Watchmen, fuck yes you are the greatest adaptation EVER

So being a the huge comic book nerd that I am, when a possible Watchmen movie was first announced like a decade back I was skeptical, and pretty much jaded at the idea. I first encountered Watchmen from a comic book vendor at the old Swap Meet near Pearlridge when I was 9. I grew up on the historically laughable 90's generation of EXTREME comics, so this was my first encounter with something old school and man was it a doozy. So back then when I heard of a movie adaptation I didn't think it would be possible at all for it to be anything like the amazing crazy sexy comic I had instantly loved.

Fast forward to two years ago and when I heard that Snyder picked up the task to making the adaptation, I was ecstatic! Seeing what he did with 300, I knew that Watchmen would not disappoint. Then the internet rumors began spreading about how they changed the ending, cut stuff from the movie, changed things around...but you know what? I didn't care because the movie had to appeal to those who had never heard of the comic before and besides adaptations would never live up to the original so I was happy that the someone who wanted to make a homage of Watchmen was the Snyder who didn't impose his vision on the comics, but rather tried his best to portray the original creator's vision instead.


Fuck the "fanboys".
There was an animation using all the paneles and text straight from the comic book with voice acting and the "fanboys" still complained. This was an amazing adaptation, littered with so many details that people like me would go ga-ga over. Like the implication that Viedt might be gay, or the opening credits.

Man. brb going to reread Watchmen again.

Kanji VOODOO

So anyone and everyone who's ever taken a Japanese class knows how sucky Kanji is, and how hard it is to memorize, the hassle of remembering stroke order and how time is better spent on the internet. While on my quest of fluency enlightenment I stumbled upon this amazing piece of software. It goes through all the kanji a student would need to learn, and in order so that it becomes easier writing complicated characters when they're just combination of simpler ones.

It works off of a SRS system so memorization is optimized. Just think of it as smart flashcards. The easier the card, the less likely you'll ever review it, and the program will always manage to refresh your memory on that one bit on info you were on the verge of forgetting. Good stuff, but it's PC only.

Kanji Gold

Of course you'll have to go and practice writing the characters out, and put some effort into memorizing, but hey nothing comes easy eh?


Did I mention its free?

Absolute...MESS

Ha ha ha, so my first attempt resulted into a pile of poopoo and lose. I watched this video form the ACM animation main site and thought I could do it. How wrong I was. I'll try again, don't want to put the stuff I did up because well...it's crap. XP

Must see Linda before trying another attempt.

うさぎさんの毎日とマリモエオ

So here I am, surfing around the interwebs in the wee early hours of the night just clicking (semi)randomly around and found some pretty interesting sites. While mindless browsing is fun, I'm keeping true to my word and going around Japanese sites instead. Over the weekend I found two sites that are random but interesting to just check up on.

The first is a regular blog, not particularly interesting at all really (sorry, I lied) but I think it its pretty cool. Just a a girl blogging about her life and all it's mundane-ness which I enjoy translating. Takes me an hour per post, but its pleasant and good practice. うさぎさんの毎日

The second is another blog, but with audio! Its more like a podcast if anything about the daily life and interesting topics of three girls from Hokkaido. Recorded from their all girl school's recording studio, topics range from the kinds of coffee they like, to the different sports they enjoy, shops they like going to at and how awesome music from Hokkaido is (I must look into this). To be honest I feel like I'm sitting in with a group of girls as they talk about their day to day going ons but without all the えとー's and あのー’s. Its like making Japanese friends but without having to talk! ha ha ha マリモエオ

Found my music to animate to!

Now drawing with no music sucks pretty bad, so I went out and tried to look for some awesome romantic music to animate to so that by some voodoo magic it'll affect my animation. Sure theres lots of Japanese songs on the subject and I was really going to use an album when I stumbled upon one of my favorite 8bit artist. He just released a new album on love and all it's joy and hardships so I added it to my "Ralph's Letter" playlist. I urge you to try the genre out. It's nostalgic and incredibly fresh at the same time.

Nullsleep emerges from the darkness with Unconditional Acceleration – an exploration of romance and tragedy in the 21st century. Five songs, limitless intensity. Ecstatic bursts of cascading waveforms race toward uncertainty. A feeling of ever increasing separation develops. Unattainable distances are approached and sheets of white noise issue forth from the fissures of an obsessively restructured reality. The sound surrenders in memory of another time and place to which we can never return. Download Album

I suggest Fearless Flight, Salvation for a Broken Heart and Galaxy Tonight.



***A little background here, back in the days of Elementary and Middle school and being a HUEG gamer I became a HUEG fan of video game music. Sometimes I would turn on my SNES, plug in MegamanX and just listen to the music of the stage as I would get ready for school. In Elementary with my gameboy and earphones, I'd just chill at the Elite 4 just to peep the music. When High School rolled in I achieved 8bit enlightenment when I found out that people like you and me (well, they were better at music than most of us) began making music not for video games but for general listening...and the rest is as you'd say, history.

Hoooooleeeeee shhhhheeeeeeeitttttt

"For the sake of protecting you, Naruto, the thing about dying...is that I'm not afraid."



It took a while for me to translate that line, but damn it was fucken worth it. Just proves my point that Hinata is vastly superior to Sakura

Love and Trust, the story of trust...love and a lama

So now that we're starting our animation, I figured I'd look back into my own experiences with the subject to superimpose some of it onto my character. Opening old high school notebooks, I was specifically looking for notes/writings I did whenever I sat next the girl I liked back then. Maybe there was some mystical primordial subconscious oozing out onto the page while I tried to control my panic attacks sitting next to her, I dunno.

Horrified by my own handwriting and anime 'phase' from way back then (10th grade) I found a really really really interesting(terribly written and depicted) story about my thoughts on Love and Trust that I KNOW I showed her just to get a reaction. I'll have to ask her what she was thinking about after looking at this.



Amazed at my own literary and illustrative prowess, I was dumbfounded at how much this made sense admist all the nonsense. Well, maybe not the Lama part, no clue where that came from but the whole trust, love and not paying attention to the person you trust could lead to a bad end for the team.


Oh, and I apologize if you couldn't read any of that. I didn't start writing in capital letters until College so until then its all chicken scratch D: