Here are guys relatively new to DA so please go give them a visit!

is finally posting again! It's exciting for me to see his stuff here on DA since it brings back memories of Epilogue.net and Treasure Planet (which btw was the first "concept art" I was ever aware of. Talk about inspiration!)

has just joined DA! He's worked on several shows such as Megas XLR and Metalocalypse and is currently on Transformers Prime doing background design. He's super friendly (and very funny!) so feel free to drop by and give him a warm welcome as he settles in~!

And while I'm at it, others who are already on DA:


Thanks for looking

Hello!

Wow, it's been busy. First there was Anime Expo. Thanks to everyone who dropped by! And thanks to those who print traded with me! It was really so nice to see familiar faces and meet new people!

Speaking of conventions, Comic-con is tomorrow! I'm excited because this is my first time at Comic-con for a number of things: first time with a 4 day pass, with a place to stay, and with panels that I absolutely want to attend.

So as to what I've been up to (an excuse for my inactivity haha): since December I've been at Hasbro Studios working as a props artist on a new show and it's been a truly fantastic experience so far. It's an honor to work with such amazing and skilled people and I am really excited that we can finally share a glimpse of what we've all been working hard on! On Thursday from 4:30 ~ 5:30pm is the "Transformers: Prime" panel. Please go and check it out!

Conventions aside, right after AX ended I moved into my own apartment. It's small, cozy and peaceful-- I love it! Now that I don't have to do 2 hours of driving every day I am glad I can spend that time and energy on other things instead... like drawing! It's also great to have some time to catch up with anime and movies I shoulda seen a long time ago. Like Hunter x Hunter, Gintama, and Code Geass. I also just watched Inception. All were really fun to marathon. If you have any suggestions, please do share!

And that's it for now. Thanks for dropping by, and take care you all!

So it looks like the Anime Expo artist alley packets are now emailed out and I'll be going again this year. Who here managed to grab a table and will be going? And who here wanted to but didn't manage to get one in time?


Anyway, wow I love How to Train Your Dragon so so much! I could ramble about it for a long time, but to cut it short I'll just say... On top of the smart storytelling and the lovable characters and the dialogue that did not make me cringe, I really enjoyed every scene and the way they worked; from the cinematography and pacing to a script that flows, to the music and sound effects (especially for those dragons); to the color palettes and lighting to the variety of characteristics defined for every species of dragon and so on.... not to mention awesome character animation. Reasons like that are, in addition to story and character, why good animated films deserve at least a second viewing. And HTTYD was awesome and managed to snare my personal interest on top of impressing the nerd in me with all that and more, which makes the rewatch factor veeery high for me. Very! And all the while you just can't help but admire the amount of knowledge, skill, hard work and effort that went behind the scenes to make it all happen.

And like many of its animated peers, I don't feel like this is a film simply made "for kids". Rather, it is made by adults who still have their inner child, made for anyone who still has that spark in them, and done in a way so that kids can enjoy it as well.

So go watch it, you guys!! (in theaters, support the artists! Even if not by means of royalties, then at least by letting them know their work is appreciated! )


And my buddy *AprilEriksson gave me a Night Fury toy, because even though I am getting older, I am still a kid at heart and loving it!
So, of course, I immediately proceed to do something stupid with it. Because at the end of the day, this is what we (alright, maybe just I) learned Photoshop for. [link] & [link]

Well, that's it for now. Take care you all!  ☆

Edit: Offline now!

Hey guys! Livestream plug again. My friend Andrew's streaming right now! For those of you with questions about learning art, here's a guy you can pick up some knowledge from!

He is super approachable and knowledgeable (and hilarious), and his paintings are friggin badass. So don't miss out!!

[link] --> The livestream! You can also check out his previous streams.

[link] --> His blog ~

Hey guys! Man, it's been a while since I last blogged. So I figured I should make an entry!

So, what to say. I've been getting real nostalgic and so on lately. I remember the good old days on DA when I was a lot less dead on the internet and used to actually socialize. What ever happened to those chat rooms and meeting random people and whatnot! And there was also the experimenting with random fanart and sharing silly story ideas and characters with buddies.. ah, good times. And what a cycle because I'm kinda doing that again now and it feels really good.

I need to go about being less of a zombie on the net. My days are rather busy but at least my evenings are now my own. Which of course means watching more movies and animations and doodling like there is no tomorrow! Still not enough hours in the day though, really..!

Anyone else watching Durarara or keeping up with Berserk or One Piece ? OP's been epic lately. Actually it always is, but still. Just saying!

( Also.. if you haven't played Robot Unicorn Attack lately... then DO IT NOWWW: [link] )

~toiletseat and I are at table D29, we are next to !Tsukie and ~tobiee. Be sure to say hi to us if you drop by!!

Also, my icon.. green for Iran!

EDIT May 23: No more kitten!
The mother cat has returned for her kitten so we gave it back to her.
It's actually not a decision I made. April and I were both out when the mother returned, hissing and angry, leaving my father to deal with it and eventually he let the kitten go. April and I were at least spared the moral decision of returning it to the mother vs giving it a human home. Either choice has its ups or downs. I hope this decision sits alright with you guys who sat along for this whole crazy ride and who wished for the kitten to have a good home. I hope it does too.

EDIT: FOUND THE KITTEN!!

here are some pictures:

[link]
[link]
[link]

It's currently in the bathtub ignoring the food and water and barking nonstop (sounds like an angry chihuahua). April's succeeded in calming it down from time to time but it's still a spazz. It is older and more energetic than I thought it'd be, which is good news. The pictures make it seem misleadingly calm and cute (edit again: Actually, April turned out to be the underground Cat Whisperer, because she totally got it to calm down and even PURR in her lap. Wow) But yeah, he is pretty filthy.

Could not have done it without my buddy April 's help, thank you for your super awesomeness!!

We finally caught the kitten after HOURS of overturning my garage and setting up barricades of stuff-- seriously, whole place looks like a wreck now. It chose to stay closest to the ground and closest to the wall, aka the furthest and deepest it could get, and therefore the most painful for us. To keep up with it we dug out stuff from one corner of the garage to the opposite. ...I think we deserve some Dip 'n dots after all that.

That aside, it was great to know that I destroyed the garage for a reason other than hallucination; for a while I wasn't even sure if it was still there or not. We moved boxes for a long time before we heard another mew from it to confirm its existence, and I cheered because this meant I wasn't just imagining things on an epic level. Afterwards-- [haha, what an understatement! I mean]-- "Hours of grueling blood and sweat later", April and I walked around the neighborhood asking about the kitten until someone finally told us that they've seen it around before and that it's most likely a stray.

As neither April and I can take it in, we're hoping to see if we can find someone willing to adopt it before we resort to the shelter, where it would be euthanized if left not adopted.

==============
Entry from 2:01 PM: It has been mewing and crying in there, but only with the garage closed and dark. We haven't seen it yet, only heard it. It hasn't responded to food lures (milk, tuna, water). It's made no move to escape whenever we had the garage door opened and we still don't know exactly where it is. Our neighbor's cat had observed for a while from a distance, but is gone now and made no motherly attempts at communicating with or rescuing the kitten, so I doubt it's the mother. The kitten was at one point crying very loudly, even as we approached its general location, and has fallen silent since then. It's been maybe two hours or so.

...I really don't want to have a dead kitten hidden in my garage. Any tips on how to get it out safely?

I also don't know what to do with it if its mother doesn't come back to claim it. I'm pretty sure it's not a neighbor's kitten (since if a KITTEN goes missing, wouldn't the owner ask around for it?) I personally would love to take care of it, but that makes only one of us in this household.

I don't want to scare the poor thing to death by clearing out the garage in order to find it, but if the thing is physically stuck in the clutter and getting weaker, then moving things around might be the thing to get it out. If this is a terribly wrong idea, please-- some cat person out there-- please tell me what to do before I do something totally horrific

EDIT 2: WOWS, thanks so much and for the daily dev! And to everyone who dropped by as a result, I really appreciate all the kind comments and favs. (Plus quite a few of the comments on  Aquarius dude were hilarious and made me laugh). All you guys just made my day, and I sincerely appreciate it!

Again, many thanks for visiting!!
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EDIT: WOAHZ, thanks so much for the subby!! KENJI, YOU ROCK SO HARD. YOU REALLY DO.
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So I was cleaning out my workroom today, and I found a packet of stuff from elementary school. Kid-stuff is always nostalgic to see- especially the old art!

So here are a few I scanned in from today's diggings:

Quite possibly the oldest drawing of mine that's been "preserved" (man, looking at this primitive crayon art makes me feel like I'm looking at cavemen drawings!) ... this one's the only one with a title, "A Dog", and I'm so grateful that my mother had the foresight to write down both title and date for me; "August 1995", so I was five years old.



Upon further digging I found more from the same time era:

and on the backside

I was quite the dinosaur fan, and if I ever had Barbies they would just be fed to my dinosaur plushies (only remember having one, and it was naked and headless).

Those two were the only ones from '95; then there was random artwork from school assignments, and I think the year is now 1998.

...That's a lot of "Sorry"s

My doodling all over notes and homework apparently stemmed from an early age... here are some drawings found within one of my homework packets:

And then an assignment from another packet; "Little children, please draw a park and the things within the part (flowers, grass, lake, people, animals, ....."


So, old stuff. Finding anything from before my middle school years is a pretty rare thing for me, so these were exciting for me to re-live.  I don't use journals very often, but I doodle like crazy, so old drawings are like diary entries to me. And on top of that, they're a great reminder of my progress.

To you aspiring artists, we all start somewhere, and hopefully that reminder would give you some inspiration. Most of you guys reading this are probably students, so... date your work. Currently we aspiring artists are in the most crucial fundamental stages of our education, so the improvement curve likely contains the most drastic changes; date your work, so you can reflect on it later if you'd like. And once a while, take a break from stressing in the present over who you want to grow into for the future; hang out with your past self for a bit, and rejoice over how much you've grown!

Hopefully gonna be on a roll~! It's so great to have figure drawing classes again.

Anyway, I've been doing some iScribbling lately ( www.iscribble.net ), so if you're on there, say hi (I'm usually on as Teez ). But really, I gotta crack down and work on portfolio stuff. Oh joy! Time to draw many things, and many new things!

And to those of you who don't have a Chipotle restaurant around you, you are so, so missing out.
Mmm, steak burrito bol....

Okay, so... that was really unexpected!

So, this is what happens when you forget to log out of the media lab at school and don't have internet access until your last class ends at 10pm. So uh, with that said...

Hi guys?


(For those of you wondering what's going on, here's the original entry. I have to say I LOLd hard. Hi Broly, nice to meet you too. And thanks for signing out and not messin up my gallery... wait, at least I don't think you did. Time to double check now! haha just kidding )

Title: "you left your deviantart on"
damn impressive gallery 8| but im all up on your page lol sign out next time but im going to try and steel some of your fame heres my page [link] signing out now

Resolutions! Got a million of them, but there goes this wise saying that "you can do everything-- just not all at once". So here goes the first ten that come to mind...

1. Better communication. More socializing as well as availability, especially through email. I can be agonizingly slow with responding to messages... gotta change that.

2. A more reasonable pacing for my education; stop cramming in as many classes as possible, and try learning more by taking less.

3. Carry through with my goals, as most of them sadly don't finish themselves; start and keep up with a webcomic. Also a collab short comic with *Kyomu.

4. Not be such a procrastinator... so I can actually make it to Together as One for next New Years!!

5. Try new things... And not get addicted to them. (Like WoW )

6. Get healthy and stay fit, go backpacking, preferably with ~Onmitsu and ~edds-bestfriend around to make sure I'm still alive n breathing.

7. More discipline with self study (especially with traditional mediums for art, and storytelling) and time management (especially with commissions).

8. Regularly blogging down my thoughts and musings over art, music, education, life, dreams, so on...

9. Continue reading and attempting to apply the philosophies from the book, A New Earth.

10. Be kind, be respectful, and be happy!

A quick shout to the guys who most define 2008 for me. I really appreciate you guys!


Wish you all a great and productive 2009! Cheers to a year of change, and hopefully for the better.

HELLSYEAH.
Time to put break plans into MOTION~!

EDIT: Please support in her time of health and financial crisis. You can donate, buy commissions, etc to help... [link] for more info. Thanks!

So you've heard of this cliche: "[incredibly useless and annoying] Japanese schoolgirl gets warped into fantasy world and meets [super hot feminine] guy and lives happily ever after with him."

But you probably haven't heard of Twelve Kingdoms, a series that might start out that way but plays out most differently.

I've been looking for older anime series lately because recent ones fail to capture my loyalty. Older gems like Now and Then, Here and There and Twelve Kingdoms are underrated and lack the fandom or awareness that I feel they deserve. I've only recently discovered 12K, finished it within a matter of days, and it's definitely got me hooked.

12K is an animated series based on a series of novels by Fuyumi Ono, and aired 2002-2003. It is not so much fantasy as it is a mythic story, or a historical drama set in a fictional world. If you are the type to appreciate stories that are told for the sake of storytelling, of well done character growth, of plot twists and ironies and a large cast of unrelated characters whose paths eventually intertwine, of mythical elements and world exploration and (gasp!) no senseless fanservice-- then by all means, please check out this series (and then contribute to the fandom!! haha)

Just a few warnings though-- 1. Chances are you might not like the beginning. But if you can get past the annoyingness of the characters in the beginning, then you're in for a great ride. What starts out as cliche or "wtf?" is all explained eventually and the cliche is made refreshing.
2. It might be helpful to have a list of key terms ready [link] .
3. And lastly, 45 episodes might sound like a lot but in the end it isn't enough; the series kind of ended prematurely and you might be left hungry for more. I'm waiting on the remaining books to be translated and crossing my fingers for the rare chance of an animated sequel.

Places to watch: [link] or [link] or [link]

And why the sudden plug? ~Onmitsu and I wish there was more fandom for it and hope to get at least a few more people in. Here's his review: [link]

That aside, this is the first series in which I've ended up loving a female lead character with as much intensity as I've hated her in the beginning. So yeah. It's Thanksgiving break. You've got some time. Check it out!

Lately I've been doing more reading and watching documentaries. (Especially since it's voting season, so it's nice to get into more depth about just how much the government has been failing us haha just kidding. Right? ) So here are a few videos that I recommend and I hope some of you out there can benefit from them in one way or another. You don't have to agree. But you should keep your mind open!

Meanwhile if you have a documentary on ANYTHING to recommend (yes, I might be interested in watching a 2 hour documentary on underwater basket weaving), then please show it to me! Thanks!

Zeitgeist: [link] .
"What does Christianity, 911 and The Federal Reserve have in common? Watch Zeitgeist to find out and along the way have your belief structures rattled." Conspiracy stories and proofs, and a general plead for us to Wake Up. (I kind of apologize in advance if anyone is offended by the first 1/3rd of the video.) This is long, so you might want to break it up, though I did watch it all in one sitting. Epic. (Also, here's the Wiki on it [link]


Peter Jennings- Ecstasy Rising: [link]
"Most media coverage about recreational psychoactives can be lumped into the broad genre of sensationalist exposé about the terrible dangers of drugs designed to titillate teens and frighten parents. "Ecstasy Rising" stands out mostly because of the very high contrast with the typical news stories about the illegal use of psychoactives. It also stands out because it represents a real effort to document some of the serious failings in the government's 'war on ecstasy' and some of the collateral damage that it has caused."
restated from -Erowid.org (also a recommended site)


Simon Schama's Power of Art:  Politics aside, here's the fun stuff-- documentaries on some old masters: Caravaggio, Bernini, Rembrandt, David, Turner, Van Gogh, Picasso, and Rothko. Some of the most elegantly crafted and engaging documentaries I've seen so far. These documentaries are just so beautiful to watch! Plus Schama has a sense of humor.
Official site: [link] and you can probably find the documentaries themselves on youtube or veoh or so on.

Hey everyone, is doing Sketch cards commissions, you can get some awesome artwork at a great price and really help her out at the same time! She'd appreciate it!

[link]


And as usual, don't forget 's 2D Rock-Off #6: Prehistoric Carnivorous Bunny. (...which is actually on break right now. So check it out now to get your gears ready for the next one!)

And just for the heck of it-- Supernatural season 4 is just badass so far.