A bit of a lazy post this week, not because I don’t want to, but because I don’t have time at the moment. I’m getting ready to take a trip to Singapore next week, so from here until the beginning of December, you probably won’t see a photoshop post. But I may keep you updated on AFA 09 and whatever cool things happen while I’m there.

I’ve decided to take this opportunity and post some of the omitted shots from both Winged Lily and Angel Lily. By the way, all these pics have larger versions if you click on them.

When I was deciding on doing Winged Lily, I took several shots from all slightly different angles to figure out what sort of look and feel worked, as well as the most appropriate angle for which I wanted to illustrate my wings.

Each shot in their own right looked nice and did have their advantages and disadvantages.

When I was taking shots of Saber Lily Nendoroid with her new friends, I had a lot of trouble setting up the shots. Mainly because I didn’t have a streamlined process of switching body parts and whatnot, as all the extra parts were still in their boxes. I really gotta hand it to Kodomut. It’s a huge time sink and dedication.

I decided that since the nendoroids were out, I might as well play around with Saber Lily cosplaying.

Since many of you liked this picture of Konata stealing Saber’s armor, I decided to make it a wallpaper. Did a little bit of color tweaking and filtering. Click it for the full size wallpaper!

Well, I’m off. I’ll post again when I get the chance to, but expect some possible no-goes for the next 30 days.

Well, it’s Friday again, but instead of a figure photoshop this week, I decided to do a fan art of Mirai from dannychoo.com. Hot off the press, just finished 10 minutes ago, radiantdreamer brings the latest news to you!

I decided to try out something new with this one and completely abandoned my normal methods of painting. I usually paint in several layers, and always keep my sketch and line art separate from the color layers.

This time, I decided to see what would result if I painted everything on a single layer. I started with a rough sketch, and then did some basic color blocking on a new layer. After that, I merged both layers together, and began painting over the sketch. I should have cleaned the sketch a bit more before doing this, as this brought in a lot of problems later with the messy lines.

Overall, I had fun doing this, but I’ll have to refine this method a bit more if I want to create more loose drawings. I don’t think anime is a good subject for painting loose.

The original sketch. It’s actually not too bad. I like it. Much of the subtle cute parts about the sketch were lost after painting over it.

The final image. Click on it for a larger size. The final image looks very polished, with good lighting, but much of what made the sketch look cute has been lost due to too much fiddling with the eyes. Though I still like this one for the softer, sweeter demure.

And of course, a youtube video!

Thanks for viewing!

As per my post on figure.fm about what I should photoshop next, I took the suggestions, of Amrita and did Moka in a cemetery. Perfect for Halloween!

Here’s the original photo I took. My wife had taken my DSLR to work today, so I was left with my POS Lumix FX-9 camera. Now, normally I wouldn’t complain, since this was the camera I used for most of my early photoshop images. But having gone to DSLR, going back to using this was terrible. The post processing done to this thing by the camera really really sucks. The ISO rating is so terrible, with an incredibly crappy shutter speed.

Ugh! Just look at the terrible grain! And this is at forced ISO 80! And not to mention the slight blurring from my unsteady hand!

Here’s the background image I used. I grabbed it from here. A site with free photos for anyone to use. This was perfect for what I was looking for.

And the final image. Click on it for a bigger pic. It’s a bit bluer than what I was hoping for, but with how badly the lighting matched, there wasn’t anything else I could do to correct it.

Of course, here’s a youtube video of it being done:

Have a happy and safe Halloween everyone!

Edit: Corrected some things as per Pyauki’s suggestions.

Lily just doesn’t get a break! We all know what it can feel like when we’re not wanted. It looks like Saber does too. More after the jump!

What a mysteriously shaped package! e2046 delivers again with awesome bubble wrap. But why is this Nendoroid box shape so oddly sized?

Finally, after some unwrapping we find… Tupperware? I’ve never seen Tupperware used as packing material before. I don’t think the other daughters have either, except maybe Rin. But then again, she’s unique.

Sugoi! Saber Lily has arrived! Why does this all look so familiar?!

Looks like Rin is the only one enjoying the bed of bubble wrap.

Nagi: “Get yer foot offa my face!!!”

Upon arrival, it seems the other daughters don’t like Saber Lily all that much. Maybe because she’s the 11th Nendoroid I own, so it kinda makes her the odd one out. Hamsters are like that too – they don’t like outsiders.

In the end, no matter how powerful you are, sometimes sheer numbers will overwhelm you. Saber was told right away where she belonged in this group.

Konata: “Look! A rare drop!”

Everyone: “ha ha ha, Konata is so silly sometimes!”

Saber: …

Thrown into the bottom feeder shelf, poor Saber Lily is left to fend for space with Ashe, Sephiroth and the newly disgruntled Uesagi… wait, disgruntled? Why?

Because Saber Lily has won a rightful place next to my computer monitor. She couldn’t beat out Asuka and her motorcycle though.

So that reminds me – This version of Saber Lily had a photoshop too!

Click the image for a bigger pic!

Of course, here’s a youtube video of it being made! It only took 41 minutes!

And if you’re worried about little Lily, it’s okay. She wasn’t in the bottom feeder for long before I rescued her, and let her join the others. She’s still being ignored by them, but they’ll eventually get along, I just know it!

Thank you to everyone who has commented on my site! I’ve reached one thousand comments since this blog’s creation!

Thank you all for your continued support! I’m especially thankful that most of the comments have been of great quality and feedback from you all!

I hope to continue sharing with you my thoughts, and the joys of my photoshop work!

I guess this would be post #91! Nine more until post #100!

So my Saber Lily has finally arrived from e2046. Everyone and their mother ordered one, much like Max Factory Ignis a couple of years back.

There are plenty of other reviews that have done an excellent job, such as Kodomut. And Lightningsabre has a nice little photoshop too.

It’s like the Monolith. e2046’s packaging scares me. But the figures always arrive perfectly with no dents or crushed boxes.

Jumping around on bubble wrap. I’ve got so much of this stuff, I can probably melt it and make a 1:8 scale out of it.

More jumping. Thanks for the wrap, e2046!

FINALLY!!! After much unwrapping!

HEY! Down in front!! You’re in the way of the shot!!

Well… what else am I gonna do with the extra sword?

Immediately mistreated. Downgraded to the “Bottom Feeders” shelf to fend for space with Ashe and Sephiroth. She’ll have to stay there until I can make some room somewhere else. Asuka is in danger of being put in storage!

On the same day, we had to say goodbye to a very special brother and sister. Don’t worry, you’re going to a good home, and you helped pay for Lily!

Taking Kodomut’s awesome idea of feathers for Lily, I decided to do a photoshop image of Saber Lily with wings.

Click on the image for a full sized version!

It doesn’t really blend in all that much, but was still pretty fun to do. Here’s a youtube video of the whole thing being painted!

So ends another post. Have a good weekend everybody!

EDIT: Uploaded a wallpaper version for you all! 1280×853. Enjoy!

Sort of a conglomerated post of several outings, starting with my most recent one: Final Fantasy Distant Worlds concert, a motorcycle toy drive, and a tour of our new 2010 Olympics store!

It’s very rare that I go out these days, being the shut-in that I am. So it’s a bit refreshing to actually step out of the house to go somewhere. Thanks to my wife, I actually get to breathe some outside air, and get some sunlight.

More photos after the jump!

The concert was amazing. It’s not the first time I’ve ever been to a concert. And I have been to an orchestrated concert before at UBC, but never have I been to one of these. I’d have to say that this is very much more a “real” concert to me than anything. Absolutely incredible experience.

What’s also cool was that my wife actually recognized half of the music, even though she’s never played any FF games before.

One of the bass players. Look at the seriousness of it all!

Moments before the concert was about to start. The excitement was definitely building up!

The upper balcony of the Orpheum Theater. An absolutely breathtaking sight that could not be properly captured on my crappy little PAS.

The beautiful chandelier that hung above the entire theater. The illustrations around it are amazing.

So what better way to show it than through a youtube video of where I was sitting?

The tuning seconds before the concert started:

I couldn’t take any more videos or photographs after that. The front row is more susceptible to angry staff members telling you to turn off your camera.

So here’s a video of the Stockholm concert of To Zanarkand:

A screen shot of the VSO website. It was a sold out show! Every single seat in the house was taken. They even had these makeshift seats out too! A few days before, there was still about 10 seats left.

A synopsis of the show. Quite amazing. Ticket prices seemed reasonable to me, I think. For that kind of experience, it seemed worth it. The cheaper tickets were definitely cheap!

The one thing I am glad to have taken home with me is the Distant Worlds CD. This moment is captured for eternity just minutes before I open the shink-wrap. They also had an “art book” and a T-shirt. The shirt was a bit too nerdy for me, and didn’t really look that great. The art book was just a flimsy thing with a couple of illustrations per FF game. For $30, I can get a REAL art book.

Tifa Lockhart approves of this concert.

No Final Fantasy concert is complete without the obligatory FFVI opera scene. This rare statue was obtained a long long time ago.

This ticket validates my existence. Row1 Seat 37. Sitting right next to the Concert Master of the night. She was absolutely amazing to watch. I must say, watching Nodame Cantibile definitely helped me in understanding the major roles of an orchestra!

Incidentally, my Yuffie figure arrived the next morning. Oh how I have searched for this one. Review in the future, perhaps.

And now for something different – It’s the Vancouver Toy Drive. Motorcycles from all over Vancouver drive through delivering toy donations. I’m always amazed at seeing the variety of motorcycles and cars, and their intricate detailing, much like how I admire figures.

That dude is scary, but friendly at the same time. I love the horns on that helmet.

Teddy bear tied to the front and back is so cute!

Hardcore east indian crew know how to ride.

Here they come! The entire street going in one direction was closed off.

Angel wings. Yes. The Yosamite Sam is nice too.

A higher up shot. This was zoomed in with my new 18-200mm lens! XD

Lots of bikes. This is at 18mm. You see that intersection up ahead?

This is at 200mm at that intersection above. There are A LOT of bikes.

That’s my wife waving hello to you, my readers!

Military bike FTW!

Tricycle. It looks so cool!

Greetings from Canada!

It seems early, but that’s what this Toy Drive is for – Xmas.

This dude knows how to ride.

The guy on the bicycle joining in with Santa!

This is win.

The end of the parade with a couple of classic cars. I LOVE these cars!

Bad-ass Deathproof-mobile.

Bad-ass cop car.

Finally, I went to the new Olympic Store set up by The Hudson’s Bay Company. I can’t wait until the 2010 olympics!

Very cute children’s watches with my two favorite mascots.

The entire store is HUUUUUUUGE. There’s so much stuff that you can buy, and it’s all very nicely decorated.

Pay premium pricing for a sticker on your SD card!

Honestly, the only reason I would have for buying that maple syrup is the cute mascot. Cute Miga is cute.

This is “the back corner” where all the good deals are. I got a full jogging outfit for $80! And it’s really good quality and style for that price!

A replica of our Olympic torch. It’s done by Birks Jewelers. A whopping $295 CAD!

Other neat little mascot goodies!

My wife models the official Olympic mittens. EVERYONE is going to wear these. They’re cheap, feel good, and is an excellent way of representing our city. Even the news channels are promoting it as a must-have. And yes, we bought a pair.

These are cute.

One of the many cashier registers.

If that Olympic torch replica doesn’t suit you, you can spend your $300 on this sweater. WTF.

Another cash register.

The biggest mascot stuffed toys I have ever seen. Miga’s definitely my favorite – nyoron~.

That photoshop I did of myself looks a little creepy. ha ha ha.

Yeah, sorry. Had to block my wife out.

I love the mascots. They’re so cute.

keychains!

A tube full of Muk-Muk toys! Muk-Muk is the mascot sidekick. Is he like, the first ever “Olympic Mascot Sidekick”?

Mascot dispensers!

This was a nice little cafe in the store. Very good idea jumping in on the cash grab. They actually serve food here too!

They’re expecting that when the Olympics hits, this store will be jam packed with at least 1000 people a day. That’s a lot of people, so I’m glad I managed to get a “preview” tour of it before everyone else does.

I also had an older outing that I wanted to mash with this one post, but it’s already gotten WAY too long. I apologize for all the crazy scrolling. I do hope you enjoyed the photos though!

One figure I’ve had for a very long time now is this Comic Party Mizuki Takase, by Kotobukiya. She’s actually been through quite the history with me, even though I don’t really think too much about her.

I bought her I think about 4 years ago when I saw her in the Previews catalog. There was something about her that I really liked. I think it’s the cute smile or something.

A friend of mine would frequently help me 0rder my figures, because I really had no means of ordering them myself. Well, actually I did, but there’s a reason why I didn’t. Anyway, he helped me order it, and several months later, she was released.

She ended up sitting on my shelf for quite a while. I remember sharing a photo or two of her on figure.fm when it was first established. Since I’ve always been lazy, I never really dusted her either. Poor neglected pvc girl…

Eventually, I took her to my workplace and displayed her at my office shelf. She was one of the “safe for work” figures, so I decided she’d make a good candidate. She had been in my office ever since.

A couple years ago, I got laid off, so I had to pack her up, and bring her home. The thing was, I didn’t have room to really display her anywhere. I had accumulated so many figures over the years at work, and at home, that I never accounted for the possibility that I would have all those figures at home. Fortunately, she was in good company, as many of my favorites were also put into storage.

She stayed in storage for a while, until the last half a year or so, when I pulled her out again, dusted her off, and put her in one of my Detolf shelves. Now, poor Mizuki is gonna be let go. She’s really sweet, so I’m a little sad to see her go, but I’ve gotta make more room, and free up more funds.

An absolutely brilliant and beautiful figure for the sale price of $35. If she sells, then I’ll be glad she’s going to a good home where someone will take good care of her. If not, well I’d be okay with that too.

Well, it’s been a long time coming, but after jumping through several Apple hoops, getting rejected once for an “irrelevant keyword”, our app is finally live.

More info after the jump!

Using a unique and polished art style and music from the 1950’s era to emphasize a truly simple and easy to pick up and play game of tossing and catching a coin.

Swipe up to toss, follow the tempo of the Retronome, and tap to catch at the proper time.
It’s as simple as Paper Toss, but you can even play this one without looking at the screen, as you listen to the metronome ticks – works good for the visually impaired.

The more catches you make, the harder the game gets as the tempo changes, and the Retronome vanishes at times.

This works great as a time-filler game as you try to beat your own score, and challenge friends!

Download it from iTunes!

Check out the website for a full description!

A youtube video of it in action, and how to play:

I tell ya, it’s been a tough time and an interesting learning experience making this game – one month in development, and two months dealing with Apple bureaucracy. After all that, we’re hoping that we’ll make it big, but it’s a very competitive and tough market out there.

We need all the support we can get, so even if you don’t own an iPhone, please do spread the word.

Neogaf is having a contest. Well, actually it’s more like Arc System Works Europe is holding a contest hosted by Neogaf. So I’ve decided to participate with heated soul! Part 2 of my work, continuing from Part 1.

From the get-go I decided that I wanted to draw my own cover as opposed to simply compositing official art into another cover. The problem was that it would be a harder sell, and may not be marketable. Well it’s pretty obvious that the official art is marketable, so I aimed to mimic it as close as I could. To start, I sketched out a layout of what I wanted the cover to look like. But instead of revealing the entire cover right now, here’s the sketch of Ragna I made:

This is actually already the 3rd iteration sketch. I can’t remember how many hours I spent cleaning this up. It looked like utter crap, and this was already the more “refined” version of the sketch. The resulting cleaned up line art:

I used this as my reference (and of course, a few other shots from the artbook and whatnot).

I basically had it side by side, and used the color picker to pick highlights, midtones, and shadows, and tried to mimic the shading style as best as I could.

Like the Noel fanart, I started off at a lower resolution. It’s basically 600dpi (I sketched it in 300dpi, and then scaled it up 200%), but I think I should have gone with 1200dpi to get finer and cleaner lines. Well, lesson learned. I’ll probably keep using 600dpi for the rest of the cover, otherwise it would look unusual that everyone is crisper looking than Ragna and Noel.

I took the time to record a time lapse video of the entire thing. It’s playing a little fast, I know. I had originally set it to record one frame every second, but that resulted in a video too long, so I changed the framerate to 60fps.  This essentially means that every 1 minute of footage equals to 1 hour of actual work. So 7 and a half hours for this one. Slightly longer than the time spent on Noel.

The final image result:

Overall, I’m not as happy with this one as I am with Noel. I do like the more expressive Ragna, but the leg pose is a little off to me. I’m not too concerned about that at the moment, once you see the cover, you’ll know what I mean.

Here are some close up shots that I found particularly fun to do:

It’s definitely been a lot tougher doing this one, as recently, things have gotten a little bit hectic. I’ve still got three more to go before I comp them into a final cover. With the number of hours I’m putting into this, I REALLY hope I win this contest.

So good I had to blog about it.

http://neoprolacus.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns%2157110DB35573F2A8%214607.entry

No idea what I’m talking about?

http://melancholic-lily.blogspot.com/

I’ve been putting this off for months, but have finally gotten some time to do a proper photoshoot (34 pix!), review, photoshop image, youtube video, and wallpaper for this well deserved resin statue from e2046. I didn’t want to do a half-decent job because this figure deserves more, and so does e2046. This is probably the biggest post I’ve ever done.

Here is an account of my experiences in dealing with e2046’s customer service, as well as an in-depth photoshoot, and photoshop pic after the jump.

My Raquel arrived beautifully. It was in the usual e2046 weird green shipping paper and bubble wrap, sporting a beautiful printed box cover and high gloss black box.

Incredibly well packed with laser foam cutouts, with foam filler pieces everywhere, this figure was NOT going to get damaged during transport.  But much to my dismay, an unforeseen problem…

Raquel’s wings wouldn’t fit. The problem was that when they put her head on, the angle was wrong, causing the hair to get in the way of the wings. You can see the hair that is touching her elbow is too close.

A back view shows that the wing is unable to go into the socket because her ponytail is blocking it for the most part.

Essentially, for the wings to attach, the ponytail needed to be in the position shown above, which meant the head needed to be turned A LOT more.

Having dealt with absolutely horrible customer service from Play-Asia, order screw-ups from Toyslogic, and figure delays from Kid Nemo, I was not looking forward to dealing with customer service from e2046. However, I was very pleasantly surprised!

The customer service representative that assisted me, Isaac, was incredible. He was patient, and very responsive – always got back to me within the next business day. Throughout the whole process, he answered all my concerns, and followed through with all my requests very well. He puts customers first before policy, and understands that “policies” are in place only to deter customers from taking advantage of the system, not  to provide excuses to not service. Play-asia did the exact opposite, so I’ll never buy from Play-Asia again.

I had to pay for return shipping, but was assured that if indeed it was the fault of theirs, they would make sure that it was worth my while and to my satisfaction. And I can tell you that it was.

My figure returned to me a lot faster than I had expected. The amount of time I spent procrastinating about posting this blog entry is longer than my whole time dealing with e2046!

One thing that I wished Gathering would do with their bases was put on rubber pads. It helps prevent the underside from getting scratched, as well as provide more stability on less even surfaces. I bought a pack of 24 at Daiso for $2.

Here’s a close-up of Raquel with her wings in-tact. You may notice that she looks surprisingly like Asuka on Motorcycle. That’s because she’s sculpted by Vispo!

In the above pic, you’ll notice that her hair is no longer touching her elbow. In fact, it’s FAR away from it now. They turned her head quite a bit! I don’t know how they were able to take it apart without damaging it, but sure as heck I didn’t want to attempt it myself!

Raquel originally came in two different colors – A black one with this colored clock, and the one you see, but with a black clock. To fill customer requests, they came out with this third one, which is the one I have – beige clothes with white clock. The roman numerals aren’t very well painted, but it’s forgivable. I really like the style of it and how well it came out.

Profile view. She’s lookin’ at you, kid.

I don’t know why I decided to take shots of her right from my desk. I guess just to try different lighting?

Absolutely gorgeous… This is the same lighting I used for my photoshop image – you can see the flower on my monitor in the background.

The corset detail is amazing! And that perky little nose is so cute!

Very clean bottom. Very nice bottom. ^^;

The frills on her stockings are very nicely done as well. Quite an amazing cast if you ask me. They’re pearl colored stockings!

No loligoth is complete without a bonnet.

The shoes have cute straps and buckles on them! Glad the buckles are black. It would not have looked nice if it was silver.

A battle axe. The loligoth weapon of choice. Such a contrasting weapon. At least this one looks elegant and highly detailed I LIKE!

The painted nails are a nice touch. I like this angle cuz it’s like she’s showing them off to you. “Look at my pretty nails!”

This profile shot shows her flaws. This statue definitely looks good in very specific angles. Since this would be really considered “the back side” it’s not all that important.

After taking some more pix, I decided maybe I should try some more studio shots.

I’ve got so many loligoth style figures now, they don’t all fit into my lighting rig! I should do a shot of all my loligoth figures at some point. I LOVE FRILLIES!

The lighting looks substantially different, and reflects her features in a very different way. I’m wondering why I took those desk shots in the first place. =_=

Gorgeous display base. It’s so victorian, and so perfectly suitable.

Another shot of her mid-section. You can see the ruffles and creases a lot clearer in this shot.

I don’t know why, but I really like this angle. She looks a lot cuter, like she’s peering over a corner or something.

A nice close-up of her under this new lighting. You can’t see the wings as much, but it’s good emphasis on her facial features.

A good wallpaper composition?

That rose reminds me of the ones you see on cakes.

Full body shot.

Some shots from the back and of her wings.

The wings are absolutely amazing! The detail on them is incredible. It’s like her wings are made up of clock machinery, which goes really well with the display base.

Another shot of some frillies! You can never get enough frillies, and Raquel is in abundance of them.

So here’s my photoshop image of Raquel. I found the hibiscus an interesting choice because she could lean on it. I was originally going to put her and the clock base with battle axe in a flower garden, but it took a lot of attention away from Raquel. There’s a lot more focus on her in this one. I probably could do without the bottom half of the image to maintain a good balance, but I do like the dash of green.

For the first time ever, I decided to make a video documenting my photoshop work. Here it is!

You’ll notice that I’ve used the paintbrush tool with masking exclusively as opposed to my usual method in my tutorials. The reason for this is because DSLRs have a much greater range of aperture, and with that great a depth, the edges tend to blur.  Using the lasso tool would have been too sharp in the cutting, and feathering a selection is only artificial at best. Using the brush, it’s a lot more accurate, though only slightly more time consuming.

To end this post, here’s a parting gift: a 1280×1024 wallpaper of Raquel. Enjoy!

That’s another post by your truly! In closing, I’d like to say that I’m very happy with this figure. It’s got the perfect blend of demure coupled with incredible detail. The paint and sculpt is flawless. Gathering did an amazing  job. It’s the first time I’ve ever had to deal with e2046’s customer service, but it has been the best customer service I’ve ever gotten from an online store. If you’re considering buying a pre-painted resin statue, look no further, because e2046 should be the place to buy! (Please note, that I’m not in any way affiliated with e2046. The views expressed here are purely my own).

Subscribe to my RSS or twitter for more updates! Another BlazBlue fanart is next!

This isn’t the first time I’ve done fan-art. But this is the first time I’ve tried to make fan-art look like official art. While it’s not quite to par with official art, I’d say I come fairly close. More pix and video after the jump!

Neogaf is having a contest. Well, actually it’s more like Arc System Works Europe is holding a contest hosted by Neogaf. So I’ve decided to participate with heated soul!

From the get-go I decided that I wanted to draw my own cover as opposed to simply compositing official art into another cover. The problem was that it would be a harder sell, and may not be marketable. Well it’s pretty obvious that the official art is marketable, so I aimed to mimic it as close as I could. To start, I sketched out a layout of what I wanted the cover to look like. But instead of revealing the entire cover right now, here’s the sketch of Noel I made:

After spending about 3 hours, this is the cleaned up line-art:

This is the reference image I used for both line-art and coloring:

I basically had it side by side, and used the color picker to pick highlights, midtones, and shadows, and tried to mimic the shading style as best as I could.

I think that I started off too low resolution. It’s basically 600dpi (I sketched it in 300dpi, and then scaled it up 200%), but I think I should have gone with 1200dpi to get finer and cleaner lines. Well, lesson learned. I’ll probably keep using 600dpi for the rest of the cover, otherwise it would look unusual that everyone is crisper looking than Noel.

I took the time to record a time lapse video of the entire thing. It’s playing a little fast, I know. I’m using a new program, so I’m trying to find an optimal time speed. I recorded this at 1 frame every 2 seconds, with a playback rate of 30 frames per second. This essentially means that every 1 minute of footage equals to 1 hour of actual work.

The video is 6:30 long, so that’s 6.5 hrs of work here.

The final image result:

I’m pretty happy with it. I particularly like this section right here:

The white part looks particularly accurate to me anyway.

A close up of her face:

Overall, I’m very happy with the result, and look forward to painting up the next character in the next few days.

If you’re on neogaf, do vote for me when I enter my submission!

Many of you know that I’ve been hella busy on a Super Secret Project. It’s why I haven’t been posting anything lately, and why I have a backlog of events that never got posted. Well, I started a game company: Trickshot Games. After reading many of Danny Choo’s inspiring articles on life, and setting goals, I decided it was time to do something with my own life.

In April, I found myself presented with the opportunity to make a change. That change resulted in me incorporating a company, running through stacks of legal paperwork, and most importantly, making my first game in which I could call my own.

Setting up the company was a lot of work, an incredible learning experience, and a lot of fun. We brainstormed and went through over 100 names for the company, and narrowed it down to three before finally going with Trickshot Games.

The paperwork was overwhelming at first, and I was paranoid about filling in things wrong, but after a while, it became pretty straight-forward. As Danny Choo says, it’s as easy as farting. Well, sort of. Sole Proprietorship is. For me, I needed to incorporate, so it was a tad bit more paperwork, but still not bad. With the Canadian Government, turn-around time for a particular process was either instant, or within a few days. That’s pretty efficient!

In coming up with the logo and the website, I learned a lot about graphic design, which as an illustration artist, I found it quite different from my usual work.

One of the many pages of sketches I did for the logo design. This page was probably the weakest of them all.

After several pages of logos, these were the final ones that we chose from. The one we ended up with was actually a fluke design of messing around with one of the other logos.

I picked up some graphic design books from the library and learned how real graphic designers work and think. After doing so, I now look at radiantdreamer.net and I see all the flaws, as well as all the things that I somehow managed to do right. I don’t think I’ll have the time to go back and redesign it though. At least not now.

Setting up and owning a company is quite exciting. You get a feeling that you’re actually doing something, both for your future, and in the world. You feel like you’re taking a step somewhere, but don’t know where, but you feel like it’s a step in the right direction.

Besides being proud of that, I’m very proud that I’ve finally developed a game that I can say “I made this.” Having been a game developer for 6 years, I was always making a game for someone else. It’s the first time that I’ve truly made a game for myself. I actually didn’t come to this realization until my wife mentioned it to me.

So what exactly is this game that I’ve made? I can’t reveal much right now other than the fact that it’s an iPhone/iPod Touch game, and it’ll retail for 99 cents. The game has been submitted, so it should appear in the app store soon, provided nothing goes wrong (fingers crossed). Please support me when the game is released!

Please do check out the site http://www.trickshotgames.com and follow us on twitter http://twitter.com/trickshotgames for the latest news!

]]> http://radiantdreamer.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/super-secret-project-revealed-and-underway/feed/ 14 Radiant img02 trickshot_sketches trickshot_logos http://radiantdreamer.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/natalia-luzu-kimlasca-lanvaldear-kotobukiya/ http://radiantdreamer.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/natalia-luzu-kimlasca-lanvaldear-kotobukiya/#comments Fri, 07 Aug 2009 23:21:18 +0000 Radiant http://radiantdreamer.wordpress.com/?p=588 ]]>

Going through my backlog of already snapped photos, I decided to post this one. Quite the stunning figure that I bought a while back. She’s out of print, and like many Kotobukiya figures, you won’t see re-release.  20 more photos after the jump!

If you don’t already know, her name is Natalia from Tales of the Abyss, a wonderful Namco game that I heard is one of the best in the series. I never had the chance to play it though. Too much backlog!

Full view shot. She’s 1:8 scale, but she’s a pretty big 1:8 scale in my opinion. The details on are are very simplistic, which is a rarity for me these days, as anything less detailed than Queen’s Gate Alice is usually a no-go (still haven’t done a shoot of her yet either…)

What attracted me about her was how clean the details were. The lines are very well sculpted and perfect. For a Kotobukiya figure, that’s also a rarity for that generation of figures. They’ve gotten a lot better these days, but their sculpt lines are still sometimes messy.

This shot shows off her mid-section and face quite well. I really like the belt and the buttons on her. It’s like really the only area in the whole figure that has a higher concentration of detail. She’s got a pretty cute face too! Makes me want to pinch her cheeks.

The hair tips aren’t the greatest. They’re a bit thick, but judging from the overall style of the sculpt, it seems fitting. The quality on is typical Kotobukiya to me. Same with the seam line running down the side of her dress. Great paint work on her stockings and boots though.

What I also liked about this figure is that she carries a bow. I’m a sucker for anyone carrying bow and arrows. I’ve sorta gotten over that now, since I’ve got several bow-toting hotties.

Her hair is very simple yet clean as well. Not as clean as I’d like though. It’s a shame you can see the seam line on her arm.

It’s actually difficult to get a nice clear shot with a low aperture to get both the face and the arrow in focus. I blame my lame kit lens, but whatever. Low aperture provides more light, and creates more depth anyway.

This is a pretty good shot. I was thinking of making a wallpaper out of it, but then I need time to photoshop it to make it look more interesting.

The back view. That quiver of arrows also looks incredibly clean. It’s like a perfect cylinder!

Those whispy things are kinda cool. It totally matches the color of her outfit too. Is that Mako Energy?!

The tips of the bows have a rather unique and interesting design. They do kinda remind me of Kureha’s bow, though these tips are more interesting. They have a sort of  South African feel to them.

Dancing with the whisps.

I was going to toss this shot because it showed a part of the light, and the top of the paper background, but it actually adds a bit of interest to it.

Sorry, no pantsu.

Close-ups are always nice. Check out those huge eyes! (Obviously not the other pair). The little neck scarf is pleasantly done. I also like the buckle a lot, and the little buttons in the middle are neat too.

This is the original packaging she came in. Mint is also packaged like this. All of it is completely transparent with awesome glyphs all around. I’ve never seen any other Kotobukiya packaging like this. Heck, any other figure besides Alter’s KOS-MOS Ver 4. (need to open that up and do a shoot of her sometime too).

That bow and arrow is kick ass.

Glyphs surround the package. Very nicely done.

The top of the box. Man that is a hell of a long name!

The underside of the box. I actually don’t like the lighting they chose for this. It isn’t very flattering, and actually makes the figure/packaging look decidedly old-school.

And just so you know, this figure is up for grabs. If anyone is interested, email me at info.at.radiantdreamer.dot.net.

I apologize that this shoot isn’t Raquel Gothic. I’m actually waiting for a good day to do an outdoor shoot for her. Tune in next time for it though!

EDIT: This figure has now been sold for my asking price of $60.

So my Moka finally arrived today last Friday. Honestly, she was on the chopping block for my preorders, but I’m actually very glad that I decided to follow through with the purchase. This purchase was made on e2046. Their prices are reasonable, I never get charged duty, and they are slightly faster than HLJ.

I can’t say that their packaging is the best though. It’s not as “specialized” as HLJ.

They’re also not as environmentally friendly. That bubble-wrap is literally wrapped around and around and around the figure. HLJ likes to pack theirs in a shrink-wrapped seal around a large piece of cardboard, plus air-filled pillows.

I have several rolls of these bubble-wraps now. It’s great free packing material that I use for when I ship stuff out to other people though, so it’s not a waste. I hope other collectors are doing the same to save the environment.

And there she is, in her original packaging. e2046 does sell PVC figures too, and they’re all authentic.

Another figure photoshoot to add to my already increasing backlog. No worries though. I’ve been noticing that blogs have started to literally disappear recently because the authors lack the funds to buy more figures. I’ve sustained heavy damage myself, but the figures will still keep rolling in at a steady and slow pace. As I sell some of my older figures, it will make more room, and provide more funds for newer figures. The backlog of figure photoshoots will make their way to this blog eventually, so no worries about me running out of content either.

More posts to come at a later date!

They are no fun, but honestly are not as bad as many people think. About 3 months ago, I had a filling done to a tooth.  Not long after, I started to notice that my tooth would ache whenever I had something cold. When I didn’t know was that this was the first signs of something very sinister.

Sometimes, when a filling isn’t done right, or a cavity forms somewhere, bacteria can leak into the tooth. That bacteria starts to eat at the nerve inside the tooth, and the nerve starts to die. The first sign of this is when eating or drinking something cold, and the coldness contacts that tooth. You’ll feel an ache there. If all your teeth ache, that typically means that it’s just too cold in general, but if only one does, that’s a bad sign. I thought I just needed some Sensodyne or something, so I ignored it. The pain goes away almost instantly anyway.

I was wrong in doing so. Last Saturday night, my tooth started to ache unprovoked. By evening, it was hurting so much that I couldn’t sleep. Taking some ibuprophin helped, but I needed to see a dentist.  The next day, the pain was so bad, I was literally hopping up and down, and keeling over! I kid you not! After an emergency booking with just any local dentist that was available, I found out that I needed a root canal. I was absolutely devastated, and very afraid.

Endotherapy, or more commonly known as a Root Canal Procedure, is by far the most feared procedure among patients. People usually say “I’d rather have a root canal.” to things they don’t want to do. Honestly, this is a misconception. It’s actually not that bad. It’s like getting a filling, but only a little deeper.

The problem is that it’s easy for some people, and hard for others. As you can see in the image above, the procedure involves drilling a hole in your tooth, and then yanking out the dead nerve inside so that bacteria can no longer thrive there. It’s dead anyway, there is nothing else you can do about it. They then go deeper into the actual root of your tooth, and clean out the canal (the root canal). This is the tricky part. Some people’s roots are not straight. They bend, curve, sometimes helix. Since drill tools are straight, this can be very problematic.

I didn’t want to take the risk, so I decided to go with a specialist (Endodontist). They have better tools, better techniques, and better skills than a general dentist in regards to endotherapy. If I had gone with a regular dentist, the process could potentially take more than one visit, up to four! Not fun! And there was a risk that they STILL won’t clean it out as good! With the specialist, he got the job done in one hour. ONE HOUR! It felt nothing more than getting a regular filling.

So how did the whole thing feel from beginning to end? The whole thing leading up to the endotherapy was terrible. I read up on it online, learned a lot, but at the same time, learned about several really BAD things about getting a root canal. One of which is a study done by a Dr. George Meinig and Dr. Weston Price. I basically scared myself with this. It’s not the therapy itself that scared me, but the aftermath.

They talk about what’s called Focal Infection. Basically, our teeth are tied to our body, much like any other organ. Even in Chinese medicine practices, they say that the teeth have a flow of Chi through our bodies, and when that Chi is disrupted, disease may result. They discovered that people who got root canals were more likely to get things like heart problems, cancer, liver problems, etc. Basically fatal diseases. They found this link when they extracted root canal treated teeth from patients with these diseases, and implanted these tooth bits into mice and rabbits. Within days, the test subjects would experience identical symptoms of the patients they extracted the tooth from, and ultimately die from it. They also noticed that the patients began to heal after the treated tooth was extracted from them. They believed that bacteria still harbored in the treated tooth somehow, and it spread to the rest of the body through the blood vessels of the detached root.

When they released their publication on this finding, they were immediately “covered up”. The publication was never seen again, and there is little mention of these two researchers now. Talk about conspiracy! The medical education field being funded by large pharmaceutical companies, cover-ups, everything. My tooth was about to be treated by a lie!

Recently, research has shown that there are hundreds of thousands of microscopic roots that permeate from the root canal outwards. These roots are impossible to clean out, making it possible for the tooth to get re-infected. It could be through these roots that the bacteria are harboring in.

I had to convince myself that the research done back then was in the 1930’s, and technology has improved significantly since then. They use better materials, better disinfectants, better tools, everything. But then that little bit of doubt still lingers in my mind…

The best thing to do is to prevent it from happening in the first place. So do take care of your teeth. I hope this root canal will be the first and last one I ever need to do.

I apologize for the complete dry lack of updates. Things have been very busy for me lately. A whole lot of stuff to sort out, and it’s resulted in many MANY things dropping to much lower priority. I also apologize to my friends for not checking out their blogs recently. ;_;

I wanted to participate in the figure.fm Creative Figure Photoshoot contest, because I had a pretty solid idea, but well, I didn’t have the time to do it. I’ll still put my idea down at some point in time, just not now…

One of the things that has been keeping me busy is that the powers that be have given me an interesting opportunity to change my life and start something new. This is a rare opportunity, so I’m trying to take advantage of it as best as I can. I can’t reveal anything just yet, so expect future news on it.

I’ve got such a HUGE backlog of things I want to do now! I also have a huge backlog of things I want to post! It may be a little weird that you are going to see a weird succession of posts that are really backdated, and maybe not even in chronological order! 

Take care, and stay happy!

Ever been to a giant water fight? I’m most certainly happy to say that I have. It’s incredibly fun. During a hot summer day, getting completely soaked within 3 seconds is very refreshing. It’s even more fun when it’s with a whole group of random strangers who are there to have fun just like you. We have an annual water fight here, and it’s the third annual this time. I went on the first annual and had a blast.  Pictured above is my wife. Not showing her face is 100% intentional. Sorry!

Here’s me getting more ammo. Obscured face is also intentional. Hey at least you know I wear glasses! Oh wait. You probably already knew that anyway.

The water fight takes place every year at around July 11th or whatever Saturday it is, at Stanley Park’s Lumberman’s Arch. Over 300 people are usually expected to show up. That’s a lot of water, very fast.

One thing I like is that teams are starting to form, and the teams usually show up in uniform! Very cool. People have fun for sure with interesting little props like scuba gear, or an umbrella, this year there was even someone wearing a gas mask!

And here’s a gallery of how epic the whole thing was!

Everything was totally awesome, except for the fact that I messed up my phone. I had my cellphone in my bag as I was running around. The bag soaked through, which normally wouldn’t have been a problem, except my phone was at the very bottom of the bag. It sent 4 random text messages to my friends before ceasing to function properly (buttons stopped working). Dried it out in the sun, and it works fine, but the moisture caused some of the silver to peel. A replacement housing is in order.

I was pretty sure that it would be okay, otherwise I wouldn’t have done that. I guess I under-estimated how much of a water-magnet I was.

The biggest problem wasn’t the phone malfunctioning but the ugly peeling of the silver parts of my phone. I guess if it was an old plastic phone, I’d be okay with it, but mine is a pristine u708 Samsung Anycall as some of you may know.

A youtube clip of this sexy phone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYRBDn_IXLs

Check it out! A high quality all girls 2d fighter! And it’s FREE!

More info, links, installation notes, tools and videos after the jump!

It’s a 2d fighter that is rumored to be developed by an ex-Capcom employee, Sugeno Tomoaki, using Enterbrain’s 2d Fighter Maker engine.  There are 10 playable characters,  with unique movesets and combos, some pretty cool designs, and local multi-player (no online).

(ignore the geeky guy commentating in the background. NO idea who he is.

The combat seems to harken to the styles of Guilty Gear, BlazBlue and Melty Blood. It looks incredibly well polished.

It’s a freeware download, so go download it now! It only works with Windows OS that support reading Japanese folders or have the Japanese language pack installed.

Windows XP Instructions

Open the control panel located under your start menu, then select regional and language options. Choose the languages tab and check the box for East Asian languages installation. Select the advanced tab next and choose Japanese as the default language for non-Unicode programs.

You will then be prompted for the operating system installation CD. The computer has to be restarted once the entire process is completed.

App Locale

For those who want to use applocale to run this game, just rename the two files ヴァンガードプリンセス.exe and ヴァンガードプリンセス.kgt with an English name (e.g. Vanguard Princess.exe & Vanguard Princess.kgt); you can choose a name yourself, but the two files need to have the same name, while keeping their original extentions. After the renaming of the two files, start applocale and follow the instructions, don’t forget to choose Japanese (日本語) and choose to make a shortcut for accessing the game later easier. After all this the game should be able to start via applocale.

The creator’s site can be found here.

The game can be downloaded here.

A Wiki has been created for Vanguard Princess!

A full gallery here.

update:

Wanna play it using a PS3 controller? Download the drivers at QJ.net

To install the drivers, follow this simple video tutorial

The rumble feature is optional. I prefer not to use it because of  Hand Arm Vibration Syndrome possibilities.

update2: Want to rip the sprites and sounds? Use this tool.

Update3: Version 1.01 has been released!

Fixed control inputs, nerfed everyone, and fixed infinite combo problems. Download here!

Translated moveslist and controls!

Update 4: Network Play software coming along nicely at r31. Check the changelog here. IRC Channel for finding players: irc.mizuumi.net, #vp

Update 5: Someone at Shoryuken forums has posted a mod of 1.01 that does not require applocale or Windows language options. Download the file here.

Congratulations! I’m one more year closer to death. Time’s running out! Gotta go have fun!!!

Mmm… McDonald’s and KFC… two of my favorite foods. Looks like I’m a lot closer to death than I think!

You know you’re getting old when you have to refer back to your wordpress profile to remember how old you were…

So how to celebrate? Well, for starters, my Raquel Gothic figure has come back from e2046. What a great present! And my wife is not working today too! I’m going out for dinner tonight with family to a fancy restaurant where I can eat Kobe beef! A rare occasion! (no pun intended)

How do you celebrate your birthday?

Update: I just heard Michael Jackson died. On my birthday too! Wow…

Update2: pix of the birthday cake after the jump!

Update3: been watching the news all day, and reading blog entries, and twitter feeds about Michael Jackson, and all the lives he’s touched. Hard to believe that one man’s death has moved every single person on the face of the planet in one way or another. Truly legendary.

Many still troll about his alleged pedo-acts, and other controversial things, but more importantly was all the charitable work that he did, and the absolutely amazing music he brought to the world, and the deep meaningful humanitarian messages some of them held.

Incidentally, Lisa Marie Presley wrote about how MJ told her one time “I fear I will end up just like your father.” Elvis Presley died in 1977, just less than two months after I was born.

Definitely, this will be a day I’ll remember forever.

This is the cake box.

The cake itself.

Thanks everyone for all the wonderful birthday wishes! It’s really interesting to know how people celebrate their birthdays in so many different ways and for different reasons!

Cheers to you all!

It’s been a while since I posted a figure photo shoot.

One figure I would like to share is my Yuki Nagato (Suzumiya Haruhi) nendoroid. My second Nendoroid, it took a lot of back and forth before I committed. So here for you all is my Yuki in relatively high resolution images. You can use them as wallpaper or  something if you like. More pix after the jump! (caution, high bandwidth!)

I seem to be on some kind of painting frenzy for the past week. I’ve been having a lot of fun making time lapse videos of my own work. It’s very interesting to see your own work kind of “appear” out of nothing in 10 minutes!

My latest one is a relatively weak attempt at painting Aya Hirano of Haruhi fame. Overall, I wasn’t satisfied with this one, and actually got pretty frustrated. Probably because it’s the first time I’ve tried to paint an asian girl. That and the fact that I lost a bit of work in the beginning due to an encoding error during the capture added to the frustration. Overall this took 80 minutes plus whatever minutes at the beginning. Still, after all that frustration subsided, I enjoyed making the time lapse, and adding the music to it. Enjoy!

In addition to the speed painting of Aya Hirano, I had done two other speed painting works, which I might as well share here:

A speed painting of my friend wearing a pair of Grado RS-2 headphones. It took approximately 50 minutes to paint this from beginning to end, sped up 8x

A speed painting of a forelorn man done in photoshop Speed painting is over a period of 50 minutes or so.
Overall, a pleasant experience, and it’s helped me look at my own art in a different way and practice my skills at the same time!

My latest work. I’m most happy with this one. Have you ever wondered how they paint images in eroge or box art? I might be able to provide you with some insight. For the first time, I’ve documented my progress in video format and uploaded it to youtube. More after the jump!

After my paint of Melody, I would have to say that I was not happy with the result. It looked okay, I guess, but it lacked the sharpness and clarity of today’s modern anime. As my wife had put it, my skills were “old-school”.

I mean, check it out, this is Melody that I painted last time:

This is something that I did in 1993 in color pencil:

You might have noticed that they kinda look the same. There are some improvements in technique, sure, but generally it’s not a whole lot. So I decided I need to update my paint style. I noticed some key differences and made sure to pay attention to those differences when I started my new painting.

So here’s the sketch that I did. Since I wanted to paint something different, I decided to draw something a little different to go with it:

Right from the getgo, you’ll notice that I am trying to put more attention to detail in just the sketch itself. Though the sketch is still rough, you can already see the final results forming. My sketches are generally really rough, so this one is a bit of an improvement. Being rough has its advantages of looser definition and freedom, but that’s a double edged sword, as then there’s ambiguity. Trying to define shapes properly in the final line-art tends to make the line-art more stiff. In other words, being more restrictive in the rough will actually help improve the final line art.

There are two things I picked up from my observations of the more modern-day anime style. Firstly is line weight and quality. It seems that thick lines are out. Thin lines produce a much sharper image. It doesn’t fight with the colors to define shapes.

Secondly is shading. My previous method involved lots of gradiants transitioning from dark to light. This was great in defining depth and roundness, but it also made the anime subject look rather unnatural. These days, hard edges are used. Though more modern anime tends to do away with that, and use Superflat coloring.

I found that creating a shadow guide is helpful in painting in the shadows. Drawing those shadows in during the paint process is inaccurate, and leads to undefined results. You’ll notice that a lot more time has been spent in the pre-paint aspects now.

I didn’t think to record me painting this image until after the drawing was completed, so alas, you’ll have to wait until next time for me to record a drawing. So from here, instead of still images, I’ve created a video recording time lapse of the painting process. The painting took roughly 6 hours to do, and this has been compressed into a more digestable chunk. I’m sure you won’t have the patience to sit through 6 hours of me painting.

Enjoy!

Since I was at it, I decided to create a black dress version too.

Which one do you prefer?

How? Some of you may remember my article “Are you a Hentai-Otaku?!” of heated debate. This article is no different. So my wife watches anime based on eroge. She’s also fine with yuri, and she quite enjoyed a series full of otaku-trivia. Before all that, she was never interested in anime, and never really appreciated the art style. So how did it happen? You want your significant other to enjoy anime with you too? I might not have the answer specifically for you, but my story may provide you with some insight. (note this only covers anime series, and not OVAs or movies)

About a decade ago, I tried to expose my wife to some anime. Problem was, the first real exposure was to La Blue Girl for reasons I can’t remember. It was a mistake at the time that I didn’t realize, or intended as a first viewing. What I really wanted to do was show her Love Hina. She got mad at me (like Naru would) within the first 10 minutes of the show when Naru showed up in the hot spring with Keitaro. On her mind, “all anime and all Japanese pop-culture revolve around sexual perversion. Most Japanese people are perverted, and focus on a perverted society of sexual innuendos, and sexual promotion.”

This was not a good start to getting my wife to share my interests. I quickly gave up.

This is where all the hot perverted sex happens.

A few years ago, I decided that the only way to get her to watch some anime, was to show her something that she would like. Something incredibly girly and cute. As a result, I sat through 70 episodes of Card Captor Sakura with her. She had gotten some previous exposure to it before with a few images here and there, and a theme song or two.

I think it was difficult for her at first, but she watched, and started to really like the show. The characters were adorable, and there was some form of love story in there (though it’s more of a crush instead). She didn’t like the darker tone of the second season, but watched anyway. I was only mildly into it. But it was good watching anime with her. (as a side note, this was her first exposure to a relatively innocent form of yuri)

What normal girl would not want to watch this series. C’mon.

Immediately after, I showed her Chobits. I figured this was a fairly decent natural progression, bringing in the best of Clamp, and introducing her to a series more mature than CC Sakura. “It’s by the same people who did Card Captor!” I said. This got her a little more interested in watching the series. She liked it. The romance was good, she thought Chii was sweet, but stupid, and she wasn’t entirely put-off by the fan-service.

Hot loligoth yuri action = win.

Shortly after, I started watching Azumanga Daioh. She was mildly interested in it, and thought Chiyo-chan was incredibly cute (the penguin costume won btw). She didn’t like Osaka because of her incredibly dense personality. This was probably the weakest response I’ve gotten from her in watching anime. Not sure what it was that she didn’t like about it. I think it was because the humor was not clever, and just seemed silly. At the time, our exercise machine was in the same room as the TV, so I literally forced her to watch it while she was exercising. She now seems to have no recollection of what the series was about. I intend to have her watch it again sometime for the win, but the priority for that is pretty low.

To me, this series wins the internet, and will always win.

After a while, she wasn’t interested in anime anymore. I asked a mutual friend of ours for recommendations, and he suggested Nodame Cantabile. I had no idea what it was about, so I gave it a go, since he said it was a good anime. She was hesitant at first, not knowing what she was in for. Personally, I liked the show too. It didn’t have as much romance as I had thought it would, and actually focused a lot on the motivations of the two main characters, and their struggles to reach their goals. I don’t think my wife really realized this was the case, and thought the series had a lot of romance. She thoroughly enjoyed it.

This scene turned my wife into an otaku.

After Nodame was done, she was wanting to watch more anime. When she heard that the manga continues on where the anime ends, she obsessively searched for scanilations. My wife, reading scanilations! Who’d have thought! After she read up to the current volume, she had nothing else to do. I asked my friend for suggestions again, and he said “Why not watch Haruhi?”. This was unusual. I hadn’t seen Haruhi yet at that time, so I thought it might be cool. I insisted that our friend recommended it. She has only met the guy once, but seems to hold a good deal of respect and compassion for him. Probably because he’s a respectable and compassionate guy.

She thought that the Haruhi series was weird and didn’t make sense. She liked the characters, thought the fan-service was unnecessary, and liked the art style. She thought Haruhi was a pretty likable quirky character. After seeing the God Knows scene, she came to understand more why I collect anime figures, and appreciated my Bunny Girl Haruhi more. This was an interesting step that I thought I would never see.

This series made my wife understand what anime is all about.

It seemed pretty evident at this point that she was ok with watching anime, but a lull suddenly came, and we didn’t watch anime for almost half a year. Mainly because there was so much other stuff we had to do, and didn’t have the time to watch anymore.

I tried again, this time with Haibane Renmei. Did not want. She didn’t like the old-style fantasy setting, and it’s evident that she will probably never watch any anime based in a fantasy setting, or old-european setting. (I intend to change that someday, but not now). Switching gears, I tried Manabi Straight. This was another girly-girl series, with ultra-adorable characters, and a very clean art style. Again, like Azumanga, we watched it during her exercise, as it was also the only real time we had to watch something together. She didn’t like it. It was too cutsey, too plotless, and again, there’s a dumb and dense girl in it.

This girl ruined the series for my wife. Why Mikan, WHY??!

Personally, I liked the series, and Mikan was my favorite character from the series. Regardless, I stopped watching the series half-way and decided to bring in something along the same slice-of-life lines, but a little bit less childish. This came in the form of the epically awesome Lucky Star. Since my wife was on the exercise machine, there was nothing she could do but watch and try to enjoy the series. She got into it very quickly, and really liked the characters. The series wasn’t really about anything in particular, with no plot as well, but she seemed to enjoy the banter between the characters.

Even my wife can’t resist the beautiful Konata.

After the span of 2 months and 6 episodes later, we started to watch the series in the bedroom on our Macbook. It was a lot more comfortable there, and she continued to enjoy the series. Ocassionally we would hook it up to the widescreen in the living room too. The only problem she had with the series actually was the rather empty conclusion. To me it was a great ending, but she felt a bit robbed that they didn’t actually show the final performance (though I thought there wasn’t a need to, and the way it was portrayed worked out better). Oh, and she hated the Lucky Channel. I guess she doesn’t like overly peppy squealing girls.

To keep the momentum going, I quickly started her on Kannagi, recommended by another friend. She liked the characters, made parallels between Nagi and Haruhi, and was pretty hooked to the series near the end. The drama was quite nice and gripping. Surprisingly, she never remarked about the fan-service as she usually does. There isn’t much of it other than a few deliberate gratuitous thigh shots, but it was strange she never said anything. Again though, she was disappointed that the ending didn’t really have much of an ending. I had to explain to her that the manga stalled partway through, so the series couldn’t really continue.

Did I have to choose such a yuri-suggestive screenshot? Of course not!

At this point in time, our anime-watching became obsessive. We would watch several episodes in one sitting, sometimes until 2am (this from a couple that normally sleeps at 11pm). Did we have enough? Of course not! After burning through Kannagi, I had another anime lined up immediately! I realized at this point that watching a series we would both enjoy was the ticket. Upon getting another recommendation from a friend, we started watching Tora Dora!.

This was by far, the most memorable series, and probably one of the best we’ve seen together. I could tell that my wife enjoyed it immensely. There was just the right mix of comedy, romance, and slapstick humor, and I’ve come to really dig tsundere archtypes. My wife really loved the good-natured personality of Ryuji, and I really loved the contrasting but adorable little Taiga. Minori was also a blast.

Damn straight she does. How can you beat that? You simply can’t.

Needless to say, the voice actress for Minori became the start of an unreal enlightenment for my wife. I’ll explain later. I picked up Aria next, but that was quickly shot down after two episodes. Again, fantasy-based worlds, boring slice of life anime, zero plot. Dropped. I decided to backtrack into an older drama, which at the start of all this, would never imagine my wife watching – an anime based on an eroge.

All Japanese girls love to be patted on the head. Try it!

Kanon. What some believe is the origin of moe. I read only quick reviews on it, from animenewsnetwork. Since it was one of the top 20 anime to watch, and it was a romantic drama comedy, I figured this would stand up to Tora Dora!. Well, it didn’t. Not to the same effect, but my wife was into it nonetheless. The first 4 or 5 episodes or so, she couldn’t stand the absolute airheadedness of all the female characters. But soon afterwards, when the plot finally started to pick up, and the mysteries abound, she settled down and accepted it for what it was worth. Overall, she thought that the series didn’t make her feel very good. It was full of broken girls, depressing situations, and even suicide. The series was a bit too emotional. One thing that did highlight it a little was when my wife suddenly realized that Ayu’s voice actress was the same voice actress as Minori from Tora Dora!. I was incredibly surprised that she managed to pick that up. Truly on her way to otakudom.

Minori… I mean, Ayu… do you always sound like a little girl?

Having watched depressing Kanon, I figured we should try something much lighter. I dug through my backlog again, and pulled out Rizelmine. The amount of fan-service in this was definitely phenominal. I remember watching it many years back, and thought it was funny, only remembering that there didn’t seem to be much fan-service. Maybe my tastes at the time were a bit more extreme than now. Needless to say, she enjoyed the show. Not to the same level of Tora Dora!, but the humor was purely something worth laughing at, and the characters were colorful. She didn’t like how childish it all seemed but was glad it was a switch from Kanon. She liked the little bit of light romance that was in the series too.

So much fanservice… this show is definitely NOT for kids!

Soon after, we started watching Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. It was during this time that I started downloading Nodame Cantabile’s second season. I figure I’d use that as a trump card if necessary. My wife was surprised at the interesting art style of beautiful japanese patterns, bloom effects, and cherry blossoms. But she thought the series was too weird for her. She enjoyed the obsessive strawberry cake scene, and the chain stalkers scene, but overall she couldn’t really get into it. Looks like this is a series I’ll be watching myself instead.

Sayonara… Zetsubou Sensei…

What next? I thought. I was running out of ideas, and there were still series I was downloading. It was too soon for the trump card anyway. Since we were on the old-school track, I decided to brave the one thing that had been bothering me since the beginning of all this: Love Hina.

Love Hina gets a second chance. But it was me that killed it.

“Are you trying to trick me?!” she asked. I said no, it really is not what you think! I tried to convince her to watch it again before, or to read the manga before, but this was different now. “It’s a romantic comedy. You have to put aside the lame fan-service though.”

She gave in, and decided to watch it. Though she didn’t hate it like she had before, she also didn’t like it. And to her defense, I didn’t like it either. The series was shallow, the pacing was wrong, and the characters weren’t likable. “I liked the manga more. That one made more sense, and was more heavily emphasized on the romance.” I concluded to her, but she didn’t really feel like reading the manga. This wasn’t a loss, as she did sit through the series to the end. I didn’t even bother with the OVAs, even though she asked “What about the rest?”. I personally wasn’t invested in this series anymore, and just started reading the manga again. What I did like though, is how she again, recognized Yui Horie’s voice. “That’s Minori!!”

So that’s it, right? We’ve come full circle. Don’t forget about the yuri!

Read the review here!

As I had posted a review previously, I won’t delve into the details. My wife was totally weirded out by it. It wasn’t that she couldn’t accept lesbian romance. It was just foreign to her. I explained to her the whole symbolic reasoning behind Hazumu being a girl, and I think she got that. She did enjoy the romance though. She just wished it wasn’t with a bunch of girls…

This time, I was the one that pointed out that Yasuna was voiced by Yui Horie. “It’s Minori!”

Having gotten off old-school train, I figured it was time to give her a rest. I could tell that she wasn’t enjoying anime as much as she was before Kanon. I began to notice the reason why, and decided to pull out the trump card. At this point, I no longer considered it a trump card, but as a reason.

If you’ve read this far, and you’re thinking you can get your significant other to watch Death Note or Ghost in The Shell with you, then you have missed the point entirely.

Throughout this journey, I’ve discovered that my wife doesn’t want to just watch anime. She wants to spend time with me, sharing an interest that we can both enjoy together. This isn’t just about getting her to watch anime. It’s about getting me to watch anime with her. Not just any anime. But an anime that we can both enjoy.

So for you, you really have to just test the waters. Find out what she likes, what she doesn’t like, and aim towards that. At first, you may not enjoy watching some “lame anime series” with her, but you will appreciate the fact that she is watching anime, and understand that she’s watching anime with you.

Well, I’m going to enjoy the remainder of Nodame Cantabile Paris. Then I’ll probably bring on some K-ON! sprinkled between some Honey and Clover.

Comments? Suggestions? Agree or disagree? Bring it on!

Browsing through the internet, I stumbled upon this figure. I have no idea what series she’s from, but then again, I don’t really care. I really like this! A kimono coupled with a scooter is such a nice contrast, yet at the same time, the soft lines blend itself well. More pics after the jump!

She’s so pretty…

She even comes with a completely separate outfit! I’m sure they just use cast-off technology. But it looks like even the slippers are different. I also wonder how they did the flower in her hair without leaving a hole. Replacing the whole hair is quite a bit. If it’s just the bangs, then that’s pretty easy. The flower looks like it is placed fairly far back though.

DO WANT!!! NAO!!!

Manufactured by Moon Toys. I know nothing about this company. Do you? After the likes of Atelier Sai, Orchid Seed, and Yamato, I’m extremely hesitant to take the dive into this 12,000 yen investment.

Does anyone have experience with Moon Toys, or have any more info on them?

Update: This figure is now out at Hobbysearch. The final product shots look nothing like the prototype. I’m not happy about that.

Going through my anime backlog, I decided to give Kashimashi a try. Having watched Kanon with my wife, it was a bit depressing. Rizelmine helped with that but it was a little silly.

I’ve read a few volumes of Kashimashi, and quite enjoyed it. It was a decent romance, with some light-hearted humor to it, so I thought my wife might enjoy it.

The premise behind this yuri anime is about a really feminine boy named Hazumu getting rejected by the love of his life, Yasuna for reasons unknown to him at the time. Through some freak accident involving aliens, Hazumu is transformed into a girl. This event triggers confusion in Hazumu’s childhood friend, Tomari as well as prompting Yasuna to confess her feelings towards Hazumu. Thus a love triangle is formed.

I’ve never read a yuri manga, or watched a yuri anime before, so I don’t know to what degree of yuri-ness this would count as. There wasn’t any heavy petting, or hot girl-on-girl action. It felt very much like a regular romance-drama. It had a much more serious tone than the manga did. The only humor was fan-service provided through Hazumu’s father and Hazumu’s best friend Asuta. I also read that the manga’s plot is slightly different, though I can’t really say at the moment, as I’ve only read 3 volumes. The manga has taken a different turn of events from the anime, but I won’t know how it will be resolved until I get the remaining volumes.

While it seems Hazumu’s transformation into a girl is just an excuse for yuri, the anime presents itself in such a way that Hazumu never feels out of place. The characters’ motivations are thoroughly convincing and clear, making the love triangle seem like a very natural occurrence. Hazumu’s femininity is further reinforced by Hazumu’s best buddy, Asuta, developing feelings towards Hazumu. Though Asuta’s struggles seem mostly for comic effect, it was effective in strengthening Hazumu’s believability.

After watching quite a number of romantic comedy anime from Tora Dora to Nodame Cantabile, Kashimashi seems to really get it right with the emotional heart strings. Most anime seems to derive character developement through lots of conversation and inner-monologue. Kashimashi has practically no inner-monologue, and not a whole lot of conversation. Much of the development is understood through the characters’ facial expressions, and occassional flashback, turning out to be much more effective, and making the characters much more believable and easier to identify with.

With only 12 episodes, the series doesn’t drag on with a whole lot filler, and gets right to the point without it feeling rushed. At the same time, the pacing is rather slow compared to the more ADD-targetted anime of this generation. Considering that the series is fairly old, it can at times, seem a little slow and boring. This is definitely a drama of a different nature. The humor, when present, is pretty shallow and recycled.

Character-wise, you see the standard archetypes personified blatantly in this series. Tomari fills the Tsundure type, while Yasuna the gentle, proper rich-girl type. Hazumu is the typical bubble-headed overly girlie-type, and then there’s the intelligent motherly type, as well as the annoying squeal-type from the supporting characters.

It seems that Hazumu’s role in this series is both major, and minor. The love triangle centers around her, but she’s also helplessly being dragged through the whole relationship problem. Overall, the love triangle ends up being a copy of Archie, Betty, and Veronica. Heck, their hair colors match to that archetype as well! However, it works really well with Hazumu being a girl, as it strengthens the believability of her fragile vulnerability.

The ending was what I expected it would end like, but not the way I wanted it to end. I’m sure many people who watched the series felt the same way. An OVA was released later providing a conclusion that I had originally wanted, but reaching that point in one OVA seemed rushed, and very unconvincing.

I would recommend watching this series, if you have the time for it between K-ON! or Haruhi S2. It’s definitely not something to write home about, but it’s also an anime worth experiencing if you’re into romance dramas.

A while ago, when my friend returned from Japan, he bought me a souvenir box of cookies, called “Maid Cookie”. Has anyone ever seen these or tried them before? They’re quite good. More pix after the jump!

I’ve seen it more than once, as some of my other friends have recieved it as gifts before. The little maid on the box front is so cute!

“Maid in Tokyo

MAID COOKIE

Milk & Maple”

A close-up of the kawaii meido. I’m assuming the tiny Japanese characters on the cookie say “Meido”.

The cookie box has a flap opening, revealing individually packed delicacies inside. And there’s Mikuru, ready to serve some delightful tea-time favors!

Each cookie has a printed expression of the maid. I have to wonder, who was the artist for this? Why would a cookie company shell out for such a product? What is their target market? Need I really ask? It’s Japan.

Each cookie is individually wrapped, and comes in either Milk flavored, or Maple flavored.

It’s tea time! I hope you enjoy your cookie. I know I will!

Another painting with photoshop diary! I haven’t painted anything anime in quite a while, and it’s something I’ve been wanting to do, but have been putting off for some time now. Getting back into it was difficult, and I gave up on a piece mid-way because it just was not what I wanted. Check out how this one was made after the jump!

You may have noticed in the past, there was a little purple-haired girl blinking at you at the top of my blog. I’ve been playing with the site mascot idea for a while now, and I liked the main aspect of her a lot – her headphones, and that cute purple/pink hair. But one thing was definitely missing – clothing design. She started off wearing a simple school uniform, which was in my opinion, pretty generic, but worked at the time, and was pretty cute.

Starting with a base moe-model, I sketched several different articles of clothing that might be suitable for her moe-ness. The first one was a revamp of her current school uniform, followed by others like the loligoth. I quite like the Lara-esque Adventure outfit. I finally settled on the adorable raincoat. It’s definitely the cutest one. And since it rains a lot in where I live, it made the perfect statement.

I was going to write a post asking readers what her name should be, but then it dawned on me pretty quickly. Her most prominant feature were the headphones she wore. She wears them everywhere. So it made sense that she liked music. “Melody” sounded like a pretty fitting name for her.

I started painting a full-body illustration of Melody, but as it had turned out, I had been losing my skills as an anime artist. I’ve been concentrating so much on non-anime work that my drawing just didn’t look good. I switched gears and for the heck of it, started sketching Melody as a mature looking female.

There’s something about the sketch that I really like. I think it’s just how raw it looks compared to the finished, more sterile result. After sketching, I started a new layer, and began drawing a cleaner line-art. I wanted this one to look clean for some reason.

The solid colors usually go in as base first before painting in highlights and shadows. As you can see, my palette is pretty simple. Just like how I had painted the face, I proceeded to do the same with the hair.

Hair is a little different from most other objects. Especially for anime. It’s a solid mass, yet it also has to appear like it’s not. How it’s shaded is very important. You have to give the hair definition so that it doesn’t just look like a solid blob, but not so much that it becomes a horrendous mess of lines. At this point, I did some revision to the line-art too, and fixed her eye a little. It was too long, and flattened her face too much.

The coat has a nice red tone to it. I decided to change the hair color a bit to compensate and create a nicer blend. Cloth is a bit like hair, in the regards that it requires definition to make it appear like cloth. As you can see from the line art to the colored one, more depth is created, more folds are created to give that definition.

The headphones were fun. They’re actually Audio Technica, ATH-ES7. They’re not the best performing headphones, but they look slick with the mirrored finish. I’m not sure if that particular model will be a permanent accessory, or if she’ll try wearing other types down the road.

From here on, it was adding layers and layers of FX to create this image. This is the version that is posted as the blog banner right now. After I was done though, I looked back on her hand and felt it was very unnatural looking. I didn’t use any reference, and it showed. I decided to take a photo of my own hand, holding a cellphone, and use that to redraw the hand from scratch.

The final result of the hand is a lot more natural. I also changed the FX to be white instead. This gave a more pure look to it.

I darkened the background, as well as added some motion blur to it. This helped make Melody pop a little more without it being overbearing.

Overall, I can’t say that I’m super satisfied with this one. Looking back at my other works, I feel this is up to par with Alternate Mikuru, and that makes me feel a little dissatisfied. Alternate Mikuru was good at the time, but it kinda shows that I haven’t improved that much, but my bar has been raised. If I keep at it, I’ll most likely get better results.

It’s another celebratory 10k worth of hits! I’m pretty happy that I am able to share my work with so many of you. At some point at the beginning of the year, some of you may have noticed a sudden change in the way I blogged, if I even blogged at all.

I was having trouble finding any reason to post anything. Photoshopping figures felt kind of meaningless as I realized I wasn’t doing it for the joys of creating photoshop images, but was doing it for the sake of getting attention. This was wrong. This was not what I wanted. I wanted to share, and I wanted to share it with as many people as I could.

Somewhere along the way, that line blurred, and I began linking the number of hits to the results of my work. When I noticed that the hits kept coming even after I stopped posting for a while, the hits became meaningless, and so did my work. As well, I noticed a drop in the number of comments I got to some of my posts. This only added to my depression and made me question whether or not it was all worth it. Like Shino, I was very tempted to give up on blogging entirely.

I had forgotten that I posted my reviews and my photoshop work to share with everyone.  I was still teetering on the brink as I was posting sometimes, but it really did feel like posting for the sake of posting. It wasn’t until I read Shino’s new blog entry that I felt something important had left me, and that I needed to get it back. In a way, Shino was the one that brought me back, and for that I’m truly grateful for.

A few commenters on Shino’s blog seemed to echo the same sentiments, but were able to find their way. As such, I’m back now. My reason to share has come back, and that reason is the pride I have in my own work, and the passion I have for my work. The passion I have for this hobby is what I want to share. In my own way, and by my own standards. The hits really don’t matter. Just as long as I’m able to do what I like doing, and be able to share my joy of doing it with you all.

- Radiant