Art Genesis at the DZian Gallery

Here is a postcard I got from the DZian Gallery, both front and back. I picked it up while attending the Arts Genesis show last Friday night.There was art by one particular group and then art by numerous other artists within the area. It was catered very well with lots of delicious food. They even had jewelry for sale. I found it funny that they also had t-shirts for sale.

Here are two pieces of artwork by Elizabeth Swallow, a coworker of mine at the Worcester Art Museum. She was one of the members of Arts Genesis, an art community within a support group for mental awareness. She had wood sculptures, digital photographs and prints on display. There is a unique simplicity to her work, yet it makes people think.

Here are three acrylic paintings by another coworker of mine, Rick Lagueux, who was also a member of Arts Genesis. He has managed this tricky medium very well.

Here is a piece done by Jeff Faust.

Here is an air brush painting done by John Gleason. I have air brush kits, but I have barely ever used them. I think I need to have a class for it somewhere if I can find one.

Here is a painting done by Lauri Blank.

I was surprised to see some work done of famous cartoon characters. It seems there were a few pieces a certain person had come across on and decided to bring them here. This one was actually done by the master Chuck Jones!

Here are two pieces done by Micheal Parkers. He has an interesting fairy tale style.

Here is a piece done by Robert Bissell of an owl.

This painting was done by Svetlana Valueva.

The DZian Gallery is a very interesting place and the Arts Genesis has some impressive members. I suggest checking them out if you are in the Worcester area.

Art Genesis & Tineye.com

Tonight I will be attending the Art Gallery Exhibition Opening for Art Genesis. I don't mind missing out on Magic the Gathering since this is a good way for me to try to branch out in the art community as well as supporting fellow artists who I work with at the Museum. I will write another post on Monday about it.

I was able to successfully find out the sources to those pictures I found online thanks to a special website someone suggested for me, because when I tried to Google search the image subjects the search engine only showed me my own pictures on my website. The website is http://www.tineye.com/ and it is really easy to use. As long as you have a copy of the image on your computer, you can upload it to the search engine and it will come up with the results. I might have not originally gotten the images from the websites I found, but I am satisfied with at least crediting other websites for the images I am using.

Updating

I realized not too long ago that I have to credit other websites for photographs if I use their instead of my own. I will be updating those posts tonight. Unfortunately, the images I found online were from Google, and when I try to search for the images, my blog tends to come up in the search. This seems to be a repetitive cycle.

I'm sorry that there isn't anything really interesting today. I was suggested to check out a yoga class on Monday, but not much of anything else happened today.

Here is an acrylic painting I made in college of some fabrics draped over some furniture. It was one of four exercises in the painting class and it is my best painting from that coarse. I have the original framed at a store called in West Newton. It is currently for sale.

In order to have this painting posted on my website, I had to do some editing. I have done a little bit of what I have done with my past paintings, but now I have tried a few other editing effects to show a bit more variety.

I have not decided whether or not to keep this particular order for these rectangles quite yet, so it is not entirely finished. Once I have made a decision, I will post it on this blog and on my website.

Dragon Painting: Revised

It took me a little of time to realize this, but I was not actually satisfied with the result of this picture. I have revised it in a way that I am more content with. The colors are better in the revised pattern in my opinion. Here it is.

Easter: Delayed Post

It occurred to me that I had not mentioned anything that happened for my Easter. Mostly that was due to the fact that I had been at Anime Boston for three days and I wanted to write a post about that. The reason I remembered it now is because I stopped by CVS and the store was selling all Easter candy and other items with 75% off. I took advantage of that deal.

(This image is from oasis-church-nj.com)

Easter was very sentimental and relaxing. I hung out with my family and the Chinese boys, ate good food, conversed, got some candy, and relaxed as a few of my family members watched a game on the television. The Chinese boys took part in an Easter Egg hunt, and it was funny watching newbies at it despite the fact that they are already teenagers.

As you grow older, you realize the importance of Holidays such as this. It doesn't matter if this holiday doesn't get as much publicity as others do, or if you get enough candy to last you a while. What matters is that you are surrounded by loved ones when you celebrate such a holiday.

It's weird, I always loved pretty much any type of candy when I was growing up, but now I find certain candies lacking. Anything with milk chocolate just tastes cheap and lacking compared to dark chocolate or white, and all of the fruit, chewy candies like jelly beans are less appealing.

Technological Beauty Vs. Natural Beauty

I have decided on what car to get and here it is. It is a 2010 Hyundai Accent. I chose it because it was cheap, doesn't have too many miles on it, gets good gas mileage, feels very good while driving, and several other reasons. I have yet to make the down payment and to get rid of my current car, but the dealer I'm purchasing it from allowed me to keep it in the driveway just so he could have more room at his auto shop.

Here are some cherry, pear, and crab apple trees growing in my mother's yard. They were obviously planted there, but they have naturally grown to be humungous trees that flower beautifully during the spring. It iss very tranquil to look at them.

I just want you to ask yourself and think. Do I find man made objects to be beautiful, or do I find nature to be beautiful? I think most people would agree that nature is more beautiful, but if you read this, feel free to give me your answer below.

Dragon Painting

 Here is an acrylic painting I made in college for a project. We were told to choose an opera to make a poster for. Out of all of the choices, I went with "Siegfried." I don't know much about it, but I did some research and discovered it is a story with a hero defeating a dragon with a chosen sword. I personally don't care for the human figure I painted, but I love how the dragon, the mountains, and the sky turned out. I have it framed and am willing to sell it.

This is an image of the painting that I played around with in Photoshop. I think it is interesting to see how it would look with different color schemes. This picture can bee seen on my portfolio page as well.

Animorn Mortisio

Here is another sketch from my Zheph Skyre series. This is among the top antagonists of the story Animorn Mortisio. This character appears as a full grown male, full grown female, a young male, and a young female at times. There is a reason for that, but I am not going to reveal that now.

This is perhaps the character I think about most often. Not only will Animorn have a unique look to him of an alternating red and black color scheme that alternates on the left and right sides of his/her forms, but Animorn's personality is quite diabolically fun. Animorn is always smiling, always enjoying what he/she does, is always exploring possibilities and potential everywhere, and has some of the best speeches filled with mysterious hints and double meanings. Animorn doesn't like to kill at all and will try to refrain from having to do so, but that is why this character is the most feared out of all of my antagonists for this story.

Animorn has been evolving in my head for quite a long time. There are numerous inspirations I got for his character like the Joker from the "Dark Knight," Izaya from "Durarara!!", Akito Sohma from "Fruits Baskets", Aizen from "Bleach", Lex Luther from the "Justice League" TV series, and several others. These are some of the more effective villains, the ones ones who play games, the ones who are able to make elaborate plans and yet can get what they want even when the hero thinks it is over.

Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of a New World

(This image is from animecrazy.net.)

I have been playing this game called "Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of a New World" on my Nintendo Wii lately. It has been an interesting role playing game so far. I think I am almost done it, but I am not entirely sure. I had to rent it from Gamefly, so I want to return it as soon as possible so that I can cancel my membership and save up for the new car.

I admit, I didn't think I would like the game that much at first. The characters seemed to have the same emotionless expressions during the first few cut scenes, the humor was a little weird at first, the game-play seemed difficult though that may have been because I didn't have a manual, Emil the protagonist seemed like a wimp, and his relationship with the girl Marta is weird. For some reason, I felt like continuing though.

As I continued to play, I discovered some interesting abilities of the characters you meet and the monsters you befriend as they all fight beside you. There is a large cast of characters who you become friends with in this game and the numerous monsters you find are actually capable of evolving into completely different creatures.

The monsters sometimes reminded me of Pokemon or Digimon, but since you fight alongside them you feel less cheap of training monsters to fight battles for you. When the human and half-elf characters use weapons and magic to fight monsters with monsters, you get more of a sense that you are all in danger and it becomes more fun. I mean, I have only watched the shows of Digimon and Pokemon, so I don't know how the games are. I am just going on how it looks to me.

I had no idea that this is a direct sequel to the GameCube game called "Tales of Symphonia" until very recently. I mean, I did know it was a sequel, but I didn't know that all of the other characters, aside from the two main ones, were all from the previous game until I saw a picture that the other characters were on the cover. It makes me wonder what the previous game was like, considering the side characters tend to share a little of their back stories at times, but it seems as if you are still left out on a lot of information.

Some of the monsters in this game are really cool and are helping me a little to get some ideas of my own.

Zheph Skyre Web-Comic Reboot

I was thinking of rebooting my Zheph Skyre web-comic series. There have been numerous pages that I have felt uneasy about. Most people have said that after a while, you will get better at it. In my opinion, as I tried to complete each page, I kept trying different methods of making the pages. Some trial errors seemed to be a step backwards at times. There were even mistakes I made that I tried going around, but just made it more complicated. I just couldn't bring myself to make anymore pages of this web-comic series when it just didn't seem to be improving.

I have been thinking of possible ways to make it easier to complete in shorter amount of time. I think I have to make a more simpler style of artwork for the pages. The amount of detail per page seemed overwhelming and at times it seemed like I tried to rush it at times. The final product might look a little scratchy. I think I will release half a page on my website at a time. If I want color in it, it will still take time, but at least fewer panels will allow me more time to finish some pages.

Here is a sketch showing some of the changes I am thinking about making. As you can see, I am thinking about going with more of a cartoon type of look than realistic. It is just a thought so far.

Fairy & Mermaid

Here is another sketch of characters from my Zheph Skyre series. As you can see, there is a fairy on the left, a mermaid on the right, and a combination of the two in the middle. There is a reason for that, but I don't want to spoil anything.

I'm not sure I have come up with any new ideas besides maybe giving a mermaid these tentacles coming out of the forehead and combining a mermaid with a fairy.

I was trying to go for a dark, icy look to the fairy, and a smooth, flowing look to the mermaid. The center one is a combination of the two. I was thinking that the wings and fins could combine at times in order to make the wings and fins appears as if they belong to the same being.

There is a chance I might start simplifying these drawings into a different style altogether if I remake the webcomic, but I at least like having these detailed drawings around.

Anime Boston: The Aftermath Part 3

There was another panel I went to that told us important information about how to get to Japan. Since I have already graduated from college, I will most likely have to wait until I can find a full time job. Maybe I will find a chance to go through my work, but I am determined to go there someday.

Here is a postcard for Dominic Deegan's web comic.I was surprised to find him in the Artist's Alley and yet he was not at the panel for the Web Comic Artist Roundtable. I am positive he would have helped out with the panel even more. Perhaps he was too busy at the time. I have heard good things about his web comic series from friends, but I have barely seen much of his work. I will check him out though.

Here is a pamphlet for Connecticon. There were other Anime conventions that were handing out pamphlets as well, but I know I can afford to go to all of them. Right now I am just hoping I can find a hotel with a deal in Connecticut so that I can go as well as some friends who are planning to go too. I would get a table at the convention for my artwork, but they require a license for vending in their state. Since the license costs $100 and it would require me to pay taxes in that state, I don't think I will bother since I can't sell that often in another state.

Here are some Angimon cosplayers from the first series of Digimon. I felt nostalgic for this since I liked the series when I was a kid. It was like Pokemon, but with a more deeper plot and better looking monsters.

Here is a cos-player dressed up as the Black Rider, Celty Sturluson, from "Durarara!!" It was a series on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim that I highly recommend. It has some fascinating action, but it is more than that. There were few cos players who could pull off the helmet with cat ears believably.

Here we have cos-players dressed up as Matatabi, the two tailed cat, and Kurama, the nine tailed fox, from Naruto Shippendun. They are two out of nine of the tailed beasts from the show. Both costumes were done very well, though not that many people dress up as creatures at conventions.

Here we have a cos-players dressed up as the Ava Unit-02 from Neon Genesis Evangelion. This is one of the only giant robot anyone can cosplay successfully because the Avas have the most human-like body proportions. The series itself can get a little weird and there are only a few characters people like, though it is really popular.

There were other cos-players and events that occurred at Anime Boston, like the Masquerade, the Anime Dating Games, the numerous cosplayers dressed up as Jake from "Adventure Time" which seemed odd, the AMV Contest, the Anime Chess Game, the Video Game room, the Venders room where you can buy good stuff, the Anime Death Match, numerous video rooms showing the first few episodes of a series, and numerous panels that only people over 18 could enter to see. Some of it was good other things were bad.

Anime Boston: The Aftermath Part 2

There was a "Webcomic Round Table" panel that I went to at Anime Boston. There were supposed to be more web comic artists at the panel, but only two showed up. They spoke about how to get into the business of making web comic pages. They helped make me think about possibly reevaluating my own web comic.

Here is a postcard of Paradigm Shift by Dirk I. Tiede. He makes a web comic/manga series about a detective mystery with werewolves. I got to talk to him at the Artist Alley after I went to his panel, and he had more advice that I was able to get. I have just began to check out his web comic recently.

Here is a bookmark of the web comic Red String by Gina Biggs. She talked along with Dirk at the "Web Comic Round Table" Panel. She also had some good advice, but her web comic will most likely not appeal to me. It is more of a romance story.

Here is another cos-player who had a very interesting costume. She was dressed up as Alphonse Elric from the Anime series "Fullmetal Alchemist." There was another person dressed up as the same character who was closer to the actual height of the character, but her costume was much closer in detail and hers was shiny.

Here was another cos-player who dressed up as the Chimera creation of Nina and Alexander from "Fullmetal Alchemist." This is impressive, though this sort of cos-play was most likely not made because people think this is cool or amazing. If you watch or read any of the series of Fullmetal Alchemist you would understand that this brings sorrow to fans of the series.

Here are two people who were dressed up as gargoyles at the convention. I didn't know this at the time, but these are from the series "Doctor Who." They are an alien race that only move when people blink. I only heard about them from a friend after she saw this post.

Here is the Berserk Fury, a dragon Zoid from the series "Zoids New Century." I personally preferred "Chaotic Century" as a series, but I can't dismiss how cool this costume is! Yes, apparently it is a costume. A viewer posted a link to a Youtube video where he/she is wearing the costume.

There is still a little bit more I have to share about this convention.

Anime Boston: The Aftermath Part 1

 This year's Anime Boston 2012 has come and gone. I had some fun, but there have been certain aspects that have been better in the years past. Some of my friends have said that Anime Boston has become more of a "tourist attraction" for random people instead of an actual Anime convention for Anime fans. Personally, I think the people organizing the convention have let certain aspects slide for ideas of what to do at the Anime convention.

This is the booklet that Anime Boston handed out to everyone who attended. As you can see, they choose an "End of the World" theme, which seems convenient after all of the popularity of 2012 being the last year on the Mayan Calender. I liked last year's Rock theme more, but it was at least better than the underwater theme for the year before that.

There were a few interesting panels. Here is a postcard from Tainted Reality who held a panel about J-Rock I went to see. They are a company that helps bring J-Rock over to the USA. They help bring CD's, downloads, music videos, and even help bring J-Rock bands over to play at concerts. I enjoyed their panel, and they helped me discover more J-Rock bands to look into. I bought a CD from them of a band called D'espairsRay. The CD is Coll:set and I really liked it. I'm going to look into more music from this band and others on Youtube.

They even have a web-comic called "Fixer" by Danny Kang posted about a J-Rock band. I got to meet him at the Artists' Alley, and I enjoyed meeting him. He has some impressive work.

Here is a picture I took of myself wearing my cos-play outfit of Sasori's 2nd Kazekage puppet from Naruto. I took the costume I made last year and made some improvements. I know these improvements helped because people seemed to notice me more. I have gotten more attention previous years for more elaborate costumes of more popular characters, but this was alright. People don't go to conventions merely to be noticed for the costumes they wear of popular characters.

Here is my friend Ryan Carrio, dressed up as Wolfwood from Trigun. The huge cross was very well made. It is amazing what sort of props people will make or buy in order to complete their costumes. People even get $60 contact lens to change the look of their eyes in order to match certain characters!

Here is a couple dressed up as two of the main characters from the popular Anime series Gurren Lagann. Gurren Lagann is one of those Anime with a far fetched plot and some ridiculously good animation, and I really enjoy it. Most people who were in cos-play were dressed up as characters from Anime, but there were a few people here and there that were in costumes of characters from other genres. It is alright, for most popular things in the US trade over into Japan and back again.

Here are three people dressed up as Boba Fett and one person dressed up as a storm trooper. The classic Star Wars is acceptable to all other conventions (no one came as any new characters from the prequels) because everyone knows them. I just found it odd to see an army of Jake's from "Adventure Time" roaming around.

I will post more about the convention tomorrow.

Anime Boston Tomorrow

Tomorrow after work I will be going to Anime Boston 2012. If you have heard, it is from Friday to Sunday at noon, but since the registration lines get to be so long every year they have the Haynes Convention Center open an evening early just so that people can get their passes and skip on the lines. It has gotten that ridiculous. I had waited one year in line for nearly three hours even after preregistering online. The line is just for a machine to scan the bar code on your printed registration form and then they print out the badge. It can get ridiculously long with 10 thousand people.

I keep forgetting to bring my camera each year, so I never seem to have any photos to share, but this year I will take photos with my camera. They probably won't be the best pictures in the world, but I can at least share them online with good enough resolution.

I have tried to get an Artists' Alley Table this year, but they ran out of space very quickly. This morning I got an email that one table is open because there was one drop, but you have to purchase the table space at the convention. If only I had known sooner and I could have prepared something special. It still might be a long shot, and the only thing I might be able to do is Anime charactactures. I will at least bring my business cards so that hopefully I can get a space next year.

PAX East will also be this weekend. It is a smaller convention so unfortunately they had a limited registration number. I'm a little sad that I will be missing out on that.

I have been revising a cosplay outfit that I will wear to this year's Anime Boston. I will show a picture of it on this blog.

So Much Anime, How Does Japan Do It?

I was just thinking about Japanese Anime in general. It again occurred to me that most anime have most of their episodes animated very simply. I was thinking about this as I watched the Anime "Ouran High School Host Club" on Netflix. It is a really funny Anime, but it is not hard to notice the lack of actually movement in the animation at times. The boys make these poses all of the time that infatuate girls and all the animators focus on is animating around the boys a sort of softening effect.

(This image is from hulu.com)

There are some exceptional episodes where the animation is suddenly far better than before, but most of the episodes might have a single still frame of the characters as they talk. It doesn't take much animation to covey speaking in Anime, just movement of the mouth going up and down is all. There are some various emotions that can be conveyed by changing the mouths and the eyes for funny moments. Then the characters might move, but they tend to stay staying still a lot. I guess if the television companies want to make episodes for weeks at a time, then they have to give up certain aspects in order to meet the demand.

Only special episodes with important fighting or action scenes tend to get animated very well. If you read the manga ahead of time, you will more likely know where and when those fight or action scenes will take place. However, not all Anime follow the storyline to the black and white graphic novel due to the budget or popularity cutting the series short. This occurs often.

(This image is from myanimelist.net)

Here we have a picture from the Anime "Fairy Tail" which uses some strange computer effects in order to portray magic casting. Using the computer in order to substitute certain things in a 2D anime show can surely help cut back time, but it doesn't match the style of the rest of the animation and looks misplaced. When animations use only 2D or only 3D, everything looks like it should belong in that world. I even had a hard time with the fact that in Disney/Pixar's "Wallie" the video clips from the President on Earth are entirely real while everything else is CGI. That just seemed weird. It would have been better if they made the magic in 2D for "Fairy Tail" and made those videos in "Wallie" animated instead.

(This image is from rottentomatoes.com)

When it comes to Anime movies though, things are completely different. The animation studios have more time, animators, and a budget in order to get things done the way they want to. Some studios still do a much better job with their animations in their films though. Take a look at Studio Ghibli.

11 Second Club March 2012 Entry

I submitted another animation to the 11 Second Club. Unfortunately I didn't get to finish everything I wanted to with this one too, but I got more impressive things done with this animation than I did with my January submission. I know I will finish this one, but I realize now that the previous animation had too many problems in order for me to fix completely so that one may never get done.

With my last animation, I forgot to make sure that the screen would fit in a 640px by 480px format so that is wouldn't be stretched out on the screen like on Youtube. I am at least glad I got that done.

I tried putting color in this time. It definably helps make things much more clearer to see. Perhaps I should have waited until the very end to color in the figure though. It might have just wasted time to color him after I complete only a few frames.

One of the things I might have forgotten to do this time was make the animation 30 frames per second. I checked the settings, and it was set to 24 fps, which would explain why I couldn't get as many frames in and make the movement a little more smoother. I tried changing it afterwards, but it was too late. The animation was too short to be at 30 fps and the audio didn't match up. Sure it would have been more work, but it would have looked better.

This time around I am up against 389 other animations! I have already began to vote on some of them, but a good majority of them are not that good again. There only seems to be a few exceptional animations.

Perhaps I should only draw the character sketches on paper while I draw the animation sketches on the computer. I would have seen how many frames are in between each movement if I stuck more to the computer. Perhaps I should keep the character's or two with only their upper bodies showing, just so that I wouldn't have to animate feet. Perhaps I shouldn't copy and paste too many of the same body parts in order to take less time and show more movement. Perhaps I should collaborate with someone. These are all things for me to think about. But if I do this competition again, it won't be until next month because Anime Boston will take up a lot of time and there are other things I must work on.