I’m not an artist – well, I am, but not when it comes to paint or colored pencil on paper. I’m a decent enough guitar player (rhythm and bass), I’ve written music, produced music – and using a game program called “The Movies” I’ve made music videos (and a couple of short films). I’m a moderately talented writer – Click on the “[show]” on Suzysunshine’s pirate page to see the back story I wrote for her. My Star Trek themed fan fiction story has passed story and (at over 177,000 words) is approaching novel size. But when it comes to drawing something with a pencil – I’m hopeless. Oh sure, I used to draw a pretty good car or airplane (I had a fondness for drawing Ford Mustang Cobra II’s and the Navy’s Blue Angel’s F4 fighter planes). Then I took a drafting class in high school and all natural ability was completely and permanently driven out of my head. Fortunately, someone invented Photoshop…
Here is our favorite pirate, Lillythanne. She’s wearing her new steampunk inspired outfit, sporting her little monkey friend. This is the outfit I made weeks ago just for this ‘Steampunk Lilly’ picture (here’s the links to part 1 and part 2 of this story, for those who might have missed it). Of course, in this picture she stops about mid calf, which means I had to find a full length picture with a pirate wearing a long dress with a magenta bottom. I scanned countless pirate pictures and finally found the magenta dress bottom – with magenta boots! Fortunately, black fancy boots were easier to find, and using photoshop I layered this picture over the bottom of the dress, layered the black boots over the magenta, and even layered the rest of her cane over it all to finish up the full length picture. All so I could get this…
This is an “Expansive” (a.k.a. Expensive) portrait background, meant for multiple pirates – all of whom would hopefully be chipping in to pay for it. Wasn’t going to happen for me though. Photoshop produced almost the same picture the game would have generated for me, had I spent all the poe and dubs I had at the time (and then some I had borrowed too) — except Lillythanne wouldn’t have cast a shadow in the game picture, and the ship wouldn’t have been named. It’s a nice picture, but I thought this one would be pretty nice too…
I like this picture because it has Lillythanne standing next to her ship – right where you would expect a proud new owner to be standing. You don’t take a picture of you with your new car by standing 20 feet away and having it in the backround. You stand next to it – proudly.
Wait! you don’t stand next to it – you get in it and take a picture…
That’s more like it – standing on the deck of her nice new steamship, a head of steam building up in the boiler ready to steam out of the harbor. Except there’s no option to use steam power (how about a new boiler stoking puzzle? Not sure how you would do it, and you’d have to have a supply of wood to burn). Anyway, the pictures are pretty much finished (although I might rotate Lillyth’s hand so it appears to be grasping the railing) and it’s only a matter of deciding which to add to Lillythanne’s YPPedia page. And in case you don’t know the most obvious drawback to this method – this picture will never appear in the game…
Yes, I like gown and corset sets – I even have shoes with them (even though you almost never see the shoes with these outfits). The first gown I made to celebrate Lillythanne’s starfish injury, and originally wore it with a matching laurel wreath (Lillyth wasn’t royalty for a time, so no tiaras). The middle outfit was for Suzysunshine (atlantean for Lillyth, indigo for Suzy), for possible picture use. The second and fourth outfits are both for familiars – Atlantean Ippolito and Magenta Parrot. The last outfit was made because I saw another player with an outfit using the same colors, and I thought it was very interesting – antique-like in a way.
I made a lot of clothes to wear with that parrot, didn’t I? Well, a Parrot is the traditional friend of the pirate, isn’t it. These two at least were fairly inexpensive. The third outfit was made when Meijinn first opened her tailor stall on Scrimshaw. I scoured the ocean looking for the best cloth deals – buying gold, black, persimmon (back when it was new), and maroon. That was probably the last time I actually used one of my ships <gr>. The fourth outfit I made when I won the Crown of chaos – it’s just too weird to not do something with. That’s why I opted for cheap clothes to go with it – but at least the rags will be worth almost what I paid for the outfit. The last is the first of several tabards in my collection – several pieces won during Sea Monster Hunts, so the price was good…
Harem Girls – gotta love them, don’t you. Most of this was won from Sea Monster Hunts (even the black stuff – which will definitely be profitable some day). The third outfit was from the ocean hopping – tailor stall days. Outfit number 4 came about after winning the mask – I think I won the mask, maybe I just found it ridiculously cheap – either way it worked very nicely with a rag skirt and a midriff blouse (all done before the age of the chromas). I did win the Night Blue buccaneer jacket, the best thing I’ve ever managed to pull from a Haunted Seas run. I found the Night Blue and purple scarf pretty cheaply, so I scrounged up a Night Blue chroma and dyed the purple trimmed pants to match. Then a pair of purple (and indigo) boots finished it up nicely.
In my villa – I have a room set aside for portraits and other such stuff (the art gallery), and I have a room set aside for the spoils from my Atlantean runs. So it’s only fitting that the wardrobe contains Atlantean clothing. Almost every thing here was won on Sea Monster Hunts – and before chromas were available. In other words, back when this stuff was expensive. Anymore, indigo and Atlantean aren’t that pricey (although given the horrid payouts from haunted seas runs, Night Blue still is). Fortunately for me, aqua and light blue are so close when used in some of these clothes that you can’t always tell the difference.
I know it’s odd to have my male clothing in Lillyth’s room – but they’re just labels right? The first 2 outfits go back to that early attempt at using a tailor stall as something other than a closet and a place to sell goodies from CI and SMH runs. The third outfit is in honor of a pirate I came across named Lemonater (or something like that). Outfit number 4 started with a Christmas gift from Sweetpant – a red fez. The last outfit is (of course) Aloyicious’ Christmas clothes…
A.K.A. The black wardrobe – almost everything here was made in Meijinn’s tailor stall except for (I think) the black shirt with the white belt. I also have a tiara with white cloth and black jewels that I would wear with outfit number 5. Outfit number 2 was something I made up for Halloween (and to use the then new persimmon color) – and outfit number 3 was made for a photoshop picture of 
6 outfits in stead of 5 – but you noticed the pronounced lack of headwear with 4 of the sets. I could do something similar with all those gown outfits and their hidden shoes – but I’m not in the mood to add another day of wear to something that I don’t have to just to rearrange things. Again. So anyway – another partially Atlantean kilt set for Aloyicious, 4 casual outfits for Lillyth (or Shigeko, or Suzy – just depends), and at the end, something I talked about in a 
The tabards that I mentioned earlier, and the last 2 outfits from my tailor stall days. After making the gold/maroon outfits I had some gold left, so I made up outfit number 1 – number 2 was to finish up the persimmon and maroon. The blue tabard was first created to go with my very first karkinos (Dr. Zoidberg), while the gold and silver(grey) tabards were made for Suzy and Lillyth respectively – should they want to pose together for a picture.
Yes, I’ve grown fond of the Epaulet jacket. My first one was the Royal Blue they gave out for buying dubs one month – but I really had no idea what to do with it. Then, I got the Chocolate one during a different promo. There was far more chocolate clothing available – and the chromas weren’t too outrageous, so I rounded up a skirt, hat, and boots and made this one — which looks very nice when I’m walking around with my 4th familiar, my monkey. Outfit number one was 32K – found by chance while scouting tailor stalls and shops for other things. There just seems to be a lot of Magenta and Indigo clothing out there for cheap – I suppose I should thank the CIs for that. As for number 3, just go back to my 
