This is a busy hectic deadline week for me, so the Art Post this week is going to be one of my freebie weeks when I get around to posting.

In between projects and nervous breakdowns I've been reading the manga One Piece, this is partially out of curiosity and partially out of peer pressure and word of mouth. Yea Yea, I am STUPIDLY late to the party on this one, I just kept intending to check it out and kept forgetting. I got busy, and side tracked, and distracted, there was that rather beautiful year or so when Lacy and I were reading little known manga through interlibrary loans and then I got caught up in researching pirate puppies for The Project.

Anyways, One Piece. I so far have enjoyed it, its a nice fairly light hearted break from Deadline Hell. I might even break down and do fan art for it.

For those of you who have never heard of it, its a ridiculously popular manga series about a kid who has rubber-stretchy abilities who sets out to be King of the Pirates. In this series, being stretchy and bouncy is actually the least weird ability someone can have so character concepts in this series gets trippy. You've got the human/reindeer Doctor Chopper (who is actually quite awesome), Sanji the Pirate Chef who fights only with kicks so his hands are saved for cooking, and villains with abilities like shape shifting or turning into sand, or turning their bodies into blades.

So the main character Luffy and his buddies sail around fighting, righting wrongs, getting in trouble and doing insane insane things. Like punch giant sea monsters out of their way. This series feels kinda like someone made a series about pirates in the world of Yellow Submarine, but with a bit more logic involved.

The series like most manga for teen audiences preaches about the power of friendship, and like most shounen (boy) titles theres lots of fighting and fight scenes that take multiple chapters. The miracle is that unlike most other series of this type I've read, One Piece manages to do both acts without getting on my nerves doing it. For ene the characters while they are crazy have fairly well fleshed out characters, I end up actually getting caught up and caring about these guys but they don't get too bogged down in angst (I'm looking at you Naruto). Also the fight scenes while they do end up being long are at least fairly interesting. I mean how often do you get to see a rubber man (who actually uses his abilities creatively) fight a man whose bodies parts can seperate and fly from his body?

So yea, One Piece is beyond my ability to explain (I've just reached a section where they rode a geyser into the sky and are currently exploring an island on a sea of clouds, there are honestly no words for this.) But I'm enjoying this ridiculously so, and manages to do the whole pirate thing in a fairly new way.And there are bits where I get the feeling that the guy actually did some research and knows his stuff even if he chose to channel it into pure epic crack.

Anyways, back to work for me.

Week from hell still continues regardless of the fact that this is a different week entirely. The algae eater in my fish tank died, still have graduation disputes, the power in the dorms died for an hour last night and my Power Source battery failed so my machine ended up shutting off improperly which apparently Windows 7 hates beyond reason. It then took me another hour to get the machine back up and running. And my technology problems continued when my computer in animation decided to save my project files as files with 0 bytes. I did manage to salvage the situation but it was a very frustrating two hours trying to figure out if I needed to restart from scratch what was due on Tuesday and taken me a couple of weeks to do.

I hope to have something worthwhile posting for this weeks art post, but at the rate I'm not too sure. I've spent more time hacking at the script for the Project That Shall Not Be Named Yet and pacing around the room trying to think of ways out of all my artist block issues and trying my best not to think back to things I can not deal with. So presentable drawings have been rather slim pickings this week, but I shall come up with something even if I end up posting the weird word art I've been goofing off with.

In other news I have gotten my hands on the Animation Labs PS3 and copy of Bioshock 2. I've been fairly well excited for the release of this game but have lacked the time and funds to play it. I still really don't have the time but after salvaging the implosion of Maya I decided to play it as a reward.

( My first impressions of Bioshock 2 ) I'm probably going to play it some more but right now I'm just not feeling it.

So my immune system is not as good as I had previously thought it.

Rather than fighting off con-crud and not getting the strange bronchitis mix my mother has my immune system has decided to pick and choose symptoms and I seem to have developed some sort of "walking crud" if you will.

I really don't feel any sicker than if my sinus' had revolted (which they do often) except for a slight temperature with the sensation of my head being not quite right. This is actually worse than normal crud where I just sleep it off till I feel better because I don't actually feel BAD, so I still feel stir crazy and have the urge to go places and do things rather than stay in bed.

So I'm sitting here killing time until my sleeping pills kick in.

Before my temperature rose I did manage to get to a book store and buy some comics with some of my con profits. I picked up the Clover omnibus and the latest Courtney Crumrin and was very happy with both.
( this turns into a review so click if you care )

Well now my sleeping pills are kicking in so now I go off to hopefully sleep and get rid of this crud. I will probably ramble on about Courtney Crumrin comics later so later folks.

So, three days, three copies of Wall-E, and four DVD players later I finally get to watch my special edition DVD of Adorable Robot Adventures. We had exchanged the first and second copy and were about to write the third one off when we discovered that the reason my disk wouldn't play on any of the players in house was due to some strange form of copy protection that was only used on the three disk edition of the movie.


Upon discovering this we tried to use the digital copy, at least then we could actually WATCH the movie in some format. Unfortunately the digital copy disk needed an authorization code to work. A code that never actually made it in the packaging. One of the three copies we went through had an 800 number to receive said code stickered on the outside of the shrink wrap, the rest had no such beast.

So we paid 35 bucks for what at this point amounts to a disk of special features telling us how they made a movie that we can not watch.

( Click for an arduous tale of trying to actually watch a movie )

So long story short, had to recreate the end of Cinderella to get the DVD to work (is this the player that will do it? NO, next fit...) which is ridiculous. Out of the five DVD drives in this house only one of them can play the DVD.

This is unacceptable, if any other company did it there would be a recall and an apology. But this is Disney, these disks have been out for a month and there has been no admittance of error. An angry e-mail has been sent from here to Disney's DVD support office where I am optimistically hoping someone gives me a fix or replacement or something.

Hilariously enough just when I was in the middle of finally watching the movie and starting to calm down my dad came in showing me another Disney DVD that was purchased for Christmas that has two discs, both of which are labeled "Disk 2". This will be handled tomorrow, until then we just sigh and move on.

So I just watched part three of the OVA. I'm also avoiding looking my drawing homework in the eye once again, so here's a review.

( SEARCH AND DESTROY! SEARCH AND DESTROY! )

Overall, another awesome ep. Minor details I missed but all and all solid entertainment and quality production all around.

Now to see if I'll get around to review episode 2.

Well my friend is stuck alone for the next couple weeks so I'm keeping her company. This means I get to watch more movies than I normally do. My usual process of movie watching is let everyone rent and watch them and wait to find out if it's any good. Then if I remember or have the money to I'll watch it. As it turns out the system is flawed I end up watching nothing.

Anyways, watched a some new releases on DVD this weekend and with my sudden pile of artwork I figured my grasp on art was going to slip if I didn't give it any excercise. So here we, go my film rants on New World, Casanova, Tristan and Isolde and The Producers. Spoilers may follow ( so click on with caution )

So my still life is getting towards the home stretch, I think I botched part of it, but they won't see what my source was anyways. Thank god. I also have to keep reminding myself that if there is a mistake in it, it's there for the reason that I'm applying to go to art college. It's there because I need to learn. I just keep telling myself that and resist the urge to erase for the 30th time. It's not working too well, I have to physically leave the room for a bit or I'll rip up the drawing and start over again, which I don't have the time for, and I don't REALLY want to do. I have things I want to do with my time besides sit there and draw the same damn set of objects.

( Click on for movie rambles and self reflection )

And since The Wall is even more cryptic as Sadako's tape in The Ring there are websites devoted entirely to explain it. Here's one for the inquiring minds out there.

Woo, anyone who has spent abit of time with me or on this journal probably has heard about my obsession with the manga series Hellsing. So if you are sick of the topic and my ramblings about it, feel free to skip on ahead. Cause I ain't changing my tune anytime soon.( For the rest of those who want to read, click here. NOW WITH 99% less spoilers )

I have seen the glory. I looks and sounds AMAZING. Voice casting is awesome. This is an INFINITE improvement over the previous series. I will ramble more later cause Lissa is sleepy now.

Well I was on google looking up something we had discussed in Goth Lit class (which looks like it shall be very very awesome) and didn't find what I was looking for. Instead I ran across this comic.

Death and the Maiden
It's apparently a german webcomic that has been translated into English.

The main characters are, naturally, The Grim Reaper and a young woman who has cheated him for a while. But Death is sticking around with every intent to change her luck. Hijinks and banter ensues.

It starts off as a gag comic then turns into a much more structured story later. Allegorical figures pop up here and there and some stick around, such as 'Little Death' (who has little to do with shuffling off this mortal coil and alot to do with *wink wink nudge nudge* and affairs of that sort).

The art is well done, slightly too cartoony for my taste but still well done. Though the Maiden looks a wee bit too much like Crimson for my comfort. Story of my life.

Anyways, if you have a few hours to kill, give this a shot. I's good complete story with an actual beginning and end. There is a sequel going on of some sort, though my knowledge of German is derived from the occasional goth metal band. So unless they talk about anything that was teh subject of a Rammstein song, I'm pretty much clueless.

God only knows why I bother typing this out when I know one will read this. Furture reference when I get my webpage updated perhaps? Ah well. If anyone reads this in the land of the future, this is a good comic.