andorus

Of all the things to get me drawing again, it was Sailormoon. (Three pencil sketches behind the cut, two Sailormoon, one Pirates of Dark Water.)

( I couldn't sleep because I was drawing, or I was drawing because I couldn't sleep...not sure which )

So I didn't pull another all-nighter, but I was at the office until 2:30 AM--not working on this the whole time, though, but I did put in over 6 solid hours of work to wrap it up). I expected to be out of here by, like, 10...but this stuff tends to take much longer than you expect. And there's still more I didn't get to fix, like cleaning up some of the ads and their placements.

http://ecomancer.net/misc/design/old+new-readable-order.pdf

I made an alt. PDF with the pages in readable order, as opposed to the printable version, where they seem to be arranged helter-skelter, since they'll be printed front/back and bound.

I ended up having to mock up a booklet with half-sheets of blank printer paper and write down the non-fixed section names (front cover's fixed, and some sponsors bought ad space on specific pages, and the lineup/roster always appear in the middle) and individual ads on Post-it notes, and juggled them around for a while until it made sense. It was a fun exercise. :)

And to view the November Symphony Hall concert programme in readable order:

http://ecomancer.net/misc/design/gala-readable-order.pdf

Oh, and... http://flickr.com/photos/andorus/3103310776/ :D I was sent this to include in this last programme, of our concert at Symphony Hall, and couldn't resist uploading it to my photostream. You can't really see me, because they photographed us from behind me and I have black hair and was wearing all black, but I WAS THERE!

Happy Friday, guys. I hope a few of you can attend our concert this weekend--Wieuca Road Baptist Church (3626 Peachtree, close to Phipps Plaza), 3:30 PM, and free! We're doing the New World Symphony by Dvorak, which is one of my favorites, as well as the Brahms violin and cello concerto (which I still really, really need to work on...) and a Slavonic Dance by Dvorak which I've heard before and isn't one of my favorites, but it's kind of pretty.

http://ecomancer.net/misc/design/gala.pdf (6MB PDF, fyi)

Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow TOMORROW! I am SO EXCITED about this--I'm dancing around my apartment giddily (but not after midnight, so as not to wake up my downstairs neighbor again).

As far as I know, the programme has been printed and its copies are at Kinko's being folded and saddle-stitched professionally. I pulled a surprisingly successful and pain-free all-nighter yesterday (late Wednesday to early Thursday) at the office, with a cup of tea and my music collection to keep me company (it was nice being able to sing along with stuff and not worry about bothering anyone else!), and got the vast majority of the work done. But after getting some sleep, I still had several hours' worth of revisions to do yesterday (like the fact that I didn't realize that the programme wasn't full-bleed, but luckily that was easy enough to fix in InDesign). I really hope Lisa was able to get the 600-800 copies of the 20-page program (10 sheets of paper folded in half) printed.

And I can't WAIT to see the final product.

This has taught me a lot about InDesign as well as setting up documents for print, the latter of which is something I'm still weak on because I've had to figure it all out on my own, and sometimes it's just not intuitive.

And we aren't out of the woods yet--our next concert's a month from now and Lisa (the orchestra's GM) mentioned yesterday that we probably need to get the poster, programme, and postcard taken care of by next week for that. No rest for the weary, though this is at least fun work, and I can hopefully use it in my portfolio, which I need to spend the next week slaving away on.

It's now Friday morning and I need to get ready for work. I will be on the stage of Atlanta's Symphony Hall at the Woodruff Arts Center in 36 hours! This is like a dream come true--I can't wait!

After long last, I have a few new sketches to post! I need to post something on occasion so I can still be able to claim that I'm an artist, right?

( Both are kind of large )

And not a sketch, but this is a scan of an article about me from the newsletter of the town where I lived in Japan, with a translation. ( also a touch large )

It's an interesting look back, remembering actually giving that interview and reliving my thoughts and ideas about the country.

Hello! Long time no public update.

I just launched the redesign of my visual portfolio, in light of my job search. Please take a look and let me know if you see any errors, typos, broken links, or anything of the sort.

(I've found several IE6 bugs, but I figure it's an old enough browser that I shouldn't worry too much.)

IE7/IE8-beta users: do you experience any problems? I currently don't have access to either browser, and I need IE6 on Parallels for testing purposes for work.

I've been working feverishly on this for the past 2 days. I'd been hacking away at it idly for weeks, but I finally buckled down and churned the whole thing out, and it feels so good to have it up! Though I'm realizing how antiquated some of these portfolio items are...I really need to find some newer content to swap some of these out for.

Thanks so much!

I've never used an oekaki before, but I decided to install Facebook's Graffiti add-on. phutro has one of my favorite photos of his as his current user image, so I decided to be a Hamza Ahmed Fangirl and doodle something quick. I ended up really getting into it and spending around an hour on it; not bad for my first try, especially considering that I was working with slightly different dimensions from the original.

( behind a cut, because the second image is a 200k .png )

Hamza Fanart! Fitting, for one of my favorite photographers. ;o)

Working on a Japan journal redesign. Screenshot behind the cut.

( 800x500 screenshot )

Speaking of redesigns...I kind of wonder if I should migrate the blog over to WordPress while I'm at it. I think it's most important to get the design up first, though, before worrying about the back-end software.

And wow, half of what I wrote just sounds so weird--I don't think it's possible for me to write normal-sounding English right now, because of how much Japanified English has seeped in and influenced my diction. I even used "very" up there!

Wow, a rare public entry.

I just wanted to point out, for people who are relatively new to my journal and don't know what this Pirates of Dark Water thing is that I keep talking about, or who don't know who those characters in my mood theme are--the show's on YouTube. All of it.

(I'm enjoying going through and reading the comments from people who've been watching these episodes there for the first time in years. It always gives me a thrill to see that sort of thing. It's especially cool seeing comments posted when episode 4 was posted and people who hadn't seen the show in years (or ever) were waiting in suspense for the conclusion.)

All these links go to part 1 of each episode. There are 2 or 3 parts per episode, due to the max file length limit on YouTube.

1. The Quest
2. Dishonor
3. Break-Up
4. Betrayal
5. Victory
6. Andorus
7. A Drop of Darkness
8. The Beast And The Bell
9. Panacea
10. King Niddler
11. The Collection
12. The Little Leviathan
13. The Darkdweller
14. The Dark Disciples
15. The Ghost Pirates
16. The Dagron Master
17. The Game Players of Undaar
18. The Pandawa Plague
19. Sister of the Sword
20. The Soul Stealer
21. The Living Treasure

So, yeah! If you're new to the show, do consider checking it out, and I hope you like it--let me know what you think! It's a lot more accessible now than it was just as a torrent, though even that's a massive improvement over what was available just 5 years ago. But if you like what you see, I'd highly suggest trying to download any of the torrents, to really be able to appreciate the stunning visuals.

And I have another big project or three coming up fast as well. Whew.

Pinocchio poster - finished!
- there's some text on the right-hand side (an English/Japanese "free"/"easy English and some Japanese" announcement) that isn't shown here. We also may be switching a venue, so some of the bottom text will change.

And this is something I pretty much did today--Anya asked me last week if I'd put together a design idea she's had for the Tokushima AJET sweatshirts we're doing. We're actually having a design contest, but though a few people are apparently working on designs, nobody else has submitted anything, and she's been asking for submissions since December, so...yeah, hopefully everyone will like it. I did a low-res mockup at work today and spent about 4 hours recreating it at 300dpi for the printing company.

front (left breast) and back (center, big-ish)
(the green dude is Sudachi-kun, the mascot of Tokushima Prefecture. A sudachi is a very sour citrus fruit that resembles a lime. It's what our prefecture's known for.)

Believe it or not, the last major art project I did was the playbill for the 2006 Tokushima AJET musical, and now it's that time of year again. I'm really, really rusty, so please be kind, because it definitely is a bit sloppy. This has taken pretty much all my waking time outside of the conferences and other obligations I've had lately, not counting the school days when I was busy all day and didn't even bother bringing my laptop.

Crits and suggestions are totally welcome, but keep in mind that at this point I can't/won't change anything major. This poster needed to be in to TV Tokushima over a week ago so I'm really hurrying to get this done.

( low-res image, with a link to a hi-res one, and commentary )

Portfolio redesign is live.

I'm having this strangely surreal moment as "Making of Cyborg" from the Ghost in the Shell score by Kenji Kawai is playing, while I watch as the files in my beta/ folder, which has sort of "sustained" my portfolio redesign for all these months, seem to fly away and vanish.

Anyway, take a look, and please let me know if anything's broken or if you have any suggestions, presentation/content-wise. Thanks!

I got the idea to start a list of these--just songs that grab me out of the blue and don't let go. I don't want to forget what wonderful music I've rediscovered.

(April 11, 2007)
Jeff Buckley - "Hallelujah" (orig. Leonard Cohen)
I have no idea how I missed this song before. I'd heard this song at our annual Burns Supper, and then promptly forgot about it. My friend and I were talking about classic rock and older songs last night, and he sent me a link to a YouTube clip of this song, and I was transfixed. You just don't hear music quite like this anymore, and I can't believe I never heard this before this year.

The Imogen Heap version just made my breath catch in my throat and tears come to my eyes.

(May 15, 2007) Haven't updated this, but hands-down, k.d. lang's version is by far my favorite. Incredible.

( older )

These are the Lookbook pages for Tokyo Orientation, for the incoming Tokushima ALTs to look at. A Lookbook is a book of pages pitching the various AJET chapters in the prefectures/designated cities--each pre/DC is allotted 3 pages, and since I've sort of become the graphic designer of our AJET group by default, it fell on me to do this. The info on these is redundant because we already put this in the welcome flyer they received with their packets, but this is just eye candy--also, other prefectures actually require AJET member registration, which is why a pitch like this is required, while Tokushima JETs are all automatically in AJET to avoid excluding anyone.

とにかく。。。

one, two, and three

It's been a while since I've really gotten into a design project like this (well, "project"--started it yesterday and finished it today, minus text edits which'll probably come in Monday, which is the day I have to print and mail it). I've been doing design things--I designed our welcome flyer (front/back) that the new ALTs received with their initial info packets from the prefecture, redesigned my Japan journal, am currently working on a redesign of my Pirates of Dark Water site, and need to start ASAP on the tokersajet.com redesign...this just has me on a bit of a high. It's not often I do work in color that I'm really thrilled with, and it's also not often that my work's intended for a real audience. I hope that I've helped to give the incoming ALTs a good impression of Tokushima by presenting a professional but cool appearance in our documents to them.

http://andorus.ecomancer.net/new/

Thoughts? Just wanted to do something a little different (for me, anyway)...if it's plain or dumb-looking or the picture's dorky or it takes too long to load or anything, don't hold back. I threw this together in several hours, when I was avoiding wading through the nasty CSS for my Pirates of Dark Water site back-end revamp.

(15 extra icons! Ooh ooh ooh! What to make...?)

Cleaned out my friends-list a bit tonight and removed about 10 screen names of people who haven't posted in a long time and/or who I just don't talk to anymore, in person or via any other medium. It's really nothing personal at all--we just don't talk anymore (if we ever really did--I removed a couple of those "phantom" friends, who friended me and who I friended back but we never commented on each other's posts, etc.), and since this is a friends-only journal, I like to keep it down to people who I know are reading it and want to keep up with me. Also, in a couple of cases, you may have continually posted not-work-safe stuff and never put it behind a lj-cut, and since I do check LJ from work...yeah.

Oh, and for any of you reading this...seriously, if you don't read my journal but still have me friended for some reason, I won't be offended if you de-friend me. Just go for it. I know that not all 100(!) people who've friended me actually read my entries--I'll be lucky if 3/4 of that number do--so if I'm just occupying guilt-ridden space on your f-list and you've been looking for a way to take me off, just do it. Not a big deal.

There aren't a lot of Tech people on here, and those of you who are from Tech (and were either CS majors or Japanese students between 1999 and 2002-ish or involved with College Democrats) probably already know--but Adam Stevens (CS '04) was found dead in his apartment this morning. We don't know anything yet, though people suspect that it could be due to recent medical problems he's had, plus he just returned from a trip to India a couple of days ago.

This has me really, really shaken up--I hadn't kept in really good touch with him since graduation (he graduated 12 months before I did--I was at that ceremony and remember the huge, triumphant, relieved grin on his face when he walked), but in school he was one of my better friends, a friendly, funny, laid-back, charmingly nerdy, and compassionate guy I always had a lot of respect for and really enjoyed hanging out with. A complete sweetheart, a hard worker, a hard-core devotee to the things that were important to him...he also struggled with computer science, but he stuck it out and ended up graduating with his bachelors in CS. We also had many Japanese classes together, and he envied me for sticking with Japanese the way I envied him for sticking with CS. He worked so hard to make things work.

He was only 24 years old. He didn't deserve something as terrible and random as this to happen to someone as wonderful as he was--he'd worked so hard to get to where he was, and there was so much more in store for him. Work and school always kept him so busy...he deserved a wonderful and fulfilling life, a chance to take a deep breath, let it out, and really enjoy himself.

The last time I saw him was when we saw Episode 3 together over the summer, a few weeks before leaving for JET. It was the first time we'd seen each other in a really, really long time, and I wanted to see him one more time before going to Japan. We gave each other a really big hug as we parted ways outside the Regal Hollywood 24, and I invited him to come visit me in Japan any time he wanted. I regret not making more of an effort to see him--granted, he was always traveling and really busy with his job, and wasn't in Atlanta very often--but I am glad that I did get to see him that one time at least.

I found out when jleepig k-mailed me right after I came home during my lunch break. I signed onto AIM and talked to her for a bit, and then called home and talked to my mom for a while, and in the process missed my bus for my elementary school (the class is at 3, but the only way to get there via public transportation in time for the class is a 12:45 bus)...I'd called because I wasn't sure if I should still go, because I didn't want to go back to work and start crying. But at the same time, it doesn't do any good to stay here and hope that I can hear more information. I've already heard the most important piece: Adam Michael Stevens passed away. He died, and he isn't coming back.

Rest in peace, Adam. I love you and miss you.

It's finally done! I just e-mailed the large files off to the guy who'll be making copies...

- Outside (doesn't Peter look much better now? The back cover now has a ridiculous amount of text on it, but it couldn't be helped.)
- Inside
- Larger version of the cover

I also made an A4 poster version of the cover (at my JTE's request; I guess they wanted to make sure my art was properly displayed, and they wanted a version that emphasized the two closest shows to us, which the kids would be able to attend most easily), and will be posting it along with the actual musical poster all over my junior high school tomorrow. I hope that my kids (and some of my teachers) will come check the musical out! If you're in Tokushima Prefecture during any weekend in March, you should come check it out as well.

*collapses*

( new cover image )

The other 2 images are too big to post, so I'll link to them: outside and inside of the playbill. The lines on the inside are supposed to be guidelines for people to fold along; I hope that when we start making copies, they line up properly.

And the info's definitely not finished, because I'm having problems reaching people--it's hitting me that this won't be done by this weekend, mainly due to not having all the text taken care of. I don't have everyone's info for the crew, I'm finding out names of more people I should include (I really need to shrink ALL the text on the right-hand inside panel)...I will include everyone, but I hope it's still readable when all is said and done.

And the blurb in the middle of the outside...that's supposed to be a quick synopsis of each of the 7 scenes. In English and Japanese, ultimately. I'm worried about the readability of that, as well, and I also am hoping somebody can do the translations for me...and maybe people will figure out how to simplify AND shorten that text, because it's too long, but it has to be something that ESL viewers can use to understand what's happening onstage, since the majority of the show is in English.

I did print out what I had, though, on the community center's high-quality printer, and tried making copies (I'm glad I remember the kanji for "photo," 写真...without that option I'd have had to redo a huge chunk of the image due to ridiculous amounts of contrast), and it worked like a charm. Totally doable, with great results! I just have to lighten Peter and John's hair, and tone down some shadows. (I also want to darken Wendy's skin a bit more--Audrey, the girl playing Wendy, isn't Caucasian, and I want to reflect the multi-ethnicity of the cast in the image if possible. It's only faintly darker now.)

And...that's all for now.