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trevmun

The Infamous Trev-MUN
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Okay ... So, last journal update, I'd mentioned that I had some art I'd put in storage and was considering taking out.

Truth is, I've been having cold feet over it.

See, in 2012 I started working on an idea for an original series of sorts that would involve personified ships, after being inspired by the likes of "mecha musume" artists such as acea4 of Taiwan, who has been doing a graphic novel titled Shermanga Wars (a wordplay on "Sherman" and "Manga," I think). I've come to dub my own project "The Oakenhearted," as you can see in the teaser/preview comic that I've taken out of storage. I had uploaded that on October 21, 2014, the same day that the ship featured in said preview (USS Constitution) was launched in 1797.

You'll notice that in the commentary for that picture, I mentioned that Kantai Collection launched in 2013 and how popular it's become. That's the reason I kept having second thoughts about doing anything with The Oakenhearted, putting up images only to either put them in storage or remove them. Not because KanColle "did it first," mind you—personifying war machines has been a thing since at least the 90's, so it's not like either title is breaking new ground here.

However, people have a tendency to look at anything that has similarities to something they like (or something that is popular) as a ripoff. Taken to the extreme, you get cases like the one fan who sent Universal Studios a nastygram accusing them of ripping off of Twilight with their 1940s film "The Wolfman." That's where my apprehension kicked in: I don't want The Oakenhearted to get dismissed as "a lame American imitation of KanColle," or a "me-too," or something like that.

If I keep going with this series, I want it to be judged on its own merits, not in comparison to more popular titles. I'd been worried it just wouldn't be possible. I'd passed around some of the work I've done on The Oakenhearted to people I know, and some of those who play Kantai Collection bluntly told me "yes, they're going to call this a KanColle ripoff." That's why I've sat on this for several years at this point.

Recently, though, some other friends have encouraged me to go through with it. And ... well, I figure now might be a good time as any: Fallout 4 was released today. Since it takes place in Boston and features its own take on USS Constitution, maybe it'll spark some interest.

I hope.

I'd really like to hear feedback on this idea—if you'd like to see more or what. I have other artwork related to The Oakenhearted I'd been doing in recent years (and more recently) that I may put up as well.

That's all I've got for now, gang.
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... Well, for a certain value of it, at least.

I've had some really, really demanding classes this entire year, summer included. I don't really have much of a life outside of working on all the assignments that pile up; in the Spring semester I jumped at the chance to take a Game Design course that specialized in Unity. Unfortunately the professor teaching that class (who was only at this university for a semester) had very, very short deadlines for projects. Case in point: He expected student teams to present their work at Oklahoma Research Day. Other Cameron students I spoke to while at ORD told me that their departments gave them a year or so in preparation; our professor gave us, at best, a few weeks.

I don't regret taking that class as it bootstrapped me where developing in Unity is concerned, but when it came to the assignments ...

Anyway, my department has another professor who is a big believer in making students spend a minimum of two hours on assignments outside of class for every hour spent in class. Said professor will assign a lot of different things all due at once to ensure this. I was in one of that professor's classes this Spring, and now I've got two of their classes this Fall. Had no choice; their classes are required for my degree plan.

Suffice to say, I've been pinned down pretty hard. It's actually really frustrating, because I've been so busy that I haven't even had time to start looking for a job once I graduate this coming Spring, to say nothing of working on my resume and portfolio. A full-time job would be far less stressful or demanding than this. And I'd be getting paid rather than paying to do work, which is another plus.

I did have a brief reprieve just before the Fall semester started, though, and that thankfully coincided with Tree of Savior's first English closed beta. I was phenomenally lucky, because I wound up getting in on the beta test. Here's proof of that!  Since all of the first closed beta testers are guaranteed a spot in the upcoming second closed beta starting October 29, I've been in overtime trying to see if I can clear my schedule enough that I can actually spend time playing the second closed beta.

If all goes well, you guys will see me there.

To that end, I've got some art I'm trying to find the time to put up in my gallery. There's also some art I've had in my gallery for a while that's been in storage, which I'm considering taking out ... it'll make sense if I actually get enough time to get things in order here. Classes come first, and I've already been pulling allnighters (or short-sleep days at least) just trying to keep up.

Medically ... well, no news is good news for now, I guess. My oncologist wants me to get a CT scan to make sure everything is okay, but since Cameron University no longer offers insurance to local students, there's just no way I can afford that. I need a job, preferably with its own health insurance plan, before I can think about that. Trying to finance a CT scan without insurance would gobble up all the remaining money I have.

The recent news that TotalBiscuit's colon cancer didn't clear but instead metastasized into his liver is a reminder that I can't just blow this off, but I simply have no choice for now. And even if, in a few years, I'm confirmed to be cancer-free, I may not be out of the woods. Yesterday, my father informed me that he's found out his family suffers from Reed's Syndrome, which is a rare inherited condition that raises the risk for kidney cancer. Most of his siblings tested positive. My father is going to get tested to see if he has it; if he does, I need to get tested, because there's a 50% chance I will have it as well. I'll have to get regular screening if I do have the syndrome.

Hopefully I'll be making some more updates before the 29th. See you guys later!
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Been a while since my last update. I've been spending most of what free time I had this year and last year trying to get better with Adobe Illustrator. I'm hoping that with Illustrator, I'll be able to achieve some actual quality CG that is also completely resolution-independent, what with it being vector-based and all. I think I've got a long way to go, though. Some of the stuff I've done in Illustrator so far is ... really sloppy looking in terms of coloring. I'm still figuring out what tools will be best for what job: you can do some amazing things in Illustrator with just line styles, but Gradient Mesh hasn't exactly been the holy grail I thought it'd be. I've also found myself still using Flash MX for making the actual lineart, because Illustrator's own shape creation tools just feel clunky and difficult to use efficiently.

So, the big news on the street is that Microsoft released Windows 10 today. A little over a year ago, I made some artwork concerning Microsoft's rather brutal (in my opinion) campaign to off Windows XP. Back then, Windows 10 was still known as Windows 9. It's going to be interesting to see what Windows 10 being absolutely free will do to XP's market share (as well as Vista's, 7's, and 8's). Still, I'm still of the same mind today as I was when I made that artwork; I'm sticking with my XP64 desktop for as long as is feasible, and I'd like to think I'm enough of a power user that "as long as is feasible" will last quite a ways.

Ironically, July 29th also happens to be the date that (19 years ago) I got access to my first IBM PC. To commemorate that in a way, I was working on another OS-tan related picture: concept artwork of Marin, the personification of that PC. Seeing as I've had Marin's design in mind and on paper since 2007, it feels good to start doing stuff with all this.

And that's not all. Hopefully, there'll be more to come (provided I can find the time between medical, financial, and educational pressures ... things haven't changed much on those fronts from my last few updates, but I'll get to those another time).

Until next time, gang!
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Hey guys,

It's been a long time since my last update; I didn't mean to leave you all hanging, and I'm really sorry to have worried the people who've expressed their concerns.

Life's been a roller coaster of ups and downs since the Spring 2014 semester. A lot of things have gone right, and a lot of things have gone wrong, the consequences of both which have left me little time to really pursue anything I want to do in my spare time. Going into detail about the the past half-year would make for a really long story, and some of it I'd rather not get into. I can share some of the good (and bad) though:

The good things I'll cover first. Medically ... So far, I seem to still be in remission. So far, there's been no sign of any lethal side effects of chemotherapy (the secondary cancer, heart toxicity, or pulmonary fibrosis). I'm keeping my fingers crossed that nothing happens.

Academically I've been keeping the course. I got out of the Spring 2014 semester with straight A's, but more importantly, I entered into the CGI Federal 3D animation competition with my final project for AP & 3D Video Effects. I had a series of false starts with that one, leading me to spend a week sleeping very little, chugging down a lot of coffee and energy drinks to fight off the effects of chemo while I worked on my entries. The competition this year had several categories for entries: Team Animation, Solo Animation (in which you must create a video using audio from a provided clip of sound), and Modeling (anything you want, but it had to fit within a tight limit of polygons).

The end result wasn't really that good compared to my absolute best, but! I won the Modeling category. The CGI employees were impressed with how I much detail I was able to cram into a model with such a comparatively low poly cap. My main regret is that, because I had to start over multiple times to get it right, I didn't leave myself any time to properly skin and texture the model as I would have liked. Still, though ... winning the competition won me several prizes, including an interview for a summer internship with CGI Federal. A paid one!

That was one big reason why I hadn't had anything to say over the summer; up until June I was doing a lot of paperwork post-interview considering CGI Federal is a government contractor. It was also, practically, a full-time job. The internship really helped make back some of the money I'd had to spend over the previous two semesters. Not all of it, not by a long shot, but enough that, if I didn't have anything else to worry about, I would be set for at least two more semesters in terms of paying university fees, tuition, and books.

Which leads me to the bad stuff ... the financial stuff. On August 7th, I received a notice from my university that they were canceling my health insurance. I had gotten coverage from Blue Cross Blue Shield through Academic Health Plans, which Cameron University handled. Now, I have no insurance. When I received the notice I went to Student Development to find out why; I was told that the health care had gotten "too expensive" for the university to maintain (but by law they are forced to provide coverage for foreign students).

I was instead directed to talk to a health care agent, who quoted me insurance plans from the Healthcare.gov Marketplace (AKA Obamacare) whose monthly fees (premiums) were all three times as expensive as the Academic Health Plans coverage at their cheapest, and much less beneficial. These plans would have done little to help pay for the actual costs of health care while extracting thousands of dollars out of me per year. If I had taken one of those health care plans, combined with the university fees and costs of living I would be forced to drop out in a year at most.

I'm in the process of trying to reapply for the Uncompensated Care Plan with my hospital and the Cancer Center. Over the summer, I also applied for (and was granted) financial assistance from the Leukemia Lymphoma Society, so I have a little buffer against the raw cost of health care (my most recent visit with my oncologist last month, plus a blood test, already added a few hundred dollars to my debt). In the meantime, I continue to struggle with creditors. The company that handled my bone marrow and lymph node biopsies last year, NeoGenomics, billed me $10,500 recently for that work. I'm currently trying to get that sorted out, and I hope it all goes in my favor. If not, well ... I'll DEFINITELY not be in college for more than another semester.

In the meantime, I'm continuing to look for scholarships (I've applied for dozens and have not been granted any) or further part-time work (no such luck) to help cover the cost of higher education. I've been having some really frustrating dealings with Student Housing which have proven to be a highly time-consuming and unpleasant distraction from both this, addressing my creditors, and keeping on top of my school work.

And this semester has been keeping me extremely busy where school work is concerned. Because my concentration for my Multimedia Design major is Animation, I'm required to take two classes from the Art department: Drawing I and Figure Drawing. While Drawing I has been useful in helping me improve my techniques (since I've never actually been formally taught how to draw), it's been EXTREMELY time consuming (as well as annoyingly expensive, for students must spend well over $100 in supplies in addition to paying a $50 fee). Students are expected to spend tens of hours' worth on assignments outside of class. All my other classes are also heavy in the projects department, which (combined with everything else) has kept me from putting much work in on anything I personally want to do.

Nevertheless I've tried to put in some time to actually finish some things I've wanted to post for years. Almost a decade, in some cases. I hope I'll be fortunate enough to get them up in due time.

Until next time, folks.
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I'm almost through with chemotherapy!

Monday was my second-to-last infusion. In two more weeks, I'll be done. The side effects will linger on for a little while, though I've not taken as sharp an inventory of my state as I had planned to at the beginning to monitor for chemo brain and the like.

I'm still really surprised that chemo hasn't been as harsh on me as I'd worried would happen. I never actually lost all my hair (some, but not all of it ... no bald spots at all), my immune system didn't completely vanish, I didn't become super-sensitive to sunlight or grow so weak that I couldn't get to class on my own (most of the time). The nurses had predicted that I would be reduced to taking a single class, if that, due to the chemotherapy; while that hasn't happened, I did wind up cutting my class load almost in half since 16 credit hours was just too much last semester.

I don't yet know if that light at the end of a tunnel is a genuine end to all of this or if it's actually the light of an oncoming train. Monday I discussed what's going to happen from here on out with my oncologist. For roughly five years, I will have to continue to go to the Cancer Center and CCMH for regular checkups to make sure that the cancer remains beaten, and also to monitor me for any belated "surprise" side effects from chemotherapy. Like heart and lung toxicity, and AML.

As I'd mentioned at the start of this, one of the drugs in ABVD has a chance of causing a secondary cancer: acute myeloid leukemia (AML). This sort of cancer is not as survivable as Hodgkin's Lymphoma, and if it's going to happen as a result of chemo, it could happen up to five years from now. So I'll have to go in for blood tests and the like to ensure they get the jump on it if it shows up. The somewhat good news is, medical research is looking into targeted therapies for AML ... but as far as I know there are no such therapies approved for use yet.

This also means that I will continue to have hospital bills pile up. I am continuing to deal with creditors threatening to turn me over to debt collection (or claiming to have already done so), and each time I've called to notify them about the Uncompensated Care Plan. So far, I've yet to have to pony up any more dough ... but another bill just came in as Spring Break ended, and Uncompensated Care will cover me for six months from the point of approval, so it won't last forever.

As much as I've been trying to look into further financial aid options, Cameron University hasn't provided me much of a breather to do so. I thought cutting my class load in half would give me enough room to focus on financials ... but it turns out that one of my classes is more physically demanding than I would have expected of a Multimedia Design class, and the instructor has been somewhat difficult to work with (there have been some problems concerning how my chemotherapy makes me miss a class every two weeks). My spring break wasn't much of one, as I had to put in entire days of work (like, early morning to late at night) at the CETES lab just to keep up with the demands of the class.

If I'd had a better idea of what this class was going to entail I would have waited a semester before taking it. But ... I'm hanging in there. I think. Not as well as I'd like, given my performance last semester, but I'm hanging in there.

So that's where things are for me right now. Stay safe, guys.
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