[AND I REQUEST A REFUND]
It's official now. I'm not the biggest fan of supernatural phenomenas but now I believe in everything in this world needs to co-exist with the opposite counter part.

I am VERY lucky to be blessed and gifted with creativity and able to come up with may-be-unpractical but new ideas. Especially fictional stories. I don't think I'm the best, but I am confident I can make up pretty entertaining stories and I'm proud of it. Except everything good comes with everything bad and my "bad" payment for this is that I CAN'T CREATE ANY STORIES WITH THE MAIN CHARACTER BEING MY FAVORITE CHARACTER.

What about Verardi Famiglia you say? Well I don't DISLIKE Vincenzo Verardi the 4th... but he is definitely NOT my favorite at ALL. He's fun to draw and a cool character to lead the story with but I had to give him some time to grow on me. I used to pretty much dislike him (not as much as Val) when I first started writing VF. For me, Verardi the 3rd is HANDS DOWN my most favorite character. Other favorites are Raniero, and Cecilio... and the hacker and the chef I've never mentioned before. NONE OF THEM works as the main character nor main character worthy!

[UPDATES AND SOME MORE ANGST]
I was complaining about the whole favorite character things because of the comic I'm working on for Morning International Manga Competition. I was totally going to keep my old rough draft from a year ago but of course I just had to let my beta readers read it. The one opinion that stood out was "the main character didn't make sense". Meaning that the main character was unbelievable and unrealistic because he really didn't have much reason to believe in Doppelgängers other than peer pressure? Even then we was believed in them too much and reacted TOO extremely for his situation. I re-wrote the story like TWICE to make sure he had a reason and then I got stuck multiple times before I realized the freakin main character just didn't work! His personality, his life, and how he thinks prevents the story from being good in every sense.


Unfortunately I liked this character... a LOT. Personality wise, looks wise, pretty much everything about the original main character was likeable for me. He was definitely a cool guy to hang out and optimistic enough but not too much for him to be bubbly happy. But obviously those kind of people are VERY hard to convince that something like Doppelgängers even exist and it takes much more pages and unnecessary dialogs and monologues which makes the climax hasty and rushed.


To fix this I finally scrapped the original character idea and made a completely different guy to be in his spot... someone who can't be content with what he has already, ambitious to be accepted and succeed but in massive stress because everything he does seem to go the wrong way for him, and emotionally unstable because he's an extremist. Or putting it simply someone that I would go up to and say "get some balls" and kick him in the groins. But it ANNOYS me because he's so much more prone to cause what it should happen in the storyline, and makes so much sense for him to take extreme actions! Also because of this new character it made the story so much more creepier than it did before and rightfully placed "You're Not Alone" in the horror/mystery category like it should be. DAMN!!

I think the only story I have with the main character being my favorite character is "Absolute Eschatology" and "Acid Rain". Actually scratch out "Acid Rain" because I don't really care for the main character and she's my favorite just because there's no likeable character in the story other than her. Zii-Lei from "Absolute Eschatology" is a beautiful character though :D He is so messed up but something about him is so loveable and motivated to do things right without being arrogant or crazy LOVE that kid.

ANYWAYZ. I made sure the new character design slightly resembles the original and he appears in the comic as a cameo so hopefully in the future he can have a major role in something else. Until the time, so long!

[DEATH OF MY BEST FRIEND]
NOT a person.
It's my mechanical pencil I think I told people about... the one I used it all through high school 'til now. That pencil was amazing... STAEDTLER Professional Technical Graphing mechanical pencil 0.3mm at least 3 to 4 model generations older than what they currently make. I think I bought it RIGHT before they cancelled it too. I consider my self being pretty un-nostalgic but to think MOST of my drawings I kept and have in my portfolio were sketched/drawn with this pencil and even worse, to look back at all my original VF pages were drawn with it... I truly think it has part of my soul embedded in it.

But now it's beyond repairable since the spring that makes the lead come out is either rusted or too old and the metal clasp to hold the lead in place is so loose it either breaks the lead or slips while I'm drawing. It wouldn't be THAT much of a trouble if I use a harder 0.3 lead but since my favorite is the freakin 2B 0.3 lead any kind of mechanical flaws would snap the lead instantly. Also that thing has so much pieces missing it's funny. So it joined my other mechanical pencil I used all through middle school which I drew the oldest illustration in my portfolio with which I BIT THE HELL OUT OF and made the weight balance went totally screwy and I couldn't draw with anymore. Now I'm using a Pentel pencil, my back-up pencil until I find another one that suits me. The pentel one is the closest fit to my hands except the balance is a tad bit off and it's too light weight for my liking. Although the thickness is helping my fingers with the grip.

Since I'm working on this contest and seriously looking into being a professional comic/manga artist I guess it's a good timing for me to move on to the next step... and I'm TRYING to accept this change as a symbol for the next big challenge but it's really really REALLY hard for me to adjust the tool I've been using EVERY day for over 8 years now. I'll miss it.

[HERE'S MY ABSENCE NOTICE, TEACHER]
With forged signature and without a doctor's note.

I'm forced to stop updating until I'm done with "You're Not Alone". I'd love to keep on posting but life is already forcing me to not work on it at least 3 days every week so I really need to spend the rest in drawing the pages so I can send it off asap. I wish I don't have to... but people just can't accept me working on art and refuse to understand my passion and love to be obsessed with what I dedicate my life to.

Thinking back, my life is all about other people preventing me from drawing <__<;;;
But the stress caused by that struggle has produced MANY good stories since the stories are all my escape routes from reality so like I said earlier; everything that exists needs to have it's opposite counterpart. 
Hopefully if I succeed in my art career enough people will WANT me to draw as much as possible and that would be THE BEST thing that could happen to me. 

I'll be back around mid December so I'll see you all then!

[SNEAK PEEK AT THE UPCOMING WEB COMIC]
Little commercial break :D
For those who don't know yet, I'm currently in the process of producing a new web comic series called "SOUP". I'm still looking for a publisher and what not to get a printed comic book series so mostly I'm doing this to kill time while I get to practice sequential arts. The real reason is to distract me from working on Verardi. Seriously! I let my self draw several illustrations of Vince, and I've been just itching, jumping-around-the-padded-room CRAZY to work on VF. Also one of my best memories of High School IS when i was working on VF, or more on a web comic so... yea just sratch out the first reasoning. I just work on a web comic.



Since I'm not expecting this to be published in any way shape or form out of the web form, I'm making this the most disturbing, mixed message, mixed emotion and heart twisting roller coaster ride in comic page form. Genre is mostly likely to be "brain fuck" since I'm planning on raping people's sense of reality like none other. Ok, I'm exaggerating a bit there ^^; but you can expect to be weirded out at least a bit. Somewhat horror, somewhat social commentary, I HOPE I can entertain those who are looking for something unusual. Sorry no teenage vampires (I just lost a whole chunk of audiences there didn't I)

The story is simple; this kind lady, Amelia, hosts a dinner on Mondays for a bowl of soup. The guests "talk" about their troubles and worries, fears, love, and life and Amelia shall show them the way to "fix" their issues. Sounds very happy peaceful doesn't it >D

It'll be on the web starting Monday, January 8th. 2 pages per week every Monday. Black and white, western standard pages (left to right). I'll post more updates as time closes in!

[BIRTHDAY WISHEZ]
To Meagan, Beth and Kitala.
Sorry I bunched up all of your birthday wishez into this small bunch, but I'm glad you can make it this far and I wish you the greatest luck you can make it until your next birthday...

Ok seriously self, from now on just say HAPPY BIRTHDAY and nothing else!! Your birthday wishes make people depressed, it's cynical and just plain WRONG for a happy day. D<

But honest to goodness I AM happy for you all!

[I WAS DOING SO WELL]
I knew sometime soon I was going to slack off on my schedule and I did so today -__-
My excuse this time is that I didn't really know what to write about after what happened last post and even worse I got a disappointing reply back from said friend who was supporting it and the original personnel who sent me the boycott message in the first place. Apparently I wasn't supposed to "openly" post this matter so my method of sharing my ideas out pissed him off, so I had to deal with that and it's just... I PERSONALLY think there is MUCH more, important, serious issues out there that must be discussed and be pissed at than what can a historical parody can do so I'm dropping this whole discussion.

To those who love APH, LOVE IT, LOVE ON, LOVE IT GOOD.

To those who dislike APH, leave the people who love APH alone. I'm sure someone out there thinks what you like sucks too. Nothing is appreciated by everyone, it's how the world works, try enjoying life.

[MORE EXCUSES!]
I was working on sketches of Verardi Famiglia. DON'T BE EXCITED! I'm not even CLOSE to presenting it to the public, and I was only jotting down ideas that I didn't want to lose, and it was easier for me to just work on the page-layout form and...yeaaaaaa I spent like 4 hours on it ^^; God I LOVE working on Verardi!!! I sketched out the short flash back scene explaining why Vince has that band-aid on his right eyebrow; which I'm sure a lot of you are dieing to know. I even half-assedly started on re-drawing chapter 0 that was online and it felt GREAT to see obvious improvements on my works. So midnight came and went working on something I won't be working on for a while. I'm planning on finishing the birth day pic for Kitala on Dev Art later today and hope to get a good chunk of the art trade I'm doing with Christy (artist and writer of RE:PLAY... I'm drawing her original characters and she's going to draw OMFG VINCE for me. Totally flippin EXCITED) done by the end of the day. After that should make time for me on Thursday to finish up "You're Not Alone" page layouts so I can have it beta tested before seriously working on the manga contest. Since I'm starting the pages TWO WHOLE MONTHS early I am ready for ANY obstacles the world might throw at me like last time! Bring it on!!

OH and my mother won't be around until the 9th of November so that allows me to really concentrate on the early stages which is AMAZING. Oh talking about my mother:

[BURN BABY BURN]


It was amusing. You really can't go against your core DNA blue prints can you?
By the way my grand father is even more of a pyromaniac than my mother. I'm the explosive pyro, he's the loves-to-handle-with-flames pyro who burns his own flammable garbages even if it's strictly forbidden to do so. Apparently controlling the fires like it's a wild animal and taming it is the fun part to him. I laugh at them for calling ME crazy... I wonder where I got them from.