IABWSS 6.4

To put things short, my plans to have a regular posting of comics is pretty much out the window due to my day job. Further comics will come out sporadically at best. :/

Comic making applications for mobile devices

I've been playing with a few comic making applications for my mobile devices. With a mobile application, you can leave out having to use a computer to make a simple comic and you can do the entire process from taking the picture to uploading the finished comic directly from your smartphone. The main drawback is you can't make spiffy special effects like you could on a desktop so the comics will need to be simple compared to what you can produce otherwise. However, for those who don't need snazzy effects or just need something quick and simple, this can be the ideal method of making comics without having to spend a whole lot of time. The above two comics were produced using My Comic Photo Free and My Comic for Windows Phone 7 on a Lumia 710.

My Comic is about as simple as it gets. You get a choice of a few word balloons/boxes and a couple of font sizes and that's it. You only get one panel and it leaves a watermark in the lower right corner. But it's totally free and supports both landscape and portrait.

My Comic Photo Free is the free version of My Comic Photo. It has much more variety with support for different layouts featuring multiple panels as well as different word balloon types and fonts. Some of the features, especially most of the word balloons, are locked but even then you can make a pretty decent looking comic. The main negative for this app is a surprising lack of landscape support.

The above is made using ComicBook! for iOS on iPod Touch 4. ComicBook! is probably the best comic app I've tried. The only problem is that the iPod Touch's camera really sucks and is a far cry from my Lumia.  The app itself is fully featured with support for different layouts, fonts, landscape/portrait, and also image stamps to post sound and image effects with support for importing your own image stamps. I'd be using this a lot more if the iPod actually had a half decent camera. The image used above isn't even from the iPod's camera and would actually look far worse if it was. :p

Main reason I've been playing around with those software is because I've come to the ugly realization that I lack the time and energy to make comics like I used to due to my current job. I still have an interest to do photo comics but I have to change the direction I take for future comics since long winded stuff is pretty much out of the question. Keep it simple, I should.

Waning interest?!

Recently my interest in figma seems to have taken a dip. This has somewhat to do with the fact that while they're posable, they're not really meant to be played with like you can with a typical action figure so I can't quite toss them on the bed to play with like I can with a Transformer figure. That said, I still have a few figma preorders still remaining, namely Samus and the Strike Witches couple Sanya and Eila. On the Nendoroid front, I have preorders for Yamada Aoi, Shinguuji Sakura, and Saber Zero.

Speaking of preorders, I've noticed Strike Witch's Barkhorn is up. The good news is they've finally changed the stands to the moveable type that's standard on almost all recent Nendoroids, something that would have been nice had they done it with Charlotte.

I still think of this blog as 2D-ism. Old habits die hard. I've quit my 2nd job but it seems my primary job is starting to pick up. Just when I thought I'd get more time do do things like finally opening my toys. orz ^^;

(all images stolen from GSC website)

Ew.

I was at a local Asian supermarket a few days ago and noticed they not only sell live frogs but turtles as well for cooking. They had both hard and soft shelled turtles. Eek.

Work & anime

Been a while since my last post so just a quick update to say I'm alive. :P I took a 2nd job about a couple of months ago but I think I'm going to quit that as it makes certain parts of my schedule inconvenient. But that wasn't the only reason for lack of update. When I did have free time, I was watching anime and reading manga as well as just generally being lazy. orz As for stuff I've been watching, it's been old stuff: Gokusen and Utena. Finished both of them. With Utena, I've watched the first half initially and then that was it for a very long time. After picking it up, I decided to skip most of the middle episodes and start towards the last third of the show which for me was a good decision because the plot moves too slow and most of it is ultimately filler anyways. I have to say I have mixed feelings with how it ended but it's good they followed up with the movie which was ultimately a much better experience IMO. With Gokusen, I watched through the anime series, read through the manga, and now following the live drama as time permits. Yankumi has skyrocketed to the top as my favorite anime/manga/game character. I've also been reading through The World God Only Knows manga this past week so that took much of my time. Being a former eroge player, this naturally piqued my interest. That reminds me, I still have some games that's been on the backburner... orz



I just received the Wagnaria Nendoroid Playset A & B so I'm looking forward to opening them. I also have the Popura Nendoroid as well as many other stuff that's sitting in their boxes. I really need to clean out my place so hopefully I'll be spending the next week doing some late spring cleaning so that I have a place to finally open up my toys.

IABWSS 6.3

I'm off today so I used a coupon for free pizza, yay!


Sorry for late update. Happens when one gets a 2nd job. orz
Also sorry for head hurting dialogue. XD

IABWSS 6.2 part 3

You see where this is going, right? :p
And that concludes that. Back to Shinki-ness!
Although to tell the truth I have lot's more TF-centric stuff in store too... orz

One thing I've noticed is that my episodes tend to center on a single toyline. I seem to have trouble thinking up stories mixing different ones. That's not to say I don't have any but they're few compared to the ones that feature only one particular toyline.

Dragons Universe Rapid Fire Dragon Fighter review

I guess it's about time I got around to it. I first posted the pics over half a year ago...can't believe I dragged it that long... orz

IABWSS 6.2 part 2

Technically, it's been about 9-10 months? :P

IABWSS 6.2 part 1

This is the first of the series of strips I was originally going to start off with. I had planned to re-launch late holiday or early new years and hence the idea popped into my head for the Xmas Carol spoof.

ComiPo and other comic creating software

I tried out the ComiPo trial download. You can find more details about ComiPo at their website.



A test comic using the Comipo software. Cool stuff is that you can drag & drop all sorts of special effects and backgrounds. The biggest disappointment OTOH is that it lacks basic text formatting features such as center justification and word wrap. Funny thing is it's easy to see why as Japanese tend to use just a single style of justification and because of that don't use word wrap either so the concepts are foreign to them. Another disappointment is they don't make all the features available such as importing your own pictures which is rather important. I want to see how that works out before I throw down any wad of cash and they pretty much screwed that up.

I've also tried Comic Life and Comic Life 2. Comic Life I was kinda disappointed with because all it does is help with text balloons and panel layouts. CL has no special effects function whatsoever so I'd still be reliant on GIMP for the fancy stuff. CL2 is a mass disappointment because it runs SLOW. I'm surprised I was able to get anything done, it was that bad. The first CL runs circles around CL2.

All that's left for me to try is Comic Creator, a software I found at the local Microcenter. It seems to feature what I'm looking for which is a way to quickly create text balloons and add special effects. We'll see how that works out.

IABWSS 6.1

My first Shinki Stew strip in a very long time. It almost didn't come out too because about a day or two after my previous post, my PC went and died on me so I had to rush out to get a new PC. My previous 2 PCs were self-built but I went with a pre-built this time due to wanting to have my PC up and running ASAP.

This particular strip is mainly about Soundwave. All that other mumbo-jumbo is just an excuse to have him use his alt-mode mouth. :D The next series of strips will also deal with the condition of the series and then we'll finally get back to Shinki and friends. :)

2D-Ism is now "officially" 2DToybox

I've come up with the title "2DToybox" a while back but I had kept the name of 2D-ism because I liked that name (don't you?). However, it just doesn't fit the main theme of my blog so I finally got around to changing the blogspot domain name. Another thing is that I've moved some of the blatant mature content posts over to http://ecchi-ism.blogspot.com/ which will be dedicated to the rare ecchi merchandise that I get or watch. If any reader still finds a post in this blog that may need to go to that other blog, please let me know in the comment section below or in the comment section of the offending blog, thanks. Other changes I've made include the fact that I'll be making pretty much all my blog posts here as opposed to before where I've tried to split it between a toy-themed blog and a somewhat personal blog. Ultimately, it didn't make sense to keep it separate as there wasn't enough content plus they eventually wind up crossing over anyways. :P So now everything will be posted here...not that there was much posted on that other blog to begin with... orz


On to other news, the past month has been huge on import purchases. I haven't even started unboxing stuff from my last shipment and I'm already getting a ton of new stuff... orz Anyways contents listed below...


Nendoroid Mio
Nendoroid Homura
Busou Shinki Lirbiete
Busou Shinki Ianeria, Dengeki ver.
Ultra-Act Mirror Knight
Ultra-Act Jan-Bot
BLK Huke artbook w/ BRSB figma
figma Append Miku
figma Homura
figma Index
figma Tsuruya
figma Mirai
BRS curry BRS ver
BRS curry DM ver

BTW, I've tried the BRS curry...and it tastes like crap, LOL. It's really black too, scary... At least the charms are cute.

I've also started work on my long-dead photocomics, yaaaay! \^o^/ Expect a strip in about a week. It's funny because I've been out of work the past year and you'd think I'd get on it then but no, I get on it after I found work. Go figure. :P Anyways, that's all I have to say for now, cheers!

Nendoroid Inami Mahiru is offical!

So I already had the Nendoroid Popura and Wagnaria sets preordered although I'm not sure if I want add another cafe set (I'm kinda tempted). When word that Inami was coming out as well, I wasn't sure from the initial picture that I wanted her.



But then I saw the below pic and that changed everything. I had to have her just for that.


Inami also comes with the Magic Hand used by Takanashi Souta which makes me wonder if they have any plans to release Takanashi as a Nendoroid. Would be nice especially if they release him with a crossdressed version like with Nendoroid Ayasaki Hermione.



Speaking of Wagnaria, I've finished watching the first season and will watch the second season sometime later. I've been busy with learning my new job last week and that will likely interfere with my hobby activities for the near future although hopefully it'll get better once I get used to the work.

On a different topic, I've been considering whether I want to put up a Twitter or Facebook feed for reporting deals I find either online or the Houston area. A local Walmart has reduced the Lego Cars 2 Mack Truck to $19 and Hero Factory Rocka XL (3.0) to $13 both of which are a very nice deal. I've picked up both of them but unsure if I'll keep the Mack Truck since I already have 2 full-sized brick trucks (Kre-o Optimus and Lego TRU truck). They take quite a bit of space and I've yet to get started on them.

Note: All posted pics are from Mikatan Blog.

Cheerful Nendoroids, to get or not to get

Shortly after Mikatan blog updated with photos of the finished Cheerful Lin and Len, I started regretting not getting them, especially Len. I got over it however. :P One reason I had my regrets was because the new cheerful parts can be used by other Nendos. My other reason is because Len would have been nice to pair up with Kaito since I've put in an order for him. XD Ah well, I might snag Len if he shows up cheap enough on Mandarake but it's unlikely.



On a related subject, Cheerful Luka is also proving to be a tough sell for me. I already have a Luka and this version is 500 yen more than the previous Cheerful releases even though she doesn't seem to offer that much more parts than the other Nendoroids. Biggest reason for me to get her would be her new arm parts which would give her much more posability as her old arms are definitely quite limiting. I just wish there was something more, something that would give that extra "oomph!" No, that ponytail just isn't enough... orz

It seems unlikely that Meiko would get a Cheerful treatment as she's too recent of a release. I personally think GSC should have just made her a Cheerful release from the start.

edit 1/29: Names corrected! XD

New Year, New Toys, New Problems

First post of the New Year! I got a package from Mandarake which compose of following items: Busou Shinki Lacamento (resealed), Arnval Mk 2 swimsuit body, Strarf Mk 2 swimsuit body, Plastica Primary 001 Alefnim, figma KOS-MOS, and Kotobukiya RAcaseal Elenor Ver.APSY. However, there is one problem: the last item is wrong! I was supposed to get the clear version of Elenor so I've sent an email to them. Hopefully, this will get resolved somehow.




On to a different subject. Last year hasn't been the most productive year for me, blog-wise, and a definite disaster when it came to my photocomic. The comic came to a screeching halt early last year and never quite restarted so I'm currently reviewing what I need to do to ensure I get the comic going again since it would be a waste if I never do any more. I seem to be in somewhat of a "brick" phase as I made a lot of Lego-related purchase last year on on top of Kre-o and Mega Bloks purchases. It seems I may be finally running out of steam so I may put this phase of my toy collecting behind me. I do have some upcoming import purchases so that's unlikely to end anytime soon.

Those who look at my Flickr have likely figured what my next review would be. I'll be writing it next and hopefully have it up by the end of the week along with some other posts I've been wanting to make. Here's to a hopefully productive year!


Update 1/16/12: Mandarake says that the product was updated as a clear version by mistake and will give me a store credit for the purchase price. IOW, I kinda get it for free. Kinda sucks since I didn't have any interest in the normal version and wouldn't have bought it in the first place otherwise. Oh well, I'll take what I can get. :P