Yesterday, I finished the second draft of my Sky Pirates novel and sent it off to the beta readers, which gave me a nice feeling of achievement. At ~80,900 words, it’s almost exactly the length I intended when outlining, even if that may end up being too short for some publishers.

Today, the first comic by me to see the air in a while went up, a guest comic for Matt Youngmark’s Conspiracy Friends! which is a fun romp through life as presented by the tabloids, I highly recommend it!

Meanwhile, In Hasbro’s Hidden Lair…

Speaking of comics, I think I figured out what was going wrong with issue four of Rough Housing– to wit, the part of me that wanted to be writing the Sky Pirates book was starting to shoehorn stuff from it into Rough Housing instead because that’s what I was working on.

So, having written the Sky Pirates book, maybe now I can relax a bit and let Rough Housing be its own thing. There’s a longer, more detailed explanation of what’s been going on with that, with my art generally, and with furry art in particular, which I still intend to write up at some point, but not just yet. Too many topics spoil the post!

-The Gneech

Okay, okay, it’s not a monster writeup. But it has a monster in it, and it’s Monday. So deal with it!

My Little Monster Studies: Displacer Beast by the-gneech on DeviantArt

Commission for Miertam, possibly the start of a new series, of Twilight learning all about monsters… the hard way. This episode’s entry is that adorable little six-legged tentacular light-warping critter, the displacer beast. Fluttershy, of course, thinks it’s adorable… and clearly Twilight is speechless with admiration!

Such a weird-honkin’ monster and one of my favorites, even if I rarely actually use them. :D Inspired originally by “Voyage of the Space Beagle” by A. E. van Vogt if my memory serves correctly, modified slightly and now immortalized by Dungeons and Dragons. Aside from its devious nature, the displacer beast has a permanent illusion of being some distance from its actual body. I never really thought that would actually be that confusing until I started drawing this, but now I can totally see it.

On an artistic note, for this pic I decided to do a piece that used the pony character models but drawn in my own style rather than trying to simply mimic the MLPFIM style. Whattya think?

-The Gneech

MLPFIM: Dreamer, It's Late by the-gneech on DeviantArt

Commission for @mlp_Dreamer of the #TwitterPonies, a fun little scene between himself and @mlp_AppleJack. As fond as she is of Dreamer, she doesn’t look real happy to be answering the door at this time of night.

Rarity– Waiting for Inspiration Collab by the-gneech on deviantART

This is a collaboration with LateCustomer on DeviantArt. When I saw his sketch “Waiting for Inspiration” (here: http://latecustomer.deviantart.com/art/Waiting-for-Inspiration-sketch-467687479 ) I was pretty much instantly seized with a burning desire to ink and color it.

Fortunately, he was kind enough to give me permission to do so! Thanks dude! I hope you’re pleased with the result.

-The Gneech

Rarity– When You Want To Comb by the-gneech on deviantART

Rarity has very definite ideas about grooming, not the least of which is that a lady’s hair should always be BRUSHED, darling!

Just a little thing done for the fun of it.

-The Gneech

Rarity Generosity by the-gneech on deviantART

Rarity says her credo. ;)

I stumbled across this quote the other day and of course it made me instantly think of the lovely fashionista pony, so I had to draw this.

Whenever I draw ponies, there’s a constant struggle between “But it doesn’t look like the show!” and “If I was just gonna ape the show, why not just take screenshots?” I think I struck a pretty good balance between my style and the show style here.

Ah Rares, such a lovely pony. :)

-The Gneech