At the animation shelter

Volunteer project: we were filming at an animal shelter
where the kitten won't stop trying to get our attention.

Now the kitty has reached for our sound equipment. lol

Path animal shelter is a well run animal shelter we are doing a short video project for. It's my first time on an actual shoot so it was pretty exciting. :) I got to play some extra part. *aka extra staff and random donor. lol* 

Birthday gifts 2010

Lien doll by Elysse B. (much love!)

A Rose to a Rose

By Eric Y Huang

Gifts I got this year and a lot of "Happy Birthdays" Thanks everyone!

Working subscription model

making revenue on webcomics: http://www.viddler.com/explore/harkneldark/videos/2/

Very informative, the fact that someone can get a subscription model working is quite encouraging, i like how he set the price low, 25 a year, 3 a month, and provide those who have incentive to support with 20% content.

i can see that working for my site, just need the system established for it.

Thanks to complex who pointed me to this.

Kick Starter "The price"

"The Price" looks like a great film, I hope it does get funded, though 150,000 mark is going to be a challenge. Help him out if u are interested in films like this.

OMG they funded Blue like Jazz for 345,992 USD!
I take back my word. OTL Blue Like Jazz has 1 million fans though. T_T

Meeting the like-minded people at manganext

My panels got crowd-less time slot (start and end time slot lol) so i had barely 10 people, with some nodding off to sleep at our voices (sad) but one took a lot of notes! Dirk from dynamanga.net joins me.

Manganext this year is really nice, Manganext has been nice traditionally. When the crowd is smaller, it's usually good buy rate. (not that i sold anything, but i bought stuff and got to talk to people)

The selection of the artists are good this year, i like how they screened for quality production, I saw a lot of good products, and a detailed instruction on how to pick up my badges for the panel and etc, usually I don't get that. Good job Manganext team!

I didn't have a table so i got to talk to more artists, it was very fun meeting with great guys like Dirk from Dynamanga.net, a freelancer turn full time comic artist by his own hard work and planning, a very open person, shared a lot of great great tips with me on book printing and joint me on my panel as well to share our happiness, and bitterness in the industry.Thank you! (and he does his comic with a lot of heart, a lot)

 Michael S Bracco the creator of novo, who holds a breaking record of doing 50 shows a year! Anywhere from crafts shows, jewelry shows, book club signing, Barnes and noble events.... omg, that's an average of a show a week! (with 10 weeks break) *bows, master sales man!*

Left to right: Michael Bracco, Rosscott, Dirk

These artists are all making a living out of this indy style retail, it's very encouraging. I also talked to the manager, Yiheng Zhao, of a super china anime club (100 strong in professional artists and amateur alike. My work is child's play in their level. T_T )  It's really good to hear her rant about how hard it is to do business in China.

the art book i bought from chinanime, the artist's really... good. *stares and study....*

 And the webcomic artists from onezumi.com who started a convention on their own, serving all webcomic, indy artists, the intervention con.

What's nice about intervention con is that they film all of the panels of sharing and put them online for people, and they put links, promotion on their site as well for their guests. They focus more on the indy, discourage fanart, but are open to all people of all styles, as long as it's original. They have a selection process that screens for people who have good products for the artists alley, not just first come first serve.

It looks like a great con with a lot of potential of growth, it's located in DC, the creators are really cool, visionary people.

After this... I realize something about myself more clearly:
I wish I could be content with working under someone else, in a way, that's an easier life at times, but I am finding I am an entrepreneur at heart,  I rather face the challenge of making my own work get out there, I rather hit my own wall than someone else's wall. I rather tank with my own ideas than someone else's idea. When I meet others with the same heart, it makes me happy, excited, and feel fortunate. "This is the way I want to live" will come to my mind.

(linked image from DA: http://fav.me/d2gjzfl )

Right now, a bit of money from the production fund can help me to make some products, and selling them might help to generate more funds... it's another way to roll on the money if I am going to do it.

I currently need to research into whether or not I should apply for a business identity, but I absolutely want my ISBNs for the next bunch of books. In order to enter amazon, and a wider range of distribution.


I also decided my manga will be printed in Taiwan, lovely Taiwan, please take my money. XD I love you. <3
Like... WTH, proof is FREE?! The price is 1/3 of the printing here? Looking more than 3 times prettier?
What's with this superb customer service? XD
Where am I going to find that in USA, Canada? Are you kidding me?!

Translation for my mangas?

Anyone interested to help translate my mangas into different languages?
For Edepth and 2Masters

I can't offer much now, but if they will do it for free for 100 pages and above I draw them a request wallpaper like this one: Every 100 pages I will offer one more drawings in exchange for their time.

I will host the translation version on my site with credit to them, or link them at the same time if they would like.

Let me know if you are interested.
I am particularly interested in Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, French, or other ones you can offer to help me with that might reach an audience who can't read English well.

(I can translate Chinese but i don't have time to do it)


Thanks in advance, translation will help me to reach a wider audience and help my growth as well.

MangaNext Panel

MangaNEXT 2010 with my panel/workshops

- Making Your Anime At Home: Saturday, Oct 30, 11:30 AM, Panel 2
----- My usual.


- Getting Into the Animation/Video Game Industry: Sunday, Oct 31, 12:30 PM, Panel 1
----- I have some tips and information to share for people, but mainly i am also hoping for more networking to take place during this panel.

MangaNext this year:
3 Tower Center Blvd,
East Brunswick, NJ 08816

Time: Oct 29, 30, 31


If you want to join me on panel, let me know.

Comic Con & Anime Fest 2010

Pigtail Studio at Anime Fest

Me with the Drunk Duck guys

 Cetriya at her post (I don't know if she minds me putting this pic up) XD

Went to comic con/Anime Fest today (for about 3 hours because I had to finish up a commission and went late) , mostly for sentimental reasons, to see how my friends are doing there and check out the first combine of the two cons.
I met some people I didn't expect to meet, and spent over 100,
with 60% going to the ticket and traveling cost. *ouch*
Bye bye to the money I just made.... ;_; 
There are so many people it irritates me so much. X.X
Especially when i  get stuck when i tried to find someone...
People I visited are:
Pigtail studio
Cetriya
and suzuran whom I never found.... T_T
 I met and talked with David White and got his art book on mecha for a special offer. Thank you David. :D
Found out a few neato sites to check:
http://prontocomics.com/
http://www.webcomics.com/



It's still nice to be part of the hot event of the year.

searching for more film fests to enter

http://www.christian-movie.com/christian_film_festival.html

The first festival I joined outside of school ever started out nicely, i hope to join more film fest and hopefully it can help with funding if i win more often.

The prize money came in so i get to invest into more festivals later.

Last day blast

Left to right: me, Jonathan Nixon, Rachel Hsu

I don't think I would be in another festival just as warm, family like for a while~~~

Jon Nixon, who's workshop i had the opportunity to attend was a great teacher, 

shared selflessly many tips and knowledge on camera, sound, and lights. 

And it was great hearing complaints about distribution with 

Walmart/Barns and Nobles from their publisher people. 

(I shall update this entry with more tips I heard later after I look through my notes)

It helps me to see the direction I am going is quite fitting for my grass roots production.
It would be nice to know where the bridge is between the large and the small people distribution though.

And to make it even better, the festival judges decided to award me with "Best animated film award" 

The award itself gave me a lot of leverage to take pictures with the professionals in the field. lol

I had the privilege to sit next to Vicky Sigworth who was the "Best feature Documentary" award winner, she is such a sweet spirited lady.  And her film "More than Walking" is a story of inspiration itself.
 I will update when all of our films get onto the festivals' site.
Scott Riehs who is a documentary film maker: http://atlasprod.org/


I do feel the festival had a lot of focus on the workshops, more so than the screening, I did not get to see my own film screened (nor did I want to as a matter of fact, Rachel almost had to drag me there) but the reaction of the people who saw it was encouraging to me.

The visit of Richard Gorey

-he shaved, this is an old photo. lol

Hm, this professor/guest really gave everyone a good few slaps in the face before graduation and finishing our thesis. Nice job Mr. Gorey.

I'll first note he's probably the most prepared, flawless, and fast speaker I have seen so far out of all of the guests yet. The corporate environment experience, and his personal taste of performance and perfectionism combined and created this kind of presentation, impressive, thought provoking, and comforting at the same time to a group of frighten students facing their graduation.



Here's a brief recap of what he said last night. (for those who missed it)


He mentioned he wanted us to remember one thing if we forget everything else, so I will list it here:

"In life, we are not rewarded for hard work, we are rewarded for outstanding work."
- No one will walk into a theater, watch a crappy film, and come out saying "wow they must have worked really hard." They will come out saying 'What a crappy film that was!'"

One student raised her hand and told me "You can't judge art." After all, art is subjective, but I will answer this... "Oooooooh YEAH I CAAAAN!" - (note the bold.... he nearly shouted in the room. lol)

In fact you come here to art school to have your art judged by me.

Everyone of you judge art, you will look at this art and say it's good,
look at that and say it's crap.


"I'm a testimony of you can end up with a C, but still be successful anyway. My father was a good man, but when he's angry, you know it. After spending tens of thousands of dollars on this son who keeps saying he will do a knock-your-socks off animation, finally he asked to see my thesis. It's the moment I dreaded, but that moment had to come. ....After he saw my work he was sooo angry I couldn't draw at home, i had to go else where to complete it. To make matter worse, when I was drawing my thesis, a professor took a look at it, and said it loud enough to another professor saying ' if I see another dinosaur fight, I'm going to puke.' As if things could get any worse for my thesis, right? My father hated it, no one wants to see it, but I decided, I'm going to finish this for myself. I called it, my 'demo reel'

There was tons of people doing dinosaur fighting, so I thought I had to do something to make mine stand out. Here you can see it was a desperate attempt."


(Then he proceed to show us his "demo reel" it was clean, neat, well timed and filmed, and the ending was funny, combining his love for the dino and his favorite old film. And his love of old films combine with his humor got him a job when he went to informational interviews, because that hit really well with his boss.)

But here I am thinking to myself, I'm not a fan of the old films, I probably don't have the same leverage he had because of his shared common interest with the older generation of my time.... I grew up in a completely different environment. So I have to use other things, and do a lot of studies to keep up with the culture.)




"I know you are all scared thinking about the tens of thousands of dollars of loan hovering over your heads, but in time, loans will be paid off. It took me 10 years, but I did it. When I finished my booklet for writing the checks, I called in to the agency and asked for another booklet, they told me, 'that was the last payment, you finished paying off your loan.' I was so happy I treated everyone dinner, it was a 1000 bucks dinner but I enjoyed every bite of it."

Mr. Gorey continued,
"You have to stop thinking of yourselves as only animators, you have to think of yourselves as film makers."

(No problem, I am already doing that. ;) I call myself a director of my indie films.)

Then he proceed to draw a chart, something looking like this...


"This is the film industry, this is all the jobs that are in the film, and this is 'animation' under film, and then, this little area of jobs are for animators. You are doing much more than animating when you finish a film, you are the writer, storyboard artist, the designer, the sound effect artist... If you just stop thinking you are only animators, your reach in the field will be much wider."

"I'm anonymous, I'm not Brad Bird, not John Lasseter, but I'm that guy who has a beautiful house someone will drive up and take a picture of, and I want to be that guy."

"My friend who taught me to draw never went into this business making money off what she loves to do, she just didn't like to have her work judged by others, but she's a very successful wife and mother making her house, and her daughter's prom dress beautiful."

Fame and Success are not the same thing. You can be successful without being famous. My definition of success is waking up everyday, and love what you do.

(my reaction: Then I am pretty much in the road of success going by this definition. I love what I do, I do what I love.)

He goes on to mention " Teachers don't have that much of an influence in your life, in a few years, you will forget your teachers' names, you might go "I had a teacher once with his name... starting with H?"

The fact is... NOTHING can stop you if you are determined!

(Amen to that one.)

(This story is probably the one that made most impression on me:)

I had one student who told me before that the workshop rooms had no pencil sharpener, he complaint to the desk, they said there was a budget problem this and that, he complaint to Reeves, and Reeves said it wasn't his problem. He then had everyone signed petition and held signs and fought for it for 8 weeks.

But, couldn't you just take a hat, and have everyone put in two bucks, and go to get two pencil sharpener and problem solved within a few minutes instead of 8 weeks?

"A few years ago, one student told me the school didn't even had flash class, and he was afraid he couldn't find a job. Well, couldn't you take flash class on your own? It's raining flash classes around here! Are you going to let 500 bucks stop you from your dream?"

(May I add... if you take a flash class in a community college, it's 135 bucks.)


(This story tells me: Solve your own problem, don't let nothing stop you from your dreams. )

(If you decided not to rely someone else to provide everything for you, you will be able to use what is there, not what is lacking. You will become a problem solver, and sometimes, an ugly problem can have a simple solution.)


And his book, "The Great Rabbit Rip off" is another story of its own.

"Sometimes you will feel as you work, you will move further and further away from your dream. But your dream can come in many other forms. For me, I didn't make the "101 Dalmatians" film I wanted, but my dream came in the form of a book, not a movie."


(Lastly... he counted his own drawings for animation..... 3000 drawings. Documented, took pictures of the camera he had and the school camera....
(seriously you had time to do that?! my honest reaction: omg geeky to the core XD )

(Now I wonder how many drawings I actually have. lol~
I will count later when I am done with my stuff.)

Hey, is this two pages yet? (checks... crap, it's 4 pages, I have to shrink this for my report)

interview

1 hour... i never intended it to be that long. Oh well.

Interview on TalkShoe about Edepth

More like its about my animation and being indy webcomic vs being published by publisher. lol~~~

But it was a fun chat. :D

oouuuch

My grandma's fractured bone x-ray...... today she's going to get some surgery. The wait before it is just.... bad. She's not allowed to eat or drink for some of the proceedure.... doesn't that weaken her even more?
I hope someday we get better procedure than that.

Grandma emergency

Grandma fell down, she managed to climb her way from the deck to my dad's room and knock the door with her staff... (cuz most people are out of the house at the moment, and the rest of us are downstairs...)

Dad immediately called 911, and I accompanied her to the emergency room as a translator, right afterwards uncle came, and then my mom, and my aunt.

It seems like Grandma broke her arm on her fall, the right arm has swollen bad.

I returned home at 10 pm to prepare for work the following day.

It has been a rather eventful month...

婆婆跌倒了, 老爸叫了救護車以後我陪程去做翻譯. 可能右手有骨折, 還要看檢查. 隨後老媽, 阿姨, 舅舅都到了.
我10點左右被放回家, 因為明天一早還要工作, 我在醫院也不能做什麼.

我前幾天生病才剛好... O_o 然後就...
最近的日子過的真是起伏很大啊....