A good time was had by all at Andy’s Secret Agent Casino Party.
Drinking, gambling… licentiousness. Disgusting!
General consensus is that Vodka Martinis are not all they are cracked up to be. Enjoy the piccus.
And I have no idea why there is that gap there. *pokes it*
Weeeelll, for those of you who don’t know, cos I’m so shit at keeping up with the blog, I’ve been working on a music video for a band who are famous in France, even though they live in London - called Hey Gravity! Gurdish and I have been doing all the direction, story, art etc and a fantastic group of animators in Argentina are doing the actual animating. (No wait, it is only one guy I have just discovered. Even more impressive.) Hell’s Bells, I just got back the final mock-up of the animation as a quick time viddy, and it is beyond my expectations! It’s like having your stuff come to life like a 2-dimensional Frankenstein’s monster. It’s being sent off to France today so they can play it on MTV and all of that good stuff. Gurdish did most of the drawing and such like. I was responsible for the addition of giant robots. 
Les’s atheist quiz made me take loads of stupid quizzes!
I’m pleased I came out as a crow, and disturbed that I am 3 x Kakashi. o.O; I did not fix this in any way.
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You scored as Kakashi, You are Kakashi! You know a lot more than you let on. Even though you appear to be quiet and innocent, you have a sinful thought.. every now and then.
Which Naruto Ninja Are You? |
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You scored as Kakashi, You’re a bit of a mystery; no-one knows when you are smiling behind that mask. You genarally appear laid back, have a bad habit of being late and don’t seem to care much. However, you’ve got the sharpest mind. I never ever would want to get in a fight with you – you can be very dangerous when you want to.
Which Naruto ninja are you most like? |
You scored as Kakashi, You are Kakashi. You are the sqaud leader of cell seven, including Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke. You have a sharingan eye, but only one of them and you weren’t born with it. Your pastimes including covering the bottom of your face, reading Make out paradice, and being late for most important functions
What adult ninja are you from Naruto |
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You scored as Crow, You are the Crow. You are able to discover your own character and help others find themselves as well. You are very creative in the field you are in and tend to be the intelligent one of the bunch.
Which animal totem best suits you? |
Well, I haven’t been writing much in my blog, due to the effects of being a big old slacker. But since I have some news I thought I would actually make an entry. FIRST: Come visit me on COMICSPACE cos there I will be putting news of comic projects and probably putting up artwork.
SECOND: Woo! I’m in the MANGA JIMAN Exhibition in London’s JAPANESE EMBASSY. It’s all about British Manga, and features displays from The Mammoth Book of Best New Manga (where my work is), Sweatdrop Studios, Self-Made Hero the Manga Shakespeare people, and a few other random things. Wow, it’s so prestigious that you even get searched with airport-style security as you enter. The exhibition is running till June 29th and it would be cool if people want to come look at it! There’s a nice blurb next to my work about how good it is, which I should copy down and use to shamelessly pimp myself - also there’s lots of other good stuff exhibited there too, like Nana Li’s artwork, and previews of Kate Brown’s awesome looking Midsummer Nights Dream. All the Manga Shakespeare stuff looks great, although they are swiftly running out of good plays. Personally I have my beady crow-eye on Macbeth! There’s also a manga-writing competition, details on the embassy website, which has some great prizes and kudos up for grabs.
Don’t forget Japan Centre is only up the road where you can buy all sorts of delicious things like UDON and POCKY and books. Yes, books are delicious. If anyone wants to go down there maybe we could get FOOD in the JAPAN CENTRE restaurant.
And number THREE: I’m sick again! Gods, will it never END?! Some kind of cough/chest infection thing, meaning I’m forced to stay at home playing Guitar Hero II, fiddling about with the Internet and watching anime. What really blows is that I’ll have to also read lots of boring reports about libraries since I have an interview next week in which I will have to be alert and interested, like a kind of … knowledgable meerkat.
I guess there’s other stuff, but it’s on me website, so you’ll have to go look for yourselves if you’re interested.
Well, this thing needs dusting off, don’t it?
Some news:
I’m published in the Girly Comic! (Factor Fiction Press) Yay for Jay and Selina, and Dan, who wrote the strip what I drew. You must all read this comic!
I’m GONNA be published in the Mammoth Book of Best New Manga 2! This is the official announcement. I’ve told lots of people about this informally, but it looks like this is actually, definitely happening now, and it’s very exciting. Best New Manga is actually published by a real publisher, I get paid (a nominal amount), AND it’ll be available in all bookshops like Borders, Waterstone’s etc etc as well. So no-one has an excuse not to buy it, really.
The IMAF awards thing appears to still be having implications too as contrary to my expectations there ARE second prizes! And I should be getting a cheque for $1000 US winging it’s way to me come April. And there was me thinking the emails from IMAF were some kind of scam. They did LOOK like a scam. But I talked to the guy on the phone, and I didn’t give him my bank details. Just my address.
In other news, I began clearing the crap out of my mum’s house some three years after moving out. Ruthlessness is the key!
And… um… sorry Lobsters for being lame about organising practices. Trying to organise things for Monday is really hard, since Monday has an alarming tendency to creep up on one, it being just after the weekend and all.
Welp, that’s it. Oh, and I finally finished my website! Go look.
THAT’S ALL I HAVE TO SAY. NO RANTING OR ANYTHING.
Well, after coming officially SECOND apparently in the IMAF awards (They should have runners up prizes… I wanna prize, damnit!) and then running away to America for a Soul Calibur marathon, I returned to find the results of the Tokyopop Rising Stars of Manga were up on the site. Unfortunately I didn’t make the finalists. In addition, there were only 15 finalists instead of 20. “What happened to the rest of the finalists?” asked one curious forum member, to be told by the powers that be that the rest of the entries just weren’t good enough. Lovely, to know that your entry was not only a losing one, but that it wasn’t even close!
The finalists are a pretty mixed bag, ranging from very good to what I would consider rather crappy. (Not mentioning any names. X-D Too paranoid.) What criteria they use to select the winners is rather opaque. See if you can discover a pattern. I would recommend going to look at them if the site isn’t still fucked. Good luck finding the right section!
Anyway, I have put my manga online for those who would recognise it’s brilliance! It aint perfect, oh no, but it’s still GOOD. To view it you have to join TP’s community, but then you get to do “pops” which is some kind of popularity thing, pop something and it gets, like, kudos, or something. So, do that to mine! If you can’t be bothered to do that, or don’t want to for political reasons, I will put it up on my own site eventually, and there’ll be a print version too! So, you don’t need to pander to the corporation.
In Phoenix with my lovely internet budski Amanda. Proof that not everyone on the net is a psycho 
Things I have done so far:
Been to Phoenix Zoo!
Shopped at Hot Topic twice.
Participated in a market research survey on Macaroni and Cheese.
Visited the Phoenix library.
Took Amanda shoe shopping against her will.
Played more Soul Caliber 2 and 3 than I ever have in my life before. (And won! ^.^)
Been on a nature walk in the dark.
Seen Tempe and Scottsdale.
Eaten a hell of a lot of Japanese food.
Discovered the wonders of unlimited buffet at Souper!Salad!
Had pancakes for breakfast at IHOP.
Drawn a lot of pictures with Amanda.
Visited Amanda’s workplace, the lovely Circle K.
Pretended to be a ninja.
Networked with comics artists X-D
Hung out with Amanda and ranted about crap in public.
Shopped at the House of Rice - Eastern stuff and kimonos etc.
Played Air Hockey for the first time in about twelve years. (And lost 
)
Saw the Grand Canyon from the air.
and more exciting stuff that you are just soooo jealous of. Aren’t you? No. Oh well, I’m enjoying it. ^.^
No, I didn’t win. ;_;
But I was one of the three out of five shortlistees who got nominated for the award. My name up in lights at last. The awards ceremony involved a big plate of sushi, a terrible comedian, some natty perspex trophies and the company of the glitterati of Britmanga, such as it is.
I’m also adding my entry to this post. The brief was to design a character for an animation, the theme being Mythological Characters in the Modern Day, and it was specified that they must be participating in some kind of every day activity.
In legend, Yoshitsune was a young samurai who was taught kenjutsu (sword-fighting) by Tengu - mythical half-bird half-man demons who live in the woods on mountains. This is Yoshitsune getting his arse kicked at a Soul Calibur style console game.
Yoshitsune was also a follower of the way of Shudo (man-lovin’) with his hunky monk friend Benkei.
Anyone notice a similarity between Rhys Thomas and our own irrepresible Jamie Marshall?
I saw him on “8 out of 10 Cats” and the resemblance is uncanny. Not only was he dressed like Jamie, had the same hair and designer stubble, but also had the same VOICE, outspoken behaviour and storytelling technique.
I’m shortlisted for the IMAF awards!
In the Character Brief category… woo…! It means I get to go to an award ceremony on Thursday evening and find out if I did win the prize.
My entry was Yoshitsune and a Tengu in the modern day playing a generic Soul Calibu rip-off. You should be able to see it on the IMAF site soon, but last I looked it wasn’t up yet. Yay, go me!
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