rising smoke (post finals)

We were doing our presentations in front of the entire class last Thursday, and the moment Andre walked up, I knew he was fucking faded out of his mind. Pretty sure the class knew too. Including the teacher. He was having a bit of difficulty inserting the thumb drive into the computer, and when told to hit the "on" switch for the projector, he sorta just stared at the control panel for a good 30 seconds. "Oh there it is! Hahahahaaahaa". Off to a good start. So he sits down in the chair, slouching comfortably, then mouses over My Computer, and then double-clicks into his thumb drive. He fumbles around for another minute or two, looking for his Power Point presentation, but instead decided to click on a cached file over and over and over again. People in the audience were like: "hey dude stop clicking on that" or "try opening it in Internet Explorer" or "try restarting the computer". I just sat there, along with anyone with half a brain, and tried to suppress laughs. Eventually he gave up and just spoke about his presentation. Later on, a girl would talk about her swimming scholarship and how she would swim at the beach for three hours. Andre goes "lol you'd look like a big grape". My teacher inquires, "you mean like a raisin?". "Yah. Hahahahahahahahahahhahahahaha."

This past school quarter was pretty whatever. I found myself having a hard time putting in decent amounts of efforts, or even caring, really. And it's almost sad to say that the highlight was definitely landing that internship. And now that I'm on break, I still feel pretty fuckin burnt out. This coming break for me is extremely overdue - 2 years of school without any pause has really worn me down.

I don't really feel like talking about all that stuff now, but I just want to say that I will also be spending this break branding myself and possibly creating a mock-up non-flash site. I want to do something unique, and I have a few ideas, cause "Chris Liao Creative" just sounds fuckin boring. I won't spoil my idea yet, but it has something to do with my favorite food AND my favorite manga, but STILL remains disconnected enough from both to become its own entity. Maybe you can guess what it is? *muhahah*

I figured I'd just make this another picture blog, since that's what people like seeing. I managed to snap a few shots of my workplace, so take a peek!

Everyone else has like fancy paintings. Me? Nah.

Lined up my shelf with those HG SEED Gundams. They were collecting dust at home anyways.

My two bosses walking around the common room. (Yes that is a ping pong table bitches)

How we organize our thoughts at MEDLmobile.

What else am I leaving behind when I go to China / Japan for a month? My beloved Berserk collection~! (which I realized has become my temp girlfriend - all of my time and money has been going into this. Yea fml. A little bit.) ANYWAYS, I just wanted to show you guys what I had planned to happen with my collection by the holiday season. It's going to be grand and pompous.

Estimated collection value (sans display cases): $5,210

Of course blogspot will downplay the grandness by auto-reducing my image size and quality, but whatever. I bought these awesome Grundtal strip lights that I plan on installing on my ceiling for some massive (affordable) lighting action. As for the Klingsbo case in the middle, well here it is! I was also extremely relieved that you didn't have to install the stupid flower thing on the bottom, cause that would have been a bunch more work having to measure, cut, and fit a black matte board ontop of it.

Zodd fits like a glove in there, with enough air room to make things feel spacious.

Fuck IKEA. That gap is fucking gigantic, and there's nothing I can do to fix it.

On other fucking awesome news, I found out that Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is actually NOT 26 episodes. ANN has titles up to 38, so it's very likely that the anime will tail right behind the manga releases, and we'll have a legit conclusion! We're looking at an estimate of ~50 episodes again. Finishing up Bakemonogatari, CANAAN, and Princess Lover! soon, so I'll probably write about those.

Been playing L4D and some WoW. L4D is somewhat refreshing, though somewhat difficult to grasp all the details right away. Playing with seasoned friends is somewhat disappointing for the both of us, since I pretty much know nothing. Update comes tomorrow though, so we'll see how that goes.

Zendikar limited. Power curve is a lot lower than the past few sets, so gauging creature quality was a bit of a trip. Bears are actually pretty solid now! There's quite a bit of (blowout) removal in the set as well, which is refreshing after a pretty pitiful past few sets. Do I like the set? It's not bad. I like it a lot more than Shards, that's for sure. That also has a lot to do with how I draft though, which is always focused around solid beats and a curve. I'm not as synergistic as some of the friends I play with, nor do I like to splash much. I pick extremely conservatively, meaning my games will oftentimes be of similar length. Less extremities, more solidity. Playing through the draft simulator a few times, I also felt myself leaning towards white. Trip Arrow Volley Traps, dub Journey to Nowhere, dub Kor Hookmasters, and a Pitfall Trap - might've been good times IRL. Too bad that'll never happen lawl.

I'll probably write two more blogs before I leave. My stomach hurts right now and I need to poo, so later.

falconia (and so it begins...)

Remember what went through your body when Griffith sacrificed the Band of the Hawk? We come to it at last.

*imaged snipped*

For those of you who missed it, it was Episode 307 of Berserk.

No words guys. There's more.

Many thanks to Joa for going all the way on my kit. I would also like to thank the encouragement that the SK.NET Berserk community has given me in my hobby endevours, especially Joa and Derek. Finals this week. Will be setting up the Klingsbo case this weekend. New things to look forward to.

i'm so excited i screamed and woke my family (BERSERK 20th anniversary)

Next Friday, September 25th, 2009, will mark the 20th anniversary of the Berserk manga, since its birth in 1989. Young Animal, the serial that Berserk is produced in, will be doing a special commemoration issue for the event. The same week, volume 34 will be released, ending the Millennium Falcon Arc, and Young Animal will feature episode 307, the beginning of Miura's new arc.

And yes, I really did squeal this morning.

Allow your eyes to feast:

Young Animal Promo Site

Limited Edition Cover

Young Animal Cover

Poster Insert

Poster Insert

To celebrate even more, the 20th Anniversary Armored Berserks will be shipping at the end of the month.

It is a good time for Berserk.

dark circles (eyes for the random)

I don't have a main topic to write about today, but I feel like there are a lot of little things that I should probably tie up or cover. SO! I will spend this post talking about anything and everything that I deem worthy enough to make an appearance here. EDIT: Going back through this post, I noticed that I totally did things WAY out of order. My bad and deal with it.

Big Skullies

The first topic would definitely be our good friend James's Skull Knight 1:1 helmet. This amazing sculptor was found by Derek (the same guy that runs BerserkStatues.com), and after the relatively popular success of his first helmet, the Armored Berserker, they decided to move forward with a Skull Knight one. At first I wasn't thinking about purchasing it, but the more I see the details, the more interested I'm becoming. Let the work speak for itself!

Absolutely stunning. Visit www.skullknight.net/forum and browse the merchandise section if you are interested in picking one up. There will only be a very small, limited number produced, so put your name on the list or forever hold your peace!

FMA S2 and Akira Senju

Anyone who has been watching the hagaren this season knows that the score for the series is without a doubt some of the best stuff ever produced in the history of anime. In fact, I scout weekly on Nipponsei to see if I can try and find out when exactly that damned OST was going to be released. To my pleasant surprise, we have a release date!

October 14th

• Fullmetal Alchemist 2009 OP3
• Fullmetal Alchemist 2009 OST1
• Fullmetal Alchemist "Theme of Alphonse Elric"
• Fullmetal Alchemist "Theme of Edward Elric"

(source: nipponsei.minglong.org/upcoming/)

If you can't recall what the hell I'm talking about, refresh your memory and check out the little snippit below. Akira Senju is an acclaimed Japanese composer who has done scores for over two dozen TV shows and counting. He's won several awards, including best musical arrangement for Strawberry Shortcake and composing the theme of Furikazan.

Home Decor

I've already spent a lot of money on not only my Berserk collection, but setting up for it as well. After some searching, finding a larger display case for a decent price is nigh impossible. I then decided to go back to the IKEA store and see what else they possibly had. I managed to find this two foot high glass cabinet that looks like it might be the perfect centerpiece for my collection. This would also allow me to store the manga and miscellaneous collectibles inside of the smaller shelves, add a glass shelf to the wall above it, and still have plenty of room to complete my mural. Seems like a pretty win-win-win situation. I'll do a mock up of the room in sketchup sometime, but here's a picture of the case. What do you think?

Klingsbo Glass-Door Cabinet

Constructing Daily Banners

Many of you who do frequent my site are like: why the fuck do you always change your banner? Well for you fucking idiotic morons, I change my banner every_single_time I make a new post. It's a mandatory thing. Why do I do it? I just have a lot of cool pictures in my stash that I'd like to make colorful and post up. I'm a person of too many interests to just keep one lame ol' banner. ANYWAYS, I figured I'd just show anyone who was curious the steps I take when trying to make one of these things. Who knows, maybe I might inspire one of you!

Let's go with the banner yesterday as an example:

The main things I think about when designing a banner is: the content of my post and how rad the source picture is. More often than not, by some divine kismet, these two notions coincide. In the case above, I chose an image of Arthas because I've been playing my Death Knight again.

Here is the original picture, as found from the Blizzard fan art program. It helps a lot that the original picture is quite fucking awesome.

Next step is to crop this bitch. I have a saved template that has a bunch of sizes and "vanillasalt" written in different languages that I turn to.

This is where I can start doing fun things. I took a large picture of an inferno and placed it above the image of Arthas. I altered the hue to a more violet tone, then changed the layer style to Overlay, allowing the fire to create a cool texture and shift the existing color theme towards some more pinkish hues.

The next amazingly fun step is choosing type treatment. I love using Asian symbols because they serve both the function of saying "vanilla salt" and great looking shapes or patterns. In this case, I saw that Arthas and Icecrown where equally spaced, so three large characters between the gaps would make sense. I decided to go with an enlarged-cropped style, but felt that the "tsao" in "shiang tsao" was too detracting from Arthas.

The only thing Photoshop can't do is cure cancer. I went ahead and rasterized the type layer and changed it to overlay as well, giving this sort of halogen white and blue look. I then set my eraser opacity and flow to about 40% each, and started to brush away the "tsao" where it was blocking Arthas's cape. Now it looks like Arthas is standing in front of the letter!

Finally, I added in "vanillasalt" to align with the right-hand crossbar from "tsao" to give more a-symmetrical balance to the piece. Where Arthas is a bit heavy, Icecrown combined with "vanillasalt" helps to even out the visual weight of both sides.

You might say: hey all you did was change the colors of a picture and put your name on it. Well, that's what I did, and I'm not denying it lol.

The Status of My Berserk Stuff

I know I have a few readers here that are interested in my quest to obtain epic Berserk merchandise. I plan to do a major update around late November, when I've finally set up my room to be a museum. These are the statues I currently own:

- Knight of Skeleton, Green-silver Armor (#1634 of 2000)

- Guts the Black Swordsman, Episode of Birth Feast (pvc ver.)

- Guts Hawk Soldiers, Limited Edition w/ Blue Cape (#733 of 1500)

- Griffith Millenium Falcon I (Toycom release)

- Griffith the Shooting Star Night, Silver Edition (#077 of 300)

- Griffith Hawk Soldiers on Horse 1/10 (painted recast)

- Femto, Custom Black Repaint (#522 of 2000)

- Zoddo Senma (#137 of 350)

- Zoddo III (#378 of 500)

I am currently commissioning / receiving this before the end of the year:

- HEADLONG 1/8 Armored Berserk (sitting) - by Joa

- Atelie Real Spirits 1/12 Casca - by Joa

- Guts Kingdom of Falconia (#269)

- 20th Anniversary Armored Berserk (bloody ver. w/ Daiba)

Working on the following:

- Knight of Skeleton on Horse II, Limited Edition (to be repainted by Joa)

- James's Skull Knight 1:1 Helmet

And of course, a tease from Joa.

A lot on the plate right now. CNBC is visiting my workplace this Thursday, so we're totally excited for that. I have finals next week, followed by leaving to China the first week of October. Busy times.

cleavage (the wow kind)

So today I was sitting in class not really paying attention to my classmates' presentations when I was spamming all of the F# buttons on the Mac in front of me. When I reached F12, this crazy thing happened where the screen dims and four boxes fade into view: the weather, a calculator, a calendar, and I forgot what the last one was. Anyways I kept mashing that button over and over again, causing those boxes to constantly fade in and out, and I started to realize that you could negative edge the button. That means, I can press and hold F12, then when I release F12, the boxes would go away. If I tap F12, the boxes will come into view and not go away. That means there are probably 20 frames or so of startup, animation and recovery of the boxes appearing that I am given to release the F12 button. I then started to see if I could perfectly let go of the button as soon as the recovery ends to min/max F12 box uptime. Let me just say, if none of this made sense to you, then good, cause fighting games have really fucked up my thought process.

Don't even get me started on talking about freeway yomi.

I don't really have much to say this blog because, well frankly, I've been playing WoW again. It's like a cold - you're going to contract it at least once a year because the virus keeps evolving. I'm sorry if I don't answer your calls or if this offends you, but just fuck off cause I need to grind honor it's AV weekend. For those of you who do care, I've been playing the plate cleave team that cheesed won Blizzcon '09. I was trying to level up some alts, but since I came back JUST as the new season started, I figured I'd start afresh. I dropped Herbalism (who the fuck needs a 3K heal? That's like one attack) and picked up what I thought would be an easy profession to level up: Tailoring. I ended up spending about 400g (which isn't bad for almost maxing a profession) to reach my magic carpet, and now I have Swordguard Embroidery on my cloak. I'm a glutton for procs, of which I will soon have: Runeforge of the Fallen Crusader, Sigil of Virulence, Darkmoon Card: Greatness, Darkmoon Card: Death, and Swordguard Embroidery. As for my alts? Well, they can just sit there and rot while I re-farm honor and gold for my main. Death Knights are still retarded - why did I ever think I'd want to play something else?

Things to look forward to: not reading this blog for a month cause I'll be in China, massive Berserk updates right as I get back, more QQ about work and school, a review on Nine possibly, going over how I make banners, and the finale reviews for a few animes ending this season (namely FMA). Have a good fucking night.