Automaton Works

Introducing Nadia Amano. A senior at Brunner High School who misses the first month of school due to an accident that occurs before the story of Breath takes place. Lots of rumors spread through the school about her before and upon her return, some due to a rival of sorts and some because of her best friend Cassie, who’s crazy anyway. :) She is often seen as intimidating and uncaring on many levels by her peers, but friends will quickly say otherwise.

Nadia is a member of the girl’s volleyball team–they had a crushing defeat at state against Ft. Osage last year–but shies away from most other after-school activities. She is the middle child to parents Shin and Jenna, who she feels pressure her to be as good as her sister. Claire Amano is currently studying abroad in Japan. Her brother, Hideki, is an eigth grader in junior high whose only purpose in life seems to be inventing ways to get into trouble.

We’re still around, just busy working on some things. I now have 4 pages done of Starcrossed. Unfortunately I don’t have anything scanned in to show you but they are drawn and inked. My goal is to get 10 pages done before switching gears and doing some pages for Breath. So things are coming along slowly, but surely. I’ll get something visible up for you soon. In the meantime I have my midterm exam on Chinese art history tomorrow that I must study for. Yes, being a full time student will do that to ya.

We’re coming along smoothly withour comic goodness. Both Breath and Starcrossed are being storyboarded so we can get a better feel for the pages, but they both have scripts for the first section of story. bratkitty will be redrawing the teaser page of Breath that you see on her dA and the news page here as well. I wish I had a better schedule to tell you, other than eventually, but I don’t suspect it will be much longer before either of these comics goes up for your reading enjoyment.

Here’s another pic I’ll be selling at Naka-Kon. I’ve also decided to hold off on the Mugen and Motoko paintings until the next con we go to. I started school and just don’t have the time. Also instead of doing a live work of Ichigo at Naka Kon, I’ll e doing Etna from Disgaea instead. Show a little more love for something other than Naruto, Bleach, or Death Note. They get enough. ;P

The site is getting closer to being done. After a few adjustments and some additons we’ll have a complete site. Everything that’s up works perfectly fine though, so don’t let that stop you from browsing our nothingness. Two more sites will be going up for each of the comics we’re planning on putting up this year. I’m tired of web building and I haven’t even finished this one quite yet. I’m not very good at this sort of thing, so I hope it meets with your approval. At least on a functionality level.

Our forum is also alive and well. If you’re from Gibberish make yourself at home and thanks for following BK and/or me over to Automaton Works.

Well I have more done as far as projects and Artist Alley matters go. I have some original drawings I’m selling at Naka-Kon. I’m posting three right now for all the world to see. Behold! My craptastic photography skillz! (these are 15″x20″ and far too big to scan in):

Yes, all fanart. I’m doing these to help support our project makings in the future. In case you didn’t know, that are: Peach and Zelda, I-no (Guilty Gear), and Sasuke (Shippuden-style). Also in the works is Ulala from Space Channel 5, and an Ichigo drawing that I plan on doing at the con.

For paintings I plan to do one of Mugen from Samurai Champloo and Motoko from Ghost in the Shell.

Also in other happenings . . . I have a sketch of the main character from Starcrossed. Her name is Quinn. I was going to call it a finalized sketch but upon coloring the shirt, I feel I might change it to something more interesting. I dunno. I’ll come back to it later and see how I feel about it.

I’m just about done with the script, if you can call it that, for Breath. Untitled just didn’t suit it, you know? As strange as this may sound I love going to Dictionary.com and Wikipedia and looking up random words or articles. I’ll jump from one thing to the next until something catches my eye, like the word pneuma, and then pieces start falling into place. Of course, calling it Pneuma seemed a bit on-high to me and saying it aloud made me feel kind of stupid. I like breath because it looks neat, beause it sounds borderline normal, and because it doesn’t have a silent P.

I’ve got another 17 pages to go before I’m allowed to call it done and BK lets me take a break. After that she’s chaining me to my desk again to write Wake Odyssey. I’m very excited. Writing Breath as been a lot of fun for me, and it’s given me the chance to get one of my oldest stories off my chest. I wish I could tell you when we’re putting it up, but I have no real clue. After Naka-Kon… This year? Yeah, pretty soon I think.

Greetings, Weary Traveler. Rest your tired fingers and take your cramped hand off that mouse and read on (unless you have to, like, scroll down or something) for I, BK, am here to entertain you with a wonderful, fantabulous blog post (or it’s just mediocre and giving you something to stare at for a few minutes). Well, enough with the poetic stuff. You get the point.

Well the site has been up for not quite 24 hours. As you can see, though we’re live and functioning, we still have some things we’re polishing up. We mostly wanted to go live before Naka-Kon in order to let the con goers know that we do, in fact, exist and to say “Howdy”. Being from Missouri we have no unique accent or interesting words to define where we’re from, so I’m stealing (borrowing) words from nearby regions (thanks, Texas). However we do use a lot of redundancies . . . and stuff.

I have several projects in the works right now, but they were put on hold so I could prepare for the con. We will have a table in the artist alley and I will be helping with the webcomic panel. We will be selling a number of things including the usual prints (and a few new ones), and I had decided to take a break from digital art for a while and created some traditional pieces that I plan on selling (yay for markers). I’m doing some paintings also. I’ll post those as I get them photographed. I plan on working on a piece at the table, sort of a live show, for entertainment purposes. . . or educational. Whichever.

Also at the con will be Lithe Kitty, you may better know her as Deek from Value=Dead. She will not be doing the conventional art, instead she is making Gothic Lolita accessories for all to enjoy (and buy). Reality Helix will be joining our table with her art as well.

As far as projects go, I have done a little working on them here and there. I have a new comic in the works called “Starcrossed” which I have just finished a script for. I have several character sketches that aren’t scanned in, but one that I have posted at the end of this entry. (No, really)

Starcrossed is a modern fantasy/sci-fi comedy shoujo-ai story about an aspiring artist/musician Quinn whose life is changed after a celestial cataclysm hits her right in the face (almost literally). More on Starcrossed within the next couple of days.

Here’s the sketch. Enjoy!

Okay, we’re coming along. I had hoped to have been able to figure out how to get all of our blog posts one color and all of our news posts another, but I am clueless. I found a few thing online that let you do it if you’re using a single class in CSS, but the rounded corners have eleven or so, so nothing seems to work. Internet Explorer, as usual, bends the code over backwards and does unmentionable things to it… So, the title may come out stranger than intended. Firefox is the way to go. Unless it’s on a Mac because then the title isn’t low enough, but it all came out close enough to call it done. I’m not a coding genius here.

We’ll go with what we have for now, but that doesn’t mean all of the changes are done or permanent. Expect lots of posts and updates from us from here on until Naka-Kon.