So my mom moved some of the furniture from my bedroom to my work room, and among them was my book shelf. She cleared out all of the books inside for the move and found some really old sketchbooks that I had to use for school that I thought had perished and/or wished didn’t exist. They really threw me off because one was from 2002 and I drew sooo much crap on it with pencil crayons, but I remembered I stopped using them after I got a tablet so…… LOL maybe my mouse on photoshop days were longer than I had initially thought…

BUT YEAH I took some pictures to show HA HA ha… I didn’t improve much back then over the course of YEARS because I was a narrow minded bitch type character and I genuinely could not see what the fuck was wrong with my art or myself. I think I am still the same just… less… severe…

The pencil crayon ones were from this sketcbook we had to fill for a class called comprehensive arts in 2002. I’m not quite sure wtf we learned there but that could be said about most of the classes I took ): I did a bunch of these what’s in your locker comics, drawing myself and my friends (I’m #2, look at my fashion sense)

and holy shit lol one of the most primitive versions of veloce after she got the white hairdo I think??? In the very first environments for this character–even before the retarded manga high school manga I did and abandoned–she lived in a vague fantasy world, and she had a LOT of animal sidekicks as well as weapons because I was so head over heels for fantasy creatures and magical shinies sdlfjdlfdl

but I was also still crazy for pokemon at the time so I stole suicune’s head crystal for her sword…

and then I guess I got a tablet and started playing ro…… lol so I topped drawing on paper until grade 12 (2004?) the next 2 small sketchbooks (my last ones until I was gifted one at AE and forced to use it again) were FILLED WITH RO DRAWINGS. and builds, really bad builds because I am a fucking noob at everything. but mostly drawings since that’s why I played ro in the first place: so I can draw a character and say it’s mine LOL I HAVE PROBLEMS. magma dungeon~

I don’t know why I never finished these (probably because I was too busy playing instead of doing anything meaningful) but back then I really liked drawing scenes of happenings.

I am SO ASHAMED of my old works and my old self because not only are they bad, I also thought they were good at the time. Now going to wait about 5 years and then say the same about the art I post all day erryday now :B I fluster so hard it turns into uncontrollable rage when people dig up my old stuff and show them to me because I deny it so much, but once in a while I suck it up and stare at my old shit for long enough to accept them so I could post them so people know how much I sucked even when I was 18 and not think that I’m any different than them.

Ending with some korean bbq from last week. censoring my parents ya!

if the seller’s claim is true, I’m pretty sure he never finished anything on the cintiq since he only played with it for a few hours. So this illus is my cintiq’s maiden voyage >u< This is Claret from Teahouse and the full image will be available sometime next year LOL.

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 haven’t decided what colour pair eyes des should have yet so he’ll be a rei lookalike for now

I bought a 21″ cintiq! This happened a few weeks ago actually, it’s just that it took over a week to arrive and the guy forgot to pack the power supply so that took another week ): I’ve been meaning to get it since the middle of the year actually, but failed to find any place where I could try it because I wasn’t going to buy something this expensive without knowing if it’s good or not. The power supply delay made it JUST too late though because I had finished volume 2 cover the day before ): luckily this time around, putting volume 2 together in pdf didn’t take that long because oh my god I’m slowly becoming more experienced!!!! so I snuck in some time to try it out in between waiting communication with the printer.

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.

It snowed a bit today! Not that I want any until all my books are shipped but WINTER IS FINALLY HERE. And that flower patch I took a photo of just 2 weeks ago? dead HAHA

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 (:

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ALL PAGES FOR CP BOOK 2 ARE INKED! hopefully I can finish toning 12 or so pages in the next few days haha. I feel so pumped about finishing it right now but I’m sure it will die down in the next few hours during which I will pain myself with endless revisions to the dialogue.

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 ;-;