progress of v0066

I started doing this right after doing v0065 on the 21st February 2009. Right now, I am almost done with the outline. Since the original is a monochrome image drawn by pencil, I had a hard time figuring out which are the shades and which are the outlines on top of multiple lines that could have otherwise be represented as only 1 line (eg. the tatami mat frames at the bottom left). I have also put up colours based on my judgment or earlier vectors at roughly at where they should be.

What I'm trying to do besides that is to redesign the character's heads, especially the 3rd, 5th and 6th from the front as the original was done in August 2005. If you had payed attention to the character designs of anime back then and now, you can see that the character designs have been improving. One such example is the 2002 and 2006 versions of Kanon where even though the storyline is about the same, the visuals of the newer one looked a lot better. Of course, this could possibly mean using the "cut and paste" method from earlier vectors or other source images and edit those from there. I try not to have it look like v0015, which looks horrible, but more like v0018 where I added the bottom half from elsewhere and modify the existing parts so that it blends nicely. Others include the head of v0007 & v0021, the legs of v0016 & v0016a, the eyes of v0035 & v0037, background of v0053, features images and drawings in v0058, colours for v0016 (again), v0030a, v0056, v0056a, v0056b, v0060, v0065. v0038 is a special case where the enlarged characters in colour, but cropped, also features the characters in full, but in monocrome with text over it, in the same source image. More complex I had done before include v0030, v0046, v0048, v0050, v0051, v0058, and v0061.

(Looks at the previous paragraph) Sorry, I got carried away. Anyways, looking at how complicated and how long I could take to release this, I may release several vectors numbered after this (v0066).

I'm posting this in the middle of the night, so I'm feeling tired and sleepy by now, so I shall end this here now.

PS. My YouTube profile is updated to look like my main blog. It actually looks a lot better; even better than other poeple's. The wonders of just using the colours, level of transparancy, and background colour....

URL of my Japanese main blog

If you had seen the URL to my japanese blog, you would notice either a long-ish alpha-numeral adress (xn--n8jos8fqkx000ci6n) or the name in Japanese (虹を追いかけて), depending on your settings. By default, it would display the former.

In Internet Explorer version 7 or latter, you would notice an icon in the URL bar like the left screenshot and may or may not display the proper URL. Same applies to browsers like Safari or Crome, but without that notification icon, though which it would display depends on your computer/browser settings.

The older URL (chasing-after-rainbows) now redirects to the English version (the1iam), which, among the 2 language versions, I would updated more frequently. There are links from there that would lead to the japanese version.

I have created these tinyurl links pointing to the same site for convience:

http://tinyurl.com/6b4aww
http://tinyurl.com/dffbs2

10,000 hits reached

Since I had put up the visitor counter across all my blogs at blogspot (except the 2 hidden from my profile) since December 2008, the numbers has hit ten thousand.

I know it's not really accurate as people would view other posts, web bots taking screenshots or finding pharses that would appear in the search results, and some would re-visit the page. Then again, my blogs has been around for many times longer than when I put up some form of knowing the numbers of people visiting.

The counter you see above it displays current number of visitors. If you click on it, you would see the pages that are being viewed and a map of where all my visitors where it is generally spread around the world. If you played around with the map, you would notice that the large majority of visitors are from Japan. This is probably largely because entering "とらドラ 歌詞" (Toradora song lyrics) in Google search, would have the post of one of my blogs appearing at the very top in 1st place out of the 242,000 possible results. The screenshot below is proof:

So thank you for visiting my blog.

progress of v0061 & what is going on now

It has been some days since I last release a vector, but there are a lot of things I should be doing now. Doing vector is like a brain drain than writing a story as I have to figure out how to colour a region. The craziest thing I have done is v0046, because I spent a lot of time just doing the leaves.

How long it takes me to complete a vector varies from less than a day (sometimes 3 in 24 hours), to a week, depending on the complexity/detail. But with life-changing events taking place for the next 2 months, it looks like I have to slow down the pace I am doing, which means even longer time than before. I may, however, continue on with writing my original stories when I feel like it, which I find quite enjoyable.

Changes made

I don't really remember what changes were made since the last update, but here's some of them:

• Background image changed
  
• Background of post, sidebar, and top navigation bar has been changed to semi-transparent. This is made possible by just replacing the white with a partially transparent white PNG image.
• Colours of the side navigation menu of the Japanese version of the main blog and the drawings blog has been changed to red/pink.
• Added "Tw Cent MT" as the first font to load on the technology blog.
• To avoid confusion or misunderstanding in the search results, (TVサイズ)/(TV-size) next to the song title has been relocated to below the name of the singer(s) as "赤：TVサイズ"/"Red: TV-size" on the anime blogs.
• Colours and table formatting for "Friends Blogs" (on both English and Japanese Versions) has been changed. Apparently, the outer border looks different on different browsers.
• Some time ago, I have (quietly) lifted the restriction of the posts having to be verified by me before the comments appear. However, I am still notified if someone posts at my blog.
• Format for the signature on my vectors has changed from

  高橋はるか
  2009年2月2日（月）
  nijitoki.blogspot.com

  to

  高橋はるか・2009年2月2日・nijitoki.blogspot.com

  Fonts and colours are unchanged. Notice the omission of the day of the week. The order may be change to fit the positioning. By default it would appear at the bottom right (bottom left for the older version). Older vectors will not be affected unless I have decided to make changes.
• I have disabled auto-play of the music player on the English anime blog. Japanese version had already done so earlier.
• If you haven't noticed, my third story on my main blog has "to be continued in part X" on the right instead of the usual left. Images are also omitted. Speaking of which, I do have plans to insert parts in between as a separate part. You would know if you see Part X.Y in the title or "to be continued/continued from part X.Y" somewhere in the middle of Part X.
• Songs has been added to the playlist. If you are wondering what number the new toradora opening & ending songs are, it's 489 and 490. (OP/ED for the earlier ones are 437 & 436) 491 and 487 are white album op/ed songs.
• "Anime watch list" on my other blogs are updated. I hadn't changed since the last few episodes of Autumn 2008 anime and now in the first few of Winter 2009 ones.