Sleepover poppin'

Q: When was the last time I went to a sleepover!?
A: Yesterday at Jaydee's house!

NO WAY!

• Loooong drive to Riverside, arrived there with other XC '09ers at around 9PM and ate most of a huge flying saucer pizza - the kind of pizza large enough to fully encase a child under the age of three.
• Played BALDERDASH for many many hours. YEEAAAHHHHH FUN! Answer highlights from the game that I (well, mainly Veronica) can remember:

--SCRAP (anagram) =
Secret Carriers of Rats and Pigeons
Scary Clowns Rapping About Pie
Sick Children Race Across Philadelphia
--The Day the Fish Came Out (movie) =
A fish is eaten by a bear and has adventures in his stomach. One day, the fish comes out.
A boy hits puberty and can't control himself.
A gay fish admits he wants to go to TigerHeat.
--The Mysterious Mr. Wong (movie) = Frankie exposed!
--Soosoo (word) = What you dodo when someone hurts you.
--Fundungi (word) = A recreational game played in Poland where five people gather around and... git crunk.
--MEG acronym apparently has something to do with gorillas.
--NPPA =/= NAPA
--Guch.
--In Illinois, it used to be illegal for women weighing more than 200 pounds to ride a horse in shorts. (That's actually true, albeit hilariously disgusting to imagine.)
--Happy Birthday to the ground.

I KNOW there's more to this list... so if anyone thinks of anymore, just hit me up, then I'll hit this up, and that's how we'll hit it up. That's like a 3x COMBO.

• Played some Rockband 2 and Beatles Rockband. British accent not required to sing, although recommended for added flare. BYTHEWAY, how come when British people sing, their accent sounds like an American one? Ya think they think that of us? If I ever meet up with a fellow from the U.K., that shall me my number one question.
• "Let's play TOD!" "Yeah!.." We never did.
• "Let's play cards!" "Yeah!.." We never did.
• "Let's sleep!" We did.
• Slept from 3am-10:30am... (cue piano transition from night to day)
• Ate a delicious breakfast from Jaydee's dad and sister! Egg/ham, toast, and waffos. BTW Jaydee, his dad, and his sister were such great hosts! (Hosts? Is that the word?) They spent a lot of time to cook all this food for us and I just wanted them to know how much we all appreciate it! (Yes, by talking about it in a blog post online.)
• More Rockband, more pizza, more Balderdash, more food.

Before we got a chance to combine our experience by playing RockbalderBandash, it was already 5pm today! We had spent almost almost 24 hours over there. And so, with reluctance to leave the magical realm that is Jaydee's Riverside house, we packed up our stuff and headed back to the not-as-comparatively-magical realm that is our regular lives in Cerritos. But that was probably the most fun I've had this entire winter break! Thanks for the memories! (Even if they ARE so great..! Get it? Get it? FOB reference cmon.)


Sidenote of unrelatedness:
This post will most likely be my last post. EVER. My very last entry for this Kanga!! So I hope you've enjoyed it! YAY!.. because yeah, I'm moving my blog to somewhere else (assuming you're reading this on the old site), so technically it's not going AWAY, I'm just leaving Blogspot. Within a week your eyes shall gaze upon my brand new website! I just hope it'll meet your... approval... oh ho ho pish posh jolly good then teaser of the sort g'day!


carry on my wayward son.

Is Santa a mutant?

Because that would explain a lot. It would explain how he can make reindeer fly, mind control elves to build toys, squeeze through any chimney, make his cheeks so rosy, and stay the same age and never die with such a rotund figure. It's called the Mutant Santa Theory.

Now a list with bullet points:

• Woke up at 7 and played Metroid Prime. I'm ALMOST done with the first game, I think I just need two more Chozo Artifacts I think.
• Watched It's A Wonderful Life in its entirety for the first time. Boy is it a good movie! The pacing is incredibly well done considering how a lot of them black and white movies tend to be a little slow, but that's just the filmnerd talking here. But man I got choked up at the very end. Hotdog!
• Opened up gifts with the familia at around 11 o'clock! To put the sum on things, I got a few shirts, a couple movies, some Mickey Mouse gloves, some other stuff, and a few art books! THANKS EVERYONE! Much more exciting than a DVD-ROM drive. Who would want THAT for Christmas?
• Ate yumlicious fish samiches that my mom cooked. WHOA, yumlicious, too lame/good of a word to find out someone else had thought of it before me so declining to search for it on Google!
• Animated some Flash with Flash. Sentence also reworded as: animated with Flash, Flash. Also, the following is a grammatically correct sentence: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. Crazay!
• Read some of my drawing book. Ironic?
• Went to the 2nd Uncle's house and partied it up there with cousins, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and unknowns.
• Favorite dinner foods: salad (surprising that I really enjoyed the salad?!), corn beef hash (though I like my parent's version better), and sauced chicken thing (what?).
• I think this is my first time karaoking, not counting Singstar or Rockband! It's especially fun to play with some elder Asian people who sing just 1 noticeable second late to the words on screen.
• White Elephant is also especially fun with horrible gifts and an incredibly sarcastic family. I got two wooden duckies, although now that I think about it, I probably should've gotten that picture frame. Hm. Oh well, I shall paint these duckies, and they shall be marvelous mallards.
• Went home sorta earlyish!
• Finished that Flash Flash animation.
• Typed this up.
• Went to sleep.

This Christmas was, for a lack of less-boring words, pretty good. (BUUHHHH "pretty good"?! That phrase should no longer be part of my repertoire of phrases! Someone hit me up with something better to replace it!) I felt really grown-up-ish this year (although not so grown up enough to use real words) because I didn't have that feeling of "I need to wake up so I can open my presents!". One possible reason is that now that I have a job that I work at for more than 3 hours a week (HAHA), I can pretty much buy whatever small luxury I want now. I could easily drive to the store and buy any game, any toy, any program of my desire without having to wait until that one special day of the year. In a way this growth takes away a lot of my innocence and replaces it with independence. No one told me that independence would make Christmas feel... less magical.

But don't get me wrong, Christmas is still awesome. Just a different kind of awesome nowadays.

So merry it, everyone! Merry Christmas!

Spacefood

YEAH! Good video quality version of this video now online! For those of you who don't know what Spacefood is, I animated this video during the summer for the Top Animator contest on Freshbrain (and got 1st!.. so money and a bunch of Skullcandy stuff). The rules were pretty much make an animated film that's 3 minutes or less.

It took me a couple weeks to plan it out and a couple months to animate it. I think? All of July and August? Something like that. Well I don't really have much behinds the scenes like concept art or anything... other than every time I worked on this, I always got the song "Spaceman" by The Killers stuck in my head. Which isn't a bad thing, one of my favorite songs.

My global position systems are vocally addressed
They say the Nile used to run from East to West

BOOM smile

Example sentence from my class presentation when reading from a paper:

"These measures are inconsistent with efforts to ensure that medications undergo the rigorous scientific scrutiny of the FDA approval process and are proven safe and effective."

Example sentence from my class presentation when improvising:

"And that was kinda like 'whoa'."

Yeah I was never what you'd describe as"debonair" when it came to presentations in front of the class. In fact, fast thinking constantly failed me whenever I was in an uncomfortable situation, so I tend to keep my mouth shut in new situations. This is why my voice in this Kanga sounds different than my voice in real life! I'm TELLIN' ya!

But blah blah introspective silly-nannies. Yknow what that group presentation in my CriticalThinking class indicates??

Winter Break!

It starts now! For me, anyway. It was my last final! My final final, if you will. That means 5 weeks of partying it up with friends, family, and of course, Santa! For me, anyway.

One of the things I'll miss about good ol' Whitney High School is the last school day right before Christmas break. It's like BOOM present there BOOM more presents there BOOM holiday flood of cheer! I talked about this last Christmas, so I'll spare you anymore detailed BOOM descriptions, but that day was always something to look forward to.

For CSUF, the week before winter break is finals week, so it's more like BOOM take this test BOOM turn in this project BOOM go home bye. No bags full of gifts. No dressing up like Santa. No Christmas parties where you bring food and end up pigging out on hard cookies, Ralphs brownies, and Ruffles chips. It's the magical festivities that I'm missing and the magical festivities that I miss.

Fortunately it hasn't reached that point of sadness. Actually, oppositely, yesterday I was incredibly happy. With everything. Which I believe sounds peesey weesey ham on cheesey, but I'm incredibly satisfied with where I am for these following reasons:

• Fwends - BUH yeah I'm talking about friends again, but I like em! One of the best things about commuting is that if I make new friends at school, we can just go like "hey, wanna hang out during winter break?" "Sure. I live right over there." HAH take that, dormers with friends-from-different-states! One for the commuters.
• Fwends - The Whitney ones, because they're still cool, and they shan't be replaced.
  
• Painting class - Next semester I'm taking a painting class, which I was DREADING more than Dread Pirate Roberts (although I don't think Westley was actually necessarily fearing anything, the title probably came with the position.) But now, it doesn't seem so bad! What if I become a great painter! WHICH IS TOTALLY POSSIBLE. Though I'll never leave graphite - my first love.
• Art in general - I like art. I am glad I am an artist. No need for elaboration here.
• Work - I've said it before and I'll say it again (my name is K-E-V-I-N!), I feel super lucky to have the job that I have. I actually enjoy it very much, and I'm not used to associating pleasure with "work" (sorry, Quest kids, but teaching you guys were like trying to direct a storm).

The weird thing was that these thoughts came about between finishing my art piece final (which turned out kind of bad) and preparing for my marijuana presentation (which turned out okay), which, contrary to popular practice, would not usually occur during a moment of great stress. But it did. Not sure what that was all about.

Since I'm getting distracted with these Barats&Bereta videos after some Googling, I'll just end with this list I thought to make right now.

How to Handle Happiness
1. Identify it. Make sure you know everything that is making you happy and understand why you're feeling that way.
2. Let others know. Put on a good attitude to make others feel better. BUT DO NOT be a douche about it, bragging about great you feel, especially if someone else is not having such a fantastic day. If you act douchey you'll end up being a douche. Speaking of which, I find jokes about douches hilarious. Now you know how to tickle my funny bone.
3. Capture it. The thing about emotions is that they are constantly changing. So the most important step-thing is to value what you go. Milk it out for all its worth because you never know how long it'll last or if you'll even get it back again. Never take happiness for granted.

Kevin used Pencil!

(click.)
Those are my sketches I called "The Valiant", reason being I like the word "valiant". It's just an "over the shoulder peak into Kevin's artistic endeavors" kind of thing, complete with added captions. They're all reference drawings (I didn't just make them up) I drew a few months ago from Flickr.com. Actually, you can find most of the stuff I draw in my green sketchbook from my Flickr account where you can see what I've already drawn and what I will post in the fuuUUuuture.

I was gonna write more in this post, but it's late and I am sleepier than that Pokemon Drowsy, and lemme tell ya, that guy is sleepy all day every day. That must be depressing, don't you think? Living your life, never really being fully awake. I'm pretty sure that's already some kind of disease. It sucks even more because it looks like some unattractive bipedal anteater in poop shorts. I would probably kill myself if I were Drowsy.

So yup, gotta go sleep before I die. Sort of ironic? Maybe. Good night.


P.S. Both Blogspot and Photobucket wouldn't let me upload the pic at its original resolution. Imageshack to save the day!!

Suddenly He Sees!

Final contemp video to showcase is IN DA HOUSE!:

In Blindsight

This is the story of a blind guy who miraculously gains the ability to see! It's based on a real story that we made up in our heads, although it's possible that this actually happened.

Behind the Scenes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Actually this is pretty much commentary.

• My original idea for the film had the same tone as a Will Farrell / Adam Sandler movie, plus an episode of My Name Is Earl. Sorta turned out like that not really? And ironically, I'm not a big fan of Adam Sandler, but I can totally imagine him blind.
  
• The first scene was gonna be in a super market, but shooting in a house is about 6x easier. Also, we could film at night even though it's supposed to be morning (which is what happened).
• That cereal box in Thomas's grocery bag is open. Haha Let's assume his character was munching on his way home.
• Thomas walking home was the second scene we shot.
• The idea of running Thomas's hand against the wall was from the movie Daredevil.
• WHY THE HECK did we choose the house with mirrors all over the walls?? It's like those carnival mirror mazes in there!! (But not really I could easily find my way around.) That explains all the weird angles we had to get. Look closely and you might catch a glimpse of the camera or light in the reflection.
• We were supposed to film a quick scene showing how Thomas and Jonathan met a la flashback, but we didn't have the time.
• Thomas had to change his shirt because that scene was filmed out of order on different days and he wore different shirts. Yeah, in the movie it really makes no sense at all.
• Jonathan is naked because "underwear" was a requirement for the film. Wait, why did we have him take off his shirt too?
• The first person views were filmed by me and Craig. Bonus points to whoever can figure out which one of us filmed which scene.
• Originally we were gonna have scenes of Thomas physically showing Jonathan all the cool stuff in the house, but Jonathan wasn't there at the time, so we shot the scenes with me as the body double. Yup, Thomas was telling me about the stuff as I stood to the side with just my arm in the frame to make it look like Jonathan was really there. Not sure where that footage is now.
• "I can see clearly now, the pain is gone" (song by Johnny Nash) was the required song lyric for the film. However, Thomas messed up and followed with the line "I see all my obstacles!".
• And again, Thomas had to change his shirt to match later footage.
• The VERY FIRST scene we shot that wasn't in the movie was Thomas running into the girl's bathroom because he doesn't recognize signs after he got sight. Yeah it was at an early stage and we weren't really sure where the movie was going...
• The chase scene music used to be the theme from Benny Hill.
  
• If you watch the sky during the chase scene, it gets dark quickly because the scene took so long to film. (We were gonna refilm the end of it but didn't have the time.) Actually almost EVERY scene was annoyingly difficult to shoot because daylight savings always turned the lights off fast and early.
• They watched Saw II before they watched Saw I, not sure how or why that happened. In other words, they saw Saw II, then saw Saw too. (HAHA.)
• Thomas was supposed to break down after an un-shot scene (yes another) of him running to the library and realizing he can't read the books because they don't have braille (which is why he mentioned it as his "favorite activity" in the beginning).
• In the emo montage, the orange and yellow toy Thomas is playing with was in one of the body double scenes that got cut.
• We filmed a scene with Thomas and Jonathan making up and becoming "buddies" again, but Mr. Z hated it, and it WAS admittedly corny. So out it went.
• "Float On" by Modest Mouse was TOTALLY going to play at the happy end scene, but it had to get booted down to just the credits.
• HOLD THE PHONE... I accidentally uploaded some of the audio for the never-used make up scene! It's at 14:45, the very end of the clip. Hehehe that's awkward.

Ahhh I'm gonna miss that class.

Thanks for everyone who helped with the film!!

Credits on the Vimeo page!!

Fallin', Fallin', Fallin', Fallin'...

Do you ever start singing a song and then have that song change into a totally different song? And then your mind is just stuck on that one segment of notes that bridges the two parts? Yknow what I mean??

I was telling Craigo the other day that my Ghostbuster's theme song always turns into "In Too Deep" by Sum 41. He helped me solve the problem.

Right now I sometimes get stuck when "1901" by Phoenix turns into "Kids" by MGMT. I go "girlfriend, no your girlfriend, duh duh duh trippin away... past and present eighty fifty five nineteen oh-one duh nuh nuh must've hurt a lot I guess not... control yourself... take only what you neeeed from it...". I don't even know if those are the right lyrics, and they probably aren't. But that's how I sing it! And it gets stuck like that sometimes!

OH dude I should make up a word for that.

Songzitions.

BOOM done. Twas a combo of "song" and "transition".

songzition - occurs when often misinterpreted notes of a song trigger a person's mind to change songs in mid-singing.
Example: (see paragraph of "1901" and "Kids")

When I started writing this entry, I never intended to make up a new word... oh well. I just did it. THAT. JUST. HAPPENED. (Was that a Will Farrell movie quote? Anyone know which one? Talladega I'm thinkin'?) No I was actually gonna talk about college. HUZZARS!


Lemme first declare that yesterday was all kinds of boring. Here's what happened:

• Go to art! I don't feel like drawing.
• We get let out an hour and a half early. Almost 2 hours till work.
• Walkin' around... lookin' for friends... search ends zero results...
• Library is interesting??
• It isn't.
• I try to draw... end up drawing man out of proportion. For me, that's quite demoralizing - drawing a person that doesn't look like a person. That's like eating a cake that tastes like broccoli YES THAT ANALOGY APPLIES. (assuming you don't like broccoli? I'm actually impartial to it.)
• I fall asleep on the desk (first nap at college!!)
  
• Wake up, go to the end of an art club meeting.
• Blah blah go to work, more boring stuff ensues, and so on.

Yup, my day was about as interesting as riding in a car blindfolded. I mean, you can twirl your thumbs a little, but other than that, you just gotta sit there YES THAT ANALOGY APPLIES AS WELL.

But today was all kinds of FUN! At least more than usual.

• Got to school, drew a picture of an epic old guy in my sketchbook from the computer. Life needs more epic old people. I'd love to see a few dozen Gandalfs running around the street... but at the same time I'd be terrified.
  
• In math we learned how to find the area of a shape! Yeah actually that might be a downside of the day. OH but upside, I finished my homework for Tuesday! So peanut butter kudos.
  
• Hung out with some people from my 2D Design class. I consider them my friends now, AND YKNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!? I have at least one friend in all of my classes! Awesome-sauce! Most of them are Asian though. Not sure why I'm pointing that out...
• It was "Snow Day" at CSUF and they had a snow slide and a snow pit thing with a snowman. I was hanging out with Jackson (a guy I hang out with) and he said "I kind of want to go on that slide." "Yeah, me too." "Let's do it!" So we did. Twice. And it was fun.
• While waiting for my food at Green Burrito, a guy said to me "hey, you dropped your money". I look down at the ground and there's a wad of cash on the floor. "Holy smokes! How foolish of me!" I says in my head. I pick up the bills, it equaled at least $50.00! I then realized "wait a minute... I only had three dollars in my wallet..". Turns out some other guy behind me dropped it. I happily handed it back to him and he said thank you with that "OH WHA..." look on his face, probably thinking "Holy smokes! How foolish of me!". As he walked away I mumbled a "Merry Christmas..!".
  
• I hung out with Jackson a lil more, then went to my freehand drawing art class...
• ...which really wasn't painful at all! So that's new. It was just a general relaxing work day and I got to awkwardly draw one of my classmates upon the professor's request.

So to sum up the excitement of those bullet points, yesterday was boring and today was fun. Odd how the quality of the days can vary so much for no real reason, dontcha think? Unlike similar sounding songs, life often has no transitions.

SO DEAL.

Unrelatedly...

HAHA while I was watching The Office just now, I switched to Supernatural during the commercial. Here's what I saw:

-Guy A reading a book... in the dark.-

-Guy A turns around and Guy B is in the room with him-

A: Where've you been?

B: Jerusalem.

A: How was it?

B: Arid.

...Nope.



Finally in Kevin's Mundane Life News, my Christmas tree is up, now complete with big pockets of darkness from the unevenly placed Christmas lights! Holiday spirit deliciousness!!

Belated Yourewelgetting

Why is it called "Black" Friday? "Green" Friday could make sense because we become greedy monsters chompin at the best discounts. Or "Blue" Friday could work because we're incredibly sad we still can't buy that $500 flatscreen (that is usually $2000) because it's still not cheap enough. Or "Yellow" Friday because countless thrifters pee themselves from the sight of such incredible bargains. Or "Purple" or "Red" Friday, for the frantic scrambling resulting in bruised bones and blood baths. So many other good possibilities!! Might's well call it Rainbow Friday. (I couldn't think of one for orange.)

I don't know why I ranted.

How was your Thanksgiving? HEY I have an amazing idea: The day after Thanksgiving, a new holiday: Yourewelgetting. Since we spend an entire day thanking people and things, the next logical step is to reply with a nice overwhelming "You're welcome!". In a few years, we could then have the holidays "Howareyaquestion" and "Sameolsameolreply". In fact, if we add a sentence holiday every day of the year, analysts predict we'll have a whole conversation by Spring 2015. The last holiday added would be "Lemmegetthatforyaoffer", which would of course be followed by a friendly "Thanksgiving".

I don't know why I typed all that.

My Turkey Break was great! The awesome week-long R&R consisted of musicals, conventions, dolphin bays and checkers, "slappin da bass"'s, video games, turkeys and hams, scattergorizings, websitings, Goo-Mas, mall visits, people visits, bulgogis, and paintings. Lots and lots of paintings (well, just one piece) (One Piece??) (no, one art piece.) (Oh.).

I don't know why I referenced One Piece.

Now time for us to go back to school! Oh how I squeal with excitement.

Animay Expo

Note, not anime.

First tiny convention! It sure was a lot smaller than the mega madness that is San Diego Comic-Con, but that was sorta expected. What wasn't expected? The amazingness of Fry's. But more on that later.

Me and Whitney (CSUF Whitney, not Whitney Whitney) entered the CTN Animation Expo, got our wristbands, and stood in line. We assumed that line was for going inside the exhibit hall, since our passes only gave us access for that. BUTT, it turns out the line was for a panel thing and we snuck (snook?) inside for free because the guys at the door were, as you say, "noobs" and didn't recognize that our bracelet colors technically shouldn't have been allowed to let us in!

!!!, right!?

So the very first thing we did was watch a free panel of this guy talking about him working on Shrek 4 (DID YOU KNOW there was gonna be a Shrek 4?! Way to milk that franchise to an empty utter, Dreamworks. Please don't sequelize Kung Fu Panda, twas good by itself. And I haven't seen Monsters VS Aliens but I want to!) and he animated a stick-block figure running off screen. Twas pretty good, especially cuz it was FREE!

It was about 15 minutes of him talking and 30 minutes of this. If you weren't interested in animation, you'd probably be bored to tears (which actually sounds very painful), but luckily I found this quite interesting! Mmmm yes, yes indeed mmmm...

After an hour of that, we walked around the exhibit floor. To put it into perspective, I'd say the floor was about the size of 1.5 average gyms (but not as tall), assuming your perception of an "average gym" matches mine.

This picture captures about a quarter of the floor. !!!, right?! That's like the size of one big booth at SD Comic-Con, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Just an "oh hey that's smaller" kinda thing.

There were a plethora of (expensive) books on sale, one of them being this one about what appears to be stoned cats and their hallucinations.

Wacom was having some kind of drawing competition. DUDE I totally sampled a Cintiq for the first time! It was pretty awesome and more slippery than I imagined. It's not on the top of my wishlist, but I still want one. Goal: To obtain a Cintiq within 10 years (assuming I'll be doing a lot more digital work in the future).

Speaking of digital work. Check THIS break dancing out!

There were a WHOLE bunch business cards with art like this on them at the Imaginism Studios booth (I got 20 cards HAHA). That one called "Big Bad Bunny Eater" by Bobby Chiu was my favorite.

COSPLAYER IN SIGHTS! I was happy to see one at the convention. (Sorry I got his back, I'm not good at taking sneaky photos.) (And when I say "got his back", I mean got a PICTURE of his back. Although if he were to get into a scuffle, there is a small possibility that I'd help him out. So I guess it works both ways.)

In fact, cosplayers should be at EVERY single CONVENTION! Even at actual cosplay conventions, there should be someone dressed up as someone who's dressed up as someone. As scary as it sounds, that has probably happened before. Cosplayers - the epitomic blend of passion, geekiness, and insanity.

Dude dude, guess who else other than that Deviant Art guy I saw there!

YUP THAT'S RIGHT! Laura Faust and Craig McCracken! THE CREATORS OF FOSTER'S HOME FOR IMAGINARY FRIENDS! (And Powerpuff Girls.) Previously I had only seen them at the Comic-Con 2008 panel, but THERE THEY WERE at their own little booth! Just a few feet away from my feet!

I got to talk to Laura a little, but Craig was busy looking at some stuff. It's funny how nervous I can get when meeting artists I've revered so happily. (See, Comic-Con 09 Half Pixel) Best of all, I had them sign my Blooregard Q. Kazoo keychain!!

YEAH! But now I can't use it. And if you were curious, Craig's working on a graphic novel and Laura's selling dolls, both of them hoping to turn their works into a TV series. And... it'll probably happen.

For lunch I went to Fry's Electronics for my first time! (Other than happening on the same day and being nearby, COMPLETELY unrelated to the expo.)

It had the crazy theme 1950's sci-fi horror movie which, of course, was amazing. There were 50's diners, martians, an octopus, spaceships, and even a 50 foot long gigantic ant that would make any Taylor Tso squeal from giddiness.

After lunch at Fry's, we went back to the expo, looked around a little more, then left for home. In the end I was pleasantly surprised at how much good illustration there was at the convention. Makes me wanna draw on the computer more. Fun times, good day.

As it turns out, we got to see the whole show floor in about 2 hours that morning. So if YOU ever go to the CTN Animation Expo, make sure you get a one day complete pass so you can sit in on the panels and participate in the "connections" mixer thing. Also, bring lotsa money. Those dang artists charge appendages for silly drawings.

Here I Post Again

Music video time.

Here We Go Again - by Jane Han, Kevin Lam, Craig Machado

OUR ECON MUSIC VIDEO PROJECT! From Spring of this year! Finally uploaded! HUZZAH! Quick recap, we had to incorporate events of our lives into a song, much like "It's The End Of The World As We Know It" by REM. So for us "dang teenagers", that's 1991-2009. This took a couple days to write, a day to record, a little less than a week to animate, a day to captionize, and 13 minutes to upload. If I did my math correctly, that's about two years of production!!!!!!!!!!!! Or one week.

At first most of the video was going to be that band playing, but just those beginning animations took quite a while, so I went with bouncing pictures. And... likin' the results!

Credits found on actual Vimeo page.

Today during lunch,

I was kinda bored. After consuming my triple-breaded PB&J mass of deliciousness, I was left with the tin foil it came in. Naturally, I constructed a little foil man from it (who matches my tape man I made in art class that you are completely aware of).


Then I made a little stop-motion animation of him transforming into another foil man... though I don't have motivation to put that together right now.

And then, and then, I made this guy.

And then I started drawing on my hand...

His name is Doctor Cop*! The "gun" in his hand looks like that one gun from Halo. Needler? (without the actual needles)

Victor was reading FML on his iPhone (I eat lunch with him sometimes). Little does he know Doctor Cop is about to blow off his head!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Three new friends!

One new friend! He is sleepy and does not rock out.

Uh oh! This guy doesn't look friendly!

First impression correct.

He grew arms!

Uh oh!

Maybe Doctor Cop and his new hands will stop the bad guy!
(Spoiler: He doesn't.)

Instead, Doctor Cop catches a robber for impersonating Zorro.

The End! I should totally start my own photo blog like Kristina and Maria, this can be my first wonderful post. Prediction: Gazillion hits.

So... very merrily! Entry over! I still have other stuff to talk about too! AND ANIMATION EXPO COMING UP THIS SUNDAY! More on that later! Next update: Thursday or Friday.


* "Doctor Cop" is his name, he is not actually a doctor.

But he is a real cop.

Comic + Weencap

New comic!


On a completely unrelated note, a lil somethin for me only two weeks late:
my Halloween '09 recap.

• Partied-it-up with Frances, Kristina, and Jane (not the partying kind of partying, the commandeering of candy kind). Planned to go to Balboa.
• I was Carl Fredricksen! Yknow. Old man from Up. (Which I saw again today - just as or even MORE awesome the 3rd time!)
• At first I thought this year we were a little too old to go trick-o-treating... but then I saw a picture of an artist named Brad Guigar on Twitter getting his Dr. Strange costume ready for the big day. He's 30-somethin' years old. This wasn't the solidifying sight that convinced me it was okay to trick-o-treat, but it made me feel better about doing so. Also, trick-o-treatin' is still pretty fun.
• Chipotle! Free burritos = long line
• Jane didn't feed me while I was driving us to Balboa to trick-o-treat, but that idea, if executed, would've been both funny and frightening - trying to smash a messy burrito in my face as I maneuver a large car down the road at 70mph and all. Well, maybe just frightening.
• Ladeeda door to door getting candy. Yknow what, I bet religious groups can get some fancy business on Halloween night.

-knock knock, open door-

"Hi, I'm from the 'God Is Awesome' church, would you like to believe in this bible?"

"Oh uh... no-"

"Make a donation?"

"No, no thank you."

"Oh I see. In that case, I am a trick-o-treater, I request that you give me some candy, as you are required to do so to a trick-o-treater. -holds out bag-"

"Um... -drops one lone candy in bag- okay bye now."

"Guess what. You just donated some Bon Bons to Jesus Christ. I win."

Actually I wouldn't want this to happen.

• At one house, the door opened to a guy who called himself "The Wizard". He'd quiz us on random trivia according to our education status (he didn't know much art so I had to answer Beowulf questions), and then gave us candy depending on how many questions we got right. So that was new.
• Later we met up with Darren and Kenny and Kenny's possum posse from UCI! (HAH could you imagine Kenny with a possum?? Actually, that's not very hard to imagine for some reason.)
• Then they left to karaoke I think.
• Lastfinally, we walked down to the beach. For the lack of a philosophical life analogy of the open, breezy beach which led out to an ocean visible by nothing but moonlight, it was cool!
• Then home. Good Halloween. The end.

By the ways, this scene wasn't even in Up, but it's still hilarious on its own...

Thy Coloring

BAM final piece first. I spent almost all day coloring this baby! (Note: Character in image is not actually a baby.)

His tentative name is Elliot and he is a Line Walker. duh duh DUH! "What! What is a 'Line Walker'? What Kevin? What what? Confused soul I hath assumed, doth my mind aspire yonder, for thy groves worn of settlement??" is more or less what you're probably thinking. Well, impressive!, and time shall tell who this Elliot character is...

But right now! Ze process!!

Skipping the penciling part... here's the line art. Looks like he's surfing.

Then I put in the base colors. Is that the right term? "Base" colors?

Darks. Lights. Yeah the whites didn't do much, maybe I should've made the initials darker...

Background bases! If I gave you those colors, then... all my base are belong to you. (NO KEVIN.)

Finalmente, background embellishments.


After that, I covered the piece with a sepia-ish hue, and voila! The picture at the beginning of the post is born!! (Note: Contrary to diction, character in image is still not a baby.)

Now you might be saying "hey I like all those colors better than the final product. Why'd you sepia it..?". I've thought that a few times before looking at other peoples' works (so I assumed you'd think that too), and my answer is: I do it for the mood. It's just personal preference.

"Wait wait, why didn't your BASE colors just use the sepia-ish colors? All that initial coloring went to waste since you just changed it up at the end!". I too have thought this (and so have you)! I wouldn't KNOW what the sepia-ish version of red looks like without first putting the red down, so I color everything without any effects, and then add cool stuff later.

Yup! A little tip to the toes, SMUDGE TOOL WORKS WONDERS. I just discovered it in Photoshop and it's incredibly useful for blending. There's this entry's pro-tip! Although if you never use Photoshop, then you have completely wasted your time reading this paragraph. Gjob, loser. (To the soft-hearted: Just kidding!)

And that's my show! Hope you liked my drawing as much as I did making it! Gnight!!


(Dang. I might be more proud of that Shakespeare-like sentence I made up there.)

Kinder the Garts

Quiz time! Lookathis. Which is better?


These are two different pieces by two different people. One was drawn and ink-washed by a person who has been taking art class for ONE year, the other piece by a person who has been taking art for THREE years. Who drew which one?

A) Left: 1 year artist, Right: 3 year artist
B) Left: 3 year artist, Right: 1 year artist
C) Left: 1 year artist, Right: unmentioned 4 year artist
D) Left: 3 year artist, Right: Kindergartner

Whoa, "kindergartner" is a pretty bizarre word. Is it just me or does it sound pretty badass... like someone who likes to kindergart just for the heck of it.

"He kindergarts!?"

"Yup. He's a kindergartner."

"Dag, yo, I'll be sure to not mess with him..."

Or possibly a "gart" is something to "kinder". That, too, could make sense, although "kinder" doesn't have the alligator toughness that "kindergart" has, so I'm guessing "gart" holds all the balls.

And back to the quiz.

The answer? E) None of the above. (Hopefully you've read this blog long enough to know I'd pull the "none of the above" somethin-somethin like that on you. Cmon. If not, then, well, read more posts ya nimrod.) (HAHA) It's none of the above! Because I made BOTH pieces, of course!

Turns out I'm pretty mediocre when it comes to drawing faces from the front, but pretty good at profile views (or any angle that isn't just straight forward). I also found out how incredibly easy it is to positions pupils just SLIGHTLY off center to make the person look all kinds of psychotic.

This (the art, not the psychotics) brings me to my next point: I want to be a superhero. Not in a traditional sense, clad in skin tight spandex and hidden behind fruit roll-up masks. No, my OTHER definition of a superhero: to have so much knowledge in a particular field that awesomeness radiates from various pours of the hero's body. Something like that. I totally wrote about this in another post (found... HERE!), but I recently realized two things, one being that I'd like to label such a status as "superhero". (I name it superhero because when I see someone doing complicated stuff as if it were nothing, my mind immediately thinks "whoa... _____'s like a superhero..".)

The second thing I epiphanized was that one day, I will be a superhero in art. I'm gonna know "jargon of the pencil" that would make you scratch your head more furiously than a rabbit (except you wouldn't scratch with your foot [or maybe you might, don't wanna rule out possibilities]). Sooner or later I shall proudly say, "Yeah. I'm not an artist in training. Just an artist". And I think I'm 50% there.

Among other things, that's what makes life exciting, dontchaknow? (Haha I went Canadian on you.) You're not exactly sure how or what you'll be doing in the future, whether it be in 10 years or even tomorrow. But you keep moving forward. Because if you don't, then you're not making any more progress than a dead man.

Let's end this post with a beautiful analogy!
Life like climbing a cloudy mountain; you can't really see the peak, but you just keep making your way up there because you know you'll probably stumble across a nice river to bathe in because your pits are drenched in hoards of disgusting.

Hey, I didn't know I could embed Hulu videos.

Merry Halloween!

Two things to talk about today. I forgot what the first thing was, so I'll just talk about the second thing.

First college-level play! Is what I just came back from! I watched the musical Miss Saigon, and contrary to the title, it has nothing to do with a beauty pageant in Vietnam. Although it does have strippers. Consolation?

Well lemme tell ya, I don't mean to downplay Whitney's drama department, but this was SUCH A STEP UP FROM HIGHSCHOOL! The set was amazing, the acting was spot-on, the singing was incredible - everything was just so refined. My professor was right when he said the performances there were extremely close to Broadway productions. The only thing missing was... actually I can't think of anything witty. It was that good.

Mini review: 1st Act was alright. It was the kind of good that's GOOD... but not exactly my cup of tea. Like Where the Wild Things Are. It's a spectacular movie, but at the same time, it's like... "what?". (Yup this is the kind of articulate review you get from a teenager.) The 2nd Act, however, wasn't just good, it was SUPER good! The story was actually engrossing, and there weren't any boring songs like the first Act. And a musical without any boring songs is hard to come by. Lastly, the end was near phenomenal and the "Engineer" character was the hilarious. This musical equation equals surprisingly pleased.

The best part about these all-music musicals is that every line has to be sung. That means even conversations have to be right on key and to the rhythm, which I find kind of funny, especially if it completely doesn't fit into a song. Reminded me of Flight of the Concords.

Overall, good experience.

One more thing, there was this random Asian guy who kept on popping up on stage throughout the whole play, especially during the dramatic scenes. He didn't even say much. Not sure... what that was all about...

...

Fundane Activities

I went to an art store.

and that's the BORING version of the story! Today's errand could have been seen as nothing special, but oh, it sorta was! So much so that I'm makin' an entry about it. Snappidy doo dah.

My mission was to go down to the Art Supply Warehouse, so I took Beach Boulevard all the way south to Westminster. And I saw the coolest things.

Chapter 1: Rally's
I totally saw a Rally's. It's a burger joint, if you didn't know. I've NEVER seen one before and I was going crazy because I didn't realize the commercial for Rally's was so ingrained into my head! It had a little tune that I hear in my cranium once in a while that goes like (Kevin's version because he doesn't really know the words):

"When it's in your eyes
There's no surprise,
You've got a thing...
For Rally's.
Gotta eat - ain't nothing like this
Gotta eat - ain't nothing like this."

So this Rally's down Beach Blvd. was a myth becoming true. Much like Sonic's, I was always befuddled as to WHERE this restaurant was, much less if it actually EXISTED. Well today I found out it does exist.

Chapter 2: Hookers and Cowboys
After driving passed Medieval Times and RALLY'S, I felt there was a sense of mystery on this street. I glanced to my right and there was a group of people walking down the street - maybe around 7 of 'em. One of the ladies was blond with a super short pants, so (I apologize now in advance), my first thought was "DAYTIME HOOKER?!". Methinks I watched a little too much My Name Is Earl.

I looked again in curiosity, not interest, to find out that it was just a regular group of people. "Aw thas not as exciting" I thought, but then I noticed that two of the four guys had cowboy hats. I don't know about you, but I've never seen someone wear a cowboy hat as standard attire, at least not in real life. Maybe I should try Texas?

Chapter 3: Robin Hood
From 1900's to 1400's. I didn't actually see a guy dressed up as Robin Hood, but I saw some mama-papa motel covered in pink that looked like it hadn't been renovated since the 1960's. In the front it had a big sign of a Robin Hood figure who was making a "Shh... be quiet" gesture with his finger, which was tied into the name of the motel somehow. I don't remember the name, so I'll assume it was something like "Ye Old Inn" or something awesome to that degree. Or POSSIBLY, it still held on to archaic terms that don't translate well to modern day lingo, such as "Inn the Hood". Regardless, the sight was both intriguing and horrifying.

Chapter 4: Mini-car
Still driving down this street, I see a tiny convertible car pop out of a neighborhood along the sidewalk. It was about the size of queen size bed. By now I should have EXPECTEDto see such an oddity, but my reaction was still "WHAT da eff was that!?". With closer inspection, I found out it wasn't a CAR car, I think it was more like some kind of cart used to transport stuff, but it was still as random as helium.

See? "Helium" makes no sense in that sentence. Too random.

Chapter 5: Art Supply Warehouse
Alas, I arrived at the X on the map (see, title of chapter). I imagined it being a Costco version of Tall Mouse, what with the word "Warehouse" in the name, that's not a noun you should abuse with exaggeration. I thought the place was gonna be huge. But it wasn't. It was average size. At least from the outside..!

Undeterred by the underwhelming size, I entered and was met with copious amounts of bodies. Many other people (not surprisingly) heard about the store's 25% off everything deal too. As routine when encountered with a bunch of strangers, I moved quickly in search of my destination (the paints, if you were curious), careful not to bump into anyone or wave my sniffer through a volume of floating body odor. "Just keep moving..."

Once I had all my paints in my basket, I granted myself leisure time to just explore the store. And lemme tell you guys, IT WAS SO MAGICAL! The place was actually a decent size! Every nook and cranny was filled with wall-to-wall supplies for any artistic endeavors of my choosing. I had never seen anything like it! DID YOU KNOW HIGGINS INDIA INKS COME IN A RAINBOW SELECTION OF COLORS?! (Don't answer that.)

It was like the first time I went to the huge Amazing Comics book store. Except this was COOLER! Because it sold materials for me to MAKE art, not just enthrall in the final product, and all the nerdy, middle-aged men were replaced with odorless introverts! That's gnarly if I've ever defined gnarly.


After an hour of browsing (hey they even sell BOOKS there!!!) and a free gift for buying supplies (a little monkey cut-out thing), I set off on the journey back home. Like the end of every adventure, nothing really happens on the way back home. And nothing did. (I took the freeway.)

But lesson learned, my friends! Fascinating sights are everywhere! You just gotta take notice.


Also, this was a result of impulse shopping while waiting in line to pay:

It's candy. (Blooberry flavor.)

I... I love Vimeo...

Trust the Hoe

After 2 years of script writing...

2 years of auditions...

3 years of production...

5 years of post-production...

10 years of anticipation and hype...

15 hours of bathroom breaks...

and 6 lines of immense exaggeration...

The Trust the Hoe video is now up online! Yeah it's the one up there.

Since Youtube quality is pretty poopy, I uploaded the video onto Vimeo. If it gets skippy at all, just pause it and rewind a little, and it should work fine. (Also, comperessing the video cut off the beginning part. This film is not called "Rust the Hoe".)

REMINDAH, this was made in the spring of 2009 for Contemporary Media. Here are some interesting tidbits OH OH like behind the scenes. This is the bonus disc of the Kanga entry's Collector's Edition box set.:

• I wrote about 2/3rds of the script. (Craigo wrote the rest.)
• About 3/4ths of the script was actually filmed.
• About 3/4ths of the filmed footage was actually used in the movie.
• Scenes never shot: Darren doesn't know how to use a lawnmower, Darren adapts to hardcore music, Ms. Saucedo parties because Darren quit.
• Deleted scenes: Crunches on a ladder, Darren's chronic tardiness
• The character "Darryl" was coincidentally named before we got Darren to play it.
• I think only Yangstuh got that "rafflesia arnoldi" reference. Brownie points, man, you get brownie points.
  
• "Day 1" was filmed in Fullerton.
• The close up on Darren's sub-level terrain planting (Day 1) was filmed in Diana's backyard.
• We lost footage of Darren messing with the plant a little to make a pen out of it.
• Originally, Craig actually fixes Darren's wrist cramp.
• Craig eats grounded up Oreoes, not manure. Yuummm... peanutbutter Oreos...
• The phone conversation was originally longer, with Craig watering that plant in front of him.
• That's Diana's foot thingy BTW. Because, yknow, she's a runner.
  
• Most of the white wife beaters belonged to Ryan. I think he said he had like 200 of them.
• The original version didn't censor the "Don't Trust Me" song. Mr. Z no likey.
• We refilmed the very last scene because the lighting was yellow-bad.
• At the VERY end after the credits, there's a whimper that we were going to use for when Craig broke his ankle. As you can see, we went with a grunt that's a little more manlier. Also, I don't think Craig really liked it. (But I sure did.)

So yup, huzzahs all around! I really enjoy "behind the scenes" stuff, so if you do too, then THERE YA GO! And gjob to everyone who was a part of this movie! (Credits on actual Vimeo page.) I shall upload In Blindsight on another day for another post.

Now someone go put this sucka on IMDB.

Graphic design - sorta fun!

Whilst working on the layout for my new website blog conglomeration, I needed to fill up one corner of the page. At first I was gonna put a nice lil sketch of myself, but I'm not sure it'll work with the current design.

Soes, I decided to work on a kind of logo thing. Those up there are all the possible "klogos". Tell me whatchoo think! ...although I already kinda chose which one I'm gonna use.

Notey note note, 7 and 12 are pretty much the same, just different size of the "kl".

Ten Gents

Today's entry theme: Ten gents walk into a bar. One guy says "Word play." 8 of them don't say a thing because they don't get it. The other 1 doesn't say a thing because he gets it.


First to bat, MY NAIL FINALLY FELL OFF!!!!!!!! Last Friday. If you don't know why it fell off, then read my earlier Kanga posts. Contrary to popular belief, parts of my body do not dismantle often. Here's a picture of when Blacky was still attached:

Not a close up for your satisfaction.
THEN!

THEN! I actually got a picture of it as it was falling off! AMAZING, RIGHT?!

My nail FLYING OFF MY FINGER!
I had too much fun with that.

I also have awweeesomely gruesome pictures of my finger (the "awe" kind of awesome, not the awesome kind of awesome, nor the "aww" kind of awesome) that I decided to centaur censor from your fragile consternation. But if you are an exception with toughness like a dozer of bulls and WANT to see my ante-naked, gross finger (in different stages), just send me a message with the subject of "Eh? Des Borus!?". I'd be honored.

(It it just me or was that last paragraph sorta confusing to read? Mmm probably just me.) (Also, "Des Borus" has no meaning whatsoever. Made it up. "Eh", however is a word commonly found in Canada.)

OH I forgot to tell the story of how it came off:

I was opening a car door and it got caught on something and fell off. Didn't hurt. Then uh... I ran... over to my desk and took a picture of it as it was still in the air.

WOWOW ironically, when I was around 5yizo, I slammed a car door on my thumb and a couples weeks later that nail came off! (P.S. A thumb is a finger. We have 10 fingers. Get over it.)

Twas also funny cuz this nail fell off on my first day of work!

Work?

Yeah!

I work as a "Student Production Assistant", and if you were following me on Twitter WHICH I KNOW YOU WERE YOU GOOD PERSON, you'd have known my first day was last Friday!

Company: CSUF Distance Education... something like that. They're in charge of the online classes on the Fullerton website.

Job Description: Convert VHS's into DVDs, upload DVDs onto a computer, edit some movies with Adobe Premiere, help film some videos (documentation stuff, not really movies), work on some Adobe Flash projects.

Not Job Description: Help little kids with homework. MUAHAHAHHA YAAAAY!

This job is SO choice, especially since it's right next to CSUFullerton! I also get to play around with almost every single Adobe program on my down time! Isn't this job RIGHT ON THE MONEY for me?! Oh, hah, literally.

I mean it when I say I feel really lucky to have this job.

I also mean it when I say that Obama does not deserve a Nobel Piece Prize for showing "good effort and incredible promise..!". Sorry for coming out of nowhere with this, but I'm just SAYIN. He didn't do jack diddly squat! Well okay, he did a couple things, such as not look gross without a shirt, but I just wanted to use "jack diddly squat" in a sentence.

Don't read me wrong, I have nothing against the Obamers as a person. I actually don't have a lot of stuff against people (other than my body up against yours WHAOSPONTANEOUSPICKUPLINEBUTNOTREALLY?!), maybe I just avoid certain people before I get to know how awful they really are. I'm looking at you, Bruce Banner. But I don't wanna talk about meeting people right now! No! I want to uh-... oh wait. Yeah actually I sorta do.

I enjoy meeting people, ...or rather knowing people. People at school, specifically. I think the reason I like going to Fullerton now is because I know people. Not a lot, just a few, but that's all I need. In a swarm of unfamiliar faces, it's so nice to recognize a friend. I thought of this a couple weeks ago when I was walking around with my art class to draw parts of the campus. I saw someone I had met earlier, and I felt immediately comforted. I waved "hi" and talked a little bit.

The second, incredibly ironic thing is that her name was Whitney. Wow, didn't realize that until just now! How cool. So many small things to just keep me going! For example, one of the little things I enjoy about college is walking up and down stairs. Especially the basementy kind. It's sort of hard to explain why I like it, especially since it's all kinds of tiring when my class is on the 5th floor, but I do, I enjoy it. Right now, anyway.

It's these minor *happenings* that make all the difference for me. A few weeks ago I had to fill up a few pages of my sketchbook for class. I decided to go draw something I liked on Flickr (a first) and I came out with this.

And by-golly-sons-of-George, I was so proud of it! I was surprised at how... GOOD it turned out! It was supposed to be an insignificant drawing to fill up these pages, like all the faces I drew back in the Whitney days which always looked like some webble katch on acid. HAHA obscure reference. (But not really, there's not such thing as a "webble katch" because I made it up. That's how bad my drawings were, though. They were unreal bad.) But this, THIS, looked like the girl in the picture. It looked like a real person.

After that sketch, I couldn't draw on the page anymore as to not ruin my graphite baby. (Yes, using "graphite baby" in a sentence automatically makes you an artsy geek.)

Earlier, I didn't understand why my previous sketchbooks were filled with ambiguous shapes ranging from stick figures to turds. I thought I was just a blahblah drawer who was only decent at cartoons. And then this happened. THIS single drawing has turned my mentality around. It inspires me to draw more. That's a first - inspiring myself.

Now I look forward to drawing from Flickr almost every day (as long as I'm not lazy and or tired). Now YOU should look forward to when I'm gonna post all my other sketches! It shall be nice, and you shall like it.

Ah...

Art is great.

Yeah.

This blog is great.

Also, I am grateful for my job.

Another gear grinding issue, why is "greatful" not a word? Can Webster PLEASE just synonymize it with "grateful"!? Do you realize how many essays teachers will have to recall for false grammatical errors?? But I do have to applaud the English language for housing "synonymize" as a real word (despite blogspot's redline naysay). Good move. If language were playing chess, I believe that would result in a "check". Legalize "grateful" to make it a "checkmate" now.

DINGAHINGADARGA another confusing paragraph.

Ah well. You should go sleep. You're probably reading this in the middle of the night. If not, go take a nap. Catch up on your beauty sleep. You deserve it.

Drawing+Writing Combo Day!

Today was 24 Hour Comics Day! And me, being the Kevin that I am, decided to partake in this national event.

If you didn't know already, you lameo, 24HourComicsDay is when people make a 24 page comic for 24 hours. Usually some shops host the event, and artists can go in and get to work, staying awake from 12 to 12 just drawing away.

COOL! Was my first reaction.

But since I am not hardcore enough to do anything near that insanity, I just did as much as I could from about 10am to 4pm. That got me 6 comics! Which, if you do the math, is good pacing! So I'd like to take the time now pat myself on the back.

And done.

These comics I made might get their own website SOMEDAY down the time line of Kevin's life. ("Time life"? A time line for a person's life? Make it happen, Webster.) With only a little more adieu from these following sentences, here's what I got. Justsoyaknow, for the first two comics, I made them a couple weeks ago as just water testers of my concept, so there's a total of 8 comics here. Luckyou.

















...Bada bing bada boom! And that's how I roll.

Like I said, I'll make more of these, and when I have a good number of these puppies, along with some time, I'll publish them to a nice cozy little website that they can call their home (BTW, the site will be unrelated to the site in the previous post). I have a name for the future site IN MIND, but I'm sorta welcome to suggestions.

That is all! Tell me what you think (if you want)! I don't mind if you don't like the comics, just don't be mean about it. Or else I will personally choke you with your own intestines.

P.S. My favorite one is F.

Wordpressed

Yesterday was EPIC!

Lemme esplain.

Since I didn't have much homework, I decided to work on my next new project: NEW BLOG TIME!! Yup! On a totally different site! That just in, I'm getting ready to leave blogspot for a lil' Wordpress. HOWEVER, it won't be done until like another half year or so, since I have to Photoshop a pretty layout, hard code a new template (Dreamweaver is for wussies! [but not really on the spare chance I might use it in the future]), and find a new webhost. Finding the webhost is probably gonna be the worse part, but hopefully I'll be working so I can pay for good hosting.

Previous paragraph summary: I'm makin a new blog (for the far fuuUUuuture) with a program thing called Wordpress.

If you're curious... www.wordpress.org (I'm not using wordpress.com)

ANYWAY... back to epicallity... so to use this program, I have to install it onto my computer by jumping through various hoops and rings for installation. Yeah I literally have to print out a striped circle and throw my body all the way through it-... nevermind lame joke.

For the sake of keeping it simple, I have to do the following to use Wordpress:

1. Download an "Apache PHP" thingy so I can test my site.
2. Set up a "database" for... well you don't really care.
3. Install Wordpress.
4. Eat some pasta.

I added the last one for my amusement, although I completed that step nigh ten times over.

Once I had a nice little Youtube tutorial ready, I was ready to be awesome! Oh wait, I was BORN ready! HAHA! HAHA! FUNNY CUZ I CALLED MYSELF AWESOME! I was ready to begin the installation. (Note: Downloading =/= Installing...)

Download XAMPP.

Check. (did that a month ago actually)

Download Wordpress.

Check.

Open up localhost and set up database.

Check.

Create a user and give it privileges.

Check.

Take a shower.

Thankfully, check.

Create a wp-config.php file.

Uh... check.

Install Wordpress.

Cheh-HOLD UP now...

It didn't work. For some reason, inputting the web address in my internet browser didn't bring up a page with a nice little "Install Wordpress" button. I just got an "Error" page. And I had no idea what the heck was wrong.

This tortured, racked, and groin-kicked my brain for almost 2 hours. Aren't computer problems just the worse? YES THEY ARE. Something on your computer could not work, and then it be like "I'zza not gonna tells you why yousa sucking!!", double annoying because it sounds like Jar Jar Binks. Gosh, that guy is horrible. Can you imagine Episode I without him? It might actually be pretty goo-...okay well maybe not. Yeah, I'm about 10 years late to this issue. BTW, the Anakin actor seems kinda ehh weeiirrdd nowadays. Go Youtube it.

Uh... yes, so this sucked! I couldn't figure WHY I couldn't install Wordpress. I ravaged through the internet all night looking for some kind of solution. When it was 11:00PM, I considered just stopping and giving up. I was stressing out, man, and I would've pulled out some of my hair if I knew how to wrap my hand around the thick mass that is my hair. BUHZING oh wait that was insult against myself. Nevermind. Dang. But I couldn't give up on this! I WAS SO CLOSE! I was one web page away! One step away!

I just kept telling myself "I'M NOT GOING TO GIVE UP".

I was kinda like the little engine that could, except I was not a train.

I was kinda like Leonidas in 300, except I was not shirtless and I did not die.

I was kinda like Marlin in Finding Nemo, except I did not blow up a submarine.

I was kinda like Sam in Lord of the Rings, except I'm taller.

I was kinda like Monk in Monk, except I didn't search for a killer.

I was kinda like Obama in America ("YES I CAN)", except I'm not black.

I was kinda like Carl Fredrickson in Up, except I am not an old man with a deceased wife and a floating house.

...I was kinda like a guy who didn't wanna give up.

I went through dozens of forums and blogs until I finally found one little post. It said something like "blah blah, it needs to be in htdocs, blah blah..". "Alright" I says "lemme try THIS solution now... it MIGHT work..." I dragged the wordpress file into "htdocs", and wouldn't you know it?

It worked.

HOT. ALL KINDS OF DOG. I was exploding with emotions - elated that I FINALLY got it, pissed that it took me so long, and confused because I didn't know how to release all my emotions. I wanted to scream, or yell (which is probably manlier than screaming), but my parents were asleep, so I just walked around my house briskly, releasing my energy with odd grunts. I was a butt with a cork in the hole, ready to fart, but I couldn't because I was in an elevator with other people, so I poked a hole in the cork to release it slowly. It's not as satisfying, but it gets the job done.

It was midnight and I could finally sleep peacefully! Alright I admit, my actual story and its events weren't too epic. But just my overcoming of this greater evil that is computer difficulties, building up that monsoon of emotions - THAT was the epic part, my good friend.

To make this post worth reading, here's a preview of what I worked on today for the layout. That's right - SNEAKY PREVIEW!!


Yeah... this took me a REALLY long time because I'm still learning how to use Photoshop CS4.


Also, sorry you had to read that butt cork metaphor. If you didn't read it yet, just go back 4 paragraphs. Once you've read it, go ahead and accept this apology.

Actually... I'm sorry you had to read this whole post! But not really. Because you loved every minute of it.