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30 Day Design Challenge | Day 1: Design a movie poster for a horror film.

It's been a while since I made something remotely creative.

These past few months have been very challenging for me creatively. It was as if I was only waking up to go to work, and sleep to wake up and do it all over again. So, I decided to let Notion AI create a 30-day design challenge for me, with daily prompts that'll tickle my creative brain and get it laughing again.

The inspiration for this simple Seulgi horror poster was mostly the theatrical release poster for the film Perfect Blue, a film I have never watched before but have heard great things about. It also had that shattered glass effect, which was perfect since Seulgi also had some similar promo photos. The font was mostly inspired by usual horror movie posters of films such as The Shining and Pearl.

Overall, if I were to recreate this, I think I would add a bit more flare to the title, but I'd like to say I did a pretty okay job for something that I didn't think too much about

Hopefully I get the hang of this challenge and actually push through until the 30th day. It was fun designing this.

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The Laziest turned 4 today!

wow i can’t believe i’ve been here for 4 years

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It’s really been a while since I picked up my Wacom tablet and did something like this. I kinda missed this style that I’ve always done since 2017 and I feel like there are certain improvements here and there, but I definitely need more practice.

I’ve been feeling down in the dumps for the past couple of months, but I’m trying to pick myself back up again. I just need to give my energy to the things that matter the most.

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Sometimes I miss having the inspiration to draw things like this again.

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If I were to be honest, the Favorite era is the era where I decided that I’d just be a casual fan. I think I might be too much of an overworked millenial to be keeping up with every single thing about Kpop, especially NCT nonetheless. This group comes back every other month and it was so hard for me to follow along that I just got tired. I still like them, though. And I want to follow their musical journey. But I guess I’ll just like them from afar.

Tumblr’s a great place to post my art and not think about it after a while. Twitter was hell for me. Coming back here kinda gives me peace of mind.

Anyway, here’s Johnny and Jaehyun for Favorite - Catharsis version. I can safely say that they’re my favorites.

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I feel like transferring to Tumblr just so I can hide from the outside world. I’m not even gonna bother changing the signature on this, I used to really be active on Twitter but it was just too toxic that I had to leave.

Anyway, I’ll be uploading all of my fanart here in increments so I have somewhere to store it. Here’s Johnny, no pun intended.

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Johnny Suh and flowers.

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It has definitely been a while.

Things to note while I was gone from Tumblr: I changed employers, I got back into Kpop, I’m a bit happier now than I was this time last year. But things are still weird, the lockdown is still upon us.

So I tried my best to at least improve on my shading during this whole year of quarantine. So here, please have a fanart as my official comeback to listening to Kpop - a portrait of Johnny Suh.

Have a great day, everyone.

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Today’s entry for A Sketch A Day is Ash Lynx from Banana Fish, an anime I’m too scared to start. I’ve heard good things about it, but I’ve actually already spoiled myself with the ending by reading the Wiki page. That’s what I do when I feel that shows are too painful.

I’ll try to get myself to watch it one of these days. So far, the memes and the compilation videos I’ve seen on YouTube are promising and I feel like I’ll like the series (even if I’m scared to be hurt by the ending).

Also this sketch ended up looking like a mugshot. I apologize.

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Welcome to A Sketch A Day, where I sketch a character or a person and post it on this blog to keep it active. I’m strictly going to use my Muji sketchbook until the pages run out.

On today’s episode of A Sketch A Day, I tried to do Mey Rin. I think I need to have better photos of my sketchbook. I’ll try to look for a much more photogenic place in my house. I don’t think I have the skills to take photos to be honest.

But yeah, starting today, I’ll sketch one person a day, may it be in fandom or in real life. It’s just so that I can practice some stuff. My hands have been quite stiff during the quarantine, I haven’t been practicing as much.

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I got this cool Muji blank notebook and I think it’s more than a hundred leaves. The paper’s a bit thin so I gotta be careful with my sketches. Here’s Sebastian Michaelis from Kuroshitsuji - a (failed) attempt to stick to a decent sketch schedule.

I’ll try my best to have an actual schedule to sketch and to hone more skills, I guess. I still have a long way to go.

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We are (almost) six months into the pandemic

and I am most definitely not okay.

I just wanted to place all my thoughts regarding my experience with the lockdown here in the Philippines, and how my mental health has reached its deepest, downwards slope.

Let’s start with the basics. Is it the masses’ fault that the numbers keep on rising?

Sometimes it’s a yes, sometimes it’s a no.

The Philippine Government has been ‘doing some things’ in order to ‘neutralize the situation’, which basically means that they’re treating the pandemic as if it was an actual, tangible enemy. Like criminals, the government treats the pandemic as if they could just shoot it, or lock it behind bars. But the virus is more than just a criminal. The virus is a damn virus that needs to be treated as an illness, and not an actual human being that you can just put into jail. So, we can definitely say that the Philippines isn’t handling the situation well. This article from The Diplomat narrates how this pandemic was poorly handled. It’s a good read while I wait for twenty minutes before I can shower, because I just had a very painful at-home workout session.

However, this doesn’t mean that everything is wrong. WHO has been helping the Philippine government in responding to the rising cases, in which an article can be found here. Influential people have started startup funds and outreach programs to those severely affected by the pandemic. Celebrities are giving away tablets and pocket wifis to less fortunate students so they can be armed with the right tools to be able to continue their education. All-in-all, despite all the wrongs, there are some things that everyone has done right.

But whose fault is it?

I still see some people posting Instagram stories of going outside, eating samgyupsal and going to Starbucks as if the pandemic isn’t happening. They’re unmasked, face shields on the table as they eat their meals. I’m sure that the preparation stages of these meals were sanitary and satisfactory based on the WHO standard, but seeing these makes me realize that I think we aren’t taking this pandemic seriously. Despite the frontliners’ pleas for us to stay at home, there are still people who choose to go outside leisurely, as if this is just a fad, as if this is just some sort of bird flu that will go away in the next few months.

But COVID-19 just doesn’t go away without an actual plan of action. COVID-19 goes away when people band together to stay at home, to follow safety procedures, and for the leaders to begin actually testing out everyone and to do serious contact tracing so we can prevent further spread of the virus.

So, I personally think that one way or another, we’re all at fault. I guess it’s just the matter of what do we do now?

How bad is it there in the Philippines?

I really can’t tell. I’ve had friends from other countries ask me how I am and all I could answer was “I’m alive.” That’s basically how I feel. I’m very thankful that I’m still alive. I’m thankful for still being employed, still being able to pay for my bills and to buy groceries for my family, despite my expenses being higher due to having to pay for my rising electricity bills for staying at home. There’s just this weird feeling that this will really not end, because every time I open my social media, especially Twitter and Facebook, it’s just news of the cases rising, or news of people dying because of this virus.

I know it’s bad to compare our country to, say, New Zealand, because New Zealand has a different economic status than the Philippines. They can afford to contact trace, they can afford to have a lockdown and just scrape the tip of the iceberg of their national economy without really breaking its ice. They managed to really squash out the virus from their country and these factors play to their success.

But also, because they responded fast. Because they took the virus seriously.

And it’s so unfair, because that’s also how I feel right now - I feel like we aren’t taking this seriously, to the point where I wake up and just feel that there isn’t any point in all of this any more. Like I could just go out and not wear a mask and infect everyone I come in contact with and it wouldn’t matter - but the truth is, I don’t really wanna do that. I wanna stay at home because staying home means I get to save lives. Even if a friend invited me to come with him to a tattoo shop so I can watch him get inked, and even if I could just easily go to a mall to walk around like it’s still normal. I take this seriously because I had a friend who got intubated and it traumatized the shit out of me. It’s so scary, to have a friend that’s fighting for her life while you just wait for news, helpless.

I’m just so tired of people that don’t take this seriously. They go to parties, and they go to places where they shouldn’t be. They don’t care.

It’s unfair, because I care. And if I start to not care, I become the enemy.

On Rapid tests and PCRs

I’ve attended a few webinars into this pandemic and the one thing that every webinar has told me is that rapid tests are not as accurate.

This article from the Springfield News Sun narrates how PCR tests are much more accurate in actual COVID results, but they don’t single it out; they say that rapid tests are also helpful in a way. On rapid tests, they say:

This method of testing is nearly immediate, which lets contact tracing start sooner with a virus where time is of the essence. When there’s a positive test result received quickly, it raises the likelihood that an infectious person can be isolated before they get a lot of other people sick.

So if there’s a place where a suspected COVID case is living, they can first do a rapid test to see if people turn out to be positive. And since rapid tests are, well, rapid, they can know for sure within the day if people need to move on to the swab test, which is a much more accurate way of telling if people are COVID 19 Positive.

Another article from ABS-CBN News interviewed a couple of medical professionals on the use of rapid tests in determining whether or not a person is positive to COVID 19. (Take note: I’ll be translating the excerpt in English, but you can read the Filipino version in the link).

“It doesn’t mean that when you get a negative result [in the rapid test] that you don’t actually have an infection. The chance of being negative is 50 percent even if you’ve already been infected. So the problem here is that even if you have an infection, because you resulted negative, people will be happy to hear that, not knowing that you’ve already been infecting people you’ve come in contact with.” - Dr. Maricar Limpin, vice president of the Philippine College of Physicians.

She added that even the World Health Organization does not recommend the use of rapid anti-body test to diagnose COVID-19. 

Here is another article I’ll be sharing, from One News PH. It’s stated here that medical groups are largely opposing the use of rapid tests as a requirement to return to work. As testing kits become available, employers tend to not read into the actual instructions and to just see that rapid tests are faster and cheaper than PCR tests. I’ve seen this actually happen - people mass-hoarding rapid test kits for their employees just so that they can safely say that their employees have a “negative result”.

There is no such thing as a better rapid test kit, or a much more accurate rapid test kit. There is just a rapid test, and a PCR test, and that’s it.

And, it’s either you have the virus, or you don’t - and that’s the sad part about everything.

So, what now?

I really don’t know. I’ve been stuck here, trying to get my life together by working out and practicing social distancing even here, at home. Which isn’t healthy, by the way, but I really don’t feel like I want to talk to anyone right now, especially if these people aren’t taking the virus seriously. I don’t want to repeat myself over, and over, and over again, but I feel like the problem with how this country handles the pandemic is that most of us feel like “the COVID thing” isn’t that serious.

We can see it in the news, and in people going out for leisure, that just because the quarantine’s lifted does not really give anyone the right to just go from place to place, while not following actual procedures for safety. People think that it’s okay to focus on other things, like taking down a large multimedia company just because your feelings got hurt, or passing a law that has nothing to do with the virus despite WHO urging all governments to take the virus seriously and tackle this issue in such a way that would save the lives of people.

Unfortunately, in almost six months that I’ve been stuck here at home, I’ve yet to see progress in how this thing could be better.

And honestly? I’m already expecting the worse.

I have no hope anymore. I have no hope, and that’s it. I just have to say it - I think we’re all going to die, and whose fault is that?

I’ll leave the question open.

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Art by Finelinernerd

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I’m re-opening my store in the hopes that I’ll be able to open this initiative to help more people in this pandemic.

Flashback to a few weeks ago, when I saw this whole Instagram account made by my fellow Theresians. They aimed to raise a certain amount of money to make a facility in Quezon City to help out in this pandemic, and naturally, as an alumna, I donated. I didn’t know; it just felt right, to at least give something, albeit small, to a cause that I know would help a lot of people.

Now I want to emulate that energy and create one myself. I’m planning to sell stickers, and some proceeds of that will go to a COVID 19 ops that I can find. I’m still scouting for an organization and I’m planning to donate not a large sum of money because I’m anticipating that there’ll be little to no turnaround from this, so I’m expecting the worst.

I’ll still have to cost everything and plan the logistics and all of that, but overall, I’m excited to be helping out. It just feels right, to give what you have, in order to reach millions of people.

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Bands I like | MGMT

Circa 2010, I’m in my third year of high school. I’m scrolling through 8tracks.com to look for an indie playlist that would perfectly capture my feelings about being a teenager, about life, about the meaning of existence. I come across this psychdelic-y song called Time To Pretend and I’ve come to love it. During those times, Spotify wasn’t an option, so I YouTube-d everything that I could about this band.

I know their songs were made while they were high on some sort of drug, and even if I detest the use of recreational drugs, I am still in awe of what products drugs produce. The art that people make when taking drugs is a good kind of weird - it’s like the weird that you feel when you’re at a museum, looking at artwork and wondering to yourself how a human being was able to put these ideas onto canvas. Maybe there was a little push, a little shove. Maybe it was an inspiration.

Or maybe, it was drugs.

I was as close minded as any teenager was, with the internet just reaching its peak as the main source of information, with Tumblr being the hip new social media microblogging site for people my age. As the years went by, so did my love for this band, and as the years went by, my mind opened just a little bit more.

People take drugs because they want to escape. People want to escape because the world’s turned to shit. And then it hit me - I don’t even need to take drugs myself just to feel the things that MGMT wants me to feel. I just need to listen to them. And so I did, and I still am listening to them, ten years later.

It’s safe to say that MGMT has become my drug after all these years. I don’t have to take anything else; their music and visuals are enough to leave me in a trance. I guess the only substance I’ve learned to take properly after all these years is alcohol; drinking and listening to MGMT gives a different feeling altogether.

People are getting old. We’re all getting old. MGMT is getting old and yet their sound still remains as one of the best psychdelic pop sounds there is.

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I feel like I still have a long way to go, but hey, let’s start with some shading practice with the help of Hayley Williams. I’m waiting for the full album to drop, as we all are.

My process on this one was to just see where the highlights and the contours were on her face. It kind of challenged me because she wasn’t wearing a lot of makeup in this particular reference photo, but the shadows were there, and I worked with what I had.

I guess everything else needs improvement? I don’t know. All I know is that I’m just a bit happy that I was able to sort of finish this before Petals of Armor drops on May 5.

Please give me reference material or things I can read so I can improve, I’ll appreciate it greatly.

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Been having a bit of a downwards spiral lately, but hey, at least I was able to come up with something a bit more appealing.

Here’s Freddy Crabs from Sticky Fingers. I like this band a lot. I should do a “Bands I Like” of STIFI once I get my hands on a drawing tablet.