Somehow, I just can't get away from it...
From witches who could change into cats with magic
spells, to tribes of anthropomorphic tigers
living in the jungles of Malaysia, to
bloodthirsty werecats of Japan who would prey
on humans for sustenance, tales of werecats
rival their more well-known werewolf cousins in
number.
As a werecat, you are aggressive, fiercely
independant, short-tempered and prone to
violent outbursts. You can also be very kind
though, by protecting those you care for from
those who wish to do them harm. Those who
befriend you are very lucky (as long as they
stay on your good side!)
Who is your inner Shapeshifter?
brought to you by Quizilla
11.19.04 @ 08:37 PM EST [link]
Quizes
How, amusing...
08.16.04 @ 02:49 PM EST [
link]
SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
I need to give someone a good, rib-cracking hug. My Corel Painter came in the mail today! Lucky day! Happy Day!
08.16.04 @ 12:11 PM EST [link]
Wai! The Squealing Inner Fan-girl in all of us.
Yay! I'm getting Corel Painter 8 in the Mail! Wai! Now, if only the little hurricane doesn't get in my way, I'll be happy. Plus, it comes with a cool little imprinted messanger style bag. Maybe I won't have to buy a new book bag for my last two semesters of school after all.
08.12.04 @ 02:45 PM EST [link] [2175 Comments]
I swear, I’m getting to be a grumpy old (wo)man. AFO
Well, let’s talk AFO, shall we?
Hmm, as a convention, I’m disappointed. I thought that since it was in its fifth year, it would be better than MetroCon (only in its second year). You can sense the big “but” at the end of that sentence, I’m sure. Not saying anything against people who live in Orlando, heaven knows I used to live there, but it seems like almost all of the cute people skipped town.
I was definitely not impressed with the organization of the place. Obviously, it’s a con, so it’s not going to be too organized, but I expected better. Just comparing it to MetroCon, Metro was much better organized, the staff was better informed, and they had a better dealers’ room. Technically, AFO had a bigger one, but, from the 5 seconds I was in the dealers’ room, the selection was much poorer and the tables smaller.
So, anyway, we get there around 4:30 on Saturday. Not the usual time for Con-goers, but fairly normal for me. Registration told us it was going to be $40 per person for a two day pass. HUH? Most of Saturday was gone, and Sunday is usually nothing to be proud of. Plus $40 is the three day pass price. So, HELL no. The pass for Saturday? $25 each. Let’s see, we get there an hour before the dealers’ room closes, which is the big draw for me, and they want to charge us the full-day’s rate? Grrr.
Then we ask about getting a table at their Artists’ Alley. They point us over to Information. Information says they don’t know—they’ll check on it. Half an hour later, still no sign of the person who was going to “check” on it. I find the Naruto cosplayer who was going to do a switch with me and we talk for a while. He says that registration happens in the Artists’ Alley (he saw a sign).
I go check, get the table (she only charged me for half of one since I was only going to be there a little while), and then go back to where Naruto cosplayer (whose name I still don’t know) and Bart are talking. I guess the chick who was going to “check” on things decided that she needed to check her colon or something, ‘cause I still didn’t see her.
So, anyway, we wander over to the table and do a little set-up. Bart wanders into the dealers’ room before it closes and came back to grab me to get my approval of a few things. Our loot was small and pathetic, which is why I say their dealers’ room was lacking. If they had a good dealers’ room, we would have spent much more money.
Speaking of the dealers’ room, what is with the YaOI guy? Bart was looking through some doujin, and the YaOI guy was so concerned that he was making a mistake. And then I come up to look at the pile, and he wants to take away the H-sketch book that Bart had picked out. I know that some people just kind of assume that if you’re a girl, then you ONLY look at YaOI and if you’re a boy you ONLY look at H stuff, but that’s just not true. And that little bit of gender discrimination definitely seems to have riled me up.
I guess it’s easier for me to get riled right now, and maybe that’s why all two of my Con reports sound so pissy, but I still think that was rude.
Going back to the actual sitting at the table thing, this cute little girl asked me for an anime-style portrait. She wasn’t little, little, but she was still young…early teens maybe.
(I feel so oooooold! Everyone is so YOUNG!) So, I drew her. She had an adorable nose too. I should have gotten pictures.
It seems like some people are afraid of flipping through a catalog without permission. It’s got sheet-protectors on it, so I don’t know why. Then there are the others who not only aren’t afraid of flipping through the catalog, they also touch the pictures on display that are without protection. *le sigh* So, next con I will have everything out in sheet-protectors and have signs up to tell people to browse.
I had lots of nice people come over to browse. There were a few stereotypical OTAKU (in the Japanese sense) come over, but I shall not dwell on the negatives, save for the one person who could not count the tails in Naruto’s butt and then compared it to POKEMON. I barely tolerate such comparison from family members over the age of 50. Evisceration would be too easy an end for one such as that person. Fortunately, I was rather apathetic (and headachy from the loud music being played) and too hungry to go over the table. Our picnic lunch was stuck in the car for a majority of the Con because of rain.
Three nice gents from the back of beyond wandered over and we talked for a while. Would you believe that one of them doesn’t even have a phone line to his house? How weird.
A nice young man wanted me to do a sketch of Kakashi from Naruto. Since I didn’t have any reference material for Kakashi, he drew a nice sketch in my book to work from. I think he was happy about the final result (happy enough that he decided to get a portrait done). I wasn’t as pleased with the portrait, and I don’t think he was either, but that’s the lumps, I guess. I think the Kakashi sketch was kick-ass though. I’ll have to do a drawing like that.
He said that a lot of Kakashi fan-art made him too muscular, which I’ll agree with. I think the point that some people miss is that Kakashi is a ninja. Gigantic muscles and stealth do *not* work, believe me. My brother is very muscled and he’s told every baseball season to not work out because otherwise he can’t swing a bat. A ninja should be cut and toned, not muscular. Otherwise they would be very bad at being fast, flexible, and stealthy. Just my two cents on the matter.
Hmm, more people took business cards this time around (rather than me handing them out). I got some interest in merchandise, which I can totally understand. Personally, I don’t buy prints very often. I have no place to put them. But something useful, like a mug or a shirt, is something that I would buy to support the artist. It’s useful, and it won’t sit around with the rest of my papers. I should get a book to stick stuff into, but there are a lot of other things on my plate right now.
So, back to the Con report…One person asked for a sketch of Spike for a friend of his who looks and acts just like Spike. We were supposed to meet on Sunday morning, and in fact, I had planned on being there, but that didn’t happen. And I did the sketch too…
I was surprised by how many people said they didn’t like Ed (from Cowboy Be-Bop). I guess she really is a character that you either hate or love.
Hmm, I guess that’s it.
08.10.04 @ 06:25 PM EST [link]
MetroCon...
Well, I’m back from MetroCon (not that I actually went anywhere), and have a few more days to go before I finish catching up on my sleep. @_@ I had a bit of fun there. It’s still a convention, so there were a few snafus. For example, me getting there around 9:00 a.m. to put my stuff up in the art show and the art show not actually getting up and going until afternoon. (There was a wonderfully nice lady there who let me put my stuff down so I could go to Tea. Names are very difficult for me to remember, and I’m very ashamed of this because she was so nice.)
So, I guess I’ll give a sort of Con report.
Day 0:
Well, prior to the Con, my friend Wes came in from Texas. Hi, Wes!
I felt really bad for him because we were busy with prepping for the art show and selling prints.
Going into the Con: 4-5 hours of sleep per night for about 11 days
Day 1:
9:00 a.m. No open art show room in which I was to display my stuff. (Damnit! If I have to get my
ass out of bed at GOD-AWFUL in the morning, so do the rest of you!)
9:30 a.m. Various excuses and ambiguous times for the opening of the art show room
10:00 a.m. Nice volunteer-lady from Necro got the door open and let me put my stuff in.
Also, when registration was supposed to start
10:40-ish Registration started. Got registered.
11:00 a.m. Went to Tea.
1:00-ish Got back to the Con. They were finishing putting up my stuff. (About 15 pieces) Note that this was supposed to be up around 9:00 a.m. Do you think I sound too bitter about this?
After that, we went to the Anime Palace table and spent loads. They love seeing us come there, I think, because we always drop a couple of hundred every time we see them. I forgot to pick up the Hyper Police DVD we’re missing. We went home for a little bit of nappage and then came back around 6:00 p.m. and got together with friends, then went out to eat at Trang’s (a local Vietnamese place). Then, we stayed up until god-awful in the morning again. I think.
Day 2:
I woke up at some point in time in the morning and worked on my costume. I had made crepe batter the day before, so Bart cooked them in the morning. Also had bacon. I love bacon. Crispy pieces of grease soaked meat…
Dressed as Unagi from Popotan, got my stuff together, and went to the Con around 1:00? 3:00? I was very out of it.
I love biiiiiig, male grins when I’m trying. I also love my tail. Thank you, Yeeni!
We had a bit of confusion trying to find the table I reserved, but it worked out well. There were a couple of guys waiting for the cosplay to start (at 5:30) by my table. We set up and the boys went to go take pictures. It was pretty fun. I got to meet lots of people (a couple of them were even really, really cute, like Ash and Tidus) and I handed out lots of business cards. It was really fun. I loved everyone who stopped by my table, even the confused ones who thought I was information. (Okay, so those kind of annoyed me.)
A lot of my friends stopped by and kept me company at different times of the day, so I never got lonely waiting for other potential customers to show up. Noel kept me company AND fanned me, so I really loved him! It was funny watching Alissa waffle about letting one of the cosplay-line guys tie her tie. ^_^
Ah, yes, and I suffered from heat exhaustion such that my hands were shaking. Oh, the joys of wigs and sweatshirt material.
I sold my first print too! The Naruto picture (bought by a Naruto cosplayer) was the first print that I sold to someone I didn’t know. THANK YOU NARUTO COSPLAYER!
It was also the only print I sold to someone I didn’t know, though I got a lot of compliments and “I wish I had money”-ies. Me, I’m just glad I made the money back for my table, and that lots of people liked my stuff. I would, however, be even gladder if more people bought prints, but I’m just greedy, I guess.
After people came back to eat Onigiri, I went to change out of my Unagi costume and into the Renamon-eyes shirt that Wes bought for me. It was so much cooler.
And I got seriously hit on. Wow. The girls in the line that formed IN FRONT of my table (to get into Cosplay, I think), thought he was a jerk, but I didn’t. He took, “No,” for an answer and didn’t get worked up about it. I respect the balls it takes to ask someone out (and, boy, was he eloquent).
We moved tables for a little bit and then left to go to the grocery store. Wes made Bell pepper sauces that were amazingly good. (And I don’t even like peppers). So, we had dinner around midnight and the boys stayed up until 4:00 a.m. I fell asleep on the couch. I didn’t miss anything—they were only watching “Dream Colored Bunny” and some Takeshi’s Castle.
Day 3:
Woke up around noon. Got out of bed around 2:00 and went to the Con around 3:00. We hadn’t eaten yet. I had to go and pick up my art stuff. The room was not open. Will not repeat my bitterness. Went to eat around 4:30-ish at Mel’s Dinner. Everyone’s stuff was good but mine (an omelet), but the potato pancakes were great. The lady took off my meal, so it was okay. We also had milkshakes and sundaes. Mel’s has the BEST milkshakes! We tried BlueBerry Hill and Dreamsicle, both of which were really, really good. Then, we went back home and got Wes ready to go back to Texas. At the airport I drew in his sketchbook.
Therein ends my Con report, and probably the longest entry here. Go me. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Forgive my grammar. Sleep and I were not together.
07.13.04 @ 07:15 PM EST [link] [213 Comments]
Busy....
Wow. Prep-ing for a con is exhausting, especially if you have to produce content as well as prints. -_- Next Con, I swear, I will have drawings done *MONTHES* prior to the con, including the scanning part so "all" we have to do is print (which is a bitch in and of itself). Each print takes about 8 minutes to come out of the printer. As for the scans, they take about an hour to clean up, plus color correction for the printers.
Now, I have to continue to worry about pictures (still drawing at least three more) and display and cosplay (because I'll be disappointing some people if I don't) and art show and selling prints and cleaning house, matting/framing and portfolios and... lots of stuff. Not including spelling here.
So, yeah. I guess that's it.
I have now visited my long defunct blog. I have a webpage to become defunct to go along with it too! Yay me.
07.05.04 @ 03:28 AM EST [link] [4 Comments]
I feel old.
Or something. I've started to look at boys and realize they're cute. Now, this isn't the "Ain't his ass cute?" kind of cute. It's the "Aww! Look at the little bumbling puppy! Can I take it home?" kind of cute. All the cute boys I see, I want to pinch their cheeks and pat their heads.
What happened to all the HOT-CUTE GUYS?
I feel violated, empty, and old.
*sniff*
03.02.04 @ 06:22 PM EST [link]
