Hey, fellow Deviants! It's been a long while since I've posted here, either journals or deviations. I haven't been doing a lot of drawing lately but you never know when the urge will hit, right? I have a feeling my upcoming graduation from Digital Animation will regain me my joy of doodling when I don't have course material sucking it out of my soul.

For those in the area, you likely know that Animaritime has come and gone earlier this month. We reached new attendee records with over a thousand anime, manga and gaming fans from around the East Coast. I'm currently writing a post about it over at my website and I'll post a link to it from there for the curious when it's done (Edit: The curious can now read it here. Suffice to say it was a blast and not even the lack of sleep and sore legs, could take away from how much fun the event was, especially my panels and the Artist Alley.

I got to meet a bunch of people from DeviantArt, including *AzraelEvangeline and :devyamicaffiene: who I regret not having more time to speak with. As usual I suffered from a good case of nervousness and fear that I came off as an impatient flake when in actuality I'm just not so great when it comes to meeting people I wish to befriend. Practice makes perfect, we hope! I'm so glad you two came down though, and hope you had fun ^^

Life has thrown me lots of curveballs lately but the good always manages to outshine any bad. *m-t-copyright and I have been both been hit by some different medical ailments this winter and we're eager for Spring to wash away the rest of what Animaritime couldn't cure (we suffered from anti-consilitis this year, woo-ha!). We're currently in the process of getting ready to move back into Halifax, get ourselves some money-making jobs and prepare for our first time at SDCC in July. I've also recently had the chance to do comic lettering for an upcoming publication, which was fun like you wouldn't believe, a big ball of all my favorite things meshed into something that's a profession. Freelance continues to be my best professional friend and I love how much I learn from every new project I have.

So life goes on and it's got tons of exciting new prospects, projects and events in the future, several of which I can't talk about right now but believe me will be worth any wait ^^ For now I leave you some DeviantArt stuff to check out:

Story of Mythology Contest

Edit: A reminder to fellow Maritimers that Animaritime's Artist Alley registration opens up tonight (Jan 8th, 8pm)! There's been lots of interest shown this year so the final numbers should be exciting. There's also the Art Galley where artists can display their work whether or not they're in Artists' Alley to give some more recognition to the amazing talent we have all around us. I know I have a bunch of locals on my watchlist so I better see some of you there

Holidays have (mostly) come and gone! I hope all my friends, watchers and random visitors had enjoyable ones. I for one am having a great holiday and I wish it would never end! I've had the last week or so to relax at home with some part-time work shifts and no school so I had lots of time to get client and website work done. I had the opportunities to do a lot of detailed cleaning around the house that I don't usually get the chance to so that was a relief too. Christmas was spent with the family for another fun year of guess-the-contents-of-our-stockings and enjoying some generally good times all the way around!

Santa got me Mario Kart for the Wii so I've been enjoying that as well over the last few days. I don't care much for using the steering wheel but the game itself is entertaining (even if the music stinks!). I really need some human competition though!

*m-t-copyright and I rented the movie Death Race yesterday, a self-proclaimed "man movie". Definitely lived up to its own hype and target-audience. It was a cool and fun movie of cars, explosions, blood, guts and sexy ladies, all coated in testosterone! We also went to see The Spirit in theatres which wasn't a good movie on the awards-level but I thought it was really, really fun. It's a comedy over an action so I think it wasn't marketed that well. The Spirit himself as a character was such a perfectly protrayed individual who balanced being hilariously-naive and stubborn with being a total manwhore. Saw Marley and Me as well. If you do, bring tissues! Lots of 'em.

In a couple of days *m-t-copyright and I will be hosting our group's customary New Years Eve/Christmas party! As always it promises to be loads of fun and with lots of good times to be had. The guest list keeps getting bigger so I'm hard at work making sure the house is tidy, clean and spacious to accomodate. Yay to all you guys who're coming! Feel free to bring some food and drinks (and sleeping supplies if you'd like to spend the night) :3

I haven't done much art-wise lately as it takes second-fiddle of my time and interest to nearly everything else but you never know when something random could pop up! Weird that I'm getting ready to graduate from an animation course isn't it? Atleast my good grades attest to the fact I must do it enough for school's sake so no worries! And only a few months left so yay!

DeviantArt-wise, are these new user-page layouts not awesome?! I was thrilled when they finally went live to use! I made a few tweaks to my journal's design so it matches better (and barely resisted the urge to remake a new one from scratch). All these changes are a breeze to use and a blast to customize. Also means people can use their DeviantArt accounts as a really sleek portfolio by taking out all that useless stuff. My user page for instance, is much slimmer right now. I hope these custom features are only for subscribers though. Us loyal payers have really been getting the short end of the stick recently!

A couple things of interest to people!

• Animaritime's Artist Alley registration opens January 8th!


• Whore of Turfan -By *m-t-copyright & ~gynocrat (18+)


• AnimeAtLarge with lots of anime-related events for fans in the Halifax-area and some fun examples in the gallery

That's all for me on this last post before 2009. Hope the remainder of 2008 is good for everyone See you next year!

Quick life update! How goes Autumn so far for everyone? Good I hope! Quick note to start: Lego Batman is a very fun game! Finally a good co-op game too X3

College continues. It's now both more difficult and easier to deal with now that I've finally let myself fully admit how much I hate it. Hate it. Hate it. Bad organization, classes cancelled all over the place with no notice, little to no communication, etc. etc. etc. Doesn't help a person's spirits any when a portion of the class traces and copy their work from online either. I saw the same thing in the year ahead of us but it's still a shame. Especially since now our class is being made to work on an outside-source project. When the clients realize half the work is plagerized, it's gonna make some big-wigs mighty unhappy! That kind of trace/copy work fine is good for practice but not finished pieces you're submitting for publication!

On the upside, there're are some people in my class who are uber talented and I love watching them progress and seeing their work :3 You honest, hard-workers know who you are and kudos to you! We're all learning and gain something from each experience, good and bad.

In the end, I want my diploma so I can get out! Atleast I continue to love my apartment, have had some great times there with friends and roomies, and living in Truro has been a great experience. I've certainly decided I like the little town feeling a lot, though I do often miss the convenience of life in the city (though my wallet does not).

Thus Kuri's life continues, a pleasantly swirling life of college homework, graphic design clients, web clients, Animaritime prep work, my jobs (fast food joint and the library) and, of course, my website! A big thanks to *kagamihanei and ~Fyor for their help with some of my reviews ^^ Ultimately, I find it comforting having lots of stuff to keep me busy, even if I dislike a small portion of it... *stares at certain homework assignments*

Must get mighty boring having all my journals be generally the same, huh? XD Guess I'm not much of a general life blogger. Looking into moving to New Brunswick after school just 'cause. That's kinda neat news, right? 8D Maybe? Really hoping I'll have enough money to make a trip to an anime con in the States next summer so I can meet some people. Planes are so darn expensive, don't even start on hotel costs!

I end the journal with some artwork from friends/acquaintances currently in animation school (in my school except for the first) who're awesome and fun with what they do ^^

A new journal layout yet again! Good practice, good fun :3 Still needs a few tweaks so don't be surprised if you see some stuff appear and disappear in the next couple of hours. Also, don't forget that I'm still offering commissions for custom journals! *wink wink nudge nudge*

Vaguely speaking of DeviantArt subscriptions (since you need one to have a custom journal entry), did anyone else recieve the e-mail for participating in a DA survey? Did you do the survey? Did you see some of the possible additions to the subscription system?! Holy wow. I resigned myself up as a beta tester (I wasn't one when I recieved the survey e-mail) just to get more info but not many people are talking about it! Am I one of a select few who got it? Crazy stuff... cool, cool, crazy stuff in DA's future for sure. Thumbs up!

Life-wise, my second year of Digital Animation has offically commensed! Looks like it's going to be a very comfortable year work-load wise. I have a new animation desk with a light desk that works beautifully, letting me realize just how much I was hindered by my broken one last year. Regardless of the awesome light table, I still can't wait for us to move onto digital animation roughs. Much easier getting really smooth animation since you can test it so frequently, plus I feel more comfortable with my tablet pen.

Haven't had the chance to really chat with any first years though. You guys are masters at vanishing; I know the feeling though, you just wanna get up and go! Never hesitate to come say hello :3 I'm not always rushing about in a hurry, I swear (sorry again, *amah!)!

I also got to put my earnings from my graphic design client work over the summer towards my new baby! I have 14 days to test 'er out so it's going through all the tests! I really just wanted something small and portable so I could type whenever and whereever the writing bug hits me (paper and pencil's been causing some serious wrist crampage when writing!). The Windows XP, massive storage space and really smooth wireless interent access are thus far just wicked bonuses. It's so small that I can fit it into my side bag/purse X3

Aside from those fun little bits of news, life goes on as usual. Lots of work to keep me busy, review and news writing for my website and now some school work to keep up with. Speaking of which, I have a crossword (tough workload ain't it?) due on Thursday; so best get to it!

After spending the past weekend in Toronto for Fan Expo 2008, I'm back here in good 'ol Nova Scotia! Met some fun people, sold some stuff, bought tons more stuff and generally enjoyed having a fairly spontaneous trip. Won't be the last, that's for sure!

If you're interested in my fun-but-less-than-epic adventures, you can check out some posts I made about it on my LiveJournal:

Day One
Day Two
Day Three

I also made a more observational post about some stuff I saw over at my website, Kuriousity.

In other news, school starts this coming Tuesday. I'm looking forward to some of the work and a little structure (plus it puts me one step closer to planning for after-graduation!), but I'm not nearly as excited as I was before first year. It's a course with more cons than pro but a little effort can make it work for you. Atleast the work load was pretty small. Now that I have a better understanding of how it 'works' from first year, I hope second year will go smoother.

Not looking forward to some of the drama though! Like highschool all over again with the he-saids-she-saids and behind-back bullying you get to be witness too. I often forget most of the class are still fresh from highschool but I like to think age isn't total basis for that kind of immaturity. Those downsides aside though, I made a bunch of friends from my class last year, good times! I hope to make just as many this year. Watch out first-years, you know who you are

Hopefully school won't kill my occassional drawing-bugs (you'd think animation classes would make you want to draw more somehow...), so we'll see in the coming months how many cobwebs could form around here. Hopefully not many, right?