip Fiction.

I also might be a bit philosophical sometimes and go into the hows and the whys of toy collecting. I do realize some people find it weird that adults collect toys (let alone play with them!) but for me it's a very natural thing to do, and I really would like to explain and discuss this.

Of course my other blog won't cease to exist but it will focus more on photography, music and hopefully in the near future my non-toy related writing.

Well, I'm looking forward to writing more about my collecting and writing!