First fortnight in Japan.

After missing out C88, I finally arrived at Japan. I rented a 21m square apartment in Minowa, a few station away from Akibahara station, top of Iriya and Ueno. The renting price is 60,000 yen per month with water bill included. The bad new is I am sick before I came over, this made everything extra hard at the very beginning, but after getting some very effective medicine from Pharmacist next door, I am almost recovered to perfect condition.

Water/Electricity and Gas connection is actually pretty easy, all I needed to do is call their office and they would provide a call back with English speaking staff. However the hard part is internet, I have applied internet though BBapply.com. it is an easy to use 3rd party agency specialize on connection internet for foreigners. The person who taking charge is called Jimmie, he is very helpful and provides help where ever he can. He checked tconnection my place have and suggest me to use Asahi.net for ISP. However even with all the help I can get, it still took 2 weeks for the internet to be actually connected. Mostly due to slow processing time and the fact I need to wait for my ID and Password to be physically mailed to my mail box. Their customer service staff have no access to any of my connecting information. My neighbor living in 201 tried to apply for internet service as well, however he had no luck due to he doesn't have a foreign credit card. And yes it have to be a credit card not a debit card. they told me they have already send the files to ISP, but it might take more than a week for the connection to be established.

Regards mobile service and mobile net. I purchased a prepaid sim card from So-net at B1 Narita airport, the connection it self is pretty stable but the price is slightly higher than other offering. I was going to switch to Bmobile since I heard lots of good words regards the service from internet, however friend told me their connection is really bad. Later on I found out Asahi.net offers mobile sim too, however their service actually requires a contract and foreign credit card to be recorded. But the pricing is way better than any of the prepaid service. It is ￥1000 per month for 3gb of LTE network, it takes a little bit of time(under a week) again for them to send the sim card and my ID/PW however the connection is stable and generally worth the wait.

For phone calls, I purchased a Japanese number from Skype, so I am able to receive phone calls in case of emergency. As for calling, the first month of Skype credit is free, overall speaking this should save some money.

For furniture and electronic appliance, I purchased all my furniture so far from Nitori. Nitori is like A Japan version of Ikea, except it’s even cheaper. Although most furniture requires some sort of Assembly, the whole process is very simple. They offer free delivery service for any purchase more than 7000 yen. For fridge and washing machine, I have followed my agency’s suggestion of purchasing 2nd hand appliance from removal service. Both the fridge and washing machine is only 2 or 3 years old, both under mint condition. In total I paid 30,800 yen for both appliance plus delivery and installation.

The hardest part is banking, as my friend suggested, I tried to open a bank service in Japan Post bank. Everything went smoothly at the beginning, however I lack of the invoice/salary document to open a debit account. After failing to receive Invoice/Salary paper from my employer since I am a contracted Artist not a full time employee, I decided to go to Japan post again the next day, however with different staff at counter, they turned me down, refused to open a bank account with me since my Japanese language skill isn't good enough. They asked me to go to Ueno office instead, since there's might be English service there. I went to the Ueno office, and they turn me down again. So after some research I found out about Shinsei bank, and I am currently trying that one out.

Also I have purchased a hanko with my initial from a hanko store in Akiba. Although most places takes signature, apparently Bank isn't one of such places, The hanko it self cost me 6000 yen, so I better make sure I take a good use out of it XD.

Hopefully my jobs for this month is coming in soon, time to work hard again.

Finally here's a picture of the 27inch monitor I bought from Akiba, it is a display copy but only cost 11000 yen!

Sold out on Comiket!!!

Hurray~ 超弩級艦隊調理バトル ドイツの味! is Sold out on c88.

Thanks Alan and Andy for help minding the table, I failed to apply for visa on time OTL.

And Thanks ACL_myon for translating, the book is not possible without you. XD

... sorry for not printing enough books to sell, I will apply for C89 this year, hopefully I can get a table and reprint the book。

This is my first attempt on Doujin Manga, it's miles away from my comfort zone, and I have learnt a lot of new skills during the production. Overall a great experience, however there's still a lot to learn, I hope stepping into different field will improve my illustration skills overall as well~

Lastly Thanks コミプリ for printing the book, the handling and printing quality is great.

Everybody お疲れ様でした~

Now what should I do for C89 lol

Accepted for C88!!!

This is Nyachou again, I am attending summer Comiket in Tokyo 2015 this time under my own circle name Clover Workshop. I will be appearing in the first day of the event, hall east and table number G12b.

This will be the first time attending Comiket on my own and I just finished story board lol, I haven't plan out everything yet. The Visa, the printing, the ticket and accommodation and plus the book it self (;*△*;), with a time spam of less than 2 month to deal with everything plus work (stress stress stress). Well I'm still glad getting in, I will try my best to get that book on the table~

The book will be Kancolle related cooking Doujin manga with bit of service in it O w O.

Here's the circle cut

And circle link https://webcatalog-free.circle.ms/Circle/11923838/

宜しくお願い致します。

Wacom Companion and Cintiq thoughts

Here's a story regards Wacom and their products on my point of view.

So, most people probably already know that I owned a Cintiq Companion since last year after returning my surface pro. Surface pro was a very nice portable computer, it's light, great screen and decent battery life. I would have kept the surface is I'm just after a tablet, however drawing wise Companion is simply a much better tool.




Regards my experience with Cintiq Companion, it was great. I have been used Companion for the past whole year replacing my computer + cintiq 21UX setup. This doesn't mean Companion is perfect, the the battery life is consider poor for a portable device, screen size is rather too small and 8gb ram isn't perfect for processing my image. However it's bearable consider Companion is the only portable device built for drawing on the current market. Let's put it this way, there's no other device on current market that offer similar experience as Companion. I even brought my Companion to the Japan trip to finish one of my unfinished projects. As matter of fact I love my companion but things will change 1 year later.

Now this is what happened to my companion. Early this year the device decided to die out of nowhere. It is the power plug issue that Companion was well known for. I have this issue after 1 month of the purchase, Wacom Australia gave me a replacement and I been using the device til early this year. Knowing the power plug is fragile, I took very good care of it and the device should suffer from no physical damage at all. But no matter how much care I put onto the device, the power plug just decided to die on me.

Thankfully the power plug issue is still covered outside of the original 1 year warranty. Apparently all device made before July 2014 have fragile power plugs and they replaced the material on later designs. After knowing the issue Wacom Australia decided to be very kind to me and send me a new device. However after all this experience with Companion, I decided to sell the device and upgrade for a new one.

I have thought of upgrading to Companion 2, however knowing original Companion was this fragile, I can't help but worry about the durability of companion 2, so unless the review of the device is overwhelmingly positive, it is not an option.

The new Cintiq 27QHD is what really catches my eye right now. It offers 97% Adobe RPG and have a pixel density of 110. Regards pixel density, For normal monitor it might not matter as much, however for a device that usual put right in front of your face, you can't help but noticing the physical pixels on the monitor. Companion having 180 ppi, is perfect, however since the screen size is only 13 inch, I would still have a bit of issue looking at my work. The new companion 2 and Cintiq 27QHD upgraded their display to 2540 x 1440.

Here's the problem I have with Wacom and their design of products. They are never up to date with technology. When companion first released, 4th gen intel cores were already available, it was a major upgrade on battery, this is especially important on tablet device, however Wacom decided to release their Companion anyways with the old 3rd gen core. Cintiq 27QHD, although this device have upgrade to 2540 x 1440, I can't help but ask why don't they just simply go all the way to 4k since this technology is widely available already. They decided to upgrade the resolution on companion 2, but this is pointless since the pixel density on that device is already great, the actual problem is the screen size of the device. I would rather have the device upgrading to 15" screen instead of the resolution upgrade. Overall I have to say Wacom do try to make their product a better experience for customer however what they offer is usually not what we wanted. And though out the years, Wacom's product have suffered from a downgrade of quality, not just the hardware but the software too. Here's a great video from David Watson regards the poor touch function of Wacom device, although to be fair half of that was Adobe's problem. In comparison, my 8 years old 21UX is still functioning to this date.

After all this talk, I still want to have a 27QHD, yes it's not a 4k display, yes there is reports on the buggy remote but what really stop me from buying the device is actually dead simple. The price. I been sitting on my computer, checking Wacom Australia product page daily with my credit card ready, hope to buy the device right away once it is released. And when the product is finally release, the price shock me. It is 4.3k Australian dollar and it does not comes with the stand. The stand is sold separately for 500 dollars, so you are looking roughly around $5000 dollar for a drawing monitor, not to mention it's not even a 4k display. So, a full PC would cost less that 1.5k, An iMAC with 5k display cost less that 3k, A decent 2nd hand car cost less that 5k, why would I spend 5k hard earned money on a drawing monitor. Oh and the stand, are you telling me this 18kg weight somehow worth the same as my smart phone?(I know international postage are expensive but same goes for any electronic device on the market right?)

Final thoughts on the problem, It is sad to see what Wacom have done in the recent years, their product quality went down greatly from the past years but the price is kept going up. What we really need now is another company to join this market, stop this total domination, and hopefully we will be looking at better quality products from Wacom at more reasonable price. However as for now, I would still be a Wacom customer, because regardless all that, we don't have a 2nd choice.

That's all I have to say and....... does anybody want to buy Companion?

ヘスティア様

Here's something that become very very popular lately, since I just finished my Dengeki illustration competition submission and still waiting feedback from Art Director, I decided to put in little bit of time to play around with this too.

The biggest question is....what is this string made of?! There's lots of image on the internet and they all seem to be vary in length! O A O Is this some kind of magic in the novel? well there's no way we could find out, but this is indeed a very interesting design.

Also I suffer from this problem lately, when ever I randomly draw glasses onto characters, I having problem of taking them off. I'm not sure if this is a psychological problem or I simply start to develop a glasses fetish....no this can not be, as I do not like glasses character in general. Anyone who know what my problem is please leave a comment and let me know.


For more reading regards the character, you can find it from link below

http://haruhichan.com/wpblog/44080/internet-reacts-to-danmachis-hestia/

Updates on what Have I been doing lately.

I just remembered I can post the projects I been doing at the beginning of this year now. This gives a rough Idea of what I been doing lately. Due to nature of this job, I can't really post anything I have completed before the game release, which is roughly half a year to be safe.

This drawing is for a 3 Kingdom game published By Gree, sadly the game it self is Japan only and I couldn't even try the game my self due to that lol.

I will update with more drawings in the future XD (and my general drawing skill is much better than what's in the image now~)

Working with Wakka Inc

What's up guys, I haven't written anything for my blog lately, so I guess it's a good time to give a update of what I have been up to.

First of all, I got contracted by Wakka for Digital illustration XD, got packed with jobs lately. Hopefully I won't screw everything up and maintain this job long enough until making money independently as Illustrator~ Although communicating in Japanese is very hard for me, but it work out nicely so far thanks to an Artist friend of mine. http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=1352690 She's a very talented digital illustrator, and improving in a very fast pace. Please check out her drawing if you had time.

Updates on Alice Overture, our group leader decided to use our current resource and get into the game production industry. He's currently working on game proposal and Resource. As for Comiket, the Kancolle book will definitely be made, however let's just hope we can get a table in the first place. The working will be sold in AFA 2014 at Singapore and Winter Comiket at Japan by end of this year. I will be stay in Singapore for a few days and then Japan for the rest of the month.

As my self, my plan is to keep improving my speed and skills on illustration while working as a digital illustrator.

I will write this blog later when I have the time, for now Ima get back to my drawings XD

Nyachou

bored

Got bored after drawing so many girls lately...

so for NGNL fans, Hentai Angel or Shiro?

Busy with contract works

And got bored of contracted works, so I did a late night kancolle sketch for fun XD.

Here's a Tonkatsu Kaze....ops I mean Tokitsu Kaze

Applied for C87

HALLO~~~~~

This is Nyachou from Cloverworkshop~ I have applied for end of year comiket 2014, which is C87. I will be attending the event with my big group Alice Overture selling a kancolle artbook if we managed to get a table there XD.

 This means I will be in Japan at end of this year and hopefully Singapore for Anime Festival Asia 2014. and in order to do that I need to renew my Citizen cert(which is somehow lost) and expire passport T A T. This gonna cost at least half a thousand OTL.

ANYWAYS~

I will be updating table position and things in the future, please feel free to meet me during those festival XD

and here's the circle cut

Summaries of everything happened this year

Since I haven't post anything on this blog for a long time, I will just summaries what happen to me lately in life Taking constant contracted work from Whomor Got Learner license for driving Bought my self surface pro Found out surface pro isn't suitable for professional drawing, refunded it and bought a 2nd hand Cintiq companion Cintiq companion's power plug broken on the first day, send for repair, gets a new copy for free Bought my self a ATH-M50RD and Aune T1 blah blah and here's a recent sketch for fun~

 For Anyone who still follow this blog, Thank you for your support, hopefully the new games will release soon so I can at least show you guys what I been doing lately~ Yay End

and yes I am still able to draw guys, here's the proof

Pokemon 19th Anniversary Artbook by AD.NAP

Jan 2014 Project, to celebrate the release of Pokemon X/Y and well as Pokemon's 19th Anniversary, Chinese Doujin Group AD.Nap gathered a group of Artist and Produced an Artbook "Super Effective", the book have been released recently.

The Artbook is going to be full color 34 pages includes Artwork covering all 6 generation of pokemon series. I am Luckily to be chosen to do the 2nd generation which is Pokemon Gold/Silver, please support my work by buying the book from following image

<==click the image

AD.Nap is well known for it's good promotional Video, and here's the video XD

There will be more projects from AD.Nap in 2014(sorry no spoiler xD), however I probably won't have time to join those projects.

New Touhou Card game 决死之梦·复苏之风

This is a remake of 决死之梦 card game from Chinese Artist Group 绯色永恒

I joined the project last year and It's a pleasure to work with so many good Artist XD (I was doing a Sakuya character card and "The world" spell card XD)

Here's the promotional video of the card game

Apparently there's 151 cards in total, including character card, spell card and event/battle field cards, and every single card was drawn in very detailed quality.

However I guess you still need to read Chinese in order to know how to play the game XD




This is the Taobao Link for people who would like to order the card set

The new Pokemon Artbook by Ad.nap should be coming out soon as well

Unboxing C84 items

Thanks wind for inviting me for Comiket, All items were received.

The Printing Quality of those books are great xD especially the badges, and drawing from Asagi's cute too.

I tried to read the light novel but sadly can't understand a word at all~

There's 2 types of folders from Asagi and I each, A gift doujin book from other famous Hisuitei A a light novel written by 黑夜 式 Artwork done by Asagi and I. A joint B/W Artbook and 2 types of badges XD

Thanks a lot for EMS and delivery and special Thanks to Kenshi being the translator and the middle person between the whole thing, without you this whole package isn't possible.

^^^^^^so many stuffs!!!^^^^

vvvv roar badges vvvvvv

Although I probably won't have time for Comiket this year(will see), but I will defiantly improve my skill during this year and try again when I'm free. Again Thanks wind and Asagi for all the supports, and hope to work with you again in the future.

2014 Updates and Current works

SO....Happy NEW YEAR~~~~

I happened to had lots of life problem since end of last year and still having those problems XD
But everything's working fine for me so far, and I got a feeling that everything will eventually get solved.

New Goal for 2014, become more successful in my career and improve my personal value!(duh?) Starting off by booking my driver Knowledge test on 31st of Jan, which happen to be the Chinese new year。 Apparently the test is actually harder than I thought due to the fact you can't get any question wrong except general knowledge...What if I clicked on the wrong option O A O"

Since last year, I'm taking constant mobile game card commission from 2 different companies, one is called "To the World"  and "Whomr". So, I don't really have much time doing own drawings or taking personal commission for fun right now OTL. Worst of all I can't really upload any working progress files as it would break the contract。And my blog just seem empty at the moment.

Ah well, I'm still joining friend's artbook, so there's still some images I can upload once a while at least~

As for drawing quality, I'm still trying to improve on the quality of my work and speed, I am not to the point that I can balance between quality and speed right now since both of those stats are lacking. I will try to improve within the year and work harder to reach my goal. Thanks god that there's a clear path for me to walk in now and I will see where I can reach in the end. There's some big problem with my coloring and choice of color. Apparently I'm still at the beginner level of coloring and yet to master any advanced skill nor experience such as drawing proper clothing texture and folds, doing them effectively without adding unnecessary steps and lines which in the end gonna make the whole image looks dirty, amateur and waste a lot of time.

Anyways that's all the serious talk, There would be a new book from Alice Overture this year (we finally got our money back after all those over-printing issue XD), and Panda from Adnap gonna make 3 books this year, the first one is gonna be pokemon themed, and release early this year. I happen to draw the Gold/Silver part of the book(yay, I get to draw Gold vs Red again~), once the book is released I will let you guys know.

Cheers

And here's some work in progress

That's it and wish me luck with the driver knowledge test~

Danganronpa - Zero n' Game Artbook by ADNAP

 Art for a new Chinese doujin group ADNAP

 Promotion video (Really nice quality XD~)

Pre-order link

http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=35329094443

The book is in Chinese only, but definitely worth every penny XD


*working on contracted mobile card games lately, doesn't have time for other doujin work OTL

Update: Thanks for DR 24 XD

Computer upgrades

Added a 2nd hand i7 2600 a month ago and a cooler master 212 EVO

And then over clocked the system to 4.1 GHZ. I know 2600 isn't really a good platform for overclocking but meh, getting extra juice out of it is always good, not to mention I never gonna use it for constant heavy load anyways.

Although 4th generation of intel's "I" series is out, but I doubt I actually need any upgrade higher than my current gear. Not to mention that I need to replace the motherboard too. (extra $100 wasted).

The system is pretty stable after 1 month of running and temperature rarely goes higher than 50(which is possibly the lowest temp for stock cooler) But the giant cooler is too big for the case, now I can't close it properly LOL.

Now I probably need to replace the power supply to a proper brand one, but meh...

Practice

Practice drawing before doing the R18 Card game thing....

hmmm doesn't look like the character lol

Panda's Saki book

Some old image done for panda's saki book

The book it self is on sale in China but they are not planning to sell it in other countries.

Here's the PV link for the actual book

PV LINK

More random drawing

More practice...saw someone wearing something similar to this wonder on the street - Although can't be see in the picture, but the headphone is actually those colorful funky headphone(probably made by Aerial 7), compared to the more oldish brown jacket and dark blue jeans, it created somewhat strong impression with the strong contrast. O w O Can't remember what she was wearing exactly though..cos I went onto 6 hour shift right after lol~

Drawing stuffs like this are pretty fun for me, maybe I should start taking reference photos and add backgrounds to these too.

However, I'm not really a fan of this kind of clothing in real life - give her a cap sideway and we can call that "SWAG"...but putting them on 2D characters does give these style a different feel...(hard to explain)

On a side note I'm finding those Adidas shoes are pretty suitable for this kind of character... maybe I should start a fan-book for Adidas shoes instead LOL