HIT ME WITH SOMETHING GOOD, MEDICINE SELLER

DO YOU LIKE WHAT YOU SEE?

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:56:14 GMT

LOOKY HERE PLANNING SKETCHES FOR NEW ARTWORK

GEE, I WONDER WHAT THE SUBJECT MATTER COULD BE?

As I said to pigtail78: "Volcanic levels of hot, music's own Vesuvius!" He's fucking dancing with a golden pimp cane, every argument in the history of the universe is invalid. Plus, there's a snake. And blindfolds. And boygroping. UNF.

AFA picture/report post to come later-- I finally snagged some of the better pictures off one of my colleagues (including those with the Production I.G. folks). I need to find time to do in in between current awesome job and studying for the JLPT and trying to finish the damn project from the old not-so-awesome job. FML.

Random art (NSFW!) and reasons why my company is fuckawesome.

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:46:51 GMT

After another one of my brief LJ hiatuses I am glad to report that I am still alive and still awesome. I bring you art, which I've put under a cut because it's terribly obscene. Not that you folks mind, I'm sure.

Only after I finished doodling did I realize that the pen/ink contrasts also fit into thematic ones: covered vs. exposed, childhood innocence vs sexual maturity, futuristic vs archaic. Huh, I wonder what that says.

I will be working over the weekend. Happily, this work consists of putting in 8 hours at the Storm Lion booth at The AFA '09. Basically, I get to go in FREE and soak it up in the name of doing work (yes, I actually get days off in lieu of this). Muuuuuuuuaa-hahahahahah.

Storm Lion's booth will be right next to the Production I.G. booth this time, because we're going to do an anime film together called Titan Rain. To say it's pretty exciting would be an understatement. They even managed to get the guy who scored BSG to work on it. Fun fact: I didn't know my boss did the English version of Yoshitaka Amano's Mateki book. Crazy stuff!

Attempt at painting on Tegaki, #2

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:30:21 GMT

THIS TOOK ME FAR TOO LONG LET ME TELL YOU THAT

Also, I can't seem to edit the picture after it's been posted. I open the edit window and make changes, but none of them actually stick when I supposedly save the file. WHAT. @_@

PAINTING IN TEGAKI IS HAAAAARD

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:07:31 GMT

I wanted to practice my ~~non-existent~~ painting skills, so I brought my tablet to work. Unfortunately, my work computer doesn't have Photoshop on it. But I remembered that I started a Tegaki account, a year and an age ago.

And then I realized that painting in Tegaki is HARD. No layers? No pen control of opacity and brush thickness? No colorpicker tool? ARGH IT'S LIKE DRAWING WITH CRAYONS HOW DO PEOPLE ACTUALLY GET SHIT DONE.

The worst thing is looking at the featured entries and they are all mind-bogglingly awesome. How do people paint like that? Holy shit!

Lady in white linen

I tried painting her hair, but clearly gave up early ~~and cheated, quite obviously~~.

Yes I know she has no eyebrows. I did that on purpose... honestly!

I should probably try painting from references the next time round, although I don't know how much that will help. THIS SHIT IS HARD, NO LIE. SHIIIIIIIIIT

I'M HERE FOR YOUR ENTERTAINMENT

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:45:02 GMT

I think I have rediscovered art of multitasking that I perfected while in college.

At the moment, I am blogging, surfing my friendslist and checking my email while doing my Japanese homework. It's been that kind of a weekend. Work from multiple sources, JLPT3 cram classes, plus I took my family out for lunch today to celebrate my first paycheck from my new workplace. (Fish & Co.-- delicious stuff.)

I've discovered, much to my chagrin, that I actually like being disgustingly busy. So much so that I am considering taking up hip-hop dance classes at the end of November.

I've been wanting to do so ever since shinrei_24 tried to entice me into it earlier this year, but back then I was working crap hours in an office in the ass end of the country, which made dance classes hard to go to.

Now that my office is in town and work knocks off at 6, though, the only thing stopping me is the fear that I will break my spine and several wristbones trying to get my inflexible, motor-reflex-challenged and somewhat over-the-hill body to pull off some slick moves.

Still looks awfully tempting though. (I blame Adam Lambert for tweeting this video, honestly he should have known the effect it would have, that man!)

In the meantime... RANDOM ARTWORK.

I had a lot of fun with the font.... NOT.

Wannabe writergirl meets rockstar of the writing world, marvelosity ensues.

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:53:58 GMT

Two days straight of fighting crowds to go see Neil Gaiman live later, I have come to one conclusion. Alright, I I've come to two conclusions: one being that Mr. Gaiman is an awesomely friendly, brilliant, and completely funny guy who can connect with an audience of hundreds and entertain them effortlessly.

But we already knew that.

The new discovery that I made is that I can walk into any room full of random Gaiman fans here and I will a) know at least one of them, and b) be able to talk to all of the rest. Easily. It's like magic!

I went for two events--a reading with Amanda Palmer of their book Who Killed Amanda Palmer? yesterday, and a hugely attended, hugely entertaining hour-long talk where he sat and answered questions in his Neil Gaiman sort of way.

I need to find video of that second session because I want to immortalize his spiel where he explained that his theory that Singapore has a secret special dish called Stuffed Author which involves force-feeding unwitting middle-aged British writers with food before cutting them up and distributing the bits to the populace, and by the time he got to the part where we would give out the filet des Gaiman in little pink packages the moderator had been reduced to a sort of bewildered "....". It was priceless.

Also, his impersonation of Alan Moore was delightful. And no, I'm not making any of this up.

At the signing I gave him a picture that I'd drawn of Death all dressed up for Halloween. He had some very nice things to say about it, which absolutely made my day. (Week. Month. Frakkin year.) I'll put up the scan I made of the picture later when my brain isn't leaking out of my ears from baking in the tropical sun waiting in the autograph line. In the meantime: my really crappy pictures of both days!

The Who Killed Amanda Palmer? reading. khaosworks moderated; he's the guy on the left. I might put up the video I have of his intro later. It was truly wicked, and Neil said so.

There were a group of cosplayers on the first night, half of whom I knew from college. This is Denise, who did an awesome cosplay of Delerium. (Mr. Gaiman was thrilled when she came up the autograph line.)

The organizers used Delerium's fishie to mark the end of the autograph line. The fishie was gifted to Mr. Gaiman at the end, I believe.

I didn't manage to get any good pictures of him at the first signing, sadly. I just wanted to post this one because I think it does a marvelous job of capturing the untameability of his hair.

Second day. Because of overwhelming demand for tickets they moved the venue to the performance theater across the road, which seats 900.

I love how the moderator had his own camera, which came out to play when Mr. Gaiman was doing his Alan Moore impression. It was hilarious. You had to be there.

The signing. Better lighting this time.

Signing my copy of The Kindly Ones. The person operating my camera accidentally zoomed in and didn't know how to zoom back out. But with this much detail, you can actually see that I got him to dedicate the book to "Miss Hallelujah" instead.

And then I gave him the drawing. He seemed to genuinely like it. Be still my beating heart.

In conclusion: FRAKKIN. AWESOME.

That is all.

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misshallelujah.net goes live! Thoughts, anyone?

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:44:35 GMT

I'm an odd sort of person when it comes to websites. I've made and run quite a number of them in the past, since 1997 when they threw HTML into our thirteen-year-old faces in school. But then I entered junior college, and then college, and somewhere along the way I firstly got too lazy for hand-coding and secondly discovered blogging, which rendered the need and want for a website practically zero.

But now, what with being working folks in a somewhat creative industry, who needs her own online resume/portfolio/calling card/what-have-you, I'm happy to announce that after a hiatus of nearly ten years I've finally got a website of my own! It's even got a customized domain name and email and everything!

http://misshallelujah.net

And yes it's still hand coded on a basic text editor-- some things never change.

Feedback, anyone? What do you think?

Once again into the fold

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:47:24 GMT

Well guess what.

Yep, new iPhone.

Posting this from my office. My second-to-last day here; probably one of the last few shots I'll take of this place.

Will I miss it? Probably. Will I regret it? Hell naw.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

ETA: I FORGOT TO MENTION I NAMED THE PHONE MOKONA MODOKI NOW DOES THAT MAKE ME A ENORMOUSLY GIANT EMBARRASSMENT TO GEEK-KIND OR WHAT

New layout. Another shiny magazine. And the flu.

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 10:39:20 GMT

I have a new journal layout! And a new moodtheme!

And also, the flu!

Or at least, something approaching it. I spent most of the weekend sniffly, cotton-wool-headed and curled up on my bed hating my life. I had to skip the first lesson for my JLPT3 cram course for the sake of my addled noggin. And I had to see the regular doctor yesterday because our silly SOSHULEEST government-run polyclinics don't open on Sundays. (Wallet: OUCH.)

It's partially my fault, I suppose. After having spent the whole of Friday already sniffling and suffering under the air conditioning at work I merrily went out and did this:

SEE THAT GIANT PILE OF FRIES, WE ATE IT ALL WE DID

I didn't get home until past midnight, and that was after a cab ride with a driver who seemed to think that turning corners at 90km/h was an acceptable thing to do (note to those who aren't fluent with metric: it's not).

At least I got Monday off for my last week of work. Small consolation, though, as I am STILL WORKING through it. It's only that I have been spared the long commute to the ass end of Singapore where my current office is.

Well, while we're talking about things that I have! I went and bought the Uniqlo Fall/Winter collection magazine. Alright, I fucking love Uniqlo (the hat and cardigan I have on in the Mickey D photo are both from there), and I fucking love Japanese catalogue magazines. Aside from being stocked with pretty photos of expensive clothes that I mostly can't afford, they also come with limited edition carry bags as omake-- and they don't eat particularly huge holes into your wallet while they're at it! Hell, most of them cost almost the same, or slightly lesser than anime magazines.

I'm probably going to end up buying a shitton of them. Thankfully they only come out twice a year (although the BAPE one I have comes in quarterly issues, I think).

The nice thing about Uniqlo magazine is that it's completely bilingual, unlike the others that I have which are Japanese-only.

Unfortunately, the translation isn't always a hundred percent accurate, as I found out.

The real question is, WHY DIDN'T *I* GET A FREE GUNDAM WHEN I BOUGHT A GUNDAM T-SHIRT FROM UNIQLO, HUH? I WANT MY FREE GUNDAM DAMMIT

Whatever.

ANYWAY! Yes! New layout! misshallelujah misshallelujah misshallelujah. I grabbed the original stylesheet from over here, then tweaked it until I got it exactly the way I wanted. I don't do minimalist designs very well, unfortunately, so I had to slop #ff9600 all over it. I like the results, though.

And, for the first time since I joined LJ!, I've finally gotten around to downloading and installing a custom moodtheme! To be honest, I haven't used the LJ moods function in a while, and when I do I'm always filling the mood text with weird shit so that I end up forgetting what the mood I originally used was.

Since I uploaded all the moodtheme pictures in a huge batch to Photobucket without actually looking at them, future use of this moodtheme is going to turn out rather... interestingly I think. Like a blind item. For example, I have no idea what the original mood setting is for this post, but the results are stunningly, appropriately HILARIOUS.

OH GOD I JUST FINISHED THE ENTIRE BOX OF TISSUES IN MY ROOM, I JUST PUT IT IN HERE 2 DAYS AGO WTFFFF ARGH I HATE MY SINUSES

P.S. If you say something like "OMG WHAT DID YOU DO TO YOUR JOURNAL, I LIKED THE OLD LAYOUT BETTER", I will personally hunt you down and go to your room and shoot snot at you out of my nose

ETA: OMG THE ICON THAT GOES WITH THE MOOD I PUT UP EL OH FUCKING EL.

The Earth Moved (+ Moleskine art)

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:59:32 GMT

There's nothing that drives home the power of social media quite like simultaneous Twitter freakouts over an island-wide earthquake.

It was somewhere around six, late in the workday, and I was doodling in my Moleskine as usual. Engrossed in my sketching I briefly wondered why the table was shaking--hard--and wondered if one of the interns sitting opposite from me was erasing something on paper. I didn't think much of it-- until someone from across the office said, "Is the room shaking?" And my immediate desk neighbor replied: "You mean it wasn't just me?"

It hadn't been someone shaking my desk-- it had been something shaking the entire damn building.

After the initial shock wore off I quickly tweeted: "Was there an earthquake in Indonesia or something? The office was shaking!"

Then I refreshed my Twitter client, and--BAM-- my screen was filled with tweets from Singaporeans, all along the lines of "IS THERE AN EARTHQUAKE WTF THE ROOM IS SHAKING". After relaying to my colleagues that the shaking had been rather widespread, felt from Chinatown and Suntec City (quite a bit away from our Eunos office), I refreshed again. Now there was information: yes there had been a quake in Indonesia, breaking news. Several minutes later we had a magnitude: 7.9 (now revised to 7.6).

And when I was feeling oddly lightheaded and wondering why seemed to be having difficulty focusing on my computer screen, there was a wave of tweets reporting tremor-related dizziness, nausea and vertigo.

It felt completely surreal, seeing a synchrony of tweets like that-- as though the surreality of feeling the Earth move under you wasn't enough. Perhaps I've got it backwards: there's nothing that drives home the power of Mother Nature quite like simultaneous Twitter freakouts over an island-wide earthquake.

(Ironically enough, earlier in the day there had been a similar Twitter wave when an inexplicable haze--which we assumed had blown over from Indonesia-- set in quickly somewhere around 3 o'clock. I had jokingly tweeted to jolantru: "Yeah, it was perfectly clear when I went out to lunch less than two hours ago-- it's like a creeping wind of DEATH"... perhaps I hadn't been quite far off in my estimation.)

In any case, the tremor has been immortalized, in its way, in my Moleskine sketch page. The incomplete sketch lines over the text was what I had been working on before the shakes set in.

I was randomly sketching during a script-read session yesterday, and as the girl in the bottom left took shape I thought to myself, "Hmm, I think she looks a biiiiiiiiiiiit like Boomer." Later I gave her a little banner, and then drew her a counterpart. I think the other girl looks a bit like Fann Wong, but then again I don't actually know what Fann Wong really looks like. I hear she just got married recently.

Disclaimer: I've only watched the 3-hour (?) BSG miniseries, so far.

I have earlier scans I made of the first two sketches I did on this page: a self portrait and (er) the Medicine Seller's underage psychic sailor-fuku-wearing girlfriend. DON'T ASK, IDEK

Underage psychic girlfriend
Miss Hallelujah (minus banners and bg)

It's 11PM, time for bed.

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Yay Neil Gaiman! Purple pimp hats! And the dog!

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:55:39 GMT

I will fully admit, I had my reservations about waking at the crack of dawn on a Saturday morning to trudge halfway across the country and wait four hours in line for tickets to go see Neil Gaiman in action when he hits Singapore for the local Writer's Festival.

In hindsight, did I think that spending extended time with a bunch of other hardcore Neil Gaiman fans would be anything but awesome?

Yes, I had a good time, yes I met awesome and funny folks, yes, I stupidly didn't get photos because MY CAMERA DECIDED TO BURROW INTO THE WORMHOLE IN MY BAG FOR THE DURATION OF THE WAIT. Seriously, I must have searched for the damn thing about twenty times because I wanted to get photos taken of the ever-serpentine queue, but nothing surfaced, zip zilch nada. Till I got home, was fishing around my bag for something random, and... "Hey WTF that's my camera, where the hell have you been you stinking bastard!?"

Also, yes, I GOT THE TICKETS. I will be attending two events of his, one a reading of Who Killed Amanda Palmer and one a talk on fantasy and writing for graphic novels (RELEVANT TO MY FUTURE CAREER INTERESTS).

I made the mistake of walking around town for the several hours after that, in the leadup to Japanese class. It's a mistake my wallet is still regretting, and I only fled to Japanese school to sit my ass down and study when I realized that any further shopping would have me surviving on biscuits for the entirety of October.

On the other hand, I am now the proud owner of a copy of The Sartorialist photobook. Who wouldn't want to own a collection of the best photos out of their favorite fashion-meets-photography blog? It has some of my favorite pictures in it, plus hundreds more. Hundreds. It even features the reference picture for that pencil sketch I made a while back, the one with a fur hood that a number of people seemed to like.

Also, I have a NIFTY new hat.

My sis and I were trying to get a photoshoot done of the new hat.

Then the dog decided to crash the party.

My sister was laughing so hard, she couldn't steady the camera

EW DOG DON'T LICK ME ARRGH EWWWW

IN ANY CASE, I AM WEARING THE PURPLE PIMP HAT ON MY LAST DAY OF WORK AND THEN HEADING OUT WITH IT TO HIT THE BARS TO CELEBRATE FUCK YEAH

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[ART] Boulevard of Broken Dreams -- sketches from meetings

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:59:23 GMT

Most of these were drawn while standing up in a pointedly useless 40-minute GM.

[ART] The Fortunes of Annie

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 14:07:37 GMT

Taking advantage of the long weekend to experiment with new techniques and media. Sort of.

I bought a small box of watercolor pencils a couple of weeks ago; I've never really worked with watercolors before but I've always wanted to try. Plus, I have a pad of watercolor paper just sitting around for some strange reason.

Her outfit is based on something I wore to the stayover I went to over the weekend, where Cranium was played, mint/lychee/pineapple daiquiris were drunk, and the BSG miniseries was watched.

The Fortunes of Annie

>> LINEART only < <

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[ART] Moleskine sketches for the week

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 05:45:12 GMT

Another of my usual art dumps: random sketches from the last week or so. A spread with pensketches based off photo references, a spread with various doodles, some more disturbing and NSFW than others, and finally a page of random sketches of girls.

I think the pages scanned are quite diagnostic of the mood I was in when I did them. It's been... quite a few weeks, simply put.

Preview:

At the moment, I am making... changes to my life which I suspect will affect the regularity of these sketch posts, in one way or another. I can't say more beyond that /cryptic

[ART] Backpacking Part II

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:58:30 GMT

A further riff on the "薬売り backpacking across the US of A" theme, complete with army surplus cargo pants and boots.

The absolute best part of the drawing was the part where I got to stuff as much rubbish on his backpack as I wanted. Not sure what he's going to do with a set of golf clubs (or a cello, or a bicycle wheel, or a magic carpet, or a fishing rod for that matter), but I don't really care.

心配しないよ　アイプォーンでGPSの使う事が出来るから、大丈夫だと思います

(You can find a bigger version by clicking on it)

[ART] LEARN 2 COPIC, SRSLY

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 07:36:53 GMT

Somewhere in 2007, I went crazy about Copic markers (thanks, Takeshi Obata!) and bought myself a small, painfully expensive starter box. After inflicting the horrendous results on the Death Note and Supernatural fandoms for a bit I came to terms with the fact that honestly, I actually pretty much suck balls at this coloring thing, and put the markers aside.

Until yesterday.

Despite being alcohol-based, the markers had miraculously not yet dried out, and I decided to test them out on absolutely the most colorful character that possibly exists.

LEARN 2 COPIC, JUNE

Good job, because the box I have only has 36 colors. To put into perspective, Copic markers come in more than 300 shades. Clearly I did not think my cunning plan all the way through.

My sister took one look and said, "Why is his kimono green? Isn't it supposed to be blue?"

"WTF LOOK AT THIS TINY BOX OF MARKERS I HAVE ON MY TABLE DOES IT LOOK LIKE I HAVE THE CRAZY SHADE OF TURQUOISE HIS KIMONO ACTUALLY IS?!?!?"

"O...kay."

The good thing about working with a limited palette of colors is that it forces me to be creative about mixing shades to create dark/light values. The bad thing about it is that Copics don't come with a Ctrl-Z function so wanton experimentation with the colors IS ACTUALLY A REALLY BAD THING. And clearly I seem to have forgotten everything I taught myself about painting skintones. What the shit is that clusterfuck.

AND THEN:
ROUND 2, with an older head study I had conveniently lying around.

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Holy Gundams poledancing on a Wacom tablet pen

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:06:11 GMT

Last Friday I was tasked to write lyrics for the theme song of one of our projects in the running. I made a whole bunch of joke lyrics up on the spot, including lyrics like "ladies watch out there's something big in town", and something about robots pole-dancing.

Then I looked over at the corner of my desk, where the stand of my Wacom tablet's pen had gotten inadvertently wedged in between Deathscythe's legs.

Five minutes later:

More photos. With wings on.

What, did you think the title of this post was metaphorical?

(You might be happy to note that the final lyrics I came up with neither involved pole-dancing nor overt sexual innuendo. As for subtle innuendo, though...)

[ART] In Her Memory

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 02:40:22 GMT

(This is the small backlog of art from last week which I'm posting up now.)

For the record, I didn't plan this piece; I just started drawing a girl's face on the train, and it organically grew into being, you could say.

I cheated on this one, a bit. I have the bad habit of changing my mind about things after I'd already laid down the heavy soft leads (which don't completely come off the paper no matter how much you erase) so the scan was dirty as hell and I had to clean it on Photoshop, which led to me digitally improving the shading on her face .

In Her Memory

I had to google "AK-47" for a reference picture, but silly Firefox autofilled "AK-47 for sale" into the search box just before I hit Enter, so that I was returned a pageful of links to AK-47 FOR SALE AT GUNSGUNSGUNS.COM. Thanks, Firefox, thanks for sending the big black vans after me. *hides from Government agents*

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[ART] Kotowari (somewhat Mononoke-related)

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 05:50:17 GMT

I've been trying to work in more concept art in my practice drawings these days, but tbh this is one of the random things that just turned out of nowhere, and I'm still not really that sure what it's about.

It's somewhat vaguely related to Mononoke, but at the same time, not really. What's going on is up to interpretation.

The composition and proportions are more than a bit wacky, but I like the shading on her skirt.

Preview:

理

Clearly, I like drawing frills and ribbons. I started off with something like one bow and ended up with six (or is that eight?). Shush.

Perhaps I should attempt to make a triptych out of 形、真と理。。。

[ART] monde la lune (lineart stage)

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 14:26:04 GMT

This is the drawing I've ever done in which I've had to run to references for almost every-fucking-element I needed. The sunflowers. The hydrangeas. The waves. The thrice-damned Art Nouveau motif. I even had to go Googling pictures of the moon because I had no idea what the moon markings looked like, really.

Bascially, the kusuriuri was the only part of the picture I didn't need a reference for. I'm not sure whether that reflects more on me, or on his character design.

I have decided that Art Nouveau is the aesthetic of choice for the incurably OCD (that, or the undeniably masochistic). By the time I was done with the motif my eyes were BLEEDING and my hand was FALLING OFF AT THE WRIST. And this was after I cheated and plonked a huge sodding palm frond where half a million interlocking curves should be. I love Art Nouveau to death, but-- no. No.

Not that I expect many people to get it, but bonus points if you can identify the inspiration behind this piece of work. I mean, if I had it my way, it would probably be tulips and violets in place of the damn SUNFLOWERS and HYDRANGEAS. Compound inflorescences FTL.

monde la lune (lineart)
Mechanical pencil on B5 paper

I'm coloring it in now, and weeping in despair because said reference actually specifies colors for the flowers, and I am about the worst color manager in the world. Dying, dying and dead.

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More Pinky MANIA! <3

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:34:59 GMT

This week, the postman finally came with the two Pinky St. figurines I'd ordered an age and ago. So I finally got to add a couple more members to the family of Pinky girls already in residence in my workspace!

The first of them is a collaboration with the Pinky St girls and the artist Renji Murata (or is it Range Murata? I've seen it spelt both ways). It's a really cute design of a perky girl apparently waitressing in a Chinese restaurant (someone needs to do a Ranka mod of this, I think). It came with little platter accessories.

Little perfect-sized platter accessories.

DIM SUM DECAPITATION

Too bad they ain't silver.

The other figurine was a tie in to the Sky Crawlers movie-- a figurine of the main character, Yuichi Kannami. He came with his own display stand, so I put him up-- with a few changes to his wardrobe here and there.

You know, nothing major.

And here, a testimony to my crazy love for these little figurines: a wider snapshot of my desk. It's a real zoo, I tell you.

A MENAGERIE OF PINKY ST GIRLS

And you know, just as I was prepping this post while talking to pigtail78 and surfing for Mononoke ~~porn~~ fanart, I came across this. SERENDIPITOUSLY.

OH MY KIDNEYS A KUSURIURI PINKY MOD!? WHAT WHAT WHAT!

I actually do have the model of the doll whose face I'm pretty sure went into making this (she's the blue-eyed girl in the black & white outfit in the group picture). The hair, bandanna and ears are probably entirely custom-made. The top may be modded from the sitting yukata Pinky model (since it's the only one I know of that folds its arm over like that). The legs, probably modded from one of the models with shorts (not sure which one). Man, whoever did this had an incredible amount of skill and patience.

Thankfully, both are things which I significantly lack, so I will not be attempting to do this anytime soon.

I'll stick to, you know, cross-dressing and decapitation shenanigans.

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Popping my Ion Orchard cherry (with pictures! and video!)

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 10:32:07 GMT

Yesterday I, taking advantage of the long holiday weekend, decided to join my sister and a gaggle of her girlfriends as they hit the still fresh-faced Ion Orchard mega shopping complex.

We walked for hours but didn't manage to get through more than the four floors that made up the basement. It is that big. Also, hugely confusing.

Also, there are fish on the ceiling. I'm really not sure why.

I suspect Ion is about to become a Little Japan for me of sorts, where I go to indulge my day-to-day requirements for Nifty Japanese Things I Like. Takoyaki, okonomiyaki, crepes, meticulously-packaged chocolate, ~~everything~~ stationery from Muji, clothes from Uniqlo...

They sell patterned stockings in Uniqlo. As well as nifty skirts. And apparently, stuff from Sunrise.

LOL WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN

I ended up getting the gold-on-black shirt the model display is wearing. It appears to be a brush painting of a Zaku. I think. It's hard to tell. It looks like gold squiggles from afar. It was a men's cut T-shirt--they were all men's cut, apparently women aren't allowed to like Gundam--but the small fits and I have plenty of accessories to jazz it up with.

Art on display at the Orchard MRT station.

Fish. On the ceiling. (There usually are more. See attached video.)

One of the escalators up from the food area.

Foodie area. Lots and lots of Japanese snackfood. There are so many interesting things on sale, we're going to have to come back several times to sample them all.

Royce, a Japanese chocolate outfit from Hokkaido that sells this nama chocolate that is to die for. I bit down on one of the champagne-flavored ones and had an instantaneous orgasm in my mouth. No, that is not an exaggeration. It is that good. (In the mouth.)

Payment counter @ Muji

This escalator goes from the fourth basement to the first.

And there's even video:

FISH ON THE CEILING, audio courtesy of BUCK-TICK

The first time my sister and I looked up, I said, "There are fish on the ceiling." After a pause, I added, "I thought this only happened in episodes of Mononoke."

I kind of like it.

The thing that really kills me is that I was doing the most girly-girly sort of clothes-and-jewelry-and-food shopping in the hippest, poshest part of town, and I STILL ENDED UP BUYING GUNDAM MERCHANDISE. How the hell did that happen? Goddamn it Sunrise, stay away from my fucking wallet. Now. Really.

2009.08.08: Randomosity

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 15:58:44 GMT

Volunteered for Aware's Flag Day today, stationmastering at Jurong East after having scrambled to make it on time since alarm clock deigned to wake me at 6AM as it promised. It was a good experience, and chatting with the other stationmasters amused and greatly inspired me by turn. It was a great experience.

On the other hand, my legs are about to fall off at the knee. Weak in stamina, this one is.

Bought takoyaki to Japanese class. There was an insane queue at Ion Orchard to get them, which did nothing to help the jellylike about-to-fall-off state of my legs.

More Japanese class sketches. You would think that I would have figured out how to draw a bandanna by now, considering that I wear the damn things all the time, but nope!

薬売りーさん

I'm still working on my Mononoke-pimping post, unfortunately. At this point I think I'm pretty much writing an entire bible for the series, which is kind of a bad way to introduce people to anime I think they should watch-- drowning them in teal deer is probably the best way to kill off any interest in the show. But so be it. I can't stop going on and on about how much pure, trippy awesome the show is made out of. I could probably write a 40-page paper on it if I had the time. No lie.

On the other hand, I'm starting on Bakemonogatari now, in concert with my sister. The really strange thing is that I am actually fairly familiar with the series, having watched a clip of it a couple of weeks ago when one of the producers at work threw it out as a reference for one of our shows in development. (The same guy also wants to use the Moyashimon version of the DAN JO DAN DAN JO DAN JO song as a reference for another one of our shows. No, I am not making this up.)

Here comes the embarrassing part.

A couple of minutes into the BMG clip I went "This show's style really reminds me of SZS," and I hit Wiki to find out that yes, my intuition was right and it IS a product of the same studio that did SZS.

What I completely failed to notice, however, was that the main character is VOICED BY HIROSHI KAMIYA. I COMPLETELY MISSED THAT. When my sister ran into my room today saying "Dude I'm watching Bakemonogatari. Oh you know what it is? Guess who voices the main character? No not Takahiro Sakurai," my brain very very slowly crept around the realization until I finally ventured: "...Hiroshi Kamiya? Oh god HOW DID I NOT NOTICE THAT." I recognized the aesthetic stylings of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, but I completely missed the voice of Zetsubou Sensei himself? WTF.

The best part is that Takahiro Sakurai actually does voice one of the other main characters, so watching this show on my headphones is like having liquid sex poured into my ear. Go ahead, Shaft. Try to kill more of my remaining brain cells than I can afford already, will you.

I've started trying to ignore the subs when I watch anime, to see how much I can understand off the bat (and possibly gauge how ready I am for the JLPT3 that I've just registered for today). It works quite well, depending on the series in question. (Mononoke? Absolutely not one of them.)

いじょう。

/navel-gazing rubbish

This is probably why I don't post much to LJ anymore. I have nothing of substance to provide. Not that I actually had much of substance to post in the first place, but these days my appetite for sharing nonsense has sunk depressingly low.

[ART] What I wore, 7th August 2009

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:07:02 GMT

I haven't really had the time to sketch this week. I have thumbnail notations of all the outfits that I wore over the week but I haven't had the time to properly sketch them out yet. Which is a pity because I some really cute outfits, skirts and scarves and boots and everything. So far the sketches I've attempted are all of me mainly in t-shirt and jeans, booooring.

I didn't clean up the pencils for this before I scanned it in because I started drawing it really late in the day, something like 5PM when everybody had already gotten into the long-weekend happy mood. Then I got home and decided to just give a go at coloring in the scan despite not having touched colors for nearly half a year.

I kind of like it, surprisingly.

No way am I that cute IRL
Pencils-only version (on Flickr)

Strangely enough today was the first day in several years that I decided to put on the nazar that I got from Istanbul en route to Zagreb all those years back... and when was on the bus this crazy old woman across the aisle started to point and stare at me and blabber on to no one in particular. I didn't catch a word of what she said (had my headphones on) but the passengers around her (whom she did address in the midst of gesturing to just about everything I was wearing) were all "Uhuh. Ha ha. Er crazy old woman." Maybe I had a premonition that I was going to need to protect myself from the ~*evil eye*~.

I am in the processing of prepping a massive anime rec post. Not that I am reccing massive amounts of anime, just that I am gushing a massive amount over a series that someone pointed me towards recently. Stay tuned!

[ART] What I Wore, 31st July 2009

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 07:32:24 GMT

I have a problem with drawing characters. I draw a face, wire lines, get the flow of the torso and the placement of the arms and legs where I want them, until I have a nicely-posed naked human body that I think is passably okay.

And then I get stuck.

I suck at drawing clothes. When I have a character in mind, I have a face, a body shape and a pose laid down. What they're wearing, however, shows up as a vague blur, and vague blurs are extremely unhelpful when you're faced with a lightly sketched human shape you're afraid of ruining with bad choices. Often I end up copping out by drawing a fuss-free, absolutely winning combination of a plain T-shirt and jeans. Exciting--except not.

On the other hand, I have absolutely no problems picking out clothes for myself to wear. Or perhaps the obverse is true: I'm actually really picky about what I wear. I have been known to spend fifteen minutes in front of the mirror at 6AM, swapping out various pieces of my wardrobe until I end up with a look that satisfies me.

So I'm going to start drawing my outfits. Then maybe, the next time I get stuck with characters, I'll have a repository of clothes-that-I-can-draw without having to wring my brain out like a weeping sponge.

Sartorially Me 090731

Disclaimer: I'm not actually as tall and as skinny as the drawing implies.

Tangentially related: a shout-out I've been asked to do: fanartmeme! It has a Gundam00 post and all it needs are members, requests and artists. It is small and sad and lonely at the moment; if this is your kind of thing, go make friends with it! If I were still doing the fandom thing I'd totally take part.