im sorry this took so long to answer i swear i didn’t forget
OKAY SO I CHOOSE: THE PROBLEM CHILD
(yes i drew this today specifically for this)
This here is Miche Alman. He’s a vampire and can’t decide whether or not to consider it a curse or a gift.
On one hand, he genuinely enjoys the act of killing, which he tends to consider an artform of some kind, so much to the point in which he’s developed a total fascination for it in his later adult life. On the other hand, being stuck in a state of everlasting life has had quite a lot of pressure on his mind, and the lady he’s devoted his services to doesn’t make it easier on him.
Miche has a lot of trauma in his life that tends to come back to bite him in the ass, and his mental conditions aren’t entirely stable, only making it worse. This leads him to be very unpredictable socially and incredibly detached, yet also makes the times in which he’s interested in someone incredibly uncomfortable. He tends to become incredibly obsessive over things he finds interest in, whether it be people, objects, concepts or goals.
There’s a lot more to talk about but that’s a general overview! I’m absolutely open to more questions if anyone has any!
(i plan on finishing this art piece eventually but i really wanted to get something out today)
Back in December I posted a picture of this street full of restaurants that I was walking down at 1am. Once again I was walking down this street at 1am because it was faster than waiting for a taxi. Instead of -4° it was 25°. The fronts of the restaurants are opened up to let the air in now. There's big fans placed outside for the customers who sit and wait. Some even offer you free ice cream. I still love living in a big city, even if I haven't explored it anywhere near as much as I would have liked to. I've still got 3 months to try and cram the rest in, I'm sure I'll manage. #beijing #china #travel #food #ghoststreet #itshot (at Ghost Street) https://www.instagram.com/p/BztUpF2HOjt/?igshid=gqbf8zz667v
After a morning of lectures, I again was able to delve deeper into understanding China’s history and culture. I’m surprised by how useful I am finding these lessons. They really enable me to ‘get’ China; when I am exploring the city, I understand what people have been through and how their country has changed so much over recent times. Most of this is completely new to me even though my professor said some of things we are learning are taught in elementary school here! It shows how our own education system is relatively ethnocentric so I am enjoying getting a glimpse of how this non-western society actually lives.
After class, I grabbed some lunch in the cafeteria (shrimp, rice and veg) and explored campus a little more. Then a few of us decided to go out for dinner to Ghost Street. Contrary to its name; it is extremely busy! The street is lined with brightly lit restaurants with waiters standing in the street ready to entice you in to get your dinner; of course all claiming theirs is the ‘best’. We also noticed lots of lobsters outside; presumably you pick the one you want to eat first...the picture I took above is an example; it made me laugh as the tub was in the middle of the street! After deciding on somewhere to eat, we ordered a mix of dishes and a jug of watermelon juice to share. It was delicious.
We then wandered the streets. We first came across a park that had loud music being played. Intrigued, we walked over to find the place full of people working out; following an instructor in the middle. It was a bit like Zumba, but calmer. Of course we couldn’t help but join in and it was quite a work out! We wandered down a bit further only to come across some elderly ladies ‘flag waving’ in the street. More accurately; they had silk cloth attached to the end of their fans that they were waving. We watched for a while, clapped then kept walking down. We weren’t disappointed! Another park we came across was also full of people with music playing. Here they were ballroom dancing. Again, we joined in although we had no idea how to dance so not only did we get stares because of our skin colour but also our terrible moves! We weren’t taking it very seriously and an elderly lady came up to us (the one in the picture above) telling us how to do it. Of course we had no idea what she was saying and she couldn’t understand us, so it was quite comical! Seeing this really gave us an insight into the community here; everyone came together to have fun and get fit- it was such a good atmosphere.
We kept walking and fortunately stumbled across a busy market street. There were shops and food stalls lining a narrow cobblestone street packed with locals and tourists. It also had a lively atmosphere and it was fun to wander through.
Overall, it was a great evening. The night does have a different feeling than the day. Both day and night are busy here in Beijing but in very different ways. The evening felt a lot more relaxed; people came out to socialise, shop and eat and it was good to join in with this.
As the Ghost Street website is notoriously quiet, I thought i'd take the time to post up a company retrospective for 2014. As much as anything, this is to help myself put the year into perspective, and also serve as a data point for a 2015 year in review.
Successes
2014 was a fantastic year for us at Ghost Street, we designed, built and shipped a number of great web projects for a range of clients. Last year we focussed on developing our craft and streamlining our processes and made great strides toward this goal both individually and as a company. We'll continue to refine these in 2015.
Websites - Our bread and butter, 2014 saw us releasing some great new ecommerce sites and providing some significant updates to some of our existing clients. Highlights included:
Cable Bay Vineyards (development by Summer of Dev)
Re-Leased and Re-View Property Management (also developed by Summer of Dev)
Fusion Entertainment functional and feature updates to our 2013 design overhaul.
3 Wise Men online store and xmas promo (development by Webfit)
Dashboards - As we move to specialise in this area we turned out some great user experience and visual design for a range of clients. Testing is proving that these interfaces are dramatically easier for customers to use as well as providing a high level of visual polish. While some of these havent shipped yet and require an account to access, i'll list them here for future reference:
Ranqx - Business Benchmarking Survey Platform
Putti - Developer Free Mobile App Platform (formerly app la carte)
Fergus - Trade Job Management App
Frontend Development work was also provided for Pitch Studio for a range of projects.
Challenges
2014 saw our design and front-end development efforts largely split, partnering with other businesses and teams. While we are effective in these roles, I feel our value is truly realised when we have full control over both design and development of projects. Hopefully this coming year will see more opportunities for the full company to work together on projects.
Growth continues to be a challenge also, as we are working out the areas of the business we need to grow to provide better service and support to our clients. To this end we need to hire a talented Backend Developer and Sales / Business Dev. If you are interested in either of these roles in the Auckland, NZ area please get in touch: [email protected]
Process
This is ongoing for us, and we'll be focussing more intently on this area for 2015. We have made the following enhancements which have greatly improved management and results:
Fully switched to GIT repositories for all our projects
Migrated our entire filesystem to Dropbox
Implemented Grunt -> Gulp build processes for all new projects
Switched to Sketch for Visual Design projects
'Responsive design' support for all projects
Continued use of Trello for Project management
Ongoing refinement to Project and Client Management
Business
Year over year we made a significant increase on last years annual profit, powered by some solid projects and an increase in our rates. 2014 also saw our first office move, from the BizDojo shared space to our own office at 1 Cross Street with the lads at Pitch Studio, this should enable us to more easily grow, and provide more autonomy and control over our office environment.
Future
2015 should be an exciting year for us. Looking forward we want to refine further the projects we take on, focussing on budgets and clients which allow us to deliver best in class design and development work. We'll be adding some more steps to our pre-project flow, and also completely re-looking at our involvement after project launch. This should support our push into alternative technologies and interfaces, with the buildout of our in-house VR / R&D lab, and other projects currently under wraps. With any luck this coming year will also bring some new team members, and a whole bunch of fun.
If you'd like us to work with us this year, get in touch as our schedule is filling fast.
