So we just moved out of our house into an apartment two weeks ago. By 'we' I mean myself, my mom and my brother, the latter of which does not even have a bedroom and has to make due sleeping in the livingroom on the pull-out bed/chair thing we bought him. A bit tough getting used to things but it's actually not that much smaller than our house was, believe it or not...mostly it's a lack of basement space, but the basement is also fuckin' huge so hopefully eventually we'll be permitted to use part of it...

Oh, right, let me explain. My Aunt El passed away back in March after various illness complications for the past few years, which is especially a shame because she was always s tough, active, outgoing old lady (she was going white-water rafting when she was 80...how's that?). She was 92. She lived in the apartment we're in now with her granddaughter, our cousin Beth (Italians really don't distinguish between first/second/whatever-removed/etc cousins, so I guess she's technically my mom's cousin but we don't pay attention to stuff like that), living in the apartment upstairs. When she died, Beth was looking to rent the apartment, and we just happened to be looking at the same time, because my father essentially wanted to kick us out of our house of I believe 14 years...it's a long, complicated story, and the only people who bother to even read this know it anyways, so whatever. But yeah. We've still got a LOT of boxes to unpack and that probably won't happen until Thanksgiving break at this rate, but we're adjusting.

One thing that makes me really really like OMG excited about this compared to my old house - WELCOME ME TO THE 21ST CENTURY GUISE BECAUSE LIEK ZOMG I DON'T HAVE DIAL-UP ANYMORE!!111ONE!!!1 Yes, that's right, because all those commercials that tell you 'you can get DSL no matter where you live' are bullshit liars, trust me, we've tried them all. We were stuck on dial-up because we lived out in the middle of the freakin' woods all these years, and I could only use 'fast' - which really isn't saying much since it sucks - internet at school. But now I finally understand why everyone says the school net isn't 'fast' at all...OMG. No longer do I have to say 'oh I'll watch it tomorrow' when someone sends me a link to a YouTube video, or have to go all summer long unable to keep up with my favorite artists just because I can't handle downloading more than one song at a time (and typically albums and singles come packaged in large .RARs). This excites me. Though we don't have a wifi router yet so I can't go online from my desktop PC, just my laptop...which can get annoying since there are a lot of files and projects on my desktop that aren't on my laptop, and moving files is a pain, but it's also annoying to be working on the desktop but then having to pause to look something up online (like a tutorial) and have to do it on my laptop. Ugh. Also, I don't know where the Hell the printer got packed, which is also my scanner, sooooo it'll still be a bit before I can update...not that I've really done much but sketches recently, but still, I've made two new chars and I wanna get 'em up soon.

Also still obsessed with Umineko. I think it's pretty much officially my favorite media series ever, yes, more than GetBackers, YOU HEARD ME I SAID MORE THAN GETBACKERS. It's so awesome. ^_^ I'm absolutely dying to see tomorrow's new episode of the Anime because it'll contain my favorite part(s) from EP3 of the visual novel, and it'll pretty much be what makes or breaks the Anime for me at this point...if DEEN fucks this up, I lose all faith in season 1 of this series (or for that matter season 2 as well; Higurashi Kai only faired well because they crammed two of the answer arcs into season 1 and had a full 26 episodes to adapt the last two arcs, so they had the time to do it properly...come on, these series' are popular enough, get enough of a budget to do 2 arcs per season DEEN -_- )...but if DEEN does it right - which I'm hoping they do, since I think the last two weeks have been pretty fantastic - then I'll forgive them for everything they've butchered up to this point and for what I'm certain is going to be completely trashed for the fourth arc (considering it's at least 50% backstory, and while Maria's is heartbreaking, I really don't like Ange, she's just a little too Mary Sueish...though her epic moment at the end of EP4 more than makes up for ALL Sueness because OMG). But ooooooooooooooooh, I can't wait until tomorrow, epic Beatrice character development is epic, even if she's the greatest troll ever ;_;

Ahem. So, what else...did I mention I'm working on making a fighting game? I'm now torn between two different engines and kinda playing around with each to decide which I like - a more traditional fighting game (ala Capcom and SNK series', or a fighting game/beat 'em up style game with a lot of unique features. You'd think the second one would be the no brainer, but there's a lot that goes into making a game that has to be considered, and I'm currently exploring my options as well as organizing my characters, their elements, fighting styles, and everything else that goes into that aspect of it. The roster currently stands at 30, so I've got a lot of work cut out for me, but I'm really excited to see what I can do.

Ah, but the main reason I decided to make a journal this morning was this. As I said, I find the notion that more than 5 people out of my many many watchers even bother to read my journals to be doubtful, but let me take a shot at this nonetheless. I'm trying to explore new digital coloring styles that I feel suit me. I'm not fond of styles that look particularly digital, personally - styles with no outlines, things that 'op' more three-dimensionally, with lots of shading and blending, etc. My current style is a more cartoonish, cel-shaded look that I feel suits my style more than would one of those uber-blended styles, and is more enjoyable for me to do (I've tried the aforementioned styles in the past and have quite honestly hated every minute of the tedious work that goes into it). But it still gives my art a 'digital' look. Basically...I'm wondering if there's a way I can experiment with a coloring style that is done digitally, but looks more like traditional, hand-colored pieces, like professional work done with copic markers or other such media. Does that make sense? I'm poor and I can't exactly afford expensive art tools like that, and frankly I find digital art easier and just more doable - I work faster and more efficiently on a computer. And I'm certain there are ways to replicate a more traditional work digitally, because I've seen it done. Most Manga and comic book artists do their color pages digitally these days, but many still go for a more traditional look. Anyone know where I could find a tutorial or some tips on GIMP/Photoshop/etc digital coloring styles that might help with this? The alternative is experimenting until I find something I'm satisfied with, but I figure I'll try to take the easy way first >.>; Yahoo! Answers failed me, so...halpplz

The end.