Just Playing....

It's been awhile since I just drew something digitally for fun.


I decided to play with pattersn out of laziness. It was fun, and I liked the outcome. Actually, what I don't like is the face. I thought I'd draw something anime-ish, just for ole-time's sake. But I dislike it. :\

Paper Texture [Link]
Cloth Texture [Link]

Hello again.

Working on a comic has made me start to read more webcomics as of late.

I found one that really interested me the other day on Deviant Art (Yes, I have an account. No, I'm not very active) that really impressed me enough to share.


Knite: Chapter 1 by `yuumei on deviantART

It's called Knite, a Flash-based webmanga about a boy who flies kites with christmas lights attached to create stars in a polluted sky. I thought the idea of it very romantic. What's interesting though, is the little blurbs after each chapter, where the author, Yuumei, explains how these things in her story relate to situations in China, where the story takes place.

Even the title is a mixture of words in both Chinese and English. It mixes the English words, "knight" and "kite", and the Simplified Chinese word (the form of Chinese used in mainland China) for "wind".

It's really well thought-out and poetically put together, it seems. The characters have an interesting relationship and I really hope this writer finishes this comic and doesn't let it simply fade away, as most web-comics tend to do.

Comic is Starting Up

Haha. Delayed post. I'm clearly not consistent with this thing, but I bet it's partially because I work on other things instead.

My contract is coming to an end, much sooner than it seems (January 11, 2011) because of the holiday season (although, I am not sure how holidays work in my company since our outsourced team doesn't share the same holidays). But I'm going home for Christmas, so I will be taking a well-deserved break then.

I've learned if you work too hard too consistently, burnout becomes a continual state. Which is not healthy. I think I started to lose the reasons I was doing anything related to games or California, but going home for Thanksgiving really helped clear my head and get away from the work stress. Going back on Monday should be better, even if there is already a line of meetings waiting for me. :-P

In the meantime, I am hunting for my next job. Anyone need a game producer with experience working in web and with outsourcing teams?

I started making a comic as a hobby/side project. Right now I'm in the planning phase, writing out the plot, making sure I get the story flow correct and the characters defined. Next step is figuring out how I want to display this, draw, and update. Maybe it seems weird to be planning out so much, but something frequent with web comics that I dislike is people going on haitus or deciding somewhere in the middle of the comic that they don't like where it's going so decide to start over. I'm sure there are many varying reasons to this, some of which can't be avoided, but I'd like my comic to have a completion date and a consistent update of pages at regular intervals. So for now, I am making sure the story is solid enough for me to start drawing pages for web viewing. Having a plan helps me stay committed to this too, instead of letting my changing life get in the way.

As a producer too, planning suits me well, anyways. :-P

Truth be told it feels kinda funny writing this comic. I don't usually let others know I like writing fantasy (oh yeah, this is going to be a fantasy comic. It's an idea that has floated in my brain for awhile now so I figured, why not? Let's do it ^_^) so it feels silly thinking I'm going to be sharing it online in public soon.

Anyways, updates later.

^_^

Should I start a comic?

Whoo! Site is almost done! All that is left is putting up my ETC projects (of course, I leave out the most important work from my portfolio site upgrade) and changing the UI of this blog to match that of my website.

If you want to check out what's been done, please look at www.tingchen.net. :-)

My contract at EA ends in January 2011. :-( It's a bit of a bummer b/c I really love my teammates here, but I guess the time to move on always comes. In either case, I'm currently on the hunt for my next job, looking in areas like LA, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco. The nice thing about being single and fresh from college is that moving around is really only a matter of furniture and lease agreements. I kind of like the adventure in switching homes and being able to pick up and leave so quickly. Kind of. Part of me wants to find a place to set up camp for longer than 6 months, which is probably why my latest apartment, I've bought some of the more frivolous items, like a a digital piano :D, even though I don't know if I am going to be staying here past December. Still, I suppose the moving is somewhat feeding the travel bug in me at least.

With all this focus on work and finding more work and then finding living space and etc etc... I've completely neglected the hobbies which I used to love back in college (undergrad. During my Art School days). It's good that my biggest passion, games, has become my career, but being a constant thinker, I get restless not having personal projects to do. I'm thinking about getting back in to drawing comics. Or do some indie game development on my own. I'm not sure yet. They both seem fun and rewarding, but also incredibly time-consuming and requiring dedication, 2 things which I can't guarantee at this moment.

Another personal question: Why is it all my interests involve being alone? I should be more social, I think. I mean, I'm living in the SF Bay Area and I rarely go to the city. Or even out in general. Either too busy or too tired. :\