The Love(bird) of My Life

I haven’t been completely idle during my long posting absence (and won’t be next time I disappear, I’m sure). In fact, I’ve been busy doing all sorts of WoW content, aka mostly complaining about dailies, gearing extremely slowly, being unable to pull together a second raiding team for my guild and therefore not raiding, playing the AH to mild success, and — most importantly — remembering at the last minute I actually want to participate in a holiday celebration.

You see, last year I didn’t realize Blizzard had added a new mount, the Swift Lovebird, to the Love Is In The Air event until after the event had finished. And alas, it was one of my favorite model/skins, the pink tallstrider Mazzranache (two of my many hunters use this as one of their main pets – Mamisha, my Tauren hunter, and Likal, my Night Elf hunter. Yet for some reason I had not gotten the Mulgore Hatchling pet until just a few weeks ago when I purchased it off the AH. Wait, I remember why — it has to do with dailies). As soon as I saw the mount I knew I had to get it.

Flash-forward to this year, and on the Wednesday before Love Is In The Air ended I remembered my deep desire for this mount. A bit late there.

Nevertheless, I carried on, and with the help of a few guildies and Jed from twitter to get into a farming spot, I got enough tokens to get my very own!

A fellow Tauren also got her pretty pink mount. 🙂

Even more excitingly, my Night Elf hunter Likal, who is on an RP realm, can use the Swift Lovebird as a way to ‘ride’ her pet bird, Kanoni!

Here she is with her pet…

Likal and Kanoni

And here she is riding her pet!

Likal riding her trusty pet and steed, Kanoni

I’ve even made a macro to assist in the mount switching, so two Kanoni’s don’t show up at once!

The ‘Ride Kanoni’ Macro

Here’s the macro text:

/cast [pet] Dismiss Pet
/cast Swift Lovebird
/cast [nopet] Call Pet 1

Sure, it takes a little longer to mount up, but it’s totally worth it!

(Especially once I get into RPing on the Alliance side again >_> ).

Secret Santa Art Trade 2011 – Now With Art!

The Twitter Secret Santa Art Trade 2011 finished late December and was quite successful, if you ask me! Tons of great art are posted on the site, and I’d encourage you to check it out!

I received my art from @rithtthewarluid, and it’s of Likal, my night elf hunter, and her pet Kanoni!

I just love it! I currently have it as my twitter avatar. And even more excitingly for Likal, I’ve started playing her again (at least a little bit). She’s ecstatic to get some attention again. Thanks again, Rith!

And of course, I ended up making some art too. This year it was for @greyseer!

Here’s a re-enactment of me on the day @Technophobia was drawing names out of a hat for who would draw for who:

Please not a person with a male character please not a person with a male character please not a person with a – Greyseer? Let’s check out his refs… Doh!

No offense Greyseer — I’m just not that good at drawing guys! And I knew I’d have a hard time expressing the awesomeness that is Tharion, because he looks totally badass.

My inability to draw guys probably shows a bit in the drawing, especially since I spent quite a large amount of time on the background and maybe not as much time on Tharion himself. (but check out that foreground cliff; it’s so pretty!) Also, I maaaay have left out some weapons and armor because they are also hard to draw. >_>

I saved “in-progress” images as I worked through this design so later I can do an in-depth post about my drawing process! And I may write an RP post describing what Likal is doing in the picture Rith had drawn; it just screams for a story, doesn’t it? I’ll probably do this for last year’s image too. :3

In the meantime, you really should go check out all the amazing art that was made! And if you participated, I hope to see you around next year for another year of art trading!

-Misha