Pifo XXI

And we finish the set (I totally forgot to upload the lineart so I will do it in a second time).

Story

Quite short for them as I want them to be as the established gay couple owning a cafe who provides food and suggestions/solutions while feeding the others.

Sometimes the solutions comes through food.

So, for example, they provide the catering for Pea's events. Amil packs his brother's lunch (it's singular, yes, in the XXI Josh does not appear, which makes me very sad but there's a reason for it).

Pifo and Amil meet in high school, they are both in the cooking club. They decide to go to cooking school together: one of them specializes in pastries and the other one in regular cooking (particularly fusion and healthy food).

They open a small business together, starting from catering and the business booms after Pea decides to hire them for a big event and their food is a complete success. Particularly Pifo's cakes are considered to be too cute to be true but also edible (which is usually never the case because I have yet to eat a cake that's pretty and also not disgustingly sweet). But Pifo's cakes are light, healthy, lno liquor and no spongecake. No glazing either.

He creates a heaven of fruits based mousses, mille-feuilles, profiteroles and saint honores!

Also Pifo is quite the volatile boy and goes through a lot of heartaches and rejections before he realizes that Amil was always there for him (sounds familiar? yes! It's karmic, I guess).

In the end, because this is a bit of a back story, when our XXI setting starts they own a small cafe called "Food for the soul"... where people go when they are depressed or sad (or not) to find comfort in good food.

Pifo made the place look very comfy, warm, welcoming... almost like your best friend's living room: a nice sofas and armchairs, pretty cups and dishware, shelves full of books, no tv, nice classical music, the place smelling sweet.

There is no menu. He either brings a special of the day or, in case of broken hearts, just looks at the people's face, talks to them a bit and brings food for them. It's always the perfect food!

Of course, after a while, he gets to know his clients very well. (and of course if you are on a special diet - vegetarian - or allergic to something you have to tell him).

So a few times we see either the girls or the boys going there to talk to him, eat sweet or savory, break in tears of relief and then leave feeling much better.

This is what makes his life perfect.... imagine how hard it is to go on vacation with a business like that! (and that's the conflict, because throughout the story he'll try to find a way to bring Amil on vacation somewhere to celebrate their special anniversary).

Balthasar plants a tree today.

So I've decided to participate to this initiative with the Balthasar blog as well but the post has to be in Italian.

-----------------------------------------------------

Volevo far conoscere questa iniziativa

dichiarando che il proprio blog e' a impatto zero, e mettendo un bottone al lato, "doveconviene" pianta un albero gratis presso Goswiz (aderendo a loro volta all'iniziativa "Iplantatree").

basta seguire le istruzioni, mettere il bottone e il gioco e' fatto.

-----------------------------------

In short by declaring that the blog has impact zero on the environment, putting the button to the side and sending an email, these people up here will plant a tree for me near Goswick.

This is the original project.

We're on TVTropes!

Thanks to elianthos we got tropes in progress!

Right here!

So I hope some of you are familiar with the Tv Tropes website... she is trying to list all the tropes that can be found in The Pirate Balthasar which - alas - might be quite a lot!

ha ha ha ha... I know I like using tropes but I wonder if dismantling them still counts as using them.

Anyway: can you help her found new tropes? Do you think she missed any?

There's room for suggestions!

Stick around I have a Pifo and Quoque illustration almost ready.

Chapter 15 curiosities

Countdown reset. 11 days to go to next release, I hope you enjoyed this one.
The calendar is now set for the whole chapter 15 but I must fix it for chapter 16 (as I shifted the next breakdown).

But now... time for the curiosities of the week.

Cheese goes crack! That's because it's firm. In Italian that would be called: formaggio stagionato (which means "seasoned" as in... old.)

The most famous is probably the Parmiggiano kind, or as they call it in English... Parmesan Cheese (it's 2 years old).

My guess is they are eating Pecorino... let me tell you, you put some honey and pepper on Tuscan pecorino (my favorite type, although I should prefer the Roman type being from nearby Rome) and it's heavenly Heaven. In Sicily pecorino is mild and goes through several stages (from soft to firm). The medium one, called Primo Sale is typically salt-less and it's ideal on Sfincione pizza.

So my guess is, being Cat a sweet-tooth, they are eating primo sale! Droool. It's soft enough to be cracked bare hands, makes a crack sound but it's soft enough and juicy enough and not too salty... so it can be eating with some nice bread. I love it!

This is a silly thing... you might have noticed that Callista's heart does not go badump badump... it goes tutump tutump like somebody banging on a door or against a wall.

It's a knocking sound.

Reason for this is that she does not feel the sound in her chest but in hear head, that's why she cannot sleep. The noise is keeping her up.

Heartbeats felt in your chest make your heart flutter as if it wanted to escape the rib-cage. When you feel it in your temples and ears you are feeling a different form of excitement and it's the type that will keep you awake at night.

Pon pons?

The correct English spelling would be Pom-pons, it comes from the French //pompòn//. Now in Italian that became phonetic pon pon and somehow more onomatopoeic (I don't know I feel the "n" have more of a bouncy bouncy feel to it ha ha ha).

Currently Tonno is not doubting the fact that they'll be using Pom-pons for gymnastics. It's trying to figure out what they are by shaking them and the sound he hears (the one you see in the sfx) is pons pons, hence he is wondering: pon-pons?

Sex strikes are an often underestimated form of protest.

The doctor calls it embargo XDD which is far worse because you are supposed to cut all contact with a particular Country in an attempt to isolate it.

I have a feeling he'll go from embargo to strike quite soon.

Il Pirata Baldassarre - Capitolo 15 A

Buona lettura e buona domenica!

Open publication - Free publishing - More commedia

The Pirate Balthasar - Chapter 15 A

They must have done something to the campus server again because it was almost impossible to navigate yesterday (cookie conflicts everywhere I go) and it is still impossible to access Deviant Art.

Of course, as usual, you can click on the title of the post to go and read it on Smack Jeeves.

Open publication - Free publishing - More comedy

NEW GAMES! September 19th celebration!

September 19th is "Talk like a pirate day"... you know, to me is also Pirate Day, in a way.

I thought we should participate somehow so, after asking for feedback, I've decided to create some new games. I will post better instructions tomorrow, but first I want to introduce them to you and hear what you have to say about it.

1) Design Pifo's ideal wedding gown (for this one I shall provide a silhouette of naked Pifo to use as a dress up doll or base XDD).

2) The caption contest (I will give you a page with empty speech bubbles and you can come up with your own dialogues).

3) Color a page contest (I'll give you the base and the lineart of a page for you to recolor).

4) what animal should they be? (if the guys were to be an animal what animal should they be? This can be done in drawing and/or writing form).

5) Talk like a pirate day: This is the one with the closest deadline, September 19th.

We celebrate pirates our way: with a drawing, a poem, a story, any kind of art form (so it's a completely free kind of game/conteste).

Here comes the best part. Your art pieces will be posted on the blog throughout the day - September 19th - as I am thinking about officially joining the celebration and putting a flag up on the "talk like a pirate" website

So, what says ye? Shall we join the pirate fun?

Mermaid WIP encore!

Okay I proceed showing you more work in progress on the mermaid piece.

First time in ages I go all out rendering like this... as you can see some things I have yet to resolve... rotation, placement, overlay... that's why I work on this only during week-ends: when working on a complex piece you have to take long breaks from it, so that when you come back, with a refreshed mind, you can see all the problems better.

If you work on the same piece non-stop the problems will disappear in front of your eyes and if the problems are gone... so are the solutions! :D

I guess in the meantime I could finish the XXI set with Quoque and Pifo (although I still don't have a clear story in mind for them and I was thinking of inserting them in the storyline as already "established" somehow).

Today I also have to fix google calendar. For some reasons a few dates are overlapping and showing all wrong up there, aren't they. That's wrong!!!! >:(

Funny dolls - your favorite cross over?

Sorry sorry I have to show you these! Ha ha ha

Apparently our friend Emily was having fun with dolldivine not too long ago and came up with these.

It's the funniest cross over ever! Ha ha ha.

I don't know about you but they crack me up.

Rose the pink dragon is the best! XDDDD

This is fun... which maybe brings us also an idea for our next game... it could be: your favorite cross over ever!

Guys, propose! Maybe I can use my own flash dolls to create something similar to this! :D

Hype~! Cover chapter 16!

Take this!

Muah ah ah ah! Is this spoiler? Is this hype? No, it's sheer cruelty (and after this post I will receive tons of phone calls from WWF and Greenpeace!).

Who knows what this really means though.... maybe I am just teasing you, maybe I am cheating... can you trust a smiling pirate? Never trust a smiling pirate!

I gotta go and fix the google calendar now, for some reason it got messed up again (I think it doesn't like being synchronize with outlook).

Mermaid prettier WIP

Okay here's a prettier work in progress.

I've already started on Cat as well.

And I was thinking... : oooh, she looks like a pwetty fish, no wonder Cat likes her, cuz Cats like fishes!

Okay, lame joke has this monday begin for me with no coffee... so I shall go get some.

Help me caffeine, this week I shall be submerged to, unlike our mermaid, not by water but by papers!!!!

Mermaid WIP Callista

I don't know how interested are you in my work in progress.

But I thought I'd show you how I am progressing on the mermaid, since, as you may know, this has now become my sunday task.

So I spent about 2 hours on the eyes already and they are 70% done now.

Then I spend 1 hour on the lips and they are also 70% done.

As you can see I have also started the nose and the rest of the head. Maybe I'll have a prettier looking work in progress for tomorrow.

STGCC

I will be at the STGCC today (Singapore Toys, Games and Comic Convention) so I won't be much present on the blog, sorry. (if you are interested I'll write a report on the convention).

It's been a rushed week, not even time to enjoy and draw the shallalahs celebrating the SJ award! (where should I put the golden butler, now? XD)... and you might not believe this but I am going to the STGCC for work. Certain aspects of work sure are nice... ^___^

So if any of you is from Singapore and you are going too and you spot me... feel free to approach me. I kinda look like the drawing, with the question marks and all, ah ah ah. Well, easy to spot me anyway... I'm the Ang Mo (white) chick with glasses and bandanas and I will be wearing some random comic t-shirt (probably Astroboy) and have a mickey mouse bag.

If my Jacket says: Kiss me, I'm a Pirate!

Then you will be absolutely sure it's me!

E il vincitore e'...

Chiedo scusa per il doppio post ma credo che a quest'ora si sia svegliata piu' o meno anche l'Italia, per cui i ringraziamenti in italiano sono assolutamente d'obbligo (e cerchiamo di farlo in tempo reale).

Ringrazio tutti per il sostegno, per essersi attivati a racimolare voti e aver postato e pubblicizzato l'evento ovunque.

Gli amici, i concittadini (sia nel Lazio che in Sicilia) e ovviamente i parenti che non si tirano mai indietro.

Vi siete dati tutti un gran da fare e siete stati fenomenali!

Grazie,

And the winner is....

Yes! This is the news we've all been waiting for... (I don't know about you but I was waiting for it! Muah aha hah ahr ahr choke choke).

I wanted to thank you all for voting the Pirate Balthasar as best romance at the Smack Jeeves awards. It's a tough category and the competitor were much more popular than popular itself!

Also romance is a category that is never taken seriously because most people think that romance = cheesy or no-brainer structure.

Most chick flick are labeled as such and are underestimated but, as I keep telling my students, most of those movies have the most sophisticated structure when it comes to storytelling (how they are developed afterwards and if the dialogue sucks it's somebody else's fault LOL).

Let's not forget the origins to romantic comedies have some balls: from Shakespeare's quarreling couples (and even further), to Jane Austen standards to Frank Capra and his wonderful movies!

Romance is a strong force in the universe! We shall ride it the pirate way!

Thank you!

Chapter 14 - final curiosities

How does she manage to do that? O_o

It's not completely impossible but it's better if a) you don't talk, don't breathe, don't fart XDD). b) don't sweat.

Bees are attracted to the warmth of the human body and some of them are also attracted by the saltiness in sweat. That's why, when, picking honey, you better be very quite and still and super cool (temperature wise). They are also attracted to breath.

This beehive, though, is acting quite strangely already - because bees don't fly at night - so something might have affected them.

This episode is based on something I saw a friend of mine do.

Bees only sting when attacked and when in a state of confusion they just fly around you like... stoned or so. That's why beekeepers smoke them to create this state of confusion that makes them almost completely harmless.

When a bee stings you she releases a pheromone that will tell all the other bees who to sting.

My friend was telling me, while quietly taking honey out of the tree, that the bees were probably acting strange because a new queen bee was born and they were swarming away. My personal opinion was that the bees were abandoning the hive because the tree had filled with water and the hive was rotting (in fact the honey tasted bland).

Anyways, if you ask me what I saw was pretty amazing. My friend kept saying he had done it many times and that bees could not see him as a threat... he said that it's the same for snakes charmer and stuff. I don't know how much of that is true, Italians are quite the boastful type, my guess is we got lucky or... he is very good a spotting stoned bees.

Remember, kids, don't do this at home.

What Cat says it's true: you cannot climb a fig tree.

My grandpa always said: fig branches are traitors, they will drop you when you least expect it.

By the way, fig trees? I have more than 16 of them, they are all different. Figs are the best!

The sea is pretty mean to Kane here... instead of going splash or splunf he tells him: flop.

So mean! XDDD

It's a flop! It's a flop!

can you remember what illustrator inspired this panel? *_*

I talked about him in one of the post dedicated to Famous Pirate Illustrators.

Frittelle. (there are stacks of pancakes in that page too, for some reason, ignore them XDD)

Frittelle are different from Region to Region. Somehow people like to compare them to donuts but the consistency of the dough is very different.

I find doughnuts to be quite dry compare to frittelle or ciambelle (which are the ones Wes and Kes still fight about). The consistency of the dough is chewy and moist on the inside, crunchy on the outside). They can be covered in sugar, filled with cream or dumped in honey.

As I was saying in a previous post fried food was considered somehow "fancy" so frittelle are only made in special occasions, like Carnival (p.s. whatever Wikipedia argues: carne vale also means "meat is ok" because you can only eat meat up until Fat Thursday, then Lent starts and is carne vale no more!), or Saint Joseph (father's day). So they are quite the treat!

So Castalia is farsighted.

That is a bookworm's nightmare.

The thing is, when you can't see things close to you and have to put a book at arm length, life becomes pretty difficult.

She can see better than regular people from afar. My dad, who is far sighted, can spot a sparrow flying kilometers away XDD (almost). When it comes to reading... he hates it! His eyes get tired easily, he gets headaches and stuff. So he doesn't like to read, even though he likes to hear me summarize book to him.

Even though he has reading glasses I had to buy him a magnifying glass.

Even though spectacles already existed, what Kane is giving to Castalia is a reading stone.

It's a better solution, it enlarges the letters (grandpa Cosimo sure knew his stuff), it's less heavy on the eyes too (consider that optometry was not super precise yet).

For those of you who asked if it was a monocle I can only add that monocles were invented in the XVIII century and became truly common only in the XIX century. That's why you never see older paintings with people with monocles but tons of illustrations from the 1800 with men using them.

Il Pirata Baldassarre - Capitolo 14 - Fine

Fine del capitolo... di giaaaa'? Eh, gia'!

Open publication - Free publishing - More commedia

The Pirate Balthasar - Chapter 14 - END

And this is the end of the chapter.
See you tomorrow for the curiosities.

Ops, as usual, click on the title to the post to go and read the batch on Smack jeeves from where we left the last time.

Open publication - Free publishing - More comedy

Preview?

I don't have anything to post, today... mhhh... mainly because that mermaid thingy is taking a lot of my time (and I am on page 39 of chapter 15, trying to finish the chapter as soon as I can), plus the update will be going up soon.

So I will post these 3 images from chapter 15 - which has a lot of Cat and Callista but... I'd rather not show muahahahah.

So, on the side a few funny things will happen and these are some them.

Any guess?

Mermaid background 80%

So this is the background for the mermaid illustration. Still a work in progress, I'd say 80% done. I spent the whole sunday painting this, customizing brushes and stuff.

I still have to put reflection on to the sea floor. Decide on the opacity a little more. I think it might be too tall and I might need to lower it. There are also some glare and colors to be added to the water, as if the mermaid were glowing a bit... but I might add them after I am done with the mermaid herself.

Part of this started as matte painting.

Mermaid WIP background

I thought you might be interested to see the background work in progress.

The top corner is the one I painted and the rest is how much I have to go.

Ehm, so for the top part of the sea I am referring to this picture I took in Sicily so that the sea turns out turquoise and green.

I need to paint in the boat now and the splash. Then I'll start the underwater part. I am still unsure if I want to put corals there or not. I'll see :D

Mermaid WIP

As you may see I am laying down the color scheme now but I am not painting the figures yet.

In fact I am creating a matte painting for the Background first.

But I thought you'd be interested in knowing that this will be my longest illustration ever and I have decided to apply some of the stuff I had to do for work (and do not like to do) to this illustration while producing my fast ones on the side (since those are more fun to do, for me, although quite not as flashy and/or attention grabbing according to internet standards).

So you might see this by the end of september (or for my birthday XDD) because it will take hundreds of hours I'm afraid.

But in the meantime I'll pick up and XXI set and finish off with Pifo and Quoque... as soon as my hand is back to normal. (yes, it's that time of the year again, where my arm hurts from scapula to pectoral and the pain shoots down to the pinky).

Il pirata Baldassarre - Capitolo 14 - Specialino Martin

Ed ecco finalmente lo specialino Martin Steeves in italiano - e scusate se il capitano si è fatto un poco attendere.

The Pirate Balthasar - Chapter 14 - Martin Special

This special should go at the end of the chapter.

But it's not like posting it now will spoil anything.

(the second special, instead, would not make sense if not at the end of the chapter).

I am putting up the English version for now because, for some reason, the Italian version is not in my hard drive!

It's a conspiracy!

Coming up next!

Sorry I haven't been posting anything useful for days.

So this image is a coming up next on chapter 15 :D.

I am currently on page 31 of chapter 15, so sorry if I slowed down with the illustrations, I am trying to get a full chapter ahead of myself in the releases because now that I can compile pdfs and put them on ipad I get to reread the comic more often and find all the typos and problems.

If times allows it, during the next break, I will try to fix a lot of these problems and I was thinking about redrawing chapter one since, as you may know already, that chapter is not made with drawings but with cleaned up storyboards!

And it's not a clean up in pencil... it's simply I erase extra lines here and there! ha ha ha ha.

Also some lines didn't flow properly so let's call this, as my friends would say it, a "perfect edition". :P

Anywas, I found out yesterday that somebody is playing an RPG on this website based on this comic. Cool!

If the person who started the game cares to come forward and tell us how to play I think this could be interesting and fun for all of us... because I'm out of ideas for games.

In fact... the OC Game idea came from one of you, guys, and now I am left wondering: What should we do next?

Would anybody care to draw Pifo's wedding gown or Princess gown or something? XDD hahahaha

Happy Birthday Singapore

Today is National Day in Singapore (I get to rest a bit and this rest is much needed) and the Country turns 46.

It seems only right to wish Happy Birthday to my new home, and if I used Kane to wish happy birthday to Italy, it seems only fair to use Cat - whose hairdo was inspired by the merlion - to convey my best wishes here, today.

Also Google.sg logo looks so cute.

Have a great National Day my S'porean friends!

The Pirate Balthasar on tumblr

Hi guys,

I wanted to mention that The Pirate Balthasar is now on tumblr as well - still on chapter one - so that if you like that platform and use it you can reblog your favorite pages and I think I activated the image reply and stuff.

It's a new platform for comics... let's explore it! :D

Help!

Alright guys,

I am trying to fix all the links and downloads in the blog/site.

So today I have a little request and a few questions for you regarding the look and functionality of the blog - so it is very very important that you answer to this message and help me out a bit.

See, a lot of times, when I post, I make mistakes (I have wrong pages, broken links) and people never message me... until a pius soul finds it in his heart to let me know... many months later.

This says a lot... a lot of sad things. But I don't want to go there with a long disquisition of how internet has changed people over the years.

So here's how it goes: please let me know if you think there's anything I could improve on the blog (if some things are not easy to find, if links are broken and don't bring you anywhere, if images don't show, etc etc). I am technologically impaired but, as you might have seen, I do try my best to find solutions for everyone's benefit.

For example: Do you see the G+ button? The one right under the facebook like button?

Unfortunately I know that I have quite a few flash widgets that cannot be read with ipad or iphone... the countdown, the fan art gallery and even the issuu reader.

Any tech savvy suggestion and tip is most welcome,

thanks,

Deda

OC Contest Final Results.

It's time to close the polls, collect the results and talk about them.

First of all we had a record of voters with 263 votes collected :D

Well, 262 because the 263rd vote is the smart pants that voted for Bob XDD

The results are as follow:

Allegra	98	37.26%
Katharina	67	25.48%
Clyde and the old lady	38	14.45%
Julian	32	12.17%
Dahlia	27	10.27%
Other answer...	1	0.38%

So... Allegra wins! Congratulations! :D

She will have a important cameo in the comic.

But do not fear other participants... I have a crowd scene too maybe you will want to look for your characters in the crowd. Muah ah ah ah -choke choke- ah!

Have a good Week End

Alright guys... 10 days is a lot to wait for the next update....

But the next one is also the one that will close the chapter so: what will happen next? Who's on the cover for chapter 15?

Initially I thought Cat and Callista would be on the cover of this chapter as well... then I counted the pages again and found out they would be on chapter 16 instead.

So how about we put Pifo and Quoque for once? Since their relationship is also cementing day by day? They're growing up ;_; sigh sob... my babies are growing up ;_;

Here's the story! :D

Here's the lineart for Lio and Foxy!

And, just as I promised, here's the story for them. It's quite simple, really... or is it?


Story

In the contemporary version of the story, Foxy and Lio are older (everybody is older, than in the original story, clearly).

Lio is a physiotherapist and she works as a sport physiotherapist. Among her clients is a famous scuderia for Formula One and she takes care of its pilots.

Now Formula One is a sport that puts a lot of stress on the neck of the pilots, the helmet weights about 6kg and usually, during training the neck muscles are stimulated to be able to resist the high amount of G force the pilot has to go through during a grand prix... which usually amounts to a total of 26kg of weight on the neck. Now the cockpit in a car is not too big and it's another reason why, even though the F1 pilots are always well fit, they are not particularly bulky.

Now Lio... she is a big sport fan and it's one of the reasons why she decided to enter the field of sport medicine and become a therapist: to massage the body of hunky looking sportsmen.

"Those sturdy, athletic bodies sweating shiny drops, glittering under the sun... huff huff" *_* - Deda hits Lio on the head!

As I was saying that particular trait of Lio is not gone because, let's face it, girls just wanna have fun! Ha ha ha.So then, one day, the F1 team sends in its brand new pilot and he looks very sweet, very polite... very naughty.

Now, our Lio she knows him very well and is a huuuge fan of his. She is all "Kyaah, I can't believe I will get to massage Salomon Twain! Huff huff.. I am going to rub him here and there! Huff huff" Cough, yeah! But see, being a professional, she doesn't want to give the wrong impression and wants to keep a low profile. She manages to keep a composure and talks to him all relaxed and stuff almost on a daily basis... only to return at home, jumping on the couch, yelling at the sister: I can't stand it!!! He's too cuuuuute!

So she begins to wait for his visits with greater anticipation every day... until one day she sees him show up with one of those racing queens, plastic boobies and rubber lips and all... and she suddenly becomes very gloom.
"Nuoooh, what if he gets a girlfriend??? Okay, I am not the jealous type I'd go for him anyways! But when? When do I go for him? I talk talk and never do.... is he into those kinds of girls?" So she casually inquires.

As I said... our man, Sally, is very nice and polite but a bit naughty (it's the XXI century after all, who believes in innocence anymore?) and has her figured out quite well. Surely by the fact that she rubs him huffing and puffing - and she also drools. So he comes up with an imaginary sharp pain on the lower part of his back and is about to get all undressed when she turns all purple and stops him... "...or I'll totally jump you."

So he grins - yes, this Foxy grins - and proposes a pic-nic.
Go figure, sparks fly and stuff happens and you'd think... wohooo... but apparently it's not very easy to date a famous person. That's when the fun part begins...

Lio and Foxy XXI

I have to run to work.

Give me a couple of hours and I will upload the story, guys.

Or maybe you want to guess, in the meantime, and I could post the story tomorrow with a few of the linearts!

Muahahahahahah!

I feel right.

We go back to Martin and Pea.

This one belongs to that sets of illustrations based on single words/adjectives and the word I picked for them is: right!

I am not going to express much on the concept just yet, you'll find out by reading the comic what's going on with these two... but let's just say that "right" means a lot of things including "not wrong" (LOL) and somehow "perfect" or "in the right place".

We won't see Martin for quite some time, we need to focus on Cat and Callista now, for a little bit... but when he will come back he'll be back with a Vengeance! hahahahaahah

What would they look like...

So this is what the OC would look like in my style.

Not particularly pretty as yours... I had to adapt them to the fashion of the time and the looks!

Soooo you're still on time to vote by going right here!

Lio Pin Up

Aaah, you thought I stopped this set with Castalia and Cassandra, eh?

No no... it's just that... I need inspiration.

Now for our smexy Lio I thought about the famous Marilyn Monroe's poster for some reason... LOL.

I hope you like it.

Now for the OC POLLS.

I will leave them open until the end of the week (might as well, it's Tuesday already and I need time to gather all the data and votes and prepare the final post).

Also... I was asked if I could not draw the characters in Pirate Balthasar style, regardless of the fact they win or lose the polls and make it to the comic. So I say... why not?

So I will tackle those drawings too!

Chapter 14 - Curiosities

Giovanni Battista Hodierna was a Sicilian astronomer.

He is not very famous but his works were quite outstanding.

He was impressed with Galileo's studies and continued on his footsteps and a lot of his speculations were actually quite correct.

"Of the systematics of the world of comets, and on the admirable objects of the sky" was probably the book Kane is referring to.

Tramontana is none other than polaris, the only fixed star in the sky, the North Star.

According to the system of navigation devised in the Mediterranean Sea , in the Mariner Compass Rose Tramontana indicated North.

Castalia is probably pointing at Jupiter, which is the 4th brighters object in the sky. Usually September is favorable month to see it in the sky... I think in 2010 Jupiter was the brightest object visible in the sky!

Kane asks for a fixed star instead... his request is quite romantic! ;)

How many sweet wines are there?

So many, you have no idea!

Now, in this case the Malvasia they are drinking might not be as sweet as it is today but still...

Malvasia is very common in the Mediterranean area and there are different types from white to black.

It's quite different from Marsala but for me it's hard to describe how...

Somebody asked me about Corvo but I forgot to answer.

The names of the islands I pick are mostly in Italian or Spanish.

Amado, Corvo and Baronetto are the three islands visited by the Aldivento.

Amado means beloved in Spanish.

Corvo means Crow in Italian.

Baronetto means baronet in Italian.

I don't really pick the names randomly, I'm a joker after all, ha ha ha... but I have to say that the name of the first island is the funnies! :P