Katrina's Having a Contest!

last modified: Monday, May 05, 2008 (8:43:26 PM CST)

Okay, so there's an ongoing joke between one of my friends and me. She says that all my favorite anime (and even non-anime) characters look just like each other. In fact, several of my original characters have the same look. So I thought, what the heck? Let's go all out and have an art contest over it. So here you go. (I'm pretty sure this is permissable to post in the Weblogs, if not, and you're a moderator, please warn me before taking my gallery down.)

Your challenge: Take one character from List 1 and another character from List 2 and draw them together in the same picture. Feel free to add more to the picture beyond that, but that's the minimum. The picture can be any medium, traditional or CG.

List 1 (Existing characters)
Sailor Uranus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailor_Uranus
Yui Hongo: http://www.sempai.org/~felicia/yui.html
Mitsune Konno: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_hina#Characters
Deunan Knute: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appleseed_%28film%29
Martel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimeras_of_Fullmetal_Alchemist
Sara Ringwalt: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Now_and_Then_Here_and_There#Characters
Kara Thrace: http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Kara_Thrace

Additional Pics of Sara and Martel: http://katrinasforest.com/cels/saramartel.jpg

List 2 (My original characters)
http://katrinakadabra.deviantart.com/art/Katrina-s-Desktop-Adrian-23955998
Adrian: (from "Adrian's Pride") A female soldier who has been raised to believe she is male. She suffers from fits of anger whenever this belief is challenged, either by herself or someone else. Ironically enough, she carries a strong hatred of women, thinking them inferior.

http://www.sheezyart.com/view/1760577
Ms. Thorne: From "Angel's Art." A gifted robotics technician who becomes a tutor for the story's nine-year-old protagonist. She claims to dislike children, and usually wears clothes that cover her entire body up to the neck.

http://www.dianahold.com/personal/blogs/index.php?blog=2&p=92&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1#more92
Sala: From "Best of Intentions" A teleporter who helps the protagonist, Haren, find his way back to his homeland. While Haren can be quickly discouraged, Sala is determined and often fights back when odds are against her.

The prizes: The winner may pick one piece of production art from any of the ones seen in the "Contest Prizes" section of my Rubberslug gallery. I may be adding to the list later.

The runner up may choose either a fanfic or fanart request from me (within reason.)

Ways to win bonus points:
-Have the characters actually interacting with each other rather than posing next to each other.

Ways to lose bonus points:
-Giving any of the characters on the lists long hair. Yes, some of them do change their hairstyle at various points in the series. For this contest, the hairstyle has to be short.
-Putting Sailor Neptune anywhere in the picture.

Other rules: There need to be at least six entries for a prize to go out. Katrina will be the final judge on the winners, and there is a possibility of a tie. Feel free to enter more than once.

Due Date: June 1st, unless someone requests an extension.

Let's do some math...

last modified: Sunday, April 27, 2008 (7:11:59 AM CST)

Some time ago I bought my Star Maker bank cel for $120. I later traded it to Dee for her Healed Galaxia sketch. The sketch sells for $180. I buy a new cel of Sailor Pluto's deadly scream for $250 and trade my old one back to Dee for the same Star Maker cel. (Add in a huge thank you and Dee's neverending patience with me for the number of times I asked her to trade.) So I think at the end of this whole thing, I think I spent $90 to get a slightly closer shot of Pluto and learn that I don't want to trade things I label NFS. ^_^;; For whatever it's worth, though, I saw a sequence mate to her sell for $300 on E-bay, so I guess I can't complain I overpaid.

Star Maker was actually one of a couple recent wishlists for me. I also got a cel from the opening sequence in Fushigi Yuugi and a cel of Alakazam from Pokemon, a really old wishlist that I've had since I started this stup... I mean, fun hobby. I really thought with as rarely as Pokemon cels come up, finding a character who only shows in a couple episodes was nearly impossible. And I actually recognize the episode! Now I need to get the screencap...

I did lose a semi-wishlist yesterday when I forgot to actually check Yahoo Japan - a nice douga of Sailor Uranus right before Galaxia takes her star seed:
[url=http://rinkya.com/twview.pl?URL=http://page6.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/f43363464]here[/url]

What kinda bugs me is that it went to a Japanese buyer, which means I'll probably never see it again. I was hoping the Rinkya bidder would win so I could admire it in someone else's gallery. Oh, well. I guess two out of three isn't bad. Besides, I technically shouldn't have even been looking at Yahoo Japan anyway, because I've spent my limit up through the end of July at this point on my new Pluto cel.

Oh, and on my last weblog entry, yes, the package did arrive safely. It's still in my stack of things to scan though, so that will have to wait.

Thanks again Dee! I know Pluto has a good home!

Where I've been...

last modified: Saturday, November 04, 2006 (7:05:44 AM CST)

Wow... I haven't made an entry here in a long time. What happened? Well, lots of stuff. I got married in July. I also got started in a Bible study in June and we decided to challenge each other to refrain from something during the first six weeks of study. Well, I'm not a big coffee drinker, but the first thing I thought of that I do in excess is buy cels. So I decided six weeks of no cels, having full intentions of picking up a few wishlists for my efforts after the fact.

Well, it's been much more than six weeks, and still I haven't bought a thing. I actually had someone e-mail me an offer to purchase a cel that's been on my wishlist for years and I turned it down. This was not my original intention, but it just sort of happened. And actually, I'm really enjoying it. I still love looking at other people's cels because I can really appreciate the artwork, but I don't have this annoying voice in the back of my head saying, "I want that too!"

I still have a few cels I wouldn't mind trading just to have something different in my collection, but I would have to say that purchasing new cels is basically not a priority for me anymore. I might add a new fan cel or something small now and again, but there will be no more Sailor Moon bank cels gracing the pages of my gallery.

Please still feel free to leave feedback on my gallery and say hi. I'm still online fairly often, I'm just putting my time into my artwork and my writing instead. This month, I'm doing NaNoWriMo. Woo! I'm up to 11,000 words already!

Thanks to everyone who was so nice to me and sold me some of my favorites. I'm disovering the fine art of getting cels framed (which is about as expensive as getting new ones... ^_^)

Here's Hoping

last modified: Saturday, February 04, 2006 (5:59:30 PM CST)

So my mom calls me around 11am and tells me that there was an attempt to deliver a cel I recently bought. I ask her to sign the form telling them to leave the package under the eve next to the door so it won't get wet in the rain. I get home about three hours later and the mail's come, but no package. Either they took the form but didn't deliver it or they left it out in the rain and it blew away.

I recently got the tracking number and it says it wasn't delivered yet, so here's hoping. ^_^

So when people say they'll "contact you..."

last modified: Tuesday, November 22, 2005 (11:48:00 AM CST)

Is that just a good way of getting you out of their hair? I just noticed today that a cel I had previously made an offer on was sold to someone else, even though the previous owner had said they would contact me if they ever decided to sell. (Granted the other person probably made an offer that was much higher than mine, but it's still frustrating to be totally uninformed.)

That in mind, there is another cel I traded away some time ago that I miss terribly. I still have the cel I traded for and I really wish I could put it in the mail and have my old cel back again, even though I know it doesn't work that way. :( (Heck, at this point, I'd probably pay the person I traded with to reverse it.)

Is it rude to re-send offers every once in a while even if someone has already said no? I don't want to be annoying, but I don't want to have another incident like this where my name just so happens to slip the owner's mind at the time they decide to sell.

Advice?

My Novel's a Mess, but my fan cel is cool.

last modified: Saturday, November 19, 2005 (5:43:12 PM CST)

First of all, I'm trying to work on my NaNoWriMo novel and failing miserably to keep my word count up, so what I'm even doing on Rubberslug I don't know, but I just got the sketch for my most recent fan cel commission today. I got tired of looking for production art of Martel from Full Metal Alchemist in about two weeks, so I resorted to a fan cel so I could get one of my original characters in the shot as well. The sketch isn't in my gallery yet so don't go looking for it but I just got so excited when I saw it. Did I mention I love AuroraBorealis' work?

Oh, and for those who don't know what it is, NaNoWriMo is short for national novel writing month. If you're feeling ambitious, you can try to write a 50,000 novel in 30 days. Or more like 10 days now... I'm so sadly behind...

A sad rainy day...

last modified: Saturday, October 08, 2005 (8:17:14 AM CST)

I recently had to put one of my pets down so I'm a little sad today. It's also rainy here, so I feel like I'm in the middle of an anime or something when the weather seems to compliment the events.

On a slightly lighter side, I got an offer for a wishlist cel accepted recently. So that means offer time on my stuff. Right now I'm only looking at offers on any of Sailor Moon sections (yes, this includes my healed Galaxia), or the FS sections. Other sections, you can offer if you want but the answer will probably be no. I still miss the last cel I gave up after a convincing offer on it, so I'm not too anxious to do that again.

Have a nice day

So close!! (a FY rant)

last modified: Tuesday, September 20, 2005 (7:14:02 AM CST)

Okay, I gotta rant about this one...

I've had a cel of Tomo from Fushigi Yuugi on my wishlist since I started collecting almost 3 years ago. I actually keep note of which galleries I know of that have a cel of him, just in case they ever open their gallery for offers.

I thought it was silly at first until today when one gallery actually was open for offers. I went to check and the Tomo cel was put on hold two days ago! (Before that, the gallery had not been updated in over a year.)

*bangs head* This hobby is nothing short of annoying sometimes!

*ends rant*

Don't worry, I've got good news...

last modified: Sunday, June 26, 2005 (10:52:41 AM CST)

...I just saved 15% on my car insurance by... never mind...

Actually, I've got a very positive update this time, for several reasons:

1. I actually stuck with my set spending limit this month. Believe it or not, it makes receiving the cels I do buy much better because I know I choose them over others.

2. I just had an offer on a set of douga I'd been eyeing for a while. (There goes my spending for next month, but hey, who's counting?)

3. I received the scan for my newest fan cel, from one of my favorite fanfics I've written. It captures the scene wonderfully.

4. I'm engaged! (Yeah, everything else kinda pales in comparison to that.) Hmm... maybe I'll change my online last name to match the fact that my real last name will be changing. ^_^ (For those of you who thought that "Kadabra" was my real last name, sorry to disappoint.) ^_^

A Rant on the Cel Collecting Habit

last modified: Thursday, May 26, 2005 (6:21:32 AM CST)

Well, my period of non-sale suddenly ended. Three of my Rubberslug shop cels sold and three more are on hold. (Not counting the cels on hold yet - I learned my lesson about that already. ^_^;;)

I do have a bit of a rant, though...

There's one thing about cel collecting that's kind of bugged me. The whole possessiveness of the habit. Seriously, I see a cel that might be nice to get, so I bookmark the page to think about it for a while. I come back later and it's gone. Suddenly the cel that would have been nice to have is a top wishlist piece just because I didn't get it. But if I actually consider how much it would have cost me to buy every cel I semi-liked on impulse, there is no way I'd be moving into my new apartment in a few weeks. Plus, the more I'm collecting, the less I apprecaite my own collection. Case in point:

Me: Oo! Pretty Haruka cel! I want it!
Other Me: Dummy! you have a cel from her henshin sequence and a cel from her fight with Seiya (wishlist cel for a while.) How many cels of the character do you need, you annoying little fangirl?
Me: *Sits in corner and whines*

Well, when I begin talking to myself, I think it's time to start lessening up on the habit. So, I decide I'm going to start backing off of collecting production cels so much, at least from my two more expensive series (SM & FY) and focus my collection more on cels from smaller less expensive series and fan cels. Has anyone else tried this, and if so, any words of wisdom? (Anyone who responds with, "You're a lost cause, don't bother" shall be spammed. Have a nice day. ^_^)

Arg! I've done it again!

last modified: Wednesday, March 09, 2005 (7:01:07 PM CST)

*bangs head against wall* I seem to have this awful ability for spending money prior to making it. When one of my cels went on hold and another one received a private offer, I thought, "Awesome! I've got spending money! I'll go buy cels!" Very wrong move. Both people were unable to complete the sale.

Now, I'm *not* ranting against on the people who backed out of the offers. (Seriously, if any of you guys are reading this, please don't take offense!) Heck, I've done it in the past, and I know people have their reasons. In one of the cases, I was partially to blame anyway because I put the cel on E-bay without taking down the shop listing.

I just wish I would keep a clear head and realize that until I actually receive a payment for something, I can't count it as money to spend on something else. I think I curse myself to have offers fall through when I spend money I don't have. Ye have been warned. ^_^

Remodeling...

last modified: Tuesday, March 01, 2005 (5:35:37 PM CST)

It's back! My "for trade" section seems to come and go. I was going to put my gallery up for offers, but I decided there were too many pieces I would never trade or sell. So I put the ones I'm most likely to part with into their own section. I also put two cels on E-bay, Ashitare and Michiru. I was going to put more, but for some of my cels, it's not really worth it the listing price so I just left them open for offers.

I've also missed classes two days in a row due to a snowstorm, but I've been spending the entire time moving my website to a new server. I had *no* idea it would take so long. The hosting company offered to do it for me, but there was a $50 fee involved. Hey, it's not my fault the server's not working and furthermore, I could buy a rather nice cel for $50. So I opted to make my files manually. With a connection that times out ever five minutes or so, it's a blast, let me tell you. ^_^;;

I also broke down and inquired about a new fan cel commission. I haven't heard back yet, but it's going to be from the same fanfiction as my "Birth of a Starlight" cel. Yah - I'm so excited!

ID on My Fushigi Yuugi Cel

last modified: Wednesday, February 02, 2005 (12:19:49 PM CST)

Okay, for all Fushigi Yuugi fans who haven't seen up through episode 34, consider this your spoiler warning.

Anyway, I'm watching Fushigi Yuugi with one of my friends and we get to Nuriko's death episode. All of a sudden I recognize my Ashitare cel, only a second before he delivers the blow. I had no idea where this cel was from when I bought it, but it was cool to find out it was from such a signfigant scene.

Unfortunatly, I can't really take it down from my sale page since I've still got Katsucon I'm trying to pay for, but it was a pleasant surprise.

In regards to my gallery, I added two new Sailor Moon cels today, one of Yuuichiro as he tries to fight Haruka over Rei and another of Michiru from the SuperS bonus episode. The new icon was edited from one on Lycentia's Sm Graphics Shop (See my links section.)

A Dream Cel and Work of Fanart

last modified: Thursday, December 30, 2004 (9:10:35 PM CST)

It's been a long time since I've added a dream cel to my gallery. Actually, this time I've added two. One is a lovely cel from Sailor Uranus' henshin sequence (This is the one I got my offer accepted on for my birthday,) and the other is an amazing fancel I recently had done. The henshin cel was a wishlist item I never thought I would have, I was jumping up and down when it came in the mail. The fan cel was idea from a fanic piece I'm still working on.
(For those who haven't seen my gallery, my fan cels are typically original pictures, not screencaps, and this one is certainly no expection. I guess you could say it's Star Maker in her "element," for as close to one as she has.)

For anyone who visits, please enjoy and tell me what you think.

---
http://members.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=katrinakadabra
http://www.katrinasforest.com

A Change in Taste

last modified: Thursday, December 16, 2004 (10:28:39 AM CST)

Not much to report. I just finished my science final, and edited the "About" section of gallery. I'm really starting to notice that I'm getting more attached to my fan cels than my real ones. (I guess that's not a bad thing, fan cels don't destroy my back account or make me feel horrifically materialistic when I buy them.)

Is it just me or is E-bay plain easier sometimes?

last modified: Thursday, December 16, 2004 (10:26:11 AM CST)

Hey, I'm a year older. ^_^ Well, after putting a bunch of cels up for sale in my online store, I took four of the ones I'm most interested in selling to E-bay. Even though it's easier for the buyer to buy it straight out, it does make things easier on the seller, I think. Sometimes I get a little tired of people expressing interest in a cel, but never following up or making an offer and backing out. With auctions, either the person bid or didn't bid.

Must go to sleep now... caught a fever over the weekend I'm still trying to recover from...

-Katrina

Dream Cel plus a rant

last modified: Wednesday, November 10, 2004 (10:35:43 PM CST)

Okay, this is my first weblog, so I haven't got a clue if I'm doing this right. In positive light, I just had an offer for a huge dream cel accepted. (Hence why I just put my gallery up for offers.) Last weekend, though, I was trying to remove a sketch from one of my more expensive cels and not only did the douga rip but a bit of the line actually was pulled off. It was so irritated, because the removal was going really well at first.

Okay, that's my rant/excited news for now. I'm going to bed and, God wiling, turning 22 when I get up. ^_^