Long time no see! I guess it hasn’t really been THAT long, but 2 months on no activity here feels like forever to me. I’d like to say that will change now, but it won’t. School’s about to start up again and I’m currently looking for a new job on top of that, and lots of other things are going on in my life. Here’s my last 3 months in a long list: Summer school; house repairs; helping my brother prepare for his big move to Japan; helping cousins house-hunt; order and watch Shakugan no Shana II; job hunting; training a cockatiel; dying repeatedly against the stupid spider monsters in Siren: Blood Curse (ack!); social obligations; order Shana II from a different seller because the subtitles are screwy; car repairs; and plotting the downfall of NCSoft: Guild Wars for wronging my oldest brother. Whew, that was long. Check out my livejournal for the elaborate version of my adventures in overseas shipping.

So about this wallpaper:
Original Scan – Shana
Runes – Obsidian Dawn
Inspiration: "Lost Carol" by Mary Elizabeth McGlynn (from Silent Hill 3). I've always associated my Silent Hill 3 soundtrack with Shakugan no Shana for some weird reason. The vocal work on that particular track is haunting, kind of like in the first opening of season one.

Anyways, I absolutely loved this scan of Shana. The only way I could make myself love it more was to have Shana in a kimono, so there ya go. I tweaked her hair at the ends because I didn’t like how it fished-tailed out in places. When I first vectored her I made her hair the same magenta like in the artwork, which was pretty, but didn’t exactly say “Flames! Mwuhaha!”, so that had to change. The swirling rune-ribbon things were original blue like in the anime, but they looked way better in red by the time I finished the entire piece. I scanned a piece of fabric that I found at a store and toned down the colors to keep it from being too loud. I guess I could have made the kimono red, but that was about to be overkill. And the color is more dramatic this way.