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< Piro >

yuki-chan

"juu go sai..."

Friday - November 24, 2000

[Piro] - 10:20:00 - [link here]

[Quick update... I've added/replaced banners for linking to Megatokyo - you can find the new banners, in all three flavors in the links section. The old banners REALLY sucked, so if you have used banners, please replace em with the brand spankin' new ones. thx - piro]

Well, I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving. ^_^ I decided to take today off earlier in the week, and made the mistake of saying 'sure' when Dom asked if he could fill in. Y'know, there should be some sort of license required before you can use Photoshop. I also think that photoshop should immediately freeze up when you attempt to draw with a trackball. I'm getting Dom a mouse for Christmas.

In other news, i seem to be over my drawing funk. I get in those every once and a while, and they are usually induced when I start roving thru Japanese fan art sites. My first reaction is a kind of depression, a resignation that no matter how much i improve, I'll never produce work like this. That usually lasts a day. Then I go thru a phase where I look closer at drawings that so irritated me earlier, and try to look closely at just what it is that makes them better than what i do. The final stage is to attempt to apply some of what I've observed done by other artists.

This is sort of how I go about improving. I know i get a lot of emails saying that my art is great and whatnot, but there really is a lot of room for improvement. The artistic ego is a funny thing. Like I've said before, most people stop drawing at a very young age because what they do becomes more of as source for ridicule than for praise (and in elementary school, who needs more source for ridicule?) It takes a lot of time and effort to produce artwork that people react to in a positive way.

When you start to receive that acceptance of your work, it's a pretty good feeling. The problem is that at that time you become your own worse critic. You get to the point that you really can't trust what people tell you about your art. "oh, its great!" doesn't do much to help you improve further. Self critique, of course, is hard to do in an honest way. I think your maturity as an artist really comes from how well you can critique yourself honestly, in ways that really help you to improve.

Oh, one other thing. I would never call myself an artist. I'm not. 'Artist' is a gift word. I can't recall who the poet was (I believe it was Frost) who reacted to a student who called himself a 'Poet'. Frost reacted to this by saying you can't call yourself a poet, it's a gift word - it's something that other people have to bestow upon you. The same goes for artist. And even if people say that you are an artist, you have to be at a point that you are willing to accept that term. Me? I'm not quite there yet.

Oh, and one other thing that helps you get over a drawing funk - having a goal for your drawing. ^_^ On Wednesday I sprung three new characters on you, some 15 year old high school girls who happen upon Piro in the shoujo manga section of the bookstore. I don't have too many character sketches and drawings of these three, so I sat down and started to draw Yuki, the one who ends up causing the most trouble. I was pretty happy with the drawing, actually. Perhaps not too inventive, but not that bad either - it seems to capture a bit of her personality.

One of my goals for the weekend is to fix up Megatokyo and Fredart, as well as get the T-shirt designs done (if you want t-shirts by Christmas, i need to get these done so you can order them by December 12th). One section over at fredart that really needs work is the 'wandering' section. I'm going to start updating that once a week with three new links to Japanese sites that i just happened to visit and like.

Ack. oh yea, and I have to get the doujin stuff done before the 30th. (gulp)

Well, Sarah and I are going shopping today, out to fight the battles in the parking lots, look and see what kinds of gifts i cant afford to buy. :)

< Largo >

you're already here.

"thanksgiving stuff"

Wednesday - November 22, 2000

[Largo] - 07:30:00 - [link here]

Well, I'm flying out of town to visit family and friends for the holiday this weekend, and so I before I split I thought I'd leave you with some of the suggestions I got on how to make Piro type less.

Suggestions Submitted:

"If he has no fingers he cannot type, therefore, his updates will be veryshort (typing with toes, or a tongue just doesn't cut it).....howeverwith no fingers he could also not draw, so that would put a slight crampin the comic, and his drawing. Hmmmmm, I'm gonna have to re-think that."- Ned Elwell

"Well since he draws the strip I'm goingto assume that hacking off his fingersetc.. is out of the question so howabout this - coat the tops of the keyson his keyboard with a conductive pasteand then connect all the keys to thepositive input voltage off the PS2 port,then connect the case of the keyboard tothe negative ground on that port.granted this requires that he has akeyboard that is mostly made up ofconductive componetns, or one that youcould make conductive. But shocktherapy is always good to keep people inline." - Adam Zilliax

"Take away his keyboard.Unplug is keyboard when he's not looking.Disconnect his monitor.format c: /qNew anime videos.Put HIS arm in a sling this time. ;-)Lock him in your trunk and forget he's there. :)" - Matthew LeClair

"Let's see. A number of devious plans come to mind but the one that sticksout is quite interesting. Have whatever editor he uses to write the rantshave a small sub program. After he reaches a predetermined number of wordsPiro will receive a "fatal exception error" and blades would shoot up fromthe keyboard loping off his fingers and or hands. Immediately there afterhis system will reboot into Linux with an incorrect monitor setting causingthe convergence set beyond the limits of the monitor. The phosphor guns willhit a single point in the monitor heating it greatly till the small amountof explosive set at that point go off sending a shower of sparks and glasswrite anymore and make it unable for him to use any "speak and type"programs." - Steve Lesiak

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