Komikon 2012: Geeking it out like a Boss

Spent most of my Saturday in Komikon 2012 meeting up a few friends I hadn’t seen in a while. Haven’t been to one of these since the one last year and thankfully, unlike last year I didn’t need to use up one of my oh-so-precious vacation days. I got a few really nice titles that I’d probably never would have heard of unless I’d not shown up too [except for Kalayaan (Filipino word for freedom) seeing as I'd been following that guy's DV-art account for a while now]

So here’s a quick review on the titles I managed to read so far:

In Alphabetical Order:

Callous – written and drawn by practicing physician Carlo Jose San Juan, the strips feature lady doctor Riane Nicah MD and her extra-dimensional guardian duck going through everyday life, in both their roles.

The Hype-intelligent humor and a fairly whimsical glimpse at people in the medical profession and the people who surround them.

I’d originally bought the title because the lead character reminded me of a friend from college who did end up being a doctor. She even wore her hair the same way at one time. Reading the story however, gave the series street cred in my mind. While it does have some strips where you won’t get the joke unless you’re in the medical profession, it’s just a small part of the kind of stories they have in the series. The fictional Dr. Nicah just grows on you.

Plus she does remind me too much of college friend. More on this later if I remember.

Website link :

Kalayaan

The Hype-A group of Filipino-styled superheroes. While we have our superheroes in the Philippines, this was fairly new in that it does introduce a level of science fiction than the usual mystically inclined heroes here (Darna and her magic rock, Captain Barbell and his magic barbel etc). The volume I got was the origin story, so it plays around with how the superhero lifestyle affects what would normally be an average joe had he not had his powers.

Link here for the author’s DV-art

Kubori Kikiam

The Hype-I first saw this series on a defunct magazine by the name of Culture Crash [DV-art link here]. Sadly the magazine in question hadn’t the staying power I’d hoped it’d have but lots of pleasant memories all the same. The comic features Dodon, Benjo and Manny, the three eponymous kikiam  [a Filipino street food] and their frat boy style humor, peppered with boob jokes. Lots and lots of boob jokes.

The nostalgia alone sold me on the series, but damn if the artist [who is only known by the name Taga-Ilog (River-Dweller in Filipino)] doesn’t milk the humor for all it’s worth.

Website Link:

Meet Lux

For a few years now I’d always wanted some sort of oddball pet. Something that you’ll probably not see on a leash or in some sort of cage. Originally I’d planned on getting something like a reptile or some sort of big spider, seeing as those things are some of the more commonplace exotic wildlife that ends up as pets here in the Philippines. Even went so far as checking out where one gets tarantulas and chameleons inside of Manila (Cartimar off Libertad station on the LRT. Walking distance. Can’t miss it).

But then all it took was one status message from a Facebook friend to sell me the idea of a mammal that’s surprisingly not as common over here.

The hedgehog.

This is Lux. I got her from this breeder I met on the internet. She’s an albino hedgehog, born and bred right here in the Philippines. What sold me on the idea was that when I did some research on this particular breed I’d realized that with my allergies this would probably be the only mammal that would make sense for me to ever own as a pet. Sure, there are those stray cats that hang out on the backyard (and never leave), but there’s something about a pet that you raise on your own.

Seeing as the parental units would likely never let me have a dog or a cat for inside the house, and I need something that wouldn’t trigger my allergies, I figure a smaller pet that didn’t shed would make perfect sense.

As you can see she’s fairly big. Six inches easy. The breeder told me she’s born of a pair of bigger than normal Pygmy hedgehogs, so they’re still smaller than a toy dog but they need space. A lot of it. Thankfully I’d gotten one of those big plastic containers in the mall and jury rigged some ventilation holes on it with a power drill. I’d planned on getting a second one, this time a male Albino but I’m thinking I should wait a few months before I got ahead and get another.

She’s also fairly fidgety. Thankfully the little thing calmed down quite a bit once I put her in the enclosure and let her rest. She’s been travelling for a few hours now, from the streets of Caloocan to BF Homes and she’s probably only had now to rest.

As of the time of this post she’s been left alone to move around in her enclosure. I’ll probably not disturb her for a while yet so she gets used to being here, but I’m fairly psyched at the idea of her growing on me.

Also.

For people who might want to think about raising their own, I found a few links that help a lot.Enjoy.

http://hedgehogcare.org/

http://hedgehogcentral.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedgehog

Telling the Story

I’d started work on preproduction for this story I’d been writing for a few months now. Originally it was a joke one-shot, something that shouldn’t have even been eight pages long. Lately, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be just a few pages old.

This project has taken on Epic Graphic Novel status [drops 100 pesos in the Jar].

It’s been slow going what with work and all but so far I think I have the beginnings of what may be a coherent plot. I have research on what kind of culture I’ll be immersing everyone in and even have some of the fight scenes sketched out in my head. Personally I’m surprised it even got this far already but I still need plenty of time to make sure that the plot makes sense in my head.

So far what I have planned for the story is:

• Swords and knights
• Dragons That Are Different
• Steampunk
• Binary star systems
• Epic battles with massive armies [drops another 100 pesos in the Jar]
• Airships
• Greatswords that don’t resemble their RPG counterparts

I dare not say more for fear of jinxing myself and not finishing the damn thing, not when I’ve got a lot of pages invested in it already. These days though I’m stuck with forcing myself to continue moving the plot along and thinking up impressive enough visuals to carry the story across. It’s probably cliche to say but damn. Writing is hard. Hard enough that if you combine that with knowing that you’ll probably have to draw the damn thing too.

Logistically speaking I’d need to make sure the story moves along in an acceptable pace and my illustrating skills move along with the writing. I’d given myself a deadline to finish most of the story outline by June, and this means needing to think about the story or at least elements of the story day and night.

Then after that I stop and realize that I’ll be putting more of myself on display when I finish this than I’d ever realized before.

Whoa. That’s deep, man.

Speaking of which, I should probably think of a working title soon….

Didn’t win, but…

Awesome all the same.

Gail herself, in the center, dressed in black

To big steps towards big things. Cheers.(“,)

 

EDIT:: Apparently Gail did win something.

 

Fashion Gail

The following post is made as a favor for a friend.

DISCLAIMER: The author of this blog makes no claim to knowing fashion and all it’s derivatives. All content not sourced from this author will have citations at the end of this post.

My friend from college, Ailyne “Gail” Hipolito-Sarion, has joined a fashion/stylistics contest sponsored by the Alabang Town Center and Meg Magazine. Voting ends at 3/24 and we need a lot of help to make sure the online voting comes up as a win.

Thats the Plan

I really don’t make a habit of creating those beginning of year posts that seem to be so popular on the New Year season. So, in the attempt to make absolutely sure that this will never, ever be misconstrued as one, I decided to wait a full thirteen days to post it. Well, except not really. For some reason or another whatever it is that I wanted to post on this entry keeps getting away from me. But I digress. In the time I was trying to write this and the time I eventually took in writing it, I’d come across a few things about my plans for the year that I never really mapped out. Namely, that I had no actual plans for the year.

Of course, this will have to change.

With the art side, I’d recently commissioned a custom-built drawing table another artist friend of mine is currently putting together. I’d planned on getting one for the longest time but funds and time really weren’t with me until very recently. No photos yet but if it’s built to spec I expect it to look particularly awesome. I’d been working on a few designs for characters in a graphic novel that would hopefully be actualized on said drawing table before I move it on the digital side.

More on that, I’d decided I’d be drawing a whole lot more. I had finished a few pieces from the last time I posted anything but I never seem to be able to get to scan all of them. I’d probably start working on at least two pieces a week, and will want to update more seeing as I have a brand-spanking new camera (courtesy of my sister, who I love dearly). I have no idea if I’ll ever finish anything in the way of a comic by the time the convention season rolls around, but I’ll do my best to at least finish one or two of them before the year is out.

I can’t really forget the office, seeing as it’s what pays the bills. Sadly, I can’t say that I live on my art because I do something else for cash, so this can’t be neglected either. I’m looking into a couple of openings in the company which may eventually fit my skill set. I’m not entirely sure how soon I can make the transition from my current role to something else but I’d be interested to find out how I can manage to work it out. Eventually I will likely find myself quitting the industry for good, but not for a long while, methinks.

Any other agendas I’ll have to think about, but this’ll have to do until I come up with a more solid gameplan. Next post will have more art in it.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Jailbreaking your PSP

Jailbreaking (v) – The process of removing the limitations placed by copyright on a device. Originally used as a term for overriding Apple iOS but eventually became a generic term for allowing non-standard content to run on most devices with software advanced enough to have copyright limitations.

I’d never really seen the need to jailbreak my psp. I normally use it for just three main purposes, browsing fanfiction when I don’t feel like booting up the laptop, and storing movies I download for when I don’t want to watch the breakroom TV (of course I normally use a different software to compress those films but I’ll probably cover that in a different post).

Then came Dissida Duodecim.

For those who don’t spend hours of their time playing games, Dissidia Duodecim is the sequel to best-selling game Final Fantasy: Dissidia, which can be described in one sentence: protagonists and antagonists from Final Fantasy 1-12 in a battle royale. It’s a lot more impressive than it sounds.

Needless to say I spent a lot of time finding a copy of the game through P2P, waiting for the torrent to get saved and then downloading it into my memory stick. And then booting it up. And then waiting for it to finish booting up. And continuing to stare at the blank screen. And forcing a reboot by taking off the battery. Attempts 2-7 pretty much run like this, so I figured, what could I possibly be doing wrong?

Could it be the file itself? Okay, try downloading a new copy. Five versions later, it still doesn’t change.

Maybe I didn’t copy the file in its entirety. See above when I ruled that out.

Copyright restrictions? Yeah right. This means I should be having problems using that homebrew ebook reader I use all the time.

It didn’t hit me until I realized another colleague of mine from the office (who was sporting a brand-spanking new PSP Go) had the same game and used the same less-than legal means to acquire his copy as I did. Firmware versions not clashing maybe? By Jove, it’s just crazy enough to be the answer.

So I take a trip to the Playstation Network. I remember my brother having a firmware upgrade on his own device and its interface ending up looking a lot more sleek and awesome.I figured it’d help if I did this from the software on the official website because of all the horror stories I heard about homebrew firmware updates going wrong.

Long story short, improperly done updates turn PSPs into bricks. Expensive bricks, but bricks all the same. So I got the update, backed up my data and followed the instructions. Quick and easy. However, working in tech support for a few years taught me never to let things that looked like they were fixed become the decider, so I went ahead and tried to use my homebrew ebook reader.

Wait, corrupted data? Okay, good thing I backed up. …why isn’t it working yet?

Oh right, copyright restrictions. Damn, this means most of my games prolly won’t work anymore. Crap.

Jailbreaking it is then. All the places I looked online had some sort of guide how to get it done. One of the more popular ones was to use a piece of hardware called the Pandora Battery, and seeing as a shipping time of 3-6 weeks definitely isn’t going to cut it, I decided to go the software route. But how do I know if it’s even going to work?

Apparently there’s a checklist of things that a hackable psp AREN’T.

• Serial numbers from the barcode that start with AB01 – mine actually starts with 03.
• TA-090v2 motherboard from the PSP slim 3K series – I know for sure this model sold a few months after I got mine so,definitely not applicable
• TA-88v3 motherboard from the PSP Slim 2K series- not sure I’m willing to take apart my psp for this so I just skipped it.

All right, so am I really stupid enough to risk turning my admittedly aging psp into a brick?

…apparently I am.

There are a could of homebrew apps you can use, so I had to filter the ones which had the most positive reviews, or internet posts even. Lo and behold most of them are good for only up to v5.0. And I have v6.39. Eventually I went with something called CFW Pro, for the reasons I stated at the beginning of the paragraph. The download took a little bit longer than an hour, but well worth it. I’m back to playing with my homebrew apps, and I got my copy of Duodecim to work. A happy ending if there ever was one.

PS: Also, it’s pronounced DuOHdeKIM, not DuOHdeSIM. The Latinate form of the number 12, so it’s two (duo) and ten (deca). Nonne et ipsam vende mihi vaccam struem MERDA.

On Why I Draw

I suppose with the number of things I posted that had something to do with art, the planning process on the creation of art and the actual creation of art itself, I figure I should stop to think why I even got into it to begin with.

The time I took up drawing I started with those little cardboard trading cards they used to sell outside my school. They were cheap knockoffs of the popular cartoons of the time, mostly Dragonball and the Tagalized rendition of Yu Yu Hakusho. I used mostly scrap school notepaper and battered exam-grade pencils paired with hard rubber erasers that would probably scrape off most of the layers of the paper I use now.I filled the backs of Math notebooks (probably why I never grew to love the subject) and English notebooks (which helped me develop my BS skills when it comes to bluffing the class with how much I really understood).

I filled old notebooks with doujins from everything, Combatron, sci-fi fantasies and even one fan work drawn with characters from a series a classmate of mine wanted to start writing. Didn’t really get a lot of encouragement in those days. I remember the Math teacher who threw a fellow potential graphic novelist’s notebook out the window off the fourth floor and it hitting the ground a few seconds later. I remember the Home Ec teacher that didn’t really think how seriously I considered drawing at the time and pretty much dared me (possibly in fun, but I couldn’t read people as well in those days) to draw the dirt on a fingernail in front of the class.

If there was one thing I learned from those days kids liked to draw. Everyone did. The difference with me is, I never really stopped drawing. It’s not serious enough that I’d consider it a passion. Heck, thinking about it some more, it being a passion is probably why I never stopped.

Okay sure, a lot of people tell you writers can make the mind and imagination bloom into uncountable universes. I’ll agree with that because I’m a writer too. But there’s a difference between thinking you’re seeing something, to really seeing something yourself. I happen to like watching my imagination take shape beneath a graphite pencil, or maybe a stub of charcoal or even a sanguine stick.

In short, I happen to like sketching universes into existence more than I like writing them. I’d certainly filled out enough sketchpads to do so.

I shouldn’t really be offering excuses. Speaking pragmatically though, the more I draw the better I’ll end up being. Eventually I’ll work my way to getting that/those graphic novel/s written and drawn. Maybe even an exhibit of some sort. Who knows where this’ll end up? For now I’ll just keep on sketching.

Sanguine scribblings

AKA the post where I realize I need to draw more.

This piece was born of a self-imposed deadline for an art piece I meant to give away. Actually, it’s not even the final draft, but it does give me a lot of ideas on which direction to go next from here. Originally I’d been thinking to use mixed media, charcoal and sanguine, but I thought that with me working almost exclusively with charcoal the past few weeks I’d need to make a change.

Still not as clean as I’d like, but then this piece was meant to be a warmup for the actual final drawing. I hope to make a better attempt to capture the expression too, as the girl was supposed to have her lips in the classic “kiss-pout” thingamajigger. Needs a bit more work, but I have some ideas where to go next.

 

EDIT: On second thought, looking at this piece from the output of an admittedly low-res camera phone, I realize I may have just been using too much detail on the first attempt. We’ll see what the final piece looks like when we’re done.

…and the remix goes on

I’d finally, finally finished the remix art I’d mentioned in a previous post. Oddly enough, the one I’d used in the sketchpad didn’t end up being the one I’m posting tonight. No matter, as promised, the original art and the remixed art.

I’d used a friend of mine from College as the subject, Raisa S.

Original Art

In the original attempt I’d had to make a lot of allowances for not knowing charcoal well enough to use effectively.This is actually attempt number two of mine at the time, still nowhere near how she really looks, and despite what some people may think this isn’t exactly my best work, even at that time.  I’d learned here that using charcoal really does take a lot of resolve, because for one thing it doesn’t erase as easily as graphite.

Actually cancel that, I’d known this since sixth grade. I’d just been forcefully reminded when I was attempting the project. Also complicating things would be my lack of knowledge in properly using fixative, hence the yellowish color that has little to do with the paper the charcoal was drawn in.

Remix Art

My room still smells like spray-on fixative because of this thing. This one is a result of watching some of the videos on speed drawing I mentioned in a previous post, and because I know the medium a lot better. Hard won knowledge, that.

Oddly enough it still doesn’t look much like the photo I drew it from but at least this attempt marginally resembles the girl. This time anyway. one only hopes one can maintain the momentum from here on out.