I finished! That animation I was teasing you all about a week ago is finished and up in the portal.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/591141

The Aquabats are seriously the best band in the world, period. The Aquabats Super Show is coming to The Hub this Saturday at 11am EST, 8AM PST. That's right: the same network as My Little Pony - so you know it's going to be an awesome show.

I hate it when artists do a "I have a project coming up. CrypticCrypticCryptic." post, but I haven't updated my news in quite a while, so I figured I might as well.

But yeah: if I can keep myself motivated to finish it, I'll have a little 30 second something up in the portal soon. Luckily I have a deadline of March 3; I seem to only be able to work under deadlines.

#cryptic

A friend of mine was feeling depressed recently because her ex was being a dick.

So, I made an animation of us beating the shit out of him to cheer her up.

http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/86 71352db184530be0678bfd23fde073

*dons sunglasses* Problem solved.

Yes, that's right: I'm having a very short-lived custom shoe sale.

You can read all the details here: http://ninjkabat.deviantart.com/journa l/40012534/

But, the tl;dr version is: for $100, you can get anything you want on a pair of shoes, I will ship them to you, they will be awesome, waterproof, and 100% original.

If you aren't familiar with my front-paged custom shoe work, check out my art tab. There are a couple pairs in there.

So, hurry up! There's only 3 spots open! This is a crazy crazy deal! I'm basically giving them away at that price.

Felt another aftershock about half an hour ago or so. It was only a 5.5 located in Nagano, though. Here in Toyama it felt probably like about a 4.3 or so.

Anyway, nothing big in the grander scheme of things. Having grown up in California, the earthquakes haven't really shaken me much (pun? too soon?). It's the tsunamis that will really mess you up.

But, I feel lucky to live in Toyama. It's a very isolated prefecture geographically and geologically, so nothing bad really happens here. I just wish that mother nature would take it easy on this poor country.

But, as they say, "shou ga nai." <It can't be helped.>

For anyone interested: I'm fine. I'm on the wrong side of the island for tsunamis and all that. I barely felt the quake at all in my prefecture.

So thanks for all the concern on twitter and facebook and junk; but, I'm fine.

The East Coast got hit crazy hard, though. Keep them in your thoughts and prayers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2 011/mar/11/japan-earthquake

-The Ninjkabat

P.S. This guy is a dick. Go tell him so.

That's right, all you people on the internet: I got a job in Japan! What global economic downturn?

So, it's super exciting, and I'm just going to verbal barf on this screen for a while. Some of you may know that I've been looking for a job in Japan for a little over a year - starting about the time I was finishing my ninjary and Japanese degrees at ucla. Going to Japan to work for a while has been an ambition of mine for quite some time. It's not uncommon for members of my clan to go over once they're out of college to get in touch with our roots and to really put our skills to the test (it's like a deadly pilgrimage or like an optional Mormon mission... that can kill you). But, due to the aforementioned economic downturn, even someone with my very special skill set has been struggling to find anything.

Well, no more! I have been offered a job with a company that contracts ninja and then finds them a position with a city or town that is looking to hire them. Most of the positions are more in sub-urban or rural towns that butt up against demon-infested hills or a lake that houses a Shinto deity or something like that. They contract maybe one, maybe several, ninja to pretty much do anything the city needs that normal-people forces wouldn't be able to handle. Like, when some punk kid knocks over a rock shrine to the river-spirit, it takes a good deal of finesse and swordplay to smooth the whole thing over. So, that's what I'm going to be doing. I don't know yet where they will find a position for me, but I should know in the next couple weeks. They asked my preferences, and based on that and my skill sets, they said they'd probably put me in one of a couple places that were a few hours out of big cities, possibly near mountains because of the classes I took in mountain demonology.

But, yeah. It's super exciting and super kick-ass. So, I just wanted to get it out there that I'm going to be in Japan. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention: the cool thing / hard thing is that the minimum contract period is 1 year, and you can choose to renew for longer than that. It's taken me so long to get there that I'll probably stay 18 months or even 2 years. I guess I'm just taking a roundabout way of saying I need to hang out with some people A.M.A.P. this summer before I leave. You probably know who you are.

Ahhhh, I'm so excited! I'll stop this though, because I'm well aware that most people probably haven't read this far. If you have, good for you; way to survive the tl;dr movement that's sweeping the tubes.

YAY FOR JOBS! (except the Steve variety)

http://www.formspring.me/ninjkabat

I know you do.

According to a recent poll I ran, there aren't many people who know anything about the weekly drawing show that I do.

So, this is a bit of a filler journal to let you know: I do a drawing show at 9pm PST on Tuesday nights. You can find it at this url, and I like to think that I do some interesting things for my viewers.

What types of things do I do on my drawing show, you ask? Well, in the past I've
- gone over my techniques for building characters out of shapes
- introduced my coloring techniques in different programs
- explained the way I do shading in flash and photoshop
- ANIMATED!
- Had special guest appearances, like my girlfriend
- One more time: ANIMATED!

So, if any of the above sounds interesting to you, tune in, even if it's only for a little bit. I had a whole bunch of viewers in November, but then I had to cancel a couple of weeks and my numbers have taken a hit.

As a special bonus to entice all of you into watching, tonight's show will be All Animation! And I'm not even going to make a new animation to show technique; I'm going to be working on my current music video project, which has not been revealed to the public yet. Does the promise of seeing high quality, never before seen animating tantalize you? Then click here and watch at 9pm PST. That's only in, like, an hour!

WATCH ME DRAW!

Hey, whoever clicked on this blog link. This is just a friendly reminder that my weekly drawing show - Draw With The Ninjkabat - is set to start at 9pm PST. You should stop by and check it out, 'cause let's face it, there's nothing good on TV anyway.

It's gonna be fun.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/draw-wit h-the-ninjkabat

I draw stuff like this