New blogskin is A.W.E.S.O.M.E.

Absolutely Wicked, Excellent & Stupendous, Original, a Magnificent Effort

All credits and kudos go to Ti Wan Feng. The art are of course, Clamp’s Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles and so on and so forth. Seriously, I am very impressed and satisfied with Wan Feng’s work. He used his own self created blog skin and, after I requested certain changes, inserted the artwork and uploaded it. ALL IN 2 HOURS!! The guy is a genius.

An interesting thing to note is that the original background art was not as monochromic as the current one. There were masses of pink sakura leaves behind the characters. When it was first uploaded, my reaction to the sheer pink infesting my blog was summed up in the following MSN conversation with Wan Feng.



CLee- The Scientist, Coldplay says:
hehehe, actually, u got better pic to reccoment or not?
Koori-kun's looking for ALI PROJECT discography says:
peeps with smaller screens won't be able to see crap
CLee- The Scientist, Coldplay says:
now that i see ah...
a bit too pink
XD
Koori-kun's looking for ALI PROJECT discography says:
It's ok
doesn't make you look like a girly man
just a tsubasa fan that has slightly feminine taste
CLee- The Scientist, Coldplay says:
.....
'_'lll

(after half an hour of discussion over how to solve pink problem yields no fruits...)

CLee- The Scientist, Coldplay says:
arrrrrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhh!???
....
wattodo?
PINK!!!
PPPPPIIIIIINNNNKKKKK!!!!!
LULZ
Koori-kun's looking for ALI PROJECT discography says:
it's almost done
hold on
1 sec
donr
*done
check it now
if it's still pink
refresh



With a wave of his magic wand, the Photoshop wizard switched all the pink areas into grey, causing the pink sakuras to blend into the white background. It also made Sakura’s (the girl character) dress turn grey.

That unexpected result was astonishing.

(Those that don’t know CLAMP, I apologize. The following will make little sense to you)

I always thought CLAMP’s artworks had one major flaw. They placed equal emphasis on detail, background and subject. That can usually be rectified by choosing your colors in such a way that the bright/contrasting color brings out the subject. Not for CLAMP. Everything is colored, drawn and inked with the SAME EMPHASIS. Basically, when I look upon their art, my eyes are simply drawn in all directions. I can’t “take in the big picture”, there’s too much going on. The subjects, their detailed clothes, the meticulously drawn background, the windblown sakuras….its too confusing!

That’s why I think Wan Feng did a bang-good-job. By making Sakura’s dress grey, it drew together the entire art. Gone were the garish sakuras. The whole gang were now pretty much monochromic. There were no confusing details to get in the way, and the subjects are no longer competing with the background. GOOD JOB TWF!

Hahaha…just a humble opinion from a thoroughly satisfied client. I’m hardly qualified to critique art.