Wednesday 1 October 2008

birthdays and long week-end

It's my Dad's birthday tomorrow, so I'm going down to visit him this w/end.

He lives in Devon and I live in Hampshire, so it's a good trek--about 3 or 4 hours, traffic depending.

I'm actually going down on Saturday and coming back on Monday, but I'm taking Thursday and Friday off as well so that I can get some personal stuff done as well.

It probably means the bloggage won't get any updates for a while, as I tend to write these first thing at work. So I'll see you next week (I dunno who I'm talking too--nobody actually reads this :/).

Tuesday 30 September 2008

my little angel

Well, I finished that re-cg I was working on.

You can find the finished product over at AP here. It's not a whole lot different to the preview I posted in the previous blog, mainly because I got sick of doing the wings.

I think it's probably my best vector work ever. I've used every technique I have at my command to make it and I think the results are spectacular.

The only problem is I'm not sure I can do it justice in a wall. I had a few ideas, but I dunno, I think I may wimp out of actually walling it :(. What makes this a special shame is that I very much doubt anyone else will wall it either :(.

I made an appeal for someone to wall it in the notes on the AP page and I'm effectively repeating that appeal here, I guess. I'd love someone to wall it. I can also make a wingless version available if you want to make your own wings in your wall--just give me a shout over at AP.

Eventually the vector will go up on my own site of course, but that won't be for a while.

And speaking of my own sites I uploaded the last of the previous batch of updates this last w/end. It was a review of X--ostensibly the anime, but also the manga effectively. Check it out here.

I think I mentioned it before on the blog. I struggle with CLAMP stuff and I sometimes fear it's because I'm homophobic on some level. I don't think I am, but, for some reason I can never pin down, I never really quite like CLAMP's stuff. I tend to assume this is because of their story-telling, but I dunno, everyone else seems to love their stuff, so I wonder if there's not something more to it

Well, that was surprisingly deep for the old blog :/.

I've been working on some new site updates - I've got a bunch of reviews done as I mentioned before, but I like to keep things a bit more varied, which is where things like the vectors and walls come in. It should basically mean my sites will be updated into the New Year at least.

Monday 29 September 2008

will it never end?

Well, I was a particularly good little boy this w/end and I did a shed load of scanning.

In fact, I actually did a count at the end of Sunday and I'd done a total of 189 scans. This was across 5 artbooks... One of which actually reminded me why the whole scanning thing had pretty much ground to a halt: of those 189 scans, it must have had about 89 of them. In one artbook.

I mean, that's great--everyone who buys artbooks loves it when they're jam-packed with pretty colour pictures--but it also kinda makes the book feel like a chore to scan. I mean, with a book like that, you can be going at it for 2 or 3 hours and then think to yourself "How am I doing? I must be nearly finished." Then you count up how many scans you've done and got left and you find you're only half way through :/.

Anyway, the good news is that the artbook pile is at least 1/3rd, if not half as big as it used to be.

I've been continuing in my game of anime catch-up while I've been scanning. I'm hopeful that if I can stick with the scanning during the next few weeks I can clear the entire backlog of series before the new (October) season's fansubs really get going.

This w/end I watched:

  • Special A - very good. Another from the plethora of shoujo manga adaptations that seem to have exploded forth this season. But this one is distinctly different. I mean, it's got pretty-boy style art and the premise is daft, like most shoujo stuff, but this is more of a traditional romance job. And I was actually quite impressed. It's not really new or original as such--I've seen just about everything here before--but it's got gusto and puts a nice spin on the whole scenario. And it's pretty funny too.
  • Tetsuwan Birdy Decode - okay/good. It's got an interesting premise, I'll give it that. And it does generally feel like it has the potential to be quite good--the bad-guys are quite interesting, especially. But I dunno, it just felt like it lacked something. I think maybe it's because the whole Birdy character wasn't really explored much at all. I only watched my usual 3 eps and maybe it gets a bit more involved later, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.
  • Koihime†Musou - okay. It's basically the same idea as ikki tousen--taking the whole "romance of the three (four?) kingdoms" thing and replacing the characters with hot chicks. And hot chicks means boobs, jiggling and lots of baths, obviously. Yes, it's a fan-service show, as you can guess. I dunno--it didn't really do much for me other than the t&a, though.
  • Natsume Yuujin-chou - awesome. Yujin-chou means "book of friends;" the friends in question being ayakashi, which are like spirits. It's based around that whole thing of knowing someone's "true name" gives you power over them. This was really very good indeed--it's the type of show that only anime does. Partly that's because it's routed in Eastern mystic traditions like I say, but also because it baulks all sorts of traditional story-telling structures and just does its own thing.
Maybe I've gone soft recently, but the above shows and a few others recently have kinda restored my faith in anime a bit. I mean, I never really lost my faith, but a little while ago we had Gurren Lagann and Code Geass in quick succession and I dunno, everything looked a little less good (and, possibly more importantly, like hoary old retreads) by comparison.

These shows have confirmed that they can still produce stuff that's interesting and different.