Academic
- I started as a Research Scientist at Adobe! My first month and a half has been a whirlwind of meeting new people and learning about all of the many products and projects here, but everyone has been super welcoming. Gotta figure out what to work on next!
Art
- Tabled at Anime Expo in July! It was crazy crowded and I don’t think I would have survived if it wasn’t for my artist badge. Still, I had lots of fun (and was able to attend some fun things, like the Card Captor Sakura Clear Card Arc premiere and a dance where Hachiouji-P was DJing!)
- I also tabled at Crunchyroll Expo‘s artist alley! It was pretty good traffic for a first-year convention, and I had fun doing lots of commissions for people! I also got to meet Keiichi Sigsawa, the author of Kino’s Travels, and give him a drawing! Yoshitaka Amano of Final Fantasy fame was also there, but I wasn’t able to snag an autograph ticket.
- A week later, I flew to San Antonio to table at San Japan! Traffic was down (understandably, considering a sizable number of attendees probably weren’t able to come due to the hurricane), but I was heartened to see a lot of the artists were raising funds for Hurricane Harvey relief or setting aside portions of their sales for donations. Did more commissions there as well!
- Finished some commissions I had remaining from Fanime!
- I… realized I really didn’t do much other art this quarter, so I decided to only take ink/pencil at-con commissions from now on so I have time to work on personal artwork. I hope this works out!
- Redesigned my Card Captor Sakura charms!
- Started working on a book cover design for a poet friend, and continuing to do front-end development/design work for my sister’s online trading card game store. Hopefully I can show off the results of both of those soon!
Personal
- Travel: I went on a fun trip with my partner and his family! After they came up for his graduation, we spent some time in the Bay Area exploring restaurants. Then we went on a road trip to Los Angeles and stopped by Disneyland and Universal Studios on the way!
- Anime: New Game! (cute, and becoming more interesting because there are actually conflicts between characters now), Magical Circle Guru Guru (relaxing, cute, funny!), Welcome to the Ballroom (promising, but characters and plot are turning out to be boring), Rakugo S2 (holy cow what a good anime), My Hero Academia S2 (I love all the kids), Tsuredure Children (mixed feelings? super cheesy/cringey, but funny at times)
- Tried: Clean Freak Aoyama (a little funny, but not enough to keep watching it), Little Witch Academia (why can’t I finish this show?), Fastest Finger First (boring)
- My partner and I also experimented with watching the Japanese dub of RWBY, and it was interesting to see how differently they pace the episodes!
- Games: I finished FFXIV Stormblood! Though I liked the Heavensward environment/music better, I really liked Stormblood’s overall plot and characters! Learning about the Xaela and Raen were super neat portions of lore.
- Pocket Card Jockey is a 3DS game by GAME FREAK where you race horses by playing solitaire, which I picked up because it was on sale for 30% off! It is extremely addicting and cute. There’s a demo! Go pick it up!
- I also tried out the Miitopia demo on a friend’s recommendation and I liked it more than expected! It’s an RPG, but the game randomly assigns Miis (both your own and those made by others) to NPC roles throughout the game which makes for some very wacky, very screenshottable situations. There’s also a cute relationship mechanic where characters in your party can interact in different ways as their relationship develops through battle and while resting at inns. I’m not sure I like it enough to pick up the full game, though.
- Still working on Persona 5! And FF15… which I’ll finish… eventually…
- Podcasts: The Adventure Zone: Balance wrapped up, and man, it turned out to be one of my favorite stories in any medium. I also finished the latest season of Rose Buddies, and stuck with it as the hosts decided they didn’t want to cover The Bachelor(ette) anymore and pivoted it into a new podcast called Wonderful! which has been very positive and cute so far! Also trying out The Besties and The Polygon Show, though I’m not sure I need to listen to multiple video game podcasts at once.
- Other:
- Went with some friends to the FFXIV Trials of Bahamut Escape Game! We got painfully close to figuring it out. It was fun, though!
- I. SAW. HAMILTON. OH. MY. GOD. IT. WAS. GOOD. LIVE.
- Ran my third session of D&D! I think I’m getting better at moving my 6-person party of players through dungeons more quickly. I hope I can keep this up!
- Watched the first few episodes of Dad of Light! It’s cute so far.
- Oh yeah I turned 28 and received some books and tamagotchis for my birthday. Already the best year ever!