Partial To Completion

It’s kind of unexpected how I actually woke early for once, and without help from my phone’s alarm.  Around seven-thirty in fact, whereas my alarm for the weekend is nominally set for nine-thirty.  It was definitely a nice feeling, though I won’t claim to actually being able to use those extra morning hours well — indeed, I immediately found myself distracted by browsing 2ch for Rebuild of Evangelion 3.0 details, and trying to sift the truth from the made-up stuff (which was pretty hard).  A booklet given during the overnight screening eventually surfaced, confirming which detail really was in the movie, but that came sometime during the afternoon.  The hours leading to that however… ah, it was an exercise in patience, particularly when you get whining and raging on the massive changes the movie brought to the EVA canon in-between.

 I can’t believe these “fans” are as old as I am… Was I the only one that aged gracefully?  Or are the whiny and bitter grognards the most noisy at it?

Aside from that, I was able to do something productive, or rather build upon what I was doing yesterday.  The result is what you can see below: the sort-of completed solo of Shiina Remi, ready to be slotted in with the rest of the stampede.  I didn’t go with a bare outline this time around, and opted for including the base colors. It was the only way to showcase how… green, her general color scheme is.  Hey, I didn’t choose it!

Green and yellow… Mmm, I’m reminded of lemons for some reason.

With this, I guess I’m a little bit closer to what I want.  Now I just need to work on general composition and, who knows?  I might just be able to post SOMETHING finished before New Years, yes?

An Afternoon’s Worth of Pastels

So, last day off before it’s back to work tomorrow.  I woke up late again as usual, though I do think I more than made up for it during the afternoon… and most of the evening.  What was I doing?  Well, working on the skyline of course, though I have to say it’s turned out much more colorful than you’d expect your usual city skyline to be.

I think I’ve going to have to tone down the saturation eventually, but that’s still in the future.  Still have to fill in the windows and whatever spaces needs doing, put it in the background of those  hedges I did before, THEN see if I need to adjust things.

All in all though, it’s kind of fun to be able to do something other than play videogames or review during my day off again.

Delayed Routines

Boy, am I tired.  Not in the “tired because I lack sleep” way, but “tired because I just finished doing fifteen minutes worth of dumbbell exercise” way.  I wasn’t able to go to the gym today, you see, since I opted to just take a nap and recoup some of the sleep I lost over the course of the week, so I had to offset it somewhat with some do-it-yourself routine.  I don’t believe that it’ll make up it though, but I’m comforted a little by the fact that I’ve built a bit of sweat in the process.

Aside from that, was able to invest some time in basecoloring the buildings that serve as the background to my mob of running magical girls.  My, it’s been a while since I touched that project.  Kind of became busy, and what with the comprehensive exams coming up again, I’m not sure if I’d be able to touch it again anytime soon.

Anyway, that aside, tomorrow’s bill payment time.  That means the reprieve my savings had been given has ended.  Oh well, it was nice to have money in the bank for at least a week, before having to worry about how quickly my next payday comes again.

 

 

 

Of Hedgerows and Skylines

It’s funny how, despite not really planning to do so, I woke up pretty early today, even before my phone’s alarm went off at its scheduled time.  I could have sworn that I heard my sister talking (about how I was supposed to have classes today), but regardless of the reason I was out of bed, and very wide awake.  Needless to say I took advantage of the fact that I was up and about, fired up SAI, and went to “work” on the other pieces of my art project.  Which is to say adding a skyline and treeline as background to my mob of magical girls.

After several hours of squinting, the result is what is displayed on the picture above. The greens are a little too bright for comfort (at least the front row), but given the fact that they’re going to be (mostly) obscured by the running girls I think I can get away with some minor adjustments to the overall brightness later on.  That said, boy this was tiring, and the effort pretty much took the entirety of my day, which just shows my rather amateurish level of skill. Egh.

Anyway, hopefully I’ll be done with the trees by tomorrow, so I can finally focus on a much harder task; that is, coloring (and shading!) all those buildings in the background.

Week-Start Lethargy

Nothing really much to say about my day.  It was slow at work, but I wasn’t really in the mood for anything other than sleeping this afternoon, so that’s what I did.  When I woke up from my siesta, I worked on the stampede again, this time focusing on the Pleiades, especially now that, with Volume 3 of Kazumi Magica out, I finally have official color schemes to work with.  It took a bit of work, but I was able to get it done somehow. 

Funny how my guess of Mirai’s scheme was spot on (without the polka-dots though, which by the way I’m keeping), and I was this close to Satomi’s as well (the shade for her official scheme was a little lighter though).  Saki and Nico’s themes were misses though, but one out of four is something I guess.

And that’s pretty much it. I’m still feeling kind of tired for some reason, so it’s off to bed again.

Raining Close To Spring

Every time it rains, I keep on thinking that the weather seems to be a whole season late.  Seriously, downpour that’s at times strong enough to cause flooding even in the city?  It’s something you’d expect during mid-year, after the summer heat had passed, and not during the first two months of the year.  What is up with that (the obvious answer is climate change due to global warming of course)?

If you’re wondering why I commented on the rain today, well it’s because it was pouring on the way to the office (although not enough to soak me), and again on the way home.  Maybe I should bring an umbrella again, just in case?  Nah, it would be a big bother leaving it at the guard, then picking it up again before heading home.  Besides things haven’t escalated to the point where the rains have become a nuisance (in other words, when it floods and makes me get late for work), and it makes evenings a lot cooler too, the latter of which is important to me, as it helps me sleep easier.

Nothing really much to add about my day at work today.  As it’s a Monday shift, it’s the slowest day of my work week, though the fact that I’m working a single queue (given my current system status) makes it annoying whenever it seems that I’m the only one taking in calls (stupid queue priority) while the rest are just goofing off.  Oh well, at least I’m still unable to take in CS calls…

And that’s it I suppose.  Maybe I’ll do some fixing on the stampede, then it’s back to bed.

Relocation

Today was my first day at work at our new location, three floors down from where I’d been working in for more than a year. There’s really not that much of a difference, except for the fact that apparently we (me and the hold-overs from yesterday) weren’t assigned any stations.  As a result, we’re going have to literally fight for free stations until the allocation issue is fixed.  It’s not much of a problem yet, since today was the Monday shift, meaning few people were on duty, but I foresee trouble tomorrow at this rate.

As for my scheduling problem, it’s still not resolved.  It’s going to be an awkward next few weeks at this rate, as Workforce is standing their ground, and telling me that the only way I’ll get Saturday and Friday off is that I’ll have to look for someone to swap schedules with.  HAH, as if such a thing was easy (and I know that few would let go of such a convenient set of day offs), but all I can do right now is hope that my supervisor’s entreaties would get through to the higher ups.  Until then, I’ll just have to grit my teeth, and take those LOAs.  I just hope that my paycheck at the end of the month won’t suffer as a result.

My systems still haven’t been restored, so much like the previous days I was stuck on Membership duty.  Though it suspiciously felt like I was always first on the call queue, it’s far more preferable to answering CS calls, oh yes.

Oh, it rained today, though it never got strong enough as to overwhelm the drainage systems in my area and cause flooding.  I still had to wear a windbreaker so I could go to the gym this afternoon, but otherwise it was mostly the same.  Mmm, with the lower temperatures, it’s going to be easy going to sleep after this.

Finally, I’ve done ‘restoring’ all of the characters from the Mobage and Yuma as well.  Mami is up next, then likely the rest of the girls from the Mitakihara area.  Have to watch for memory allocation problems again though.  SAI can be so unstable at times, it’s worrying.

Juncture

And so another weekend ends, which means it’s also the end of cheating on my diet and back to watching calories for the week to go along with my planned exercise at the gym.  My target for this week?  A modest pound, maybe one and a half if I push it.  Anything more than that will be far too aggressive, and would be damaging in the long run too.

Hmm, come to think of it, it’s about time to pay for the monthly membership fee.  Good thing I actually have money for a change, so it won’t be much of a problem, and given the massive difference between the price per session compared to the bulk monthly fee (two-hundred pesos per session versus one thousand two hundred pesos per month), I’m actually getting my money’s worth, especially since I go to the gym every day during weekdays, heh.

After that though, I’m pretty much on savings mode again until the next payday.  Ah, those times where I had all the extra money to spend for myself seem like a far-away memory now.  Heck, I can’t even go visit the dentist now even if I wanted to, since I don’t have the extra money to use.  Even having my teeth cleaned (something I used to do every three months) seems to be a luxury, as the cost of a session will sink my savings very quickly.  Mmph.

It’s during these times that I wonder if I should try one of  those get-money-quick stuff, just to be able to earn extra cash… like blogging for money.  But I figure, nah, it’s just not in my nature to do so.

And so I wait, and so I endure.

Anyway, on the hobby side of things, it might not be much, but I’ve based three more magical girls today.  It’s not as fast as I had initially hoped, but with three of the Pleiades started on everyone (at least, everyone with color schemes anyway) should be done by midweek.  After that all I have to figure out is the possible non-corny color schemes for those who don’t have any, then deciding on a background of course… That’s always hard.

Hey, at least I won’t be idle for the week, yes?

Another Slow Day

Hmm, I’m not sure if I have anything of note to share today.  I guess that’s partly because it’s a Tuesday, and as such it’s still a little too early in the week for anything of note to happen, and the fact that I never had anything planned for the day to begin with.

The heat did not help matters any.  Or rather, the humidity.  Summer seems to have taken a long time in coming, and we’re only experiencing the uncomfortable heat now, whereas last year it was already this muggy by the middle of March.  Funny how things worked out.  Anyway, since this means that we’ll be using the air-conditioners again, I expect our electricity bills to skyrocket. Oh joy.

Anyway, it’s already late in the evening, so I better turn in.  I’ll continue the Homura coloring tomorrow after I get off work.  This time for real. 

Coming Along Nicely

This was a surprisingly relaxing Friday for me.  I spent most of my day in front of my PC just working on my fanart, punctuated with watching some of this season’s new series (after they finished downloading of course).  I somehow managed to squeeze in some game time too, specifically an odd hour and a half playing Left4Dead2 with some of the folk from the SCCSAV: emperorj (who wanted to test his newly-assembled rig), krizzybear, and vucubcaquix.  Needless to say we had a rollicking fun time, what with hilarious Special Infected spawns in the worst possible places (the one with the Tank right at the helicopter in the finale of the Parish was really bad).  It’s really too bad I disconnected close to the end, but that’s because of a sudden brownout in my area more than any server issue.

Oh, and I passed by DLSU to check if my grades were already in (to my relief, they weren’t in yet).  Now if only more of my weekdays were like this… A woman can dream, ne?

Speaking of the aforementioned fanart (which, given my way with the human anatomy, will VERY likely not pass muster in Danbooru), I’m slowly adding to it little by little.  I mentioned yesterday that, for an amateur like myself, it’s a very laborious process (using a 20% opacity brush doesn’t help matters), but I’m happy with what I’ve accomplished.  There’s only a few more segments for me to shade, after which it’s off to the more complicated aspect: the backdrop.

While it’s fine to just leave things with a simple white background, I think it’ll have more impact super-imposed over… something.  Maybe an outline of Sayaka’s witch alter-ego perhaps?  It’s been done before, but I haven’t done it yet.  We’ll just have to see, I guess.

Ah, definitely looking forward to figuring what the heck I’m supposed to do with Sayaka’s hair.  And eyes.

P.S. Almost three days, and the pic I worked on posted on Danbooru still isn’t approved.  It’ll get thrown out at this rate.  *sigh*  I guess in the end it does come down to the personal tastes of the moderators of the site.