Small update

Sorry for the lack off updates and stuff, I’ve been going through allot lately. I added some images to my illustration works and comic works pages. Most of it will disappear to make room for some better planned work that better shows off my skills around the end of the week, passably early next week. I also put a copyright thing on my site. Please stop using my stuff without asking.

Gmail stoped working on my Drift -_-

Just after writing my last entry praising Helio and they’re Drift model, Gmail mysteriously stopped working on my phone. It’s an issue specific to the Drift, there isn’t any fix for this, It’s a long time known issue that Helio doesn’t care enough to fix. As much as I like my Drift, I need access to my email when I’m away from my desk.

I’m not really sure If I’m going to upgrade to the Fin or if I’m just going to go with a different service provider. If I want a Fin I’m going to have top pay for it. Needles to say I’m not happy about the situation.

To be fair, the drift is a phone that they discontinued. Carriers don’t usually stop suporting a handset unless it’s for a verry good reason. At the same time though, this isn’t my first complaint about Helio.

In closing. The fact that somone who receives the service completely free is considering switching to something else that he’d have to pay for should say something.

Phones

For those that don’t already know, I’m a full blown technophile. I love anything computer or technology related. Whether it be computers, game systems, stereos, etc. In the case of this little blog entry though, I’ll be focusing my nerdines towards cell phones.

As a technophile I have a compulsion to have the latest, greatest thing. When I was in Japan I always had some of the best phone that I could get my hands on. I didn’t ever have the best phone on the market, mainly because I couldn’t quit afford them. Either way, my phone was always light years beyond what was available back home in the states. When I finally settled in on a phone to use here in America, I got an pretty cool LG phone through Verizon Wireless. Sure I could have just used one of my Japanese phones and plugged in a new sim card, but I was really busy, and I already had an ongoing Verizon account. So, I just stuck with that.

My LG phone was pretty cool, it did most of the things that I needed. The things it didn’t do was because the services weren’t available in America. Recently though, I was starting to feel kind of left behind with it. There are newer, much better phones out in America now. Some of them are similar to ones I used in Japan. Alas, I felt the nagging urge to upgrade. I decided to go ahead and get a Japanese model Sony Ericson phone and sign up with T-Moblile.

That didn’t work out though. Through some work thing My fiance got a free phone and service from Helio. So, for obvious reasons, I went with Helio instead. They gave her a Drift but she wanted the shiny new Ocean, so she got the Ocean and I got the Drift. At first I wanted an Ocean too, and I was planning on getting one. After using the Drift though, I think I’m going to stick with it. The only thing that the Ocean has that the Drift doesn’t is a keyboard. To be fair, it is considerably faster too. However is has less customizable options and its big, really big. My Drift is all cute and small.

At first I wasn’t really looking forward to using Helio service. I though it was going to crappy, over hyped, hipster, emo, crap. Well, I was wrong, Helio is equal to if not better than any service provider I’ve ever used, here or abroad. The people that work for them are really friendly and helpful. They have cool proprietary phones, they offer cool little features that nobody else has like GPS integration. And from an art persons point of view, the company just looks cool.

That however isn’t to say that they don’t have they’re faults. PC Link, The software that they provide to sync my phone with my computer doesn’t work. I don’t mean that it’s poorly designed or that it doesn’t have enough features. What I’m mean is that it simply doesn’t work. At first I thought it was just me having the problems, but after doing some research it doesn’t seem to work for more than about 5% of the people who try to use it. I even spent an hour or so on the phone with tech support with no avail. Also, there Internet service has been down twice since I started using them. So they aren’t without they’re flaws

The best thing about being with Helio though is the community support for it. Specifically, all the free games and applications that are available for it. Sure, some are straight up bootlegs and thats not cool. However, most are open source projects. I’ve downloaded Tetris, Pong, 300, Zelda and a whole bunch more. I have Zelda on my phone. How cool is that?

Overall, I’m rather happy using Helio’s service. Hopefully they get they’re act together a bit better in the future.

art Vs. craft

Whether working in animation, comics, or on the occasional illustration job, my background is in a very defined craft. I say craft because I don’t think of myself as an artist, nor do I feel that any of my work in those fields can be considered art. I’m not saying that pop media can’t be art, that would discredit true artist that choose to work within this commercial subculture. People such as Yoshitoshi Abe, Range Murata, Kouji Ogata or Takashi Murakami.

The large majority of my experience is from working as an animator, both key and inbetween. I have a little experience working on comics and sometimes illustrations, but for the most part, I’m an animator. When working as an animator, your basically told what to draw. Your given the storyboards and then you copy that into a nice clean set of drawings that sync up into a fluid action. True, there is usually a lot of creative freedom given by the director and every animator gets to add his or her own personal touch. However, it’s still just copying. There is little room to focus on creating art when your goal is to make something look correct. For me, I’ve always focused on making things “correct” while putting less of an importance on making something that communicates what I want my patrons to feel when looking at a piece. In other words I wasn’t making an effort to create art.

Now that I’ve began to focus my career more towards graphic design, I’ve come back to my roots as an animator. I’m no longer trying to make a living off of it though, I’m using it as a basis to create something that maybe, one day, I’ll be able to call art. I’m running into a problem though. Now that I’m striving to create something original, something that might be called art, I’m stuck focusing on creating something thats correct. And without the aid from people telling me what to draw I’m getting completely lost.

 

Above is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. It’s a test illustration, one of many that I’ve been doing in an attempt to define a new style for myself. While the image is technically correct, it lacks any feeling or emotion. It has no since of an artists vision nor does it communicate anything to anyone. Its boring. It barely even creates the slightest bit of visual interest. One thing that I’ve learned working in graphic design is that art should serve a purpose, it should communicate a message. If your not going to say anything, then nobody is going to listen.

I’ll go ahead and close this entry with a test illustration that is far simpler, yet far better than the illustration previous example I shared with you. Unfourtunetly though, it still doesn’t look any good.

 

Halley from the hall

Above are some pics of our new Kitty, Halley. About a week or so ago, we where on our way out to buy some groceries. On our way out we ran into some of our fellow tenants by the back door crowding themselves into the corner over by the soda machine. Me and Thu being the excessively curious people that we are, went ahead and poked our noses into the commotion. What we found was an adorable little kitten… well, maybe not so little (shes a Mancoon), but still really cute none the less. It appeared that she’d been abandoned, apparently she had been sitting there all day. Long story short; we adopted her and made a new friend in the process.

We named the kitten Halley, in honor of finding her in the hall. At first she was really shaken up and starved for attention from being neglected. She would follow us around everywhere we went and would get all sad when we had to go out. The first night she wouldn’t even go to sleep, she was so exhausted too. She was falling asleep every time she sat still for even a second, eventually she just passed out. Now a days shes settled down quite a bit and has become rather comfortable with her new home and her new roommates. She spends her days doing the things kittens do, going places she shouldn’t, knocking things over, making meses and being cute.

As far as our new friend goes, he’s this really fun energetic actor guy. We haven’t spent much time together yet, but he’s already our best friend here in Denver, perhaps because he’s our only friend here. Either way he’s really nice and a lot of fun.

He recently got me to start playing Halo with him in cooperative play and it’s soooo much fun. I used to play it a little bit. But that was way back in the day when I was studying at The Art Institute. I never got to much into it though. Mainly because I never owned an Xbox and I only got to play it in PVP mode. At the same time I’ve never been a big first person shooter fan. Halo plays more as an action game though, also playing games with human interaction is always really fun.

I’m really starting to feel at home here in Denver.