Been getting kind of lazy with updating this…. :\ Oops. Well, I am a major procrastinator, so I am constantly working to keep up. And also, if I stopped working for two days, it makes the work pile up more. So it sucks right now having 3 studio classes. On the other hand, I’m gdtting better at sketching people in public. I try not to attract attention so they don’t think I’m staring at them so intently — that is really hard. It makes me feel awkward and just don’t want a repeat of the same the thing 3 weeks ago.

Well, in this installment, been practicing with painting portraits with watercolor. I chose Natalie Portman to practice on. I finished the Ben and Jerry tshirt promo design last last week. The cherry is probably the prettiest part… haha.. And drawing people at the Temecula Promenade Mall. And a two page comic to practice inking. The comic was suppose to be from week 2, but I didn’t get a good grade on it because it wasn’t finished enough and I made the ending anticlimatic by showing the scarecrow too soon. Well, I fixed it before I inked in the words. Writing was never my forte. But using the ames lettering guide for the first time was interesting! I liked it. It was given to me, but I thought it was for making circles. Haha… well, now, I know why there were so many holes.

New Berserk chapter makes me curious about upcoming fight. I read Kentaro Miura’s interviews and it got me thinking about my own work schedule. He takes forever to release a new chapter and it’s been 10 years, but he’s got about 33-34 volumes out. Apparently, inking takes him a long time. I can believe that, I think pens are cool, but the amount of time for all that detail he does, yup, it’s going to take forever.. haha. But I think that if I am at a decent working place and I’ve got my own graphic novel going, I was born to be a comic artist.. haha I can really imagine myself committing to a story I’ve made. I don’t want to think of it as work anymore, because work, no matter what you do, that word takes the fun out of a hobby. So it is my career, yes, but I’m going to put that thought aside and pretend that’s something enjoyable and fun. Instead of tedious, harsh, and unthankful. (Well, maybe not the last one.)

Week three works. Sigh… I’m tired of the constant work… so very tired. It must be why I have a headache. My ice cream design color roughs need to be redone because its dull, but I got a good grade… it just needs more work… Blargh… 24 Hour Comics Day seems out of reach now. Now I know how Cinderella feels about completing all her chores. If it weren’t for a jury duty call, I wouldn’t be thinking too much about all the work. Stupid… -__-

As for the comic page, I didn’t know what my teacher meant by “Ningia” in the assignment: “A Motley Band of Gladiators Fighting the Vatican’s Secret ‘Ningia’ Army!” Someone comment and thought it might have been the Swiss Army that is the Vatican’s official army and goes back a long while. They’re garb is a little outdated, it’s way too colorful…

But everyone got a different genre, I’m glad I didn’t get the armed cheerleaders one…

Well, I’ve decided to do a magazine. I wonder how it would go? I’m really wanting it to succeed, in the sense that I and a group of people collaborated and did one. I’m not promising though, that it is going to great, just that we made a magazine together. I think some people miss the point sometimes when I ask to do group collaborations and give me excuses as if they cannot do a thing in the world when that’s entirely not true. The only reason starwardblocraft.com is dying right now is because of a lack of direction and leadership. But I’m not the peoples in charge and it’s not like I can say much to convince them. I think that everyone does have some time. I have time… I just waste it on playing games like Typing Mania, which I’ll have to say is improving my DVORAK typing abilities. That’s a productive and useful skill to have anyways, so I don’t think it’s a bad investment this time around… haha… I’m hoping to find more artists for the collab since I have found 4 writers and then myself that is 5. I am thinking, the more the merrier, for such a project. I feel quite passionate about it, I feel like I have to get it done, and I want to take people with me. I realized that I won that $5k scholarship 2 years ago because I had put in the commitment and effort. It also wasn’t coincidence that exactly 8 of us wrote the same ideas as each other because there were hundreds of people who applied to it. I’ve always been very lucky and thanking God for all of the things I’ve been given even if the first years of my life didn’t exactly have good experiences, but they were things I learned from none-the-less. Apparently, Oprah has had worse problems having been raped and miscarried, but she’s now living a luxury life. I always feel so otherworldly while everyone else is standing on the other side of a plane,  I suppose it’s time for me to cross that border.

In the coming week, I’d like to do these:

1. Finish painting my canvas bag
2. start learning Indesign
3. Finish scripting LM
4. attempt 24 hr comic day, but only if I have allowance time for it.
5. write a short story
6. start learning dreamweaver
7. read

And also, my memoir draft sux….

If I had known that wordpress how the gallery button worked on workdpress, I would have done this sooner instead of manually putting them in… sigh… Anyway, this week’s works. The skateboard images were due last night, unfortunately, I got a 503 error in my browser while trying to log in because too much traffic going in? That sucked… I would have made it… 11:35pm, I had 25 minutes to upload, such ample time too. So sad. I try not to make excuses when I turn in late things because of opportunities and chances. I suppose this answers one of my old questions about letting opportunity pass. But still, I think that some opportunities are facades that are truly out of reach. The supposed “missed opportunities” are more like lessons we learn about how to get the next opportunity that comes along. There will always be something to counter an excuse anyway, such as mine, what is the counter? “You had ample time, an entire week to do it. Spend time wisely.” Etc. I can’t say much about that because that’s mostly my inner voice chiding me about how I like to waste time by reading online comics and playing time-waste games like bejeweled. Even thinking about it makes me want to play….

Well, this week, I’m a little more ready to face my assignments. I’ve a real fear of failure so when I feel like the teacher could be mean and bot-like, it makes me not want to come to class and avoid it altogether…. Which I feel like is my illustration class, perhaps the teacher needs some warming up to. :\

So, it turns out that the website admins noted all the teachers that there was problems with logging in at 11:15pm to 12:15, so we got an extension of time. Whee! So there wasn’t much to worry about. I wasn’t worried, but I was resolved to my fate….

Watercolour properties chart. What is this for? It is to figure out how your watercolour paints (in the tube, not the palette) well react. How lightfast it is, transparent, or how it stains. I learned a lot doing this, it was tiring though. This was also my first time knowing that you had to stretch watercolour paper. I never knew! I always bought the packs, but it the paper buckles when wet.

For those of us not in the know, to stretch watercolour paper, you need an art board made for stretching watercolour paper, special craft tape (gummed brown tape) or staples (they are less pretty), and watercolour paper that is under 260 lbs. You wet the paper in cold water, never warm, front and back, place it onto the art board and tape or staple all the sides down. Any other tape other than the above won’t work because it the adhesive can’t stick, I know because I did it with my drafting tape… -_- When I stapled, it created indents, so if you can’t get tape, I suggest cutting a large piece and then either cut off all sides or hide the ugliness under a mat, if you plan to do that.

The above comics were for my comics class. It’s anecdote from when I was 6 years old. I had met a cat that hung around my grandma’s place and I was always curious about it. One day, I came upon it and then sat next to it. I noticed it had a scar, and I wondered if it hurt, so I tried to touch it. It didn’t hurt, but I imagined that it was painful, and I felt very bad. He was a very good kitty though… very nice. I remember it to this day.

Well, I’m getting an itch to really do a playing card deck, but I have no other artist friends to collaborate with. It’s just a project that keeps coming into my mind. I know I’m doing an android girl series, but I’m also thinking about doing a fairy-tale kind of deck from all the folklores in the world. So it’d be nice to know people are interested in it. I just want to see it come to fruition within a year instead of yearsss.

I’ve been having this lapse in judgment lately as to whether I should pick up an mmorpg game or something. It’s not that I’m bored, but I have this urge to play a game. I don’t want to get into WoW, it seems like that’s what most people are doing. It’s probably the very top picked mmo, this is opinion, but also because I’ve been looking at a variety of mmos to play, and this one seems to always show up at the top of the list. I’m not surprised because Blizzard is probably a multi-million dollar company now. $15 x 8 million (plus) players, that’s a lot of revenue per month. The next choices are perhaps Eve or Final Fantasy XI, some others that I cannot remember… Guild Wars is cheap since you only pay once with no monthly fees. I am thinking about paying the $20 bucks, but of course there are expansions to consider…. Maplestory is old news and too much grinding. All the other free mmos seem cheap and graphics are second rate… hahaha… Yeah, I don’t know what I would choose. Although the Shin Megami Tensei has a free mmorpg but even if I wanted to play any of these games, I’d have to install windows xp or vista in and dual boot. Agh… I’m feeling lazy about that. And another neg point to Macs.

And I also realize I’m just neglecting my blog for a little bit. My sister just got married this weekend. Whoo~ I had to dress up all pretty and wear dresses. Getting in touch with my more feminine side… since I have neglected it for so long.

I’ve also spent about $400 in art supplies this semester. The list gets longer, and the expenses more costly. I should not have to buy anything anymore! Unless I run out… I have so much extra stuff like paints, pigment liners, pens and nibs, inks, notebooks, pencils, canvas, paper pads, newsprint, and the list goes on. I hope I can take a majority of this up to SF because it would suck to have to pay for it twice. I also really don’t like the shoppers at Art Supply Warehouse in Orange County. Like, they’re so disrespectful and retarded. I never meet or see them, but they leave their carbon footprint behind. (Figuratively speaking). I just bought a bristol vellum 11×17 comics pad that was suppose to have 24 pages but some fucker ripped out a page and one of the corners was torn. So basically, I didn’t check the quality and they couldn’t do a return because (I was too truthful and) it was no longer sellable. #$%! I should have lied and got my money back…. I didn’t even need it. But I have been honest for so long in my life that it feels crappy to lie. I can’t help it, even though I got the short end of the stick. And other examples include opened containers and used looking containers. Like, wtf, you SOB, think about the next person who’s gonna buy it or maybe even the store.

But I can’t say that I haven’t ever returned a borrowed item in worse condition. The hardest to keep new is a new book being tossed around in a backpack. You’d have to put it in a saran wrap or something to keep the scratches on the surface. There was a girl who I lent one of my books to, and it came back to me really worn… Most of my books are in “like new” or almost new condition, but this one was just so crappy. I stopped letting people borrow my things…. This brings me back to memories in elementary, middle school, and high school where I lent some girls my markers, crayons, color pencils, anything to color with. It went kind of like this:

Nowadays, I just let people use my cheap stuff like the tempera paint and those watercolors in a box thing. I do get annoyed when my dad randomly takes my good staedtler pencils and uses them to write with…. Problems like this, only artists can understand each other… Sigh.

I really like these “Wow! brushes” I got from the text book, but I barely read the book… well, it’s useful, and simulates real brushes.

This reminds me, it takes about half of your hair to tie it up into a bun. Sailormoon has tons of hair. I would also like to comment that Sailor Chibi should also be even longer because her hair is a cone thing… but one never discusses this aspect in anime. It doesn’t matter… haha…

It seems that the people whom I comment on livejournal always ends up removing the OpenID and thus, people who don’t have livejournal can’t comment. What is up with that? Do I bite? Do they think I spam? WTF, that makes me question if I should care about people who don’t really care about others. When you go over to someone else’s blog, unless it is a flame comment, then the commenter is trying to be friendly. So by doing that, that person from another blog, like wordpress, or even blogger will feel excluded. And thus, making them angry. I wouldn’t bother returning at all.

I totally forgot to post this up:

Eventually, I will color her… haha… But all ready #5. woot! What happened to number 3 and 4? They haven’t made their debut yet, is all. I need to make a list of 52 cards and 2 joker, with an additional back cover. Eventually, some day, they will be printed.

I’m really glad to have come across this. A lot of creative individuals really do suffer from a “success” complex because what we do makes or breaks our career. And there is this notion that if we fail, it will lead to homelessness, hunger, and subconsciously our mind thinks “death.” We may not say that aloud, but that’s where it all leads to. Everybody sees, hears, and feels different modes of inspiration. As for me, I always see movies. I am very curious about how others are able to perceive their ideas.

Oh, nothing much. Yes, I realize I’ve been away for quite some time and that is mainly because I’ve been doing a lot of reading. It’s amazing what books you can find for free online. There is a website that I bookmarked that had free ebooks. I reread Hans Christian Anderson’s original Little Mermaid. I loved it when I read the children’s storybook version in fifth grade and I remembered how bittersweet it was. Disney made it too happy in my opinion. And the fact of the matter is that most people don’t even know the original stories of all the stories Disney took anyway, at least most kids unless they come across. I’ve always liked the original Winnie the Pooh too by A.A. Milne. So I can just create a Little Mermaid and call her my own. She is nameless in the original btw, she is just called the little mermaid. You can read it here. I’m hoping to get over my laziness and begin scripting it out because I want to make a my comic and why not use one of fave fairytales?

I had also planned a lot of things to draw like redoing fanart for sailormoon and comparing them to my old ones. I’ve decided to stylize it to make it more unique. Alas, I’ve only successfully done one picture… I shall try to do the entire team. I started drawing in fourth trade because I thought Sailormoon was so pretty… They started to air all the episodes up to season 5 I think on Toonami. But I don’t remember for sure. They stopped somewhere in the middle where Sailor Chibi returns to the future and not airing the sailor stars because they were, technically, transvestites; I am thinking there are some scruples with that. And I always thought that in the Japanese version they transformed without the glitter, but that is untrue, it is always glittery. I wonder who told me that they didn’t, I wonder where this person saw it. It’s too bad because I wanted to see more of Sailor Saturn, I like her the best. Before her, I really liked Sailormoon best and pink was my favorite color until I was teased for it. Well, purple is my favorite color now… hahaha… and I am biased against anything pink now.

I will color this later when I decide that I want to. Please credit me if you use any of my drawings. I don’t want to be a nagging biatch, I just want to know where my things end up at.

I’ve been using omegle for some time and find it sometimes frustrating because the majority of people are such bastards. Some do annoying things on purpose and some are just ew… I don’t understand why a majority of people I meet are from China even though I tried to log on at two different times at the day. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Chinese people but I wanted to meet Europeans or people from other countries. And I’ll meet someone for a little, I kind of like them and then suddenly they get disconnected and try to connect the next person is horny or they’re shouting strange obscene things like “You’re a fag!” and then disconnect. Or when you don’t say anything and wait a long time people just leave… Hah…. sigh. But I’m done with it, I don’t want to take shit from a passing stranger, it drags me down and ruins my mood because I’ll be thinking what a jerk that person was.

My final for Digital Illustration. Although I had serious gripes about that class, things started to pick up in a positive way near the end. The project final was a book cover illustration and I chose to do Tale of Genji. The hand was the worst part even though I had taken a reference photo. But maybe it’s because my left thumb is stubbier than my right? I don’t know… but it was just hard to fix… D:

The reason for the bigass signatures is because I keep hearing these terrible, terrible stories about art theft. So I’m not going to be sorry about that anymore. And if people can go over to conceptart.org and steal images from Jason Chan and modify it, that’s pretty sucky. But with Massive Black, they have Jason Manley, so he seems to be pretty adamant about telling Castle Age (a facebook game app) to take down the art or else… But I’m sort of outside of the community since I never post anything… :\

I have sewing projects to now! Like… my sister’s ring pillow for the ring bearer… and getting my dress fitted, and booster shot for Nico. Things just never cease. I just want to relax!!

1. Nico’s booster shots
2. Get bride’s maid dress tailored
3. Make ring bearer pillow
4. New sock puppet!
5. set up etsy store
6. Chillax/ find a part-time job…