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…………..

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

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 ):

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:

I didn’t get a screen protector because I was just going to do the same transparency thing I had done for my intuos, but I haven’t found a sheet big enough yet so the whole time I was paranoid about damaging the screen LMAO… I also didn’t buy a glove so I just held a piece of tissue paper which worked like magic. It wasn’t brand new (guy claimed it was only used for a few hours and I haven’t found any evidence against that claim yet) so the guy wiped the screen with a wet towel I guess, maybe, so it had some botches on the screen like when you wipe glass, but 2 hrs of drawing with the tissue paper on my hand and the screen is sparkling clean LOL. I will have to find a more ergonomic setup though because it’s way too high up right now and my arm gets uncomfortable… once again I’m looking back at these amazing extension arms from ergotron which cost lot but look glorious. Back then I was a little disappointed because they’re ingenius, but I don’t actually have a use or need for those things. now that I do… I’m finding ways out of it because I’m pretty sure like the screen protector and glove, I most likely don’t need it LOL.

And here’s when I first plugged it in :’D actually I lied it took me forever to figure out how to setup dual monitors even though it was so fucking easy and I was already on the last step. The concept of dragging a window into a different monitor is just alien to me ): and that is the cover for book 2 ! I am so happy with blackbird’s face, I’m not sure how I did it, must be praying to the right gods

In other news I’m thinking of getting a new motherboard/cpu/ram tomorrow, since this store near me apparently has discounts for black friday even though it’s not a canadian thing… it’s just that I spent a lot of money already this year so I somehow feel like distributing the costs over time, even though it would make absolutely no difference and this is actually a justifiable cause. It wouldn’t cost much either since my video card is still pretty good and I won’t be buying top of the line stuff. I guess I can just see it as one of those years when everything suddenly becomes outdated all at once! I won’t need to buy electronics again for a looonggg time. UNLESS someone suddenly invents something amazing and crucial to the sustainment of life, but steve jobs is dead so the likelihood of that happening is pretty low.

And I finished the last of the pages! I still have to put the book together and finish extra content/the cover. But man I toned at the speed of light, 12 pages in 2 days LOL;;; I think it’s because I inked them all, then lettered them all, flatted them all, and toned them all. It cut out a lot of of the getting into gear bullshit that I had to go through in the past. I just might consider doing this for future pages, but I will have to wait a while and then read it again to see if the quality suffered from it. I can’t quite tell right now from the 2.5 months of manga marathon LOL.

Ending with some more reflection (:

I’ve been researching ancient chinese emperors for designs for rae, in the end my searches led me back to chinese martial arts tv series that I’ve watched a lot as a kid. I loved them and most of the ones that were produced in mainland china had nice costume designs that looked both authentic and pleasant. But despite watching them a lot, I didn’t really take in any of the stuff I could’ve learned from them. It reminded me of how I always believed that learning is mostly an attitude thing. I rarely ever focus on how some people are born slower than others, less aware, so to speak. I always like to believe that environment and nurture is the most important difference between smart and dumb people. But even then, if you’re wired to not pay attention to your surrounding, even if you’re dumped in a foreign land you won’t learn its culture, just like how watching all those martial art shows did not teach me anything useful in how ancient chinese clothing looked when I was small. Some kids have better memory, some have worse, but the ones who are better are usually just more alert about what they’re seeing, consciously or subconsciously.

But even attention is a habit! There is enormous room for conscious effort to bring yourself to the best of your potentials.  If you aren’t used to noticing things that may benefit you, force yourself to describe everything you see to yourself in your mind; after a while, no matter how long it will take, it will be like breathing to you. Maybe it’s because everything I do nowadays is drawing related, I’ve finally begun to think about everything in terms of what it can contribute to my art. This is something I rarely ever do back when I’m more focused on how to make more zeny on RO and how to play certain songs, and it shows a lot in the content of my old CGs and how poorly I understood the stuff I drew. Walking down the streets thinking about homework instead of walking down the streets thinking about a drawing of street life, you’re bound to notice different things.

I believe myself to be a slow person, I take in and realize things slowly and often late. But in the end I do realize it and learn it because I force myself to. If a painter has an autopilot in their mind on what colours and texture to use to create a brilliant effect, then I will spend 10x the time following my notebook manual by checking every checklist, arranging and layering all the colours step by step, trying every possibility until I find the one that works. If a musician has an autopilot in their mind on how to do overall dynamics and rubato of any piece they listen to, then I’ll follow what’s on the score, record myself and listen to it time after time, adjust my treatment until I find one that works, then practice it repeatedly until I remember it. I know that people are smart because they can notice, see, APPLY a lot more connections between things we otherwise don’t relate, so if I’m not wired to think like this, I will figure out their method, grind it into my brain and consciously MAKE it a part of my living breathing self. It takes a lot of motivation and self control, especially if this is concerning a profession you don’t give a flying fuck about, but practicing and achieving this kind of conscious self control is completely doable for anyone in one way or another, and having this kind of self control at your disposal will help you in a lot more ways than simply attaining success in a field of profession.

and I started packing some orders since the books are here! the printing company was crazy and packed like 80 books per box and they’re like… 60 lbs per box I CAN BARELY PUSH THEM ON SMOOTH HARDWOOD FLOOR. I’ve spent most of the afternoon yesterday and today signing the books but I’m still not quite done. One thing that I didn’t realize was white books are just like white cars or iphones or anything else… they are VERY hard to keep in pristine condition, even just through the printing process. I didn’t have any of this problem with my manga book because the cover was littered with dark colours and details, but all the white/near-white on this book made even tiny unavoidable specks and flaws glaring. I ended up wiping all of them with tissue paper while signing and isolated about 20 books that I just feel bad selling. Most likely though I will try another company, or at least scold this one and see if it will make them behave, as my dad’s scolding got his previous company to produce better products. most of the books are perfectly fine and I understand there WILL be factory defects for everything ever produced, but when most of them is dirt (nothing gross, just pixel-size flakes of ink) related I don’t feel so forgiving because they can totally be avoided.

I also got einlee‘s art book in the mail yesterday!! hers put mine to shame both in actual content and quality of printing. the art is sooo glorious and the design is sooo classy…………… this is where my urge to make another book in order to redeem myself pours in LOL. I am so glad that I can keep doing this and this book wouldn’t be my last, because that kind of final feeling makes all the things I could not achieve in this book a lot worse than they already are. WORK HARD AND DO BETTER NEXT TIME!!!

but in the mean time, behoooolllld its gloryyyyy

obligatory picture of that picture frame on my wal-I mean my window. I miss sketching and posting scraps ;-;

I realized a while ago when chatting with a friend that I am all business when it comes to reaching milestones (AS I AM WITH EVERYTHING ELSE ACTUALLY…) so I decided to celebrate my art book a little and go out for some ice cream on preorder night HAHA… I can’t believe I wanted to go for like the past 1-2 years and I NEVER WENT, even though it’s like 10 minutes from my place what is wrong with me ): but fear not ice cream crepes, I will come claim you this weekend.

I’m pretty much done with my late romantic period so I’ve been looking for different music to listen to, and looking through billions of songs you’ve heard billions of times is HARD HAHA. But I’m back to baroque stuff now–or in this case late romantic renditions of baroque stuff LOL. I fucking love the fact that they’re so focused on forms (not sure if this one applies tho I don’t deserve to pass music history lmao) I don’t know why this always gets me off so much more than emotional downpours of romantic stuff and totally makes me wanna cry. same for art, too! I just may have some serious obsessions over control and constrain

Anyway have some busoni! This is only the second half but this is what I’ve been listening to haha

Ending with a wall of self reflection which might inflict brain damage so I’ll put that behind the cut (:

when I was in new york I stayed with a friend of my family who is a psychiatrist. She is really busy/stressed out most of the time, and she has been living alone because of her work location, all this along with her profession made her really enjoy talking to people, and we chatted it up the few nights that I stayed at her place, about my career and my opinions on what I’m doing. It was kind of like what happened at Otakuthon with my parents’ other friends, but she was much nicer and less imposing because she saw me as more of a subject than a family friend’s kid who didnt know what she is doing and needs to be saved. She regularly brought up sharing, collaboration, and responsibilities to those around me during the discussion and in the end she was like… you are so weird, you ENJOY solitariness when others find comfort in caring for each other.

It’s a really obvious statement about me but she describes it in a much less stereotyping way than me trying to be a loner. In the end from that and what my mom says about me, I realize I just trained myself to be incredibly selfish and a control freak. My interest is solely between the subject and myself, no one else is involved in anyway more than spectating because I don’t want them to hinder me. no one can really be as into carciphona as I am for obvious reasons, and as for music… I focused on my instrument which is a solo one in contrast to an orchestral instrument, or even an instrument requiring accompaniment (eg voice), and what’s more I’m a solo pianist and not a collaborative one, so my entire learning experience was really between the music and solely myself. It’s almost like I build better relationships with inanimate objects and concepts better than with people. I always liked not having to cooperate with the need of others and much rather do everything by myself. Sometimes, I look at groups experiencing the inevitable fall out and feel secretly glad for myself.

A company can’t get big without sharing and collaboration, I understand that, but I really don’t believe in following principles for the sake of showing people I understand it, especially if it doesn’t benefit my situation. I’m not going to hire an orchestra for a concert for the off chance that I might want to perform a concerto, but because I’ve learned to think like this in order to be efficient, I ended up being aloof even during the times when I don’t want to be. I ended up being able to justify it as a reasonable price to pay to avoid trouble and grief in the future. I can’t always control others, but I can always control myself, so I’d much rather deal with putting away my spurs of social needs than resolving quarrels with others. I’ve almost lost sight of myself this way, all I can see is my goal for a little while.

Strangely this year I’ve met a lot of people who have amazing experience and insight into things I was doing, and it was a little puzzling how it all managed to happen because what are the chances? Just as I do something new and unfamiliar, it’s like these people are god sent. It occurred to me that maybe it was just because I wasn’t looking before, but whatever it is I hope I will be able to constantly remind myself to not let such a good opportunity go, and start extending my connections because I finally need it now. It’s so tiring and draining on me because even though I’m trying my best to be sincere about it, all I am doing is being dishonest since I just don’t feel this kind of external connection with people. But hopefully each time I try to do this I will get a step or two little farther than the time before.

that aside, drawerings!!

special request for Flow! ugh 3rd classes UGH LOL CANT LIE ABOUT MY FERVENT HATE FOR 3RD CLASSES… also he looks like my archbishop lmfao fml /sameface

Got this shortly after posting that photo before. I was going for this mirror-like reflective floor like tiv and nardack but I very quickly cluttered the floor up with crap AS USUAL… I ran out of crap to fill at the top but now I think it’s ok to have some breathing room haha, I’ll have to get rid of some stuff at the bottom to balance it out so it doesn’t look like everything is falling into the bottom of the picture LOL. or leave it as is and put a title over the top for a book cover but this is obviously unacceptable as an official cover;;;;

I kinda really want to cg this picture but I just don’t have the time rn ): It’s gotten to the point where I don’t want to rush and ruin ideas so I write them down in words… maybe they’ll turn out nicer and more well thought out since all I can do about them is work on them in my head.