Making the Kyoot Scene

I’m always listening to music while I work. It’s a pretty integral part of my process, to the point where opening my music list is part of my daily boot-up routine. I always keep my eye on the top charts to see what’s new, but my mixes sometimes run in seasons, like now. Maybe it’s the warm sunshine or the saturated colors of summer dripping through the air, but I felt it was time to find some new stuff to jam to and came along quite a few new artists that I really like during the past few days of hunting.

Below are some of my favorites from the resultant summer list. Most are pretty new (to me), but I’ve also thrown in a couple old favorites that really signify an upbeat and fun summer sunshine feel. The audio on the Bee video isn’t the best – I’d suggest giving it a fresh listen on itunes or something else that doesn’t have that bit of static. It’s a really fun song. There’s an official music video for Electric Twist, but embedding is disabled by the record company. LOL. Alright then. It’s 2010, guys…gotta do some catching up with the times here.  Some others that are on my that I didn’t feature here are Katy Perry – California Gurls, Jamie Foxx Feat Justin Timberlake – Winner, a good chunk of the Glee soundtracks, and several others.

The Weepies – I was Made for Sunny Days (from the album “Be My Thrill” 2010)

Mumford & Sons – The Cave (from the album “Sigh No More” 2009)

Lena – Satellite (from the album “My Cassette Player” – 2010)

Lena – Bee (from the album “My Cassette Player” – 2010)

A Fine Frenzy – Electric Twist (from the album “Bomb in a Birdcage” – 2009)

Meet Choco Cookie-chan who just left the plate for minute to go make a phone call. Where did his family and friends go?? ;________;

Nuuuu chara desu!!! But I’m not sure about his mouth. I’ll not mess with it anymore today though…I’ve got to get back on the new site redesign. It seems like it’s taking forever… It’ll be so great when it’s done though!

I suppose if you travel a lot something has to go wrong sometime, right? Standard law of probability? Well, that time was Mini Megacon this past weekend. In retrospect, things could’ve been much much worse…the hotel could have actually burned down instead of being the victim of a massive set of pranks. But it’s still annoying as hell. Anyway. So it’s after 12 Saturday night/Sunday morning and I’m getting ready to go to bed. Suddenly this high pitched keening siren goes off in the hotel room. Kendra and I look at each other and at first don’t realize what it is…then it suddenly dawns on us. It’s the fire alarm! Oh joy. I look out in the hallway and sure enough, other hotel guests are in different levels of disarray peering out of their rooms and looking for someone to tell them it’s a joke and to go back to bed. Then people started to scurry around and others  were running down the exit stairs, so we determined it was not a joke and that we should probably go too. It later amused Kendra how calmly I turned and packed my laptop and backpack. She was grabbing things and chucking them in her bag and I was taking stock of my luggage and grading it from most important to least. I think I was ready to go out the door before her too.

So we go out and immediately see a guy running through the parking lot with a sheet wrapped around him. Hahaha!! But not really. It would really suck to be him, and if I hadn’t decided to skip my shower and do it in the morning, I would’ve been in the same boat but also dripping wet. We walked around and decided to leave our stuff in the car and go see if anyone knew what was going on. We heard many people say “It Was Real!!!!!” and that the 5th floor was full of smoke. At this point somewhere around 5-8 fire trucks were pulling up along with paramedics and fire engine support. We walked around the building and looked in all the windows to see any signs of a fire on the 5th. Nothing to see. We did see someone on the 6th floor though…that turned out to be someone’s 90 year old grandmother/mother who couldn’t walk to get out of the hotel. The person with her had just apparently left her there when the fire alarm went off. Real nice. The paramedics got her out and she was ok, though.

An hour wears on and we wander back around to the side of the hotel where the Kyoot mobile is parked. People are taking pictures of the cars along one side. Hmm. That’s weird. What’s going on? We had moved our car from that row to give the firemen easier access to some pumps on the side of the hotel earlier. We found out that someone had keyed the entire row of cars facing the hotel. They had literally walked along and dragged a key over the back of 8-9 cars. I went over immediately to check the back of ours and sure enough — someone had keyed the back hatch and there was a line going across Cupcake to the other side. Thankfully it didn’t cut deep enough to get the paint below…it only cut the top laminate and second layer and in some spots down to the white base. We’re getting it fixed and you can’t see it unless you’re standing right there, but it’s still really crappy. I’m assuming it was a bunch of kids or drunks…they actually drew on some people’s cars and really messed them up. So we did get lucky in that only one panel needs to be replaced and they didn’t decide to draw on multiple spots on the car or the glass. After that the news circulated that it was not in fact a fire, but someone had unloaded an entire fire extinguisher on the 5th floor. Great. They let people back in and I got to sleep some where after 2AM. It was a fun night.

Other than that, mini Megacon was a fun weekend. It was just a 2-day convention this time. I got a picture of Happi Paper sitting on R2D2. I also came up with the start of what could be a really fun new manga. I’ll have to do it in my spare time though as it’ll be very loosely connected to BeKyoot. I’m really excited about the storyline and characters. I’ve got a lot of details to iron out though. I’m hoping I’ll be able to grab some domains and get the comic setup relatively quickly.  *^_^* So yeah…this weekend was an adventure and I wish I could’ve slept a few more hours this morning. Maybe running at the park or a nice dinner will perk me up? I hope so..

Time for some News of Awesomeness!

BeKyoot is sponsoring a giveaway on TokyoBunnie.com! Check our her blog for a chance to win a brand new Lovie Fat Cat bag and matching pin set! I’ve become a loyal reader of TokyoBunnie since discovering it not long ago. She covers a lot of indy artists and always posts interesting content. I’ve found quite a few new artists to follow through her posts and features! Do check it out!

In other News of Awesomeness, I have discovered and become addicted to a new manga. Kitchen Princess. I really like it! And I love that they give you the recipes at the end of the main chapters! The main plot follows an orphan girl named Najika who wants to become a chef to fulfill her parent’s dreams and find her Flan Prince. Standard mushy shojo fare, but darn it! It’s fun! *^___^* It further piles upon my already toppling desire to cook and make my own bento so that’ll most likely be coming very soon. Another series I’m digging into right now is Violinist of Hamelin. I’m watching the anime first and am preparing to be a mess by the end as I’ve heard it’s pretty sad and dark in comparison to the manga.

Today I’m putting up a Free Wallpaper Extra! From the game Gyakuten Saiban / Phoenix Wright. This was done for a good friend of mine who is going to law school soon, so I thought I’d post it here for others to enjoy as well. A new size…I’m thinking I might change my standard wallpaper size to this soon. As always, click the pic to download the full version!

Phoenix Wright Extra (1900×1200)

Hahahaaaaaa whoops! Alright so if you’ve noticed that all of my June wallpapers were down…gomennasai!! I had the brilliant idea to try and combine the two different gallery systems I have running on here and instead of copying files over from one to another I just moved the major wallpaper files and poof! There they went, breaking my inline links in the process. -.-;;; Everything should be back in working order now.   I’m going to do my Expo coverage blog tonight and will have some extra freebies to post as well. I’ve been riverdancing with new layouts for both Kendra and my blogs for a while, and I’m hoping to send those live sooner as opposed to later. I’ll also be making large leaps of progress on the webcomic and animation projects…so! Yay! Back to work.

IEEEEEE!!!! It’s done and it looks SO AWESOME! OMG. I went nuts as soon as the thing came in sight. So perfect! So perfect! And I got the seal of approval from a 5 year old girl about a mile from the pick up point…she was on a walk with her parents, saw the car and started grinning and pointing and then her parents looked and they loved it too. Hehehee. Alright! To the pics!!!

Click image to enlarge!

More babble tomorrow when I’m not as tired. But yay!!!

Free Kawaii Wallpaper Friday です!!

Woo…I’m little late today. And…pink. I’ve been doing a lot of pink stuff lately…XD Sorry! I’ll widen my color palette here. For today’s post…another Fat Cat wall! This is actually a piece of the graphics taken from the car wrap which I’ll be posting this weekend. Eeee!! It gets installed on Wednesday just in time for Akon! I can’t wait to post the design and then see it actually finished! But enough babbling!

Lovie Fat Cat Regular (1600×1200)

Lovie Fat Cat Widescreen (1440×900)

Click the pic to download the full res version!

My first emoticon post seems to be pretty popular so I went ahead and made another one to stave off wrap stress. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have some previews of the BeKyoot Mobile to post. I’m really excited about it.

Glossed this one up a bit more than the others…and yes I am guilty of randomly bunnifying these two emotes.
Kawaii Emoticon Tomodachi Regular (1600×1200)

Kawaii Emoticon Tomodachi Widescreen (1440×900)