Not the immortal one, sadly.

(at Georgia aquarium)

Sushi dinner last night, made up for horrible one last time.

A temple dog (หมาวัด) is, literally, a stray dog that hangs around a (buddhist) temple. But it can also mean a poor—as in, not rich—young man, especially one that dares to desire a woman with …superior attributes.

It can also generally mean a person of no [...]]]>

A temple dog (หมาวัด) is, literally, a stray dog that hangs around a (buddhist) temple. But it can also mean a poor—as in, not rich—young man, especially one that dares to desire a woman with …superior attributes.

It can also generally mean a person of no prestige, often used in insulting, mocking or pitying tone like when you want to talk about people who desire or do something without being conscious of their class, those who dare to dream beyond their birthright.

When I looked at these dogs, I wondered if I wasn’t just one of them.

On the other hand, temple cat doesn’t care.

And here’s my desk when it’s (relatively) clean and tidy:

The transportation [...]]]> For no particular reason, let me guide you to the finer establishment known as Tesco Lotus supermarket. I was fighting a nasty case of artist/writer’s block this evening and decided to tag along with my mom and aunt-in-law for some food for tomorrow’s BBQ, (no special occasion, just a feel-like-it BBQ.)

The transportation of choice was a small green scooter/motorcycle. And yes, we carried all the groceries on the trip back home; the BBQ stuff plus assorted household supplies. Too bad I couldn’t take photo of us doing that, but just google indian/asian family on motorcycle, you’ll get some idea.

Yeah, there’s movie theaters, now showing: Resident Evil 4. And a thai horror movie about ghost of pregnant women.

Arguably the most important aisle in the supermarket.

Yeah, Campbells soups, expensive as hell compared to local stuff.

And Spam. Don’t worry if you come here and can’t stomach local food :D

Move on to fresh stuff, although this didn’t look particularly fresh.

Pork, specifically, pork belly. Awesomely fatty goodness.

Thai people don’t eat much beef, at least Thai people of my income bracket, this is all they have in the whole supermarket.

Comparing to row and row of pork and chicken.

More chickens, for when those puny packs are not enough.

Duck hearts, pork hearts, for the adventurous eaters.

Sausagessssss.

A sad-looking sushi. It was near closing time so it was a buy-one-get-one deal.

Frozen stuff.

The DONOTWANT area.

Do you think this one belong to cake wrecks? It’s not too bad but that bird butts do look like pile o poops.

My battery ran out and I forgot to take photo of what we got. I felt a bit silly taking photo of such mundane things. But hope you enjoy it :)

This week’s Pavlov’s Dream; It’s Sasha’s interview with famous dead people, and he’s still with Ivan Pavlov, who never really got to finish his lecture. Main storyline will be resumed next week!

Machine golem comics is fully up [...]]]> It’s last week of April! Holy crap, where did the time go?

This week’s Pavlov’s Dream; It’s Sasha’s interview with famous dead people, and he’s still with Ivan Pavlov, who never really got to finish his lecture. Main storyline will be resumed next week!

Machine golem comics is fully up and running. I’ll give it a couple of months to see if everything will work as (I) expected. If nothing’s gone wrong, I’ll post about how to set it all up later.

New books to read, courtesy of @bicyclefish. Soulless by Gail Carriger and Demian by Hermann Hesse. I have skimmed read Demian before but didn’t finish it, was distracted by Rockband.

I want more new reading materials but I rarely venture out to buy dead tree books and it’s hard to fine non-DRM ebooks that aren’t porn erotica romance or public domain.

Last of woe-is-me; I absolutely despised Thailand Post. This package would have been in better condition if it was dropped from a plane. Jesus Christ.

The ink was brand new despite how it looked like it went through WWII.

Let me end this post with a movie I wanna see (but probably won’t get to). A movie adaptation of a comic that isn’t superhero or hipster (or god-forbid, hipster superhero). Les Aventures extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec (The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec)

This is the pocket edition, it’s a tiny little thing that doesn’t weight much more than a book. At 150$ (found on sale at Fry’s) It does what it’s meant to do quite well. You don’t even need to install any special software [...]]]> Latest addition to my electronic gadget family; Sony E-Reader.

This is the pocket edition, it’s a tiny little thing that doesn’t weight much more than a book. At 150$ (found on sale at Fry’s) It does what it’s meant to do quite well. You don’t even need to install any special software to use it, just mount it like any external storage devices, drag your files in, you’re done. That’s all I really need from ebook reader.

I was interested in Amazon’s Kindle ever since I have heard about its existence. But 3 things stopped me from even thinking about it; 1. The price. 2. It doesn’t even work in Thailand. 3. You can’t easily put your own files on it*. That pretty much rendered it useless to me. A shame really, I quite like how it looks.

*I know you can put your own files on it, but it’s not a simple matter of just mount it and drop the file in, as far as I know

I felt like a zombie right now; having slept only 4 hours the previous night. But it was worth it, PAX was great!

The first thing you’ll get to do at any convention is, of course, queuing.

I felt like a zombie right now; having slept only 4 hours the previous night. But it was worth it, PAX was great!

The first thing you’ll get to do at any convention is, of course, queuing.

The line for official swags was loooooong, wrapped around outside theconvention center. But fortunately the weather was great, no sweat!

I didn’t take many photo of the Exhibit Hall tho, too busy gawking.

The swags!

The bestest swag of all at PAX, imo, is the FREE Guildwars 2 Artbook. Signed by the artists. It was hardcover, 120+ pages of really high quality artworks. I couldn’t believe they are giving this away for free.

This book alone worths attending PAX for.

San Diego Comic Con 2009 is truly over. I had a productive week. The best thing about the con was that I got to meet a lot of comic people! It’s great to be able to [...]]]> This is probably the shortest SDCC post ever, but I haven’t done much besides sitting table really. :D

San Diego Comic Con 2009 is truly over. I had a productive week. The best thing about the con was that I got to meet a lot of comic people! It’s great to be able to put faces with names (and works!). The down side is that I didn’t do much else. I went to grand total of 1 panel and I didn’t actually walk the whole con floor. *sniff*

Sail Pavillion, if you want to see sea of people without any obstacle :P

I actually got to walk preview night this year, which is probably the only time I get to walk con floor properly, gawking at stuff, and my most favorite booth out of the entire hall is this:

What kept me alive all week.

Table, is where I spent most of my time. This was Image table for Liquid City, with Sonny Liew and Lefty

And lastly, my loot!

I’ll aim to take more photo next time, and try to not be so tired all the times XD

I only recently started to use brush for inking. (pentel brushpen doesn’t count) I hadn’t thought of using one at all because I don’t know anyone who uses it. Basically, if you are doing manga, you are either using multiliner, dip pen, or do it digitally. I have used all of those options, and [...]]]>

I only recently started to use brush for inking. (pentel brushpen doesn’t count) I hadn’t thought of using one at all because I don’t know anyone who uses it. Basically, if you are doing manga, you are either using multiliner, dip pen, or do it digitally. I have used all of those options, and I wasn’t happy with any of them. Dip pen is by far my favorite, but it came with problems of its own. First is that the supply. I can only buy them online. Second is that each nib doesn’t last long, and you have to clean it fairly often, thus making it pretty cumbersome to use. Digital inking is good for fast and clean job, but my problem with it is that I can’t make it stop looking so… digital. It looked digital even when pro used it, so I guess it can’t be helped.

Recently though, I came to realize that I was trapped in ‘manga’ bubbles. A lot of what I believed and what I have done revolved around the idealistic image of ‘manga’ but not necessarily the real ‘manga’ itself. What happened last year changed me. It hit me like a brick in the face, and I realized that I just wanted to do comics, sequential art, graphic novel, whatever, and I can do it anyway I want, however I want, with whatever tools I want. Why did I limit myself with the prospect of manga? It’s just a catchword.

I started reading other kind of comics and liked some and hated some, which is perfectly normal when I came to think about it. I probably only like about 5% of all manga, but I started to appreciate other style of works beyond “manga” and started to try different things.

That’s when I started to try brush and ink.

You can look at my earlier attempts I posted on this blog. While they didn’t come out perfect or even good, I like them enough to pursue this course. I found out that the brush I use is crappy and there are inks better suited these kinds of projects. A quick browsing through dickblick and wiki introduced me to types of brushes than I have ever heard of or will ever remember. I honestly never knew that there were so many kinds or how they are all different. After reading them all, and quick round of googling, I decided to try Full belly round size 2 kolinsky sable with Higgins color ink as well as PH Martin. The brush just arrived today, and here’s result:

As you can see, it can produce much finer lines than anything I have ever used before. Even a school pen nib (the smallest and finest line of among the nibs) can not do that, and a huge plus is the fact that I don’t have to clean it so often and didn’t need to shake out excess ink as much as when I use my crappy synthetic hair brush or g-pen for that matter.

I’ll have to use it for real inking to test its durability and how well it will perform when it’s not new. I hope it lasts longer than a month or 30 pages which is how long my synthetic brush lasted.

As for inks, Higgins performed better than Dr. Ph Martin’s. Higgins is more ‘viscous’ (it doesn’t flow out of the tip so much thus making finer line and last longer between dip) but less opaque. Next time I’ll try the Higgins black magic to see if it’s any better.

By the way, I still like manga, if by manga you mean just comics, and it is still my passion and my inspiration. I just came to realize that I don’t have to carry any excess baggage that comes with the word itself.

As you can see: