my resume is updated.

Young Master Mikko.
Master of the the Baby Dragon Kung Fu.
Special Weapon: Computer Mouse.
Promil... er, Breastmilk Baby for 14 months.

had fun last april 27, sunday! wheeeee!

I finally finished the first panel! And just minutes later gerry came along! serendipity or what? ;) he said it's ok(I corrected the middle object as jonas suggested), and that I could proceed to the second panel.

My cold (or SARS as some of my friends affectionately refer to it) is on its way out and is looking for a new host (hahahahahah!). The nergy transfer still works, thank God. And I think I'm a bit happy that my weirdness is lot weaker now. I do less damage that way. I remember back in college when everyone knows about my weirdness by being my patients, a classmate came up to me and handed me a pamphlet titled "The evils of witchcraft" and told me "not to lose hope, I can still be saved". that was priceless. But I decided to lie low since then. I was having so many patients I got too tired to keep up with schoolwork. And when I'm really tired I accidentally get someone's else's energy just by touching them (yeah, how Rogue can you get?) so i sometimes end up in trouble. I'm just glad i don't live in old-times Salem or anything. I tried explaining the science of it again and again but they still find it weird. i gave up eventually and reserved my services exclusively to my family.

excuse me, I'm babbling ;)

they can't open the file because i use Photoshop 7 and they don't have photoshop at all. i saved a copy in JPEG format and wrote a long list of instructions which I hope would be helpful enough. So yes, I'm up at this ungodly hour again, despite having to leave at 4am.

i finished the last-minute revisions. i had to get up in the middle of the night and work until 3am to send it in time. I raised the fee just a bit for all the trouble i went through because of this. mostly with my fam who thinks i should be a getting a more stable job than a freelance artist. like sales or something. they say i get through too much trouble for so little pay.

but i guess i'm crazy this way. it's what i want to do. i may not be good enough to prove them that it will pay off some day but i'm doing my best to get there.

finished 'just4kidz' booth, added some people.

just found out i should have charged higher on one of my projects :p life. and all this last minute is kinda stressful. hope this pulls through.

here's my frustratingly slow progress of my first time to draw tight pencils on an 11" by 17":

proposal: April 6 Sunday (after I showed my portfolio to dave campiti, and he suggested I give this harley script a try)

script: April 10 Thursday (i think) ... i couldn't find the script anywhere online, good thing eugene sent me one :) thanks!

layout: April 11 Friday ...made layout of first page after working all day at haribon with jonas :) best co-worker I've ever had so far ;)

April 12 Saturday ...layout second page. I'm afraid I spent too much on this one, for a layout. But I had so much fun I forgot the time.

April 13 Sunday ...Had to rush-finish layouts of pages 2 to 4 to show gerry whom I'll meet with azrael. Got Gerry to sign Tek's Wasted then made helpful comments about my layouts and answered my questions (thanks!). Had fun hanging out with az, gerry and ilyn (gerlyn? ;) even if we just went around the Sampaloc Lake. On foot. Again! ;D

April 14 Monday ...Started pencilling. Took a looooooooong time. To start, I mean. Trying to convince myself I can do this. And making the voice in my head that keeps saying "Why do I bother? I can't do this!" to shut up.

April 15 Tuesday ... finally finished... the harley figure. Still wondering what to do next. voice in head at it again.

April 16 Wednesday ...no drawing done this day. prepared for day swimming. things came up. ended up night swimming. got a good deal of renting a private hot spring-supplied pool with air-con room, kitchen sink, stove, fridge, the works. all for P2,000. from 2pm to 6am the next day. one thing though: the water's too darn hot!!!! i felt like a boiled lobster after! thanks to SPF45 I didn't end up looking like one as well. Whew!

April 17 Thursday ... too...pooped...to...draw... @_@ drove all over laguna after night swimming/boiling for some sort of bisita-iglesia.

April 18 Friday ...finished harley figure (changed the mouth, smile not seductive enough), added frames (figure finally doesn't look like it's floating) and title (surprised myself with the realization that I can do lettering after all, with my good ol' stubbornness)

April 19 Saturday ... jonas came by to lend me books: loomis, how to draw bad guys and girls, and pen and ink drawing. And asterix books which my eyes devoured. all in an hour ;) then finally got back online to check email. got one that said one of my deadlines is now! and i've yet to scan it! let alone negotiate about the prices. gave first bid based on jonas' guess (heheh!).

April 20 Sunday ...got another email from same person asking if i'd charge higher if i color it myself. gave a new price quote and colored the strip. invited jonas over again 'cause i felt i owe him at least a Coke session ;) Started drawing first panel after read-devouring all of jonas' books about drawing. Got so far as a central longshot of harley and an arkham asylum-theme park, drawing what i guess to be arkham asylum at the background.

April 21 Monday ...Added 2 ferris wheels (big and small), and an unfinished rollercoaster (tracks only). Sent colored strip (as you've read below in the previous blog).

April 22 Tuesday ...Papa's birthday! After work, I erased the smaller ferris wheel because i just noticed it distorts the perspective. I redrew(is that the correct form of the 'redraw' in the past tense?) it in a farther shot and what i hope to be a more appropriate scale. then added a riddler booth, a kiddie playhaus, another ride(joker themed, based on Ocean Park's 'Clown A Round') and a carousel with 2 mystery characters ;) riding in it. Also added an old couple, a boykid, and two more mystery characters(a girl kid and a girl) on the other side. hint: the last two mystery characters have the same name, and may be the same person!

made the board carrier! just slapped two 15" x 20" illustration boards together and stuff. went back to tindhan. got text about price quotes from two people, one from blitzworx and another for this Education Campaign in Hong Kong. I texted blitzworx my dad's account number with the price quote. they agreed to it. I guess i should have asked for more, but i enjoyed doing the job. too bad the comics got cancelled. As for the Hong Kong thingie, they also agreed on my monthly.

the reason why I'm online again right now (yes, i rushed back home from the tindahan) is to send them the monthly strip in time for the month of May issue.

We just reopened the Fast-food today. Dad made a bit of tweaking as he supervised the ‘spring cleaning’ so it looks slightly better. Less dusty, heheheh! Just kidding!

We are tasked to revamp the posters and signs using the PC since the old signs are made before we had a PC so you can imagine how those manually made posters look like.

And dad said he had the second floor room cleaned up so we can rest in its bed and I can draw on its table on the slow hours or off-shift. I’m going to make a makeshift board carrier for the 11” x 17” boards I’m penciling soon, so I can lug it to and from work. I hate wasting time :)

[4/11/2003 4:24:01 PM | Jac Ting Lim]
weird. these two entries are posted, but never published. i tried many times, but still nada. so here's my last resort.

[4/7/2003 5:37:05 PM | Jac Ting Lim]
I went to the 2003 comics creation seminar. it was pretty helpful. and it took me a while before i could gather up enough guts to approach David Campiti and show him my portfolio. He thought it was ok, and suggested I try out the harley quinn sample script. As well as talk to eugene about web design, since he saw my layouts for an ad agency.

i can't wait to start working on the comics, but I can't find the script either. I texted Wilson Tortosa and he soon replied, saying he'll see if he has a copy of it to forward to me, also suggesting that i email eugene. I emailed eugene hoping he could send me the script or at least send me the link to it.
[edit]

[4/3/2003 7:46:25 PM | Jac Ting Lim]
Before I forget, Riq, if your birthday is april 3, happy birthday!

I don’t know what's about yesterday, but I felt really lousy and depressed. Must be that time of the month. Or I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Or it started with not being able to return and exchange items in Saralee. I’m finding out ways to work around the red tape and their ridiculous rules. Then I went on to the tindahan facing the fact that our business is student-dependent and had to close down for the summer. And my hand still hurts too much to draw, however much I itch to just grab a pen and draw curves and lines to create wings and fly again, even if it’s just on the two-dimensional drawing surface. I put medicine on it. I hope it heals by the time the workshop comes along. And I hope I have money to spend by then. And it’s so frickin’ hot. It reminds me that the last time we went out to a swimming excursion was way back in Summer 2000, I think. I remember going to Splash Island.

Darn, the weather’s so hot!!!

Just watched Treasure Island. I enjoyed it. And I wanted so much to draw again. On Saturday, healed or not, I’m drawing! I looked at the bonus materials and saw how the movie started out with concept sketches, ending to the refined final renderings.

I’m trying to find time to study Flash between minding the store and the house and sometimes the baby(he got his first barber-haircut, by the way, so people would stop mistaking him for a baby girl. His hair had grown so long we used to put ribbons and clips on him. So ok, I guess the trip to the barber also had psychological-health reasons, heh-heh-heh!).

Mom and dad had to go to Calamba to get li’l sis’ stuff from the dorm so it fell on me (again) to hold the Tindahan Meeting. I told them about temporarily closing until school starts again, and how they could (read: should) improve for the benefit of us all. The primary employee replied with a statement that I should involve myself more in the business. I guess I wasn’t too excited with the fact that they’re wanting to depend on me the whole time I’m trying to tell them to take initiative for improvement. I mean, I’m trying to build my own artistic and architectural career and future here. And they’re expecting me to take full responsibility. I just told them I’m helping as much as I can already, but they shouldn’t depend on me and mom to improve the system.

Let’s just say the meeting ended with me feeling more depressed because of all the politicking the employees are doing. It’s like there I was trying to tell them to do their jobs, and all they wanted to do was to rant about the other employees. Geez, there was so much back-stabbing going on I wish we could find a new business and a new set of employees! Running the business was so difficult and the employees are not helping any. If the place wasn’t located at such a prime spot we would’ve closed shop long ago.
That night I checked my cel to find a message from my best friend ranting about HIS bad day and asked if I could cheer him up. I chuckled and tried to tell him that he could get online for us to have a bitchfest. I was working on the computer when I got a call from him long-distance. He said he just got home from work(at 9pm) and is yet to eat or get dressed or even rest.

“Is it that bad?”

“Um, no, I guess. Gusto ko lang may makausap,” I could hear clattering plates on his side. He’s using the noisy(buzzing) kitchen phone again. Soon he told me he had to go and eat.

It was pretty brief. But I guess it’s still something when someone calls you long-distance just because gusto nyang “may makausap”. Well, kiddo. I hope our short phone conversation helps J

PS: If any of you know where I can get myself a Final Fantasy VIII PC game, please let me know! I looked everywhere in San Pablo Mall and they only have PS versions of it! I finished playing Grandia 2 long ago and my big sis and I are asking for more games like that! Grandia 2 was the only game my big sis liked so far. I guess she liked the turn based-RPG stuff. I personally like the story. And the different backgrounds and graphics. What other games are like that?

PS2: AYT!!!! I successfully installed WARCRAFT3! Wheeeeeee!
[edit]

hello! this is my new blog! If you want to read entries from April 1, 2003 and earlier, just go over to putingkuting.blogspot.com and you'll see my earliest blogs ^_^