a backspine, an arm, a wrist, and three fingers

are what it costs to get this far.



and i haven't even started filling in blacks and shading. i think i'm gonna die.

it's 4am now. i think i should head to bed because my back is killing me. i've been sitting and drawing for at least 6-7 hours per day total for the past three days.

$55 + tax

i officially worship chen shu-fen's illustrations. i had no regrets spending over $50 on two of her illustration books.

WHY YOU LITTLE

zoro looks more like a monkey than the monkey himself, though. oh well, fitting. click to enlarge.

micron 005 and 01 on kent paper. with copic markers for shading.

if you wanna see work in progress:

sketch stage
halfway inked

mirror, mirror on the wall

when i was a little boy my dad was quite strict in raising me. he tried to impose rules that i, as a little boy, didn't like. hate, even. so when i was little i swore to myself that i would never grow up to be like him. in fact, i think i made it clear to him that if i were to ever be a father, i would not impose the rules he imposed on me.

after four years of college, however, i began to understand why he brought me up that way and i couldn't be more grateful. realization always comes late and before i knew it, everytime i look at a reflection of myself in the mirror, i feel like i'm looking directly at my dad.

like father, like son. oh, the irony.

goddamn cyborg ears

this was originally a quick sketch to celebrate this blog turning 3 years old. but a sketch turned into an inked piece, which then turned into a colored piece. it's surprising even to myself, but i guess i would eventually need to step out of my grayscale territory and into this field of colors.

click for a slightly bigger version.

yellow hair and pink panties

happy belated birthday, sanji.



we know you like it.

why women are so complex

one, two, and then a three

the first entry on this blog was made on march 8th, 2004. so today this blog has officially become 3 years old. thank you jimoho for dragging me into this.

i was re-reading my old posts to commemmorate this day, and it seemed like when i started blogging 3 years ago i was an angry man. all of my posts this recent year have been written in a calmer manner, which is a good thing since i don't want to give out the impression that an angry frenchman does.

here's to another year of slacking off.

i flipped a coin and it landed on its side

it is a personal belief of mine that whenever one is faced with a dilemma, he should grab the nearest coin, flip it, and let nature decide which of the two lemmas (HAHA) he should go with. consequences are not supposed to be something one should worry about because consequences happen in the future, and after four years of physics, i think i am safe to believe that the future is probabilistic. no matter how much time you spend in planning out your life so that you can avoid making decisions that will lead to a bad consequence, there's no certainty that you will end up with a good one. for every 99.9% of certainty that you've made the decision that will lead to a beneficial consequence, there is a 0.1% of uncertainty that might just completely screw you over. the reverse is true: for every 99.9% certainty that something bad is about to happen to you, there is a 0.1% uncertainty that might just save the day.

every decision i've made in the past twenty-two years of my life had been made by a coin. every decision that the coin had made, strangely enough, had landed me on some sort of comfort zone that i am very grateful for. i guess if a man does not stray from the path that nature prepares for him, things will work out one way or the other. this is a path of comfort that everyone follows. it might not be a path that maximizes happiness or minimizes suffering, but it's a path that always gives a zero at the end of the day. for every +1 of joy you get, there is a -1 of pain, and vice versa. it's a very stable path, but it's also a boring path.

during my years in college, i've always wondered whether it is better to live a life +1/-1 kind of life, or to live a +5/-5 kind of life. the latter would be a sort of a rollercoaster ride. you live a life that is filled with lots of joy and pleasure, but also lots of deep shit that you have to deal with. and i mean, REAL deep shit. i've always wanted to try to live this +5/-5 life, but i've never had the guts to. i'm always afraid that once i stray off nature's path, i'll never be able to go back to my comfort zone. the path that nature provides for you has plenty of inertia; you have to exert a huge external force in order to change your trajectory, and this is not easy.

but my mind's made up. i do not wish to spend the rest of my life in my current comfort zone. at this moment, i can see another zone that requires a bit of patching up, but a potential comfort zone nonetheless, and i intend to reside in that zone instead. last week, i started exerting some external force to alter my trajectory toward that new zone, albeit in small increments, and i plan on continuing to do so. i do not think a huge, sudden force would be a good idea because if there's anything i learned from thermodynamics, it's that adiabatic system has no heat flow, and for this case, i certainly want to avoid any kinds of heat flow. in, or out.

wish me luck.

CHANG MEETS THE ROBINSONS

i have a big head... and little arms!

watch until the very end. this is a MUST-SEE. MUST. for chang's sake.