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Recovering from last weekend took a little longer than I expected. I'm not really sure why though, I just felt exhausted for most of the week. It's probably a sleep thing. It might also be a weather thing. The weather where I am has been annoying me. It's supposed to be summer, but over half the time these past few weeks, we've had cloudy damp weather. The temperature usually doesn't even break 70 degrees. Looking outside just makes me feel really "blah". Oh well. One good thing is that I haven't had to turn on my air conditioner.

I picked up the second "Comic Party" DVD this weekend. That series just keeps getting more entertaining. When it comes down to it, the real gems are in the details. For example, there is one scene in a video arcade, and wouldn't you know it, the Initial D guys are playing on some racing cabinets. However, there was one scene that just had me in stitches for an entire episode and more. In episode 5, Kazuki, the main character, runs into Chisa at school during lunch. To give some background, Chisa runs the printing company that Kazuki uses to print his doujinshi and she's your somewhat typical hyper-genki slightly psychotic little kawaii girl. Anyway, the both of them sit down to eat lunch and they talk about typical stuff like grades and whatnot, but all the while Chisa-chan is eating her lunch... which consists of one lone ginormous onigiri (those triangle shaped rice balls) that's about the size of her head (which is already huge from being semi-chibified already). I have no idea why the creators put this in there, but I found it hilarious!

I just find the series enjoyable on a number of levels. Although a number of the situations a doujinshi creator in Japan faces are different from that of a webcomic creator, I can't help but to see some parallels. It seems like a main theme in the series is that the most important thing to keep in mind while creating doujinshi is that one should enjoy creating it and have fun going through the process that is creating doujinshi. IMHO, this should also apply to webcomics. From watching the show, it seems that the life of a doujinka is not easy. It's full of stress over deadlines, funding, PR, etc. I know using "Comic Party" to learn about the life of a Japanese doujinka is sorta like watching "ER" to learn about being a doctor, but there is some truth in there (isn't there?). And I think that truth is that doujinka do it because they love to do it. I mean, they would have to. From a webcomic creator point of view, there is already enough to trials and obstacles to overcome, and we don't have to worry about printing our stuff. If one didn't love producing a webcomic, he or she would seriously have to be crazy to keep doing it.

Hey hey. I haven't written a rant since late March. Time just seems to fly by.

Unfortunately I've been kind of scatterbrained lately, and it probably won't go away anytime soon. Just so people know, I'm trying to work on my portfolio. I haven't done anything for it since I graduated college which was over two years ago and I'm kind of having a hard time with it. It's just that recently it sort of hit me that I should be doing so much more with my life right now. It seems like the art world is littered with highly talented people years younger than myself who are getting all the jobs that I've always wanted. And here I am, sitting on my butt.......waiting. For what, I'm not even sure, but I'm kind of depressed over not having taken more initiative over the years. I feel like my talents have become a bit stagnant and that I haven't grown enough as an artist over the years. And so I guess I'm just trying to get myself back on my feet so to speak. Right now the two most important things to me are to get my portfolio presentation-ready again and to get my website back up to date before the end of the year (preferably before the end of the fall, but well...). So if I'm MIA these days, it's cause I'm a bit distracted. I wish I had more time for the comic, and I do try to get some extra stuff done once in a while, but right now this is the most important thing to me. My hope is that once I do get this stuff done, I'll be able to go back to devoting more time to Eidolic Fringe and do things like get more covers and art done, and some of the other stuff that I talked about a while ago. But I do promise to keep the comic going on schedule (though the updates are now basically Monday night :| ).