clefdecristal

At long last I am able to post the cover of my doujinshi which will be released for Japan Expo 2009 next week-end.
I will be present on the saturday and sunday at the Meluzine booth.

If you're present on the convention, don't hesitate to come and say hello.

( Cover here... )

It's been a while since I last posted.

So the news is I will be attending Japan expo, the anime manga convention in Paris.

It took me a while to decide if I wanted to attend or not, mainly because I had nothing new to sell. But what with the 10 years anniversary of the convention, Clamp presence as guests, buzz for other artists (even non French ones!)... all of this made me change my mind.

At first I wanted to have my own booth but I couldn't do the 4 days of the convention, and I was late for the subscription and so on and so on... So I was resigned not to go... Until I was invited by a french association to attend as guest (selling my stuff, draw dedications...) on their booth. They already invited me last year, but with a 2-month-old baby, it was a definite no. This year, that they still thought of me really flattered me, and I was very glad to accept (maybe the real reason is I am a very dedicated sales(wo)man and they take a percent of all the sales on their booth ^^;; ).

Now the big challenge is to be able to actually produce something for the convention. I had 4 pages roughs 2 weeks ago. Now, drawing furiously on the train on my way to work (sadly only frameset and characters/text placement), I have 17 more draft pages that need to be drawn correctly before even inking or whatever. I aim for a 36 pages comics, but I don't know where my story will lead me. I can't afford to "go too far" due to the deadline and how little time I have to draw. I still don't know if I'll be able to finish it off properly with ink and tones. Let's just cross fingers.

It is the sequel of "On the Threshold", but more oriented boy's love (but no more than shonen-ai).

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Sorry for being late... See I'm still alive and I don't come empty-handed but with a lil' doodle done hastily before the turn of the year. As always, just to prove to myself that I still have it in me *wink*

( See under the cut... )

Took me an awful lot of time to get it scanned and all on my new laptop (I positively hate vist@ and new drivers to find or adapt or dunno what x___X )

My wishes for the new year:
- have my lil' baby grow nice and well
- have time for myself and my darling
- have time to draw a lil' something from time to time
- continue to find good reads such as the Ayerdhal series on Aimlin(e), the sexomorph (not sure about the translation, since it may be a neologism) or his Mytale one-shot (and I don't think it comes from the english "my tale", just a word made up for his crazy planet XD ) => so long since I read about such hot and strong female (or male/female for Aimlin(e) ) characters!!

I'll go back to work tomorrow. Even though I had nearly 0% time for myself these last 2 months, I found under piles of paper a sketch I had started before and didn't finish. Also yesterday, I snatched some minutes just to prove to myself I had not become impaired with my hands and made another (incomplete) sketch. I just post them so that I won't be able to totally forget I have pics to finish ^^;;

Also, the only thing I found suitable to do on my first "free" evening (that was some days ago)... to spend hours on THAT --> (base from Kio @ DA) for my signature on RL forums.

( Nice lil' LJ-cut )

Wish me good luck for tomorrow ;)

Just a word to say my internet connexion has been dead for more than a week and I don't know when I'll get it back (thank you, support people è__é ). So don't think I'm dead (yet).
And unfortunately, the internet cafe in my town closed, so I have no mean to go online except from time to time at my darling's work.

See ya all again soon!

Because I want to keep a trace of my latest readings, here's the beginning of a series of book reviews posts.

Ender's series by Orson Scott Card.
This SF series consists in 4 books, among which the first 2 won SF awards.
- The first, "Ender's game" (La stratégie Ender en français), is truly a great book. We follow Ender, a (very) young genius in strategy who is sent in a military school to hone his talents while humanity faces a mortal enemy. But his "studies" are only a facade for the ordeals and trials his capacities, both physical and psychological, are submitted to. Ender's thoughts and dilemmas are shown with a clarity and implacable logic until the truth is finally revealed about the real goal of his training.
- The second one, "Speaker for the Dead" (la voix des morts en français), shows us how Ender's life changed after the conclusion of the 1st book and the beginning of his travel towards redemption. This book made me read about anthropology for the 1st time and I really appreciated the glimpse I had of it (I won't pretend I *know* about anthropology through a SF book ^^;; ). Diving into human interactions, the interplay of culpability and desires, the plot appeared to me both moving and crudely direct in showing how people make a hell of their own life in the name of prejudices built in dire circumstances, and how other people, through compassion and love, can bring balms to these tortured minds.
- The 3rd and 4th books, "Xenocide" and "Children of the Mind" ("Xenocide" et "les enfants de l'esprit en français) came up with very interesting concepts about the birth of conscience and the structure of the universe. While Ender tries his best to defend his new home, the Lusitania planet, the members of his adoptive family follow their own paths through religion, biology, physics or anthropology. In parallel, on another planet, another young genius, just as Ender was in the 1st book, is enlisted to bring down Lusitania and its so-called dangers. Through not as catching as the 1st two books, these 2 dig farther in the esoteric and physical concepts elaborated by Card.

I'll be reading in the following days the Shadows series which runs in parallel to Ender's series. Other books about Ender's universe were written, dealing with side characters and such, but I'll stick to these 2 series for the moment.

Next, I'll be reviewing Nancy Kress SF "Probability" trilogy I just finished reading yesterday.

It might have been unnoticed, but I've disappeared for a whole week, and indeed, I was completely cut from the world during this period.
I still don't know if the world is still standing as I still have to check the news (or maybe I shouldn't, because it might be too depressing ^^;; )

I'm just back home, and directly (or almost) on the computer and internet XD

I hope everyone's fine ♥

( RL stuff )

This is my entry for the "Choose Your Own Adventure" community challenge of yaoi_challenge.

These are Fay and Kurogane from Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles.

( Romance? )

I love Fay, but I still can't draw him as he should be. As for Kurogane... *facepalms* he's just too hard to draw TT____TT I positively hate his hair and I can't seem to manage his gloomy expression.
I guess I really need to improve my skills if I want to draw them more often... if I really want ^^;
Sorry for the simplistic background ^^;;;;

(I know I'm late ^^)
I'm not that big of a cosplay fan, but occasionally, I attended some cosplay event and quite appreciated it.

Last year, during the Japan Expo convention, there was a big cosplay event to choose the french team which would go to the WCS (World Cosplay Summit) in Japan. However I didn't pay attention... until I fell on a tv program yesterday on an otaku tv (NoLife TV). The program was a long interview of the winners...who happened to be the french team! Their exhibition was truly great, even though many other teams had wondrous costumes and were talented in their shows. I felt very proud of their performance and of their maturity during the interview.

---

On the anime front, I watched Nabari no Ou 1-3 and Monochrome 1.

I loved the first one but felt much more dubious with the 2nd.

NnO has a great chara design, detailed and fine, and the animation is great. Mihaku's character is too much, the perfect lil' jerk, apparently insensitive and with a straight face, but able to play with his pretty face to attain his (often futile?) goals (those parts are GOLD ♥ ). However the funny moments are somewhat overshadowed by mysterious and angsty parts with the world of Nabari, full of violence and power struggle, centered on the very unwilling Mihaku.

Monochrome presents a bored (boring?) character who meets a mysterious lipstick/long-haired guy who likes to tease him by getting outrageously close and ends up kissing him fully on the mouth to awake his powers. Maybe I was too focused on that (gratuitous) fanservice, but truly, I felt it was too "artificial". The chara design is somewhat "cruder" than in NnO (well, it's a different style compared to NnO, and some ppl certainly like it, but I don't like it much) and the animation feels lower than in NnO. Maybe I would have liked it more if I had only watched it, but watched in parallel with NnO, it's difficult for me to appreciate it. But I'll continue to watch it, just in case ;p

A few days ago, I discovered a young singaporean singer named JJ Lin (short for JJ Lin Jun Jie) through a flash animation and I rather liked his voice and feeling (asian pop, nothing revolutionary). I went through youtube to hear more of his music and found lots of beautiful ballads... and then I watched one of his latest MV. Big mistake!!! First, the title, "Killer", should have been my 1st hint of the theme of the song. Then the comment in the title, "uncensored version", should been the 2nd hint. But, innocent and air-headed, I went on and watched a mini-movie about (surprise surprise) a killer, who has a very morbid obsession with a girl whom he ends up "transforming" in his perfect princess/bride. I know, we don't see much but I have a very strong imagination!!! Somewhat he reminded me of the serial killer embodied by Iwaki in one of Haru wo daite ita chapters ^^;;; Anyhow, I should have listened to the Killer song without watching the MV, because I rather like the song, but now, I can't help thinking of the MV when hearing the song TT___TT

Now, off I am for another round of Caramelldansen to cleanse my mind -___- ;;;