Last minute

Oh. Hullo. Guess who's not letting this year pass by without a single post here. It's insane, realizing my last post was September of last year. That was even before I landed this website coordinator job. Yeap. First day on the job was October 16 of 2009. Looks like we know the cause of my absence?

All work and no play makes Gino an inactive blogger. Whuttup.

To recap this year though, some highlights:

• getting free VIP tickets to the Usher concert (gotta love my mom)
  
• winning an Xbox 360 for my Jack Skellington costume
• the 33-Caliber Chocolate Cake from Got Bakes?
• my team winning the company's annual badminton tourney
• getting a lovely Sony digicam for my birthday
• Enslaved
• seeing Darren Criss live (righto, you heard me)
  
• buying myself a Lenovo netbook
• getting Kinect and Dance Central for Christmas
  
• Puerto Galera
• Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
• finally reading Rendezvous with Rama and Dune
• Glee
• getting to watch Step Up 3D in 3D
  
• landing a head position in two subcommittees at work
• Matabungkay
  
• The Big Bang Theory
  

Ah yes, the feeling of walking tall for a day. Priceless.

Racing rats

So what's happened during the past couple months? A lot and a half, of course. I've been stuck in a loop of video games - surprise, surprise. Mostly it's been Monster Hunter, then Dissidia, and then Professor Layton, and now, Suikoden Tierkreis (which I'm thoroughly loving, btw). Unfortunately, the PS2's been pretty neglected of late.

Oh, I've been able to catch up on some reading too. Finally got around to reading Ender's Game - and eventually finished it too - and more recently started reading this steampunk novel, The Scar by China Mieville. It's quite fun, despite its poetically taxing narrative descriptions.

I have, however, gotten the ball rolling on getting myself back into the rat race. Why, just last week, I had two interviews for the same company. I was supposed to get a callback last Friday, but I suppose people get busy too. Now I just have to wait and sit tight. *crosses fingers*

My dad's company got me into another project too - a poster design of sorts. I was given a sample design - an eyesore of a design, one probably created in MS Word - of what they wanted they wanted the finished product to look like. After about an hour of Photoshop, I came up with my own version.

I couldn't find any nice (royalty-free) picture yet, but I did show them this:

Now I have to take out the central image and find something to replace it with. I'm thinking it's high time I learned how to do vectors. But to do that without a mouse... sigh.

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

My dad asked me to do a design study to mascot-ify their company's logo, which is that of a lion's head. How the hell do you turn a lion logo into a full body mascot? Ring-ding-ding, I had to go online and look for lots of Lion King (both movie and musical) shots for the face and Tony the Tiger for musculature.

So today I sat down in Starbucks and sketched away. And that's something I haven't done in months - just chilling and working and drawing with coffee and cigs. Man, I missed it.

But anyway, while the rest of the mascot's attire looks cool and all, the head piece I scribbled up somehow looks more like some sort of wolf bear. Or bear wolf. Or something.

And no, my iced Americano wasn't spiked with alcohol.

Re:Creation

Yes, I'm back from the beach. And while I'm still looking for the USB cable to transfer some pics from the digicam, I decided to upload more art to DA.

This one was from way back in July 2006. A friend asked me to help him with a project for school. He gave me a sheet of paper with a couple sentences written out. It was a creation story taken from Philippine folklore. He wanted me to illustrate it. And so I did... for some coffee, cigarettes, and beer.

Ah, me.

"Long ago, the Great Makagagahum found himself alone in the wide, desolate world."


"And so, he struck his staff firmly into the ground and there it grew into a majestic tree. He gathered the tree's seeds and spread them all throughout the world, and where ever they landed, new life came to be."


"Seeds landed in all sorts of places. Those that landed on the rich soil became grass and other plants. Other seeds that landed on the valleys and enjoyed the light of the sun became humans and animals. Seeds that found themselves in the waters and oceans became fish and other marinelife. Those that landed on top of trees became the birds and monkeys. While those that burried themselves in the darkness of the deep cracks and fissures of the earth became the engkantos and other malevolent spirits. One seed found itself in the deepest, darkest crack in the earth. There it turned into a great white hairy monkey that sat seething between two large rocks. It is believed that whenever the great monkey would shift its position, earthquakes rocked the earth."

Creation Story: Makagagahum
Original Size: 8.5"x13"
Medium: ink, colored pencil on vellum

RED

I'm having trouble getting a 15kb 50x50pixel image for my DeviantART account. Gah. How how how to save on filesize... Hrmm.

Anyway. Hurrr. The oh-so-lovely Paint the Town RED plate I did back in college for 'Creative Writing and Illustrating' class. We were told to translate into drawing any common idiom - it was one of our very first illustration assignments. And for this plate, it's one I'm most proud of.

Unbeknownst to me while creating this piece, it would actually eventually serve as groundwork for what would become of my final project in the same class (a children's picture book!). More so, this plate helped me find and establish my art style.

Stick figures are sooo underrated.

Paint the Town RED
Original size: 8.5"x11"
Medium: pen, ink, paint on vellum

Forward

So I'll finally shuffle free from the corporate coil come next week. From then until gods know when, I'll be in the most favored status of a procrastinator - the ever promising "in between jobs" status.

Lovely.

I've already got some options on the table. Not entirely sure how those will go about. So we're playing it by ear.

The short term is looking fun though (with a beach trip already scheduled next week too - woohoo!). I'm slowly getting back to my art and graphic design, but firstly, I'd have to set up shop at a deviantART. I had to create a new account since my old one which I've never practically used is now in virtual limbo - I can't even remember the username I had before.

I'll slowly populate that account eventually. But to get from here to there, it's gonna be quite a lot of work:

• watermark some of the stuff I've already done
• scan some of my drawings
• buy a new USB flashdrive to replace the one I just lost *teardrop*
• draw, draw, draw - rediscover the skills I've lost
• design, design, design - relearn Photoshop and InDesign

Seriously, I want to be a video game concept artist and/or designer in the relatively near future. Like 2011. Preferably somewhere in Europe too.

Transplant

Not entirely sure what creating an account here means. Either

• a) I'm just broadening my horizons
  
• b) I'm slowly moving away from LJ
• c) I need a fresh start
• d) [insert whatever made up excuse here]
  
• e) all of the above
• f) none of the above

Actually, it's more of me wanting to claim this domain URL. I actually wanted it without the dash, but someone already beat me to it. Whoever you are, you are so fail.