The Tchacata Machine

Rachael here,

Bringing you a little colored sketch to ring in the new year (and also prove that we really aren’t dead, we promise.)

So if you’ve read the book, this is Aleisha; grumpy, freckley, snarky, and cranky Aleisha.

Believe it or not, I’ve actually been practicing drawing people with my iPad all last year and I think it’s paying off, sort of. I’ve got a lot of learning to do as far as utilizing the tools, drawing clothes, and adjusting proportions for children but at least I’m taking a step in the right direction. (Also I’ve been commissioned for 20+ illustrations primarily featuring children for a kids’ book so yay! Practicing on the job!)

Didn’t have any particular scenes in mind for this particular sketch, just wanted to really get a good feel for her face.

Rachael here,

Bringing you a few sketches of William Benson II - the main antagonist of our series.

I think both of us have a difficult time drawing him because he’s kind of your everyman: a kind of nondescript face, generally just wears a gray suit, really doesn’t stand out in a crowd. Makes it tough to draw him because he could be just about any 60-something White dude.

With these three sketches though, I think I finally hit on it, and Christina and I realized Benson II looks not unlike an acting buddy of ours which really helped our art-brains recognizing how Benson II should look.

Just letting y’all know we aren’t dead yet, still (despite the universe’s best attempts.)

To make an incredibly long story as short as possible; my car died at the end of September/beginning of October which is a pain in the ass in and of itself, but was especially troubling to me because my main source of income pretty much relies on my car. Luckily I was able to float by for a couple months borrowing cars from friends so I didn’t go absolutely bankrupt, and I managed to make some really fun art and sell it in preparation for the holidays which helped keep me afloat. My partner got in touch with Christina and a bunch of my friends and family and were able to gift me the funds to make a down payment on a new (used) car and to pay off the loan I’d taken out in attempts to fix my old car. So here’s to hoping I can get yet another loan, so I can get a new car, and get back to whatever semblance of normal I’ve created for myself.

Which, let me tell you, there’s nothing quite like rolling into 2019 depressed as fuck, fighting all spring to feel better, then suffering a natural disaster and a national tragedy over the summer, only to get your primary source of income breaking down on you in the fall.

Christina, for her part, is working hard being a mama. Her sweet child is growing up fast, but still needs loads of attention every day. To top it off, Christina’s partner has been dealing with the lion’s share of the damage from the baker’s dozen tornadoes that frolicked through our city, so she’s been hard at working helping him recuperate with that emotional mess. I’ve driven past the damage he is tasked to repair and lemme just say;

Holy fuck.

I’ll be honest and admit that for a couple months I didn’t do jack-all related to this project. I’m sorry. I’ve just been in absolute crisis-mode for three months and I couldn’t muster up the energy and time to give it attention. If it helps you at all, all of our characters are equally disappointed.

So here’s some good news, if you’re still reading: I’ve been practicing my makeup skills and learned I can transform into anyone I want to, which means I’ll be transforming into Robert and posing for Christina so she can paint him. That makes both of us happy, and we hope it’ll make you happy too. We’ll keep you posted once we get together for a makeup and art jam.

Another cool thing; last spring I wrote a short story based on the universe we created, and at the beginning of 2020 my partner will be featuring it on his podcast. This is good because it gives us a deadline, and we operate best with solid deadlines.

Last final cool thing; my life and Christina’s life are finally coming to a point where we’re going to schedule regular get-togethers specifically to update this project. I figure most of those meetings will be boring, and will mostly be us editing things and fighting with coding on the website, but at least we’re working it into our schedules.

Rachael here,

Editing is going slowly this month. Summers are always crazy for both me and Christina, so it’s been hard to take the time we need for editing. We’re still chipping away at it chapter by chapter, so expect more updates soonish.

A lot of what I’ve been editing is the bits with Prioon, just trying to get her character right.

This, of course, led to me doodling a picture of Prioon during the incident on Mount Tchacata in the 70’s - which turned into a warmup sketch for me to work on before other illustrations - which then turned into an exercise of using different tools on Procreate... so this thing kind of evolved a lot.

(Yes; Prioon did totally get her arm ripped off and eye gouged out during battle, then just slapped some bubbler wrapper flesh on the biggest wound and just kept on fighting. She’s extra like that.)

Rachael here,

I got in the mood to draw Aaron the other day. He’s actually pretty easy to draw because he’s missing the quills above his eyes and on his head.

Rachael here,

Christina and I got so caught up in editing and normal life-stuff that I missed posting an update on Sunday.

I got stuck with fighting off a sinus infection, and so I spent a lot of time convalescing but was too loopy to actually post anything. Couple my sicky-boredom with the insane heat-wave we had and you get this.

Rachael here,

Bringing you a surprise update

Christina and I got together the other day to discuss the Tchacata Machine and where we’re taking this massive beast of a story.

Since she and I got on a roll, and since we decided that it would be beneficial for everyone to post more art, I dug out some sketches I had of Lilun and put them all together.

Top-left is Lilun looking pretty pissed off for some reason - which, considering the book starts with the genocide of her home-town I can’t necessarily blame her.

Middle-right is Lilun looking pretty happy, probably laughing at a joke Maggie made.

Bottom-left is her looking a little curious.

These sketches were mostly an excuse for me to work on Lilun’s coloration. She’s mostly that agouti brown but she’s got those lighter cream markings on her face and neck - the markings can be difficult to get down exactly since they’re asymmetrical.

Hey guys, Rachael here

So the bad news is that I wasn’t able to finish my sculpture of Io. Not for lack of trying - it’s just that my poor little laptop couldn’t quite handle what I wanted to do and it would take way too long to print. (I’m estimating about 3 days of running the printer non-stop. Which, isn’t feasible since my art show is on Monday.)

I’ll probably go back and work on it just for funsies - because I’ll be damned if I sculpt and rig that model and then do nothing with it.

But here’s something TM-related that I did get finished in time!

Here’s a bust of Eric - he is definitely Not Happy. I won’t spoil which part of the book this is from, since it happens near the end, but I definitely had a specific scene in mind when I sculpted this. I’d like to eventually go back and print this life-sized but again working under time constraints I had to print it pretty small.

Hi guys, Rachael here!

I’ve been frantically working on 3D models for an upcoming art show, and I decided it was time I made a model of Io.

I absolutely love Io’s her design because on the one hand she just kind of looks like a big weird dog but then she opens her jaws and she becomes terrifying.

Rachael here,

Our city and the surrounding areas will take months, if not years, to rebuild. The good news is we are a tremendously resilient people, and we are all working tirelessly on it. (Even the German Baptist’s that apparently everyone but myself and my direct family totally forgot about.)

I finally have potable water again, which is a huge relief. The extra pack of bottled water I bought is going to a charity. On Tuesday I donate blood. If the hospitals need more later on, I’ll donate as much as I can give. Since my schedule is a little more flexible, I’ll probably try to volunteer a few times with cleanup sometime this month.

Still no internet in my area, though. I’ve even prowled around trying to steal WiFi from the local businesses and I can’t find anything. I think we all must use the same service provider.

So, since I have no WiFi, I can’t upload images directly from my iPad. Which is annoying af but that just means you guys get a grainy phone picture of a sketch I’ve been working on for fun.

Aleisha is kind of my spirit animal at this present moment of my life: gives no fucks but will not hesitate to get down and dirty any time it’s required of her. Couple that with literally working my ass off to pull myself out of a funk (some days more successfully than others) and you get this picture of ~16 year old Aleisha stewing and smoking a cigarette.

She’s got a case of perma-angst. I’m angsty. Christina is angsty. Our whole damn city is suffering from a malaise.

Rachael here,

I don’t know if any of you are keeping up with the news, but I wanted to give a general life-update because boy have things gotten hairy.

First, I had to work every single day in May to get my finances in order then I spent a week in upstate NY assisting with filming for Babysitter Massacre: Heavy Metal. I thought I would just have to work on makeup and SFX, but turns out I was also the only qualified crew member to operate the boom mic. So I got absolutely no time to work on the TM which is a little disappointing, but at least thanks to all the active work I got a great 7-day full-body workout! (Honestly I think my arms and shoulders are only just now recovering. You’d be surprised how heavy a boom mic feels after 8-10 hours of holding it, every day for almost a week.)

While I was in NY, on Saturday, there was a rally of the KKK in our city (only 9 cowards showed up) which was met with over 600 peaceful protestors from all walks of life. Christina did her part with the peaceful counter-protest, and met some amazing people. National news outlets are praising our city because despite tensions being high the counter-protest remained peaceful and loving and nothing bad happened.

I got home on Monday, literally just in time for the Tornado-pocolypse. Last I heard as of this morning, 17 tornadoes hit down across the Midwest, 12 hit our state, and 9 hit our city directly. Some of those 9 tornadoes were up to EF-3, which has absolutely leveled parts of our city. Honestly, driving through parts of Dayton it looks like a war zone; buildings are collapsed, roofs are gone, power lines destroyed, rubble and debris everywhere... it’s a nightmare.

We’ve all been under a boil advisory since Monday night/Tuesday morning, and a lot of areas lost water entirely. Luckily the water plants are up and running again, but the EPA still hasn’t finished its survey so we don’t know when the boil advisory will be lifted. Many areas were without power until late last night, and some areas still don’t have power at all.

But, in true Dayton fashion, we’re all banding together. Local businesses have been donating food and water to people who have lost their homes to the tornadoes, pretty much everyone I know is donating food/water/time to local non-profits to help the effected areas, and some businesses have even been hosting free block parties and BBQ’s to unite everyone together and help everyone get back on their feet. Rideshare services are even offering free rides to those effected by the storms, and those who are volunteering in disaster-areas.

Because there are disaster-areas. There are places that will absolutely never recover. Housing complexes are gone and the residents displaced and homeless; businesses destroyed; even the Hara Arena is just gone. Which is wild, and she and I are still emotionally processing all this.

The good news is, Christina and I are safe and our homes were not effected by the tornadoes. Which, trust me - when you look at the maps of the swaths of destruction left by the tornadoes you can see how both of us were spared by as little as 1 or 2 miles. I drove home during the tornado warning, and missed getting sucked up into the largest tornado by probably only 15 minutes. That tornado literally followed my path home and then swerved south-east when it got about 2 miles from me. One smaller tornado looks like it skipped just a mile or so north of Christina like a tiny wind-god playing a destructive game of hopscotch.

I am without internet, and to be honest considering how bad this could have been I’m counting it as a minor annoyance.

So we’re counting our blessings and moving forward. Now that my work-schedule is clearing up a small amount I’ll get back on schedule with editing, and even trying to map out book 2. I also have plans to make some new TM-related art for a big fancy gallery show I have in May and August. I have a little non-sequitir short-story I wrote a couple weeks ago that has nothing to do with the TM but does take place in the same universe, so I’ll be uploading that this weekend (once I have internet back and don’t have to use up my phone’s data.)

Rachael here,

So I’ve needed some serious Art Therapy.

And I’m angry because I’ve got like... almost 20 commissions waiting to be finished and I’ve made some amazing progress on one of them (and I’m refusing to acknowledge the rest because I’m ANGRY and HORMONES and PAIN and also I didn’t explain my pricing very well with one huuuuuuge batch of commissions but they’re for a friend on a project I’ve acted in so PERSONAL DEDICATION but also MONEY FOR BILLS) annnd I have to work on all of them while still working 30 - 40 hours on my “daytime jobs.” Yay self-employment.

Blah blah blah ANGST blah

Anyway

My brain keeps reminding me that adorable things exist and I can totally draw them, which is a shame because aside from a gratuitous amount of bewbs none of my commissions are adorable and fun so I kind of have to scrape by on what very little free-time I have in a day.

So I’ve been turning to the TM trying to find what little bit of Adorable Things™️ we can actually build upon and discovered while daydreaming between modeling sessions that Eric and Lilun were friggin cute as kids. Like, almost Gerber Baby cute.

Like... look at these two. They’re so stinkin cute together I almost can’t even.

Ignore the fact that at this point in Eric’s life his mom was starting to go native, and had given him some bells around a wrist so she could ignore him until she heard the bells (or didn’t hear them well enough.) I won’t say that the year he and his mom spent on Au’wm led to her divorce with his dad, but it was definitely a huge factor. (Not adorable, just a fact.)

BUT JUST LOOK at how Lilun is glancing at Eric! She’s so excited to be with him! She’s probably planning some expedition to dig up some clay and make little sculptures or something. Or maybe they’re begging to go catch some wild animals. Whatever the case, it’s cute, and it’s just what my brain needed.

So I’m going to try real hard to update again next week - it’s all depending upon whether my life actually gives me more than 5 hours a day to sleep, eat, and take care of myself or if I have to keep grinding until the end of May. (*the last week of May I’m escaping the state to produce a movie. This is one of the things eating up my time right now tbh. I’ve got to spend the next few weeks building a financial buffer so I can actually afford to spend a week in upstate NY just kind of... waiting? Until someone needs something? Producing is weird.)

The really good news is that while I hurry up to wait at the end of May pretty much the only thing I’ll be able to work on is the TM (also some other producing/acting projects waiting in the wings but shhhhhhhh don’t mention those) so even if I can’t make a huge dent in work now I can at least get to it in a few weeks.

Rachael here,

I just wanted to pop in and say THANK YOU! Me and Christina noticed that we’ve gotten a few new followers, so we wanted to say hi! Also hi to the followers who have been here for a while!

If you want to check out our website, we still have the unedited chapters up and we’re slowly going through and fixing stuff before we slap them back up on the website. It’s just tough to work terribly fast on our baby seeing as how Christina has a full-time job as a real parent, and I work like five million jobs all the time. (Yay parenthood and self-employment!)

I’ll be dumping some more sketches this weekend so keep your eyes peeled for some fun new art!

Also, our ask box should be open, so if anybody has questions about anything regarding what we’ve already posted ask away!

Rachael here,

So sorry about missing the update last week! I had a very bad mental health week (and just a No Good, Awful, Stinky Bad Week in general which tbh makes the mental health issues infinitely more difficult to deal with) and trust me, I’m working on it. I’m trying really hard not to be self-deprecating and just admit where I’m at fault and move on and do better so you guys, for better or worse, get to help me practice. So thank you for understanding and letting me practice being better!

Which, since all this is actually kind of is appropriate for this week’s sketch dump, I’m going to take it as a win!

This is Prioon. She is, in every way I can imagine, a Certified Badass.

Prioon is a Xzeejees similar to Lilun, they’re just different subspecies. Prioon has lived her entire life on a different planet from other Xzeejees, and her culture has been there for over 500 years, so they’re different enough genetically and sociologically from other Xzeejees that they kind of have Their Own Thing going on.

The best way I can think of describing the relationship of Prioon’s people and Lilun’s people is this: if Lilun is an AKC show-bred Siberian Husky, Prioon is a pariah dog from actual Siberia. They both share 99.99% of their genes, and on the surface they look pretty similar, but once you throw them in a tough survival situation the differences really start to show. Lilun can move fast and talk tough, Prioon on the other hand is the embodiment of the phrase “talk softly and carry a big stick.”

So when I first started writing and imagining Prioon my prime directive was to create a character who actually has a vague idea of what is going on, and is actually emotionally-invested in all the turmoil of the story beyond simply “I miss my friends.” She was a very one-dimensional character (which I’m still working on building her up) and that annoyed me because there was something else there, a kernel of Awesomeness, that I just needed to uncover and build upon.

So I’ve been building up her backstory, and building up the culture she lives in, and here is what I would like to share.

Prioon’s people are a semi-nomadic culture that live on the planet Tearis. Along with constantly grappling with the unpredictable weather-patterns of the planet and the less-than-friendly wildlife, her people have also taken it upon themselves to fight the alien ‘Teur whenever possible and Prioon is no exception.

She lost her arm and right eye to the ‘Teur during the War on Mount Tchacata in the 70’s when she was barely 20 years old, and refused to let that stop her. Once back on Tearis she accepted the gift of an organic prosthetic arm but refused to undergo more extensive surgery to replace her eye because... actually, her exact words to me right now are, “My depth-perception is fine. I needed to get back to my family to be certain they were safe and I never made time after that.”

Since that incident she’s risen to the leadership role of her family, and of the entire race of Xzeejees on Tearis. Once the immediate threat of a ‘Teur invasion had passed she helped her people focus their cultural-vision from warfare to rebuilding, and they’ve been enjoying a prosperous four-ish decades with her help and guidance.

Prioon hasn’t really let the times of peace distract her personally, and while she hopes that the ‘Teur never come back she isn’t foolish enough to believe that’s true...

Rachael here,

I realized I can’t forget to post a sketchdump this week if I post it a week early!! (Which is less of a life-hack and more me realizing I have free-time now and I should take advantage of it. Because I’m stuck in a parking a little bit, but still! Take advantage of it I shall!)

Here’s Lilun Baghreet, one of the main protagonists and also an alien called a Xzeejee. She’s a very outgoing social butterfly, generally pretty amicable person overall. She’s best friends to Eric Blake and Maggie Verger, and she and Eric are actually childhood friends. Lilun’s job in the Benson Research Initiative is basically a translator - since she grew up exposed to both her native tongue, a few other languages native to her planet, as well as English, she’s a pretty solid translator. It helps that she loves meeting new people and genuinely enjoys her job.

Anyway, Lilun’s family originally lived on their home-planet but when she was about sixteen some of her parents decided to move to Earth to work for the BRI and gave her the option of going with them. Since it would give her a chance to be closer to Eric, and since it would give her an immediate job-opportunity, she jumped for it.

Things don’t work out too well for Lilun in the end, but that’s part of what this whole story is about.

I love drawing Lilun’s expressions, but for some reason I always draw her nose too big. I’ve really been trying to work on that. She’s got these soft, round, delicate features (for a Xzeejee) and I really want to capture that.