Itchy

Somehow I keep forgetting the price that I need to pay for shaving my legs. It allows goes like this: 3 to 4 days after I shaved my legs, I will start feeling itchy all over my legs. I mean, VERY ITCHY. The pain will continue for 2 to 3 days and eventually it will go away. But it's definitely irritating. This is nothing but just a note to self :-P

Nothing surprises mom

2 days ago was the first time I fully dressed in girl consume in front of mom. Even though she saw me in make up and costume while I was doing Chinese dance, or tried out some female dance costume, this was the first time she saw me on night gown and Mongol dance costume.

She made some good comments on my made up and costume, and then we had dinner as usual. Yep, in her eyes, I am still me.

I am proud of having this mom.

Pretty terrifying...

I was experimenting with facial expression, and eventually found that overdone the face. The result is that the faces seems to have too many lines and got too busy. Anyway, I titled this sketch "OMFG, what is THAT?"

Practicing Manga Studio EX4

I spent some time trying to get myself familiar with the new Manga Studio EX4. The following is the result. Not something original, but at least I learned how to use different layer, apply tone and so on.

90s

In the s4 club while we were waiting for the Bride party , I kept hearing so the 90s pop songs that I used to enjoy back when I was young. Sigh, I am old.

First and last time on wearing low cut top

I promise myself I will never dress such a revealing dress ever in my life.

So my friend insisted in going to S4 the dance club last Saturday. Since he asked me to find the latest costume looking costume from my set, so I picked the short skirt with the low cut top. I've never worn that set of clothing in the public before since I tend to think that my back doesn't look good. But, again, this was the closest I could get.

Interestingly, I was both glad and disappointed that only one person came by trying to hit on me. But then maybe it's because I had my friend around and guys usually hit on single ladies.

Bad make up started my bad day

I am still introspecting trying to figure out why I didn't have fun at A-kon this year.

I think it started with terrible make up. I don't do make up well in general, but the one I did on last Saturday morning was terrible mainly because the room I did my make up at was too dark. The light source, which was the sunlight at the back reflecting on the mirror I used didn't gave me a clear image of my face. As the result I applied way too much make up and it was way too dark. By the time I realized that it's too late, and I only got enough time to slightly decrease the damage.

And then my wig was too tight. Actually I shouldn't wear the wig I worn cause it wasn't look good on my face. So I felt like I was like a freak. The negative self-awareness made carry a grumpy face, which did help in an occasion that was all about being socialize .

Finally, somehow, I felt like I don't enjoy crossplaying among teenagers anymore. There's such a big generation gap that I really found myself not fitting in.

Anime convention is like a high school experience with anime skin. I also realize that , just like in high school, if I am not attending panels, there is still not much stuff that I really enjoy doing at anime convention. It's just like when I was in highschool I didn't do much other stuff besides taking classes. I also don't find much common stuff to chat with my fellow Cosplayers, just like there's not much conversation between me and my classmates back when I was in high school.

So basically there's not much imporvement on me. I was an anti-social geeky guy back in the high school, and I was an anti-social geeky cosplayer in the anime convention.

Now that I realized this, I should put a stop on attending these conventions.

A-kon 20: Long lines at registration and mean people

I cannot believe that I totally forgot what made me unhappy at A-kon 19 last year. Now I remember it: it was the freaking long line at registration. I was reading the notes I took on my iPod Touch while I was waiting in the on site registration line. Very stressful considered that I had to carry a comestic case and a heavy bag with my Tablet PC in it.

Maybe I was in bad mood, but people around me seemed less friendly compare with last time. Sure, teenagers love shit talking, but boy some of them did have shit spreading from their mouth.

So let me give myself a note-to-self: never come to A-kon again.

Elder people

Somehow only elder people asked me to take photo at A-kon 20 this year. I guess the blue fighter costume looks either too old fashion or too odd for the younger people.

Best iPhone instrument to play while you are waiting: Bass

Based on my experience on waiting in a ultra long queue at A-kon 20, the best musical instrument to play on iPod Touch (also apply to iPhone) is Bass guitar. Hands down.

I want to explain this as coincidence, but it's just too strange. When I drove to Dallas to attend A-kon 20, I took an exit and filled out my tank. It was a Shell gas station, and I was surprised that the price of regular grade was just $2.089 per gallon. Considered that all the other stations I'd seen so far were at $2.2 or above, 2.089 seemed a very good deal.

When I got back to Houston from Dallas, I had a need to fill up my tank in the middle of the road again. I exited at 164, found a Shell gas station, and shockingly found that the price was also $2.089. In fact, based on the surrounding, I felt like this WAS the gas station I went to during my driving from Houston to Dallas.

Wicked.

Stronger

What doesn't kill you will make you stronger. Such an old saying, but so true, and really help you to get through some tough time of your life.

Doing laundry ... for A-kon 2009

Sometimes I can get too picky on cleanness. I am doing laundry now solely for A-kon as I want to make sure that everything I wear next weekend smells good :-> .

I am also syncing my iPod Classic now. The 4.5 hours Dallas trip need something to keep entertain me.

Cutting fingernail

I cut my long fingernails yesterday.

I usually don't like leaving long fingernail as I found it keeping me from working effectgively, and I am such a workaholic. However, a week ago I was so busy that I kind of left my finger nail alone. And then when I tried to take videos for the chroma key experiment I was working on, it suddenly thought of trying out painting fingernail. The result was nicer than I expected, so I left them staying long.

Last night, though, I finally feed up with it. They made it harder for me to take contact lens off my eyes, harder to write on my iPod Touch, and then some. So my they are shorter.

Good and bad

The bad thing about having my roommate around is that I can't use my stereo after midnight. The good thing, though, is that he get rid of all the roaches.

More about stuff I learned through my last video shooting

• I really really really should NOT do closeup shoot on my face. It looks pretty terrible. Time to consider hiring an actor.
• Quite some minor clean I have to do after the aftermath of that several bleeding scenes.

Experience I earned about a day of shooting

Woke up at 12:00 a.m. Feeling ... good! I went to sleep at around 9:00 p.m. after spent a whole day to shot footage for my little video project and was totally exhausted. After wiriting this blog, I need to clean up a messy room left over by all the shoting I did. Am I regarding this? Hell no. It's so much fun, and makes me realize how much time and effort it takes to do a video product. At first I thought I could finish all the taping of footage within a day, but it's obvious that it takes two days, as I only finished half the taping based on the storyboard I planned.

Couple of things I learned:

• It can be very painful to be the solo person who does everything on a video project, including video photography, lighting, props paperation, acting, choreogrpaher, directing, makeup artist, special effect person, writer, producer and the clean up dude. But at least now I know how much I can willing to pay to outsource some of the work to the others :-E
• Because of the limitation on my resources, there are quite a lot of stuff that I planned on storyboarding couldn't be actualized during the actual videoshotting. Guess I have to live with my limitation.
• The nose bleeding scene was way more messier than I expected. I should have planned better.
• I was right getting an extra set of battery for my video capture device: Canon Powershot SD880 IS.
• I was also right getting extra harddisk to hold raw video footage files.
• I am getting smarted on keeping myself my being sick. I have a tendency of stubbornly continue working when I can feeling cold, especially when the weather gets chilling, and I am getting tired, and yet I am too lazy (or too sweaty) to put on more clothes. But this time I went straight to bed. Result? Full awake and full healthy me continue typing my blog.

That's it for now. Let me clean up my room and then I'll spend sometime checking the video took in order to decide whether I should re-shoot them or continue shooting result of the footage today.

Cancelled

Guess what, I DID NOT go to the scheduled MAC one-on-one makeup session. Of course, I did call them to cancel the appointment. I don't know why, but I felt like I didn't exhausted my DIY resources. So instead of going to MAC, I did some search online, find a few tricked I never tried before (like using red lipstick to cancel out the green caused by bread mark), and got some good result.

.... or maybe I am just cheap :-E .

Sigh, didn't take any shot today ....

I planned on spending today to do some shots for my little 1 minute short film. But then so many other stuffs keep me from working on the plan:

• Figure out how to make fake body fluid (blood ... and so on) for the short film.
• Figure out if Adobe Premiere can directly load Adobe After Effect product (yes, it does :-D )
• Find all the clip art and video for the film (bees, roses ....)
• Find OSX 10.5.5 on VMWare, and installed iPhone SDK 2.2 in it (Success)
• Went to Walmart to buy materials to make fake body fluid
• Brought a Blue Full Fitted sheet set for my mattress , and thought of using it as a blue screen, and found it TOTALLY failed, so returned it, and brought just a fitted sheet back. This is probably what took most of my time today.
• Tested to see if I could do my acting on to top of the mattress box instead of on the mattress. Well, it failed, and I created several HOLES in my mattress box. Not that it would affect it's function as a mattress box, but still it's kind of lame. So next time when I try to do shots, I either do it on my mattress, or I have to roll up everything and do the shot on the ground.

Well, maybe this is a good thing. I really should write out the storyboard before I take any shots. I shouldn't rush and jump right into doing shots.