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Last night I finally decided to undertake a little project that has been years in the making. It is well known information that I enjoy collecting Transformers. Well, much like every chicken much hatch from an egg and leave the shell behind, every Transformer is removed from its package, leaving the box behind. So, throughout my several years of acquiring Transformers toys, I have also acquired a lot of Transformers boxes along with them. Well, I always keep the boxes. I just don't want to throw them away. So, these boxes have been in storage, taking up space, for a long, long time. With recent purchases of several large toys, I knew that I wouldn't have much room for the boxes anymore. And so, it was time to flatten them. So, here are some pictures of the boxes before I started. You can see that the floor was almost completely covered with them. I've got boxes here from Generation 2, Beast Wars, Machine Wars, Beast Machines, Robots in Disguise, Armada, and Energon.    It was tough to say goodbye. I really like the packaging. It's a part of the product as a whole, and I'm sure that a lot of hard work goes into designing them. They have some great artwork and photographs. But when I was finished, that huge pile was reduced to this:  The smaller boxes were flattened, folded, and placed inside the boxes from my recently acquired Omega Supreme and Omega Sentinel. The boxes that were too big to fit in either of those went into this large plastic container. Ironically, Unicron's box was left unfed. I had to draw the line somewhere though. I just couldn't bear to flatten my Japanese or Korean boxes. I just think they look neat.  So, now that that's all done, the result is that it hardly made any difference. The boxes from the Omegas that I just got take up about as much room as all the smaller boxes I've had for years. Bah! Sayonara.
TransformersCon is finished for another year. It was an amazing show! Of course, you can expect to see a full report right here on SykoGrafix during the next update. So if you haven't already, sign up to the mailing list to be notified. Thank you to everyone involved with the show, the organizers, the other fans I talked with, and the great Gary Chalk, for making this convention as amazing as it was. "Nobody calls Ninjatron uncrazimatic!"Sayonara.
Yeah, a new update finally. New art, new articles, new music, lots of good stuff. Check it out, will you? When you're done, you can discuss the new additions on the message board. And please sign the new guestbook while you're here. My Star Wars Collection article is out of date now. I just bought this:  Cool, huh? I got a Darth Maul before The Phantom Menace came out, and a Jango Fett before Attack of the Clones came out, so getting this General Grievous figure before Revenge of the Sith is just keeping in the tradition of obtaining the action figure of the movie's main new badass character. TransformersCon starts TONIGHT with Free Fan Friday! Really looking forward to this! Let's hope that my discussion panel goes OK. Sayonara.
Regarding my previous post: Shortly after I posted that, I buckled down, went right in there, and repaired that artwork of Casey Jones with the damaged pixels. It does look like it was repaired and not exactly like it used to look, but at least it's better than nothing. I got a print out of it now, and it doesn't look too bad on paper. There are some noticable differences, but I'm going to leave the version I've got up here as it is. Some people have asked me if I saw the weekend's episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, "Same as it Never Was", since it was a real big shocker. I missed it, but managed to track it down and just saw it yesterday. Good golly, that really was unbelievable. That has got to be a record for Saturday morning on-screen deaths! The story was solid, and I just can't believe that they got away with all of that. Amazing. But not entirely surprising. It's just more proof that TMNT is one of the best things going on TV right now. A Katamari Damacy game is coming out for the Nintendo DS. I guess that means I really need to get a DS now. Well, I'm not in a hurry to get one, but what with the recent free wireless Internet access announcements and now this, I do fully intend on owning one eventually. Heh heh. I almost typoed the word "intend" up there with " intendo". I "intendo" to buy the Nintendo. Yeah, that's stupid. Never mind. To all of those planning on purchasing the PSP, you have my condolences. Not that I want to get into a huge war over this, but if I were you, I sure wouldn't buy it! There are far better ways to spend your money. This strawberry yogurt I'm eating right now isn't really very good. But I will still finish it, because that's just the kind of guy I am this week. Sayonara.
I've been working really, really hard on new stuff for the website so I can finally update this website again with some new content after such a long period of inactivity. I admit that at there was a long stretch where I was slacking off, but I've done some new artwork and it's looking really good. So sit tight, everyone. I promise that the wait will be worth it. Today I wanted to make some new prints of my artwork for my colour portfolio. I go to open up my Casey Jones piece and I get a strange message telling me that there has been an error and some pixels are no longer valid. What the hell? The image file is damaged! Never seen anything like this before. How this happened, I don't have a clue. The suggested causes are from a faulty connection or scratched media or something, which is just nonsense to me because I'm running this file off my hard drive. The result is that there's a slice around the center going all the way across one of the layers where its all messed up and nothing looks like its supposed to. Adobe is no help. They say that this information is lost forever. I don't know if I've got a backup or not. So the only way to fix this may be to go in there and fix it by hand. I've already taken a few stabs at it and it's really tough. If this were to happen to a crappy picture then I wouldn't be so upset, but this is Casey Jones and I really liked that one! I was really hoping to get some printouts of it, but I might just have to give up the ghost on that. I don't know that it'd be worth the time and effort to fix it at this point. There's always something. Bloody Hell. Sayonara.
Earlier this week I finally finished watching the fansubbed episodes of Transformers Super Link, the Japanese version of the show we know as Energon. I've had these episodes for awhile, but I hadn't felt up to investing the time to finish watching the series. But with TransformersCon coming up and me running the fan panel on the night before I wanted to see the whole thing and have it fresh in my mind, so I started watching from the beginning. As I watched the series, and especially as I neared the end, I just could not believe that so many people have said that they don't like it. It boggles my mind that anyone, especially Transformers fans, could hate this show. This show rocked on so many levels! Now that I've seen the entire series from start to finish, I can honestly say that this is far and away the best Transformers show ever. Yeah, you read that right. Best ever. Better than Beast Wars, and much, much better than Generation 1. Super Link has everything I'd ever want in a Transformers show. Great characters, amazing battles, internal conflict, metaphor, symbolism, everything. Even the main human character, Kicker, was not annoying! The way that characters like Ironhide (Roadbuster) and Scorponok (Mega Zarak) grew and changed through the series due to various circumstances was masterfully done, and even characters with smaller roles, like Landmine, had a little quip here or there that cemented who they were and what they were all about. It was a huge epic with different messages about knowing ones place as a part of team, obeying orders for the right reasons, and doing everything one can to accomplish a goal even if it seems insignificant. Not morals per say, but different, and often contradictory, interpretations of messages like these that aren't going to try and change anyone's life around, but are there nonetheless. The ending was mind blowing and very emotionally draining. Far from simple kids' stuff. It's too bad that people have been turned off by the English dub, but I can't accept that. If you don't like the dub, seek alternatives! Fansubs have been available from TV-Nihon. If you just can't stand anime, grow up! Anime is here to stay and Transformers has always had more of a connection with anime than it does to North American animation, so get used to it already. If you hated Armada, suck it up and watch this show anyway. There's no excuse. But hey, those people who call themselves Transformers fans but refuse to watch this show, it's their loss! Most people like that just want G1 all over again. Well Super Link is not G1, and thank Primus for that! I really hope that there are other folks coming to TransformersCon who loved Super Link as much as I did, because I really can't wait to discuss the show at the fan panel on the Friday before. This weekend, YTV will be airing the final 4 episodes of Energon, as well as the classic Transformers The Movie, so we should all be caught up with show after that. As for me, I'm moving on to the new show, Galaxy Force! As Alpha Q would say " Something cool might happen again!" Sayonara.
This weekend was the final lesson of my Anime Round 2 class. Overall I'm pretty happy with how it went. The students, for the most part, took the material seriously, which made my job a lot easier because I've dealt with a few classes in the past with students who were more interested in goofing around than actually drawing anything. The course, on the whole, isn't as much fun as Round 1 or 3, but the material is more important in the long run, so it was great to have a group that saw it the same way. Granted, some of them still have a long way to go, but I think everyone's much better off than they were when they first started. There was a lot of improvement there. There were these two kids, however, that are an interesting case. Two brothers, one of whom is very young, the other not much older. They jumped in during the middle of the fall session, so right off the bat they missed out on several important lessons that they've never been caught up with. Then they suddenly appeared at the start of this winter's session without anyone knowing that they'd be there. I don't think they ever arrived on time for class even once, so that was frustrating to deal with. Their mother would often ask me if they were behaving, worried that they'd start fighting like they do at home, but things never got out of hand. Most of the time they just worked on their own drawings and didn't really care about anything I had to tell anyone, but since they weren't bouncing off the walls or anything, I didn't complain as not to upset the balance of the classroom. But their drawings were surprisingly very clean for their ages. I have no idea if they are going to be coming back for the next session, so when the younger of the two started talking about how he and his brother fight each other, I decided I'd have a little fun and encouraged the younger lad to fight back as hard as he could. Ahh, good times. They both seen to have a genuine interest in drawing, so I wonder what will happen with them. So now I am off for the next month or so until I start teaching again in the Spring. Hopefully I'll be teaching two classes at that point, Anime Round 3 with returning students and Anime Round 1 with new students. Until then I've got some other work to do, and while I'm sure to enjoy the break, I'm sure that I'll be itching to get back at it again in no time. Sayonara.
This week I've been trying to get some more new artwork done. Things are going slowly but surely. As much as I'd live to just jam on new pieces of work all day and all night, I still have to be careful. My wrist is still not what it used to be and I've had a few moments of discomfort recently. Certainly not to the extreme rage-educing levels of pain I was in a year ago, but troublesome all the same. So, during extended periods of working on some art with my digital tablet, I have to take a break every once and awhile. Usually I fill up break time by playing video games. After neglecting it for awhile, the game that took up most of my time this week was The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. This is the first home console Zelda game I've ever gone out of my way to play. Yesterday I finally finished it. Though as it started to become apparent that I was coming towards the end, I took my sweet time with it and went through several of the side-quests. I was enjoying the game so much that I didn't want it to end. Now that I am finished, I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it truly is a beautiful, inspiring game with a fantastic story. I especially enjoyed how the concept of the wind was used as a practical gameplay device and as a storytelling tool woven into the tale both literally and meteorically. I understand that you could probably take any given game in the Zelda franchise and talk about how great it is for hours on end, but I think it's important to say this specifically in regard to The Winder Waker because the visual style is so different and controversial. Some people may have been upset when the game was first unveiled with its cartoonish style, but at the end of the day they really knocked it out of the park with this one. I loved the story of this game so much that I could honestly see it as being a movie or a TV show or something like that. There was a Zelda cartoon years ago, but I found it obnoxious. Of course, Pokemon, Kirby, and F-Zero are big Nintendo franchises that have recently been animated, and Nintendo has a sweet deal going with 4Kids to bring those shows and any future Nintendo-based anime series to the international scene. One must wonder, though... Why no Zelda yet? Recently Nintendo has expressed interest in going into animated films. Could this mean that a Zelda movie is on the horizon? I would love to see that. I don't care if it used either traditional animation or CG or both. A movie like that could be the huge event that finally puts animation over as a valid medium of expression in the eyes of the general public. Until that highly hypothetical event happens, we've got another Zelda game coming up later this year for the GameCube. Not much is known about it yet except that the style is different than Wind Waker, but from graphics alone I can say that it looks freakin' amazing. See the new trailer here. I waited a year after Wind Waker came out before I picked it up, but this one I might have to dive into right away. I'm really looking forward to it. Sayonara.
Thought I'd do something a little different and spruce up the title bar in anticipation for this month's big Canadian Transformers Convention.  The 4th Annual TransformersCon is being held on Saturday March 26 at the Doubletree International Plaza Hotel in Toronto. Guests include former artists and employees of Dreamwave Productions and Garry Chalk, the voice behind Optimus Primal in Beast Wars and Beast Machines and Optimus Prime in Armada and Energon. There'll be plenty of toys to buy, autographs, prizes, and more. Best of all, it's a massive gathering of fellow fans and great people. The night before, Friday the 25th, a free fan gathering is taking place with trivia and fan panels. I'll be holding one of my Transformers fan panels there, similar to what I've done at Anime North for the past few years. You can read my report of 2004's TransformersCon here. This year's show looks to be even bigger and better, so I promise you that if you're in Canada, or even across the border, and you love Transformers, this is the event you want to go to! See you there! Is that new artwork up there? Yes, yes it is! I was originally just going to put one of my older Transformers fan art pieces in the title bar, but I suddenly got inspired to do something new. Besides, I had to put Armada Prime up there to pay tribute to Garry Chalk's first ever Toronto convention appearance, because I've been a huge fan of Garry's work for years. You'll see the whole image on the site soon, so stay tuned. Prime lives afterall!Sayonara.
Died not from wounds inflicted on the battlefield, but from Prostate Cancer. I speak, of course, of Robot Chicken, the new series on the Cartoon Network Adult Swim block. It's a comedy show co-created by Seth Green and completely animated using stop motion with toys and action figures. Each episode is about 12 minutes long and is made up of all sorts of various bits and sketches of various lengths. One of the longer sketches, and the one that everyone seems to be talking about, is the Transformers parody where Optimus Prime is diagnosed with prostate cancer and dies. Originally I wasn't going to go out of my way to watch this, but after seeing some screen shots and hearing so much buzz around it after it had aired, I decided that I had to see what all the fuss was about and found a way to download it. Now that I have seen it, I have to admit that I did chuckle a bit. It was pretty well done, and as far as being a Transformers parody goes, the people responsible really seemed to know their stuff. It was a real Transformers parody and not just some vauge reference to the concept of Transformers. Some of the figures they used were actually highly customized to get different characters on the show. The voice acting was pretty close to the original Generation 1 cast, but the real gag came from seeing the Autobots in situations you'd never see them in, like in the showers after winning a battle, and Optimus Prime at the doctors office. News of Prime's death has been spreading, and even the National Prostate Cancer Coalition has issued a press release, both in the spirit of fun and to seriously raise awareness of this disease. So perhaps some good may come out of this silly cartoon. Other, less moralistic skits involved swearing Pokemon, a smoking Teletubby, crude and violent TV show bloopers, and " The World's Most One Sided Fistfights Caught on Film". Some are funny, some are lame, but for the most part the show isn't a complete waste of time. The humor is obviously not for everyone, and it's certainly not for children, but it's worth checking out. Geeze, never thought I'd ever have to type the word " Prostate" so many times. Rather not have to do that again. Sayonara.
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