My Wii Was Gone But Now It’s Back – I bet you didn’t even notice it was gone.

The Nintendo was having weird video card glitchy problems including rainbow-like static patterns appearing (and getting worse bit-by-bit) in dark areas of games. I called Nintendo Canada’s reps a few weeks ago and they sent me Purolator labels and what-not so I could send it to BC for warranty-covered repair/replacement. That was on January 22nd. I figured I wouldn’t see the console back for at least 4 weeks minimum.

This morning Puralator delivered the now-perfect Wii to my door. 14 days total including the shipping – I’m really impressed with their customer service.

Now I can really dig in to Warioware.

Who’s up for a Wii party this weekend? A show of hands?

The weekend went really well. Birthday party for Dan on Friday, dinner party with friends on Saturday. I’m relaxing a bit and balancing work stuff a bit better even though there’s a lot on the go.

The full shipment of Makeshift Miracle books finally arrived on Friday so I now have enough copies to send out ‘Thank You’ copies to people who helped me promote the book and/or offered quotes. It’s amazing finally having enough stock on hand to take me through the summer cons and fulfill any and all web orders that come down the pipe. The book chains have finally started ordering the book as well which opens it up to a much wider audience and takes it in to actual profitability; up until now I’ve been jockeying for breaking even.

Overall, things are going quite well. I don’t know if I’m not used to that being the norm but I almost want to pinch myself. I’ve had several surreal-good moments lately and I need to stand back a bit and appreciate them.

One month down in 2007 and the momentum is looking good so far.

Right… February, the slow UDON work month. I have to keep telling myself that.

In no particular order, I’m managing or illustrating and stressing about:

– 140 pages of artwork for a Random House teen graphic novel volume now underway with a crushing deadline.
– The latest Street Fighter/Darkstalkers card set (set 6 I believe) artwork is blazing towards completion.
– New RPG artwork for Dungeon Magazine, Sword & Sorcery and Exalted RPG products.
– Pagination and tweaking on the Exalted comic trade paperback.
– Test artwork for a major Hasbro contract.
– Translation edits and lettering approvals on our Capcom Manga line.
– Prepping on a major Capcom-related project.
– Artwork for a Canadian Kid’s Textbook.
– New York Comicon coming up.

All that and a rep from Nintendo Canada contacted me today to ask about Udon artist availability.

Plus Seneca stuff… wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Tired Jimbo Attack

PS: It’s fun, just crazy.

PPS: Or as Dan just wrote to me “Boooohoooo I’m successful waaah waaah waaah! Booooohoooo I’m successful AT SOMETHING I LOVE waaah waaah waaa” 😉

I just wrapped up my morning lecture early. The students had their first project hand-in of the semester and destroyed themselves last night to get the work done on time. I had a big talk with them just before Christmas about time management, organization and avoiding all-nighters at all costs so they could stay healthy and aware. As far as I could tell, they understood and entered this new term intent on staying on top of the workload.

Apparently those intentions lasted all of two weeks. Ten minutes after my lecture wrapped up I counted eight of them passed out at their desks while the rest shambled around the work area like corpses.

Classes get a group dynamic. The strongest personalities in the class seem to dictate the “class mentality” and students on the sidelines join the hive mind. This morning group is all about extremes – massive enthusiasm or complete burn-out.

Lecturing to a class of zombies is like doing stand-up comedy for an empty room. It sucks the energy out of me. If a group is neutral I can bring them up a few notches and get them jazzed but if they’re way below zero it’s almost impossible to warm things up. The whole lecture becomes adequate but lifeless and the same with the drawing demo. I know they’ll need me to cover most of the material later on one-on-one because they didn’t retain any of it.

I was a hooligan back at Sheridan. I definitely pulled some all-nighters. Being on the other side gives me a completely different perspective on it. Some of these life lessons are going to take time to percolate down into their heads, if ever.

Crap. I sound like an adult.

Thanks for the facial hair feedback from every one. Wow! That’s the most LJ comments I’ve gotten since I announced I was publishing a book, for cryin’ out loud. The Van Dyck brought out the people.

This week I’ve been busting my ass to get a whole pile of things done – old projects hanging over my head, college responsibilities and making sure upcoming projects are organized. I think it’s working. Even though the studio is as busy as ever, I actually feel like things are under control. I can choose to do artwork for a project instead of being forced to because we’re overwhelmed with things that need to get done.

Over the holidays Erik and I discussed ways to market the company even more. I suggested creating an Udon Studio DeviantArt page as a cheap and useful way to showcase work most people wouldn’t know was done by us. I’m happy to say that it’s been unbelievably successful, even just in the short time we’ve had it up. In just over 2 weeks we’ve had over 50,000 unique pageviews (over 200,000 views as a whole) and over 2000 people subscribed to watch our site and be notified every time it updates. It’s been a fantastic way to promote our lesser known artists and show people the wide variety of artwork we create for our clients. Nifty keen!

All in all, things are going pretty well.

Okay, just over two weeks in to the new year. My shaving laziness and general busy-ness has formed the ol’ Van Dyck that I used to have while I was in college. So, the burning soul-shearing question for you all today is:

Should I shave it off or let it flourish?

Will this facial hair survive? It’s up to YOU.

(Click here to see a summer photo without the facial hair for comparison… or scroll back through my LJ archives.)

This is probably the most typical livejournal-type thing I’ve ever posted… I don’t do any of those ‘You are a (insert whatever)’ or polls or stuff like that, so indulge me this one ridiculous post.

I’m not sure what I think of it and I need your positive or negative reinforcement for the time being until I make up my own mind.

Groggy but good overall. Woke up at noon, went back to bed and woke up again at around 1:30pm. Last night was a Birthday Blitz for both Scott Robbins and Eric Kim as we partied, karaoked and generally made asses of ourselves. Even though we were missing a few of our “classic” Karaoke Crew, it was still good times.

January through to the end of March is normally a dead zone for work at Udon. That’s the end of the fiscal year and most companies have blown their yearly budget by Christmas time, so the start of a new year is when they plan and we wait for new things to happen. That is definitely NOT the case this year. As soon as we started up after the new year we were slammed with projects in a way I’ve never seen here before. Larger, more extensive projects with bigger companies. It’s a lot of pressure but very cool as well.

Unrelated thought:

I remember reading an article talking about how much what we see factors into how we treat people. For example – studies have shown that people ascribe traits completely unrelated to appearance to taller and more attractive people. Until we’re given evidence to prove otherwise we assume a tall/attractive person is smarter, more discerning and more capable than someone shorter/less attractive. We may know on a conscious level that beauty doesn’t necessarily equate to brains but tend to react that way subconsciously until we’re given a reason not to with each individual.

When it comes to artists I’ve noticed a similar trend in myself and other people. In this day and age we don’t usually interact with artists face-to-face, so the only “appearance” we have to judge is their artwork. Subconsciously I’ve assumed (until being shown otherwise) that an amazing artist is a higher caliber of person – that they’re responsible, smart, friendly… traits that have NOTHING at all to do with their art (and vice versa for a poor quality artist). The quality of their artwork gives them an advantage in non-art related areas of business and interaction. Even after I’ve been shown proof of their social, scheduling or budgeting INCOMPETENCE I subconsciously struggle with it, assuming that they’ve made a rare mistake instead of realizing that maybe they’re actually terrible in that area.

In other words, good art doesn’t instantly mean they’re a good person. Don’t judge a book by its cover and all that stuff.

I’ve thought about this before but a few jarring examples of it lately re-brought the idea to the surface so I thought I’d jot it down here to solidify it for myself.

A video of the speech that I gave at the Makeshift book launch party was filmed and uploaded to YouTube by a wonderful guy named Trevor Grace. Here it is for everyone to see:

Makeshift Book Launch Speech – Part 1 (5:10)


“Have you seen the news this morning? The world’s gone, it’s all bonkers and we’re all gonna die!”

Makeshift Book Launch Speech – Part 2 (8:30)


“The fact that you guys are here and the fact that I’ve got foreign pre-orders I’m sending out to Australia, Belgium and France… it astonishes me, amazes me and embarrasses the heck out of me, quite frankly.”

Had a great day. Mom and Dad came to visit this afternoon and the whole thing played out like a Nintendo commercial. Last time my Dad became completely hooked on the Wii when they were here just before Christmas. This time, he and I finally convinced my Mom to give it a try.

The scene in my living room today.

I’m not even making this up. She LOVED it. We played Wii Sports almost all afternoon and they would have stayed over night if I didn’t have to work early tomorrow morning. Mom got so into Bowling, I couldn’t believe it. By her 4th frame she totally got the interface and started kicking butt. Within a game she was beating my Dad consistently and by the time they left she’d beaten me a couple times as well.

Mom and her Mii avatar.

Dad and his Mii avatar.

I actually think they want to buy the system when more become available in stores. I’m so very amused by this. Nintendo’s goal of involving non-gamers into video games is so very real to me now. I’ve read articles and watched videos of it but seeing it happen first hand was awesome.

You have to understand how big a deal this is. Mom and Dad don’t understand e-mail or websites, never use the internet and the last computer they bought was a Commodore 64. Dad likes Tetris and Bookworm (though I have to set it up for him). On the other hand, Mom has never even given a wayward glance to a video game. Watching her doing a little dance every time she got a Strike in bowling was pretty amazing. When she got a Turkey (3 Strikes in a row) and then another two Strikes later in the same game, Dad and I realized she was a serious threat:

Mom kicks our butt. Slight irony = Sony television.

My parents finally understand the joy of video games. Thanks Nintendo!