babayalo

I managed to improve the hairstyles, marginally.
It seems like I have better luck with shorter styles, so these I will stick to for now... the brief swings more towards longer hair, though.

Also got myself a graphic tablet.
When I mentioned this to my dad ("I want a tablet"), he looked at me in horror and pointed out at "how unstable and unreliable they are". At which point I realized that he was talking about....... tablet PCs. Gauging the situation, I decided to keep it to myself and is now a skeptical owner of one tablet. Graphic tablet, that is. (It's not a Wacom, I'm too broke for that.)

Sooo... does it make me a digital drawing convert?

I use mine to edit croquis on Photoshop and put different colours/fabric details in to make a fashion range. A tablet's sensitivity is much greater than that of a touchpad. I still like my touchpad, and I'm learning to wield my tablet. The nuanced lines a tablet makes is nowhere near old-school manual drawing - I find them too clean-cut and lacking in tonality. I think I will get myself OpenCanvas and train myself in digital drawing, but in the end:

Nothing beats pencil, paper and a nice black Boxy eraser.

LIFE ROCKS!
(and I mean in a "I get stoned, Biblical Stephen-way" manner. No hemp was harmed during the stoning process.)

I... draw croquis with hairstyles. Bad hairstyles.

No matter how much warm-ups I do from copying photographs of people with good hair (and doing really well with it), when it comes to my own fashion croquis they look bad. As in, flat. And the proportion looks like they can do with a lot of fixing. Problem is, I loathe doing formalized croquis (that classify as first-class fashion drawing) - I do baldy templates and that is that. And what makes it worse is because I've got an interview in a few hours, croquis will definitely be something the interviewer wants to see. Hrrrrm.

Anyhoo, I'm ready to almost nuke myself. Geez. I even bought a hair magazine to give them good hairstyles...

Three subjects to tackle this term:

- the all-hallowed Research Project
At 20 credit points, I expect this should suck up half of my waking hours, half of my academic thoughts, half of my blood... ooops got a bit far there. Anyhoo, it's a decidedly commercial brief (cue in homoerotic dancing naked men with washboard abs... anyone got a clue whose mole it is?)
For submission, I need to make 4-5 garments... that's about three outfits. According to an older version of the brief, it entails having 'the looks' accessorized with a leather bag... so I did a bit of my bit and hunted down a few cool leather skins... although they were more of the "sod off the brief, I'm doing my own stuff" nature. (Cripes, I hope they like eel-skin.)
Being commercial is probably not exactly bad, although the kind of things I needed to submit are quite unfathomable. Doing well, on the other hand, could lead to gainful employment. So there you go, sod it or suck it.

- Cultural Studies [10 credit points]
The academic subject that involves a deceptively simple-looking reading list, an unhealthy amount of reading, which (when combined with my reading fervour) would mean I need to be careful in managing my time to get the most mark out of it. This year I'm going deeper on the more commercial side of things, hence the specialisation "Production and Consumption" over more aesthetically serene ones like "Fashion Photograph" or "Designing and Making". So far, cultural studies is oddly and expectedly my forte. I mean, who would expect a dyslexic to be a pedant and write so well? But then the dyslexic is a commerce graduate. Ah, the opposing tensions...
Form of hand-in work is a 2,500-word essay.
I picked up last term/year's essay yesterday. The Examination Board results was an 81, yet the actual paper was marked 88. So apparently those folks decided to take 7 points off me and downgraded my mark from a first-class to a 2:1. Grrrrrrr.
(I'll make sure I get an ultimate first-class this term.)

- Creative Print Development [10 credit points]
The practical elective subject, which I quite enjoy. Getting on with research. Technically, the class will be taught screen-printing and transfer printing methods... and indigo dyeing. Yay! I will be shacking myself up in the print studio, enjoying the facilities... which was my primary reason for choosing the elective.
Hand-in involves mood board, sketchbook, samplers and 4-5 final pieces.
Despite the applicability, I am not exactly of the 'faithful one and only' nature, so I've been peeking at what other practical electives are like... especially beading and embroidery (Lesage, anyone?)

I'm so disturbed at the prospect of this term's work I stopped caring, got worked up for not caring, and decide to eat the bitter pills anyway and pull it through.

So, there you go.
Wish me luck!

Yes, I met them....... in cosplay forms, obviously.

One thing that I couldn't help noticing is that commercially available cosplay costumes look like they're not worth the salt. You can call me snobby and artistically narrow and all that if you want to, but my mind find it disturbing to associate an image of ¥300,000 Ouran uniform set with its polyester lookalike.

If I ended up going to the expo as Karen, I'll make my own stuff. Or go as Lulu/Luluko (no need to colour hair, har har har.) Well, I'm neither 178cm tall or in possession of melonpans, so that's an added challenge. Bless those character designers...

To commemmorate the passing of the 50th episode of infamed Gayass series, to assume the mantle of Pedantic Knight of Britannia (how dare did they do bad spelling on this spoilerish screenshot randomc.maximum7.net/image/COD… ), and to celebrate the end of my stalkative nights spent hunched over some bishounen years my junior!

With these kids being born in Sunrise-talk year 2000, they're officially children of the third millenium. And I'm officially around the age of Empress Marianne, a fact of no better comfort for me.

So, goodbye Code Geass. May you rest well.
(that implies my expectations for no third season, no OVA, and truckloads of post-series official illustrations to satisfy every possible fanbase genre out there.)