Maelstrom

I’ve been pretty busy lately with group projects and … okay just group projects. I’m so sick of group meetings now, although they sort of force me to do some work. Midterms finished last week so I decided to “attend social gatherings”, even though I still have a million projects and assignments due over the next two weeks.

On Wednesday night, it was raining and I had a group project/report due the next day. So I went to Bomber with my roommates, of course. The Bombshelter (”Bomber”) is a pub by day, bar/nightclub by night in the Student Life Centre. I was expecting a large turnout, after hearing that “everybody goes to Bomber”. In the end, we got a large turnout of AFMs, because they had just finished a large, time-consuming project. It was also disappointing how everyone crowded around the bar while the dance floor was practically empty. Along with the fact that the four of us were all sober, we got bored and left around 1:30, which made for a very lame night.

Thursday night, I attended a friend’s birthday BBQ. It started out quite civil but as the night wore on, people just got rowdy. The hosts tried to get people drunk, but they themselves became the most inebriated. Also, birthday boy got really horny. I left around 3am and I’m not sure if the attendees actually want to recall the events of that night.

Friday afternoon I went to the gym with my regular gym buddies, and then had dinner at East Side’s. When I got back, I was bored and started chatting with Amy about potentials plans for that night. I wondered if our neighbours were in Loo for the weekend and if they might want to chill, and as if right on cue, they knocked on our door to ask us if we wanted to play board games. Eventually we ended up going to the community centre for some jitz and ping pong, back to their place for SSB Brawl (woot woot!), possibly 5 rounds of Taboo, a round of poker where Amy proceeded to unwillingly own everyone, and then we decided we were hungry so we went to Mel’s around 4am. I slept at 5.

And then I had group meetings and blah blah blah and yadda yadda I’m still unemployed. :’(

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For all you technophiles, it’s going to be one sweet sweeeeet summer. I just want to point out some interesting (to me anyway) highlights from the geek/tech world:

• Apple rolls out its 3G iPhone in Canada with Rogers and Fido July 11th. Apple fanboys go nuts.
• PS3 DualShock with MGS4 bundle to appear some time this or next month. Sony fanboys go nuts.
• ModeLabs will be offering “My Dior”, a Dior-branded cellphone for $5,000. Or if you’re looking to blow $26,000, why not go for the high-end model?
• The next couple months are going to see many many sweet DS game releases. Square-Enix is officially overlord of video gaming. Screw Guitar Hero: On Crack.
• Forbes thinks Apple’s iPhone could kill the Nintendo DS. iThink a certain journalist needs to smoke less weed.

In school-related subjectiveness, OB has got to be the most bullshit course on the face of this earth. I just read a paragraph about the Hawthorne studies, which essentially concluded that positive treatment of employees improved their motivation and productivity. I mean, what the shit, any retarded chicken could’ve told you that! What a waste of time.

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As promised, here we have the second half of the two-part “on-lined-paper-cuz-I’m-too-lazy-to-use-white sketches” series. Number one is Olette, a minor character in one of the awesomestest video games of all time, Kingdom Hearts II. I thought she looked kind of fun to draw, and I liked her personality in the game. This one took me longer than the others, although I would say it was because of the shading. She looks a bit…off… I dunno.

Second up is Kairi, also from t3h royal w00tness, KHII. Okay I will stop with the shameless plugs. I don’t like how WP’s thumbnail generator slices off her head. But I haven’t figured out how to adjust their cropping parameters so you’re just going to have to live with headless thumbnails. Moving on, as you can see, I messed up big time. She looks nothing like her character. This is what happens when you try to turn a CG model into something 2D. Don’t do it kids! It’s unstable! And for some reason the pencil I was using made really uneven and weird-looking lines, hence her hair looking like moldy spaghetti. [Disclaimer: I’m not even sure what moldy spaghetti actually looks like.] I really like her overalls/skirt thingy she wears (in the game, not in my butchered sketch). To summarize, this picture disappoints me. *Shakes head*

Next we have Nina from Breath of Fire. I am now also realizing that we have a “video game girl” theme going on here. In any case, I have never played BoF nor do I know the first thing about it. I found this image in a random gallery and thought “hey, this looks like a cool pose”. I also wanted to try drawing a character that I know nothing about to see how it turns out. Usually when I draw someone, I think about their personality, experiences and characteristics so I can create a better “feel” or “expression”. With Nina, I thought it’d be fun to just have a go at it. And is it physically possible to bend your arms like that?

We’re nearing the end! (”Yay!” you say.) This one is just an original character sketch. I think I had wanted to try out a different method to draw eyes. I started out with a realism-anime style but I guess I ended up leaning more towards the realism. Some parts of her face are totally anatomically incorrect, which I will artistically attribute to the “anime” part of “realism-anime”. I’m fairly happy with the shading going on in this one. For her hair, I was thinking of Mimi from Digimon season 2. No self-sticking stars though; that’s just too much.

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Due to popular demand (or so I’d like to think), I’ve posted up some sketches I did in summer 2006. They all took maybe around 10 minutes each. The first one is Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist (FMA). He looks really kiddie in this picture. I copied it from a screenshot of the anime. If you haven’t watched FMA yet, where the hell have you been you should. Awesome storyline + awesome characters = awesome show. Anyway, I think I might have overdid the cross-hatching. And I can’t even do it properly. But cross-hatching is fun! :D

Lust is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, and in FMA she is a homunculus, ie. she was created when someone else tried to resurrect a dead person through alchemy. For all the gory details, read the manga or watch the anime. This was also done as a copy of a screenshot. I think I also wanted to try doing a cel-shading experiment. It turned out okay but I think it could’ve been better if I used some guidelines.

I really like this one (of Ed the Shrimp again) because I like his expression. It’s the manga version of Ed so he doesn’t look as “kiddie”. Not much else to say…. I was bored.

Last but certainly not least, we have Sailormoon, w00t! This was just for fun and completely drawn from memory. Out of all the senshi, I’d say she’s the easiest to draw. I guess it doesn’t really look like her. Meh.

Sketches Part II coming up next time! I need a scanner in Waterloo…

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Winter is finally over and what a long, drawn-out term it turned out to be. The snowstorms didn’t really help. In any case, work ended for me on April 30. I spent the entire next day just hobo-ing at home and not really getting much done. I was very surprised when I actually experienced some post-work depression. It felt weird to not wake up at 6am and subway to the top floor of Scotia Plaza and immerse myself in the hustle and bustle of the financial district. I went out for drinks with a couple traders and summer students on my last day. We chatted about random stuff, mainly work or school-related. A couple of them were really nice and handed me business cards saying if I ever needed anything, to let them know. Then the conversation topics swerved to arguing about the validity of certain statistical and financial models and somehow winded up being R-rated, which I took as my cue to leave (I was the only female there). Sales and trading is an exciting environment but to be thrown into it is actually rather scary, and I don’t think it’s the right one for me.

School started last Monday. I don’t have much to say, except I hate participation marks and profs being ridiculously anal about absence and lateness. It’s not high school anymore, godammit. Living in res though is so far great. I can come back for lunch and naps. I have a relatively easy term this time around so I need to make it a goal to hit the gym more often. Also it’s cool that a lot of people I know are on campus this term so I can run into someone literally everyday.

Since I pretty much neglected this blog for a month, I have posted two drawings I did around 3 years ago. A couple of my friends requested that I make Naruto-themed “nametags” for them. First up is Evelyn’s. Gaara’s just being emo, Naruto is retarded, and Sakura is apparently humping the ‘V’. The second one is for Hin Ping. We have the super threesome (Team 7): Sasuke, Naruto, and Sakura. Naruto is a pain in the ass to draw. If you can’t get his hair or eyes right, everything just looks wrong. Anyway, you may draw the conclusion that I suck at colouring, and that is why most of my work is left in b&w (or grey if you want to be really specific).

I have some sketchbook doodlings that I want to post up, depending if I will have anything worthwhile to blog about next time.

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