wow I kinda just… died after new year’s LOL. I keep waiting for myself to sketch up something so I can post it here along with anything else I wanted to write, but I just didn’t draw anything at all. I’ve been busy rushing to finish off volume 3 thumbnails because it has taken far too long, then I started drawing them out right away because based on the pace I settled on, it’s going to take forever to finish if I don’t pick up my pace and make up for the 2 months of break between finishing the last book and starting this one. I’ve also taken my relatives everywhere to get their government IDs and school stuff taken care of since their immigration, and by the end of the day whenever I sit down, I just don’t want to draw. It’s kinda that time where I haven’t finished something serious for so long that I’ve accumulated so much I want to accomplish on the next drawing and end up not being able to do anything instead. I think some inspirational outdoors trip is long due ): So I’ve just been doing random 20-min photo studies instead HAHA (something I’ve been meaning to do for years………………..) hopefully I’ll stop caring sometime soon!

In other news, I watched the second season of avatar! I don’t remember what happened in the first season anymore but I don’t think I liked it very much back then, else I would have had a stronger impression. I did like the second season a lot though, mostly if not almost entirely because of the characters. The story is well thought out and nicely played but there are still a lot of stuff I don’t like about it, so I guess it pales in comparison to how the characters strike me. Whether or not I like the type of character I feel they were really believable. on top of that I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that toph is such a girly character and just not what I had anticipated. And even at the end, after going through so much struggles back and forth, when presented the opportunity, zuko still returned to his original ambitions because even though ideally, a character morphs for the better but realistically, no one can really so easily drop what they’ve pursued for so long just because of a couple of inspiring events, especially someone so young. I wish I could be more brave and persistent in writing character flaws but my desire for balance is way too strong ): I just feel the need to sort everything out and maintain order at any given point in the story. No matter what happens in my story, I don’t think I ever let anything feel like they’ve gone out of control.

now presenting mudkip on his bahamutmobile. My room faces south now so if only I slept at normal times, I would see beautiful sunrises everyday. but who cares anyway it’s just sunrise and not nearly as important as going to sleep at 4am

And Happy Chinese New Year if you’re celebrating! I’ll be having the most festive new year gathering yet tomorrow in just about 10 years, with my uncle and aunt (separate)’s families present! To think we used to have like 10+ families gatherings just because our families are huge LOL BUT I THINK THIS IS BIG ENOUGH. I think I’ll go insane if I went back to the old days…………..

ok this post has nothing to do with the new year but happy new year! I’m going to jump straight to business like any other day lalalala

so!! my dad is back home from China and my aunt’s family have moved in! they’re great so far but I’ll leave that for later because I still haven’t gotten too acquainted with them… BUT YEAH my dad also brought back 2 copies of carciphona volume 1 and 2! The rest are on the way to be shipped here. It printed really well! we had paper, size and weight ink concerns at first, also this company has apparently never printed comic books before because they specialize in art books, magazines and such, so they were really confused about a lot of stuff LOL;;; but I’m glad that after all the shit we gave them that the final books (or well just this one) is awesome. now to pray for not so many factory defects this time!!

I remember I really aimed for the thin lines and neat look for volume 2, at least compared to volume 1 because I actually went out of my way to thicken lines for line thickness variation in volume 1. It really stood out in volume 2 with the bigger canvas and the fact that I crammed a lot of material in the latter half of the book due to page count issues, and now that I’m comparing them side to side, I kinda miss the bold lines sometimes haha ;; It’s so clean and neat and organized now. I’ll have to remember to make use of both in fitting circumstances, because the thin lines and detailed look helped a lot in drawing elaborate the elaborate backgrounds the story keeps finding itself in.

yaa pictures of our yard!!! EXCITING

This Friday will see 3 more permanent (?) residents in my home: my aunt and her two children who are a few years younger than me. The aunt will for sure be home 24/7 until she finds a job, which is very unlikely since she doesn’t speak english, and I will have to look for schools for my two cousins and most likely have to help them with any school work they don’t understand, drive them to places, and just in general have my doors open to my family. I’m beginning to stress out now because I need the kind of concentration and freedom from external hindrances I have right now to work; sometimes even just the interaction of my parents and grand parents and the tv would throw me off. It’s almost like I have those artist retreat in the mountains right here in my room lolol, JUST NOT IN A HEALTHY WAY. It will be a great motivation for me to save up to maybe start paying for a place of my own though! I’ll manage but the transition is going to suck :T /spoiled only child

I’ll be posting a bigger version of this on my sites on new year’s (: but you guys can see it first as a reward for looking at my blog! I am very bad at drawing stuff for special occasions, and since I missed christmas I forced myself to at least draw something for new year’s. I wish all of you a safe and peaceful 2012! (or I guess a dangerous and exciting 2012 if you’re an adrenaline junkie)

Writing about this year feel kinda like counting down my life, scratching another year off til the deadline and I’ve got all these things that I am now bent on accomplishing. I kinda like this because unlike having nothing to do, I feel motivated and unlike having a boss, if I miss a deadline I won’t dread to be scolded and wait for my sentencing. I’m so cut off from society but at this very moment it feels like it’s not worth it to fit myself into social norms just because it will make me miserable and slow down my work greatly.

I looked back at last year’s resolution list to see what I did and didn’t do LOL. I never got around to the studies like anatomy and colour and just plunged headfirst into practical work. I think that’s pretty terrible for my growth but yeah, I never really find myself to be the scholastic type. I feel more like the apocalypse-is-tomorrow-so-I-better-finish-this-book-so-it-can-be-incinerated-by-the-sun-along-with-myself type. I also just outright threw any semblance of a balanced lifestyle out the window in exchange for productivity, and it showed I think… I remember thinking that all I churned out this year was manga pages with relatively few drawings, but while upgrading my gallery script, I noticed I painted more than last year, and most of the pictures had taken much much longer to complete than drawings from last year. I played piano more than last year… though considering I played in like almost half year gaps last year, that’s not saying much LOL… but I can feel my fingers numbing because there are some pieces that even after familiarizing myself with them, I can’t play them as well anymore simply because my hands are more clumsy now from lack of practice. It’s depressing but I can’t ask for reward without putting work in LOL.

2011 summary of stuff I remember:

• Published CP finally! and suddenly the subsequent volumes are following like the wind (in my mind ok)
• Got out an artbook too? although that’s more like putting art together into a book because I didn’t draw too many new pieces for it
• I did better at conventions than previous years because I have books to sell now
• what I’m doing is much more solid and does not involve describing abstract career concepts to parents
• I am not sure about this but I think I treated people better? I tried to go the extra mile (at least for me it is considered such) to correspond with (or just respond to) my friends and loved ones. It’s really tiring still but it’s coming to me more naturally
• I somehow suddenly found a style I am completely comfortable with painting omg?? before no matter what I did I would always struggle greatly with the face, but somehow I can finally bid this decade of struggle good bye

I’m actually not going to do a resolution list for next year because there is nothing I am particularly keen on overcoming above all else, and I would probably mostly just aim for a continuation and improvement from this year. Also I just have no idea what would happen to my work style and habits after my aunt’s family moves in ): but here’s to a safe and peaceful world. I hope that while the young and fed-up stand up for their own causes, they actually have an idea of how to deal with the onslaught of chaos should they actually succeed in overthrowing the “system”, whatever they consider it to be. I’m not the most responsible or considerate person out there and I’m not too filled in on a lot of the current worldly issues, but while I believe some of these world powers are fucked up in the way they operate their countries, I feel like the masses trying to spread justice are just as dangerous and insane.

Ending with my playing! My mom went out today so this would probably be the last chance I have to putting together a recording without anyone else in the house for a long, long time. I did this to record flandre’s theme for my waifu sepia but also decided to record something else too because I get asked about my education once in a while. Time really hurts my skill but I’m not out here to impress any experts haha, if I need to do that in the future I can always actually practice for it. and tune my piano…. it hasn’t been tuned for like 3 + years now LOL;;; anyway this is lezghinka by liapunov; I decided to learn this after hearing a classmate play it and it has been my favourite song to play for fun. Everyone living around me is probably so fucking sick of this song lmfao

So I like watching mayday, minus the dramatization because I think they’re ridiculous and almost comedic. I’ve always liked mechs but I just don’t allow myself to waste too much time on all things useless and impertinent… not to mention I have no idea how to draw them. But finally after years I asked myself, WHY DO I DO THIS TO MYSELF LOL… so after I watched the episode on a korean airliner being shot down by a soviet fighter jet in 1983, I decided to draw a plane.

The episode featured a cgi render of the attack and when the plane was shot in the tail, it nosed up uncontrollably until it lost lift and fell out of the sky. It’s like a giant flying whale that got killed by fishermen ): So in the end I drew the plane as some creature just with commercial jet engines, wingflabs and… wheels LOL. It felt really satisfying to draw despite my having no idea how to draw something like this. It could have been from the sketch in the first photo because nowadays I tend to draw really light and carefully due to the fact that I need the clean lines afterwards, but I really like to be able to scribble hard and brashly. I was going to just leave it at the first sketch because I honestly had no idea what the fuck I was going to do with it, but in the end I decided to etch in some harder lines and totally ruin his day HAHA

Despite being very generic, somehow I want to keep this vaguely established big bear and I even want to give him a name! I was thinking about just naming him Mayday but that’d be naming him to his doom lmao… It would be strangely cute though since he would be a summoned creature and calling his name would also be saying help me. Too bad I can’t use him in CP because of all the mechness but who knows, most of CP resulted from my forcing out of place elements into the story and working everything around it LOL SO MAYBE HE WILL JOIN THE FAMILY………… or maybe it is just for the best that I don’t do that

I went shopping for christmas presents on sunday, but I ended up only buying one present and bought myself a skirt, shoes and a hoodie LOL;;; at least each of those was under $20 and the present itself was like the same price as the three combined ):

It’s here! I swear this company makes the worst proofs but I guess this is what I get for getting proofs without having to pay LOL… apparently it’s really busy for them right now, and my book is backwards and doesn’t have page numbers on every page so it made it hell for them to arrange. The first book was wrong in a whole bunch of places but I’m glad they got the page orders right in the end. I can imagine how fucking pissed they would be at my books hahaha, and I’m not even printing a lot of them so they probably have very little patience with all the shit they have to go through with my books lmao…

I hadn’t even opened them yet and they were already falling apart hahahah

In other news, I wanted to draw something for my spanish translator celes because she is so punctual and nice, but she requested meron paired with des or veloce so I’m not sure if this even counts as a request LOL… but it’s not something I would have drawn myself so I guess I can pass :D…?

I clearly have no regard for age here because veloce is like 10 years younger than meron wahahahaha r: