The end of the summer

Well I gotta say it's been a nice summer so far, hopefully we still got a couple of weeks more here in the Pacific North West. However, you can already feel it's going away unfortunately.

Personally, I've been feeling accomplished regarding my artistic work this year so far. At least my Instagram account has been pretty active -- sorry guys for not updating the website as often as I should have, will try to get better at it. The website really needs to be pumped up by setting up a new way of uploading content (right now it's been very manual) and that's the main reason I've been slow here :) -- Well also remember I got a completely unrelated job and rent to pay .. oh well.
There are still many projects I'm trying to accomplish but I really need more time, I guess that's everyone's desire, isn't it? For now, doodles will keep being uploaded and hopefully a new short film or the last episode of Squad 37 will keep in production (there are already a couple of minutes made there).

On the other side, I spent a couple of days in Los Angeles this summer and after the third time going there I got to go to Universal Studios Hollywood. I had already been to Universal in Orlando and Osaka (Japan) and since they were quite similar, I didn't have huge expectations for this one. However two things: One the Studio Tour at Universal Hollywood is a MUST DO, it's just an amazing one hour ride that you cannot miss. Second, I was lucky enough to be there for the last day of the Jurassic Park ride, after about 22 years it was going extinct that one Monday night! Even though I was never a huge fan of such ride, it was a pleasure going there for one last time. It seems they are going to be working on a Jurassic World ride to open in 2019, so that'll be interesting to see and probably will need to book another flight to LA.

Finally, I've created a dashboard on Threadless.com: https://okcerk.threadless.com/
I'll be uploading my doodles there so that people can buy products with them in it. I'll have to start promoting it soon and see how that goes, but looks like a very interesting side business for artists so check it out!

Until the next time!

About travelling and moving

I've recently spent some time off flying back home and moving to a new place in Seattle-- Main reason I haven't uploaded much in the last month and a half, sorry for the inactivity.

Travelling back home (Argentina) was an experience, it had been two years and a half since I had flown there and it was great going to my best friend's wedding and meeting people I hadn't seen in a long time. It's also always a really weird feeling, some things change but also many remain intact and it feels like one's moved and gone everywhere and those things got stuck in time with no change whatsoever. They're just a few things I won't name, but that was the general feeling. Oh yes, I brought some Fernet Branca which is surprisingly cheaper down there compared to the states -- turns out since it's the country that consumes it the most, they've got their own 'fernet factory'.

On the other hand, before leaving I had left my place in Bellevue, WA in order to move to Seattle (they're 20 minutes away from each other) the day after I was getting back. And even though I don't own many things (or didn't use to, I've been purchasing furniture lately), I can say moving is a pain in the ass. Because I didn't have many things I did the moving myself with some help from some folks, but it was still painful. I've also been buying nice furniture but it's taking time, every single piece I'm purchasing I have to be super sure it'll fit and that I'll like it -- quite different from past times where I just went to Ikea and got everything at once. But that's part of the charm anyways. I'm still thinking whether I made a good choice picking this place up or not, but it's been alright so far.

Oh yeah and I went to see The Offspring last night at the Sabroso Taco Fest in Auburn, WA.

First time seeing one of my fav bands of all times

I've got a sick desk and a nice setup to keep sketching and uploading stuff to the site. I can't wait to get back on it!

Until the next time,

A.

First month

So it's been a whole fun first month of okcerk.com and I'm personally so glad and fulfilled about it. With weekly updates (usually more than one post per week), I've been back to my roots somehow and been having so much fun working on comic strips and doodles. Comic strips are something brand new to my life if I had to say. It's something I'm still learning and getting used to, while also realizing how hard it is to come up with a good short story / situation / joke to tell. On the other hand, those doodles / sketches I've been uploading are basically what I've done my whole life except that now they're being digitized and colored (somehow). Personally, this is a very fun time spent and as it used to happen with E37 back in the days, every time someone comments or says something about it, it pushes me to keep working on more productions.

These are still very early days, I have many ideas on the table for things I'd like to create and upload. I have a huge stack of drawings I've made over the years that I'd like to color and upload. I would also like to get started on uploading a comic series, probably one I had started over a year ago and got about 7 pages done already on paper. Finally, I would like to move out of YouTube for the E37 episodes, and get them uploaded to Vimeo -- I will have to figure out how adding subtitles there works though. I still need to get back on the final episode of E37 but that's still a big project. Once that is released, I'll start thinking about well produced short animated films, not necessarily comedy ones.

He looks like he's skanking

Don't freak out if things go slower in April, since I'll be taking some time off and won't have access to my precious Wacom tablet. Also good ideas area always welcome.

What else? I've been lazy with making changes to the website lately, but there are a few things I wanna modify and should probably get on that as soon as I get some free time.

Sayonara!
A.

okcerk.com to be born!

This is just a sneak peak of what I'm finishing in the following days. I believe this is the 5th website design I've made during my lifetime, always with the same purpose: Upload the things I love to make. All my creations will be uploaded here: 2D animations, comics, sketches and other related stuff.
I figured it was time to make a comeback and finally get back to the roots, to the things I really really love. To begin with I'll be uploading the good old Escuadron 37 (Squad 37) episodes that remained in my YouTube account together with some sketches I've made in the last year. Right after, I'll be planning on uploading my most recent comic book pages -- probably after going through some simple digitization process. I'm also making the final episode for Escuadron but that will take longer, I want to close the series with a legit episode.
It's taken me some time to finish this idea since I'm a busy dude who works a lot and does not have much time or is too tired in the evenings to keep working. Hopefully I'll learn to manage my times one day :P

Here's what it will kinda look like:

Squad 37 sub-section in okcerk.com

The website will indeed be: okcerk.com (yes, I got to that point in life where I finally got a .com domain!)

Here is some history of how I got here:

I started making Flash animations after watching an episode of The Simpsons where Bart was watching TV and some internet cartoonist shows Bin Laden in a blender. Pretty hilarious I thought. The next day I purchased a pirated copy of Macromedia Flash MX (yes, I'm that old). I started making very short cartoons while learning how to use Flash. One of my first ones was three very short and crappy episodes of a mouse that found different ways of dying. A couple of weeks afterwards, I was making my first episode of Power Rangers Ultimatum, which I uploaded to my very first site.

Back in the good old days -- in 2004 my first website was hosted for free in okcerk.galeon.com, which I wonder if it still exists today. Because it was fully free, I had to deal with lots of added ads that made the whole thing very annoying, but it filled its purpose. That was the golden age of Flash animations in Argentina, originally leaded by Alejo y Valentina. We were about 15 or more animators between ages 14 to 25 I would say, spending our free time making cartoons while still living at our parents's home.

From 2003 to 2007 I made four Power Rangers Ultimatum episodes (three main ones and a special one). After that I thought it was time I stopped parodying the Power Rangers and start making something with my own characters. I was sitting in my classroom and drew almost all of the main characters for Escuadron 37. The next day I started animating the first episode. The idea was to make something simpler by having all the characters locked down in a spaceship. This way the same backgrounds would be repeated across the episodes. However, one always wants to improve quality and story, etc, etc and it always becomes a harder job for good.

My first Flash series: Power Rangers Ultimatum

During this phase and after a few design changes, I got the okcerk.com.ar domain for free. I'm not sure if Argentina still gives out these domains for free, but that was the case back then. Of course, now I was paying for hosting, but I had access to some extra money. This phase was great, I got to learn a lot more and my website was almost fully made in Flash (99%).

The second episode of Escuadron 37 got delayed for over a year cause I became an exchange student in the US. When I got back home, I finished it and released a total of 9 episodes (2007 to 2012). Eventually, I didn't pay my hosting and the interest on Flash animations decreased a lot. Most (not to say all) of the 2D Argentinian cartoon sites are dead today, none remained which is a shame since there was good stuff back in the days.

I never stopped drawing during my spare time, but I did stop animating for a long period where I went to university and later moved to Canada and then the US, where I currently reside. However, for the last year I've felt more and more the need of going back to what I really love. This new phase probably won't be as good as the one from 10 years ago, but hopefully it makes my days happier and maybe I get to meet cool people in the same environment.

The site will be live in the following weeks!

Cheers,
A.

Japan

So a bunch of little things happened since my last post. I spent the entire month of November in South Korea and Japan. Here is a nice picture I took:

The golden temple of Kinkaku-ji in Kyoto

It was an eye-open trip. A few cities I visited include Seoul, Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Fukuoka and Kagoshima. Japan especially was very insane, after travelling to 15+ countries I don't think I had ever seen something like that. Their culture, their food, not even counting their language (of course) are completely different to what the rest of the world has to offer, and that's what makes it so unique.
Also, any anime fan should at least once in their lifetime come to Japan.

Dabura transformed into a cookie by Majin Buu

Transportation is also unbelievable. We got around the whole country by getting a JR-Pass for about $500 for two weeks. It seemed expensive at the beginning but if you really plan it ahead, it's well worth it. We were taking at least one train every two days, but since its speed is about 400 km/h you can just go to Hiroshima from Osaka in a few hours, making it a nice day trip. Even if you are in the southern island, you'll be able to reach Tokyo in no more than 5 or 6 hours, which is crazy.
Tokyo must have the best train system in the world, no matter where you are staying, any place is reachable.

Shinkansen to Hiroshima

On the culinary side: Sushi, ramen and rice bowls domain, I'm not sure if that's the right order. I was just amazed by all these, specially sushi. The one sushi place I'll always go back to is: Gansozushi in Akihabara. If you happen to be walking around that obligatory geek neighborhood, you gotta go Gansozuhi -- a small but effective place with the freshest fish I've ever eaten. Almost everything comes with rice, I would compare it to bread in Italian restaurants. And ramen is just amazing. I gotta say, after three weeks of being there, the food becomes a little monotonous so make sure you flip between one and another -- meat options are expensive and veggies barely exist in the island :)

Ramen

I'll probably need to make a couple more posts about this amazing trip I just had. Seoul was also a very nice experience. I'm also still working on my new website to start uploading animations and sketches once again, I've had a few design changes but everything is coming together. Will keep updating! Til next time.

A.

Winter is coming

Well not really... yet. But I just felt like writing here after a while since it's raining outside which is basically indicating the official end of summer for the Pacific NorthWest. It's a shame that good days are gone already. Hopefully the rest of the year should be quite interesting for me. I'll be travelling to Asia for a month, more specifically Seoul, South Korea and a bunch of cities in Japan, including Tokyo of course. I'll upload one or two pictures when I'm there, although I don't know how many people have actually read this blog so far. That concerns me, did social media really kill the blogs? Oh well, I'm trying to stay away of social media as much as possible. I've never even had an Instagram account, but deleting my Facebook is maybe still too radical, I'll wait a little longer.

This summer was fun, I had decided earlier this year that I was gonna visit California as much as possible since I had never been there before.
In March I couldn't handle the bad weather up here anymore and took two days in LA, which I loved! I even did a tour to the Warner Bros. Studios and got a picture in the Friends sofa. I stayed at Venice Beach, which was also great and drove non-stop everywhere.
In July I went to San Diego for the San Diego International Comic-Con, oh man, what an experience! Me and friend were in line for about 20 hours (of course we took turns though) to make it to Hall H. That's where the most famous TV shows have their panels where they bring actors and the audience has a chance to ask them questions. I saw the Big Bang Theory, The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones panels. Was it worth it? I guess so, but I'll go more prepared next year. I missed a chance to get an autograph from the Rick and Morty creators, so that'll be number 1 priority in the coming year 2018.
In August I went to LA once again and from there we drove up to Monterey and then San Francisco. That was quite a touristy trip too, SF was amazing! All this was followed by a 22hs train to Seattle, which I wouldn't recommend since it's just forest all the way.

Now I'm back to work for another 5 weeks and then I'll be leaving to Asia. I've been adding English subtitles to my old cartoon series, Escuadron 37 (Squad 37). I'm also planning on bringing my website back from the death, which may be done in React in a very simple way. And I'll be purchasing a Wacom 13HD soon to start learning more about cartoons development! At the same time I have this unnamed comic with 7 pages so far, hopefully I'll come up with a name soon. As you can see, there are a few projects in mind which I'd love to achieve.

Here's episode 4 of Squad 37 with brand new English subs:

See ya soon!

Landing my job at Microsoft: Part 1

Back in February 2013 I was on my last year of university and had my very first interview ever with... Facebook. Yes, I had a Skype interview with a Facebook employee and I failed it gracefully. Usually coding interviews consist of a few easy problems followed by a bunch of complex ones that hopefully will land you a job at one of these big companies. Turns out I had an easy first problem and for some reason got so nervous or the correct answer just did not come to my mind, I solved the problem but not in the most efficient way. I was so disappointing I had failed that interview after studying and going through books for about two months, that I started uploading my resume everywhere. My aim by the end of my university phase was to leave Argentina ASAP (that's usually the post-effect you get after being an exchange student).

So my resume ended up in a couple of job listing sites and for some reason I uploaded it to the Microsoft Careers site as well. Two months passed by and I got an email from a Microsoft recruiter saying he was going to be in Buenos Aires in three days taking some first instance interviews for a possible future job at the company. I ended up replying to that email after a few minutes and went for that interview on a Friday without going over any books since I could not be bothered about it. I was going to give it a shot, never thought I'd have made it afterwards. I had a chat with the recruiter and he gave me 10 minutes to solve as much as I could of three string matching problems. Then that was it.

They said the results were gonna be emailed in two weeks. Three weeks went by and nothing, so I emailed the recruiter and he said they were delayed but that I had made it and I was gonna be flown to Brazil in the coming weeks for a round of 4 interviews with long time Microsoft employees - that was gonna be the real deal. Basically I had no time to study since I was also dealing with my classes at the time so I just locked myself in my room and did as much as I could.
Lucky enough, one week before the interview, they sent an email explaining how Brazil was too risky at the time because of all those riots that were happening, and the interviews were going to be postponed for later that year -- no date set at the time. That was actually good news! I got myself the time I needed to really get ready for the tests.

The final round ended up being on September 3rd, 2013 in Santiago, Chile. I got in a plane and went to a different country for less than 24 hours, which for South America is NOT common at all -- maybe Europe, not South America. My Chilean buddy Marcelo (who I had met back in 2007 in Fargo, ND) picked me up at the airport and went for a dinner. I ended up at the Radisson hotel (paid by MSFT, of course) and I had the interviews the next morning at the Sheraton hotel which was just 7 blocks away from there. I never felt so stressed in my life, the interviews were too much to handle.
We were about 8 for the morning session and they sat us at this round table where one of the recruiters started talking about the process and how awesome Seattle was. She was right, Seattle is great, except for the rain part -- One of the guys there asked if it was true the city was so rainy and she had to lie saying that wasn't true (lol). After each interview they would gather us back to the round table for a quick 10 minutes break and then the next interview would follow. A curious thing at this point was that after each interview there were fewer and fewer people sitting at the table -- they were getting rid of us, only the best ones (or lucky ones) were making it to the end.
After the last interview we were 3 or 4 left and they called us one by one, I was shaking, I had no idea how I had done. I was quite confident on my first 3, but the last one took me forever to solve and was not even sure it'd be enough. One more thing: between interviews, the interviewers talk to each other regarding how good / bad you did and what weaknesses they found, to maybe test you deeper on those points.

They finally called me and gave me the offer to start working in Redmond, WA on October 2014 IF I could get my H1B working visa. I was gonna have to wait over an entire year to be able to start, but the wait was gonna be worth it. However things did not go as expected at that point in time, but I'll leave that for later.

That's me the day I had my very first interview in Puerto Madero, Buenos Aires. I stopped by the Buenos Aires Book Fair afterwards and got a picture with Ernesto.