It Ended Today

Today is the day Flipnote Hatena ends.

This online service was dedicated to displaying the works of Flipnote animators around the world. I just so happen to be one of those animators.
If you've ever seen the works created on Flipnote Studio, you probably would've never believed it was created on a Nintendo DSi.

When I signed up to be a part of the service back in 2009, I had no idea that it would change my life. It pushed me into improvement and honestly, I really have no idea if I would be drawing this great today if I hadn't signed up. It gave me a great idea on how many people really enjoyed the work I've created over the years.
I guess you can say that it was my first "big break." With over 13,800 fans, including international users and over three million views, you can see what I've built up to over the years I've been active.
Although I have drifted away from the site when I start high school, I never completely abandoned it.
What I loved about Flipnote Hatena is, right away, you can tell we have some sort of culture that we're all apart of. We have our own fads that come and go, and of course, we have our popular creators. I don't mean to brag, but I've been fortunate enough to be one of the "popular creators."
Though my favorite part about it all was that I've made some ridiculously awesome friends on the site! They're all a bunch of cool cats. Heh heh.

Overall, I think the experience I've had on the site was really a life changer for me, since it paved the rest of my life for me. Thanks to this simple little app, I now pursue a career in animation. It's hard to believe some dinky little application on a Nintendo DSi could have such an impact on one person's life.

Funny that I received a Nintendo DSi on my 13th birthday. I didn't ask for a DSi; I wanted a Wii. Funny how that works out.

Summer Plans

With school ending in about two weeks, I've got to make myself productive for the summer.
My last summer was totally crappy since I wandered around the house doing nothing. Nothing!
It was a good waste of a summer. Since then, I've decided to be more active this summer(and when I say active, I mean being productive, not exercising)
Ladies and gentlemen, the typical American.

Anyways, bach  back on the topic, I've come up with a small list of ideas that I'll hopefully do this summer:

• Create animated videos for YouTube
• Do some sort of creative collaboration with some one (it could be of video, animation, or maybe co-write another blog (I know right? Another blog?!)
• Drawing! Of course! That's always on the list! Maybe over the summer, I'll try to draw in other drawing styles or maybe I can go back to learning anime (I dropped that earlier this year)
• Earn money (a typical teenager thing)
• Work on story/series concepts I've had in waiting for awhile

That pretty much sums up what I'll be doing this summer, or at least what I'll be trying to do this summer. I have a bad case of "Losing Motivationous."

And of course, I've got blogging. Hopefully, this place will be a mad house over the summer.

Cover Colored

A few posts ago, I mentioned how I decided to enter in a contest to design a cover for my school's planner.

Here it is:

To be honest, I kinda didn't really try as hard as I did last year, but I'm still okay with how it came out. It didn't come out great like how I expected to be, but I can live with the results.
I would kind of put more work into it, but tomorrow's the deadline and I already submitted it last night through an e-mail, so whatevers.
I didn't want to do the other concept idea I had, because that was just too boring-looking.

Since I love the idea of hiding easter eggs (mainly a number or maybe a word), I decided to do that for the cover.
Whenever I do decide to hide something, I always use "622" to hide. Why?
"622" just so happens to be my birth date! Like "June 22," in case no one caught on yet.
Just like how Pixar hides "A113" in their movies, I hide "622" in my stuff.

Of course, people will think that's just a random number. Let's just let 'em think that.

Lil' Baby

Holy crap, has it really been one week since I last posted something?

Okay. So. As I mentioned earlier, I've tried out the "blurred background" look for my comic strips and I actually really loved how it looked! This was the first comic strip I tried it on:

I really loved how it gave some sort of sense of depth to how far the background was and how close the characters were to the "camera," per say. I personally thought this is pretty much the perfect-looking comic strip I've ever created, ever. 'Nuff said.

I'm not the kind of guy who can write out one comic strip per day like Jim Davis, but I tried to choose strips I thought are funny and great enough to turn digital.

Then I ran out of those. Like, quick.

So now I have to create actual original strips rather than taking some from my sketchbook. They're still original, but in this case, I'm taking them from my sketchbook.

In other news, has anyone ever read Of Mice and Men? For English, we were assigned to create an alternate ending/extra chapter of the story following the author's style of writing. I felt really proud of my work, which is weird, considering you never really feel proud of doing a good job on a school assignment, just only that you completed it is enough to be happy about it.

So anyway, today I turned it in, feeling pretty good about it. And I thought, "Well boy, I should post what I wrote here!" I will, soon after I get it back from grading.

I felt like keeping a blog really does help with improving writing skills.

Production (Might) Pick Up Again

Remember that one time I mentioned that there's a delay on an animated YouTube video that I planned on working on?

Okay, things might pick up now. Things happened and now, I might finally get on starting the video sooon. Maybe, just maybe.

Also in unrelated news, I've started posting again on a little site called "Flipnote Hatena." This month's the month that the service will finally end after three years of running.

Boy, it sucks to see the stepping stone of my pursuit in being in animation to shut down in about a few weeks.

Ah, oh well.

Next time, when I have more work done on it, I'd like to talk about this superhero thing I'm working on. Luckily, the name hasn't been taken (Google's my anti-copyright infringement agent); just today, I went bach back on working on it and it's coming out pretty good at a slow pace.

But enough of that, I'll get into more detail the next time I bring it up.

Second time's the charm?

Welp. My school's running another contest for best cover design for next year's planner.
I entered last year with a rather colorful and neat design, but ended up not making it. I didn't even make second or third place at all. The top winner was a really plain and a little boring design, compared to mine at least.
You know how schools can be. Everything's "on a budget" and can't afford color printing for over 3000 planners (I don't know the reason for not making it, but that's kind of my logical reason)
BUT. This year, I'll take another go at it. I kinda got the whole "Eh, what the hell? I'll take another shot at it" kind of attitude towards it.
Last year, I kind of did it all in a "last minute" sort of way, but came out still great, in my opinion. This year, however, I'll try to be better at the whole "planning and designing" thing.
I created my entry by hand last year, but this year, it'll be all done digitally...because it's faster...and because it'll come out looking neater. Like seriously. I only had to use Crayons to color my entry and like me tell you, it's not easy trying to create a good-looking design with crayons.

Okay, so here are two early concept designs I had in mind:

Concept 1



Concept 2

Concept 2 was created after I first saw the winning design because apparently, schools love being boring. Concept 1 is kind of following the example of design I entered last year.
Early stages it's in, but I'll try to post progress if I can.


Also I completed the sketchbook.

Final Three Pages

Okay, for anyone who draws at all, it's only obvious that one should keep some sort of sketchbook or a doodle book to keep and take around.

I'M ON THE LAST THREE PAGES, HOLY CRAP.
My last sketchbook took over two-three years to complete. It was my first one I attempted to totally complete. It's honorably laying on my drawer, that crusty ol' notebook.
Now with this one, it's about the same page length, but took me just a little over one year to finish; well, almost finish. And since it's in the shape of an actual book, I'm totally going to be proud of the completed thing.

And I haven't even started on buying another sketchbook. Aww crap.
I'm gonna miss drawing in this old thing. I became kind of attached to that thing (I know, weird, right?) but at the end, I'm glad that I've finally 100% completed another sketchbook and will really soon, start another one.

It's hard to believe that by the end of the next sketchbook, my drawing style might look different (or improved) than how it currently looks right now.
All I know for sure is that May is the end month for the little guy.

Revisions

MEANWHILE IN THE SHADOWS. I've been doing some small revisions to things.

So for one this:

I went back and gave it a better look in quality and I added a blurred background to it; why I did is because I did that to another comic strip I redrew in Flash a few days and absolutely loved how it came out; but I'll post that comic strip another time.
Basically, I fixed minor details.
I always do that. I think there's a saying for something like this. I have a feeling there's a saying about this somewhere.
In other news, I kinda did the same revisions on the ESF poster I posted a while ago:
http://dojipocket.blogspot.com/2013/03/poster-colorized.html

Happy "Revenge of the Fifth" Star Wars fans!