Archive for the ‘Art & Design’ Category

So, for the last few hours (maybe even longer because I get distracted a lot ), I’ve been moseying along TFL to join some fanlistings and fill up my FANDOM section. When I started joining fanlistings of various J-dramas and some J-idols (I haven’t joined them yet, but I did bookmark for the future), I realized one thing. My own fandom designs are not girly enough for anyone to join.

CUTE is still the in thing in the hobbyist fanlisting site designs, at least, in relation to Japanese entertainment. I used to go all-out using old school web standards in the early 2000 but when I got a revelation regarding the Web 2.0 standards as well as producing sites with validated code, my so-called CUTE design style had disappeared. It just got way too long to produce another CUTE design style that would actually conform to today’s web standards, so I went for a more thematic (thematic as in design based on the theme of the fanlisting) rather than producing another CUTE designed fanlisting site.

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• Mood: Hungry

(clockwise) Mia Fey, Maya Fey, Phoenix Wright, Miles Edgeworth

I’ve always been a fan of the Ace Attorney games since Day 1. Well, I consider Day 1 as sometime during spring in 2007, starting with the first game, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. These followed by Justice for All, Trials and Tribulations, and Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (featuring a new main character/defense attorney, Apollo Justice). If you’re one of those import gaming purists and have never heard of the small hype of a visual novel game taking place in court, it’s the Gyakuten Saiban (Turnabout Trials) series.

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• Currently Drinking: Coconut Chai Tea
• Mood: Tired

Before I got in to digital design, I used to be quite heavy with traditional art. To be more precise, towards traditional calligraphy, simple sketch cartooning, silkscreen printing (I did design some t-shirts as part of my final project in silkscreen printing class, but supplies are so expensive), and (what was considered back then) “illegal” art (graffiti art (on paper) and even tagging (like you see those messy “tag” art on the walls). I also used to draw “street”/”hip-hop” style art back in high school simply because a group of my friends were in to it and somehow gave me some inspiration. No, I didn’t violate any school roots by doing some crazy graffiti typography on one of those Hello, My name is… tag stickers that people use on meetings to identify themselves. As an open-minded artist I always thought that those “dirty graffiti” seen on walls of buildings and structures looked creatively and vividly beautiful. Today, it’s become an official integral part of general traditional art. All you need are pencils, colored pencils, markers, and if you decided to do murals on the wall, you’ll need paint— lots of paint— from airbrush painting to… airbrush printing.

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• Currently Drinking: Green Tea Kombucha Milk Tea (so fruity!)
• Mood: relaxed

As you can probably see now, I just uploaded a sample theme. Well, not quite “sample” theme, but a preview of how the theme currently looks like in progress. I’m still doing some more tweaks with the help of the awesome theme generator Artisteer and some good ol’ manual tweaking. Despite that I’m using a simple-to-use Wordpress generator to build my themes due to my lack of fluency with the WP templating system, I’m still working hard, studying hard, watching all these How to make WP themes videos and reading Wordpress for Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson.

Overlooking the current layout (before I added this new one) I noticed so many things that I’ve went overboard with. Once after I’m satisfied with the final look of the theme, I’m gonna start re-organizing the sections and my overflowing sidebar.

And that’s all I have to report. Adri signing off now!

• Current Location: Home
• Currently Eating: Japanese Rice Crackers
• Currently Listening: Doo-Wop Channel @ Pandora Radio
• Currently Drinking: Cherry Pomegranate Juice (sugar-free)
• Currently Reading: 2009 Best American Mystery Stories

I got a call from my aunt about a website project for her family’s charitable organization that they have been supporting for quite awhile earlier today. We’ve discussed about this for awhile now but never really had the time to actually move forward with it. It looks like I’ll have to put my fan hobby stuff on hold, which would cause some delays on my current hobby projects. FSM and AMNOS may have to delay a bit from its projected deadline (not that FSM has a projected deadline in the first place) and I may be blogging a little less. I have to get back to real life in order to get this done.

My aunt wanted to get started with the site so I’ll have to halt a few things. In addition, I need to seriously revamp my entire markup and look of my portfolio as it has not been touched for over a year now so I can add this new project in to my portfolio/resume/CV. I also need to update my resume as well in order to reflect this new project. There’s a couple of things that I also need to do but for now I’ll have to get to work.

Other than that (and some real-life mishaps and happenings), nothing much new to report. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to write about the current web trends in fandoms in general (okay, just J-idol/dramas fandom, mostly) in this blog. That’s my current niche at the moment and I’m not backing out on that one. That also doesn’t mean that I’m going to start writing heavily about the mishaps and happenings of my real life because, as mentioned, they are private. I’d rather entertain readers and enthusiasts than getting stalked by stalkers with hate in their minds.

That’s all. Off to working now!

What do you know? For the first time, not a long-ass “novel-length” entry.

• Current Location: Home (not going to blog from work as much because I do tend to become very busy anyway)
• Currently Drinking: Crystal Light Mandarin Red Tea
• Currently Reading: Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Mood: Contemplative

So, this is just a very quick, random post where I give a short test to see how this Post Avatar plugin looks like on my blog and the blog theme I’m currently using. I need to write something brief but long enough for the entry to surpass the 100×100 size of the test avatar I’m seeing. If it works perfectly, it may need some tweaking and hacking. If the tweaking and hacking doesn’t work, then I’ll just have to disable it and not let any avatar be posted in every post I make. I need to add a CSS class for the avatar to make it look a lot nicer layout-wise.

In addition to testing this Post Avatar plugin, I also replaced the WP-Grins plugin with WP-Smilies plugin. For some reason the smilies appear on top of the Comments management section of the admin CP that it came to a point where it just gotten annoying. In addition, the clickable smilies inserted in the Post and Page sections doesn’t work. I’ll just have to copy the smilie code guide so I’ll know how to type them and make them appear. I’ll definitely look in to more smilies to add but this is it for now.

According to the preview version, 100×100 isn’t going to cut it. I’m going to try uploading 50×50 (or even smaller), then we’ll see what happens.

Still looking in to what to install for amnosNET. I’m thinking news and commentary blog, some general info, and maybe open up a directory of fansites dedicated to JE idols or just J-Pop idols in general. It’d still be hosted on amnosNET. Yeah~!

• Current Location: Home
• Currently Drinking: AriZona Iced Pomegranate Green TEa
• Currently Eating: DiGiorno Supreme Combination Pizza
• Currently Listening: The Fun We Had by the Raggamuffins
• Currently Reading: Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Mood: Sleepy, Sleepy