The Asinine World Website Updates

Anime and manga fan art for shoujo series: the "main" fan art page. I like mostly shoujo, so sue me and my double X chromosomes.

• Fruits Basket Fan Art: My fan art for a wonderfully sensitive and warm series by Natsuki Takaya. I seem to have a tendency to draw Sohma Yuki a lot.....of course, he's a true prince but most importantly, he's Tohru's prince.
  

• Cardcaptor Sakura Fan Art: While I was at it, I also threw together a page to store all my Cardcaptor Sakura pieces. Doing CCS fan art is very hard since CLAMP is nearly inhumanly flawless in art technique.

Xi You Ji: a casual look at the ancient Chinese adventure story with screencaps of the CCTV television production.

Hola
I made several pages nicer looking. I also put up a new guestbook and I'm quite pleased with the way it looks--it took a lot of effort on my part (tables give me migranes >_<). Next, I'm planning to spruce up the main page a tiny bit with colored tables to give it a more "art deco" look (That was what I was aiming for in the first place but I got tired and left it half finished). Art deco...art deco....happy sigh...........

Xiyouji
I made the main Xiyouji page a bit nicer looking and sorted out the different screen cap galleries. As you might see, I've planned out the "themes" of the future screen-caps. I added the peach icon. I'm also planning on redoing the other icons for that page--I did them a long time ago when I just had PSP and no graphic tablet. Now with my tablet and Photoshop, I can make nicer looking ones like the peach icon. Besides, the current ones are gifs and the colors are not nice.

Wow!
Wow! A real update. I put up a few new captures in the "Profiles" section of the Xiyouji page. They are from the 2001 sequel which I've been meaning to get around to screencapping for a while (um...half a year, maybe?). Maybe more later when I decide how to make that section of my site a lot nicer and spiffy looking.

Art page
I gave the main art page a badly needed face lift. Some people seem to be visiting it for whatever reason and I thought it might be nice if I actually gave them something more than black text on a white page. The new page is still super fast loading as usual. I actually pondering handing over money to turn off the pop up ads. It's not that much and I blow more than that a week just on sushi. But my most popular page is just getting 30 hits a day....I don't know if it will be worth it....

Hmmm....
I got my first criticism in my guestbook which was totally cool: at least she sounded fair about it. People are indeed sensitive about their music--that's why I usually don't bother mentioning it. I usually don't know what I am talking about when it comes to music any way: my parents were REALLY strict. I don't care how strict your parents were--mine were stricter. I wasn't allowed to listen to any music unless it was the type of music they listened to: old sentimental Chinese pop songs, easy listening music (The Carpenters, Peter Paul and Mary, Andy Williams), or classical. That was it. When I became a high schooler I managed to convince them to branch out into listening to Broadway showtunes. So now I try to keep a open mind when it comes to music because I'm pretty much a clean slate......or I'm just boring.......depends on how you look at it.

Lack of updates.....
Yeah, I've haven't added anything new to the site. Work is keeping me busy during the day and going jogging takes up a lot of time at night. Weekends I would rather go out shopping or wandering around in the city. Plus I have to move soon so I've also been busy packing. Whenever I do get the chance, the Xiyouji page will get updated. I'm been too uninspired to do any more fan art as of late.

Hits!
Google must have updated its database recently because I've been getting quite a number of hits today--I think I got more today than I got all week. I'm sorry I don't have any Xiyouji episodes for you to download: prohosting wouldn't like that and it would be a violation of the copyright anyway. You can find VCDs of the series in Chinatown if you live in a major city. I got the second series from San Francisco Chinatown.

I did a tiny bit of tweaking on the Xiyouji page but otherwise I haven't done anything. I've been too tired and busy to draw and I think my "phase" is almost over now. Don't get me wrong--I still love the series, but I just haven't been hit with inspiration for a long time.

Wow!
Wow! I was so surprised someone liked the opera section (Thank you! Thank you for signing my guestbook. It was very kind of you!)--I had almost decided to take that section down since no one seemed interested. I wish I had more time and money to go see opera live more often.....sigh.....

It never rains but pours
Wow, two guestbook entries in one day from people who have seen my Xi You Ji page. Thank you thank you. Now I feel really motivated to make more screencaps. I put up the page because I, myself, went looking for webpages about Xi You Ji and found next to nothing. So I sensed a definite void I could fill. I'm also considering putting up an Ancient Chinese costume page since there's very very little about the wonderful robes from the "Golden Age" of China. I'm considering drawing a twin set (day and night) of pictures for Cardcaptor Sakura. If you've seen the original manga, you know that CLAMP drew these twin day and set sets for each main character. Also considering doing a drawing of Hatsuharu for Fruits Basket. Of course, since no one has signed my guestbook asking for more fan art (hint hint) these projects are definitely given lower priority.

Hmm....
All these hits from people search for "how to draw" some anime character. I'm almost tempted to put up a tutorial. But I'm such a lame artist that I'd feel bad about misleading people. The other thing is, if you don't train your eyes to be able to really look at a character design and pick up on all the subtle nuances, you'll be severely limited in your ability to do fan art for new series that come down the line. Plus, if you don't practice and learn how to draw the figure and head from all sorts of angles, you'll pretty much end up copying an exact pose and angle I show you. My advice would be to look at the original artwork--I always always prefer manga artwork since anime artwork has a good deal of variation in style and quality since a team of people work on them--and really study where the angles, soft bends, and distances between the features are in the face and body. It's okay to copy the manga art but for practice only--don't ever try to pass this off as "fan art" because it's lame and any fan can immediately tell it's a copy.

Finally....
Finally done with the latest Fruits Basket fan art. Same thing as the link I posted earlier but now in its completed form. I think I'll take a break from doing Fruits Basket fan art for a while--takes too much time and effort (And I do actually get out of the house once in a while). Whenever I do my next piece, I think I'll do a simpler style closer to how the manga artist, Natsuki Takaya, uses. It's a really nice style that shows off her fluid line work. Unfortunately I ink like cr@p so I "over color" to hide it. (I saw scans of Chapter 60 in Hana to Yume and the color splash page of Yuki was really well done. The coloring is pretty simple but it really works. I like how the manga artist has appropriately aged her characters gradually over the years. I don't know if that was intentional or just a natural drift in her drawing style, but it's nice.)

I tweaked the background image of the main Fruits Basket fan art page--I decided it was too busy looking and made it hard to read the page. It's even worse when you try reading it on a Sun machine--all the colors look darker. I also keep wondering why people visit and yet not one of them has bothered to write in the guestbook. So I put in a direct link to the guestbook in the corner navigation boxes. I don't think it will do much, but just in case......

My next project is fixing up my "Xi You Ji" webpage. More screenshots, a nicer looking front page, links to other resources, maybe even more original graphics. Of course, I'm always open to your ideas and suggestions on what to work on.

(Of course pink and green go together--didn't we learn anything from Cardcaptor Sakura? Just like how grey and pink go together too.....hee....)

If you're desperate...
If you're desperate for something new to look at, I posted a large thumbnail of the current state of my newest fan art project. It's not done, of course--I still have to fine tune the shading, redo the lotus plants floating in the background, and draw in the embroidery pattern onto the vest. But hopefully you'll get a taste of how it will turn out. I was going for an extremely subtle, delicate look so the coloring is quite a bit different from my previous offerings. This super subtle style takes about 5 times longer, yet people don't seem to realize that. Also remind me never to scan drawings in at 500 dpi (it takes Photoshop about 2 minutes every time I try to save this sucker). I will also never ever draw a lattice window ever again--I nearly tore my hair out trying to align everything correctly in perspective.

need a site tracker--arghh!
I need more site trackers for my website. So far I've been REALLY happy with Extreme Tracking but their rules say that only one tracker per page per site. I'm already "bending" the rules by having two--one on the main page and one on my main fan art page. I don't want to push my luck. I really would like to put trackers on the Xi You Ji page and the Fruits Basket Fan Art page. I'd rather not have ads displayed within the page, and I would really like to have the option of preventing hits from certain IP addresses (like mine) to be counted. Any suggestions and I will be extremely grateful.

Still giddy
Since the weather became more hospitable, I started pencilling the next fan art piece. So far I like how his face and hair is turning out--I was worried since I wanted it tilted at an angle and some of the foreshortening of the face is really hard to do well. I'm not going to scan copies of the picture as I progress along like I did last time--it makes the finish product look a lot less spectacular when you realize the wholly unmagical steps I took to do it. I'm going to draw in a peony pinned to the shoulder of the subject in the piece--wish me luck, though: peonies are tough to do right. I also thought up of a really wonderful background. I usually never draw in the background, but I thought of something nice that goes well with the clothing. I feel a bit bad though--hijacking someone else's character so I can indulge in drawing Chinese-style stuff. I mean, the connection is pretty flaky at best: the character, as he was originally created, quite frequently wears shirts that have a strong Chinese flavor to them with rounded standing collars and frog fasteners, etc. I--I can't quite help myself when it comes to Chinese clothing XD

I also submitted my main Fruits Basket Fan Art page to DMOZ (heck, if they accepted my other page, their standards can't be all that high). I'll get around to adding more content to it--I highly doubt they'd want to include a page with just five drawings no matter how cute I make my onigiri icons. I'm definitely going to link directly to a new guestbook right from the Fruits Basket and Main Fan Art pages--I think people are too darn lazy to go up to the top level and then find the guestbook.

And since I'm so very pleased at the way the newest chapters of the Fruits Basket manga is shaping up (Go nezumi!), I'm also musing about doing a Fruits Basket drawing of Hatsuharu. It'll give me a chance to design a really interesting outfit and CG leather again. Plus, it helps to keep people from thinking I'm obessed with just one character :D

gasp!!
Aaa!!......I'm giddy....lookeeee at the last link on the DMOZ directory for Classic Chinese Literature! I submitted my site about a month ago but I didn't think they'd accept it. I mean, the site basically consists of screenshots and my not-so-witty commentary. I actually didn't go into the "literature" part at all since I haven't actually read the story. They didn't send me an email to say that I got accepted or anything--I was just browing around and went back to check because I'm crazy like that.

the heat fried my brain
It's soooo hot in my room. It's hot and miserable everywhere but somehow my room manages to be hotter and more humid than the outside. That's the main reason why I haven't made progress in the next fan art I promised you. I barely have the energy to pick up my drawing pad and blue pencil before my brain starts wandering and I start cursing the East Coast heat.

The other reason I can't draw is that I think I entered another artistic funk. You see, I recently got introduced to the (really comely) graphic artist at work. Since he has a semi-unique name, I turned to Google in my usual manner. Turns out he is a graduate of a relatively prestigous art school and has his own fancy (maybe too fancy--too much Flash hurts my brain!) website with really lovely examples of his graphic design and paintings. Sigh......being born with just a small bit of artistic talent is both a curse and a blessing. Though it's nice I can pound out small doodles that manage to be somewhat recognizable ("Oh, look--a chair", "Oh, look--a really feminine looking man.") and people keep telling me not to be so hard on myself, my artist's eye--no matter how untrained, undeveloped, and weak it is, it still allows me to see how very far I still fall. Ever read "Little Women"?--Amy said, "talent is not genius."

Gah, I'm making a mountain out of a molehill out of this. Yuki will get drawn, scanned, and Photoshopped as soon as it gets cooler or whenever I feel like dragging my drawing pad to the air conditioned student center.

icons
It seems, despite all my other artistic efforts, the icons seem to be the biggest hit. Maybe I should just become an icon-making factory and churn out icons for other people.

I don't think my fan art page is entertaining anyone--lots of unique visitors come to my fan art page via the anime directories I'm listed in, but not one has bothered to sign the guestbook. I guess it's human nature--I don't think I've actually signed anyone's guestbook that wasn't at least a friend of a friend.

The other funny thing is that I KNOW I have repeat visitors to my main page--and I think I even personally know some of them. But still, DrunkenB is the only person whose bothered to give feedback. I'm all confused as to which sections to add content to since I have no idea what people liked about this site (well, other than the icons)

So now I'm paranoid that I coming off as an insane freak to the people who see my site. Really, I don't bite. And I'm not going to suddently start electronically stalking you if you just leave a tiny little thing for me in the guestbook. Really.

Special Olympics
I'm afraid to say that the Special Olympics quote that so charmed DrunkenB-fly isn't at all original. I hang out way too often at fark.com--that's where I saw it at least a couple of times. (There's even a graphic that goes with it.) Needless, to say, that quote entertained me as well. However, I was a bit worried about using it since it might offended the mentally disadvantaged.

shuffle shuffle
Hmmm...since my reorganization of all my Fruits Basket fan art pieces went over so well, I decided to make a page especially for my Cardcaptor Sakura pieces--which means more fun icons....Wheeeeee! Card Captor Sakura Fan Art

Yeah, yeah, only three pieces ain't enough for a whole page. I'll add more later.

Now for my next trick.....
Well, I upload the finished Ayame Fruits Basket piece. It turned out much more garish looking than I had planned (that's some intense lighting!). Go take a look and tell me what you think.

Last week at work, I came up with a really charming Chinese style clothing design. Everyone already knows about the "typical" Chinese clothing elements: mandarin collar and the row of frog fasteners across the front. They get used so much that they tend to be boring. So I came up with something that incorporates a traditional girl's dance costume with a slim fitting vest. I just hope the end result is masculine enough because I want to do a nice Yuki fan art (yes, Fruits Basket again).

Or I might choose to do an Escaflowne picture--I've been getting hits from Google by folks who are searching for Esca stuff. Poor Esca fans--so little fan art and so much of it is lousy since the original character design wasn't exactly what you might call "stunning"--yet another reason why I go for "shoujo." I'd be more inclined to do more Van and Hitomi drawings if the ending weren't so screwy. Or I might do just a Van drawing and use all my mad "shoujo-fying" skillz to change his looks to suit my preferences. Hmmm....it would be a chance to practice CG wings and feathers.

Of course, if anyone besides my most loyal reader cares to drop me a line and vote for one series or another, that would be a big swaying factor. Heck, if there are enough requests and you don't sound deranged, I might even consider doing stuff for a series I have done anything for......maybe.....

I do have my limits of course:

• No series with the words "Dragon" and "Ball" in its title. This is mostly because of asthetics--nothing against the story since I'm unfamiliar with it.
• No "Saiyuki." I do not look kindly on series that make hash out of my most beloved Chinese legend.
• Nothing by Watase Yuu except for the character of "Nuriko." My feminist spirit won't allow it. Unless I get paid for it, then it's a different matter.
• I will not do yaoi or shonen-ai. This is personal preferences--I have no beef if you like it and it's really dumb when people (like Gundam Wing freaks) get into flame wars over it: arguing on the internet is like running in the Special Olympics--you may win, but you're still retarded. Speaking of Gundam Wing
• No Gundam Wing. I took one look at the horrid stiff hair and it nearly gave me a conniption fit. Gah! Plus, I was @#!$$% @#$!%$^&% offended by their portrayal of Chinese people.
• No Rumiko Takahasi. No doubt I'm alienating the majority of anime fans by stating that I think she writes and draws for sales and popularity's sake more than for art's sake. There is no ending in sight for Inuyasha and it's approaching 30 volumes! Plus, I don't think I could do something that was even remotely related to someone who created Shampoo--if anyone tried to do even something remotely racist as that in the US, they'd get a kick to the head: Hello, Abercrombie and Fitch.
• No Hana Yori Dango. 30 volumes is about 15 volumes too much. I'm not going to comment about the art.
• No Angelic Layer. I think this is the only CLAMP series I am not open to doing. I have no problems with their *wink wink* suggestions of "shocking" relationships in all their series, but it's freaking sick to go into combat against your MOM. Sick sick sick.

There's probably more, but it would take too long to list them all--I'm known to be very very picky about art and manga.

Woo hoo
Google did come as scheduled on June 3rd--exactly one month after the last time it came. But for some reason Google didn't actually update its databases until today. Lookee!!!! (Please forgive my vanity)....also these links might show different results sometimes depending on the time of day.

I'm #1 for "asinine world" of course
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=asinine+world
Also first for "coriolis anime"

I'm #8 on the first page for "fruits basket fan art" http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=fruits+basket+fan+art
But I'm on the 21st page for "fruits basket".....but it's okay--I'm not greedy.

I'm the last link on the first page (but hey, it's the first page!) for "xi you ji" http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=xi+you+ji

I'm on the 16th page for "card captor sakura fan art" but on the 3rd page for "cardcaptor sakura fan art"--CLAMP consistently spells it as "cardcaptor" with no space so I'm in the right, even though it's the less popular variant. I'm also on the fifth page for "Escaflowne fan art" even though I've only done one drawing--there really must not be enough Esca art out there.

Yee-haw!

**sound of crickets chirping**

Now why was I interesting in Google in the first place?

**crickets**

Oh yeah....trying to shamelessly attract visitors

**crickets chirping**

Eh....

doh
Hmm...the next real update is going to take longer than I thought--I got my hands on Photoshop 7. Ah! Natural media brushes! I'm estatic! Natural media brushes! Woo hoo! Not anywhere near Painter's realism, but I'll take what I can get. Hopefully this means better looking pieces, but I also need some time to play around with all the new stuff.

Also I decided putting both Ayame and Mine in my next fan-art piece would be way too crowded since I had planned for a rare full body drawing. I'd have no chance of inking cleanly if I had to draw small enough to fit both of them into the paper. So I'm leaving out Mine. Because of the strange body position and angle, the result will either be a total catastrophe or be the most advanced of all my pieces. I'm betting on the former.

Once again
Once again, no sign of Google crawling my page. I got desperate and angry so I submitted my fan art page to a few of those anime directories (except for Anipike which seems to be somewhat dead these days) in hopes of attracting search engines spiders. As of right now, I'm listed in three different ones but no sign of the googlebot. No longer is this only a matter of attracting visitors, but rather about winning against a goliath. And I will win, Google, just you wait! I would be paranoid that Google banned my page somehow if it weren't for the fact that it hasn't crawled across Esoteric Pain or Magic Cheese's page since May 2--same time it last saw mine. It's so hot and humid--stupid East Coast weather. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm working on those fan art pieces I promised--mostly because it's too hot to go outside and too hot to think.

Pending updates...
Here's a list of all the things I'm planning to add to the site. I'd forget if I don't write them down anyway...

1. Fan Art: The Ayame and Mine piece I've been putting off. I have a rough outline on a tiny slip of paper, but I'm nervous that I can't pull off drawing the anatomy for their complex body position.........No, not in that way.
2. Fan Art: A new Yuki piece--something very white and clean looking like him in a crisp white shirt.
3. Xi You Ji: I need to make more screencaps for the 2001 series. Evidentally people from Singapore have found my page.
4. Made a custom CGI message board and guestbook on prohosting. I don't know though--Prohosting's CGI can get flaky at times, but this way I can back comment on guestbook entries.....if only somebody would actually write in it.
5. Add polls to some of the pages. Again, flaky CGI problem might stop me. But I'm really very interested in what visitors think and how I can make my dump a better site to visit.
6. Remove crazy rant on the right hand side of fan art page. Replace with a series of crazy rants. If you haven't noticed already, I get very wordy even on a portion of my site that supposedly is all about graphics. I think I will remove that one long rant and place it on its own page which I will link to from that spot. This will give me more room to put in interesting little voting things or polls--it might also improve the look of the page. I also might put in a FAQ page, a list of art materials used, and perhaps links to my favorite fan arts pages.
7. Fan Art: Cardcaptor Sakura doujinshi--you may notice that I put it last. I'll get around it eventually....unless I get lots of requests in my guestbook (**hint hint**) at which I will get around to it a lot faster.

Tiny changes
Lots of tiny changes to the anime/manga fan art page today. I realized that a darkish red background gave the whole page a "dungeon-like" feel which was totally opposite of my light and floooofy fan art. Yet I still wanted to keep a "reddish" color scheme so as to not clash with the Yuki image on the left hand side. So I settled for dim greyish pink (like I said before, I will never escape the power of pink). I hope it's light enough to keep it from looking like a dungeon, yet grey enough to keep it looking somewhat more sophisticated than Barbie furniture. I also had to keep in mind what link and visited link colors would work and not clash with the Yuki image--chosing colors is such a pain sometimes. I think most of the time I spent doing HTML is used for fine tuning the colors which is very stupid since colors look different across different platforms and monitors anyway.

Let me explain
In the two or three months since my Prohosting site went "live," I've noticed I tended to rant and rave about my site in the updates page even though it really wasn't an update--just looney me saying that I was thinking about an update. What I really needed was a blog--kind of like how Magic Cheese has her homepage set up. But I already have a blog with my home at Esoteric Pain courtesy of Timmy. Still, I don't think Timmy would appreciate my flooding Esoteric Pain with stuff concerning my site--it would smell too strongly of shameless promotion. So now I set up a place on pitas.com for rants and musings about my website content. The updates page will now only contain REAL updates (hopefully now it will be much easier to find new content). And Esoteric Pain will still be the exclusive home of my rants and musings of everything besides my website content. I hope this makes things less confusing for everything and all my loyal readers.....all three of them.

A blog....
Test test test....is this mic on? Does HTML work here?
The Asinine World: home of retarded anime fan art (Fruits Basket, CardCaptor Sakura), half-baked anime reviews, opera, and an obsession with Xi You Ji.

Old Entries: April 27, 2002 to June 30, 2002

Magic Cheese: coriolis's friend and one of her biggest supporters. She does wushu and has her own blog too.

Manga: Fruits Basket, Cardcaptor Sakura, Clover, Vampire Princess Yui
Anime: Fruits Basket, Digi-Charat, Kare Kano, Koko wa Greenwood.
Books: Madame Bovary, The Great Gatsby, Agatha Christie's Poirot, Crime and Punishment
TV: don't own one, actually...
Pet: fuzzy wuzzy cat