Something very exciting has happened today. The t-shirt winner is announced [link]
It will be very fun to see people wearing the design. A first, for sure! I will definitely take many many many photos.

I wish I could draw a celebration drawing, but I am so sleepy. On the upside, this weekend I will be able to sleep a bunch, paint a bunch, and draw a bunch.... after I finish a little bit of homework. And determine what I need to do for a certain term paper. And garden. And care for my pets.. When will it end???

AnimeNext artist alley: 99% likely to attend
AnimeNext Art Show: 100% intending to submit at least 4 paintings, hopefully 6.
ANext Goal: hotel need? weekend figure out

Grammar need? who?

Something I realized for paintings: I need smaller canvases. I will go buy some Friday.
Something I realized about my work style: I do not like to put off work until the last minute because problems only get worse if you ignore them.

I wish to share my current painting, but it is currently in "the uncanny valley" where you cannot be sure if the work is correct or creepy. This weekend's goal: get out of the uncanny valley.

Since I won't be artist alley tabling at anime boston, I am going to be painting my brains out for it instead.
But, like many intentions in life, it's still restricted by time and resources.

It's my general feel of things that the next two to three weeks will be hellish because of grad school.
Which is unfortunate, because it means that the actual amount of time I have to paint will be quite restricted...


I've also just recently noticed that anime next is merely two weeks apart from anime boston, but Otakon is a good five weeks after AnimeNext. One convention between ANext and Otakon is AnimeExpo... but it is all the way in California, so it's not likely I will go unless I do really really unbelievably well at Next and Boston. I will certainly try!

I have two paintings that may need a touch up but are otherwise ready to go.
But I also want to work on several new paintings:
A painting based on Ophelia
A painting based on Water Nymphs
Perhaps the Night Watch.
Perhaps something Adventure Time.

And finish paintings that have been started:
A Sailor Jupiter portrait
A painting based on Leda and the Swan

It doesn't seem realistic to expect to be able to complete all of the painting ideas I have by Boston, and even among the ideas I do have, some of them are too complex to pull off in the amount of time I have... I would only have about a week per painting, and it's difficult to find time to paint. Whenever I do find time to paint I realize I have to do more homework: This homework thing just appears whenever I think I have time to paint, draw, or write.

BUT seeing how there is no homework right now (Well there is, but it can wait) I will begin painting at 8:30pm EST at [link] Now back to HW.

I will be putting in at least six pieces into animeboston 2013's art show.
Paintings that will be making a second debut:

Eva Catching Sahaquiel


Sailor Neptune Wave
I may alter this piece to keep with Anime Boston's Art Show regulations "Subject matter for all works should be drawn from the styles of Japanese culture including, but not limited to, manga and anime." Plus people were unhappy about her face. Some people were happy, but many were confused... Must re-evaluate to see if altering the face will alter the meaning/purpose.

NEW pieces --
No preview: A painting about "Princess Tutu"
No preview: A painting with Shinji and Rei
No preview: A painting with Asuka
No preview: Princess Sailor Jupiter

There may be more than 6 pieces. Topics of interest: Adventure Time, Ghibli movies, Sora no Woto, Nichijo, Gurren Lagann, Lucky Star, kino's journey, jigoku shoujo, Sailor Moon, miniature wood paintings, (your suggestion here, especially on any post 2011 anime)


animenext 2013: artist alley table not confirmed, art show 100% likely unless no space at con.
T-shirt contest winner still undetermined: [link] so I don't know if I'll be tabling or not.

Sorry about any strange typos and misspellings. They are happening because I'm very sleepy. I will fix them tomorrow.

I did not know princess tutu episode 1 is on youtube [link] youtube.com/watch?v=na9GxDuuD00
Ahiru's voice sounds really good.
Not too crazy about Mythos being called "Myuto" when ahiru is named "Duck".
Also Mythos' voice.. lol why so old man?

Check out my time lapses on youtube. I have many!

Hey yall, I just took a survey on deviantart.
They gave me a couple code to get 15% off of something, like a print or stie goods or I forgot.

LpY937EsJ

I will not be using it, so if any of y'all need a code. there ya go.

The survey got me thinking about this site.
I really should be working on a midterm right now that will contribute towards my current career goals but all my stuff is on here! I have to care.

1. Integrate youtube and ustream/livestream into this site.
It's absolutely ridiculous how this site has a redirect page. The redirect page absolutely discourages people from sharing links to eternal sources. Youtube links should be integrated so that instead of a redirect site, the youtube video is embedded into the site. Youtube users should also be allowed to comment on this site with their youtube ID.

2. Allow facebook-deviantart and tumblr/twitter-deviantart and possibly linkedin-deviantart integration
People should be allowed to comment, share, and "like" pictures.
Any stories and links to the picture should be displayed to the owner (like tumblr, facebook). Being more integrated might help reduce the shame-factor associated with the site.

3. the gallery stats page needs to be more useful.
It needs to not only provide data in a better manner (dashboard, weekly, monthly, yearly breakdown, event-based breakdown) but also identify how the user can improve performance (do most visitors visit in the summer? in the winter? On mondays? What kinds of pictures are the most popular, and why? What are the internal and external sources of traffic?)

4. Content must be more dense.
I don't know about anyone else but I'd like to have more than 4 pieces displayed on the top of the page.
There's too much empty space on the site. Maybe the site can offer smaller but better thumbnails (allow users to customize scale/rotation of thumbs through a site app / have taller or shorter thumbs?) so that more of them can be displayed in a row. This would also address the problem of this site requiring way too much useless scrolling. (unlike google where you want to scroll down to see the other search results in case the top 4 were irrelevant, on deviantart I hardly ever ever ever ever have a desire or purpose to scroll down.)

5. Prints are too expensive. Who buys them??!
I would just get rid of this whole business division or figure out a way to make it more competitive. Or maybe outsource it to someone who does it way better, like printkeg, shutterfly, vistaprint (not great for art prints but they're good for business cards and text-based posters), maaaaaaaaybe cafepress (althought they are kind of doing lousy too).

6. Groups front pages need to be more community-empowering
I'd rather search pictures by tags, or look through collaborative galleries that would function like "shows". Groups are owner-glorifying, and their front pages are not as useful or content-dense as they should be. They should be community-oriented not owner-oriented. I only visit a group's front page ONCE to join them and then ONCE agin to leave them. They're that useless.


I don't think deviantart's business startegy should be in products, like prints. Unless they figure out a way to make the prints more attractive (more showings/demos? better quality? lower cost? professional preference?) it's kinda lose-lose since you're trying to sell a physical product but you have this website that is largely unrelated to the physical products. This is why I also think premium subscriptions are a very poor way to maintain the site. There are too many other free alternatives like facebook, tumblr, blogspot with BETTER social tools.
Charge money for what is free on other sites that have a bigger potential for audience? Seriously?

I think deviantart's business strategy should be in offering the best or the most unique but useful service. Probably more unique but useful since there's just no topping all those photo sites like instagram and tumblr and even imgur. That's why I think deviantart could really find it s future in being a social-hub where people from all these other major social networking sites could participate without having to bother deviantart.

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I was trying to draw for the animenext t-shirt contest this last friday.. but.. my god, it was hard. Terribly hard.

Usually when I try to draw something, I have an idea of what kinds of things I want in the picture, and then all I have to do is draw the ideas to scale on the medium. The idea is like a quick flash of shapes.. There's multiple reasons why drawing was so hard.
1. I haven't drawn in a while
2. I have to draw on paper in a while
3. I haven't drawn from my mind in a while

I must've spent a good 40 minutes trying to draw one squirrel-like character (animals! Agh!!), changing its pose and scale each time, until finally I settled to one pose and one scale because I had given up, not because this pose and this size was the best.

The human girl was no easier to draw either.. I kept thinking about how I wanted her pose to feel (whimsical, curious, active) but I couldn't really find a pose that really expressed all these things correctly... I did put her down with some pose in the end, but I want to fix it. I just don't know how.

Now it is Sunday.. I had so much homework I didn't have time to draw at all. Tomorrow I have a job interview, Tuesday I need to prepare myself for creating a presentation for next week, and Wednesday is packed from sunrise to after class (9PM).

I'm worried that, even if I get a good concrete idea, that I won't have enough time to execute it. And having just enough time to execute an idea isn't good enough this time around -- I have to have some time to mess up a few times since it's been quite a while since I've been able to draw anything.

It would be nice if I could enter this contest... but I guess it won't be the end of the world if I can't enter. I can just not table at animenext. It's close enough that I can afford to risk it all on paintings instead...

It would be nice to get a table though. It would motivate me to draw more once the school year lets out. If there's no table at animenext I will probably spend my summer studying statistics, hopefully interning, and being afraid of my next semester's classes.


This is an interesting vision of summer.
One of my reasons for creating paintings for otakon in 2012 because I was afraid that once I started grad school that I would have no more free time to paint.
I wanted to go out with a bang, so to speak. But after Otakon I felt tremendously encouraged, and I thought it was great how painting was bringing people closer to em rather than me having to work to be closer to people.
But maybe.. just maybe.. I did go out with a bang. Or I will. Sigh.
Wouldn't it be great if I could astro-project myself, and one of me could paint, and one of me could go to this college and pursue a career?

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