niji to the bug

doodle dump doodle dump~

( 18 pictures under the cut )

changed my blog header, title, and subtitle for the first time in over 3 years. arthur waley and bai juyi and huangshan just haven't been me for a while.

didn't manage to draw much these past two months, though I was able to doodle something at least once a week

( 14 pics under cut — a good mix of gintama, exo, and original )

Back on campus and back at work. Jetlag has made me pull 2 all-nighters straight. sanxian tells me sunlight helps fight jetlag. Well, yesterday I spent like half an hour outside in 102°F/39°C and mostly direct sunlight on my walk back from work. That just ended up making me woozy, and I took a "nap" from which I did not awaken until midnight. orz

Sort of had a vacation the week prior during which the small brother person finished watching the third season of Community (and I rewatched most of it with him), and I saw Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead for the first time (and he rewatched them with me). The rest of the time, I played Sacred Stones while he heckled all my strategies (he'd beaten it once back in '09).

I'm really tempted to crosspost the photos my roommates sent me from when they were bearsitting for me while I was away, as well as pics of the new bear — a rilakkuma plush — I bought because his ears reminded me of egg custard tarts. But I realize bear photos for me are the equivalent of cat photos for those among you who are cat owners in that we personally derive a great deal more pleasure from them than those who have to scroll past while reading their daily journal backlog. |D

So ahh without further ado, that bimonthly doodle dump I've been procrastinating on:

( 17 new pics under the cut, mostly gintama, gif-heavy )

And finally, it's been about a year now for me personally, but I think pseudo_tsuga and I have been definitively dragged (kicking and screaming) back into kpop thanks in no small part to the usual suspect, ghostdrive. The other parts are credit due to exo-m (so far), and Tao being a criminally cute cutie. Although kpop had been sneaking its way back onto my mp3 player in droves this summer because I like the way Bang Yong Guk raps, B1A4 is fun, and the new f(x) mini-album is their best yet (more Amber is always welcome ♥)... but exo is definitely where it's at right now, I can't lie. /)u(\

pseudo_tsuga and I grudgingly look forward to whatever insidious plans ghostdrive has in store for us, sIGH. ♥

× A piece showed up on tumblr radar today that I'd suggested for Daily Deviation back in 2009. I clicked through and read my written description; I sounded like a salesperson. I used to be really involved with deviantart back in high school. I would read into all the gallery mods and try to figure out how they clicked; what started as a way to get my biases recognized soon turned into a game of manipulating people with words. At first I would try to get each of my friends featured at least once as a way to show my appreciation (a moderately successful endeavor, in fact). It wasn't long before I started suggesting pieces I personally did not even like expressly because I knew what the mods liked and could pitch it to them in a way that would sell. And, unsurprisingly, it wasn't long after that that suggesting DDs lost its appeal for me.

× This is the first year in longer than I care to remember that I've remembered the Sand Dance anniversary but let it slip past. I have forgotten it in the past, but I've always done something to commemorate it when I do remember (which is most years). This is the first year wherein I was so stressed out by other things that I purposely let it fall by the wayside. I'd originally intended to finish up a certain project I'd thought up in November 2011 and started in January. It feels like missing my children's birthday. The year's not off to a good start.

× Went out for hotpot with the roommates last night. It was really good. I haven't had hotpot in a long time. Last time the roomies went out for hotpot, I was too busy with either work or student org obligations (I don't remember). We really don't hang out anymore; lately it's been more just them telling me what all happened after they come back. We used to have inside jokes; now it's more like they have inside jokes and have to make an extra effort to explain things to me. Kinda convenient that I already find cheese fondue funny in a Gintama context, since that's one of the big ones....

× The Gintama anime could not have picked a better time to wrap up its current season. I'm a horrible multitasker (more like, I can't multitask at all). One fandom at at time is how I roll. The last series that had my heart so completely (lived for it from week to week, screamed and cried when it was over, wrote love letters to it) was of course A:TLA back in high school. I didn't get into it until the summer of 2008, meaning I marathoned seasons 1 & 2 during the tail end of the infamous one year hiatus before season 3 aired. I lucked out in a similar way with my Gintama experience. Anyway, you'd think that after waiting 4 years for The Legend of Korra, I'd be more adapted to waiting but nope, haha. The opposite. I don't know how I'm going to survive until April 21 for new episodes, and each week after that....

"More than the morning routine~♪"

Click if you want the actual resolution (and tl;dr comments on my OCs ._.) Seriously, the full-size image nearly breaks my layout. o_o

I'm still awkwardly straddling this artblock. Watch, it'll be halfway through March when inspiration finally strikes and I'll want to draw a lunar new year picture. -_- ...But hopefully I'll be back in the game and drawing in time for the Lantern Festival?

...Gotta survive those midterms first. Ulp.

I miss having a scanner (I'm terrible with a camera). And, uh, yeah, that's a notepad from dad's office......


Finished version will be part of a rotating banner at sand_dance.

I've lost skill and familiarity drawing with pen and paper (no surprise there), but I haven't lost the "sense" so to speak. My eye is still as critical as ever; it's frustrating that I've grown so sloppy. Even as I struggle, the result still survives the horizontal-flip test. I still know what about the general anatomy is off, even if I can't quite fix it, being so out of practice.

So is one saddled with an "artist's eye" for eternity, forever judging and wishing to capture even after one has long since lost the skill? What a sad, sad existence...

If you watch either my deviantART gallery or sand_dance, then I owe you an apology in that you've already seen these sketches incorporated into larger, completed works. But I generally don't post complete works here to avoid redundancy, so here are the "works-in-progress" in their original form.

( Long time no Sand Dance sketch dump )

Apologizing again to my overlapping dA friends who saw this days ago...
So, after making Sailor Katara (see comments for Sailors Toph, Azula, Mai, Zuko, and Sokka!) on the spur of the moment, I couldn't stop until I had turned my brainchildren into Sailor Senshi, too.

( SAILOR SENSHI OMAKE! )

She has a Y chromosome
She is a girl
Her name is Asian



( Colored version here )

Eirendi is an Old Norse word meaning "message" or "tiding".

"Pizzicato Rain" was my first attempt to write video game style music. Pizzicato strings and flute. Shisaa's theme from Sand Dance.

( Pizzicato Rain 1:26 )

I had a wonderful dream. I plugged my piano into my laptop, started up OpenCanvas, and when I played, it CGed a picture. Yes, I know...wishful thinking. OTZ

Today was my first attempt with FL Studio — a remix of "Path" — this was before I figured out how to adjust dynamics (volume) and and tempo (speed)

( Epic fail, Take 1 )

Then I hunted around for some free soundfonts and found a bunch of neat Arabic instruments. Sand Dance's theme is meant to be played by an erhu, a long-necked, two-stringed, traditional Chinese bowed instrument, but I had to make do with what I had on hand.

( Sand Dance theme, musical sketch )

I'm not disabling downloads for these two because they're half-assed excuses for music, pardon my Klatchian. So if you really wanted to that badly, you could find the mp3s under my "Original Compositions" folder on my 4shared account.