Originally published at red bird. You can comment here or there.

Well, jet lag and respiratory crud have kept me from doing anything the last week, but I am gearing up to at least upload my obsessive picture collection from a twelve day stint in Japan from April 16-April 27.

More or less this isn’t a comprehensive look at Japan or even the cities I visited. Largely this is because at the end of the day, my friend and I decided to go with a package tour in order to accomplish as much as we could with a short agenda.  (Having done a small tour in Korea, I realized how efficient these tours can be in terms of packing in sightseeing.)

One of the key concerns that pushed this as a necessity was that unlike with Korea  I would have very little ability to read or fumble my way through the language.   It sounded like English would be available on a lot of signage in Japan, but moving about country without the ability to speak concerned me. (Believe me, if you have been in Seoul, you know that once you’re away from old, true downtown you’re in deep doodoo if you are relying on your ability to read English in different places.)

Also, you can’t appreciate all tourist spots that don’t have English support as much unless you are committed to carrying around a good tour book and/or tablet(phone).

So I knew I wanted to look at tours that had some English language support along the way and offered support with things that would be new to me in Japan (i.e., train systems).

After the earthquake/tsunami of 2011, however, there were very few operators who were advertising any sort of guided tours. It was startling not only to see a lot of operators simply drop everything from 2011, but also had no information on a 2012 schedule even when the country desperately tried to assure people that they were safe and open for travel.   Worse, several groups that I had tried to contact that had advertised heavily online and at various conventions/expos in the past just did not return any emails or calls.

More or less, this narrowed the field back down to either tours that were conducted by operators based out of Japan — mostly corporate or enterprising ex-pats who were willing to customize tours.

In the end, I fell back on a lot of old research I had down pre-tsunami and to a few official company resources like Japanican.com and Visit Japan.  Most of these companies buy their packages from JTB, the largest and oldest travel agency specializing in Japan tourism.

It didn’t hurt that their offices are also located at several convenient cities in the U.S., often colocated with Japanese supermarts.

In the end, picked this tour package (http://www.japanican.com/tours/tourdetail.aspx?tc=GMT01TYOOSC9ARH1)  for the highlights (Hiroshima and Hakone were key sites I wanted to add in).  We worked with the Chicago based JTB office which (at the time) had a retail setting at the Mitsuya marketplace near O’Hare. (Since then they’ve consolidated into one CHicago office in the city.)

In sum: JTB has absolutely FABULOUS customer service.   Although sometimes we had to rely more on email to communicate (as I was not based in Chicago), the entire experience with my agent has been excellent.  That said, the office is really an intermediary who works with a Tokyo-based JTB office for everything.  .

In any case, our liaison in the Chicago office (Hitomi) was super at handholding the entire time I was trying to figure out a lot of little details related to the itinerary and helping us also recustomize the stay to add additional days and packages into the visit. (FYI – I added a Studio Ghibli tour and a kimono tour into the mix and thoroughly enjoyed them.)

All I can say is, yes, the cost may appear daunting at first when you look at the overall package, but the entire trip is truly supported along the way.  There is little opportunity to truly mess up and get off course with JTB staff helping you along the way.  The only hiccup I recall was very minor regarding one luggage transport and that was resolved with the help of hotel staff and JTB staff in the Kyoto office fairly easily.

Great group. Great service throughout. Food. Hotels. Buses. Transfers. Really amazing job given the aggressiveness of the itinerary and the need to herd us foreign tourists like cats throughout each minitour. (Seriously! Westerner are like ADD cats, going everywhere.)

Flight

Because my friend and I had a different homebase, we had to pick a West Coast city to originate out of.   I also knew I wanted to avoid domestic carriers as I really found with my experience with Asiana in 2010 that the level of food and customer service and overall comfort was much higher on an Asian-based carrier.  Asiana doesn’t fly out of Los Angeles, so at the end we looked at JAL, ANA, and KAL.  Delta appeared to have a flight that would have worked, but cost wise KAL was the best.   Base fares were similar on many of the airlines but the taxes were not. KAL had the lowest tax rate and because many Tokyo flights go on to Korea, were offering really the best fare overall.  So KAL it was….  and they did a great job. Happy with them, although I like Asiana slightly better IMHO only because it was easier to get up and walk around on their flight (when I went to Incheon in 2010).

 

Anyways – this was my explanation for all the pictures and blogs to come.    I had a great time overall and want to go back and catch some places again that I missed or didn’t quite see the way I had hoped.

Photo Tools

With that, the only note I have is a photographic one. Those of you following my facebook saw all my iPhone shots. They are blended in to these galleries (sometimes with horribly typo-filled borders).  The majority of these pictures, however, are shot with my SLR.   That is why, unfortunately, there are SO MANY xD

There are still a few of my iPhone shots mixed in the bunch (and they may stray in out of order). These were shot with a 4S and often filtered using Camera+ or other editing tools.  They do look different because I just applied standard filters.

The SLR shots are not filtered or fixed. They need some light adjustment, which I may undertake for gallery quality submissions to Tumblr or DA.

 

ON TO THE PAGE

Originally published at red bird. You can comment here or there.

In 2009 I decided to stop mucking about in fanstuff. I loved drawing it, but I lost someone important to me in 2009.  She was, oddly enough, my doppelganger in a way. We shared similar histories, Asian parentage, similar career paths, and such. But she was way more confident about tossing that path for what she determined was the one she loved more.

She was a person of immense integrity, even more so in the artistic sphere.  I miss her terribly and miss her inspiration.

But she kicked me in the butt before she moved on from this world, and she and I said we’d be mostly playing with our own toys from now on, not others.

And the odd thing was when I was a kid, my sister and didn’t really have a lot of TV or popular media to draw our entertainment from.  We were largely  fine as kids inventing Dallas-type melodramas of our own with whatever poor toys happened to be handy. We were masters of story and puppetry as well as making up the most ridiculous sagas one can create for armies of bears and rabbits.

I didn’t need fandom.  I never even cared much about pop stars, movie stars, music stars, whatever…  our stories were way cooler. And somehow I had gotten way too immersed in it and caring about what was popular, and  in light of everything that happened in 2009, it was stupid.

But all this doesn’t really excuse the lack of art you know.  I think I doodled more, but painted far less. I think most of my pictures in 2011 came from sketches I did at conventions.  What happened?

In 2010, I went back to writing.  This was a conscious decision after man years of flip flopping.   As a creator, it is far easier for me to write and explain to you the dimensions of the sandbox, the rules we must retain within it, and who else is sitting there with you than it is to draw it.  I am simply NOT that quick or capable of showing you what I see in my mind.

In 2010, I started to travel for fun.  The biggest impact on me personally was a trip to Korea.  That trip resonated with who I am as a person. I saw an old, almost inexplicable beauty in my parents’ homeland and I realized I needed to see more of Asia to understand where I came from and who I am as a creator.

In 2011, the confirmation came that writing  was where I belonged.

I found the ability to work inside the schedule I have, using my phone or netbook or scraps of paper to craft at any time. This past year I even attempted to goad my poor Siri into taking dictation while I lolligagged in bed at night.

Moreover, response to my writing has been stronger than it has ever been for art.   While Deviantart and Tumblr have been environments of diminishing returns, the new works continue to grow in readership and the old ones still show they have a “tail.”  I’m gratified to find seven year old pieces of obscure fanfiction still floating around and fans still waiting for me to update them (auuugh), and other fans still waiting to stomp on me for ruining their favorite pairings xD.

And yet, I prefer artists… more open minded, more willing to acknowledge the talent of others, more willing to review, encourage, and be social.

The writing world is a very strange, insular one.  IN many ways watching the e-book vs. print debates this past year has been nothing short of annoying.  As an outsider, and one who likes both my e-reader/smartphone and print options, it’s pretty obvious to me that these guys are arguing apples and oranges.  There will be no more “ONE CONTENT PLATFORM DELIVERY SYSTEM TO RULE THEM ALL.”  Let’s get real.  The way it works is that delivery constantly changes. You might have a dominant force, but there’s always a disruptive force waiting to mess with you.

So I don’t seem to really get these writers and the time they waste bickering.  Maybe they like writing incendiary blogs to get pageviews, but in all seriousness, some of these folks are so full of vitriol and inflexibility that I now have no interest in reading their books.   Negative PR. Moving on.

So what about 2012

Well, 2011 threw me an additional curveball personally.   I think it’s time to stop playing casually.

I decided that other than Momocon and AWA, I will not pursue any artist alleys this year and likely the next year.  My goal is to finish the webnovel this year, work expediently to get it into e-book formats, and contemplate whether to make a limited print edition with illustrations in 2013. (Yes, a vanity press run with my own illustrations! Quel horreur!)

Each convention this year took away weeks of time from writing. As I got sideswiped with family matters in fall, I realized I lost a lot of mental creative time for half the year and was stressing out trying to get updates out on a weekly basis.

The reality is, 2011 was really confirmation that the tide has shifted away from AAs being a place that tries to benefit artists.  Many conventions have simply become too mercenary about making up shortfalls in revenue through the artists and blowing the table numbers out of whack.  There are still a few good ones out there, but the economy has not returned (yet) to where it was before the bottom fell out.  Worse yet, my peers no longer attend these conventions — even the ones who got me into the entire scene.  Now i go to

Where do you hope or expect to be at this time next year? Both artistically and otherwise? Are you excited for the new year?

I hope I will be able to say I’ve reached one of my goals or several.  If all goes well, I’ll make one huge trip to Asia this year and photograph the heck out of it.   No other travel this year… small trips are interesting, but I want there to really be something or someone at the other end to see. Travel is money.  Travel is also time, the  time I want to commit to accomplishing something with permanence. 2011 proved life is scarily short.  I still have a few things I want to scream into the creative void.

One of those things is that first novel.

And so, will be here supporting all my friends in the art world, cheering them on, helping them sort through life and stuff, but not going to be a road warrior anymore.

Have to do serious work. and hope that 2012 doesn’t throw more curveballs.

(Except maybe winning the lotto !  )

 

Originally published at red bird. You can comment here or there.

I’m not much of a blogger about each of the anime conventions I go to anymore. I have a full-time job, a few full-time side projects (writing-wise — *cough*TalesoftheBigBadWolf*cough*) and therefore at best I can only pick up driveable regional conventions or one or two long distance ones that would involve vacation time.

Because time is money, I need to pick conventions that are worth the stress of preparation and have some measurable or immeasurable benefit.

Rather than write about each experience, I developed a table and sat down one evening this past fall to sort out my thoughts by filling in data points in this table. I used this process to help me think through my decision whether to apply or go the following year (which is where the table ends).

The rows signify some aspect of the convention or my own preparation that I felt could possibly influence my overall experience. I’ll discuss the reasons for each factor below, in hopes that some of the newer folks to the AA actually start thinking through this prior to applying to “any convention USA.” Because of our current economic landscape, I urge new artists to be careful about where they jump. As always, start local to avoid costly food or lodging fees and start with a convention that doesn’t break your existing budget. Sales are never guaranteed!

These were the variables that I used in the linked
worksheet.( Read the rest of this entry » )

Originally published at red bird. You can comment here or there.

Random links to residence of Katsura Kogoro (later renamed Kido Takayoshi):

This was random stumbling while trying to track down the fate of his diaries.  I’m frustrated by the disappearance of theses/dissertations into obscurity, particularly when there are so few well written and researched ones in English on Japanese figures from its turbulent era opening to the west.    In general as a person who likes studying both Korean and Japanese history and culture, it’s frustrating to see how sparse the material is, particularly when you can easily track down kajillions of pieces of stuff on European history.

Anyways, this is one of those things that I should have bought years ago when the volumes were in circulation and I’d like to still, but have to think about whether it’s realistic to think I’ll ever come back and write up anything Dx.  Yeah – I’m still struggling a lot with having loads of academic side projects in Asiana .

More than likely I’m going to blog Korean stuff for a while as I have beautiful pictures to reupload to this site (if only Photoshop.com imported everything into WordPress , but that’s really wishful thinking) and some stories I’d like to talk about, as well as books I”d like to honestly and amateurishly assess.  Folklore and fairytales makes more sense it seems as I have been obsessing over those as of late.

So siggggghhhh… poor Meiji era subjects, you’ll have to wait until I have more of a reason to springboard. If all goes well, though, next spring I’ll start blogging about Japan stuff again

And dang it – I can’t get control over community/LJ crossposting it seems.  It’s either one or the other, I believe which I gather makes sense, but unnnnngggggh, WP, you apparently do not understand LJers -_-

Originally published at red bird. You can comment here or there.

Well, after all this garbage of signing up all these years for multiple journal and social networking sites, it seems I’ve found the one method that allows me to integrate different things easily from multiple sources and crosspost  both to LJ and Tumblr (or turn it off if I want).  So here goes, the TRUE inaugural blog post from red-bird.org.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

There is a strange phenomena that happens when creators take donations. It is that these transactions create a power struggle between viewer and the creator.

I've been watching both webcomickers and webwriters closely for almost a year now, and the failure to update seems to create concern, then public disappointment and irritation, and then sometimes outright hostility towards the creator...

The response slides towards the latter I think more often when followers were adding in their own money into the equation.

Perhaps I should provide an analogy for those not familiar with this culture. It's sort of like "I put in my five cents and get a gumball every time I want one." When the machine stops working, the gumball fan gets frustrated. When it appears the machine is truly broken and silent, the fan reacts in many different ways.


The odd thing though about the internet subculture is that we seem to feel more free to express our frustration. It's odd only because television has long disappointed me in the number of times nothing is satisfactorily resolved. That's life baby, whether you follow a comic, a story, or television.

But you know life is like that. There's a lot of things that are not resolved to our satisfaction. But the wonderful thing about creative things is that you can use your imagination to complete the blanks. There are plenty of tv shows or anime where I wrote fanfic or some resolution in my head, discussed stuff in forums, and then moved on.

We each have an imagination. We can use it. And we can modulate our own reactions appropriately.

That was a bit of a tangent there.. perhaps not where I meant to go.

In any case, this shark-frenzy phenomena is one thing I dislike immensely about the micropayment model overall and why I don't want to open up a donation button on the projects I have planned. The idea that people will feel they have the right to demand that I produce something when it is not ready is repugnant to me.

I'd like people to voluntarily love what I do enough to buy the small things I produce, prints or charms or whathaveyou. These would be more tangible tradeoffs where the person has something they enjoy and I don't have to continue to deliver after the exchange has ended.

But I also know with this internet culture, it isn't going to happen often either. The entitlement issues around scanslations have pretty much made me permanently cynical about patronage on the web. I know that I'm going to have to rely on the kindness of true fans when I finish this project and turn it into an electronic book for sale. They'll pay me back in kind by sharing my work with others and telling them to pick up a copy on their ebook or tablet. Until that point some years from now, I'm going to just try to keep them with me and sufficiently engaged. I don't know that I will be keep them with me until I get to that very end, but I'm a gambler. I have to try.

I guess this is not doujinshi but 4-koma #2 (particularly if one counts the rough pic I threw up last week when stalking gailcarriger at this link.


click thru :)

So she seemed to find my sense of humor mildly entertaining enough and did not shoo me off from trying again. So I took a little bit more time to actually doodle it in pencil on real paper and then scan to redraw and lay it out in Painter. 

I have no idea where the thought about collars came from other than it's a pickup from last week's strange thought process where a terribly OOC Lord Maccon obsesses over the possibility of drawn manga nakedness. (You can go see the thread to see what I mean. It just doesn't make sense without the context of the thread.)


Anyways. I think I'm going to go back to working on other drawings.  Swan Queen returns (1) and AU shoujo-Elanore gets to be loved on by two hunky dudes (2).

Attempted to look to see if any of the folks who I loved to read five-ten years ago are still writing.
Not finding many. Not sure whether that means that they're quietly working still on those novels they had started, or have published under different names, or what.

Very weird. Very troubling/discouraging to me.

Anyways, still here, still kicking, still wrestling with a weekly update schedule, and fretting over being only halfway through the first novel of three planned for this series while worried that I haven't started scripting my kid's comic series >_<. It will be ten months I think before I finish the project I'm on.

Thinking about things this past week, I lost too much time this year due to conventions and all that stuff. I think I need to cut them all next year (as far as participation as an artist is concerned as attendance is an entirely different matter). Sad, because new friends these days are mostly art people, but I need to put some of the time I might use for finishing paintings back into concept work. I also need to use some time to do some reading again.


...

Also realized that while I love connecting with readers/art viewers, I wish that my friends connected with what I created. It's kind of odd. It's like they know me, but don't. Will expound/journal on this later.

I have stopped posting doodles and photos here, my apologies.

I'm enjoying pencil so much. Maybe it's the commitment issue I have a problem with these days when it comes to fully painted works. There's something more immediate about pencils I guess.

And... I admit it. At the moment, I still ship Elanore and Edmund more than Elanore and Maximilian.
NOt sure why other than I'm a sucker for childhood loves? :D

Or maybe... I'm shipping Max with someone else. hehehehe.

I can see the end of the story I'm working on, but I can't see the road all the way to the end.


In diagramming all my notes out and trying to resort them I see I have a lot of little threads I want to interweave,but the connection of these elements to the end (as signified by five or six post-its) on the lower right corner of this image is kind of threadbare.

The problem is that I think I'm struggling between genres. If I were writing pure drama/slice of life/romance, I have only a little bit of filler to plug in, I think. However, I chose to work in a suspense framework (with a lot of relationship stuff). All of those little post-its are plot points, mysteries to drop and to explain. The relational stuff isn't even diagrammed because that's the stuff that I found I do much better with if I write it organically. This last week was strange. I rewrote about two paragraphs over and over until I arrived at the thing I wanted at the last possible minute.

It's a constant cycle of calculation/recalculation. Working serially means building the plane while flying it. And I am truly skirting the end of my buffer so organizing my thoughts is even more critical. I have no patience for redoing work so I want to get it 95% correct as I jump into the next five or six installments.

That said, if I want to turn the story at its very end towards fantasy ), then I think I need more rising action and probably a higher body count. (So far, nobody is dead yet, as I don't have enough red-shirts to kill off. hahaha.)


And.... I know I'm overthinking it. I have plenty of things to explore . I just want my thoughts resolved so I have a clear target in sight.

Next story arc will not be structured like this. I think that one will be far more "Snow Queen" in structure.

Anyways, so I break my LJ silence. har har har.
Back to wasting Post-it notes.