Anime + Food

Decided to put together an anime night. This is just the invitation for the event I put up on FB...Posting it here because I can! We'll see if it turns out OK or I scare everyone off with my 'old' anime. Could be fun or it could be a disaster.

Let's get this rollin'

After the last time everyone came over and we ended up watching anime, D* suggested putting together a bi-weekly or monthly get together. I like the idea, so this is kinda our trial run of the Anime + Food night...Come for part of it or go insane staying the whole night.

So, let's get together, watch some cartoons, and eat some food! It'll be pot-luck style. I'll make something main course-ish and everyone else can bring sides, snacks, or whatever else. If it turns out we're missing something vital we can just walk over to Safeway and get it.

For anime....I've got lots of shows you all probably haven't seen, but if you have suggestions let's hear them.

Anyways, proposed schedule:

October 24th!

1 - 2:30: R.O.D. (Read or Die) OAV
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH0zsABQiaQ

Think British Library+James Bond+X-Men vs re-incarnated historical and fictional characters. There was a TV series for it, but it wasn't quite as good.

2:30 - 3ish: Bubblegum Crisis 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNp7CN_Hqjo

Our old-school moment for the day. Practically required viewing in many people's books. Girls in power armor and transforming motorcycles vs cyborgs, rockin' 80's music, evil mega corps, and lots of Bladerunner references. It's a poor copy on a VHS tape but that just adds to it.

3ish - ? FOOD! Everyone should be here by now so we'll start. I'm thinking of making beef bourguignon. Made it before from a recipe out of The Country Cooking of France. Mom says she has a superior version. We'll see....Not sure which I'll make. So, fancy French stew + whatever else we come up with.

? - late: Revolutionary Girl Utena 1-13(?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL25C0H9vVw
(And because I like this ending) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZSgCvmkZCc

This'll get us through the first story arc. Rather bizarre show and one of my favorites. Girl gets ring as a child, decides to become a prince, goes to a school and gets caught up in duels to gain "the power to revolutionize the world," insanity follows. Has...well, just about everything in it (except robots) at some point or another. Tested it out on D*. He had no idea what was going on but all the pink didn't make his head explode so we should be good.

More packing

Packed up more stuff for the move today. Spent most of it in nostalgia land again while I dug through my old stuff. These are some copies of Animage from 1999/2000. Gundam, Inu Yasha, and Cardcaptor Sakura...Shonen action and magical girls. Got me thinking about how much (or how little) has changed in anime over the last 10 years.


Also unearthed this little jem. My sketchbook from about 12 years ago! Lots of really bad sketches in it, but also lots of memories. This is a picture of one of the flyers I did for our club and a Ranma character guide I had started to work on. Right around the start of my interest in design before I really thought about making a career out of it. Funny thing is, I've started to swing back towards hand lettering things...


Made these bookmarks a couple years back. Didn't cut the linoleum block right so I never took it past the test printing phase. I still love printmaking and do them now and again. The cuts are messy but if you want one just let me know!


Ahhhh...My Comic Party doujin. I did scan and digitally letter this but there wasn't much interest at the time so I never printed any copies. Not sure what happened to the files or the script but I did find the thumbnails and a few notes so I could probably re-make it if I wanted to. Must be from around 2004 because it is on Deleter paper which I bought at Gamers.


Aaaand my signboards just before I boxed them up. Big thanks to the Bro Crew for getting me these and many other sketches over the years. Each one has their own crazy little back story of anime convention hi-jinks which makes me chuckle each time.

Moving

In case you haven't heard I'm moving soon. Not a very big move...Just to another apartment in the same complex. They lowered the rates here but won't drop mine unless I move into a new place so off I go!

I've been putting it off packing for a while. The thought of putting everything in boxes is really daunting since I've amassed a large amount of stuff since I moved here a few years ago. Got rid of a bunch of it but there is still way more to go.

Mainly because I'm one of those obsessive otaku types and have been for years. I don't want to move all this stuff but can't get rid of it either. And books and DVDs are super heavy...Case in point: the picture above. Started boxing things up and got about half way through my books. All my DVDs and figures are boxed up at least! That is what you see in the pic above. So, only three more bookshelves worth of manga, novels, and artbooks to go! Luckily my ~300 VHS tapes are already crated up in the closet. You can see one box of them in this pic...That has some that I had on the shelf because I still watch them periodically. Stuff like Royal Space Force, Dirty Pait TV, and Oniisama-e. Maybe when I get it finished I'll stack the boxes all together and take a picture of the giant stack of otaku shame.


It isn't all horrid tho. I also like it because I find stuff I had almost forgotten about or not read in a while. Things like this, my Clow Card set! Can't remember when I bought it but it was a long time ago. Even if I can't remember the details of this purchase it still conjures up some nostalgia because of the series it is from....Good gods, the US TV version got me all riled up when it started airing.


It also gives me time to flip through old floppies and magazines. I was one of those guys who had an account at a comic shop for a while. Also had subscriptions off and on to a number of anthology magazines. I love to subscribe when I have the money and normally give the first year a go. Thus, these are all the first issue of those pubs...But only one of them is still around. Used to have a handfull of Pulp also but those got lost in a move many moons ago. Still a little bitter about that.

Anyways, call me old fashioned but times like this are why I still love print much more than digital distro. Sure, the sweating while lugging around boxes of dead tree sucks a lot more than tossing my CD case in the back of my car...But I'm having much more fun flipping through old copies of SMB! to re-read Club 9 and Shadow Star. Can't recall the last time I popped in a disk to find a PDF I burned 6 years ago. Just isn't as accessable or enjoyable to me.

Time to catch some sleep then get back to packing and job hunting tomorrow.

Mission Peak

A few of my friends and I decided it was time to defeat Mission Peak and went on a hike yesterday. It was a fun time but my gods it got hot pretty quick. Didn't take too long for my out of shape self to start sweating like mad...which is pretty normal even if I exercise a lot unfortunately.



Anyways, as usual we set out a little later than planned. Ran into a few cows blocking the trail which we were warned about. Made it to the top in 2.5hrs and there were a lot of people also tackling the mountain. A lot!

I brought along a couple video cameras...One of which was our old teacher's which I haven't given back. Decided we should hold it for ransom.

The hike back down went really quick and painlessly. Once we got to the bottom we decided we were hungry and set out to find some prime rib. There was a place nearby that P said had really good meat but when we got there they were closed...only open for dinner. Determined to get steaks we headed out for Outback...and they were closed until dinner also. Damn! Ended up at the Cheesecake Factory.

Ran home, took a quick nap then jaunted over to another friends place for some BBQ till midnight or so. Really long day. Now I'm sore and pretty tired but feel good. Got a bit of a sunburn but when you are as pasty as I am that is to be expected.

Back to job hunting now!

Nola's

Went to AIGA's traveling lounge tonight. Really wish I was at ComiCon but tonight was fun none the less. Caught up with friends, handed out business cards to complete strangers, and drank way too much also. Good times! What made it even better? Yeah, that's right, Nola's has a painting of none other than Robert Johnson. Not a stellar painting but they get bonus points in my book. Off too pass out for a while..

My SelfControl broke.

Well, my personal self control has always been broken, but I'm talking more about the app. I downloaded it some time early this year and it helped out quite a bit. This program lets you create a blacklist of certain websites then start up a countdown timer for how long you want to block them. I had things like facebook and various chans on mine.

They recently updated the program and I got the new version, 1.2. It had a bug...got an error the first time I ran it but didn't think much of it. The next time it loaded I couldn't set the time, edit the blacklist, and it wouldn't block anything. Guess there was a known bug in it and they updated to version 1.2.1...but you can't just delete the app and re-install.

Anyways, contacted the guys that wrote it with the issue. They sent me over a SelfControl killer, I d/l'd the new version, and it is working again! Good stuff.

So if you use the app be sure to grab 1.2.1. I got it from here but you might be able to find it other places as well. OK, back to work.

Fanime 09 part II

I've been running here and there lately. Keeping up with friends and trying to find a job. Sent out plenty of applications but nobody has called back yet.

Today Pat and I went out for some Chinese style beef noodle soup. It was really good. I guess the waiter asked Pat (in Chinese) if he should make it less spicy for me. Hell no. Bring it on! At the end of the meal they brought out these little things. They were fried pastry filled with red beans and looked like mice. I almost didn't want to eat them, but they were too delicious to pass up.


Still lazily going through pictures I took over the last month. Here are a few more from Fanime. Cosplay this time around. First up is someone from Kuroshitsuji. I think...


The video game version of Haruhi.


A convention isn't complete for me without at least one Rabi-en-Rose sighting! But I am seeing fewer and fewer people dressing as Koge-Donbo's characters at Fanime so she was the only Rabi I saw.


This guy was pretty cool. He had a machine gun backpack that when he squeezed one of his gloves it emitted steam out the pipe in the top.

That's it for now. Back to being lazy.

Fanime 09

Slowly catching up to present time with these posts. But not really...These pictures are from our semi-infamous Gainax Suitcase Sale Incident where we partially cleared out a meet-and-greet with Kanti figures. The Gainax staff was all at Fanime last year and many of them wanted the figures. I guess you can't get them too easy in Japan since they were a US made product.


Anyways, they saw them at our booth and quickly bought all the ones we had. Shiz found more and brought them up with her on the plane. We took them to the party and ended up selling the last of them...out of a suitcase, on the floor, in the hall. It was all very shady looking but the staff was happy to get them.


I had my Yashica A on my that year so I snapped a few pics. This year some of the staff was back so I printed these out and gave them a copy. I wanted to give them a for-real print but never got around to it during the semester. grr.


I went to the party again this year and was actually let inside this time (Thanks everyone!). Being the dunce I am, I only showed up with my camera and no sign boards. After a few moments of debate Dee and I ran down the street to Walgreens where I picked up a cheapie sketchbook. I got this cute Yoko sketch during the party as well as a few signatures.


Afterwards Shiz took my sketchbook and got this super cool drawing of Nia. I'm contemplating taking them out of the book and mounting them to boards so I can put them out like my other signboards.

I took more pics with my Minolta this year but have been too lazy/busy to develop the film yet. Maybe later this morning?

And then it was over.

The show is over, I've graduated, Fanime is done, family has gone back to So. Cal. I guess it's time to start real life now? I've been trying to finish up my site and work more on my portfolio lately. AIGA's portfolio day is Saturday then it is full time job search! I've done a little of it so far but still don't want to put my website out there until it is more complete. Soon....

More Action^3

More pictures from the show! Last day is today so if you haven't seen it, get your butt on down there!! This is the area where we show the movie titles that we made.


Tide charts.

The amazing spinning obelisk of doom. This was to display our 3D timeline. A lot of us didn't want to re-make them and were worried about how much floor space they'd take up so S* came up with this idea. Plywood with stone texture and lazy susans to spin each section. Then the pictures are on hinges so you can lift each one up and 2 more views of the work. Quite cool. Thanks to Bob for leding us his amazing carpentry skills!

Our experimental type books. We weren't allowed to use any pictures in them which is why this says "We want more words." 150 in Wonderland and crew printed out and pasted down pages from the books then cut them out to make those letters.


Our identity books and part of the portfolio wall. That type at the top says "Show me the money" A little play on the economy of course. Also a play on how much branding firms make on each identity. It was a little shocking to hear when we took that class, but once we saw just how much time and energy it takes to make a good, comprehensive identity it all made sense. That red line continued all the way across the gallery.


The infamous whale poo wall. Really, what more needs to be said?


Finally, 150 in Wonderland's Alice typeface packaging along with Sinatra and Mariah Carey.

I think that covers all the displays now. Maybe I'll post some more individual work later? Closing party tonight, Graduation Saturday, then we take it all down Sunday and Monday. Oh my...

Action Action Action Open

The show is open and the opening receptions have come and gone. Everything went over great and I'm really happy. Lots of hard work from everybody that paid off in the end. I took a bunch of pictures of the space with my Canon but forgot it at the gallery so here are a few snaps from my little Sony.







We're keeping it open until next week so be sure to come by if you're in the area.

Progression 2

Show opens tonight. I'm so glad we got it all done in time. Come see our shit!

Progression

Show setup has begun! It's already been two rather long days with only 2.5 more to go. Progress is being made but there needs to be more! Here's a few pictures of the setup for you all. Get ready for a rather interesting time if you come. This picture is how the gallery looked when we got into the space. We were trying to eat breakfast, figure out where everyone was, what to do first. So much to do we weren't sure where to start. Stepping into a blank gallery is pretty exciting. I couldn't wait to get going.

Also...Is that Mac Vs PC?


Color coded trash ready to go.


Type on type? It's rather unanimous between us all that we love this wall.


Paintin' and tracin'.


The soon to be portfolio wall o' doom.


K* getting all artsy on us. It was a shame it had to be painted over.

More progress was made but I was so tired I forgot to take pictures of it. Day 1 I was there from 8:30AM to around 10PM and today I went after work from 3PM to about 9PM. Not enough has been done to make me feel safe yet...anyone want to re-print and assemble the rest of my projects for me? I still need to finish my website too. Uhoh..

Back to printing and binding my portfolio.

Buttons!

We have buttons! I'm totally in love with this little machine. Anyone want to buy me one?


In true fashion, we started attaching them to everything. I think the Ninja liked hers. Looks super cute on her bag! These were quick mock-ups that I made to test the machine but some of them turned out pretty nice. Look for more when we get the show running.

In your mailbox.

After weeks of drama the posters for the show have been sealed, labeled, and mailed. It felt really good to get them out. One step closer to being done!! If you didn't get one send me your address and I'll drop one in the mail for you. We start setup for the show Monday and I'm pretty jazzed to see how it all turns out. One week exactly 'till it opens.


We also got in our class shirts. Fuck yeah! Another thing that took us a while but was totally worth it. Funny side story...L* stabbed her index finger with an x-acto knife the other day and had a bandaid on it. This shirt was a prophecy!


I also helped de-install the Image and Idea show. It was pretty nice to see my work in a gallery and have people reading one of my books. Got some pretty good response to it. I loved the images and my concept for it, but I don't think I'll do a book that big again. It lost some of it's intimacy even though it let me be really expressive with some of the pages. And, if you were wondering...Yes, I sewed the images onto the page and gave the edges of my pages the treatment. Sometimes doing the needlework is my favorite part.