Fun_Retrospective2009

This is a retrospective on my second art-posting year.

So here is a listing of my favorite pieces of the academic year, listed by category, accompanied with photos from this year's studio, or "dorm," as it were.

And here we go...

Sketches Favorite: HarvardGirl

Moleskine Favorite: Hiroyuki

Fan Art Favorite: MomoAGoGo

Rock Favorite: SpaceBattle

Retrato Favorite: TheThoseGuys

Fun Favorite: BigKappa

Color Favorite: DanesCooks

Unpublished Overall Favorite: TheThoseGuys

Record Favorite: Death

Quarters Crisis Favorite: Acolyte

Penny Dreadful Favorite: West

note to self Favorite: concentration

Monsta Crash Favorite: PocketMonsta

Misc. Work Favorite: Bulldog

Sick Little Suicide Favorite: Kuro

Zero Like Me Favorite: MinorityReport

Published Overall Favorite: Kuro

Favorite Comment: Comment #1

Favorite Post: TheThoseGuys

...and that'll do it for this year's 100th post. In one week I'll finally be back home at Yale!

Woah, woah, are you out there?

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Fun_Death_MO

To celebrate turning in my Record art for the summer, here is the making of the Death piece I did for the Record last year.

Speaking of which, tonight was my first time driving in a long, long time; I was terrified the whole way. I'm a fictionalist and am easily struck on flights of fancy, so I kept imagining the car behind me was one of those guys who flickers his lights brighter, and then after he gets bored, he drives up beside me in perfect sync with my speed, and as I turn to look at the car, I see the barrel of a pistol a split second before my skull splatters apart.

...man, I really hate driving.


And besides, driving around my town depresses the heck out of me, it really does.

Anyway, the following posts' art have been updated, finally: zlm.Vanilla, zlm.Taboo (renamed Taboocco), mc.MonstaCrasher as well as jack kelly's comics for that week, and finally, sls.Lullaby has also been updated slightly.

Also, my deviantART has been updated, too, which exists to display my more polished artwork plainly and with as little of my stupid lip as possible.

Neat,

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Fun_SeigiNoBanana

This is an old sketch from Japan. Also, I'm also entering a Back to School Story Contest with a story that's just plain--wait for it--bananas. So here we go:

Someone offered to store a box of my clothes and stuff over the summer at his place in Connecticut while I was back in California/Japan. This was a terribly fortunate free storage offer because I've accumulated quite some extra stuff at school after OCD'ly over-packing almost every time I fly back to Yale from California. So he covered what my residential college's free storage wouldn't and everything was going to work out perfectly when I return to school in the fall.

I arrived really early on move-in day and was ready to get all unpacked and have tons of free time to roam Yale and draw before school responsibilities officially started up. So I get my box from the guy, bring it up to my room, and unpack only to discover a box full of orangey-green fuzz. I don't know where he stored my stuff over the summer, but wherever it was, it leaked mold right into my stuff.

So rather having a relaxing move-in day, I spent the rest of the day walking between my third floor room, the basement laundry room, and the Walgreen's down the street--to buy bottles of disinfectant and laundry supplies--as well as filling the time with hardcore scrubbing and cleaning and hoping the laundry machines would actually do their jobs for once. I salvaged most of the stuff, but my pillow and blanket now have these weird black spots all over them that refuse to wash out, and my heavy winter jacket reeks whenever it isn't in subzero winteriness.

So...sincere thanks for the storage assistance, but it did end up ruining some of my stuff, and killing my super relaxing move-in day plans.

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Fun_DanesCooks

For practice, I tried coloring this piece using only brush strokes, and for more practice today, I tried adding smudges.

Fun Facts: On a break from comicsing, I sketched from this clip of Yale dropout Claire Danes, whose stage debut (Pygmalion) I saw at Culture Draw '07.

Baa: So far I've won a ticket for Culture Draw every year and even saw an extra play last year! Pretty amazing. Who loves ya, JE?

Say, you know who played the Doolittle dad in Pygmalion?

The announcer from Angels in the Outfield, Ranch Wilder!

Excellent performance, too.

I vaguely remember seeing the movie when I was really little (actually, I was fatter), but I found the play kinda depressing.

Go back to Cincinatti,

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Fun_MerriKerri

Where have you beeeeen, my darling?

Did you want to get the old gang back together?

For one last romp?

I don't know.

I just don't know.

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Fun_SummerSonic

Working on stuff...so there isn't a lot of time to put up a proper Friday post beyond sketches.

First up is a girl that I feel looks better without eyes.

I remember drawing this at a party in Japan and a Japanese guy came over and told me he really liked it. And then he asked if it was a boy or a girl. Haha!

So stemming from that, at right was kind of a study in androgyny.

I look up to Japanese artists, so it feels extra special to have impressed "real" Japanese people, like that party guy, and the director who came to visit class later, cuz they probably see great artwork every day. A Chinese guy auditing the class even liked my art!

Neat,

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Design_logo.BlindPig

I booked a deal--I made this logo for my former EIC's new publishing company, Blind Pig Media Group.

Who's gettin' money?

This guy.

Word,

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Fun_SquidzillaRoboKilla

This is probably my most productive summer; I just made a list of the projects I've got underway and I got that sick feeling like I'm back in school, getting pulled every direction at the same time.

But anyway, here is a double shot preview of upcoming Record art.

What is the Record?

It ain't this.

As for this one, it's probably going to go through a bunch of changes from this concept sketch, which is kind of appropriate.

Cuz one thing is for sure...

...there's more to this one than meets the eye projectories.

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Fun_LakeEffectKID

Hey, you're new...well, I was just talking to Nyao and Zero about the big news...

"..."

You know, that I'm going vegan.

"..."

I've uh, completed five whole days now.

"..."

Ugh, fine.

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Fun_IDEAlism

Oh, hey--there you are! I've been looking for you all day, Zero.

"Oh...uh, what do you want?"

Well, I just wanted to let you know that I'm going vegan. I'm on day three, in fact.

"...That's neat...I guess...?"

Can somebody be thrilled for me around here?

"I mean, you made me kinda apathetically narcissistic and made Nyao sorta concerned strictly about me, so...probably not."

...You guys are messed up.

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Fun_AttenSHUN

So...I'm going vegan. What do you think, Nyao?

"Don't be nonsense! Who will ever wants to vegan?!!"

Well, gee, thanks. I'm sure you'd be all supportive if I were Zero. Hey, yeah, maybe Zero'd support my decision. Have you seen him around?

"..."

Oh, so now you're not talking to me? Hey, don't stick your tongue out at --

--fine. I don't need your help anyway, I'll find him myself.

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Fun_SpringBroke2

Continuing from last time, this is the second week of Spring Break spent at JE, where I anonymously tagged a new whiteboard every day until school resumed.

So it was St. Patrick's day, and enjoyed a chocolate milkshake and a slice of pizza. That was the single greatest day of purchasing I had all break, having survived on a loaf of bread and water from the bathroom sink.

Saving money is Serious Business.

Anyway, this board had some blue message on it; I think CL is a crayon.

This board had a Goku and stuff on it, so I countered with a pikachu.

Fun Facts: I was voted "Most Pikachu" Freshman Year in my suitemates' end of the year Mosts awards for our suite.

Baa: This was basically a joke joke award because my suitemates didn't know me well enough to come up with "real" joke awards after I won Most Quiet or whatever, although I did like earning the "Most Sneaky Mean Comment" award ("Ok, someone give him a push.")

Ho ho ho.

I was drawing and scanning in CT Hall late into the night, so to meet my midnight deadline for whiteboarding every day before midnight, I bolted over to draw at nearby McClellan Hall.

If you are in JE 2013, McClellan is where you'll be living Junior Year because despite what they tell you Freshman Year, Yale Hates You.

I love pairing frowns with smiles, like the comedy/tragedy masks, so on the board across from the above, I drew his complement.

By "Yale Hates You," I mean that you're getting annexed. Watch Colleges 13 and 14 not end annexing. I would be all for them if they made annexation as silly a cruel memory as Pierson's mascot being the slave, but if it adds students and we still have forced annexation, then 13/14's an unforgivable mistake.

We go to Yale to go to Yale, not to go to New Haven.

Back at JE, I explored the empty husk of the college and found a hallway of pretty much vacant boards.

Couldn't think of anything, so I went with a kind of alien rat-dog.

I was thinking of how my cousins used to have a Scottish terrier.

Boston's the way to go, though...terrier-wise.

The problem with whiteboards is that they're not as easy to get into the swing of an idea, as paper or computer-drawing is. So it's easy to get stuck on a dud idea.

Fun Facts: I took a lot of photos of people Freshman Year, but pretty much stopped afterward. But as my photography declined, my drawing increased.

Baa: I hate having my picture taken, yet I often have to photograph myself for model references when a mirror doesn't work for the pose...

The big finale, based on how my dog is often in the way around the house, and we have to scream at him to move. Well, I don't, but others do.

In any case, watching TV is better than staring at a dog, right?

I should be at Comic-Con...dangit.

I completely blew it.

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Fun_SpringBroke1

Thanks to my combination of cheapness and my desire to be at Yale for as long as possible, I stayed on campus during Spring Break, deciding that every day I'd hit one of JE's whiteboards. Here's week one's adventures.

I wanted to be as spontaneous as possible with these, just pack a dry erase marker, find an open whiteboard, and draw. My three rules were: tag once daily before midnight, don't tag it if the suite seems occupied, and do not be seen.

First up was "my" suite. Easy. The only guy living there was a total hermit, if he existed at all.

Fun Facts: I was going for Kamigawa sorta.

Next was the suite across the hall.

I later learned that at least one person was still living there over the break, so I erased it, quite happily, actually.

It's kind of ugly. But it does Remind me of someBody I used to know...

Next a suite downstairs.

Easter Eggs: Death Star, Millennium Falcon, TIE fighters, Star Destroyers, "my nightmare."

Fun Facts: Not really my nightmare, but I was scared of aliens for a long time.

Baa: I'm afraid of the dark.

And across the hall from yesterday for day four.

Easter Eggs: An apple from either Paradise Lost or Death Note.

Fun Facts: They say Superman's the greatest!

Baa: But I disagree.

Entryway A sucked about using their whiteboards, even A21, who had a 4 color marker set hanging unused off their board! I found B to be the opposite: theirs were mostly already taken up.

Leaving my entryway, I found the emptiest B board I could, which had a guy on it already, so I just did some tweaks.

Man, it's ugly. Kinda reminds me of Sam Waterston.

Easter Eggs: "Pablo was he" references a name I liked to introduce myself as Freshman Year.

Fun Facts: It's supposed to seem like someone defaced my tag.

Baa: I like introducing myself with fake names if I don't expect to ever be named/remembered afterward or if I don't think the other person really cares.

This was a fun one. It had a grid on it, so I turned it into a game of breakout.

Entryway C was fun to draw in because it was still crawling with people, so I had to really dance around them in order to draw unnoticed.

I felt like a real little tagger, dodgin' the coppers and stuff, except I wasn't destroying a building for "art."

Fun Facts: Tagging where it's literally JUST a dude's name isn't art.

To close the week, I made some blue squiggles into a little sky scene.

Fun Facts: I don't normally draw my clouds so bubbley.

Baa: I try to draw my clouds like Eiichiro Oda does.

Ok, so that was week one of my first Spring Break spent at home--Yale.

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Fun_LateNightToo

Captured via photographic technology, this is a kinda-sequel to last year's "This Is My Late Night Conversations;" it's actually a casualty of a social experiment I undertook junior year: I wanted to see if it would be possible to live with Yalies for a year and feel absolutely nothing towards them at year's end, like perfect strangers, meanwhile examining the emotions that come from self-imposed isolation.

The big goal was to see if by actively seeking and imposing isolation on myself, I could manipulate and master everything I've felt since Freshman Year, which I could then use to improve or inform my art since I feed off of my feelings to operate creatively, like an actor.

My suitemates seemed like nice enough people, but I did everything in my power to maintain that early unfamiliarity, since that would only leave room for isolation's misery and discord to form, if anything.

The golden rule was simple: Don't interact with them (not even visually) unless it's unavoidable. This was a response to how I would drop everything to interact with my Freshman Year suitemates.

My bid to stay emotionally uninvested in my junior year suitemates was a success: I don't know what three of the four(?) look like, and I can't match voices with faces.

In the process of avoiding them, there were some big misunderstandings that erupted over the year, but I chose not to clarify their confusion, letting them speculate all they wanted behind their paper-thin JE walls. They impressed me with some beautifully ugly passive-aggression that helped accomplish the main purpose of my experiment: to manipulate misery.

After one of their particularly painful, poignant moves, I stole away to WLH and drew on some blackboards, riffing off of pure emotion. The result doesn't look too good, as is usually how that sort of drawing goes, but it felt great. Really great.

I love Yale. I loathe May 2010.

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Fun_SecondStop

I'm the tourist, and this is the second stop on the grand tour.

There are no darlings to kiss goodbye.

And none for the return.

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Fun_FirstStop

I'm practicing with Photoshop...so here's the first stop at the old boys' club.

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Fun_GreatSeizures

Some days I feel like a fraud. After working for a long time at a drawing and then feeling so happy with it, only to look back at it and see mountains of flaws. Ugh.

So today I feel like a fraud. I don't plan on finishing this drawing, but what is done isn't as great as it should be. Ironic. Yet you can see a pattern.

On the up side, these guys are back at it, and although I'm wrapped up on other projects, their project is coming up and I'm excited.

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Fun_RockerBirthday_MO

I'm clearing out my art backlog, so here's the making of a piece I did a while ago.

I was pretty happy with how this turned out, but now I have a tough time looking at it.

As usual, the clothing was probably the funnest part.

Baa: I really don't like the Ramones.

Anyway, this is a smaller version of the final thing. Yeah.

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Fun_HeraldMenu

These are the weekly comics series I did for the Yale Herald.

Series 5:
Zero Like Me: Zero Romance
Fall 2009 - Spring 2010
A suicidal Yale boy meets a cheery alien girl in the "Sunday edition" of the YDN series Zero Like Me, which it is independent of and in league with.

Series 4:
Monsta Crash
Spring 2009
A farm girl in the big city unwittingly becomes a Monsta Crasher with a stowaway monsta.

Series 3:
Quarters Crisis
Fall 2008
A boy finds a magic, quarter-spewing bill, but its owner wants the relic back and the boy dead.

Series 2:
Darling Find
Spring 2008
The Darling Find's most prized curio pilfered, a girl must recover it to earn employment!

Series 1:
Lighter Light
Spring 2007 - Fall 2007
Unrelated comics on various flights and frights of fancy.

I spent my Thursday afternoons all the way until Friday about 8am working on these. I never missed a week, and yet I can't help wondering if I in fact actually missed quite a lot.

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Fun_Snoozin'

I'm no longer living the superhero adventures at Yale, being a miserable little human in California until summer's end, but as far as Clark Kent compensation goes, I did just get Photoshop, which is pretty all right.

It's an older version than I'm used to working with, but I pulled up an old drawing to get some practice in. Anyway I met this guy back in Japan last summer, and he's swell. And his website, "SongTwit" is much improved, very handy.

I had a feeling this drawing's debut post would be popular because it had a bunch of Yalies in it, and if there's one thing I've learned at Yale, it's that Yalies are super-hams. Haha! Seriously, I get a bunch of (presumably) self-searches in my little traffic-tracker dealie. But it was also one of my most popular posts ever because it featured a cult--er, "improv group"--and improv'ers love passing self-congratulatory links around. To be fair, it's fun drawing people and then seeing them and their pals visit. I'm happy to entertain.

Since it's the summer wasteland, I'll tell you how to find yourself on this site: I rarely mention names in the bodies of posts, but I tag noteworthy personalities in the labels section. So if you want to find yourself, just click a label and replace the URL ending with what name I know you by. Or just search yourself in the search box up top. You ham...

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Fun_MyWayHome

I drew this on a paper towel at the Yale Herald office before meeting with the EIC for our end to the year meeting.

So as I leave Yale for...California (just for the rest of the summer)...I'll have something to absorb all the terrible, terrible tears to come in the meantime.

And if ever there were a shoulder to cry on, she's got to have two of the best.

Alls will be's better soon! --Nyao

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Fun_NaoAndLater

I wrote a comic for the Herald about a vampire girl crash landing on a farm, but scrapped it shortly before I left for Japan last summer. This is that girl, named after a founding member of one of my favorite Japanese bands, Maximum the Hormone.

I wrote a story for my Writing Sci-Fi/Fantasy class about a strange girl crash landing on a farm, but scrapped it shortly before I left for a more popular, fun story that started in my notes as "Rockets...IN SPACE!"

Although it held its last meeting today, it was one of the greatest, funnest , most nerve-wracking classes I've ever taken. Sitting in the hotseat every week, twice this week, was tough but a real thrill. I got by incredibly well on Monday, though!

Flying back to California on Friday...yuck.

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