Academic
- I presented Storia, my MSR research project on generating story summaries of social media events using narrative structure, at CSCW 2016 in February! It was held at the Hyatt in San Francisco.
- I secured a Yahoo Internship for the summer! I was originally going to intern with Yahoo Research, but, uh, some stuff happened. But the silver lining is this: I now get to intern with Yahoo UX Research, which is awesome because UX research is a career path I’m definitely considering for after I graduate.
- Committee assembled! Defense scheduled! I’m going to be defending at the end of May.
Art
- I finished Herogirl Chapter 4! I’m not super happy with this chapter, storytelling-wise. Chapter 5 is shaping up to be more interesting.
- I… have 2,000+ likes on Facebook? This is sort of nuts!
- I tabled at Sacanime in Sacramento! This is probably the furthest I’ve traveled for a con. It was nice to actually have some time to hang out with artist friends! I also had con roommates for the first time, which turned out awesome. The con itself was super slow at first — partially because Christmas had just happened, partially because it was New Year’s weekend, and partially because the Artist Alley was too big for the attendance count — but picked up later in the weekend. Strangely, I sold less merch than usual, but wayyyy more commissions than I’m used to! I actually had to turn people down, and even then I was finishing them up for about a month after the show was over. I’ll probably not do Sacanime Winter again, but I’ll give Sacanime Summer a go next year!
- I also tabled at AOD (the first show I ever did! Daw.) and Anime Destiny (first time there!). Again, so many commissions.
- I started streaming artwork on Twitch! My stream is set-up all fancy-like, with an overlay and everything! I also started posting the recorded videos as speedpaints on Youtube.
- Due to the lack of traffic I experienced on Storenvy, I moved my store to Etsy! I’ve been dabbling in learning a bit about SEO here and there and tweaking my listings, and it’s super exciting to see people finding my stuff and favorting them.
- I participated in the Undertale Album Project! Artists were paired to a musician and asked to create a piece of artwork that matched the track created by the musician. I was assigned to create artwork for Helena Ruth’s lovely track, Fallen Back. Really fun to do a collab with another creator.
- Lots of merch firsts: acrylic charms, a collaborative zine, and Nintendo-themed valentines!
Personal
- Sadly, no travel or books to report. I need to at least get back in the habit of reading regularly.
- Anime: Haikyuu S2 (beautiful animation and story as ever!), ERASED (my vote for best anime of the season. Chilling story with characters full of hope. Really good!), Silver Spoon (hilarious moments of humor, nice story about kids wanting to achieve their dreams! I feel ya, kids.), Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu (unsure about this one at first, but the story and cinematography is A+), Love Live s2 + movie (not as good as the first? seems like a rehash of the same themes, with nothing different), RWBY S1 (surprisingly good for such short episodes and low budget!)
- Tried: Myriad Phantom World (there’s no plot?), Sekko Boys (weird), Dagashi Kashi (boring?), Prince of Stride (too dating sim for me), She and Her Cat (tried on a whim, expected cute, got depressing)
- Games: I bought Animal Crossing: New Leaf, and spent too much time on it. As of this writing, I have weaned myself off of it, and I hope I can play it in moderation from now on. And with the announcement of Pokemon Sun and Moon, I got hyped up for pokemon, asked my friend to teach me how to EV-train, so I’ve been raising a battle team. I caught up to Heavensward in FFXIV, played through Firewatch (really pretty and interesting short game), and now I’m spending my mornings with some Stardew Valley over breakfast. I need to get back to FFXII…