Happy Birthday to Kurea, and a new blog design!

Today is August 22, theoretically my favorite day of the year. The start of fall (except in Texas, it's still summer). [EDIT: apparently I have been wrong my entire life, fall starts in september... blah i don't care] Fall is my favorite season, so I'm excited to get a pretty orange leafy background! After I finish this post, I'm going to go redesign my blog and stuff. c:

August 22nd, being my favorite day, became the birthday of my first well-developed original character (made for the Naruto universe). Of course, at the time, she wasn't too well-developed. Let's take a visit back to Webkinz Insider, the forum I frequented in middle school when I first got into anime, thanks to Brittany and Bethany.

(hah, I logged on and saw I had seven new messages despite the fact that I haven't been active in years... they were just birthday messages from random people)

This is the very first picture of her. Obviously, I was in my 'digital art' days (MS Paint was the coolest and I was beast at it) She looked like me and wore clothes that I owned. A Mary Sue for sure. Thankfully I was unique enough (hah) that she didn't turn out completely lame and boring. She was just really random (I thought I was hilarious).

Of course, I helped/forced Bethany to make a character as well, and they were obviously BFFs. By this point, I had re-thought Kurea's hair, and she became a little less mary-sue-ish... except then I thought she was SO cool that I got my own hair cut like hers...

That's me, on the left. ...yeah, no. I'm obviously the kid.

ohohoh I was so silly. It didn't turn out like I drew it, exactly, but my friends thought it was cool since I came up with it myself.

Here we have the first full-body picture ever! Still bad at proportion, still MS Painting... Her outfit basically hasn't changed. I know ninjas in the Naruto world don't wear converse, but she really needs the knee socks. :P
The main difference is that I've stopped trying to 'christianize'

 the universe, so that cross-star headband has changed to a normal, dark blue leaf headband.

This one was REALLY GOOD OMG
(because I traced a photo oh aw snap you thought I had dramatically improved my art)

Still sporting the cross headband. By the way, I totally cosplayed Kurea once or twice.

With Besani-chan~

I think that was supposed to be "Kurea Akihoshi" in nihongo

Kurea was and is a hyper and obnoxious thirteen year old. Not exactly in the same way as Naruto. She's more... insane. But I have a feeling that she may be putting it all on and actually be super intelligent and mature underneath... and is such a good actor she's even hiding it from me.
She has a secret passion for techno music. She received her training from Ronin Tokugawa, a 'rogue' of sorts who established an unofficial training camp on the fringes of the Land of Fire. A lot of their routines involved music and dance to learn fighting, which explains her secret obsession. Hehe. Originally, I had her train under "Might Giru", Might Guy's brother... Obviously I have changed this. That was one of the most Mary-Sue-ish things about her in the first place--on top of basing her off of me, her existence depended on a canon character or a convenient relative of a canon character. Good OCs can exist all by themselves.
She used to train with Besani and Jaki, the characters of Bethany and her friend Vanessa, but since neither of them really did much with their Naruto characters, Kurea ended up having an older-brother figure named Masahiko Kurosaki. Another character I put into her little universe was Yufi, Ronin-sensei's sister.
Sometimes, in alternate universes or roleplays or whatever, she's teammates with Brittany's OC, Asuna Myuki.
Anyway, this is about Kurea, not her friends.
She can't use genjutsu. It makes her pass out. Her ninjutsu skills are average. She excels in Taijutsu (I wanted her and Lee to have a bonding element, heh). Here are her stats (if I can find them).

Her favorite food is sugar, but if she has it, she gets really really fast and maniacal. This is good for short bursts of fighting and stuff, but afterward, she just stops and can't be convinced to do anything (sugar crash, obviously).
Since she is banned from sugar (sensei's orders) her favorite food is onions. Just onions. Plain. And in things too.

 

So of COURSE she had a crush on Rock Lee. (Because he was and is like the best character okay)

I thought this picture was so good, but honestly I didn't draw Lee (I don't remember where the picture is from), and Kurea was basically Lee flipped over and all the features changed. I did add the blushes and changed Lee's eyebrow position...

I had fanfictions, still have character profiles, etc, but it's all too much to post here. In any case, I still love Kurea, and I'm glad today is her birthday so she can have some cake (but be prepared for her to go crazy).

Here are some things I've made with dollmakers etc:

Search "Naruto Character Creator" on DeviantART and this should come up.

This one is by someone on DA. If you google 'anime facemaker fox richards' I think it will come up.

You can probably find this by googling

 "anime facemaker"

This is from 'dream selfy', a site based off of the tinierme avatars.

Now let's find some recentish pictures of Kurea and I'll let this long picture heavy blog post be done. c:

It's a shame, but I can't find the specific picture I was thinking of... probably my most recent. Well, I may edit if I find it... man. That's disappointing.

anyway.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KUREA