Eh, the others all have one, so I figure Ith needs one by now too.

Say anything to me! For now, this will serve as Ith's concrit post as well, until I find it necessary to create a separate post for that.

THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS. WILL BE SUBJECT TO MUCH EDITING AND ADDITION yes. Canonmates--or heck, anyone canon-familiar with YW or FW at all--feel free to add/suggest stuff in the comments that you feel might come up in play.

( The Speech )

( Strings/Hyperstrings )

( Kernels )

( Master Words )

( Walking on Air/Water )

( Walking through Solids )

( Invisibility )

( Shields )

( Teleportation )

( Healing )

TBA: Prescience/the Eye/timestream punch; Powers; Ordeals; the Oath...?

Cut links: The Speech; Strings/Hyperstrings; Kernels; Master Words; Walking on Air/Water; Walking through Solids; Invisibility; Shields; Teleportation; Healing.

HAI GAIS messing with Ith's keywords/userpics, don't worry if some of his threads are a bit funny-looking because of that from now |D

[something is rustling in the bushes nearby]

[alternately, give me a location and time of day in the topic]

Name: Sehhff'hhihhnei'ithhhssshweihh. Goes by Ith.
House: Sparklypoo
Talent: ...is a freaking DINOSAUR--okay, he's interested in Astronomy and Arithmancy and Transfiguration
Other: Ith's family is from some obscure aboriginal race originating on a small island somewhere in the Mediterranian, which is isolated from almost all outside contact, and which has its own culture distinct from that of all european and african countries, hence his strange name (it's also unplottable).

Ith's father is a dark wizard of some reknown who believed in knowing the enemy, and who, with this in mind, set out to understand their Muggle culture as intimately as possible. After watching a certain Muggle film one too many times, he decided that an army of intelligent dinosaurs was an excellent way to rid the world of muggles and those of impure blood. But where does one find an army of intelligent dinosaurs in this day and age?

And so it came to be that, after much research and endless nights of coffee and a few miles of scrolls filled with notes, Ith was cursed with his saurian form. At the time, the boy was but a wee child of eight. The curse is, naturally, irreversible so long as Ith's father lives, and the old bastard is pretty damn hard to kill. Ith isn't too worried about it, anyway, but the two of them are by now understandably estranged, after Ith was taken away by wizardly child protection services and somehow got adopted by a family of cats, who then immigrated to England. As far as anyone can surmise, Ith is the only product of his father's research.

...I'm starting to run out of steam on this I'll finish later 8(

SO UH. You may have heard me (or castmates) call Ith a Jesus sometime in the past. Now, in camp, "jesus" can mean a lot of things.

( F-FULL OF SPOILERS AHAHA. )



...so yes. LONG STORY SHORT: ITH IS ACTUALLY JESUS. BUT WITH SCALES. AND A LOT MORE LITERALLY THAN YOU THINK.

[Edited 1/09 for notes]

...thought it might be useful to someone, oocly. Not that I. Make note of these all that often. But.

Jaw drop--smile
Jaw drop w/ tongueflick--bigger smile. As far as I can surmise, this is his species' equivalent of laughter...?
folding of claws--neutrality; contentment
twitchy claws--anxiety, uneasiness. Rhiow says in canon that the easiest way to know Ith's mood is by watching his claws.
bowing--same as for humans.

...I'll reread canon to see if I can pick out some more specifics at some point, but those are the big ones. o/

HOKAY. This is a basic outline of a technique I use to recolor bits of icons. The technique I use for Ith is... well, it's actually a lot more complicated than this! Because recoloring photographic images can sometimes be a heck of a lot more painful than recoloring animated/illustrated stuff a-and maybe I'll get around to doing a tutorial on the extended version later. But. This is based around the same basic ideas, and it's optimized to be as un-OCD as possible because I am very very OCD sometimes. You'll see that I still manage to squeeze in bits of obsessiveness around the edges despite my attempts at making this process relatively straightforward. I use Photoshop Elements, which is essentially Photoshop but minus the cool bits; I'm pretty sure this is A LOT EASIER on real Photoshop. But a lot of these techniques will still apply for any graphics program that has layer grouping, levels, etc.; you just have to work with different specifics.

I'm a little bit sleep-deprived as I'm writing this, so apologies if it's a bit low on the coherency.

But anyway. Exhibit A, our model for today's tutorial:



Tabitha Smith of Nextwave fame, whom I wish to edit to have Squalo's hair color. The base is by actualize.

( I-image heavy. )

End result:



And that's it! This entire process usually takes me around fifteen minutes tops, and then fifteen more minutes of being obsessive over readjusting the colors and agonizing over the crop h-haha (if it isn't already cropped, that is). Parts one and two can be done in the opposite order, if you so wish, which will minimize the need for part four, but which will also mean you're going in "blind". I often like being able to have some rough idea of what the final product is going to look like as I'm coloring in, but sometimes I don't have the patience to even spend the fifteen seconds it takes to make the mock-up recolor layer and just go in blind anyway \o/

This same technique can actually sometimes work on photographic icons--I did arhu's bigcat icons in much the same way except minus step three and plus some other fiddly bits to make the colors work out right. (Those started out as cougars / pumas / mountain lions / catamounts / whatever the hell else people like to call the damned things, for the curious.)

I'm sure you can do something reasonably similar to this with layer masks instead of grouping, but layer masks are a pain and I hate them 8(

I might do another recolor tutorial sometime since there's still a bit else I haven't covered but it's getting late so yeah. That's all for now 8D

Character: Sehhff'hhihhnei'ithhhssshweihh ("Ith")
Series: Feline Wizards
Character Age: around the tail end of latency, so somewhere in mid- to late adolescence for his species.
( yaddah yaddah )

voting~

Age: adolescent
Height: one source says six feet at the shoulder, the other ten! This could be because of the angle of his body, or because he changes form between Old Downside and the normal world--or it could be because Diane Duane is having consistency issues again. I am going with about 8ft/2.5m at the shoulder, and 24ft/7.5m long from nose to tip of tail.*
Weight: a ton and a half.
Eyes: golden
Hair Hide: red and orange, with markings described to be similar to those of a calico cat. Not a patchy calico, but more of a brindledy one.

*I'm thinking his stats are probably something slightly bigger than those of Jane, a juvenile T. Rex discovered in... 2001? Which is after the publication date of TBONWM, but eh. Jane is estimated to weigh only about half of what Ith does, but that could probably be explained away by the fact that Jane is a lot younger than Ith would be; Ith's species' full size is a lot smaller than that of an actual T. Rex, so I'm thinking they'd reach true adult proportions a lot faster. I'm overthinking this, aren't I?

( etc. )