My first character to cosplay was Erza Scarlet of Fairy Tail with her Samurai outfit, then on the same day I also cosplayed Ishida Uryuu with his school uniform. Here are the official released photos:

I really had fun! It was a blast even if it was a tiring day for me, considering my nocturnal self I didn’t sleep to be able to go at our HQ 6am sharp. I don’t regret being awake for almost 48 hours, and I’d surely do it again next time!

I have recently played the game — Heart no Kuni no Alice. As part of the “bishounen” fanatics, I had that deep urge to draw one. The first route I took on the game was with Boris Airey, so I drew him. He definitely is a lovable character! This is dedicated to all the bishounen fanatics, as well for the lovers of Boris.

This artwork is part of my pencil control and shading practice. Hope you like it! Comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Changing rules/themes for the wallpaper challenges is the current fad of the designers’ at my workplace to keep it from being stale and boring. For today’s challenge, we decided to go for Style as our chosen challenge type; Pop Art was the winner on our votations, and the style used for our pieces.  Though I find the actual pop art’s description as confusing, I decided to use this definition:

A genre of art that uses elements of popular culture; often uses techniques from commercial art and advertising

Popular culture, specially on my case would revolve around no other thing than Anime. Darker than Black was my chosen Anime since it really is cool, and I always wanted to create a wallpaper for the series. I’m not really impressed with my work; though Hei is really making my desktop sexy, so I’m still happy. Hope you guys would like my little Darker than Black tribute as well.

Click here to view all the entries of ′Pop Art′ Wallpaper Challenge »

This weekend I watched Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood from episode 1 to 27, even though I had some other things to do. The first part of the series was similar to the first series – Full Metal Alchemist, then the other half was totally different. It’s quite interesting to watch another version of the story. I read that FMA Brotherhood is closely related to the manga unlike the first animated series. Though, I don’t like the part of their jokes, even in serious battles they have silly chibi characters having tantrums, specifically Ed. That’s just my own opinion though. The artwork also differs with characters like Scar, they look older compared to the first series. The series by far is very interesting to watch, and I’m still craving for more!

Photo from: Nippon Media

With a smile…

My concept was to create an evil smile. I didn’t have much time, so I vectored an animal’s face that is already sinister looking on its own – a fox. After I finished creating the wallpaper, I realized it looks like Naruto’s Kyuubi. Created in just about 30 minutes I didn’t place any effects on this one, for I was going for a simplistic wallpaper. Let’s just say, I’m tired of my messy wallpapers all this time.

Future Intelligent Robot

I loved this topic for the wide range of Anime I may use to portray my idea. Ghost in the Shell was the first thing that came into my mind, since I’m not a fan of gigantic Gundam type robots, and I’m fascinated with humanoids. The design style used in this wallpaper may be typical, but I love the overall outcome of the wallpaper, since I was able to create what I envisioned to do in just one hour. Hope you like it.

The Plot

The anime revolve around the Selecaos – 12 people who were given phones that have a value of 10,000,000,000 yen each. This money cannot be converted into cash and must be used to save Japan. The money must also not reach zero while not being able to save Japan, if that happens the penalty is death. These Selecaos are in a game they can’t refuse to accept were there is only one winner, and will be the only one to survive in the end.

The interesting part about the story is about the personas the phones were given to. Each of these people have different beliefs, passions and personalities. But the story centers on the 9th Selecao and his quest to stop the evil plot of the other Selecao members.

The Artwork

At first I didn’t like the artwork, the characters have a weird look on their face, due to the big smiles and flat-looking nose. I really didn’t like the shading on the mid part of their noses, since it adds up to the “flat-nosed” effect. Besides that, I have no complaints. They have good backgrounds that uses vibrant colors which easily catches attention. In some parts of the anime, they used 3d objects like cars, building and even the thousand buck naked running men. I would have preferred those 3d objects to be drawn traditionally, since the characters and the backgrounds would blend more naturally.

Also. their opening theme has a good art style. I like the combination of good typography, contrasting colors and vector shapes in the video. It greatly adds to the modern effect, and they pulled it off perfectly.

Conclusion

Overall, I loved the series, Eden of the East now belongs to the list of  my favorite animes. I would recommend it to anyone who wants a unique story and great entertainment. I can’t wait for the release of their first movie on November 28, 2009.

One of my projects is to work on the ChanLu Redesign mock-ups and start recoding of the web application. But… what happened instead? Ok, I won’t be ending up in excuses. I have been watching Naruto Shippuden for about more than a week now. I’m really behind the episodes since during my thesis, even though I wanted to watch the series, I didn’t. I just had the time now and my officemates are updated to the latest manga chapter. You know how horrible the feeling is when your friends are talking about what’s happening on the newly released chapter, and you have no clue about it. So now I’m about 3/4 of all the episodes of Naruto Shippuden. I may eventually read the manga, but I’ll manage my time better.

About 2 weeks ago, my Ubuntu was upgraded from Hardy Heron to Jaunty Jackalope with the help of Wayne. We decided for a fresh install so all my settings and applications were gone. I reinstalled Songbird just now, and even VLC media player. so I may watch anime and movies in this operating system. Also my localhost is ready for the development of ChanLu, but I’m on the addicted mode of watching Naruto.

Also, I posted earlier about the “designer’s website” at my workplace. We now have a deadline on the end of July. So we must hurry up on the development process of this website and hopefully have more time working on ChanLu besides the other projects I’m working on. But I’ll try on making some freebies to make up for the delay on the development of ChanLu.

So, what’s making me pout then? Yesterday, Wayne gave me the code for the config.ru file for the ruby application. The ruby gem path now works in DreamHost! But I still have an error, just one error though, there’s a fastthread installation in DreamHost currently version 1.0.1, but DataMapper requires 1.0.4. The fastthread 1.0.1 is activated by another gem first, so 1.0.4 can’t be activated anymore. I contacted DreamHost about the problem, they won’t upgrade the gem on a server basis. I must add the fastthread upgrade to the suggestions corner and wait for people to vote if they want the upgrade or not.

I’ll try to find other means of using DataMapper for the recoding of ChanLu Design, since I won’t give up on using that wonderful gem. Here’s the code that Wayne gave me, tell me though if there are other better alternatives.

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if (ENV['HOME'] =~ /^\/home\//)  ## DREAMHOST
  require "#{ENV['HOME']}/.gems/gems/rack-0.9.1/lib/rack.rb"
  require "#{ENV['HOME']}/.gems/gems/sinatra-0.9.1.1/lib/sinatra.rb"
  ENV['GEM_HOME'] = "#{ENV['HOME']}/.gems"
  ENV['GEM_PATH'] = "#{ENV['HOME']}/.gems:/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8"
  require 'rubygems'
  Gem.clear_paths
else
  require 'sinatra'
end
require 'datamapper'
require 'haml'
require 'app'
run Sinatra::Application

The rack and sinatra gems are being required manually because when requiring it by using their names, a lower rack version is activated which is installed default in DreamHost.

Besides that, I have been watching The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Though I still haven’t been able to finish the series yet due to my personal projects and work. I do like the series, its worth a few laughs and the characters are cute! I also find Itsuki Koizumi quite appealing.

I will be posting more about this series after I watch all the episodes, maybe this weekend if my brother bugs me onto watching this show.

Also, I have been reading Japanese comics (manga) – shoujo manga is my current genre of interest, I read Kimi ni Todoke (Reaching You) but sadly there are no more scanlantions for the other chapters. But this manga is really fun! It is about a girl who is really pale having long black hair and is being called as Sadako, encounters the “refreshing” guy – Kazehaya which will open her up to new opportunities such as having friends. This story is a love comedy, which has cute artwork and will hook you up wanting for more.

I am also reading Hana to Akuma, it is about a Demon who decided to live on earth, and adopted a baby human. Though the story focuses when the child is 14 years old already. The artwork of the male characters is awesome, they look cool, handsome and cute, depending on what they want to portray. But the girls in this manga seem like blank looking, it’s only my own opinion though. I do find the story entertaining and it gives me a good amout of laughs. I haven’t finished reading the current chapters of this manga, so I may post later more about this series.

Related Links

• DreamHost
• DataMapper
• Haruhi Suzumiya vector source
• Kimi ni Todoke
• Hana to Akuma

Rogelio and me watched a movie called Monster House which is a 3D animated movie. I was first amazed by the detail in their backgrounds and objects which almost looks real. I liked the way on how they play with the situation by focusing on an object to illustrate an event to occur.

Throughout the movie, I had an idea on what’s going to happen next or at least some answers on the questions on my head, which in the end were correct – the movie was predictable. Maybe because its a movie targeted for kids, but was enjoyable nonetheless.

Train Heartnet

After the movie, I watched Black Cat – an anime series. I was able to watch 5 episodes straight. The anime was quite interesting, with the story revolving about sweepers (captures criminals without killing them) and erasers (kills their target without hesitation) and how they mingle up with each other with similar targets but with different missions.

I like the main character Train Heartnet in the earlier episodes where he still is serious and somewhat coldhearted. He is an eraser working for Chronos, but when he met Saya (a sweeper) he decided to quit Chronos and suddenly had a change of heart. Though I still haven’t seen the other episodes, their opening song shows that Train will have a change of clothing also, which really suck. But, I still have the interest on watching the whole anime bit by bit.

Currently I’m making the Sequence Diagrams of WIO. There are many more types of UML diagrams that I need to make, which means more of brainstorming and staying up late for me. These UML diagrams are supposed to be submitted on December 1 as a part of the design phase of our system. We also have to present our work in front of the whole class. Here is a sample of the sequence diagram I created, which shows the process of logging into WIO. Now, I’ll be going back on working with these UML diagrams.