One Shot: Densha Otoko

The lovely Jessa Phillips, of the most popular blog in the universe (or should be) OneShots me and my opinions of the manga miniseries, Densha Otoko!

I'm such a sucker for good love stories. :)

OneShot is here.

Finding Vincent: Beginning

As usual, I've got a lot on my mind. Sometimes I wish I could clone myself.

While I go further into my own life path and stream, I realize that sometimes to find myself, I find others that are into that stream.

I've always loved Vincent Van Gogh. His frenetic brushstrokes I could akin to mine, the bold use of color, and the wildly imaginative perception of what regular things are. I too, can relate to his quests for love, acceptance, and kindness. I can also relate feeling like the odd one out with my artwork where everyone else is getting acceptance but yet feeling like something would be increasingly missing if you went the way they did. I don't even want to get into "BOLD and DIFFERENT" as it's an increasing marketing tagline and after a while that echoes emptily. I think he couldn't be anything else.

Mine isn't a tale of self-absorption or self-martydom and I'm not about to start with Van Gogh. I don't think he set out to be one. I think he tried his best and in the most honest way possible.

What I want to know is why he mesmerizes me so. I want to know why he's more brilliant to me than Gauguin who is just as intriguing. Maybe I find Vincent more "honest"? Maybe that's why I want to call him by his first name - almost affectionately as he's someone that I feel close to. I don't think about posthumus love, but I do feel something deep within that I really relate to him.

There are times I have thought briefly that I wished I was there with him. Someone who truly understood him other than his brother. I saw and understood how he went about his relationships - wanting to have more, that bond, only to be rejected partially as no one understood and were empathetic to his attempts (mostly clumsy).

I want to travel in your time, Vincent. I want to live as you have lived. I want to see what you see. I want to see through your eyes - not documentaries that film with a bland eye, but someone truly engaged.

One of these days, I will see YOU, Vincent. I will see you who you really are and somehow take that into my soul. Maybe it will make me understand or find something of which words currently fail me to express.

Perhaps I will see your counterpart Michelangelo, and to see that madness that we all suffer from in order to see how he thrived, and excelled.

New Directions - A Set of Ruminations

There's a lot of things that I've been self-assessing. My friend Peter would consider these brain reformats - although I would like experiences to enrich me, not the other way around.

I think defragging would be a better term.

Interestingly enough, I'm in a place in time where I could feel easily overwhelmed and overwrought. I must admit I've come to that place many a time in this day and age. However, I feel that these experiences hone me to be a much better individual that I was supposed to become.

I don't know for a fact what I will become. I only know that a lot of distractions that we allow ourselves to feel and issues that we allow to overwhelm us can really deter us. I'm not here to say problems and issues are merely stupid and nonimportant - that would be dismissive to declare.

However, I've noticed that perspective is definitely something that is important. It is really easy to get caught up in day-by-day. Even when you've willed yourself to be calm and calculating, even the perspective can really throw you off. Yet, if we are focused on what everyone else is focused on in a harried hamster wheel - we are no happier for it. In fact, there's been plenty of people that feel to make snarky exceptions when things are posted that seem to resonate deeply.

We seem to want to find nirvana, but are always fighting in many different ways and in may conflicting ways to get there. For example, we all desire lasting relationships - but we push away people that we care about in callous ways. We like to assume. A LOT. We don't understand the simple fact we don't need to go all out in one viewpoint and be absolutist - we gotta see in the big picture of finding the mechanisms in our lives and to see the individual ability of ourselves and whatever path is set out for us to do. All we need to do is state our piece and go forward. We usually can get what we want if we ask.

In today's world, I find interesting is that if you have a lot of interests and still want to pursue them all with equal fervor - it means you're unfocused and uncaring about your career. It seems like in the world of self-help books, positive affirmations, and "unlocking potential" - we seem to degenerate into ripping the another down, arguing with that person because they don't fit in our little box, to not letting things "be" with the other person. We're all entitled to our opinions and conclusions, but so are we to our own solutions.

I'll be throwing up content here and there on Patreon to see where I go.

http://www.patreon.com/HoraToraStudios

Alors! I Am Now An Author!**

I've written of my personal survival guide to becoming an artist in the gaming world.

It's in Gamedev/Tuts+.

It documents my neuroses and how I've learned to deal with them in order to become what I am and will be in the future.

I'm quite excited. Please, feel free to read it.

*Thank you, Jean Webster...

Puddle of Ink

Depression is to me a puddle of ink.

It washes away in a heavy flood of who you are, what you are, and what you can be.

You need to repaint yourself again and again in these times where you build enough ink to sustain past the flood waters of your life and to stay whole until the very end of what you were given.

Gallery Girls: Goth Babes

I wanted to do something different as with Goth Night.

People often draw lacy, black thing types of which are quite nice, but I wanted to go a step further.

It didn't help that it was the weekend of my birthday and well, I wanted to take the piss out of convention. Besides, I wanted to analyze the skeletal structure.

Then, shit got weird...

Ah me.... and like a boss I spilled some of my delishus drink on my sketchbook.

Thanks to Gallery Girls. They're a lovely bunch of ladies for all of your modeling wishes!

Moving Forward:

I'm currently accepting queries for projects as my brain has been growing at a rampant rate. It needs brain food to feed it.

It desires projects.

It desires lovely things and inspiration.

Feel free to reach me through any medium and I'll get back to you asap.

If all else fails, email me at:
designer [at] christieshinn [dot] com

//format is designed to deter evil spam-bots.

See you next year Comic-Con!

This is a practice drawing as I've had this image in my head from when I was a kid. I want to see if my vigor has recovered from Comic-Con.

I would always see Gumby skating around on one leg, no wheels.

So, I wondered how his leg didn't grind away.

His feet must have been self-oiling or something. Either way, I was thinking of that possible outcome.

PS. Comic-Con is fun. I love the people I met there.

Whew.

I have been a busy potato.

I've started a new job in the meantime. I consider it calling it going to business school, but I get paid for it ha-ha. I figure the worst enemy that I've had to contend with is boredom. It breeds idleness, sloth, and lack of self-worth after a while. At least with this, I can keep sharp and socialized. It's always good to make connections.

I've also been asked to instruct part-time at game design for ITT-Tech. It does pay off graduating valedictorian and establishing good ties no matter where you go. I do love my students and it is a fun subject. Plus, they are hardworking and the feedback I get is that I make a good organic (probably tired of hearing that word, ha-ha) learning environment for them. I do try to tailor the assignments to what they are studying for. If they do concept, bring me a character. If they do 3D modeling, show me the process in what you do. I really do like it and I get to learn more and more about more cool video games. I did introduce them to Dwarf Fortress, I Wanna Be the Guy, and many others. I almost want to buy the 360 just because of it.

Damn, do I LOVE Bayonetta.

What else? Oh man, I have been working on a few personal pieces. I've been posting them up on this blog as I've been completing them, but I am viewing it as hermiting away until I find enlightenment in the art world. I'm not forcing it, nor letting it go stagnant. I kind of view this whole process currently as to what one of my buddies calls, "a hard sell". I've also updated my site to Flash, as it seems to be the best way to articulate my page the way how I WANT.

I've also been getting into fashion. I call it branching out in an artistic fashion. No, it's not going to have me wear spandex and neon lights--yet. I've just been finding a path that works for me, but doesn't feel constrained. I'm just reworking things that work into working for me in expression. I just don't feel like getting too outlandish. I think a big statement can be made just as effectively with something different and bold without going too razor-blade estranged against the senses.

That is all folks, I'll show something else as they go along, but wanted to update you after my SIMS life calmed down a bit.

Long time.

It's been a while...

Been kind of keeping to myself, trying to find my rhythm and groove and it seems I got knocked out of the spinning LP. I had to get back on.

It's not that I don't want to study or get better. I just realized that I lost track of some things. So for a while, I'm going to draw stuff I like at the moment. I got too clinical. It's not that clinical isn't important, it's just that I think that sometimes a balance should be achieved.

I can write in my own hand!

And at the end of the day, I will not have the tired scrawl that doctors normally do after writing 10 million perscriptions.

Whee!

Quick! Before it all runs out!

Whoo

Things are going very well. I'm taking more illustration jobs as I go along. That's more in the line of what I want.

Now, I'm going to be busy doing these, but I will go ahead and post them as I go on and finish them.

I can't believe I did 4 projects last week. Whew!

But I feel great because I can do the workload and more. I think of this as training.

patrick

So, my friend Patrick referred me to some stuff regarding Gerald McBoingBoing.

The cartoons were cute and they reminded me of a time when the world didn't deem it that in order to be intelligent you had to be cynical. In short, they just had a sense of wonder that you don't see much in animation anymore. :(

So, I saw in his Kitty Journal (about his character) of how cute he thinks the character is.

Mind you, I have sent this man bunnies. Very cute bunnies. And kitties too.

Now I get a hold of this idea and make it my own.

I'm so evil.

*He asked why gerald went "Splort!" and not "Boing!"

Ah well....

I've had this duder pop up in my head all day. They had a topic of doing an Alien Fetal Bio-Synth, but I didn't want something that was a typical umbilical thing, so I drew this in a happy 20 mins.

Yeee. :)

Crap.

Is there something that makes your head explode if you go over?

To succeed as an artist you must have:

1. Insanity (good kind).

2. Total relaxation on your own inner dementia. :P

3. Dedication.

4. Motivation.

5. The LOVE.

Did I mention that they were all on the same level!? Now that is a balancing act.

apologies.

I didn’t post yesterday due to the fact that the whole block had lost power from the early evening till sometime during the night when I was well asleep. I’m making it up for now and hopefully will essentially ‘double post’ (Hahahahaha) when I am able.

I can’t believe how much GDC made me tired. It was kind of a sloggy fatigue where I was fighting off just general weariness, of which puzzled me, since I’m not the hard-partying type and I do try to get in 7.5-8hours within my day.

BUT. It seems that one of the banes I have to contend with is Photoshop.

I drew an initial study of Cleo here, a preliminary to flesh out an idea and I wanted crisp, clean lines. What drives me nuts is that Photoshop, especially CS3 loves to anti-alias virtually everything in the world until I want to scream. (I know it’s always done that, but I wish there was a centralized point in the General Options/Preferences where you could set a blanket settings and maybe tweak one or two of the Tools.) Also, I’m messed around with brush hardness with the basic default brushes, but no go in the Pen tool function. One of my friends that gets the crisp lines suggests that I start off in Illustrator and import. I may try that, but I shall continue on in my research to find the crisp line. I feel like I’m on a religious quest of something…

I guess kind of like Caine in Kung Fu, except it feels more like ‘Boot to the Head’ at times.

Well, good thing is that I’m over my fatigue, I’ve been drawing in earnest again. I’m getting rather obsessed with feet and legs, but still working on hands and arms.

I wonder if Michelangeo was like this? He was certainly hardcore, so was Vincent van Gough. I can sort of relate to them in personalities as well. Nah, I’m not saying I’m just like them, because they have reached a level I one day hope to attain. I guess I sort of need to inherit more of their ‘madness’ of sorts.

I did draw a kitty, to kind of loosen it up for a bit. I think I’ll color him. I don’t know I felt sort of contented when I drew that. Maybe I’ll experiment with the lines in Illustrator.

Wow, looking back, I still have more work to do, but I’m looking really forward to it. I think you learn focus is not single-minded but a sort of an all-inclusive feeling towards a goal and staying on track does not mean immovable rigidity. That will make you die in creating and make the whole workload more galling and burdensome. You just have to let it go. The zen and religious masters had it man, just let it work and let yourself go.

Basically, don’t forget why you started in the first place. I think it sort of started where I liked to do it. I forgot it along the way and it clammed me up. I was in haste to ‘get it done’ rather than take my time and learn.