August 4th, 2004: For The Love Of All Things Holy! Read It Left to Right!

Whew, another good week of hard work has gone past, and things are looking quite nice for me these days. Even the extra flammy heat wave that made me dizzy time to time is cooling down, and that's just ice creamy. I really would like to buy a bag of carrots now. I don' t shop much, so I'm not very good at estimating what proper price for produce should be, so I stick to things that already come in bags and sets. I find carrots go well with virtually anything you cook, even cake, it's like a vegetable of all flavors, it can be sweet, spicy, bitter, salty, sour and even can be empowered with the side effects of MSG.

Anyway, it's early in the morning, so I would LOVE to introduce the very first - that's right, the VERY FIRST, Xynthica Manga ! Okay, it's not really manga by definition, it's in full color, it's not in book format, it's only a single page and you read it LEFT TO RIGHT, yes, believe it or not, you actually read this thing the way you read a book if you live in North America, and the irony is, I intentionally made it so that not a single word is spoken in the entire strip, save for the titles. So just to make sure you can't possibly screw up, here it is again: READ IT LEFT TO RIGHT! Oh, and of course, click on the thumbnail for the full image.

It took years to recondition the minds of the innocent North American manga reader to read right to left, so why the heck am I trying to break the flow that took so many hard years to establish and that so many otaku have suffered for? Simple, I have no idea what I'm doing, so there. Actually, I figure that it makes sense, the same way slapping ice skates onto water buffalo makes sense in some universe or other. Anyway, despite the genre police inside of me telling me otherwise, most of the people I asked tell me that this is manga, if only because of the cute girls with BIG WATERY EYES and WEIRD COLORFUL HAIR, so manga it is. I might just try and invent another word though and call it something like "Comanga". Actually, that's not a horrible idea, but I'll save it for when I have some more material.

In this manga, Xyni comes across her first experience with the ever elusive hair ornament trend that she eventually becomes very interested in. This isn't the beginning of the Xynthica saga, but it gets into the heart of when the fun starts to happen, and for the time being, I am very content with thinking happy thoughts - potentially lethal, but happy thoughts nonetheless. This is in full color, but most of the following ones, in manga tradition will be in black in white with a very different layout for more efficient story telling.

Okay, on one last note, I'm also very happy to announce some new stuff in the literature section. A lot of new stuff, too much to mention here, so please check it out today! Anyhow, just please enjoy the manga! In a month or so, I'll have a second one and make a new card and manga sections, along with my usual colorful commentary that you have all grown to love, by choice or by force!

July 29th, 2004: Nice to Meet You, Like To Eat You!

Phew, a lot going on these days, still smacking the termites in my master plan the old fashion way, that is, with a gigantic six foot tall spoon that weighs more than I do. Given the fact that I don't eat very much these days, I was very happy to find a can of chicken noodle soup and vegetable soup in my apartment somewhere. I feel very lucky, especially since I was cooking rice while I found them, so I feasted like a king that day. Some people like to call it fasting, personally, I like to refer to it as voluntary starvation. Of course, it's not because I don't have the money to eat, it's just that when I am full, my body temperature tends to go up, and the summer heat make me sleepy real easily. Then again, death by starvation doesn't sound so good in concept either. Anyway, one of the age old anime and manga questions is "why are so many characters named after food items?". I think I figured out the answer first hand, and it shows in my work.

I am very, very, ridiculously happy to introduce the first in a long line of Xynthica Cards! Anyhow, in accordance with Xynthica's tendency to put really weird things in her hair is the first card where Xyni puts really weird things in her hair. In the case of this card, she manages to shove Titanic sized Pepperidge Farms Goldfish crackers into her hair! Click on the thumbnail here for a bigger image!

If you haven't been to the official Pepperidge Goldfish website, it is simply one of the best, bar none, Flash websites on the internet. I swear, whoever they got for designers and marketers, their bloody geniuses, the humor and interface on the site is top notch for a site dedicated to a consumable application, and I really couldn't say enough good things about their products. What self respecting parent wouldn't want their kids desensitized to cleanly biting off the heads of smiling fish? Actually, if fish in real life could really smile, that would be just creepy, I wouldn't want to eat one of those, it'd be like trying to eat that annoying singing bass thing you can buy from off of TV. Xyni would probably do it, but then again, Xyni throws cactuses into the ceiling to see if they will stick.

But wait! There's MORE! Yes, a couple of hours after posting up the previous card, I completed this new card of Baby Kibsy, the first of the monster cards! Hahah, actually, I never intended there to be a system behind these cards, I'm making it up as I go along, but it's a fun way to do something that's normally a bit boring and it's encouraging to have a way of connecting everything to each other. When I have enough cards made, I'll put them into a neat little gallery, but I'll have to stick to tape and scissors for now. I hope you enjoy these cards, they ought to tie you over for about 2 seconds, realistically. That's the time it would take my attention span to commit suicide on a pretty picture alone, and from experience, I can expect no less from every other person on the planet, but I hope it was a good two seconds for you so far!

July 13th, 2004: Every Day Is Somebody's Birthday! Yeah!

Or so the song goes. Today happens to be mine though. I honestly don't really care much for arbitrary dates of celebration though. Today is just like Christmas, Easter, Labor Day, and Mental Health Day. In other words, I'm working today. Thankfully, I'm an independent artist for now, so I love my work, and it's no whip cream off my strawberry sundae. Let's see, I think I'm 21 now, that's a good number, especially if you are a Blackjack fan and multiples of seven are lucky.

Well, today should also be the day that I first upload this site, that's if everything goes according to plan and doesn't bomb disastrously like a gigantic watermelon dropping out of the sky in Mexico. Still, I got my faith that it'll be okay, which usually means that the worst case scenario is going to happen, but hey, think on the positive side. Actually, screw that, when you are a professional, nobody wants to hear you say, "Well, I screwed up, but that sure was an interesting experience". That is the last thing they want to hear. So I'll just say the site will go up today.

All of my works and the basic layout are up, although there is nothing in the Literature, Productions, Guest Book and Links part just yet, but the Gallery, which is the main part of the site, is pretty large, so I hope that will satisfy your hunger for now. I might have more finished by the very end of the day as well, as it is still early in the morning, and I have plenty to do. I would love to start putting some of my mini manga and Xyni's Corner up soon.

I think I might also do a section called "Xyni's Hair Ornament of the Month" where she sticks weird things like a pair of cinnamon buns and a toaster oven in her hair. This whole concept is based on the theory that anime/manga girl hair is like a Christmas Tree, you can put the absolutely most hideous and vomit inducing thing in it, and it'll still look good.

I would like to get the fanbase involved in this project as well, so if anybody has any good idea any object at all for her to put in her hair, please drop me a line and I might draw it. If I like it enough, I might have it become a regular part of Xyni's hair ornament collection and wear it in future works.

June 14th, 2004: What The Hell Are Those?

I finished up the icons up on the little source seed orbs up there. I got a book for literature, a film reel for productions, a feather for the guest book and a bunch of rings for links, which all makes about sense... then I got a snail for home, a squid for profile and a vippy for gallery...of course, this makes about as much sense as using a cheese grater on an onion... hey, just because I do it doesn't mean it has to make sense to the other 99% of the universe.

Xyni lives inside a snail, hence the Home, the vippy is apparently my token draw on the side obligatory cute animal mascot thingie... so it's perfect to fit the Gallery. Now comes the squid for the Profile. I suppose I could have used a picture of myself, but nope, that would have made too much sense, and that's not allowed on this site, so a squid it is...

Oh yeah, it should be noted that the original icon for the Guestbook had the words "You Suck" on them, since it seems that every Guestbook in the universe has to have at least one mandatory "You Suck" written by some current defying, truth telling citizen of the web. Since it does seem mandatory, I might as well make the one on my site really pretty, so I'm going to make a nice beautiful "You Suck" later in the future for the Guestbook.

Oh yes, I bought one of those nice jelly mouse pads a bit back cause the long working shifts were giving me some serious hardcore carpal tunnel syndrome. If you know me, I like pressing and squeezing soft and squishy things... quite a bit actually. Anyhow, long story short, I like the gel pad squishy thing, and that's where the inspiration for the large emblems up on the top right come from. If you see the current mouse pad that I use, it looks very identical.

June 12th, 2004: Here Comes The Lens Flare Police!

It should be said that for all artists working in the digital medium in this day and age, through the tough times and the fun times, there is always the evil temptation to use the most dreaded of all filthy, sacrilegious and inconceivable king of all filters than makes any image "better". Whether it be anime, sports, science fiction, fantasy, porn, fantasy porn, it doesn't matter, it generally seems to always work even in the most incompetent of hands. Heck, you could hand your computer over to a gang of bubonic plague infested rabbits in mating season, and they'd still be able to turn your most filthy garbage into a masterpiece of completely epic proportions.

Of course, I'm talking about the Lens Flare, it makes artists cringe, it makes photographers shake their heads and it makes me want to run around in circles, light myself on fire, and jump out of a window into a truck full of flammable mattresses Of course, chances are, if you're viewing this site and aren't completely blind yet, there should be this huge lens flare hovering just above eye level at the top of my site on most every single page... Yup, I sold out cause it looked pretty...

June 5st, 2004: I Suffer For You!

Whew! Finally finished the last piece of the best filler material I ever made especially for this site! This site and myself are still at war with our inner potential, parallel universe selves (That are better than us in every single way, but are evil), so my apologies if things are a bit on the chaotic side... Even the delivery truck I wanted to crash through my front door has managed to evade my carefully placed bull's eye target... although, it is admittedly a commercial grade one... so it's not that large...but still...

Anyhow, if it's one thing I learned from my last piece of work, it's that my technique is far too slow and too painful to use for acceptable production to quality ratio. If you were to compare my last technique to a Kung-Fu style, it would be the Splattering Pigeon. It goes well for the first few flaps or so, but when it hits the glass, the only way to slide is down. Anyhow, I'm done my days of converting pencil drawings into vector then coloring, I'm going to try and master that colorful coaster on my table with the word Wacom written on it, and not deplete anymore of the world's extremely limited graphite reserves. I gotta' start getting in more colored works in, cause nothing says you have absolutely no personally like a site that weights 256 pounds on the grayscale.

Oh yeah... did I mention that this site hasn't been launched yet? Hahha, yeah, but I sure do love to hear the sound of my own typing... that's just sad...