My goals for Nyjichun

In no particular order:

  • To get to 500 words / lexicon entries, not counting affixes (I currently have 371 lexicon entries, but that’s including affixes)
  • Write up a working grammar
  • Sketch out the culture beyond ‘they live in the forest’
  • Make a map of the area
  • Fix all the words I’ve marked as needing change
  • Redo the family words
  • Translate the Babel Text and at least two other long passages (I’m not sure what).
  • Write up enough lessons that I can pick it back up when I want to

After that, I’ll probably be burnt out on conlanging for a while, but if not, I want to fix up one of my other languages (something simpler, sheesh – probably Ylis, which is basically the English of Thundera) and then working on splitting Ŋyjichɯn into two dialects, which will mostly just be vocabulary changes.

I know probably no one cares, but I’ve uploaded a new version of the tiddlywiki. As always, and more visibly now, it’s a work in progress.

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Conlanging – Nyjichun

Okay, I’ve finally uploaded the Ŋyjichɯn tiddlywiki*. I’ve also updated lesson one there, with more stuff and assignments (working with the idea that it’s meant to be a textbook). As any conlanger would tell you, it’s very much a work in progress and pretty much everything is subject to change at any time. But now I can go to the conlang forum and ask for input without having to rewrite things. Which is what I’m going to do next.

Notes for using the tiddlywiki: You can navigate from the Table of Contents or tagCloud. Links open below in the same window. I’ve got it set up so the last 20 or whatever links you follow show up on top. And no, you can’t edit it.

*  I should do a blog post about tiddlywikis. They’re very awesome.

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Vintage Write-Up – Swanky Swigs Kiddie Kups

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Swanky Swigs are decorated tumblers that were originally sold by Kraft, starting in 1933. They had Kraft cheese spread in them and were sealed with metal lids with rubber gaskets. They’re 4 1/2 inches tall and were hand-decorated with stenciled patterns. Kiddie Kups were released in 1956 and I haven’t found any online sources with all the designs, so here you go. If you can find them, they usually go for fairly cheap and are some of the more common Swanky Swigs.

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Each cup has a different animal on each side, facing a toy version of itself. Around the top on each side, in white, is a duck, deer, bunny, pig, bird, rooster, and dog, which matches one of each of the designs.

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In red, a bird and an elephant.

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In orange, a dog and a rooster.

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In green, a bunny and a kitty (the green is a bright spectrum green).

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In blue, a teddy and a pig (and the pig is the only design where the real animal is to the right of the toy).

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In brown, a deer and a squirrel (it’s a chocolate brown, which didn’t show up well in the picture).

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In black, a duck and a horse.

Like any screen-printed glass, you can’t put these in the dishwasher because it will dull and scratch the design. I love my glasses. Only one is chipped (unfortunately not one of the ones I have three of). The black and the brown are my favorite.

Sources:

http://antiques.about.com/od/madeofglass/a/aa062101.htm

http://www.mountainstatescollector.com/articles.asp?ArticleID=132

http://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1956-kiddie-kup-swanky-swig-set

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Conlanging – Ŋyjichɯn – Lesson 1

As I said last time, this is one of my languages that I made for Thundercats fandom. Specifically, this one is the one that Wilykit and Wilykat speak, along with one of my original characters, Felino. First of all, I haven’t seen all of the 2011 revival, so all of this is from the original series and the 80s comics. Second, my personal theory is that Wilykit and Kat are adults, but that their clan don’t get as tall as other Thunderians and grow up slower.

None of that is incredibly relevant to the language itself, to be honest. This post will cover phonology (the sounds of the language) and colors. Here we go.

Phonology

IPA / Trans labiodental alveolar post-alveolar velar
nasal ɱ m n n   ŋ ŋ
plosive   t t   k k
affricative     tʃ dʒ ch j  
fricative f v f v s z s z    
approximant       ɰ w
tap ⱱ β ɽ r    
lateral approximant   l l  

The International Phonetic Alphabet notation is given in red. The standard transcription is given in black. Honestly, the only reason I use β is because the IPA symbol doesn’t show up in my browser. It looks better than β, but what are you gonna do?

My accent is Standard American English. Since this is a conlang, it honestly doesn’t matter that much if you pronounce things incorrectly, but I’ll be giving approximate sounds based on my accent, with heavy help from Wikipedia.

The majority of consonants should not give students trouble, although Ŋyjichɯn speakers may detect an accent on the ‘m’ and ‘w’. If you wish to prevent that, pronounce ‘m’ against your top teeth and ‘w’ in the back of your throat.

  • ‘ŋ’ is equivalent to ‘ng’ in ‘sing.’
  • ‘r’ should be pronounced cleanly and shortly, a tap at the top of the mouth, like the ‘d’ in ‘rider’.
  • ‘β’ is similar, a short tap against the upper teeth.
IPA / Trans front near-front central near-back back
close i y       ɯ ɯ
near-close   ʏ i   ʊ u  
mid     ɜ o    
open a a       ɒ ɒ

The pairs ‘i’ & ‘y’ and ‘ɯ’ and ‘u’ are primarily distinguished by how rounded the lips are. Vowels are most likely to give students trouble, but the approximations below will generally be sufficient.

  • y as in free
  • i as in bit, but with the lips rounded
  • a approximately as in cat
  • o approximately as in strut
  • ɯ as in boot but with the lips very rounded
  • u as in hook
  • ɒ as in hot but with lips very rounded

(If I don’t have IPA available or it’s too much hassle, I cheat and use ‘h’ for ‘ŋ’, ‘B’ for ‘β’, ‘x’ for ‘ɯ’, and ‘p’ for ‘ɒ’.)

Doubled vowels are pronounced twice as long. Any vowel may combine with another to form a diphthong, and are pronounced long. On the occasion that a vowel is meant as a syllable it is written with apostrophes separating it. For example ro’ɒ’ryi, za’yr’ta, ny’i’an, kyo’yt.

And now for some fun stuff.

Colors

Color words in Ŋyjichɯn are heavily associated with nature and the exact color meant is heavily context specific. The pictures below give a sampling of the hues associated. If you’ve checked out the link dumps, there was a long article about how different cultures see color. Wikipedia also has a fair overview here.

jpxw

hafnxh jasakyijio     kixklyasim kouch

To reference the color itself (or to create new color terms), the color is incorporated into chanyki, thus chajɒɯwnyki, white; chawaovonyki, fire colored (waovo, fire), etc. Native speakers would say that metal terms would fall under lyasim, even if the shade itself might fall under ŋafnɯŋ or kiɯk.

You’ll note that most of the words have meaning beyond colors. Words will be given in Ŋyjichɯn alphabetical order.

Modern Ŋyjichɯn English Notes
chanyki skin, surface, color  
jɒɯw day, to be daytime, white, light  
jio water, to be wet, to be liquid, juicy, black, brown, blue, green, blue For colors it describes deep cool colors like black, brown, green, and blue. The base color is black/brown. May also be used how we would use ‘tomato red’ to evoke the flavor
jasa fruit, flower, pink, red, magenta, purple References flowers and describes anything from pale pink to vibrant purple
ŋafnɯŋ child, unripe, green, raw, yellow, pale When used as a color it’s the color of unripe fruit, early morning sky, young shoots and grass, and can cover white, yellow, and light greens
kyi ripe, adult, mature, full-size, green, blue When used for colors it means the green of ripe vegetables, or noon-sky (vibrant greens and blues)
kiɯkjio red-brown Given as an example of combining colors. From kiɯk and jio
kiɯk blood, red, orange Describes the color of blood.
kouch night, dark, black Describes the dark, usually blue and unsaturated colors, you would observe at night.
lyasim stone, grey, beige, pale, yellow, tan, off-white Primarily inorganic colors (the color of stones), but also pale bark, the yellow of wheat, etc

I’m creating all this using a combination of Excel, Tiddlywiki (basically a wiki in a single file. It’s awesome), and various text files. At some point I’m going to write up an in-character description of Ŋyjichɯn, but I have to figure out how I want to approach it. And probably the next post will be simply ‘I’ve changed this in the tiddlywiki, here’s a link!’ rather than making it work in WordPress, which is somewhat of a pain. I have to get the tiddlywiki uploaded.

(Editted 2-18-13, because I screwed up when I derived kiɯkjio.)

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WTF is a Conlang?

What is Conlanging?

Conlang is short for constructed language. Conlangers make up languages, whether that’s basically an English cypher or something as involved as Tolkien’s Quenya and Sindarin or Klingon created by Marc Okrend, which has taken on a life of its own. Generally, it’s done by people who love language for their own pleasure. It may or may not end up being used in stories (it seems most conlangs made up for as background are fairly skeletal). Some might be little more than a phoneme inventory, how to build words (morphology), and a bit of grammar. Some are as involved as any real language. There’s way too many different ways to do it for me to explain it, but the wikipedia page and the links at the end are a good start.

Why do you do it?

I like language. I unfortunately don’t have the knowledge necessary to be good at conlanging (I only learned IPA1 last year, for instance). It works my brain in different ways. I tend to work in spurts, which makes going back to things a challenge, but I have fun anyway. Pretty much all of my languages started as background for writing. My first (really bad one) was for a bunch of stories I started writing in junior high, I think, and was basically an English cypher. Several of them I came up with a phonetic inventory during class when I was supposed to be paying attention and did pretty much nothing else with it. I have a tendency to use mostly affixes and to create a writing system for each one.

When the Thundercats fandom was a lot more active in the 90s and early 00s, I started several Thunderian languages. Most of my languages started from that. They’re mostly going to get applied to other things (specifically the world of the White Knight, because creating a language is obviously easier than translating something into a real language /sarcasm). Some of my newer ones I take more inspiration from other, real languages, as you’ll see.

Some of my languages, in no particular order:

  • Herlanian: My first conlang. Objectively terrible. It was supposed to be the result of mixing a ton of real languages together, but it’s basically an English cypher. It just wasn’t very good at all and we shall never speak of it again.
  • Tusir: something I’m going to go back to at some point. A proto-language2, to then evolve into at least four other languages (theoretically). I was going to take inspiration from Arabic and Sanskrit. Currently just a phonetic inventory.
  • Nyazchyn: The name is probably going to get modified a little. Previously called Ochyn. One of my Thunderian languages, and probably the language I have the most done on right now. Previously SOV3 and isolating4, now highly synthetic, edging into polysynthetic. It takes some inspiration from Iroquois and other Native American polysynthetic languages, but only a tiny bit. Verb heavy and pretty much anything can be turned into a verb. This is the one I was working on most recently. I’m kind of lost on it right now (I stopped in the middle of things) so it’ll take some floundering to get going on it again. I need to do a ton of translations for it.
  • Lepadi: Playing with gender and another Thunderian language. The gender of a word determines the placement of the accent and the pronunciation. Phonemes have different sounds based upon gender. Noun-heavy with few verbs. I actually have a few passages translated, which is rather remarkable for me.
  • Okelen: Another Thunderian language, this one I was mostly dealing with the writing. It’s logographic like Chinese, but I was trying to avoid having any pronunciation info in the characters. VOS and supposedly agglutinating5.
  • Tynthna: Another Thunderian language that I did a fair bit with. Inspired by Japanese, with a syllabulary writing system and honorifics. That one was fun.

1 International Phonetic Alphabet

2 A language that will evolve into other languages. Latin is the proto-language for Romance languages, for example.

3 The word order of a language. English is subject, verb, object. There are six possibilities (I leave figuring them out as an exercise for the reader, or you could look at the link at the beginning of this).

4 A language is isolating, like Chinese, when the majority of words can’t be broken into smaller meaningful parts (aka morphemes). Synthetic is the opposite of that.

5 A form of synthesis, where you just keep adding bits (as opposed to fusional, aka inflectional, where the bits added mean multiple things)

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Sick – No post today

This doesn’t count. I’ve got a cold and my brain isn’t working, so don’t expect posts for a bit.

Last week I had an overwhelming urge to draw The Shadow in my Silver’s Kids style. You can consider this a preview of when I start doing those write-ups.

the-shadow-silvers-kids-style

I stole the pose from this issue:

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Theoretically I could ink and color it, but I probably won’t.

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Ben-Day Shots – Detective Comics #33

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Detective Comics #33

1939 November, Golden Age
Cover Price: 10 cents
The Batman Wars Against the Dirigible of Doom

Characters: Batman, Bruce Wayne, Thomas Wayne, Mrs. Wayne, the Wayne’s killer (unnamed), silly red dirigible, the Scarlet Horde, Professor Carl Kruger, Travis, Bixley, Ryder, Bat-plane

(Edited October 2013) (CN: character death, fictional terrorism, mental ableism)

We start with a cover that has nothing to do with the comic, so I’m not including it. We really start with a cool image of Batman in the Bat-plane in the clouds looking at a red rocket-ship looking dirigible (which is a hard word to type). However, the story actually starts with Batman’s origin, which we all know by now.

“Some fifteen years ago, Thomas Wayne, his wife, and son, were walking home from a movie…” Why Bruce’s mom doesn’t get a name, I don’t know. Then, “Days later, a curious and strange scene takes place.”

Not to make light, but, Bruce have you considered perhaps that you read too many comics?

Read more

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2012 and 2013

This year I wrote 135,000 words of fiction on six stories. I made a fool of myself here by posting a rough draft. I survived that with my self-esteem mostly intact. I won NaNoWriMo and got halfway through Camp NaNoWriMo. I’ve discovered booze I like and started a hell of a liquor cabinet. I tried to get readers here and mostly failed (blog catalogs don’t seem to work, triberr helps only a little). I posted here 56 times, on average twice a week, mostly.

On a more personal level, I moved into my own place, finally getting my stuff out of storage after about three years (although I still have quite a bit still packed because there’s no place to put it, or in a severely disorganized state). I’ve had the same boyfriend since approximately March. I’ve made several new friends and not been a complete hermit. I’m starting my third year working at the same place, where they seem to like me quite a lot and I have lots of free time (or I could do this on my breaks if I would actually remember to take them).

I’ve accomplished less than I would have liked to and more than I thought I would. I spent way too much monkey-clicking around the internet and napping.

So, next year, let’s try to do better! I have a plan (that I probably won’t stick to)!

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Ben-Day Shots – Captain Britain #2

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Captain Britain #2

Week Ending Oct 20, 1976
Cover Price: 10 pence

Characters: Captain Britain / Brian Braddock, Reaver / Joshua Stragg, Merlin, Lady of the Northern Skies, Unnamed Thugs

The cover is very exciting and all – well composed, full of Kirby Dots, nice color contrast between Cap and Reaver, but… Look at Captain Britain’s pose. So his legs are basically perpendicular to Reaver. Who is attacking him. Brian had to have fallen on his ass one second after that blow.

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To recap, Brian Braddock got super powers and a really spiffy costume somehow, he’s fighting the Reaver who is in plate armor for some reason, and this is all a flashback. (You can tell because all the panels have round corners.) Continuing from the last ish, we have the giant head of Merlin and the Lady of the Northern Skies, Brian trying to run, Reaver looks like a troll and his men are in pseudo-medieval / technological armor. Brian has to choose between a sword and an amulet. To no one’s surprise this is an easy choice.

Really, it’s all very kind of melodramatic.

“YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE NOW.”

“I’m not a killer! I can only chose the amulet, the symbol of life!” (Since when do amulets generically symbolize anything?)

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(And this is a direct quote, because DRAMATIC MUCH?)

“Rejoice, my son, for thou hast chosen the amulet of right o’er the sword of might! Therefore, let there be beauty and strength — power and compassion — honour and humility, mirth and reverence — within you… Be one with thy brothers of the Round Table — with Arthur and Lancelot, Gawain and Galahad, with them all…”

Brian: Srsly woman, you don’t have to yell.

No, sorry, I was doing direct quotes. Here we go.

“This — is — insane!!

A second ago, it was as if my very being were on fire — mind, body and soul together — and now… This costume, appearing out of nowhere — fitting me as if it’s tailor-made — and my body within the costume. I feel… bigger, faster, stronger — literally bursting with power, but how– and why?!?”

How and why? Seriously, I thought Over-Dramatic Lady made all that clear, more or less.

So our sides are defined – Right (aka, Law and Justice) and Might. A little cliched, but okay.

And to no one’s surprise Reaver decides to grab the sword to fight Cap with. And it’s EVIL. Which seems wrong to me. I might be overthinking or in the wrong mindset or something, but why are Merlin and this Lady setting out something evil? And two, it’s not like swords or might are inherently wrong. To bring up the previously mentioned Round Table – those guys used swords all the frikking time, and while they weren’t all entirely righteous (with the possible exception of Galahad, if I’m remembering my mythology correctly), they weren’t bad guys either. I know, I know, they were simplifying, stop thinking so much.

Anyway, Reaver grabs the sword and gets transformed like Brian. Except sillier (see the GIANT plume from last issue). And Reaver’s men tackle Brian. And we get this:

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And then Brian instinctively reaches for his whupping stick, gives himself a pep talk, and the flashback ends. And apparently it took him a half hour to beat Reaver’s men.

Turns out Reaver got powers too. Which seems unwise of Merlin – okay, there has to be a wrong answer, fine, but don’t make it one that will then make you have to find someone else to clean up the mess if the hero picks it. Or, for example, a bad guy wanders in and grabs it.

So, yeah, his sword shoots energy. Because having a sharp pointy end isn’t enough when you’re dressed in armor and the other guy is in spandex. Brian tries throwing the staff at him, thinking that’s going to work. Brian? Cutie? HE HAS A HELMET. And they fight more with, in good Marvel Tradition, Brian getting the worse end of it. So, again, in good comic tradition, he has a crazy thought.

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And I hate to interrupt the action, but we get a special bonus! A Captain Britain Do-It-Yourself Colour Page! Which my cynicism translates to: we ran out of money to color this page. So, yeah, black and white.

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And Reaver is defeated, just like that. And Brian has proven himself a champion of Right, by beating people up. Because Might is evil.

Icons

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Credits: writer: Chris Claremont, artists: Herb Trimpe & Fred Kida, letterer: I. Watanabe, colorist: Marie Severin, editor: Larry Lieber.

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Link Dump – Gunsel Edition

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“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” – Mae West

Savoy Stomp Stomping through the Savoy Cocktail Book. Also other cocktails, recipes, and other blog stuff.

No Logic in “Etymological”: A Response I Actually Sent Kory Stamper is a lexicographer at Merriam-Webster. She gets odd correspondence. This is a response to one of them. (from Harmless Drudgery)

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The Germans have a word for it – and it’s a very long one. ‘The editor of the Accidental Empire series muses on another thing the Germans do extremely well’ (from The Guardian)

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Look! Up in the sky! It’s…it’s… it’s an amazing optics display What you can get from just ice crystals and sunlight (from Bad Astronomy)

Cocktail DIY: Stocking Your Bar At Home I’ve started following the blog which has all sorts of great recipes, aside from cocktails. (from Putney Farm)

An Open Letter to Writers in 3 Acts: the Anguish & the Glory (from A. Victoria Mixon, Editor)

(note on this post’s title: Gunsel has a factoid associated with it that will never fail to amuse me. From Dictionary.com:

gunsel

1914, Amer. Eng., from hobo slang, “a catamite;” specifically “a young male kept as a sexual companion, esp. by an older tramp,” from Yiddish genzel, from Ger. Gänslein “gosling, young goose.” The secondary, non-sexual meaning “young hoodlum” seems to be entirely traceable to Dashiell Hammett, who snuck it into “The Maltese Falcon” (1939) while warring with his editor over the book’s racy language.

” ‘Another thing,’ Spade repeated, glaring at the boy: ‘Keep that gunsel away from me while you’re making up your mind. I’ll kill him.’ “

The context implies some connection with gun and a sense of “gunman,” and evidently the editor bought it. The word was retained in the script of the 1941 movie made from the book, so evidently the Motion Picture Production Code censors didn’t know it either.

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30 Characters Challenge #7 – Lee DeLoreo

Here’s the last of my entries for the 30 Characters Challenge.

Name: Lee DeLoreo
Hair Color: Ash-blond (with red dyed stripes)
Eye Color: Grey
Skin tone: Pale

Lee DeLoreo is the events organizer for several charities, including the Friends of the Greyhound. He has the annoying tendency to name drop, usually unnecessarily, but all the publicity he gathers is for charity.

DeLoreo is a minor character for my comic series, The White Knight, but may show up more than I planned since the main character does a lot of charity work.

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30 Characters Challenge #6 – Gimmick

Name: Aaron McKay, aka Gimmick
Hair Color: Reddish-brown
Eye Color: Grey
Skin Tone: Reddish-Brown

Gimmick is one of the more subtle Name Criminals and a great deal of his fame is self-promotion and bragging. He’s a classic bully and narcissist, and somewhat of a loner, choosing to spend time with very few people. He has no real friends, but the people he spends the most time with are those that can compete with him intellectually, like Techrat, or that will flatter him, like Jill. He’s intimidated by many of the other more dangerous Name Criminals and tries not to show it by upping his bragging.

He’s usually hired by another criminal to plan jobs for them, and uses a different gimmick for each client. He’s liable to spend more money to do the crime than it brings in, but since it’s all for show for him he doesn’t care.

He has profound hearing loss from childhood and wears very discreet hearing aids of his own design. He makes a fair amount of money off the patents for them. He also wears glasses for reading. He has multiple sclerosis and finds the flare-ups very frustrating, and smokes both tobacco and marijuana. He won’t admit how badly he’s addicted to cigarettes, but he comes close to chain-smoking when frustrated, nervous, or bored.

Gimmick is a villain for my comic series, The White Knight. He’s half black, half the local equivalent to Native American (the world the story is set on has no America.)

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30 Characters Challenge #5 – Swordcat

Name: Leon Smith / Lenxoli, aka Swordcat
Hair Color: Red
Eye Color: Yellow
Skin Tone (fur): Gold

Leon Smith was a fairly ordinary man. Divorced with shared custody of his daughter, Melinda. He preferred to spend his time camping, hiking, and fishing, well away from people. It was on a camping trip that he found a strange sword in the debris from a recent landslide. He made the mistake of picking it up and found it had a personality of its own, Lenxoli.

Lenxoli had gone somewhat mad after the destruction of its home planet, floating in space for countless eons, and laying buried on Earth for millions of years. It wants nothing more in the universe than to recreate the civilization it came from. The first two steps, in whatever order necessary, are to destroy the hairless beasts and uplift the felines, the creatures that are most like its makers.

It meant to completely overwrite Leon’s mind, but didn’t quite succeed. An unexpected side effect was for Leon to change from a grumpy misanthropist to someone who wanted nothing more than back scratches, good food, and a nap in a sunny space.

The sword itself grows  from dagger size to full-length sword. (The two swords as drawn are in scale to each other, I believe). Lenxoli’s mind is connected to the sword which is usually kept in the mental institution freezer, which helps quiet Lenxoli. The staff otherwise find Leon quite pleasant to deal with, especially compared to many of the other inmates.

Swordcat is a villain for my comic series, The White Knight.

I was trying to find a way to make him look fuzzy without having to draw lots and lots of hair, because I’m don’t draw that fast and I need ways to get out pages of the comic (when I make it) without each page taking forever. I use Manga Studio. With Swordcat I tried using the Brush Pen which has a little bit of texture for his skin. It showed up better in the giant version (duh, I know). It wasn’t a successful method from the time saving stand point either, because to preserve the texture I had to paint in all the blacks – without completely blacking them in – instead of using the Fill tool. Oh well, I had fun.

The swords on the bottom were drawn several years ago, which is why they’re shaded. I’m trying to get away from that shading style because, again, it takes too long. And, yes, the eye on his back is correct. It shifts to stay upright. And it’s watching you.

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