This year flew by pretty quick, didn't it? (Well, at least for me it did...)
I've been blessed to have a pretty upbeat 2010, with the exception of a couple of little bumps on the road.
(I was close to losing/having to quit my job at Disneyland at one point while settling in on balancing two jobs.)
There's been a little bit of stress of having to take in my grandma last year, but nothing that isn't being solved at the moment.

:: But lots of awesome things happened as well:

• Graduated art college with a Bachelors of Science in Game Art & Design
• Discovered my new fandom: Assassin's Creed
• Went to E3 for the first time (and for FREE!)
• Got selected to have my art piece printed in the upcoming Assassin's Creed Artbook, & getting paid for a buy-out of the piece.
• Got a job at Square Enix as a game tester. Crossing my fingers that I can stay on more projects right away.

:: Things I learned:

• PCs are a necessary evil. I love my Mac, but some things are still PC-only....(I hope my lil' laptop will survive another 2 years)
• Final Fantasy XIII = huge letdown, overall sucked (with the exception of being eye candy), and will forever be on the back burner.
• Public transportation is AWESOME (at least the trains). I get to work in 20 minutes instead of going through an hour+ of traffic.
• Always look over your contracts. I almost got paid in Canadian dollars instead of US dollars cause of a typo ^^;;
• I have a habit of buying games, and not playing/finishing them...(Ico, Shadow of Colossus, Prototype, Kirby....)
• Gamestop sucks overall, gotta start buying games elsewhere.
• I will grow up to be the comic/manga lady (as opposed to the "cat" lady)

:: Things I need to work on:

• 3D MODELING!! Oh gawd, I've been really lazy about it. I desperately need to update my 3D portfolio.
• Losing weight. I've got my Weightwatchers book in hand, and now will apply it starting next week (once I buy the appropriate groceries).
• I NEED TO WATCH TANGLED, INCEPTION, and TRON, DAMMIT!!!=

Get ready for another exciting new year, peeps~!

" WH@(#*$%^FOIEHW(@U*#R(YFWEOHI)*#@&!? "

...was pretty much the reaction I had when I got a call today saying I'll start working for QA at Square Enix.
QA (Quality Assurance) is the elaborate title for 'bug tester.' So my job is going to be looking for bugs and grammatical errors in any upcoiming Square Enix title in the process of localization.

Although it's wasn't the job I was initially looking for (3D prop/environment modeler),
this is great enough to hold me over for at least one project (a few months) guaranteed.
Square Enix is a HUGE name in the game industry,
so it helps open a LOT of doors once I try to find another job.
And Square sends a lot of its employees to conventions and conferences,
so it doubles as a giant networking gig.

What does this mean for the current Disneyland gig?
Well I have to talk to my manager today,
but if they can't accommodate me for weekends only, then I'll put in my two-week's notice and 'sayonara' Disney.

So, back in July, I had read on the UbiWorkshop site that they were going to release an artbook for Assassin's Creed.

I thought, 'Awesome.'

I read the same website about a week later, and seeing that they were making a call for contributions for the artbook for their 'Carte Blanche' section....

I thought, 'EFFIN' AWESOME!!! I'm so doing this!' (Even if I didn't get accepted, I had nothing to lose but a bit of free time).



( Cut to the hell I had to go through to make the submission...Collapse )



A little more than 3 weeks later, I get an email from Ubiworkshop.
Thinking they had finally come to let me know that they rejected it (I had no confidence in myself at this point, lol),
I got the biggest shock in my life. Two little sentences was all it took:

"[...] we are interested in the artwork you’ve submitted. We think it would be a great addition in the carte blanche section [...]"

Ho.
My.
EFFING.
GAWD!

I had to re-read it a couple of times to make sure I was making it out right. Nope, no rejection mentioned in the email (I was REALLY looking hard for something that screamed that it wasn't a definite YES. Like a phrase saying, 'we MIGHT use your art').
I jumped out of my chair, wooping and cussing in excitement at this point (I don't do that squealing thing...don't have the throat for it). I ran to my parents and made them read the email (also to check if I overlooked something as well). I had just graduated in March, but I let my instructors know, classmates, counselors...

I was MORE than ecstatic, I was practically drunk on adrenaline, as if I was on a runner's high. Assassin's Creed is my favorite game series, and Ubisoft is one of my favorite and inspirational companies. And now I'm going to have something printed under BOTH those signatures that was made by MY own hands! I've never won something like this! I've now got a GIANT niche in my art record to prove that I did something worthwhile.

I can't show the piece mentioned since it has to stay confidential until further notice,
(probably until the book is published)
but I'll keep up to date on what'll happen from here on out.

Note that Ubisoft opened a Forum topic showing the images of those that didn't get selected.
I'm in shock. A LOT of those pieces are so bad-ass...how did they NOT get in?
They are awesome pieces, so take the time to look at them.



Links:
• UbiWorkshop: Homepage
• UbiWorkshop Forum: Forum page of submissions that weren't selected, but amazing nonetheless!

Mini-Earthquake about 10 minutes ago~!



So, tomorrow I'm gonna go fangirl and attend E3 in LA for the next 3 days.
I promise to take LOADS of pictures and report as much as humanly possible.

So be on the lookout for reports on:

• Disney: Tron Evolution, Epic Mickey, Toy Story 3
• Square: Deus Ex: HR, FFXIV Online, FF Versus XIII, KH: BBS
• Ubisoft: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
• Nintendo: Zelda Wii
• Sony: The Last Guardian

*XIII Versus and The Last Guardian were not available to view at their respective booths.
**FFXIV Online demo was by appointment only....(?)

Most likely will touch base with other games when I get to play with/look at/hear about them.
(Plus, gonna nab every piece of swag I can lay my hands on)
But other than that...ONWARD TO E3!!!!


ASSASSIN'S CREED!!! HUZZAHH!!!!

fanart by doubleleaf: [found here]

As promised, here are some sketches of anime characters I'll be selling at this year's AX.
Although, I did lie saying that there would be some Oofuri and KH...
Some people came over the house and I ended up playing mini-host, so they'll be next!

Why am I still typing?!
ON TO THE PICS~!!
( Let's see some art!!Collapse )

Enjoy~!

Stay tuned,
major sketch dump coming in tomorrow night as it will by my only day off for the next month!
(And I have to get them AX keychain prints up and going ASAP!!)
Will include Oofuri, Evangelion, and Kingdom Hearts chibis


In other news...
why the hell do some parties put GLITTER on the dining tables!?!?
I swear, I think I ingested a tablespoon of the sparkling crud from it flying everywhere and sticking to anything BUT the tablecloth.
The last thing I wanted was for my carne asada to effing SPARKLE as I ate it. >.<!!



rant done

1) Earthquake? What earthquake?!2) Having a cold SUCKS!!
3) Helloooooooo baseball season XDXD!4) Hoooly Crap, here comes those damn Loan payments TT_TT
Ah well,
c'est la vie, as they say.

I didn't realize that Disney was re-releasing all their studio Ghibli titles in 2-disc DVDs this year.
So I picked up Kiki's Delivery Service yesterday.

So I just finished watching it, and felt somewhat disheartened.
The English vocal audio that it was originally released with back in...1995(?) had been cleaned up and edited to closely match the original Japanese audio. So where I expected some of Phil Hartman's (Jiji) cute little comments, and cute foley sounds to come in...all that was there was some awkward silence...

The musical audio had also reverted back to the original soundtrack has also been reverted back to the original Japanese soundtrack. So the English openings by Sydney Forest ("I'm Gonna Fly" and "Soarin' ") are M.I.A. and gone back to Yumi Arai's songs. Not to mention that some of the whimsical foley and overlaying musical scores in the '95 version is gone.

Now don't get me wrong...I'm NOT against keeping this film as true to the original as possible!
On the contrary, I applaud Disney for doing so!
But I kind of wished that Disney had kept the original English audio that I had grown up with as an alternative English Track on the DVD, regardless on how corney and unorthodox to the original as it was.

(Oh well, this just means I have to find the 2003 DVD version~!)