Goodbye 2010

What a lousy year, good riddance!

Now onto the laziest New Year art in the history of mankind.

Actually, I did something semi-nice for xmas, but didn't post it anywhere.

Best thing in 2010: THE SISTERS' LUCK released. 

Worse thing in 2010: THE SISTERS' LUCK reviewed. 

FAVORITE THINGS in 2010: Adam Hills, Assassin's Creed II, Steam sales, Walnut Ink, Dr.Ph. Martin's Hydrus, A3 papers. 

FAVORITE THINGS I can't have in 2010: ipod touch, macbook air. 

In 2011, I want to: 

Finish one GN. 

Get some illustration jobs. 

Get some flatting jobs. 

Write more prose. 

Write more blog. 

Read more books. 

Read less porn. 

Here's some doodles to end the post: 

Fooling around

Playing with sepia ink and then photoshop.

Cable Destroyer

Every time my internet slows to crawling, especially when trying to connect to foreign servers, I imagine a sperm whale tipping the underwater cable, or maybe a giant squid.

Panic 1

My many, many pens.

I love pens. I went through so many of these before I switched to dip pens, then digital, then brushes. But I still have them in handy, for a quick doodles and drafts. You'd think they're basically the same. But there's subtle differences in each brand. My current favorite is the Faber-Castell PITT artist pen, which I just discovered this year, not sure why I like it over the others. It just feels different. The others are Sakura Pigma Micron, which is the default brand, most known here in Thailand. Not bad, does the job, but the ink tends to pool and bleed even on the bestest paper. Copic multiliner & multiliner SP, guarantees to work with Copic Marker (also same premium price.) not sure what's the different between the two, except the SP is metallic and shiny, and comes in a very very fine point of 0.03, catering to all your shoujo line needs. Staedtler Pigment Liner, no bleed, no pool, works great, also never seen them here.

Temple Dog

A temple dog (หมาวัด) is, literally, a stray dog that hangs around a (buddhist) temple. But it can also mean a poor—as in, not rich—young man, especially one that dares to desire a woman with ...superior attributes.

It can also generally mean a person of no prestige, often used in insulting, mocking or pitying tone like when you want to talk about people who desire or do something without being conscious of their class, those who dare to dream beyond their birthright.

Mysterious fruit

fruits from my hometown, I honestly don't know Thai name for it, much less English name. My parents only knew Khmer name, I won't even try to spell it. X_X

This is not mysterious, it's unripe mango, with sweet fish sauce dipping. (Made of fish sauce, lots of sugar, shallot, chili and I don't know what else).

Pavlov's Dream #38! The Sisters' Luck was sighted in various bookstores, and people actually bought it! Thanks to everyone who did, and if you haven't yet, please do. So I can keep on doing comics, Thanks! :)

I doodle while I write. Habit I got from school years I supposed.

Comics stuff update: October 2010

This update is brought to you by chibi Cthulhu


— Pavlov's dream is still going strong. I'm working on additional designs right now, so Sasha's filling in!

— The Sisters' Luck is released, reviews started coming in. There's free wallpapers with every resolutions I can think of, some behind the scenes. And I'm totally working on book 2!

Synergy; one keyboard (and mouse) to rule them all.

This is my workspace as of September 2010, notice anything different? Especially compare to the workspace photo from February. No, not the mess. look again.

There's only one set of keyboard and mouse.

I'm one of those people who have multiple computers next to each other. It's a sad fact that I just can't make it on mac alone. I'm addicted to MMO and most MMO games I played don't support mac, hence my predicament. I always hate having two keyboards on my desk, it seems such a waste of space. I have used KVM before, one which I called my pet tentacles, with so many wires going in and out, and obvious lag in switching, it just wasn't worth the hassle.

So entered Synergy, a software that let you share keyboard and mouse through LAN connection. No extra hardware needed, all you have to do is installing software (free, opensource) on each computer, set one as a server and the rest as clients, and you're done, in theory.

In practice, it's a bit harder than that, just a bit, since the software is still under development. It's stable enough, but not without problems.

PAX-inspired illustrations.

I didn't go to PAX prime this year, which made me very sad. But I got lots of swags, thanks to my friend who infiltrated PAX for me by becoming an enforcer. (kidding)


Based on a comment a guy made at PAX about how Mike (Gabe) and Jerry (Tycho) should cosplay The muppets, so here it is :)


I love Rockband and Guitarhero.


Table Top games seem to be the spirit of PAX, I never played one myself. Closest thing to TTG I play is TGC, trading card games, in which, I got quite a few;



Without spending a dime, some hand-me-down, some free promotional decks. I enjoy playing it occasionally.


Bonus, fish in a box.

Thai supermarket tour.

For no particular reason, let me guide you to the finer establishment known as Tesco Lotus supermarket. I was fighting a nasty case of artist/writer's block this evening and decided to tag along with my mom and aunt-in-law for some food for tomorrow's BBQ, (no special occasion, just a feel-like-it BBQ.)

The transportation of choice was a small green scooter/motorcycle. And yes, we carried all the groceries on the trip back home; the BBQ stuff plus assorted household supplies. Too bad I couldn't take photo of us doing that, but just google indian/asian family on motorcycle, you'll get some idea.


Yeah, there's movie theaters, now showing: Resident Evil 4. And a thai horror movie about ghost of pregnant women.


Arguably the most important aisle in the supermarket.

Last week of July; I'm being a bum.

A picture is worth a thousand words—or I don't really have anything to write about, so here's what I have been doing, not in any particular order:


Pavlov's dream; time out.


Happy boy in the cloud.

Second week of May; Robot Unicorn’s adventure in Linuxland.

 

Pavlov’s Dream Page 19, Micha lost his hat! *gasp*

Not much to show on the comic department, since everything is at writing/planning stage.

A lot of things to talk about at the distraction department though, it’s a wonder I ever get anything done these days!

First, the infamous Robot Unicorn Attack. This game is crack-done-right; It’s a combination of absurd concept taken to the top, tried-and-true gameplay mechanism plus actual quality in execution. I think the soundtrack (Always – Erasure) also plays a big role.

My fingers started to twitch involuntarily after 30k.

On other gaming news; Steam for Mac! With free Portal! I got it of course, never said no to free stuff (Unless you can see obvious strings attached) and downloaded  Torchlight demo. So far so good, but I want to see more AAA titles available for mac  before I make any judgment. One complaint though; where’s menubar icon? I like menubar icon!

Last of the distraction; over the weekend, I decided I wanted some lightweight Linux on my EEE 900HA netbook, because waiting 5 seconds for each window (even an empty folder!) to completely loaded up is ridiculous. Don’t make me say how long I had to wait for ‘add and remove programs’, grrr.

I never used any linux before. But I do enjoy installing (and breaking) things. My criteria is simple, all I need on this netbook is Browser, Dropbox and some kind of word processor that can open .doc. I started with googling ‘lightweight linux for eee’, and ‘lightweight linux for netbook’ which brought me;

-- Puppeee Linux. I was sold by the name alone. But after trying it out for a few hours, I found that there’s such thing as ‘too lightweight’. For one thing, I can’t figure out how to install Dropbox on it to save my life. So it’s a no go.

-- Jolicloud. Everything seemed fine except that I hate having to register to their site to use an OS. And I hate ‘cloud computing’, whatever the hell that means. And really, why do I want to know which apps people are installing? Some kind of nerd voyeurism? 

-- Ubuntu Netbook Edition. First time I installed it, it didn’t work, produced a lot of error booting up and shutting down. So I tried to wipe it off and installed it again, worked better second time, but really, it was about as fast as XP, and as prone to crash as XP as well. What’s the point?

-- Xubuntu. The same as Ubuntu, just with prefix, different look and a –tad-- faster. It worked well enough and I could have stuck to it, but I really want something more lightweight. And I really don’t see the point of using linux that looks like windows…

Which brought me to final candidate, one which I’m currently using, and probably here to stay:

-- #! Crunchbang linux. Confession time; I misread the name as ‘Churchbang linux’ for about half a day before I realized it, no wonder I can’t find anything worthwhile when I googled the name. Crunchbang linux is basically a lightweight Ubuntu (at least the current version is, the next version is gonna be based on Debian instead) with just enough GUI to get by, a lot of administrations/configurations are done via terminal/text file config, just enough to keep me on my toes and make things interesting. And I like abusing sudo apt-get, the bestest way to install programs, imo.

Isn’t it pretty?

First week of May.

First, the big news would be that Zuda, as it was, is no more.

They have eliminated the monthly competition entirely. It used to be that they pick 10 comics each month and let readers vote, which comic get most vote would get to be serialized on the site. Pavlov’s Dream which I co-created with @bicyclefish was in the January 2010 Competition (we ended up rank 6). I admitted that I both like and hate being in the competition. January was the most stressful month so far and I was glad it was over. But I’m definitely sad to see that there will be no more competition. After all, it was the reason that Pavlov’s Dream was born. I have 2 more stories I was working on which I had to put on hold for now, just to see what will happen next. My guess would be that Zuda will move to ‘instant win only’ model, which is at best, one comic every few months. I feel like the door was definitely shut. But we will see, @bicyclefish wrote a thought on this as well, check it out if you are curious.

Here’s some drafts of Zuda entry that will never be:

I might try to adapt these two to some other format, or maybe there will be other venues open up in the future, who knows.

I’m currently working on sisters’ luck book 2, speaking of which, I need to finish website for it, at least before the book comes out.

On a more personal news; I’m going back to school, in pursue of a bachelor degree. A degree in which I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do with it. But I guess Bachelor degree is the new high school and it’s your civic duty to finish it, or something.

There’s nothing caught my eyes on the internet this week, not even Youtube cat, On to next week!

Forth week of April

It's last week of April! Holy crap, where did the time go?

This week's Pavlov's Dream; It's Sasha's interview with famous dead people, and he's still with Ivan Pavlov, who never really got to finish his lecture. Main storyline will be resumed next week!

Machine golem comics is fully up and running. I'll give it a couple of months to see if everything will work as (I) expected. If nothing's gone wrong, I'll post about how to set it all up later.

New books to read, courtesy of @bicyclefish. Soulless by Gail Carriger and Demian by Hermann Hesse. I have skimmed read Demian before but didn't finish it, was distracted by Rockband.

I want more new reading materials but I rarely venture out to buy dead tree books and it's hard to fine non-DRM ebooks that aren't porn erotica romance or public domain.

Last of woe-is-me; I absolutely despised Thailand Post. This package would have been in better condition if it was dropped from a plane. Jesus Christ.

The ink was brand new despite how it looked like it went through WWII.


Let me end this post with a movie I wanna see (but probably won't get to). A movie adaptation of a comic that isn't superhero or hipster (or god-forbid, hipster superhero). Les Aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec (The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec)

Third week of April

Let's start with Page 17 of Pavlov's Dream. I'm getting the hang of drawing this!

Major change on my sites (note the plural), which probably confused everyone including myself. I'll just pretend that last couple of months I was on high acid trip and can't remember anything. I moved main blog back to sharii.com while giving Pavlov's Dream and Beleth their own set ups. I just got tired of trying to customize Wordpress just so I can have everything in one place the way I want it. By separating everything, the pros are
1) Clean site structure and URL.
2) Easier navigation for each comics and blogs.
3) Proper automate archives, no more manual pages.
4) Everything out of the box, I don't have to heavily customize anything.

Cons
1) Separated feeds, who's gonna keep track of me ;_;
2) I feel like I have too many sites to take care of.
3) Did I mention separated feeds?

It's a trade off I'm willing to make. And I really hope this set up is working cos I don't want to change anything anymore.

What am I working on besides Pavlov's Dream? How about a new original GN? Here's the back cover for The Sisters' Luck.

I'm hoping to put up preview pages soon, after everything is finalized.

Lastly, is there anyone who actually haven't seen the ipad cat yet? I watched the clip went from 1K views to 1M views in one day. The awesome power of twitter.

January 2010 Zuda had concluded

And congratulation to Matthew Petz! We will be anxiously waiting for more War of the Woods.



Thanks to everyone who participated in Pavlov's Dream promotion Contest! Good news is that, all of you will get some swags from us! :D

Pavlov's Dream will definitely be continued here at machinegolem.com, likely will be once a week update till the conclusion. I hope to start as soon as possible but I have some other affairs to sort out first. Meanwhile, you can still read first 8 pages it at Zuda.

I have learned a lot from participating in this contest. It was fun, but on the other hand, I was practically a jumpy ball of nerves all month. I will probably try zuda a few more times. But not immediately, I need to recoup first XD

*Yeah, I just happened to have hugging otters plushie from seaworld lying around :D

Pavlov’s Dream; reviews roundsup

Zuda January 2010 is almost over. Although Pavlov's Dream hadn't done as good as we would have liked (we are noob when it comes to pimping). We are happy to get to be in the competition and to hear a lot of useful feedback that would help us improve in future project. Here's the reviews so far:

Mike Perridge (mpd57)
[...]It does worryingly shift slightly over the course of eight screens from a lush but subtle European illustrated children’s tale into something more noticeably Manga-ish and I hope the creatives can pull back from that just a little. Seems a shame to make it so obvious when there was a cool blend going on to begin with. Even if it does go the whole hog and develop into that manga style I still think it’ll look good and read well. I was happy to be rid of the picto-grams myself but it’s all a question of personal taste.

Despite my own tastes I think this is good work all round and deserves a lot better. The synopsis is solid too – not that it does anything more than any other synopsis is supposed to do, but just a great choice of words and plain language. Lots of people have a go at this kind of ‘junior’ reading thing and fail badly because they think the target audience will be easier on them, but quality is quality is quality and audience age doesn’t have a great deal to do with it. At some point these creatives will pull through with something somewhere. One wonders how long Zuda can keep showing talent in order for other publishers to cherry pick the best talent. I know it doesn’t really work like that, but that must be at least the perception among some viewers. This should be fighting for the win.

Pavlov's Dream: Podcast review

This is a podcast review of every comics in January 2010 Zuda competition by Digital Strips. Kelsie had transcribed the part where Pavlov's dream was mentioned:

20:04

Steve: Moving right along to something that definitely does not have a straight black background, "Pavlov's Dream" by Shari Chankhamma. What did you think of this one? Little more colorful.

Jason: Little more colorful. This is my art pick of the month, because it's... ah, it's just so gorgeous. It's lush, it's very... very kid friendly, it's very, just detailed. The colors have so many nuances to them. It's very... *laughs* I keep saying very a lot. And... but it is very. It's got that anime feel to it, definitely, but it's just a lot of fun to look at. It's just fun to read. And the panel layouts work well, I think, to the effect of the strip instead of the determents. To me it's basically "The Chronicles of Narnia" or at least "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" with a couple other beats thrown in. But, uh, I think it's well done. If you like the anime style then you're gonna love this. if not, then you should still love it for the colors alone. They just pop off the page. I think that made it fun to read. I would consider reading it just cuz the art is very... I always forgot how he pronounces it... is it Miyazaki, that did "Spirited Away" and "Princess Mononoke". It's very that. And the fish on the last page definitely makes me think of that. I would read this one just for the art.

Steve: That's basically all I can say. The art is very good on this one. Story not very fitting of Zuda, just cuz it doesn't end on a "hook you" moment. But the whole thing is good.

Extra points to them for pronouncing my name right :D

Read and vote for Pavlov's Dream ♥

Contest Contest Contest! Win free stuff!

I called it contest but it's more like a sweepstakes XD

To thank everyone for participating in this month's Zuda I'm holding a contest, and everyone is eligible. The prize is the goodie package shown in the photo below which contains a set of five pinback buttons, four postcards, four bookmarks, and a copy of "Beleth's Library of Eclecticism".

To enter, send an email to shari.hes@gmail.com with the subject line: "Pavlov's Dream: January Zuda Contest". In the body include your name (real or screen) and email address where you can be reached.

On the last day of the January Zuda competition three names will be randomly drawn and email notifications sent. The prizes will be mailed out ASAP once the winners are contacted. If any winner cannot be reached within 2 days of the email notifications, another name will be drawn.

Please don't hesitate to enter, you might be the only one who do! Free goodies are nothing to sneeze at XD

Don't forget to read and vote for Pavlov's Dream!

Pavlov's Dream: early concept art

We came up with idea for Pavlov's dream in January 2009—which feels like a lifetime away. Started with idea of talking shadow and it went from there.





Originally, the colors and style were going to be dreamier, but while it worked as individual illustration, I feel that the entire comic through the blur filter is a little bit much.

Read and vote for Pavlov's Dream here. :D

Pavlov's Dream; Zuda's Jan 2010 competition

Finally, I can tell the world about this! XD

If you haven't heard of zuda before. it's a webcomic site run by DC where every month they select 10 comics to advance to the competition. The winning comic will then be serialized on the site. This month my comic (co-written with kayay) is in the competition!

Pavlov's Dream is about brothers, Micha and Sasha, who accidentally tumble into the land of the death. Not only they have to find a way back to the land of living, they also have to fix the mess that their brief adventure in the land of the death brings.

Read it, vote it, fav it, rate it, comment it, anything! (If you like it, that is :D) I'll be very happy to hear any feedback too!

Yeah, this is basically same post as on LJ, if you have read it there already, I apologize for the bombardment XD.