I think it's settled by now that I want to adopt TinyTieria. Even though he'd kick me and tell me that I'm unfit to be his mommy. I would love and adore him anyway. And anyway I'd know he secretly loves me back on the inside.


So, folks, want to know what's better than a chocolate condom?



♥

So in the office today we discovered that one of the producers had brought back a couple of boxes of chocolate from Taiwan. A couple of very... strange boxes of chocolate. With rather... interesting packaging. Named... PLAYCHOCO.



"Oh no, they didn't," you think.

Oh yes, they did.



To be honest we were actually disappointed that you couldn't unroll it to eat it like the genuine article. It was delicious, though. Pity that I've been spoilt by Hershey's dark chocolate Kisses so this came across as a tad too... creamy for me.

*is shot*

not with Irish cream

unfortunately

I made a couple more sketches in my Moleskine for the b00bies doujin anthology. I was trying to move on to incidentals & stuff, because where I fail in comicking it is at the backgrounds and prop details. VERDICT: I still fail at backgrounds and prop details.

An exercise in I HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT I AM DOING. Can't you tell I've never designed any mech in my life, ever? And then, all of a sudden, I realize I need long shots of a flying research institute and I don't know how to draw one. I grabbed a reference book on futuristic cars and spaceships from the office, but all the designs were so sleek and globular and totally at odds with the sharp, blocky designs in b00bies. In the end I gave up and drew a compromise of both. Which looks utterly fucking retarded. I was supposed to draw front/back and top views as well but by the time I finished this was so sick of it that I went I KNOW WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN MY HEAD AND I CAN DRAW IT FROM ANY ANGLE SO THERE. OTL



I was trying to practise drawing the interior of the spaceship because Kira knows I cannot draw backgrounds to save my life (the one time I tried to draw a 2-page DN doujin, I spent more time on the background of 1 panel than I did the rest of the comic). After this I have decided to cop out and make it all look futuristic and spacey by having every bulkhead look like it was stolen from the set of Star Trek, i.e. Spartan and bland. YOSH.

...and no, I'm not actually writing shotacon for the anthology. You only wish.

Perverts.




Now, anybody want to write me AlleTie shotacon involving the use of chocolate condoms? Anybody? Anybody? ....no? ...........er, what?

In lieu of a proper post more Moleskine sketches I've been doing for the doujin, introducing the other half of the cast.





I need a lot more practise on Regene. I find her insanely hard to draw despite the face that she HAS THE SAME FACE AS T-CHAN. Apparently, I am way better at moe/omg!donthurtme expressions than I am evil/cheeky ones. Evil faces just make me all stressed up and then I screw up the proportions and everything. OTL

In other news, after having watched the first two episodes of the original Mobile Suit Gundam (yaaaay!!), I think I'm in love with Char Aznable. And EVIL ZAKU CYCLOPS EYES. \o/


1970s animation makes me LOL though. And the bitchslap:episode ratio

Because I've signed myself on to dilettantka and hinoai's english language b00bies dooujin project, I've been spending my spare time (on the bus, in the shower etc) agonizing about what to do about it. I've already got the story I want to tell in my head, but I was worried about the page count and art style.

I dislike using screentones but my lineart seems too plain to go as-is, but in the past couple of days I've started reading Death Note again (this time in Japanese), and I realized that Obata-sensei's art style actually makes very little use of them. So I'm going to go with his style: heavy on the inks for linework and shading, and screentones primarily to indicate blocks of color, like hair. It probably suits me since I learnt to draw from Western comic drawing how-tos anyway.

On Friday I made a bunch of headsketch turnarounds just to practise and get a hang of what I want the kids to look like:




Tieria's look still bugs me. I wanted him to look closer to Allelujah in terms of age but my pencil simply insisted on the cherubic tantrumy three year old. I think I might have a thing for cute round pinchable cheeks.

In any case, I figure the doujin would look more surreal with TinyTieria, so I'm sticking with it. Next up, test sketches of Halle and Regene.



And just some random guy I doodled in on my work Moleskine during a meeting with Animax that I merrily inserted myself into (because I think the project is awesome and I want to watch it while it develops). I have no idea who he is or where he came from. Since I pretty much only draw girls and bishieboys this dorky-looking dude caught me by surprise. He looks a bit like Milo Ventigmila. Except not as pretty.

This was inspired by a conversation between rynn_sama and I which started off with us talking about Code Geass cosplay and somehow ended up with her saying "Now I want to see T-chan in a short skirt and pigtails."

So I grabbed one of my working Moleskines and sketched/inked up after she had gone to bed.


I obviously have no idea what the Ashford Academy uniform looks like and I couldn't be arsed to look it up on the Internet because I was doing this in between translating a four page document from Mandarin Chinese to English (a real stretch for a Chinese C student). So I just substituted my own student council jacket from high school made one up instead.

Also, I now remember why I hate sketching stuff in 2B mechanical pencil. Horrendous mess. Horrendous. Luckily I didn't bork the inks up as much this time round.

The thing I love about working in my office is that you can have my direct superior sneak out at lunch to go get the world premiere of Grand Theft Auto 4, come back and set it up on the Xbox in our creative lounge... and when the boss sees it he's like "heeyyy--!" and runs to grab at the controls from him. Sigh, it's fun working in a creative house.

Not much Xbox playing will be going on in the next week or so, though, since our co-producer from the UK is here on a business visit (Er, UK no producer wa shucchousurukoto ni kochira e kimasu? *borks Japanese*), which means lots of production meetings, which I expect I'll have to attend. EXCEPT THAT I HAVE TO TAKE HALF A DAY OFF TOMORROW TO GO TO THE DENTIST'S BECAUSE I JUST DISCOVERED A GIANT CAVITY IN ONE OF MY MOLARS TODAY.

And all this while I thought my teeth hurting when I chewed was just sensitive gums. Agh.

I desperately hope no tooth extraction or painful surgery will be needed because aside from the whole I CANNOT AFFORD THIS SHIT thing I also cannot afford to have downtime at this crucial junction. Guh. Already the half day off to the dentist is killing me because it means I have to spend tomorrow morning cramming to finish adding stuff to and polishing the translated document before our UK guest arrives at 9AM because my exec producer needs it by the end of the day and I have to leave the office by twelve. Which means that I have to get into the office by 8AM which means that I need to leave the house before 630AM which means that I SHOULD REALLY GET TO BED NOW BECAUSE IT'S PAST MIDNIGHT FUCK. ASFDJKLA DARN SCRIPT BEATS FOR KEEPING ME UP SO LATE ASFDJKLA.

Expect me to be slow to reply to comments, both today's and yesterday's. GOMEN. FORGIVE. ONEGAISHIMASU.

At least Thursday will be a holiday? And look! It's T-chan in a tiny skirt! Shiny!

I think there's something about Moleskines that just demands creativity from its owners. I can't stop myself from drawing or writing in them, not even the ones that I use for other non-creative purposes.

"Rapture I"

You know what I need? TO STOP SUCKING AT INKING.

And oh, to pre-empt horrified questions: Yes, she did. I was actually intending to draw him with special milk er, Irish cream all over, but I decided he looked prettier without random splats of stuff on his face.

Ganked from candypyon and others on my flist: this video is made of fuckawesome. Dancing Meisters FTW. Original dancing video they spoofed is here.

Okay, so I wasn't going to buy May's Newtype because I didn't think the extras were anything special, but someone reminded me that there was the Celestial Memories thing, which is something I always look forward to with every Newtype. So I went to get it on Saturday and... man, oh man, you guys. Am I ever glad I did.

Why?


The funny thing is that all the instalments of Celestial Memories so far have been GIANT ROBOTS BEATING THE SHIT OUT OF EACH OTHER OMG!!! and then all of a sudden you get this glorious dump of the MINES OF MOERIA. Oh, Newtype, I love ya.

I've managed to get all 6 instalments scanned in HQ now and I will share them... after I get around to posting the first batch of World Report scans. OTL That post is nearly done, I just have to polish it up and add comments. Eyes peeled, peeps.

In the meantime, I am totally blaming logam for this, since he noticed that I frequent 'skine art daily to gawp at the gorgeous, gorgeous art that people do in their Moleskines. He jokingly said "Stop looking at that site already, just go buy your own Moleskine and draw your own!" I pouted and was all BUT MOLESKINES ARE EXPENSIVE and besides which I blow donkey balls at art, are you kidding?

But he put the idea in my head.

Which is how I found myself in Kinokuniya on Saturday blowing nearly sixty dollars on Moleskines. I got a large plain softcover notebook and a set of 3 plain tiny, pocket-sized cahiers in brown. In Japanese class that followed (in which we finally learnt to use dekita and the jisho-verb form!) I experimented with B/W art on one of the baby cahiers.




The thinness of the pages is really an issue because even the archival black ink shows through on the other side, and it's not as penetrative as Zebra pens or black Copics. I should have gotten a sketchbook-type 'skine instead, but they didn't have it in a size big enough for my purposes (coughb00biesone-shotdoujincough). We'll see how the large notebook holds up to the ink treatment. (Fucking thing cost me forty-one dollars, dammit!)

(Come to think of it, all my Japanese class doodles so far count as Moleskine art, since my Japanese class notebook is a black lined cahier with DEATH NOTE written convincingly on the cover. OHO)

Had post-class dinner with thurisaz83 and trilled, lovely as usual. I taught trilled to say "I do not want to go on a business trip" in Japanese (shucchoushitakunai, and it's kind of one word, because Japanese is just that fucking awesome). And then somewhere along the way we had a conversation like this:

misshallelujah: Mmm, greasy saxophone music.
thurisaz83: "Greasy"?
misshallelujah: Isn't that a phrase? "Greasy saxophone music"? Like, the kind you'd put into the soundtrack of a porn movie?
trilled: The kind of music that Lockon would use.
misshallelujah: WHAT.
trilled: Well I mean, he seems the kind of person who would use it.
misshallelujah: ...wait, YOU DON'T EVEN WATCH THE SHOW.
trilled: I got the impression from your LJ. With your comic and all the scans you've been putting up.
misshallelujah: ...
trilled: He's always got this sleazy kind of look on his face in those scans.
misshallelujah: ASFDJKLA

Holy fucking shamrocks, Batman!

And then I ran into kingbitch in the middle of the street, and he said that I looked more like a hippie than ever, maybe because of the hat and the scarf, and then on the way home I passed by the freak traffic accident that involved a toppled 18-wheeler sending prefab concrete slabs flying everywhere crushing a van and blocking off one entire half of the highway WITHOUT GETTING ANYBODY SERIOUSLY HURT. I mean, what the fuck. FLYING. CONCRETE. SLABS. On a major highway leading to town on a Saturday afternoon. Only one van got squashed AND THE SLAB MISSED THE DRIVER. That's seriously Patrick-level "How the fuck did you even survive that!?" going on down there.


TL;DR summary: My Saturday was weird. Yours?