nejinoki

I'm usually not too much of a stickler for these things, but I've noticed multiple instances of people lifting my work to use in their own works, without giving credit to me. As long as it's for non-commercial purposes, I probably won't say no if you just ask, and even if I forget to answer, feel consider the act of asking as basically getting my permission.

But because I'm feeling evil today, I'm going to list some stuff I've come across where people have uploaded stuff that has used my work without contacting me.

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This Cornerian seal seems to be popular, where I took the original and added the rope-like ring around the globe and fancy-ified the star a little.



This video uses it.


This guy is using it too:


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This is an ancient one, where I thought I could make the Arwing look cooler with my own take on it, but never got around to finishing it:


And here it is in a work by someone else, except flipped horizontally and finally given some more details!
<da:thumb id="561004429"/>

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I'm not asking these to be taken down ... just let me know if you ever use my stuff again in the future. Thanks!

I've been away from drawing for so long, both the physical act and the mental exercise, that I realized I'm now afraid to find out if I actually cannot draw any more. Leaving that question unanswered so that I can keep telling myself "I can draw anytime I want to" seems like a more attractive choice than facing the possibility of trying and facing any unpleasant reality ... at least until I can come to terms with that possibility before finding out.

You may or may not have heard about John Harris.
If so, I'm just joining the club. If not, I feel obligated to spread the word.

I used to think that a lot of the cover art for contemporary science fiction novels published within the past two decades were made by a bunch of people who subscribed to the same aesthetic, with a distinct feel to it that was kind of hard to describe (curse my lack of literary expressive vocabulary). If you read science fiction novels, or even browsed through the sci-fi/fantasy books section of your local (English-lanugage) bookstore, you should have seen the artwork.

But it turns out, it was by the same one guy, John Harris.
Check out his official gallery here: www.alisoneldred.com/divisionJ…

I always kind of liked science fiction artwork that evoked a sense of wonder, with a feel of surreal awe. The ending artwork for the anime Outlaw Star by Hikaru Tanaka, for example (He seems to have dropped off the interwebs btw and I can't really follow what he's doing now). But my self-recognition of my preferences never went beyond a nebulous and fuzzy "that kind of art" as I wasn't really able to express it in a single word or phrase or flailing around with adjectives in futile attempts to nail "it" down. I never really bothered to look up who the cover artists were on the books I bought either, and even if I did, it didn't stick long enough in my memory for me to write it down somewhere.
But then I was looking through the making of Destiny by Bungie -- which I really want -- and the name John Harris popped up. They showed some of his works on screen and mentioned it was one of their inspirations, and I thought, "huh, that's kind of cool, that's the stuff I like", but it still didn't really stand out. That was maybe spring of this year, winter last year.

Then I was looking for some inspiration for some more recent artwork projects, suddenly remembered that there was a guy who was the inspiration for the aesthetic for Destiny -- which I really really want -- and googled it.
I found the name, googled that, and the rest is what I mentioned above, with a big "holy shit it's all this ONE guy!" moment. It all kind of crystallized in me, as now I could browse through a comprehensive collection of the stuff I realized I liked much more easily, and I could start to build a more concrete definition of what I liked and what I want to be able to do.

So yeah, I now can blurt "John Harris!" when someone asks me what my favorite artist is, instead of giving a waffling answers like "well there isn't really one guy but...".
Before, the one name I could give to that question from early on was Yoji Shinkawa from the Metal Gear Solid fare. But looking back, it's now a bit of a love-hate thing, on how I may have been exposed to his stuff too early and how his influence might have screwed me over. I saw his stuff for MGS, thought in my teenage years, yes that is awesome! I want to draw like that! and tried to ape his abstract style without actually knowing how to draw normally. I feel that kind of derailed my growth and my goals to a certain extent, and I haven't been able to emulate the style with much success neither.

But now I can start to worship someone else now.
I might be saying the same thing about myself 10 years down the line, but who knows.

So everyone go buy his art book. I did and it is awesome.
The Art of John Harris: Beyond the Horizon

Though the end result for other people is the same, I wish there was an "unpublish" button rather than just outright deleting stuff, so that it's still there in on the dA servers in stealth form with the accumulated stats, but won't appear on people's favorites until I flip a switch again.

I think it's time for my biannual session where I try to guess my dA login password! Weee!
And yes, I guessed it correctly since you are seeing this.

So this is what's been happening in the last half year, in non-chronological order.

- moved
- had my old computer broken by the movers
- got a new computer with ridiculous RAM
- found out too much jalapenos makes my bowels implode
- watched the Bourne Legacy
- finally played MGS3
- got married
- finally got cavities after a quarter century of complacency
- found out buying new socks every time I lost track of matching pairs was a bad idea
- broke my 360
- watched the new Nanoha movie
- got a new 360
- didn't die
- changed my last name
- finally paid off my smartphone
- lost 6 kg in weight
- developed an acute red bull addiction
- drew lots of pictures

That's about it. This is all true. Except the last one.