Art, Writing, and General Nerdiness

Tumblr art blog for M.C. Aquila, aka Mahira. Indie author and creator of the Triforce of Power and Moonblast fancomics. Mostly spooky OC art, along with news about my books. All art and writing copyright M.C. Aquila unless otherwise noted.

[mcaquila]

Last June, my co-writer @spookyscribe and I ran a Kickstarter for an audiobook of our first novel in our YA fantasy series. It was fully funded, all backers received their awards...

🎉And the audiobook has been published!🎉

You can currently find it on Audible and Libro. The narrators did absolutely amazing jobs, and it was a pleasure to work with them!

Audiobook production was very different than anything I've done before. It and the Kickstarter were an exciting and wonderful experience. Many thanks once again to everyone who made this possible!

[mcaquila]

Me: Drawing characters dancing is really hard! I should keep this simple Me: Me: But what if flying was also involved...?

This is one of those sketches I had to force myself to stop working on because I'd keep editing it into infinity 🙃 I am at least happy with how Florence's expression turned out!

[mcaquila]

I took the easy path with this dance sketch, but I love how it turned out ❤️ Romance isn't really a super prominent part of the Spooky Story, but I do hope to make these two one of those couples that everyone likes and wants to ship..............

Truly an easily achievable dream! ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

[mcaquila]

The first of a few dance doodles from the past couple months, for practicing drawing the Spooky Story characters (and anatomy.) Also took another stab at Belinda's dress and hairstyle for the dance -- and it still needs work. But liking the idea of Heron getting a creepy bolo tie for this outfit.

[mcaquila]

Jacqueline is a vampire who is young enough to still fit in very naturally with the 40-something crowd, but who is old enough to no longer enjoy hunting for blood. It's messy, risky, and a lot of people either smell bad or use way too much perfume/cologne, which ruins her appetite.

[mcaquila]

Screenshots from the first very rough Ren'py test for the Spookier Story! 👻 Basically I wanted to see how the character art and so on looked in the game before getting started on the colors, finishing the backgrounds, etc. ...And I realized the backgrounds might be basically off-scale compared to the character profiles. But good to know these things early on!

(Those awful white outlines are due to messing things up regarding transparency -- I basically forgot transparency doesn't save in jpegs)

[found-you-fnaf-comic]

I've officially decided to say "screw it" and get this Security Breach AU blog (which will eventually host the main AU comic) active. We'll be starting off from some reblogs of AU content from my main Tumblr @mcaquila, then go from there.

If you love Security Breach -- in spite of its flaws, or even because of its flaws -- this AU is for you.

[mcaquila]

I kept putting off starting this other blog because I wanted to get the comic to a certain point. But frankly, I need to start experimenting with different types of horror ambiance for my visual novels -- and FNaF is *perfect* for that. So starting this blog up kind of gives me permission to start investing time in that experimentation.

Also it's spooky season, so...

[mcaquila]

I started this back on the autumnal equinox, then got really sick, and only now was able to finish it. Freeing me up to hopefully do some spooky art!

[mcaquila]

The worst part is when you laugh in a public place while writing a comedy scene.

[mcaquila]

I have been chipping away at inks for Spookier Story art, including (almost) finishing the above. Decided to draw specific leaves for the trees -- but bushes are nonspecific because:

It saves some time

My love for trees infinitely outstrips any liking for bushes

[mcaquila]

This also applies to anyone who makes AMVs.

[mcaquila]

Lorelei is one of those overachieving high school girls who either legitimately does not require sleep like the rest of us feeble mortals -- or she's on the road to some major burnout.

Time will tell.

[mcaquila]

I thought about including ethnicity in all the Spooky Story character profiles -- but it isn't quite as important for some characters as others. Plus, Silas' mother is from the Spooky Story world's version of Kerala -- and describing someone being of Kerala origin is surprisingly hard, because there are lines drawn about who can call themselves a Keralite (and Silas might not be considered applicable, since he wasn't born/didn't grow up there).

In short, it was complex and interesting -- but wasn't easy to include in such a concise profile. So instead I focused on him being a rich prep, which is MUCH more relevant to the story.

[mcaquila]

I just finished the first content edit for The Spookier Story's script! 🎉👻🕷️🖤🎉 It's currently about 40,000 words and needs to be a lot less haha. We'll get there!

No game art has been finalized yet, but so far I've sketched more character art & background art than I'd honestly thought, such as:

^ This is the base for the player character (left) and the best friend (who looks too old lol -- it's hard to do long-faced kids and teen characters. Luckily these are just sketches!)

The only other character (except for the antagonist/s?). I wanted to include an element of 1970s fashion that the MCs of this game and the Spooky Story kids would avoid. Hence, the bucket hat!

For every single scene and profile where the MCs appear, I'll have to have multiple versions, since the player can choose if the player character is a vampire (seen in these sketches), vampire bat, or werewolf & if the best friend is a witch or lake monster.

Luckily 10 years of comic making has made me used to making lots of small edits and changes like this!

We're slowly but surely getting there...

[mcaquila]

I made an Unvale account partially as an excuse to finally make character profiles for the Spooky Story kids! I'm waiting to start posting on there until I have at least a few of the profiles done.

...Was also going to wait to post them on here, too, but got too impatient.

[mcaquila]

True friendship sometimes means compromise -- even if that means betraying all your instincts and allowing someone to put ginger on pizza 😌

Silas (the werewolf) and Heron only have a few classes together, one of which is home ec. Silas is there to get an easy A. Heron is there because he grew up cooking and enjoying amazing Italian and Southern cuisine and is genuinely passionate about food.

And he WILL spread that passion to his friends..... though not always in the exact way he intended.

[mcaquila]

It's well-known that nothing helps keep a werewolf happy around the full moon like lots of games of fetch the stick.

Just trying to figure out how to draw Silas' shifted form more consistently!