ART OF THE WEEK:

This picture was the cover picture used for literary release of Another Dream 6, the western Touhou fan publication. I spent most of the summer working on it, sporadically that is, which is why it took an entire month from start to finish. It has been a while since my last attempt at coloring, so at first the going was incredibly slow. However, around halfway through, the going got a lot quicker. This is probably the first coloring job without a tacked on background that I really feel is completely finished. I did use a reference for the background though, and the lighting doesn't quite fit, but overall I'm fairly satisfied with the outcome. I actually finished the last bits of the picture and background back up north, as I went back home for my birthday. I had to borrow a friend's tablet to in order to paint the rest of it. I'll be doing another cover for the doujin release of Another Dream 6, which will be released in mid October.

EVENTS OF THE SUMMER:

Sorry for the complete lack of updates for the summer. The way I have to update this blog is incredibly hack-y, which really puts me off. I'm definitely going to work on revamping the website and blog this the next couple of weeks to make both my life and your viewing easier. I've also been trying to regain and grow my viewer base ever since I discovered the awstats tool my host provides me. It gives me fairly detailed information on monthly visitors/hits/traffic/bandwidth. I now update regularly on Wednesdays and if I can't make it on time, I leave a note so I don't leave my viewers wondering. I've grown the number of unique visitors and hits by about 80% in the last month, so things are looking up. Thanks to all the loyal viewers out there! Check back soon for the site overhaul!

After school ended in June I went back to Fremont for about a month. I originally was only going to stay 2 weeks, but I wanted to stay to celebrate the July 4th weekend. Then my parents decided they wanted to have one "final" family trip together, so I actually didn't back to Los Angeles until the morning of the 14th. During the first week in Fremont I got the Playstation 3 game Infamous and played it for the entire week. I also had to perform 'spring cleaning' for the house, as my parents don't really take care of the house very much when I'm not there.

After the first weekend I was back, Kirby came back from Georgia for two weeks, and stayed at my place for a couple of days because his only available abode was in Pleasanton. I tried to goad him into working on his art, but it was mostly to no avail. When Transformers 2 came out in theaters, my buddies and I decided to catch the IMAX showing over in Dublin. However, by the time we got there all the IMAX showings were sold out, so we ended up driving 30 minutes to watch the regular showing of Transformers. The movie turned out to be horrible.

I'm actually glad I stayed in Fremont longer, as I was able to get in some BlazBlue time before I came back to Los Angeles. I wasn't that big of a fan of Street Fighter 4, but BlazBlue hits all the right buttons for me. After playing around with the entire cast I settled on Noel as my main. Unfortunately, most of my buddies with the exception of Xephyr and Raydiant weren't that into the game, and with the former busy with family issues and the latter leaving for China, I didn't have a whole lot of people to play against. I even brought it to Dammerung's July 4th BBQ, but everyone just wanted to play Guitar Hero instead. I was able to finish the story mode, including the True End the day before I had to leave on the family trip. I was pleasantly surprised by the visual novel format of the story development, and I'm definitely looking forward to the sequel, since the story pretty much drops off at a cliffhanger.

During the July 4th BBQ, Dammerung told me of his involvement in the development of an Android platform app. His team consisted of Laibert and BlazinIce, and he wanted to pique my interest in such an undertaking as they felt I would be a beneficial asset to the team. I didn't officially join until a little bit later, and that's what I ended up doing for the past month. I'll talk more about the Android project as well as the rest of my summer in my next blog entry, as this session is already getting quite lengthy. See you next time!