You might have noticed my lack of updates for--well, over a year. I could give you the LAUNDRY LIST of reasons why, but instead I will just tell you that I have been busy (and yeah, I have!).

(...if you wanna know what happened with the anime store, scroll down to the bottom of the post.)


SCRAPPED!
I have scrapped all of my older work. (That is, everything I made prior to this update.) The reason being--I crawled into an artistic cave, but over the past couple of years I have been studying my ASS off 8D You should be able to notice an immediate difference in the new work that I am posting and the old work, which has all been moved to scraps. I still have lots to learn--the artist is constantly learning, and the day they stop learning is the day they give up--but I feel a lot more confident in myself, especially when it comes to selling. I used to feel shy about doing commissions for people or making prints because my work wasn't where I wanted it to be. Now I feel that selling it is justified.

Speaking of which brings me to my next blog topic!

New yaoi project: Yaoi Briefs
I've started a new project, the goal in mind being that I am going to publish my own comics. Yaoi manga, specifically. ...OH MY GOD IT'S SO MUCH WORK!! But the pay-off will be great, if I can pull it off.

I've started a website for it - [link] - the forums are up, and I added image sharing boards because they're cool (come join us if you like yaoi! Image sharing only works if we can get people in XD)


The anime store
So over a year ago, I blogged about the fact that Max and I were looking into opening an anime store, and then never updated about it. Well, as you might have guessed, the state of the US economy had EVERYTHING to do with it. We had gotten our business plan together--we put so much work into it, and market research, and planning, and budgeting--then we went to the bank to apply for the loan. We were told that basically, getting one would be insanely difficult (the federally-backed small business loan that we were applying for had been given so many restrictions that it was near impossible to get, and the amounts they were giving up were VERY small--not nearly enough for a start-up loan). We were told that we would have to re-write our budget and downsize our initial inventory. The banker told me this with tears in her eyes--you could tell that she knew how much work we had put into it and how discouraged we probably felt (....did feel). So we went home and started re-working the plan, and that's when it happened--the market plummeted. It took a dive, and took our aspirations with it. We knew then that there would be no way we could open a store, not anytime soon. And being as the "magic recovery" of the economy still hasn't happened yet, we have pretty much given up.

Maybe one day this will be a possibility again, but we are kind of resigned to the fact that it's not happening...not anytime soon. We still have our business plan tucked away--we had some really good ideas!! But we have both moved on to other things.



and because this wouldn't be a ScrumYummy post without something about bicycles.
Check out this photo of Lance Armstrong:
[link]

more photos of the bicycle:
[link]

motherfuck has YOSHITOMO NARA (favorite artist of mine) ITACHARI (bicycle decorations) on his MOTHERFUCKING BIKE.

....I am going to steal it. Just watch.
(yeah yeah, I know, it's being auctioned to raise funds for cancer research and all...but who cares. THAT BIKE IS MINE.)