Otherwise I finished two commissions this week! They were smooth and I actually didn’t struggle too much with them or give up really fast like I did with a number of past commissions. now I’m 6 pages behind my CP schedule haha ;; but at least I finally painted something…………

yeahhh fabric w0000000

Anime North’s artist alley registration date is finally set, and unlike past years it’s AFTER the design contest deadlines. I really don’t want to enter again, especially seeing how it is almost a requirement to draw fandom in order fill up the community spirit quota and to win. But the table application process is just too mercilessly competitive, even with the lottery–or should I say, ESPECIALLY with the lottery, reducing the total table numbers drastically and makes the sell-out time decrease from something dumb like 3 seconds to 1 second. In reality it is one of the most fair and stable application processes around; most cons try to improve every year but end up screwing up the process every single time and making it worse. It’s fair to everyone who wants a shot at AN, but it’s kinda a slap in the face for me (and I’m sure for a lot of other people as well, there are SO MANY AA artists who live in toronto it’s unreal) to have such a convenient, affordable, decent sized and long running con right in my city and I would have to worry about getting denied at the last step. I don’t think I’ve ever failed registering for any other cons for the past 4-5 years, but I’ve never actually successfully registered for AN a single time legitimately (I won the design contest twice and got lucky with the lottery twice)

In terms of other cons this year, I’m considering going to: AX, otakon, otakuthon, fanexpo and NYAF. It would be nice to be able to go to AN, and I might add one or two others if I manage to find some other ones that are close by (:

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…………..

But I’ll just say I love the cintiq and I’m so relieved that I do. I feel a lot less inclined to zoom in because of the precision it offers me, and I believe I undo a lot less since most of the undoing I did with the old tablets are just brush strokes that I can’t get to exactly where I want even though I already know where I want them. I can actually scribble now and do faster paint strokes because I don’t have to estimate where each stroke is going. I LOVE BEING ABLE TO NOT HAVE TO ~FIND~ THE SPOT I WANT TO GET TO… even though I’ve used a tablet for 11 years now and it has never felt unnatural (only inconvenient at times). It’s just great that I can pretend I’m drawing on paper; I’m actually glad that I drew all my manga pages on paper with pencil because otherwise I wouldn’t feel familiar with this, and certainly not enjoy this.

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.

In other news we went to a restaurant for my grandma’s birthday yesterday. It was a chinese restaurant aimed towards the more classy/rich non asians, with an objective of “showing the western world what true chinese cuisine is like”. The whole place was decorated in baroque furnishing, except since it was done by chinese people it has the usual unauthentic vibe to it which I thought was hilarious, because I really think regal ancient oriental palace style decoration would’ve looked no less classy, without any of the counterfeit look LOL. The food itself was decent, but not worth the expensive price because I can name a lot of loud crowded and shitty looking restaurants that cook more authentic food, the money paid was mostly just for the service and environment. I should have taken my camera with me because at least for the money we paid I would’ve gotten some nice photos out of it but whatever! Also now it’s making me want baroque furnitures and want to paint my room red LOL my tastes are so old q_q

And here are some more photos from my window! there was a storm near the east coast but as usual, we didn’t get much of it. but storms mean rainbow hotspot yay! it was so bright it was glorious

and the day after the storm was cleared. suppressing urge to photoshop out the trees

I don’t like snacks but these rolls… I was just gonna have one and before I knew it the whole pack was gone LOL damn chinese snacks… I BET THERE’S CRACK IN IT

I BROKE MY COMPUTER by installing a crap load of programs trying to fix my artbook’s file problem. I don’t know what’s wrong with it but it’s either there’s too much shit loading at startup, I got malware, or I’ve been opening multiple huge files in huge programs too frequently recently and force restarting too much whenever it starts lagging to shit. I can’t fix it despite disabling a lot of startup programs and uninstalling a lot of stuff and I really don’t have the time to reinstall windows right now, so I went back to the windows xp I used 2 years ago since I leave that drive plugged in anyway to use for space. And MAN it’s so fast and smooth with an utter lack of bullshit I don’t know what the fuck I did wrong with Windows 7 that could make it inferior to XP LOL… I pretty much have everything I need on there and installed whatever that’s missing, and now I am even more unmotivated to go back to windows 7 cus what’s the point ): just going to wait until no one makes software for winxp anymore or something lmfao

I’ve been having a lot of problems with the artbook but the most important one is finally fixed today. I am waiting for a second proof to be made and once it’s ok I’ll get it printed. It will probably be here by the end of October, but at this rate I probably want to wait for the books to arrive before I start taking orders. I will be gone for a week in the middle of October anyway and I want to wait til I get back to work on this, because I don’t want there to be any unexpected problems while I’m away and unable to tend to it. I am considering fedexing a small number of books after they are printed to bring to NYAF to give to friends/sell but I’ll see when I know the costs/time!

I’ve also been working on the year-end deadline for volume 2, and trying to get ahead of my schedule because I am pretty sure I would need to fork out a lot of time proofreading and editing any problems with the book after I’m done, which I didn’t plan time for. My relative who is coming has two high school and college aged kids and I am now charged with looking into enrollment and credit transfers for them lol ): I also agreed to work on a website for a friend and my dad wants to do some major renovation before the end of the year so all this will probably take a lot of time out of my schedule, so I’m trying to prepare for any unexpected time consuming delays (LIKE THIS ARTBOOK SHIT UGH) but right now I’m only 2 pages ahead ):

It didn’t occur to me that the last time I’ve drawn veloce normally in the story was like… 40 pages ago or something, because I was comparing how I’ve drawn her now to just earlier in this book and I just laugh at how badly I draw people LOL. During most of book2 I thought I kinda settled down with how I want to draw these pages and the change throughout the book isn’t as drastic as book 1 I guess, I should be able to look through my work after I’m done without feeling embarrassed about it right? WRONG HAHA man I’ll never be able to take CP seriously, I’ll just look through it and feel like I’m reading porn in public… I am not even trying to do anything good or out of ordinary, I just want them to look generic and good WHY AM I SO BAD AT LIFE.

I wanted to swap out my manga site and storenvy background with something that looks good and at the same time reflects the story. I didn’t find ANY usable drawings because all the pictures I’m happy with are out of universe, and all the pictures that I can use suck (also amounts to the grand total of like 3 pictures). So I decided to draw something simple and generic for this purpose. I think I got the generic part but LIKE ALWAYS, I failed the simple part and took forever just to finish the lines and roughs lol q__q

The colour scheme and brown light makes her look like link for some reason… I think it’s the green hair ribbon looking like his pointy hat hahaha

And something I doodled at fanexpo! 3 really really old characters (you can actually find a shittyass line up of them in their first incarnation in this blog) that solved my Carciphona plot problem when I made them XD But because I can’t mention them for like another 10 years or something I never had any situations to draw them, aside from the ram girl on my website layout but I fired her LOL. Their names are Stigma, Eqin, and super secret name I can’t mention. The titles refer to them, but they’re out of order so you can guess which one is for which!

I want to be able to open preorders from Sept 1 to Oct 1 because I like nice dates but I don’t know if that’s possible or smart anymore, especially if it is affecting how much I would like to put into the artbook. I could push the preorder back to October instead, but November is too late for shipping since I am worried that it might snow by then. The only concern I have left is any artbook-exclusive pieces that I had wanted to do, but honestly I don’t know how much that would matter for anybody really and it’s just there to make the artbook sound a little better than “here, I printed out pictures in a book come buy it!”, so I might not do that anymore!

I was surprised at how long this took because in the beginning I had pretty much envisioned cel shade/gradients with backlight, but decided to put effort into it because I actually liked the piece, and my cel illustrations actually don’t sell well because they look mediocre next to all my holy shit 30 hour illustrations XD Then I was surprised that I actually got it done for last night (I had to reprint some stuff and today is the last reasonable date imo to send in my files for next week’s convention). It was hard to preserve the texture because the whole image is basically in shadows, and what I’m shading in is only the subtle shadows within the shadows. I had the urge to do very high contrast and definite shading but I was able to keep it down haha

for someone else’s art book!

A commission I did for Setsuna22 at Otakon! She was nice enough to scan it and send it to me since it was one of the pictures I forgot to scan XD This is her OC Deniz I think? I love all the curves on her, it was so fun to draw XD

And cats in a basket is always a good stress reliever

And all these plaaaaanns of stuff I was going to do, lists of pictures that I was going to draw but never bothered to, artbooks that I was going to make. I was never a planning person when it comes to this kind of project stuff; if I feel like doing it I can do it even if it’s a big, elaborate project, without writing down anything (like now). I knew this, but I think I just tried anyway to see if they would help me get things done. They didn’t but hey, not every trick works!

Back to now! I’ve been cging like a mofo trying to get stuff done in time; all these conventions really take up a lot more time than they seem because each take up 4 days including traveling, and then another day or two for prep ): and Otakuthon is this weekend! I hope no one jumps up to me and start talking french lol

commission wip! It’s kinda like Heavens 2.0 but only because it was pretty much the commissioner’s request for it to have the same vibe. Happy pictures yay! I am in desperate need of some of these

I spent forever on this boot lol, and it’s not even because it has ornament or anything. I coloured too systematically and it looks soooo out of place in the picture. I spent a bit of time drawing the actual ornaments and twice the time trying to make the edges and shading coarser in order for the texture to blend in with the rest of the picture. This is as good as it got, but I’ll be wasting more time to make it work lmao. It was the same problem in the veloce visrin pic but I didn’t care that much on that pic LOL.

A few days ago the books and prints I ordered from Aurore arrived! They’re so soooo precious and i spent so long staring at all of them and trying to put my fail grade 9 french to use LOL;;;;;; I’m keeping her glorious hand written note forever like a creep wahahahah

*v*

Then today I went out to buy some convention supplies, like stands and binders and stuff, and I came across this ULTRA BADASS BINDER. I was like holy shit this is fucking perfect for my manga pages, not that I show it ANYONE LMFAO BUT I DON’T CARE it was practically created just for me. I’ve been using cardstock paper for most of volume 2 so the old binders I use for CP pages are not thick enough anymore; I have 1 more chapter to go and the poor thing is already bloated. There were only 2 of these in the store though… I hope I will be able to find more when I need more in the future LOL ): pls don’t go extinct badass binders

SERIOUSLY LOOK AT THIS SHIT. These things make my manga pages a lot more epic than they really are. I wish I could bring this to a convention or something LMAO people would be like holy mudkips look at this amazing binder

Ending the long post with my cat. People who I talk to on msn/aim knows that all I ever talk about are my cats sleeping. So here are some pictures of my cat sleeping! Seriously I turn around and there she’d be sleeping somewhere near me.

On the stairs.

In my chair. because she has no fucking bills to pay.