21st of Nov. 2020: *checks watch* nope still not dead!
But wow man this place sure is a shadow of its former self *whistles*
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20th of Nov. 2016: I'm not dead!
I'm doing OK, working and dealing with my mental health as well as I can. I won't be back here, though. I've started creating content for The Sims 3. As for anime, I've left it behind mostly.
If any of my old friends end up reading this - the years together have been great, and I still get nostalgic about them sometimes. Hope life is treating you well!~
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8th of Nov. 2015: For anyone wondering what's happened to me
Simply put, I grew distant from TheO. The fine folks here have nothing to do with it, you all are still amazing (and I feel awful for missing so many birthdays >_<). Tagging on Minitokyo took up a lot of my time, and I gradually found myself visiting TheO less and less, until it got to literally months between visits. Hell, I don't even think I can remember my password, thank God Firefox has the option to save them.
I'm also not that interested in anime anymore - I mean, I like the style and still add to my collection of eye candy, but I don't feel the need to keep up with new releases. I've got my gigs of old manga and am pretty much satisfied with that. Art-wise, the same: haven't felt the drive to pick up or finish a work in months, probably as a result of my passion for anime fizzling out. I'm still playing The Sims 3, and have picked up Doom too (love them custom WADs!).
Anyway, if you made it this far, thanks for the visit. Drop me a line on Minitokyo if you feel like it.
Hope all is well with you, and a huge thanks for the support. Take care.
icon by Torao
"Really really nice!! Her face looks innocent,but if you take a look at her hand...! Nice! Nice! Nice!" (12/11/05)
Three Four times the n00bness. Also, out of context...this sounds really creepy (I don't even know the context, the links are the old format - now we have the title of the wall included in the links).
"OOOOH!!This one is just so cute,calm & serenic! I love you for making it!" (01/02/06)
..."serenic"? *facepalm*
"Love is in the air...with a beautiful sunset background. VERY good work!" (01/02/06)
Hellooo Engrish!
"I absolutely love it! Darkness & feathers...the best way to express feelings!" (01/02/06)
You know, like people normally do! I also seemed to have an aversion to the word "and" סּ_סּ
"Hi hi! So cute & evil! Good work! She's so cute! Lovely!" (01/03/06)
Spouting! Random phrases! Just for the! Hell of it! Was this the time when we had a quota to fill in order to be able to post? If so...well, you have your answer.
"OOOOOOOH MY GOD like this is sooo pretty!! I'm speechless!!" (01/03/06)
*falls off chair due to the onslaught and abuse of the letter O*
"He's so good looking here that I could just forget he's just a cartoon(*sniff*) and KISS the monitor!" (01/04/06)
Context: from the other comments, I think I'm referring to Alucard. Oh, and I obviously had some issues.
"Very kawaii character! ^_^" (08/03/06)
*weaboo-desperately-trying-to-conform alert goes off*
"WOW! Great wallpaper! I believe this is one of the best VHD wallpapers I've seen up to now! ^o^ I love those trees and the full moon in the background! Not to mention the headstones and the leaves! GREAT work!" (04/24/07) [here]
Someone apparently conked me on the head with a rock - what is this verboseness?? (is that a word?) That wallpaper is still pretty awesome though.
The rest aren't really that funny though. That being said...THANK YOU, ADAM, for helping me shake my head in shame and yet embrace the old me! ü YOU DA MAN.
Guys, gimme some of your embarrassing stuff so we can all laugh together! :3
Hello, hello everyone! I'm (sort of) back for a little while, at least until next week >_< Uni has literally sucked out all creativity and desire to do anything but shoot something in video games. I've missed a lot of birthdays and for that I am truly sorry, I know they were the birthdays of dear friends and I feel really down for not even being there to say a "happy birthday". I apologize again and hope you will (somehow) forgive me for being such a shitty friend yet again *bows*
Uh, to present the situation... This month and especially this last weekend have been positively hectic; homework, an oral and written exam for Spanish, written exam for English, project for Pragmatics, an anthropological study and a museum opening *wheeze*
Furthermore, I'm not sure how things in other countries/colleges work, but here we rely mostly on Yahoo! Groups to communicate and there was a major shitstorm on one of them last Friday because of the date of the English exam; people were complaining that it was supposed to take place on Friday, which is abnormal since most people who choose distance learning either have jobs or a college on the side. Guess who had to fix it? Yup, lil' ol' year rep me. Then an idiot got on my back and I had to deal with her, but the most amusing part was conversing with the ones who were on my side, in private: they were all outraged at how irrational this woman was - long story short, it was a mixture of entertainment and bone-crushing fury. It feels nice to have someone watch your back, though c:
All in all, I'm pooped, stressed, pissed off most of the time and have been known to develop really bad and crude jokes lately. And laugh at stuff only 5th graders would laugh at. And live on a steady diet of Coke and coffee. Yeah, not the best company ._. Is uni taking its toll on you as badly as this?
I seriously don't know what to write for titles anymore, they'd all end up sounding like "College, rants, RAAAGE" D: I lack creativity in the writing department.
Now, I want to thank everyone who participated in my surveys c: You're all sweeter than a caramel sundae with candy sprinkled on top! Thank you very much~! As for the icons, I wrote down everyone's details and will get to them ASAP, as soon as I get a break in my exams - the next 2-3 weeks will be terrible, since I'll only have 2-day breaks between exams and, since I haven't studied for them...let's just say it's going to be pretty interesting XD Also, I'm supposed to retake the exam I failed tomorrow, but it's the same as last semester: I'm too lazy to even look at the material. Furthermore, we were notified of the date only 3 days ahead of the actual exam day, and we don't even know what room it's in. Yeah. My college is pretty big to begin with, what's worse is we could be taking it in one of the neighboring colleges (Maths, History or Chemistry) if there are no available rooms in ours. Do me a favor and shoot me already =_=
But exam period is also fun, since it's usually the time when everyone panics and starts looking for the texts and notes. Including me 8D Time to cram!
As for the artsy stuff, I haven't touched the pen tool in a while, for vectors or wallpapers. With exams here, I've kind of lost my will to wall and have been focusing only on icons (I'll post a batch soon, I usually wait until there's at least 10 before posting). Luckily, I didn't promise any big prizes for my challenge (thank you for the entries! ^^) - I wouldn't have had time for them anyway. But I have this killer idea for a challenge, that I want to start after this one is over. I just hope it'll be popular! *crosses fingers*
That's about all I have to say for now, I'll leave you with a cute/sexy pic of my generation 6 heir of The Sims 3, Jason Stewart. I love him to bits <33 Unfortunately, he died two generations ago XD He's an in-game-born vampire, if you're wondering about the glowy eyes and skin color.
Now we're "hugging"? This is the same as those silly "press all the keys on your keyboard in reverse alphabetical/numerical order and the name of your mom's secret crush will flash on your kitchen wall" or "send this to X people or you're a bad friend/you'll get dead". I thought we weren't Youtube.
Please stop the spam, unless you want to get banned (but hey, it's your right if you want to). If you feel the need to hug someone, talk to them through comments/PMs and show them that you really care about them, instead of copy/pasting a message that's been around the internets 3 times and a half and doesn't mean anything anymore.
You don't need to hug me, believe me. And if you need to convince yourself of my feelings for you, check my icon.
:)
Oh, and before commenting, please note that I'm not pointing fingers.
Alrighty, peeps, it would appear that things are going to hell here, so let me try to clear up some of the confusion a.k.a. notice me jumping on the bandwagon and trying to explain the clustermess that's going on with TheO/Pixiv.
First of all, I'm going to try and explain how I see fan art. In my mind, all fan art is divided in two:
1. Official fan art (I refer to it as doujinshi)
I think of it as artwork done by artist B that represents artist A's ideas (characters, scenes etc.). In this case, the original artist (A) allows the doujin-ka (B) to use their idea to make profit, legally. Artist B claims the work process and their interpretation of artist A's ideas but cannot claim full ownership of them, as they are still the intellectual property of artist A until they officially give up copyrights.
Example, Miwa Shirow isn't the creator of Vocaloid but has done doujinshi of it (examples: 1, 2, 3).
Tl;dr: official" fan art is what I call doujinshi: it is usually made to be sold, which means the doujin-ka (B) makes money off the original artist (A)'s idea, with their permission.
2. Unofficial fan art (fan art per se)
The basis of unofficial fan art is that the fan artist (B) agrees to use the original artist (A)'s idea as long as they don't make money from it or claim it as their own. And while a fan artist can't claim copyrights on their images (since the ideas aren't theirs to begin with), they can claim possession of the work involved in making them; whenever someone reposts/uses fan art without the fan artist's permission, they are breaking this rule. Think of it as artist B being merely a fan of artist A's work and wanting to bring a tribute to it. B is not allowed to profit financially from A's work or use it in any way that would damage A's public image while improving B's. B is not allowed to use A's work without their explicit permission.
Tl;dr: This type of fan art is just a tribute or, if you'd prefer, a pretty picture to look at.
(some parts quoted from my own comment on MikuBerry's post)
Again, these are my interpretations. I'm not a lawyer or law-savvy, so I do not know all the implications of the doujinshi vs. fan art debate, but this is what I've used to guide me all these years since I've discovered that, hey, I can save images to my computer!
Some of my tips:
- Check your sources religiously.
- Don't use images you suspect are fan art.
- If you're unsure of an image, ask people if they know where it's from or who made it.
- Credit your resources to avoid suspicion of plagiarism.
- Don't play innocent and don't claim ignorance. If you didn't know up to this point, you must surely know that DeviantArt and Pixiv, as well as any other fan art site, are off limits for image grabbing and using.
- Don't use stuff from image dumps like e-ShuuShuu, Photobucket, Imageshack etc. without going through the steps mentioned above.
- Never claim images you didn't draw/create yourself. Avoid plagiarism.
- Name your files properly. Try to include the names of the artist and the person who uploaded the image or at least the site you got it from. (when I download scans from Minitokyo, this is the file name I save them under: SERIES NAME scan name [uploaded by UPLOADER NAME])
- If the site is in a foreign language, use Google Translate, Babelfish or another online translator to read the FAQ/TOS.
Some other helpful posts that you should take your time to read:
Oh, and I do believe the Pixiv drama level is about to beat the paysite drama level in the Sims community. Woe. I usually love seeing drama but the case here is too serious to crack jokes, so I guess I'll be watching from the side? And expecting a proper FAQ/TOS section, just like we all are (I hope).
EDIT: replaced Kelsey's link as per her request.
