Fanexpo was this past weekend! It was such a long weekend because my US friends weren’t there and it was 4 days long ;; Half the time I’m certain I was mistaken as just a retailer of random goods, and most of the time people had to ask if I were the artist. It was cool that a bunch of people talked about my manga in front of me without thinking it was mine; lets me pretend that my story is legit HAHA. Some people also came back for volume 2/volume 3 which made me super happy! Everyone who hasn’t seen the book look through the first book only though and I was just screaming in my mind WHY WON’T YOU LOOK AT BOOK 2 INSTEAD ]: because the first book is so terrible LMFAO… I JUST WISH I COULD REDO IT UGH

I finally realized that I can still stay awake on tea despite drinking it everyday, and this year was a lot more pleasant than last year with the help of like 3 cups of tea every morning HAHA. I was all done out by Tuesday though after family errands and trips to the doctors and sooooooooooo glad I can sleep in again zzzzz

I sat behind Careko and Oceanchan at the AA and we shared our horror stories of traveling to the states LOL. I WANT TO SAY IT WAS A PLEASANT CHAT but the topic of our conversation was just enraging LMAO. BUT YEAH they were such sweeties and Careko drew this cute veloce for me ;u; SHE’S SO PRETTY FFF

Holly was also at our island, but because I am a terrible person and I hardcore suck at looking for people, I didn’t even notice until she came by on like Friday or Saturday LMAO. The second time she was wearing a polarbear cosplay and graciously lent it to me to take a tourist photo. I had that mask on for like 5 seconds and I was suffocating in there LOLOL

This person also dropped by my table! I remember seeing his art before, also seeing him at NYCC last year and my friend bought a print from him so I was pretty honoured when he bought my artbook and gave me a copy of his, and even drew/signed it to me YAY FREE STUFF!! I seem to have ok luck just sitting at my table at fanexpo and people finding me; last year I managed to get my caterpillar print signed and doodled on by Bobby Chiu when he stopped by. Daxiong and I had this huge discussion about direction of my art in response to the audience here in North America, I think my stern stance disappointed him though, as he seemed to have initiated the conversation in an attempt to help me get better a customer/viewer base. He iterated the changes that could make my work more appealing to the western public, since the anime audience is not as willing to/capable of forking out a lot of money for these things. I already knew and understand a lot of the things he said to me and it wasn’t the first time someone sees this kind of potential for change in my art. Most people who say these kind of things to me assume I do what I do because I don’t know of other, more financially beneficial directions of art. I completely appreciate their attention, because I know if they don’t have interest or see competence in my art, they wouldn’t bother wasting their time talking to me. But they usually end up disappointed because they rarely expect to run into people like me; I spend my time making things I like work, ie developing carciphona to a point where I can do it for a living, rather than tailoring what I do in order to meet certain already established career paths and pray that I can grow to like what I have to do. At one point he was just shaking his head to my response, which I am not really surprised by anymore because I’ve gotten way worse reactions of shock by the fact that I am foolish enough to not accept their decades of industry experience. Luckily things didn’t turn sour; I would’ve hated to waste another hopeful mentor’s time. He was surprised to hear how many copies of my own artbooks I am able to sell, and in the end I think we were cool to keep contact!

In other news, Carciphona in polish by  Yumegari also arrived in the mail :D the printing quality is pretty good for a small, start up publisher with small runs. I’m not sure how well they’re selling, but they sure did put a lot of effort into making the manga completely polish. The book pdf I sent them had totally flattened pages (the same as what I use) which was ass to use because of all the pages that I had bleed problems with as well that I could do nothing about, but they managed to translate the entire volume without leaving any signs of the manga being a translated manga. The lettering was superb, and I was surprised to see that they even updated all the sound effects as well. It makes sense since pronunciation is different in polish, but that would have made the translation project an ungodly amount of work, which they did a perfect job of.

I want to ask them for that font because it looks perfect for sfx LOL. IT LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE HOW I DRAW MY SFX except I take 10 years to draw every letter, crying Q_____Q

And of course, the bonus story!

ending with cheesy pretty clouds -u- and back to workkkkk

Schnittke choir concerto #4. tumblr is one of the greatest things I’ve ever come across honestly

And now to what I separated this post for, courtesy !more tag to close the ramblings of the rest of entry for large majority of people who don’t aren’t here to see rants:

Not sure if I posted this before, but a preview of some card game commission I did a while ago -u- I wish I could post the pieces because I was surprisingly satisfied with them considering I hate doing commissions. I rarely have any success doing generic looking pieces but I think I really like the results this time. I’m not sure if it’s because it’s a japanese company and therefore they were more rational or something, but they pretty much asked me to draw what I do best aka maleloce and I was just wondering why can’t all commissions be nice like this? you’d think it’s logical that you find an artist and ask them for their specialty based on what you see in their gallery so you get QUALITY PRODUCT, without having to pay for excessive amount of pain and suffering on the artist’s part. Learning and trying out new things should be done by the artist on their free time, right? Not when you’re paying for it and depend on the end result to be amazing, BUT I DIGRESS……

So back in 4th year in piano literature class, we had 4 playlists of the 4 main periods of music, and I’ve been listening to the first list from early baroque to the middle of the classical period I don’t even remember what the cut off was at. I discovered that rhythmic Baroque music is really good for getting stuff done? It has a little drive to it, while the voices and motifs keeps me thinking without baffling my mind like their super expansive late romantic counterparts. I’d really like to relearn some fugues especially these days cus they’re so satisfying to play, but they’re a pain in the ass to learn compared to just technical splendor HAHA. The list of things I’d like to do after I’m done with volume 3 just keeps getting longer and longer Q___Q

Anyway here is part of a toccata by bach that I’ve been listening to for a while to work! the paintings are fucking bizarre I must say

I just finished toning the 50 pages I inked, so only 50 pages more to go! Then a cover and possibly a bonus story, depending on how my page count is looking because I’d cry if volume 3 turns out to be like 1mm too thick for the lettermail height limit LOL;;;;;;;;;;

Set my playlist on shuffle, first piece:

clicked next track:

clicked next track:

composers: LOLJK

I was convinced my playlist was on repeat track |:

First a giant face to offset the text in the rest of the post. I felt soooo guilty drawing this instead of pages so she’s just a floating head lol q__q it felt nice drawing meaningless useless things that have no product value or learning value whatsoever, I wish I could do this more, THANK GOD I HAVE MY WORKAHOLIC TENDENCIES TO STOP ME OR I’D NEVER GET ANYTHING DONE…Hopefully next year will be way less of a rush after volume 3 is complete `u` 110/164!!!

I was chatting with Sepia about my poll on tarot/poker cards and astrology set on DA, and we ended up trying to fill the blanks I had on my set of signs and move some character signs around to things that fit them more. I tossed meron out of the roster for now, and switched up Vocruen, Blackbird, Auresque and Weirin from what I had for them before. So far we have:

♈ – Iriel
♉ – Vocruen
♊ – Rae
♋ – Desair
♌ – Auresque
♍ – Weirin
♎
♏ – Blackbird
♐
♑ – Veloce
♒
♓ – Keritzel

Missing 2 out of the 3 air signs LOL I GUESS IM JUST BAD AT MAKING AIRY PEOPLE… and none of the people who are missing a sign suit those signs… The important people I’m still missing signs for are Meron, king of Kronzel, Vladimir Gorchen, Rosien, Keri’s dad, Seroccrim, and Kathryn. I should really name the king and keri’s dad too lolol Q__Q I’m probably going to replace Iriel and Desair when the old people are more integrated into the story because they’re actually not very important endgame and won’t get much attention past this arc.

I copied down some stuff straight from astrology websites Sepia found that suits as a description for these characters for future reference below.