Accomplishments... Questionmark

Question mark because I don't really know if I should call these accomplishments.

I've been reading "The Little Lady Agency," a chick-flick type of book. I haven't read a chick-flick or watched a chick-flick in a long while, so I have to say it's been quite entertaining. I'm having good laughs with this one :)

I'm also getting more active on my DeviantART account again, which is good news to me. I'm planning on doing more comic strips and jewelry crafts, and hopefully making this the central blog to explain thoughts about them as I see fit.

House dance has been MARVELOUS. The class is over; Monday's was the last day. But boy was it a great last day; we got into a circle and danced one by one in the middle, then groups of four or so to get comfortable with dancing and grooving to the beat. The teacher was great, the vibe was great, the people were phenomenal. I'm loving the dance.

I also went to the breakdance session last night, and that place is PACKED. So many people go there, especially now that it's the summer - and not just so many people, but so many good people go. They're really amazing. I managed to whip out my sketchbook and do quite a bunch of gestural sketches to jot down moves and body positions, but was sadly intimidated myself to practice for long. I did go out there and bust some moves, but I was also just fascinated by watching everyone else's styles and power moves.

I leave this message with a little video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjkAq3LWwOs

Seiyuu Revelation

Well, while I was watching FMA: The Brotherhood, I kept wondering why Ling Yao's voice sounded so familiar. At first I thought it was probably just because seiyuu voices sound similar. But for some reason, I had the hunch that Ling's voice was extremely characteristic.

I forgot about it for a bit, until on a whim I decided to check it out today and see who it actually was.

It's freaking Mamoru Miyano, the dude who voiced Tamaki Suou, Yagami Light, and Death the Kid, among many others.




Man, this is a little unfair: the guy has looks, a great voice, and amazing acting skills.

Starless Fright

There were no stars tonight.

I came back home from my house dance class (excellent fun, by the way) and walked in the dark back to my front driveway when I decided to look up at the stars. Whenever I walk home in the dark, for some reason the long, empty driveway always prompts me to look up and into the sky.

Tonight, there was not a single star.

And I admit, it freaked me out just a little bit.


It's like trying to see the stars in this mist. (The photo is of dad and sister, walking the cobbled streets of Erice on the island of Sicily to dinner.)

Woah there, Google

I went on Google today to search for something, and look what popped up:

Yes, that's right. Google's page was illustrated for Comic-Con San Diego. I am actually shocked; I've only seen Google change its page for holidays, never for something such as a comic convention! Quite a revelation. I admit I'm somewhat amused and happy about it, actually.

I guess when you think about it, the event IS pretty big - for one thing, the tickets always sell out way beforehand, and big names probably attend each year. I hear Hayao Miyazaki's going to be there this year... (sense my underlying tones of jealousy for anyone who sees him.)

Also, maybe Google has some sort of mechanism for getting your own advertising on that page... wonder how much effort it would take to get some sort of "Caroline" day on there...

When life gets you down...

Well, what do you do?

Personally, it depends. It varied today from drawing to watching anime to singing and playing piano to feeling utterly unmotivated to do anything. I'm sure on a different day the activities would have been different.









It's felt like a misty day I had a year ago in Sicily.

Train WIP

I already posted it on my deviantART, but hey, we love repetition don't we?

I'm trying out cell-shading. I have a habit of not mentally being able to stand doing cell-shading type of coloring, much as I like to look at other people's renditions of it. I just couldn't do it myself; my instinct was to blend and shape through the shading.


Ahem well. This piece is probably going to take a while to complete fully, but I'll be working on it intermittently. In the in between time, I'm working on other things - I made three pairs and a half of earrings this morning, as well as watching Return of the King for the first time in a very long time. I still can't believe that movie came out five or six years ago... I still remember the day I went to watch it in the theater. I'd also finally turned thirteen and made the cutoff for PG13 according to my mother (which is why I didn't get to see Two Towers in theaters, and Fellowship was just that I watched it at my cousin's house).

Life: A Fruitful Couple of Days

Well, two days ago I finished my comic and submitted it to the competition. I'm still feeling quite accomplished because of the amount of effort I dished into that project, and now I'm raring to work on the rest of my projects that have accumulated.

The past couple of days has been productive on some levels in terms of work. I've been around people for most of the time, but my artsy friends allow me plenty of time to doodle as we chat, Quinkee with her drawings and Sim with her knitting. I have a couple of sketches waiting to be colored, one to be digitally inked and colored (and that I'm quite excited to finish). Perhaps I will post the sketch here in this post... ?

Last night was definitely a tops - me and Sameera got to go and see Erica for the first time in a long, long while. I was joking earlier with Erica about how we saw each other more often during the hectic college freshman school year and that once school was over, for some reason we didn't see each other afterward. I blame it on her school being semester system and mine being on quarter system; I think by the time I got out of school, she was already back doing summer school...

Whatever the case, a grand stroll in the dark through the not-so dangerous streets this time (unlike the night before, on my freaky though fun escapade with Quinkee through a definitely more shady part of town), and I felt some sense of accomplishment for finally having seen her again. I really missed that girl.

Oh, and did I mention, I saw some hilarious photographs that Sameera brought over of her parents in their younger years? Of course, she had to use my scanner because they didn't have one, but it was definitely worth it for me.

As projects come along and go, I'll for sure keep up with project updates. I just don't have any scanned sketches of the ones I'm definitely working on right now, and a few things still are being kept under wraps ;D That's called a surprise.

And actually, instead of a sketch that I can't seem to find, you are getting an oekaki I drew ages ago that I believe is already on one of my deviantART accounts:

Congratulations - to myself!

Omedetou, Carol!

Translation: I have finished my twelve-page manga contest entry! Hurray!

In celebration, take a look at a shrunken version of the GRAYSCALE scan, which I went through some trouble to accomplish because I had to stitch three images together (as usual, click to see a bigger, better view):

I may eventually decide to upload the entire comic somewhere on the internet (probably my deviantART account or my mangabullet account), but for now this will remain a mystery, likely until the contest is over.

Wish me and Quinkee luck! She's also entering the contest :)

Trouble trouble

Nothing much happened yesterday except that I cooked, washed, and drove my sister around to her various activities. In between, I finished erasing stray pencil lines on my comic and shading in what I wanted shaded.

At some point I was waiting for my mom to come home so she could take me to her office to finally scan these large comic pages in her scanner since ours was too small, and my dad calls into the window from outside, "Caroline! Come out and help me a second." Apparently our watering system suffered an injury and so part of our backyard was dying from thirst. We hoisted buckets and went around manually watering the poor things, several roses and a beautiful but dejected-looking maple.

My mom took me to her office sometime in the evening, and the chaos began. She'd left her work laptop at home, so we couldn't access the scanner, and she went back home to get it. In the meantime, I was trying to see if I could somehow hook my own computer into the system, but clearly failed.

When my mom got back with the laptop, it was time for excitement. I kept worrying along the way - a scanner on a copying machine?? It scans into PDF files?? Does it go t 300 dpi??

Eventually the scanning started.

Unfortunately, while I could convert the PDF files into images, and the scanner scanned at 300 dpi, and the process went quickly, the one snag was that it only scanned "black and white" and had no "grayscale" option.

There goes all my shading effort into huge masses of black and white...

I am now in the process of scanning them a piece at a time into my small scanner at home, after which I'll have to stitch the images together.




To the right is a preview of the terrible disaster that is "black and white":

"No one's gonna take me alive..."

The Half Blood Prince

An old drawing of Harry I did once upon a time.

I went to the premier of The Half Blood Prince last night, and boy was the theater PACKED. We arrived a little over an hour early and already had a little difficulty finding seats. We did end up finding some nice ones in the third row. Can't say the same for the bigger groups of people who arrived after us, though.

Anyone who's read the actual book will already know what happens, so I don't expect I will spoil anything for anyone. Those who haven't read the book will likely be confused.

Because I'd watched the Order of the Pheonix earlier in the day and the Half Blood Prince picks up exactly after the Dumbledore and Voldemort duel, it was great to feel the continuation between the fifth and sixth movies.

My first favorite line came when McGonagall told Harry to hurry up to potions class, and to "Bring Mr. Weasley with you; he looks far too happy there." The two were idling in the hallway watching the other students go to class because originally they were not going to take Potions at the NEWT level and subsequently had a free period; McGonagall soon reversed that situation for the both of them.

The other memorable moment was definitely not on the part of the film, but on the theater goers. As I'm sure many people are aware, a great number of people in the fandom are shipping the couple of Snape and Draco, and they certainly had their moment in our theater when Snape forcefully told Draco to leave Slughorn's party with him. A massive array of wolf calls followed the two as they left, and when Snape pinned Draco against a wall it began again. My humor was definitely tickled but it wasn't over until Draco angrily said, "I don't need protection!" The final straw for the audience who burst out laughing and cat calling.

I always thought Draco was rather dashing in the sixth book in terms of his character, and he still is rather dashing on the screen.

Ron's expression after eating Romilda Vane's chocolates laced with love potion was also quite hilarious; that sequence was probably the most amusing I'd seen Ron's face get.

Ron and Harry's conversation about Ginny and Hermione is also a memorable dialogue. I'm not sure where they came up with "Harry should talk about how nice girls' skin can be an asset in attractiveness," but well they did.

I didn't realize that the Felix Felicis scene where Harry finally actually consumes the liquid luck would be so funny; Harry's personality was great during that sequence.
"How do you feel?"
*Beaming smile* "... EXcellent!"
"Good, now remember - blah blah blah-"
"Yes, well, I think I'll go to Hagrid's now!"
"Wait Harry, remember our plan?!"
"Yes but... I've got a good feeling about Hagrid's." He exits the portrait and gives a cheery "Hello!" to some random students coming in.
Slughorn meanwhile is sneaking around the precious plants when Harry cheerily saunters over and gives him a shock. He talks for a little with the professor, still in his hilarious cheery manner, before turning to leave the grounds to Hagrid's.
"Harry!"
"Professor!" --> Probably the best expression and voice he's ever had behind this line, win to Harry
"How did you get out of the castle??"
"Through the front door!"
Then final line of Harry's during his Felix Felicis induced humor that amused me a great deal is definitely, "They also got those pincers..." after which he proceeds to mime some said pincers.

Well that was a lot. I'm sure there are a ton more I'm forgetting - like how irritating but amusing Lavender was in the film. I didn't realize they were going to make her such a ditz, but well, they succeeded in making her rather annoying.

They did spend a while building up the Ron x Hermione deal, and they added a lot of what I like to call fan-service scenes with Harry and Ginny, which I thought were a little too much but the cat calls in the theater were probably worth the suffering. Even Dumbledore kept remarking to Harry about girls, as one of the first scenes with Dumbledore picking up Harry from Little Winging clearly showed.

I'm sure we were all just waiting for the dead things in the water to come up and attack Harry while he was in the cave, and we all in the theater knew when the exact moment was about to come. You could feel everyone curling up in their seats and when the hand finally shot out of the water and grabbed him, some woman or girl screamed incredibly fiercely, so loudly I thought for a second it was part of the film until I realized there shouldn't be a woman's voice screaming in that scene.

Alan Rickman also wins. His subtle facial expressions as Snape were phenomenal, from when he makes the unbreakable vow to when he finally does the deed.

Young Tom Riddle was also great, especially when he was asking Slughorn about the Horcruxes.

I suspect I should end this now, before I go ahead an post the entire movie down.

Celebrations

My friend Sim and I have officially become a year older. I'm still amazed that our birthdays are only five days apart :)



Needless to say, we had a celebration, and I'm sure we both felt rather full after the affair.

I'm hoping she'll make good use of the Glamour Knit patterns I gave her, and my astonishment at how the earrings I made matched her dress perfectly will not go undone. As she said, "It was like divine intervention!", with like being the key word.

A noisy reminder of the party's festivities accompanied me all the way home as I drove back from her house in the hills; Quink had given us each a little egg animal that mewed every time it was jolted, and I could swear as I was driving that it was mewing along to the beat of the music. The bass would bang and then the cat would sang.

Thanks everyone :)

Departure

Yesterday morning I went with my mom to the airport to send off my grandmother, Abu, who was leaving to go back home to Shanghai. I'd been kind of down about it, and actually getting to the airport was surreal.

Airports are associated with many different things. The airport here, when I enter the Departure zone, always brings some sort of excitement but also dread for the exhausting plane haul ahead. So it was strange to walk through the aisles to the airline where Abu would be taking off.

I also found out something new about airports. They tell you you can't go past the security area if you're not a passenger, and ask that you present a boarding pass before letting you go in. My mom was worried about Abu, who didn't speak English, and asked to go through and into the gates. I thought the answer would be a flat out no, but through a little-known airport protocol we were able to lead Abu straight to her departure gate.

The house is very strange without Abu in it now; even though I was in college for the majority of the time she was here, her presence became a part of the space. I guess that is some sort of semblance to the way the house must have felt after I moved into my dorm and began college, only this time I'm on the side with the empty space.

I'm glad though that she can go back to the more lively city of Shanghai; I think life here was a little too quiet and slow for her. She's still a kicking old lady, and she loves her strolls through the streets and shops.

Life: Project and Image Update

My twelve page comic is coming along nicely. It has been great practice for me; I've never drawn comic on this size paper before, so it's been new getting used to the proportions of the page and the large size.

I'm currently finishing the sketching on the last two pages, after which I will need to also draw up the cover. The daunting part that still lies ahead is, of course, the inking and shading (or as most call it, toning) portions of the entire process. Should be fun, though~

In the meantime, a little update on my sentiments and imagery. I think this photo I took in Napoli sums up what I would love right now; a good sale on the brightly colored aspects of life that require money, which unfortunately I currently am lacking. As unfortunate as it may be, money does make things possible, like the dance classes I am taking and the art supplies I am seeking.

The world is still good though, today, in the land of Carologica. Worrying really doesn't do too much.