Friday, April 13, 2012

Easter Weekend

I feel like I want to blog more often!  〆(・∀・@) The interval between all my posts are like, a month apart and there needs to be more activity.  Ahaha, in a way I want to document these moments in my life because I know in the future this blog will be like a time capsule.  I know that's what it feels like when I read my posts from the teenage years.  And oh boy, was there some second hand embarrassment there!  But fun to look back on how I have grown too.

Quite a busy Easter Weekend was to be had last week.  Spent some time with Lunatarius while he was studying, and cooked meals together (⌒▽⌒)☆.  I will be looking forward to next week, when he can relax a little bit more than usual.  Though its good to be able to spend any time with him really.  We ended up watching Beastly as well, and gotta say it isn't the best movie.  It could almost lie around the realms of Twilight if you are thinking about QUALITY films.  (Sorry to all those sparkling vampire fans out there)  Everything happened so fast, not to mention without proper context and I expected so much more from this prior to watching.  Rotten Tomatoes was right this time, unfortunately.  But they were so wrong about Hilary Duff movies *shotshot*  I will always love Cinderella Story and The Lizzie McGuire Movie ahaha...

On Monday, I went to Beebeesquee's house for our cosplay photoshoot.  I didn't feel like crossplaying that day (cos that's honestly all I have atm and Trucy is missing *sadface*), so I ended up dressing Lolita-esque.  It's fun to dress up!  Noxnoctis was the pro make-up artist of the day and man, even just observing her teaching Beebeesquee about tips and techniques was quite helpful in gaining knowledge about the craft.  It was taking quite a while, so I ended up taking advantage of Bee's tablet and doodled random stuff on Clip Paint Lab.  After lots of chilling at her house and pigging out on snacks and pizza, we went down to the Meadowbank Wetlands (I think?) with Pongo as our photographer.  It was a fun day, hanging out with fellow people who have enjoyment in cosplay and japanese pop culture.  I almost feel like a little kid again, doing all this dress-up stuff!  Never would I imagine you could do all this stuff as an adult as well, because I suppose its not the typical thing you would be expected to be doing at this age.  I'm glad I can!  And, I will continue to.

Speaking of cosplay, still need to figure out who I want to dress up as at Overload this year ^p^.
A girl this time, for sure!

On Tuesday Bobo, Momo, xraiko, Japgem, Hoi Yang and I ate lunch and went to see The Hunger Games together.  The place we went to eat was called Kanda.  It was a Japanese Buffet place, and was it filling, or what!  They had you fill out a sheet, which had all the options of food you could pick.  You'd write down the number of each item you want, give the sheet to the waiter, and voila just wait for the dishes to come to you!  The price was a bit more expensive than the usual places we would dine out at, but for a buffet it's pretty good.  I probably got sick of all the sushi afterwards, cos when we passed St. Pierres on the way to New World, I felt it all in my stomach OTL.  But om nom nom!  So gooood.  Wouldn't say Kanda could appeal much to vegetarians though.  It's a pretty meaty menu.  The Hunger Games was an epic movie!  I think I finally understand why everything is so hyped about it.  It is sorta reminiscent to Battle Royale in the sense since that they are both contests where they have to kill until there's one left.  The brutality is quite interesting, but I'm hoping this never ever happens in real life.  Unlikely, but I had to say it ^p^.  It was heartbreaking seeing the kids die one by one.  Makes me want to join the bandwagon of reading the books now.  Joining the brigade of people who read books after the movie.  *shotshot*  I'm guessing there would be a bit of elitism with this sort of thing.  In the fandom anyway.  But, meh.  Anyways it was great catching up with my friends again, and I think xraiko and Momo are making me tempted to buy a PSP sometime in the future.  Dammit, those cool games!  D>  I shouldn't get ahead of myself though, since there are already plenty games on my list that need to be completed first.

(●⌒∇⌒●) Oh, oh and great news!

I received my precious RAM upgrade in the mail! ヽ(*⌒∇⌒*)ノ

I'm so happy that my computer runs so smoothly now uwahhh~

I can now open as many tabs as I want, and open more than one Adobe program at the same time without that evil lag, while playing iTunes in the background toooo!  Wheeee~

Loving my computer even more now.

Okay, signing off.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Gesture Drawing

Started working through Glen Vilppu's Drawing Manual last week!  I've only read the first two exercises so far, but I can already see some results.  He warned us in his written word that people may be tempted to skip all those basic steps that he teaches because it looks so easy and pointless, but it honestly helps.  If only I had been patient earlier instead of flipping through the pages, and go "pshh that seems easy enough".  It was good to finally sit down and go through the book.  I find when I rewrite notes from books into shorter form, I tend to grasp the information better and am discouraged to just skim through parts that might be important.

The first exercise was the jot down the overall gesture line of the body, arms and legs.  Not necessarily copying the outer shape of the body but feeling the movement and letting your pencil capture that shape.

The second exercise was to play around with spheres, and how different the lines can communicate to the person looking at an image depending on how its drawn.  Just the way you place a line can determine whether the shape is in front, behind or twisted in relation to another shape.  I like how I can get a more logical take on drawing.

I guess I would usually depend on my artistic instinct (whatever I have anyways), but I feel that starting to learn the fundamentals properly is allowing me to make sense of it all.  Part of me thinks that I should have focussed on this earlier, but better late than never right?


Okies, gotta keep trucking with these gestures from posemaniacs everyday!