Uppercut Justice

As I finish the old year and enter the new, I will say the same thing over again. Next year will be more productive and at the end I will prep and plan for the new year and most likely do nothing. Sad.

It’s like saying, “Live a life without regret… and in the end, REGRET EVERYTHING!”

I’m really going to try to start writing here more often. I know I say that A LOT, but forreal realz!

. . .

I do find myself struggling to take a moment to create or express myself. I think that’s the struggle of trying to be a creator and a consumer at the same time. With any type of fandom, anime, comics, video games, etc, we draw our inspirations from said media and when we try to put forward our own ideas, stories, or impression, I find it easier to just consume than to create my own content.

Maybe it’s just an excuse I’ve clutched to. I don’t have time. Add work, commute, and fatherhood, and that excuse almost seems valid.

I’ve found myself saying this over and over, every new years resolution, (chinese new year resolution, YEAH, second change… and now Thai New Years resolution, third time the charge) I’ll start to do something.

This conversation with myself reminds me in college, after a night of drunken debauchery, I find myself telling myself I won’t drink ever again.

Same Shit, Different Day…

So what’s the real reason I don’t do anything creative anymore?

Time?

There is always time, I just need to better manage it. I was speaking to a friend, Matt, who seems more of a mentor really, who publishes and draws comics, has an excellent career with education and art, and also is one of the founders of DC Conspiracy, and is an awesome father. He was telling me how little time he has, but found a way to do so much more, and was questioning what was he doing with his time when he was younger, before kids, before marriage, before his career.

I know I need to manage my time better and using time as an excuse is pathetic. Honestly, I don’t even have my son during the week. He’s with my mother since both my wife and I work.

Sure, I have an hour commute, but I also have scheduled an hour lunch break so I can workout, illustrate, or write. My hour commute can be used to listen to podcasts to try to learn and get motivated. Time can be managed and put to better use. I shouldn’t use time as an excuse.

Failure?

What could I determine as a failure? No one liking my work? Everyone hating my work? While those are valid possibilities, almost every success story I heard afterwards was, “I did what I did because of passion” followed with “Those who create or do whatever it is they do for popularity, burn out”. While we all dream to be successful and love, if that’s our only goal, it most likely will never happen. People seem to be attracted to passion and that passion is what keeps us going through the set backs. If success is my only goal, once I hit a road block or fall down, doesn’t that mean I’ve failed.

As quoted in Batman Begins, “Why do people fall Bruce? It’s so that we can learn to get back up”.

We need some sort of motivation, passion, burning desire, to get us through those rough spots. No one every became success without experiencing failure.

And speaking of failure, never starting or seeing it through, is failing before we really started.

Becoming a father?

This has been the BEST thing to ever happen. Having a child in a way is a new start. I want to show him that he can do ANYTHING, if he has a passion for it. When I was growing up, people always told me that I could be anything I wanted to be, but then I was also told that “Artists only became rich after they died.” I don’t want to instill that lesson to my son but I want him to know that he can become anything he wants to be, but he will have to work for it.

If anything, this has been more of a motivational point in my life.

What if I never make it?

When I have that thought, I think to myself, “What if I slip on a bar of soap and break my neck in the shower?” Welp, that would suck, but I also never know if I don’t try. And it’s not always about the destination, but about the journey.

Life is rather short and if I commit myself to my passion, even if it’s ridiculed and hated, at least I did something.

Last SquareEnix game I played was Murdered: Soul Suspect and honestly, I’m glad I got that on sale rather than full price… but the story was decent. The game play was interesting at first but did get tiring afterwards and by the end of Soul Suspect, I felt let down and probably would have been if I paid full price.

As I play Life is Strange, I’m reminded of Soul Suspect in a way. The story for Soul Suspect was “haunting” and it lured me in, the same way Life is Strange is doing, but I think the main difference is the type of game place and I guess if Soul Suspect tried to be more of a Point and Click rather than a pseudo action/adventure game (which it totally is not) I think it might have done better. But I digress, I’m supposed to be talking about Life is Strange.

Life is Strange is very strange… yes it is.

At the time of writing this, only 4 episodes is out with one more around the corner. As I played through the game, my wife and sister-in-law asked if I was living out my dream of being an artsy hipster teenage girl. But little do they know, she’s a time machine.

The story is about a young girl who is aspiring to be a photographer and is in a fancy private art school, who realizes she has the power to control time. While coming to term with this, there is several mysteries going about the town of Arcadia Bay, along with a pending storm, a missing girl, and a psychotic rich boy.

I’ll be honest, I abused my time travel powers to make my best friend shoot herself in the stomach over and over, scratching time like a turn table.

The execution of the game is perfect and in the beginning I found myself rewinding time, just to try to hear each and every different conversation options but by the third game, I found myself so engrossed in the story that I probably missed a bunch of stuff, but that’s okay, because unlike most point and click, I think this will have a pretty good replay value. Each choice you make can effect different aspects of the story, some major and some minor. I did find myself pondering on which choices I should stick with but honestly, I think I’ll just have one play through where I’m super nice and the second play through, I’m a super bitch.

The art style of the game is also amazing. Being an ex-professional photographer, I appreciate the level of detail in the conversations of photography and it does make me want to take up my camera again and just shoot. Not only that, since it takes place in an art school, you have a few illustrators also going around. If they release an art book for this game, I’ll probably try to pick it up.

The sound track for this game is also amazing. It defiantly helps fit the mood and seems to be a lot of acoustic guitars. Sorry, I’m not great at analyzing music.

I’ve been still drawing here and there but I forgot my tumblr password for the longest time and I just haven’t had time to post anything lately… I really should try to produce my content and just upload it…

Half Filipino, Half Chinese… ALL AMERICAN… HAHA

So it’s been almost a year since my son was born… His first birthday will is about a month and a half away and it feels just like yesterday he was just born. Looking back at all the pictures my wife and I took of him, I can’t believe how fast he’s grown. I remember after the second month, how we were putting away his 1 month clothes away and Qiao was crying because he was getting so big. But as fast as time flies, I can’t remember life before him.

Being a geek and a new father, I was curious if I would still have time for all my nerd hobbies, or would I have to give them up? I remember pondering on buying tbe PS4 and wondering if I would have time? About 3 months after he was born, I decided to anyway, (also about the same time AFTER my paternal leave was exhausted so I was going back to work… but I didn’t take off two months to just sit and play video games, contrary to popular belief)

Prior to becoming a father, I thought this small child would exhaust all of my free time, and while a majority of it has, I still take time to relax and enjoy myself. It does help that during the work week, my mother either comes over to babysit or takes him to her place for the week… so there is that.

I was talking to a friend who has been a father a lot longer than I, and he was stating how his time has become rather valuable but he tends to make the best out of it, still enjoying his hobbies, drawing comics, and being a full time father. He said that he’s just become a lot more efficient and more productive while at the same time having far less time than he did when he was younger. He doesn’t know how he does it, but he gets what he needs done, while still enjoying the things he does.

First Time Parents: On Nail Trimming

To be honest… trimming nails are the scariest ish EVA. Now, there is a WIDE selection of tools you can use and one baby care produce we got came with 3. THREE DIFFERENT TYPES OF NAIL TRIMMERS. One was like safety scissors where it seems like it had a place to rest the nail… the other one was like regular scissors… the third was regular nail trimmers, except a bit smaller. I went with the latter because if I eff up, I’ll just nick him as oppose to cut his freaking fingers off with scissors.

First Time Parents: On Feeding

I’ll be honest, I’ve considered taking the baby’s milk for other things, such as using it for my cereal, adding to coffee, making mac and cheese… but I imagine the baby would be upset, least of all my wife.

In another issue, people are so passionate on the issue of breast milk vs formula. I’ll admit, breast milk is better, but people are so quick to form judgements on mother’s feeding formula. Maybe it’s their choice, maybe it’s a medical issue, maybe… it’s no one’s business. Watching my wife try to breast feed and her feeling so frustrated in not being able to was devastating, and yes, there were medical complications. People would say, “you have to just keep going, etc”. I likened the experience to telling a person in a wheel chair to just get up and walk, or a person dying to stop being a baby and live.

2nd Week of my 365 day project. After next week, I may have to get a sketch book since I’ll be going back to work after my 2 month maternity paternity leave. Scanning has always been a ban for me and then prepping the files, but ah well. If I may miss a date, it most likely was in my sketch book and I’ll try to update on my same weekly schedule.

The above was one of my first attempt with Corel Painter which was done I think maybe 10 years ago, according to my DeviantArt site.

Below is a piece I did today.