Cel-Colored Metempsychosis

Yay new artwork!

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:35:25 GMT

SEWING MACHINE!!
http://haven9270.deviantart.com/art/Sewing-Machine-94660840

Back to work and back to school....

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 05:32:26 GMT

It's 10:20 in the evening and still I don't feel like sleeping.
Because when I wake up tomorrow, it's gonna happen again.
I'll be driving my mom to work, then I'll be going to work, then I'll be doing some schoolwork.
And the weekends are nothing more than 48 hours of brainstorming on what I should be doing on my free time.

Exhausting
Stressful

But what's really pissing me off is I feel like I don't have the right to complain.
Because I feel like I can do more than I am doing now.... I should be doing more than I am doing now.
Yes, what I am doing is not enough.

*sigh*
I know - if I got time to whine, I got time to work no?

Rising Stars of Manga 9 T_T

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:05:28 GMT

THE WAIT IS KILLING ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I've been going to the Tokyopop forums, and it seems the forums are...kinda dead.
People were asking here and there whether or not there would be an RSOM9, and it seems the
only answers they receive are speculations by fellow forum members.

The mods and staff, from what I heard, seem to be...on vacation at the moment.
At least it kinda explains the lack of updates.... of does it?

So far, our only glimmer of hope is the "look forward to future contest RSOM9" in the RSOM page.

Saddest con I've ever had...

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 02:19:31 GMT

I found nobody with interesting costumes (except for the lone Ranka Lee cosplayer).
I never met with the people I'm supposed to meet with.
No merchandise caught my interests.
Went to my Japanese language instructor's booth.... didn't catch him in the best of his moods.
Food was overpriced (as expected).

And worst of all, I couldn't make it to Shoko Nakagawa's concert since I had to drive my mom to her workplace at noon,
especially considering the travel time to the convention center (I live about an hour away).

It felt like a slap to my face.
And my aching limbs don't help lower my headache.

The only good thing about this, however, is that I'm really surprised at
the fact that I'm not taking this nearly as bad as I would've 5 years ago ^^

Hopefully, I'll eat something good for dinner...
Plus I gotta watch the new season of Slayers (ZOMG has it been more than 10 years!?).

A little worried....

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:34:27 GMT

I'm a little worried about my future in comics.
I've read rumors about Tokyopop no longer publishing OEL which also lowers the chances of there having an RSOM9 contest.
Add to that the public outrage of the Pilot Program and the company restructuring.
Their forums are sorta dead, showing little to no enthusiasm about the subject.

It's already July, and I'm still willing to wait until the end of the month for any form of news whether Tokyopop is either going to continue of stop this tradition.

There is the option of submissions, but I just don't know which companies are good to work with.
I don't mind starting out small. I just want enough exposure to be able to take off.

Please PLEASE Tokyopop, don't let me down.

At least I'm finished storyboarding my comic.
Time to move to refining the designs.

You just gotta do it!

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 19:21:45 GMT

The layouts and roughs stage for my comic is going more smoothly than I thought.
Especially after I decided to extend the intro to 5 pages (which turned out to be the perfect length for it).
I'm now at page 7 which is the second page of the the fight scene.
If my editor's calculations are correct, it should take me about 8 pages to do this part, but instead spread it out on 10 pages

Hopefully I don't "save pages" again :P

Well played, Rubens, Well played....

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 20:35:18 GMT

I just found out today that the dog in the bottom left corner of
Peter Paul Rubens' painting "Elevation of the Cross" was actually Patrasche.

Rubens pulled a Metal Gear Solid on me, that's for sure....

Anyway, I've learned about this in the documentary Patrasche - A Dog of Flanders which you could find out more at
http://www.dogofflanders.be/ (also the site I ordered the DVD in).
Basically, there's this book by some chick named Marie Louise de la Ramée (aka Ouida) way back in 1872.
It had an anime adaption in 1975 as part of Nippon Animation's World Masterpiece Theater series, along with
a TV series remake in the mid 90s followed by a full blown animated movie version in 1997.
Ironically, the people from Belgium have absolutely zero idea as to why Japanese tourists would
flock in front of Rubens' painting in the Antwerp Cathedral.
They didn't know that a book and an anime taking place in their neighborhood have touched the hearts of these sushi-eating folks.

I watched the mid 90s TV series remake in my younger days, and I have to say it's a moving story.

JUNO ROCKS!

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 04:26:28 GMT

I just watched this movie called Juno.
I was expecting another "ZOMG TEEN MOVIE WITH HOT TEEN CELEBS WHO LOOK CUTE TOGETHER WHERE THEY MAKE A DEEP SPEECH ABOUT LOVE IN THE END ghbegbergbewrbg".

And I was proven wrong.
It was surprisingly refreshing and mature for a change.
And I love it^^

MOAR LIKE THIS PLZ!

Macross Frontier episode 12

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:13:22 GMT

HOLY FUCK SDF-1!!

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH STUCK!

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 04:30:11 GMT

So I am currently planning the page layouts for my RSOM9 comic.
I can't believe I had all day yet all I was able to roughly do are the layouts for the first and last 3 pages.
The last 3 pages (18-20) will pretty much remain the same (hopefully) as I go through the layouts of the entire comic.
But I'm just sooooo stuck on the first 3 pages.
It will probably give me nightmares tonight If I fail to come up with a solution.

My main problem is trying to compress the "intro" portion of the script within 3 pages.
As much as possible, I don't want to extend the intro to 5 pages as I want to give the middle portion a lot of real estate.
Especially because I'm seeing the ending portion as 5 pages long.

It was a tough decision to not include establishing shots of the setting in the intro.
I left shots of the main character's "room" to the ending where they have symbolic significance (sorta).
The challenge in the intro is that I wanted the shots of the main character to cut in back and forth with shots of another scene involving another character whom he will encounter by the end of the intro scene (that is.... page 3).

Surprisingly enough, I'm not having the "crowded artwork" problem so far (one of the main complaints in Soda Pop).
However, looking at the thumbnails, the narration, which would be part of the layout, seems to be competing for space.
This problem became obvious when I actually couldn't fit the title logo at all on the 3rd page as I planned.

From the looks of it, I might actually redraw the first 2 pages to make the 3rd page the title page as it should be.

After this, 12 PAGE FIGHT SCENE!

I can't believe it!

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 03:12:53 GMT

It's been months since I last played Ossu! Tatakae! Ouendan! But I played again today from scratch on Normal Mode (Ippongi Ryuuta) and I was shocked that I beat it in only one sitting! I only lost once in Ready Steady Go and that was it! SKILLZ!

I died....

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 08:02:36 GMT

So I was googling for animals....

http://very-bored.com/pics2/cuteanimals/cute-animals-1.JPG

What is this!?

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 19:43:53 GMT

After about 6 months, I did it again: I printed a page template for my manga project.
And when the paper came of the printer, and I held it in my hands, a strange tingling came down on my spine as
I looked at the familiar crop marks and safety zone printed on the white copy paper.

"It's that time again" I thought....

THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:10:42 GMT

They banned 4chan in campus computers again!

I'm so pissed.
Now I'm bored working with no 4chan to stare at T_T

On the bright side, at least it motivated me to stop procrastinating on my RSOM9 comic.
Right now, I'm working on the storyboards to see how I'm going to fit my story within 20 pages.
It's not nearly as story-heavy as my previous entry, so hopefully I don't get my pages crowded this time^^

The drawing style and story is a huge departure from Soda Pop (which was, theoretically, designed to appeal to a broader audience but didn't).
I won't release too much details until like the last quarter of 2008.

Actually, I couldn't decide on a title yet (I suck at titles :P)

Look forward to it^^

Rising Stars of Manga Finalist WOOT!

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 00:49:25 GMT

No doubt about it,

Last Thursday afternoon is one of the happiest days of my life.

I received an e-mail from one of the Tokyopop Staff saying that I've been selected as one of the finalists for their Rising Stars of Manga contest.

For those of you who didn't know,
Tokyopop's Rising Stars of Manga contest is a biannual competition that lets artist from the whole country to have the opportunity to get their comics published - with or without prior publishing experience.

My entry is titled "Soda Pop"
A sci-fi/action/comedy/mystery/dramatic satire about religious superstitions gone horribly wrong, and about the main characters getting themselves involved with it against their will.

There's like about 20 people who made it too.
I've checked out a few of them and they're pretty good in either story, art, or both.
I would say that this year's competition appears to be more intense than the previous 7!

No winners have been picked just yet.
Like the past 2 contests (out of 7), winning entries would be
based on genres.

Genre-based winners would be picked by the Tokyopop judges.
While the online voting coming up early March will be for the
People's Choice Award where you, the readers, will get to read every entry of the finalists and take your pick!

To participate in the online voting, please refer to
Tokyopop's official web site.

If you guys like my entry, Soda Pop, please take the time to register and vote.

I really worked hard on this entry from
brainstorming, scriptwriting, storyboarding, and final production.
I have experienced what has been termed RSOMbiefication.

Once the online voting goes up, I hope you read and enjoy my comic^^

Thank you very very much.