Can’t tell you about it! Haha, I’ll get in trouble since there’s a strict “no blogging” policy or some crap like that. I will say that it’s been both a fun and exhausting experience though. My bunk mates are friendly — a few of them are from overseas too — and so are the commanders and officers.

Anyway, I managed to squeeze in a portrait of Kristin Kreuk as Chun Li from the upcoming Street Fighter movie. As usual, I used a reference and still only noticed the glaring mistakes after I finished, check it out in the Bygones page.

And before I forget, here’s a quick sketch of Akemi.

Alrighty, first things first, just a heads up, I’ll be gone for the next couple of weeks for boot camp. Finally, I say. Took the government long enough.

Now on to the update!

The past week has been a rather exciting one, for me and for my buddies. FinalFantasyXIII.net has finally launched! And we’ve already updated 3 times with user created content and a mid ‘08 — mid ‘08? Man, time really flies fast these days — news wrap up on everything FFXIII related, which isn’t much, but at least it’s something! Hahaha.

And right after that successful launch was GamingUnion.net’s turn to shine, I designed the logo and skinned the forum, it’s not much, but at least it’s clean and shiny. The main site is still under progress, it’s a long term project says Darryl. The community’s steadily gaining new members and we’re having fun discussing about our favourite hobby and livelihood: video games, with none of that fanboy hostility crap.

Next up is a little surprise with Forever-Fantasy.net, I’m not saying what it is, but I’ll have it done before I ship off. So keep your eyes on the site.

As for the collaboration project with Graham and The Duo Group, that is finished! Well, my side of things are finished, so that’s a great relief. I’m really excited to see the final product because from what I’ve seen, it’s looking pretty sweet.

As for portfolio updates, I’ve added a design piece to the portfolio, it’s the GU Logo as seen above. I’ve also added a fanart of Soul Eater to the bygones.

Meh, I can’t draw anything decent for myself lately. Just been slogging away at a collab project that I’m trying to finish before I get shipped off.

FinalFantasyXIII.net is coming along nicely though! I can’t wait until we launch, I’m so excited. Haha. Oh, and FF-Illumina.net interviewed Kyle, Lauren and I concerning the new site! It was a lot of fun, too bad quite a few of our messing around didn’t make the cut!

Also, I somehow lost my database and had to restore it. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a very up-to-date back up file. The only significant posts that are missing are the two video recordings- -which I might as well post here.

The FXN Final Fantasy XIII Podcast is back with episode 7, but…there’s absolutely no news! An epic misadventure ensues as news-hungry maniacs chase down the newly formed four person crew for their fix of FFXIII crac–I mean, info.

This was a blast to work on. I just had to draw something for this week’s episode after listening to the kickass intro sequence that Kyle cooked up. It’s the best one so far, in my opinion. Anyway, got a couple of easter eggs in this piece! The car chase is based off of Burnout Paradise’s “Marked Man” event and David’s got a Zat from Stargate.

It’s a lot more cartoony than my usual works too and I think I’m getting better at noses. However, I noticed that I haven’t been that great with hair. I guess it’s time to start doing more studies again, I haven’t done any in a while. There’s a couple of perspective issues too, I guess I should’ve used a vanishing point, haha.

By the way, I’ll probably be doing some tinkering around with the CSS in the next few days, so if you notice anything wonky with the colours and layout, don’t fret! It’s just me.

Procrastination is not a good thing…Anyway, I finally managed to finish this before the deadline. I totally forgot about it, good thing I opened my sticky app this morning.

This is my submission to dA’s Okami contest. I loved this game on the PS2, such a beautiful piece of art and the story was just so engaging. The funny thing is, out of the entire game, my favourite part has to be when I’m doing nothing and Ammy just plops herself down to rest and all sorts of pretty flora begins to grow around her. I gave this the same title as one of the music tracks since I was listening to it pretty much the entire time I was working on this. That’s another thing I love about this game, the music. It’s brilliantly epic.

You can either click the thumbnail to view the larger version here or check it out in the Portfolio page.

Finally, as you can see, I’ve done it once again! Don’t you just hate love me? Anyway, if you’re oblivious as to what I’m speaking of, I’ve made yet another layout for unartifex.com. The layout space is significantly wider–just like I’ll be if I don’t start exercising. Other changes include the addition of an archives page, which I’ve named BYGONES, just so it doesn’t get confused with the blog’s archive. The info page that somehow magically went missing during the last layout change has also made a return! Now with just as much boring information as before.

I have also reorganized my portfolio. For the moment, only selected pieces will be showcased in it, everything else has and will go into the bygones. Visit the blog for works in progress, sketches and the usual unimportant ramblings of a conscripted fool. If you haven’t already noticed, I’ve also given the comics section its own page. Why, you ask? Simply because the thumbnails would have looked rather funny compared to the rest of the art in the portfolio.

One of the biggest changes to the site is that everything is now powered by Wordpress! In the previous layout, I had seperate sets of images and CSS for the main site and blog; however, now not only does unartifex have a single set of images and CSS, but I’ve learned how to pull posts from my blog to be displayed on the index page too. Hooray, neat stuff I’m learning here.

Anyway, there’s a bunch of new art in both the portfolio and bygones, so feel free to check those out!

I’m in need of money at the moment, yes I have considered getting a part time job, but unfortunately it’s not that easy for me to leave the house as I’m taking care of my grandparents. Anyway, I thought this was a good opportunity to build up some experience in this field, as well as adding to my portfolio.

Click here for more information on commissions.

I was originally trying to implement Lightbox into my blog manually, but then it hit me, why not just find a plugin for Wordpress. And that’s precisely what I did. So now whatever images I post in Thumbnails should load using Lightbox. Hm, well at least the images in the latest posts, I’m far too lazy to go back and edit every other post I made since…whenever it was I started this blog, haha.

I’ve also added a couple of other plugins, including Facebook Comments, which imports comments from the notes that Facebook imports from here. I’m still experiencing some issues with the Author Comment Replies plugin I downloaded, so I’ll try to figure that out before activating it.

Oh, and I’ve upgraded Thumbnails to the latest version of Wordpress, huzzah!

Mmm, I’ve decided to continue adding to the concentration pieces that I painted back in my senior year of high school. It should be good practice for me, but personally, I would rather be learning and practicing in school under good direction; however, since that’s not an option, this will do for now After all, I have a lot more free time than I previously thought I ever would.

Anyway, I’ve reorganized the Drawing and Illustration section and I’ve already added 2 more concentration pieces!

So, I posted 3 days ago about my getting a new iMac. Well, since I got a new iMac, I had the urge to redesign my website and as you can see, I already have. Anyway, it’s a simple redesign of the previous layout. I’ve reorganized the galleries–which is now called the portfolio. I hadn’t coded anything in ages so I forgot how tedious it is to code an entire website from scratch. Now I remember, ugh, I spent about 3 days coding. I’m glad it’s finally over. Aside from that, I also finally got around to upgrading Wordpress to the latest version. YayOh and I almost forgot to mention, I’ve changed the blog’s name from Sketches to Thumbnails.