If you expect to be in Los Angeles on Sept. 26 at 4pm, you might try to attend the LA Irish Film Festival. Because that's when "The Secret of the Kells" will be screened...a really ridiculously stylised and pretty animation from Kilkenny-based Cartoon Saloon.

Since there's no way I'd be able to see it at the festival, I'll just have to keep hoping for an official U.S. release. Or perhaps distribution of a Region 1 DVD, eh Buena-Vista/Disney?

Go look for yourself, and see how gee-gorgeous this animation is:

Official "Secret of Kells" site
Blurb on Cartoon Brew

...I thought I'd go do it again. Silly me.

If ever you find you have too much spare time, grad school may be just the thing for you. Oh my, yes. But it has its good points too; at least then you get to stay up nights slaving over a hot workstation for a subject you're actually interested in. Preparation for the workforce, what what?

Anyway, if anyone is curious, I'll be spending the next couple years hereabouts learning how to make fancy animation and thinking "I'll never be as good as such-and-such artist! Why do I even Trrrryyyyyyyy?" lots and lots of times.

On the positive side, my job is forcing me to learn a little website coding, and I'm actually starting to have some idea what (specifically) I want to do with the rest of my life. So...yay?


Heh, wow, I haven't been around here in a while.

...will be an exciting month, because of San Diego Comic Con!

Never been to a con, before, and I've never tried cosplay before, either. Time permitting,(and if I don't chicken out) I'm going to dress as Azula for the Avatar event. Because, even though we look nothing alike, she's a fun villain and I'd like to attempt the bad-assery. Er...does anyone know how that cosplay business works, by the way? Do you brave the weather and wear your costume all day, or just bring it with you and change when appropriate? I know there will be a fan meet-up, but haven't heard whether it's scheduled yet.

I'm unphotogenic and socially-awkward even at parties where I do know everyone, but the awesomness of the con experience will be worth it. Hope I'll meet some of you there.


And if you are bored, the mechanical contrivium is usually good for a few laughs. For example:

. Long ago, the people of Nicaragua believed that if they threw Iroh into a volcano it would stop erupting.
. 68 percent of all UFO sightings are by Iroh!
. If you don't get out of bed on the same side you got in, you will have Iroh for the rest of the day.
. All shrimp are born as Iroh, but gradually mature into females.
. Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are Iroh! <---'Nuff said.


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More things to see:

A couple of nice illustration resources, with artist galleries and stories.

Nocloo
Surlalune Fairy Tales

And we mustn't forget about these:

I was ready for a new entry on the front page, so, there you have it. Meh.


Content? Er, ah, um.....well, here's a couple of interesting sites I ran across whilst researching illustrators:

Nocloo - A very nice resource on well-known illustrators of children's books, with a large image gallery of art and artist information scanned from the host's private collection.

Surlalune Fairy Tales - An index of fairy tales, and another excellent gallery of illustrations and artists associated with them.


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And we mustn't forget about these:

Apparently, I'll have been a member of dA one year, as of tomorrow. That seems to be deserving of some journal entry, even if it is a silly rant.

It's mostly my thinking aloud. Consider yourself warned.

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I've always thought of myself as un-girly, and remember being annoyingly proud of that when I was younger. I played with plastic dinosaurs and pirate legos as a kid, didn't like pink, detested frilly things, built contraptions and suspension bridges out of household junk and read a ludicrous amount of comic books. Stereotypically boy-related preferences, y'know.

Soo...I'm clearing out my warehouse of a room, trashing the useless things that have accumulated under my bed and and been stuffed in my closet for ten years....and Lo, I rediscover many, many drawings and doodles of things from Days Long Past.

Most of them are cats. Or rainbow-colored horses. Or horses with big bat wings. Or anthropomorphic cat-people, since humans were @#$% difficult to draw. (They still often are.) And lots of these drawings look like those scenes in Disney movies where the two characters break into a romantic love ballad as they dance in the rain...i.e. stereotypically-cutesy/girly subjects. So much for my perceived self-image.

I don't know what I'm trying to say here; I've got nothing against cat-people and horses and Disneyesque dances in the rain...all those are very nice, and plenty of artists wiser and more talented than I make a grand living out of such subjects. I know I have some of them on my watch list, or in my favourites. I guess...it just makes me laugh to look at those drawings and see how my interests have changed as I grew older. Really, the biggest, maybe best, change is feeling less embarrassed about letting other people see the things I draw. Oh, I'm sure I'll always feel silly about some interests or some of the bizarre "Where the deuce did that come from?" sketches that I tend to flip quickly past in my sketchbook; that's just pride, after all. I'll look at those again someday and laugh at myself, and maybe someone else will, too.

Those particular cat-people of yesteryear, however, will never be seen by mortal eyes other than mine.

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Here's to another year of being inspired, impressed, and amused by the dA community. Cheers, all!


...now, somehow, somewhere, I must find the fortitude to look through the 800+ new deviations in my oft-neglected message box.