Work as usual. I'm in sight of the finish line which is wicked. Just a few things to mention:

There was a post in Spanish that was awaiting approval in my inbox I accidentally erased instead of publishing. Sorry, m.j.Nuqez. My bad. Although I have no idea what you wrote it had the word fan and a bunch of !!!!!'s so I'm assuming it was something nice.

I crashed into a dude on the street with my bike the other day. I was biking home from the gym when he jumped out of an alley and kaboom! Luckily he was a nice guy and we simply apologized and went our ways. I was acting normal and smiled the entire time but in my head I was thinking "my hand! my hand! is it alright!??".

I had a MegaMac for the first time today. A MegaMac is known as the Double Big Mac backhome, which isn't all that rare, but when it has the word "MEGA" in front of it it's news worthy. I had a MegaTeriyaki burger a month ago and I had trouble eating that since the sauce covering all 4 patties made the meat slip out from between the buns when biting into it. Um, does anyone care? I don't think so...

TAK

I'm a bit bummed I'm not in San Diego right now. I'm living it vicariously through blogs of friends. I was there last year behind a table for most of it so I barely got to see anything. Maybe next year I'll go as just a fan. I haven't done a con like that in forever. Man, this sucks!

I finally rented and watched Gedo Senki last night. It was... dare I say... boring? I didn't think that word was ever possible to describe a Ghibli film but it was. For all the trouble they went through with the world building, we only ever got to know, like, 2 maybe 3 people? It was Spidey 3-esque in that manner with people only ever running into certain people. I think the biggest failure I felt was a lack of motive behind anything. I just didn't give a damn about what was going on. Finally, I've always admired the studio's innovative way of merging the end credits with extra footage or beautifully rendered backgrounds, compelling me to sit and watch until I saw the word owari or "the end" but, shit, man. Nadda. Disappointing.

TAK

I caught a commercial for this movie VEXILLE last night by chance and wondered why I hadn't heard of it before. It sorta just popped up from no where. I haven't read into it all that much but it looks like the people that brought us the CG Appleseed film are gracing us with another movie. The story sounds interesting and echoes the current North Korean situation. Yeah, maybe a bit typical but I'll gladly check it out. If it is the same studio it looks like they've really juiced up the visuals and made it less cell shaded this time around. Wicked. Anyway, the website is here.

I've been tearing through flats for the past few days. I should finally be done with ninjas and nazis in the next 2 weeks. I took the day off yesterday to go to a barbecue and got utterly wasted. I don't even know how I made it home and it ended at 4pm! WTF!


TAK

First of all, I've been getting e-mail wondering whether I'm all right after the quake yesterday and I'm totally fine. Thank you for worrying though. The areas that were hit the hardest are up north in Niigata and Nagano and spread out from there. I felt a small tremor while still in bed but it was really nothing. Thankfully. I have friends up in Niigata and they are all fine with their homes and belongings unaffected.

Also, I've been getting e-mail asking whether I will be attending the San Diego Comicon this year. The answer to that is an unfortunate "no". I don't have plans to go home until maybe Christmas and I'll probably come straight back here after a week or two so no North American cons for me this year. I've been debating whether or not to accept a limited number of sketch commissions due to being non-active in the con circuit so I'll let you know about that later if you're interested.

The final question I've been getting a lot of is if the project I'm working on right now will ever be available in North America. Honestly, I have no idea. There are a few steps before it can ever see publishment here so it's a question that's both possible and impossible to answer. I don't want to get ahead of myself so I'm taking things one step at a time. I'm guessing it'll be done in another 2 weeks then I will shop it to a publisher. If they approve it in it's entirety then I'm hoping they will print it but I'm guessing they'll probably find things to change and edit to suit their magazine. They may even reject it. I really don't know how they will react to it but that's what I'm most looking forward to right now. If things don't work out and it falls into limbo I'll upload it to my site or something.

That's it for now.

TAK

I haven't had a game console since I moved and the only game I'm playing right now is freecell on windows. My current record is 3776 wins with 1208 losses. A winning percentage of 76%. I'd like to get that up to 80%. It's good to have goals.

I've killed 4 cockroaches in the last 2 weeks. I've easily found 40+ eggs around my apartment mostly centered around my garbage bin and bathroom area. Through it all, though, it's raised my overall level of cleanliness. No dirty dishes in the sink anymore. Ever. There's an up-side to everything.

My electricity bill last month was 4650 yen ($40). Rainy season and hotter weather has boosted that up to 5289 yen ($45) for this month. I expect it to be even higher in the coming months. Shit.

My current project is 41 pages in total. I have 35 pages of characters done with 14 of those pages complete with backgrounds. I'm aiming to have everything ready for toning by next week. It's taken me about 2 months to get to this point and I'm a bit bummed I haven't finished it yet. I'm itchin' to work on something new dammit.


TAK

I think I've got the upperhand on the roach problem. Haven't seen any for a few days. One less thing to worry about. In the meantime, I've been doing nothing but sleeping and drawing with a few meals in between. I've almost got all the characters drawn and then it's onto backgrounds which shouldn't take as much time. Oh, I also watched Transformers and Die Hard 4 during some down time. Liked them both but got into Transformers more than Die Hard. I had such low expectations for Transformers but was pleasantly proven wrong through great pacing and strong acting. It was truly amazing to see the CG robots seemlessly interacting with the cast and the surrounding environments. Not once did I question if they were real or not. Quite a feat. Here's hoping for a sequel.


TAK

Sorry for the long absence. Not only have I been battling this 40 page project but a sudden infestation of cockroaches. I hate cockroaches. I really do. I don't mind rats or spiders or any other creepy crawlies but cockroaches are just gross and notoriously hard to get rid of. If one gets in your place and drops a crop of eggs you're done for. I even moved into a brand new building just so I wouldn't have to deal with them but, shit. I did a once over with the vacuum cleaner and some chemicals last night but I'm gonna have to do it again. Not good...

They have a myriad of products to kill or trap them in Japan and here's probably the most famous. The Gokiburi Hoi-Hoi. Gokiburi as in cockroach. There's your J-lesson for the day. I think the picture on the box here gives you a good idea of how it works. But, of course, this doesn't help with the root of the problem so I've gone so far as taping up holes underneath sinks and cupboards and looking for eggs with a magnifying glass... Fuck this suuuuuuuucks.



TAK