Biggest hailstorm I've ever seen

 Time for my annual post!

I wanted to post the photos I took on July 9 this year. I was livetweeting the storm on Twitter, but this blog serves as a much better archive than Twitter, so I felt like making a blog entry dedicated to this storm that occured on July 9, 2021.

We had golf-ball sized pieces of ice falling from the sky, they destroyed the bird feeder.
After the storm, there was a rainbow and pretty clouds.

I wonder what we may expect from the weather in 2022.

How I got a Nintendo Switch Lite

 Annual post time!!

Now that there isn't much left of 2020, looking back at this year, one of the best/funniest things that happened to me this year was when I was like "if I earn enough with commissions/donations, I shall buy a Nintendo Switch Lite so I can play this darn Fire Emblem game I'm so crazy about

- ahaha just kidding... UNLESS..."

And that's the story of how I got my Switch.

A few days after I made this announcement, the Claude drawing I posted on the same day suddenly blew up on Twitter. Nothing I posted on Twitter for 5 years received any particularly remarkable attention before that one drawing. And all of a sudden, there was no end to notifications and even famous artists started following me. It was like everything in the universe was conspiring together to get me that Switch.

I think my Ko-fi goal was maybe $230, but I'd already had 43% of the money from earlier commissions. That was enough to buy a Switch Lite at that time. A lot of people donated (most of them came from Twitter), so I managed to collect the money and have the Switch in my hands in less than a month.

Little did I know in the summer of 2018 when I went "oh my gosh, the yellow archer kid has such a fun design, too bad I don't play Fire Emblem" that it would eventually escalate into this. XD

My FE3H fanart will meet an inevitable decline in popularity in 2021 as the game was released in July 2019 and FE3H fans are already moving on to new hyperfixations, but I'm still having a blast playing the game and drawing fanart. <3

Thank you!

Annual post

So I guess I've officially migrated my sketches to Twitter. I originally made an account there in 2015 to stalk the cool Japanese/Chinese artists and participate in the PH69min challenge, but now I post there sketches and shit I'm too shy to post elsewhere. I log in and retweet a lot because I have the app on my phone, so it's easy to access all the time.
I still think I could use this blog for something but I just don't have the time/energy for it, I guess.
And nobody is looking at it anyway.
Bye~

First and last post of 2018

Where the heck did 2018 go?

Hmm, so last few hours of the year, you say?

Actually, not much happened to me in 2018. Still, it was a pretty great year for me. I feel like I achieved somewhat of a financial stability and I got more confident and stronger thanks to my job. I did have some depressive episodes, there were times when I was feeling down and I still have no social life, but 2018 was a good year in overall.

As for drawing, I really don't know. I am now certain that commissions were the only things that kept me going, as soon as I saw no interest and closed them, I completely stopped drawing. As I grow older, it just makes me feel ashamed. I still draw like a teenager and I'm over 30 already. I don't think I should keep forcing it since I'll never be half as good as I'd wanted to be. I've been on deviantART practicing and doing art as a hobby since freaking 2006. I saw improvement memes and they make me cry. :I

I'm not saying I shall never draw again because I'm a fickle person and will do it anyway if I feel like drawing again. In fact, I may start posting some older art on this blog or DA that fell victim to tumblr's "NO NSFW" rule.

Idk what to do with this blog. I may start using it again in 2019. Let's see.

Anyway, since my last post was a sims post in 2017, I'll post some sims again on the last day of this year. :B

One of my fav sims in The Sims 2 recently died so
RIP Claudia 01.11.2015-12.29.2018
(She lived for 77 sim days but almost 4 years in real time because I've been playing the game on and off with long breaks and I have shitloads of sims/families. Haha.)

~~HAPPY NEW YEAR~~

Saying goodbye to The Sims 3

To save up some space on my HDD, I decided to get rid of The Sims 3. I haven't really played it in over 3 years after all...

I'd like to say a few words about the game before I delete it, though.

The open neighbourhood was a great new feature compared to the older games, but I think it had its drawbacks too. My game was only a "beta" game with only 1 neighbourhood (Sunset Valley) and no expansion packs, so this might have been the cause but if I played the same game for too long, all the cool premade families died out (often without a "heir") and got replaced by dumb computer-generated randomized sims who always had "male voice 1" and "female voice 1". Literally everybody sounded the same after playing for a while plus they were super random sims. They often seemed to reproduce by mitosis since single sims had babies more often than couples left alone. I once moved in a single woman for my male sim to meet with and possibly marry and then she had a baby within 24 sim hours after I moved her in the neighbourhood. :| Tbh I didn't really wanna start my sim's married life by having to raise a goddamn clone baby... Also, I once played with a family for quite a long time. When the 4th generation grew up, I continued the game with the younger girl (out of 3 siblings). The rest of the family ended up quitting their jobs, breaking up with their spouses, etc. The kids they had all had the same hairstyles and voices.
In the end I was like "NAH, GIMME BACK THE SIMS 2 where I can control the entire neighbourhood!"

These were the drawbacks. I liked the new personality trait selection thingy where you could pick from a much wider variety of traits than before for your sims. Though some of them really don't do much. The moodlets were fun too. The texture selection was an amazing thing too. You could buy anything in any colour and/or texture, it certainly gave a unique feel to the outfits and household objects. Certain challenges like making Ambrosia were really fun for avid players like me. The toddler life stage was too long in The Sims 3, though. Raising toddlers and having to tend to their needs is a time-consuming task for your sims, 4 days were enough for that in The Sims 2.

The graphics are definitely a lot nicer than in The Sims 2, but you don't get to appreciate your sims' beauty or their unique accessories because you play zoomed out most of the time (at least I did) because of the open neighbourhood.

So yeah, maybe I'm just getting old, but I didn't like this game as much as its predecessors.
Anyway, let me post a few screenshots here of my favourite families:

His first child and it's a girl! It's really hard getting a girl as your first child in The Sims 3 for some reason.

Same family. Daddy playing videogames with daughter and her friend watching.

The siblings I mentioned. I really liked this family while I was controlling them all. Then I chose the younger girl (in red) when she got married.

She was a scientist and knowledge-loving sim. I had her master gardening and fishing and had her make Ambrosia. She also had several children with her family-loving husband. I'd wanted to continue the game by keeping her young, breaking up with her old husband, moving her out and starting her life anew, but I kinda liked her only daughter as well, so I never did it in the end. I started new games instead.

So these were my adventures with The Sims 3. I shall continue Dragon Age once I get a new computer or new graphics card. I may try The Sims 4 as well, but I'm afraid I'm not all that interested in Sims games anymore.

Animu list

Okay so my graphics card died and I'm using this opportunity to do a big PC cleaning and reorganize/delete all the shit I saved and downloaded in the past 9+ years. I'm writing a list here of the anime I currently have on my external HDD. The ones I definitely want to keep are bolded, undecided ones are italic and the ones that must go are in strikethrough.

1. 07-Ghost
2. Ao no Exorcist
3. Bakuman
4. Claymore
5. Code Geass
6. Code Geass R2
7. Dantalian no Shoka
8. Deadman Wonderland
9. Dogs OVA
10. Durarara
11. Eden of the East (series + movie sequels)
12. FMA Brotherhood
13. Gosick
14. Hakuouki (trash but looks good and maybe I can use it for art reference)
15. Kuragehime
16. Kuroshitsuji (trash but looks good and maybe I can use it for art reference)
17. Kuroshitsuji 2 (trash but looks good and maybe I can use it for art reference)
18. Magi
19. Magi season 2
20. No.6
21. Otome Yokai Zakuro
22. Pandora Hearts
23. Puella Magi Madoka Magica
24. Rainbow
25. School Days
26. Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin (trash that I still liked for some odd reason)
27. Shiki
28. Supernatural
29. Tales of the Abyss
30. Tiger and Bunny
31. Togainu no Chi
32. Toradora
33. Umineko no Naku Koro Ni
34. Usagi Drop

Others:

• Gintama Benizakura movie
• Black Rock Shooter OVA
• Spice and Wolf II OVA that I downloaded but couldn't make the file work 

 Oh well, there's actually a lot that I'd like to keep. I guess I'll have to delete the undecided ones then... Some of the bolded ones are bound to change too. All this anime is about 200 GB of disk space, so I could free up a lot of space if I deleted just half of these.

Sometimes I just want to lie down and die

Writing this very personal post here because nobody reads this blog but I need to vent somewhere.

HOLY SH@T AN UPDATE!!

*wipes cobwebs away*

Okay so I haven't written a new blog entry for almost a year. It's because 1) I don't draw much 2) I no longer have time to ramble here 3) it feels like talking to a wall 4) I sort of moved to twitter with my doodles and wips. :B

Where did 2015 go?!

Seriously, 2015 just started and it ended so fast. I didn't post much here this year. I kinda lost interest in this blog because I lost interest in drawing and "fangirling" in general by the end of the year. Still, I'd like to continue drawing in 2016. I haven't sent a message to my commissioners about canceling commissions yet because I'd still like to try in these 4 free days I currently have until Monday.

I didn't draw enough in 2015 because I kinda got back to playing AND watching random dumb games. Getting a smartphone for my birthday didn't help because I got into playing smartphone games too. I even considered buying Final Fantasy III for my phone, but I thought it was too expensive. I also have a full time job now, so I spend my weekdays working, then going to tumblr and/or twitter and playing games for a short while. I usually don't have the inspiration and energy to work on drawings...

Anyway, let's post some things I've been working on:

Wow, it didn't turn grey! 8D Apparently, I only posted this one on twitter. It's a quick scribble I did of waka!Sin before going to sleep, maybe. This one is back from summer, but I haven't updated this blog since then... (I won't be posting the ones I have finished and posted on tumblr or deviantART.)

David and Sinbad. I'm still into Magi. I'm also very excited about the whole Sinbad-David deal, though I have a bad feeling that Magi will end in a disappointing way. I have many ideas with these two, including a dumb parody of a famous painting.

Reigisa scribble I did for a friend's birthday. Unfortunately, I had no motivation and time to finish it on time.

Sinbad again. This is part of a larger concept sketch I probably won't finish.

Random girl I doodled in a few seconds, probably. She's not naked, I was just too lazy to draw her clothes.

Another random girl.

I have no explanation for this, but I kinda like how it turned out.
I just doodled a really rough sketch on "Pocky Day" (11.11.) before going to work, but I didn't decide on the characters at the time and they were basically 2 awkward scribbly potatoes done in 2 minutes or less. Then came the idea to do SinSeren later but Pocky Day was no longer actual, so no pocky for them. Maybe I should post this on tumblr...

Okay, that's it for the end of the year. I hope I can continue drawing and doing commissions in 2016. I'd really like to improve and make more money with commissions. That's my new years' resolution, haha. Happy New Year!!

Worst storm I've ever seen

I don't write about personal things a lot because nothing interesting happens to me. But yesterday we had a terrible storm where I live and I just have to write about it a little.

Putting it under a read more because of reasons.

Not dead yet

Yes, I only come here once in every few months, it seems. Truth to be told, my friendship deteriorated with most of the people who used to follow/view this blog years ago, so I'm not so enthusiastic about updating any longer. Plus I forgot how to draw. :B

And I also got myself a twitter account in March. I've been uploading the few things I'm working on there. However, I think I'll still keep this blog. It's a nice archive for myself. Better than twitter because I can actually find things I posted months or years ago.

This was the first sketch I posted on twitter. I also coloured and posted it on dA, but I still prefer the sketch. I don't like how the coloured version turned out.

Sinbad is my big obsession, I still haven't stopped doing countless little sketches of him. And I wanted to draw an angry Sinbad for once. I find him very attractive when he's angry/serious.

Not sure if I should finish this. It's a random VinceAda thing I did based on a photo. I suck at drawing long hair, uuugh.

I drew this for the 69 minutes challenge on twitter. I'm amazed I managed to draw it in only 69 minutes, though I had the concept and reference ready before I actually started drawing it. (Even just planning a drawing can take long. If I don't have an actual idea, I can spend 20 minutes staring into the void and drawing random lines that make no sense before giving up.)

This was drawn after the last PH chapter came out. Just a warm-up practice thingy of Vincent.

Little Lacie dancing in the blood of her enemies. I originally wanted to draw Jack all beaten up but then I drew Lacie. Her legs may be too short, idk.

My next PH Tarot card, I'm working on this right now. I did the characters separately and randomly inserted them on my template and I was surprised how well they fit. The background is too gaudy at the moment, I'll probably tone down the pinks later. I had a lot of issues with this card because I wanted to come up with some super cool symbolic concept and all but nothing I could do looked good enough, so I had to resort to something simple.

The sparrows are so annoying today, I can't concentrate on drawing because of them. This year we even have woodpeckers, Eurasian jays and doves.

And we also have a cheeky chickadee. We feed them walnuts besides the sunflower seeds. They love walnuts. Yesterday morning I wasn't feeling well (I often have stomachaches lately) and lied down on my bed for a bit. I opened my window because most "unwanted" birds (pigeons, jays, etc.) are afraid of an open window and won't dare to eat the chickadees' food while it's open. However, there weren't any walnuts left in their feeder, just the ones my mother had cut up and put on the table earlier.
So our favourite cheeky chickadee comes. She (I assume it's a female) doesn't find any nut pieces in their basket left, starts searching and jumps on the inner frame of the window. She looks around for a bit, then comes in and flies on the table. She found the freaking nuts my mom put there for me to put in their feeder later. So she walked there, picked up a piece of nut, knocked another piece off in the process, then I think she jumped on my armchair with it and finally flew out the window. SO CUTE.
I watched the whole thing from the back of the room from my bed. It's a shame I didn't have my camera with me, I could have filmed it.
Last summer they came in to the kitchen by accident all the time, but this one bird seems to be way too brave and intelligent. She's also that kind of bird who comes as soon as we open the window. She sits there and waits for us to put food in their basket. Then she starts eating while we are still standing there in the open window close enough to reach her. A few days ago I tried offering her nuts from my hand and even though she was too wary to actually touch my hand, she seemed very tempted and didn't fly away.

I want new music to listen to. I discovered the album The 1975 by The 1975 a couple of months ago and still love it. I used to listen to their songs "Me" and "Fallingforyou" on tumblr a lot and then I finally got their album. My favourites are "Heart Out" and "Robbers".

Okay, I guess I rambled enough for now. Back to drawing VinceAda~

Magi scribbles and The Sims 2 8D

Happy New Year! 8D I know it's super late, but this is my first post in 2015, haha.

I still haven't managed to draw much since last time. I got inspired once and managed to draw a sketch every day for 4-5 days in a row, but then I gave up and started watching anime and play The Sims 2 instead. The recent Levi drawing I posted on tumblr is from that random inspired time.

I did several practice doodles of Ja'far when I wanted to draw him for a friend's birthday in the beginning of February. Ja'far is her favourite from Magi and I dislike Nanatsu no Taizai, so Ja'far was the obvious choice for me, lol. Maybe I should have finished this one instead of the one I ended up finishing, but I didn't like how his face turned out here.

This is an OC doodle that somehow happened. I created this character many years ago after waking up from a movie-like dream. My OCs always change a lot in my head and I keep changing even basic stuff like their names, but I guess "Darshana" finally got stuck as this girl's name.

This is her old outfit which I don't really like anymore. :/ She had straight hair on my first designs of her because it took me forever to learn how to draw this wavy "flowy" hair. I wanted to make her feminine in appearance but masculine in personality. I often try to imagine her actions and interactions with other characters while imagining how an outgoing charismatic and overconfident male character would act. And I like it. XD I just had to create a male attendant for her who balances her out a little, he becomes nervous, embarrassed or worries in her place and makes her stop when she goes overboard. I'll draw him too one day.

Obligatory Sinbad scribbles, duh. I'm still so addicted to drawing him, I hate him so much ugh...

Really quick doodle I did after one of the recent Sinbad no Bouken chapters. OMG my baby is growing facial hair already?! XDD He's growing up so fast, jeez.

Aaand this is not my art. It's a birthday present I finally got recently. My favourite PH boys wishing me a happy birthday, yay~ <3 I'm posting it here because having it here may be safer than having it on my PC or my external HDD. (I apparently lost two or three months worth of old photos thanks to my external HDD - some of them were important personal memories.)

Okay, I guess that's all the unfinished stuff I wanted to post for now. (I have some more messy scribbles, but they are too shitty to post even here.) I'd like to finish at least one of my old Sinbad drawings this weekend. I'll pray to the animu gods to give me patience and inspiration, haha.

One of the many times the Reaper came

Oh yeah, and I wanted to write about a funny story that happened in my The Sims 2 game (I shouldn't have downloaded it last year when EA made it downloadable for free. X'D).
One of my favourite sims refuses to die. XD
He's a guy with romance aspiration and pleasure secondary aspiration. I created him as a university student sometime last year. He's now an elder who reached the end of his life (he lived a great happy life fulfilling his lifetime wants twice - reaching the top of the Athletics career and WooHooing with 20 sims), but when the Grim Reaper comes at 6 pm, he throws himself on his knees and begs for his life. Then the Grim Reaper offers to play a guessing game and my sim always wins. XDD If he keeps this up, he's gonna live forever, lol.

Wife crying on the right, but he won

Eventually, he managed to outlive his wife who was actually a couple of days younger than him (she died normally like every other sim). I also realized this is probably not a glitch. I saved the game before 6 pm and kept reloading a few times and one time my sim ended up choosing the Reaper's wrong hand during the game and died. But I didn't save the game when that happened, so he's still alive and keeps messing with the Grim Reaper every day, hahaha. After losing the game, the Reaper leaves and my sim doesn't get a day older. 8D
Update:
I finally figured out why he didn't die! Back when he was still in college, he randomly got a magic lamp and one of the wishes he made was being able to trick the Grim Reaper. I didn't consider this possibility at first because I thought the effect of this wish would "wear off", but apparently it didn't. Anyway, after losing to the Grim Reaper twice in a row, I saved the game and let him go. He was a fun sim to play, may his 4 children prove to be just as fun. RIP. XD

Okay, I'll shut up now. I also wanna ramble about anime/manga and the latest PH chapter (I'd like to draw Aliceee and Ozzz), but I'll do that on deviantART eventually. Now I'll go and work on the drawings I want to finish. Bye for now~

Last post of 2014: VinceAda Hell

Long time no post again. To be honest, I haven't been drawing much. I'd thought I'd be able to draw so much in December, but I failed. orz I'm trying to draw for at least 1 hour every day, though. But it seems I'm only getting worse and worse... ;___;

This is a scribble I did for Halloween. It wasn't turning out well, so I never finished it.

Very quick draft for a big picture I'd like to draw one day. Knowing myself I'll never draw it in the end, but I'm posting this here as a reminder because I may end up commissioning someone to draw it for me.

I was tagged with a kiss meme on deviantART a long time ago and this sketch was done for that meme. It's "kiss on the shoulder" VinceAda style.

More VinceAda. This is almost finished, though still needs a lot of tweaking and amending. Whyisitsobrightasdds... I originally did the base scribble of this in October and it wasn't refined or anything, just two stick figures facing each other, but I saved it for some reason. So I opened the file a few days ago and turned them into Vincent and Ada. I hope I can post this somewhere today.

That's all I have to post for now. I don't even know what I'm doing but I somehow manage to waste my time pretty effectively... I guess I spent a lot of time on tumblr this year. I also keep watching anime and reading manga and talking to people on deviantART. I also started playing some computer games again. For example, I downloaded The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection when it was available to download for free during summer. I only started playing it in October, but Sims games were always somewhat addictive for me.

I love the evil snowmen grouchy sims build, lol. I think I've tried out all the expansion packs I never had (I only had the base game). The Pets expansion is probably the least fun for me even though I'd expected to like that one. But I really enjoy the addition of changing seasons, the new romantic interactions and I like sending my teenagers to university. And I suck at managing stores with Open for Business, lol. Anyway, now I don't know how I was able to play The Sims 2 without any expansions. One thing I don't like is how the game handles the personality points of sims who are born ingame. I usually get hyperactive hyper grouchy sims.

Another issue is the first serious glitch I've experienced. My teenage boy got 7,000 Simoleons of scholarship (+500 when I moved him in), all of his skills were at least level 8. But for some reason, there was a "cap" placed on the class performance meter thingy below the line and it stayed in the red zone no matter how many homeworks or essays he did. This means he cannot complete even the first semester and he'll eventually be kicked out and sent back to the main neighbourhood. Apparently, this glitch occurs if you put several valuable objects in your teen's inventory before sending them to university. (Since you can't give them money from their home household, giving them objects is the only way to raise their scholarship and allow them to buy better household items.) But if you move them to a dorm instead of a house, the class performance cap thingy doesn't appear.

Anyway, it seems I'm cursed with Sims glitches, haha. Or it's just that the game doesn't like what I want to do with it.

I don't think anybody is reading this blog anymore, but Happy New Year to everyone! I'll definitely try to do unproductive things less and draw more in 2015.