(via the mostly-forgettable gallery here, where one of the few others I recognize is LOAD-kun; sadly, no Utsutsu-chan, although it has been done)

Coming soon: a Bentenmaru model kit with Marika painted on one side and a bikini-clad Chiaki on the other. Sadly, it’s a kit, which means painting and gluing, or getting someone else to do it for you. I’ve already made that mistake once when buying a figurine, and I don’t plan to do it again.

Wandering through San Francisco Japantown on Sunday, we came across a large display of the following item in a shop:

Simply put, Japanese women tend to have flat asses, and this bit of padded gear is designed to mask that little genetic quirk. The product name is literally “Ass Up”, and the box promises a beautiful hip line through increased volume. Interestingly, the pictures at Amazon include a fully translated box, with the name “Up Shape”; I guess they thought the English-speaking market wouldn’t be as receptive to the blunt approach.

Nude photographers tend to deal with the flat-ass problem by using wide-angle lenses up close to create perspective distortion. This tends to produce images ranging from the goofy to the grotesque, but they do it so often that it’s clear that Japanese men want cheek.

…but you can’t take the H!P out of the girl. Former ℃-ute member Erika Umeda has a solo album coming out.

It’s, um, not going on my wishlist. Not because her new wranglers are obviously short on feathers, rhinestones, flair, and clashing fabrics, or because her grin appears to have been borrowed from the Joker; no, I just think it’s going to be a terrible album. Now, if she’d released a bikini DVD like fellow former member Kanna Arihara, I’d consider it; their music does nothing for me, but as they’ve grown up, the girls of ℃-ute have become quite attractive women.

Never change.

(from her 2014 calendar)

A rare safe-for-work Oglaf cartoon.

A somewhat-belated follow-up to my earlier hanko braindump, here are two bits of ExtendScript (Javascript) for generating decent-looking square seals (kakuin) in Illustrator and then resizing them to see how they’d look at different sizes when sent off to an online dealer who has a laser engraver, CNC mill, or photopolymer (e.g. Brother) system.

The first, make-seal.jsx, takes a string of kanji/kana and formats it into a traditional-looking square or rectangular seal, with options for changing the font, spacing, etc. You need to have some sort of kanji fonts on your system, of course; the script goes looking for anything by DynaCom or Hakushu, and if all else fails, will let you use Meiryo and MS Mincho/Gothic. Overriding the font menu is on my to-do list, along with creating double borders and some other features used in real hand-carved seals.

The second script, seal-sizing.jsx, takes whatever artwork you have selected and creates a new document scaling it to various common seal sizes (by default, the ones offered by Inkan Honpo, who accepts Illustrator files directly; most dealers want black-and-white GIF/JPG). Useful for printing out and seeing how good your design really looks at different sizes, which is important for the seals I’m designing for some local martial-arts instructors.

For extra credit, here’s what I’m using to lightly distress the resulting seals, adjusting the outlines to look a bit less computer-generated. I’d save this as an Illustrator action, except that actions aren’t capable of recording everything any more, sigh.

1. Select/Object/Text Objects
2. Type/Create Outlines
3. Effect/Distort & Transform/Roughen...
   0.15%, 67/in, Smooth
4. Object/Expand Appearance
5. Object/Path/Simplify...
   96%
6. Select/Inverse
7. Effect/Distort & Transform/Roughen...
   0.2%, 83/in, Smooth
8. Object/Expand Appearance
9. Object/Path/Simplify...
   93%

(I could rant about how Illustrator CC for Windows forces the pixelAligned property for all RGB documents created in ExtendScript, or how ScriptUI windows are mis-sized on HiDPI displays, but I’ll save those for bug reports)

I have some notes on making round seals, but automating those in a way that looks half-decent is actual work.

[Update: because it amused me…]

This arrived. What makes it special? It’s widescreen, not the pan-and-scan that was released in the US.

Audio is English, with Japanese subtitles.