So 500posts.com yielded it’s first perk - a paid commission for an architectural rendering.

I actually tried to do this in Painter, but man was the response slow. The original size for this painting was 5400×3600 pixels - so it’s understandable. I wonder how Art Rage would perform…
Anyways, after about 3 hours of wrestling with Painter, I switched to Photoshop - and inside of an hour I had the underpinnings of a painting, and finally feeling like “I can do this”.

The look was obviously inspired by those architectural renders you see everywhere - nothing really fancy there. Overall, it took me about 12 or so hours.

I’ve added a new site to the line-up. 500posts.com

I posted earlier on this blog that I went to Vancouver to help my buddy Kev Chu out on a project produced by Heavy Metal Mag, animated by Blur Studios, written by Kevin Eastmen, and directed by David Fincher. It - was - awesome.

Kev and I spent 10 days working, walking the town, drinking coffee, more working, eating crepes, spending waaaay too much money at Book-Off, working and painting some more, and eating like kings. Good times, thanks a ton, Kev.

But while I was out there I felt something I hadn’t for quite some time. Some inspiration. I usually putter along on auto-pilot, monitoring and doing fixes here and there for the various projects we have going on, but I don’t always feel inspired - like - not in the way where I not only have to do something, but I have to PWN it.

I guess it’s just getting competitive again, finding the inspiration in other artists/painter’s works and pushing yourself to play at that level. I have put off learning to paint for sooo long, I thought Kev just about gave up on me.

My hope with 500posts.com is to learn to paint - and after that? Well, there’s no reason why it only has to be a painting site - it could be the realization of pretty much any personal goal of 500 posts.

I’m now off to do the 2nd of the 500 posts!

Scott Hepburn, a good friend of mine from waaaay back in my college days, has a weekly comic he’s been doing with the group over at Transmission-X.com called The Port.

Scott’s a pro, penciling comics for Dark Horse, Marvel, Udon and the like.  The Port shows his versatility with style.  It’s about a group of kids in a small town coming head-on with some really bizarre shit.  Very fun read - check it out.

A good friend of mine, has a looming deadline ahead of him, so I’ll be flying out to Vancouver for 10 days to help out. Should be a total blast.

I’ve got a good face lift for Shop-Anime.com going on - but it wont be up for another 2-3 weeks at least. The goal with the redesign remains the same, more credibility, improved SEO, and improve the discoverability of product while surfing the site.

It looks as tho I’ll be able to hand the bulk of the web development chores of the Panda-Girls.com site to another developer. He returns from Belize at the end of the month and I’ll show him a complete docket of what I got cookin up. The site’s development requirements are a bit over my head, and this guy’s got enterprise level web development experience - so it could be awesome. We still have to come to a business arrangement, but I’m getting desperate, so I’m sure he’ll be on board. (He’s one of the ONLY people who reads this blog… shit.)

(A storyboard panel I did for Panda Girls.)

While in Vancouver I’ll be getting a crash-course on concept/speed painting, so expect some Panda Girls visual development goodness when I get back.

My writing partner on the Panda Girls anime movie now has a blog over at cromunhinged.com

He probably wants me to say something bangin about him, or tell you to visit his blog or some shit. But do you know what I want? How about A FINISHED EFFIN SCREENPLAY!! T_T

But I know what Crom has planned for his blog - and it’s gonna be nothing less than ball-busting hilarity downloadable directly from his brain. (Crom has agreed to stop taking pharmaceutical drug-tests to be a WordPress guinea pig for their exciting new plugin.)

I joined this sick site for anime, here’s my profile:

http://myanimelist.net/profile/Axe

It’s kinda funny, because a year ago now, I reserved facebookanime.com. But I have to hand it to the site’s creator, Garrett Gyssler, because it’s pretty slick regardless of the obvious FaceBook inspiration.

I’m definitely going to continue to be a part of this community. All the anime is listed there, and people are talking about it all the time. I’ve been watching a lot more anime lately, (pretty much watching everything), and this is a great site to go to and figure out what to watch next.

A lot of great features, they even have a blog for each user, so my first post has some Panda Girls action:

http://myanimelist.net/blog/Axe

I think this will be a good community for Panda Girls to start getting the word out in. The target audience just seems suited for PG, and PG for them.

Now Crom has to get on there…

A person after my own post. The post is long, but well worth the read. I wont bore you with me text - go NOW.

<< click pic || When artists connect directly to fans and find success without the corporate model, it makes me imagine “suits” as Persians, and I unleash on them in the 300 style.

What I love is how the business opportunity online doesn’t require the army of unnecessary and costly business infrastructure. The internet is making that breed extinct. They suffer, much like a factory worker suffered when automation was introduced, from the interweb making THEM obsolete.

This is so damn sexy, I nearly want to cry while jumping headlong into the millions of dollars saved from “bloat-collar” casualties.

Imagine you’re a Corporate Fat-Kat, livin’ the high-life by supplanting the dearth of your own creativity with that of young artists. You then wake up and wonder, “Where the fuck is the fresh meat this year?”.

It’s turned… We aren’t playing “their” game. The internet is the “great leveling”. If they want to continue stealing millions, it means the Bloat Collar has to pick up the mic, brush, camera, camcorder - and play OUR game.

Connect - we’re calling you out.

Ah… This is the way it should be.

>Striking writers in talks to launch Web start-ups<

Creative people connecting directly with their audience, and taking the lion’s share of their efforts. Imagine, from a business perspective, how much money you would save if you could eliminate all the unnecessary studio execs, board members, conglom structures, etc.

For me, these are exciting times. 2nd Culture is poised quite well with this movement to entertainment online. Money is flowing, and I believe we have the right mix of creative property, and business philosophy to find our own market and fans, and build a viable business model.

Anyone else wondering what Joss Whedon could accomplish online?

(Click the “Original  Story” link below)

Ok… I’m confused as to why this is scaring anyone in cable. Should they not already have a strategy in place to compete with these markets? This is the best part of the article are these two comments:

1. “a show broadcast on a Tuesday evening during primetime is often watched on the Internet on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays over the lunch hour. This suggests that when people miss a favorite show on TV, they try to watch it from work on a computer”
2. “But providing those shows as video-on-demand over cable may not help because people don’t have access to TV during their lunch hour at the office.”

wow.

The only thing scary about this “learning experience” is that they are still learning it in 2007.

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