DA! Desktop Anime Design Blog

1 new wallpaper (Lily Hoshino - Thank you for smoking)

2008-06-23T22:30:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Artist: Lily Hoshino - Thank you for smoking (Pop Art)

I am currently working through a backlog of bishounen walls, because dammit, we girls need more bishounen to decorate our computers with. Why should guys get all the skimpily-clad eye candy? Except this isn't a skimpily-clad bishounen. But the smoking. That's sexy, isn't it? [more]

1 new wallpaper (Full Metal Alchemist - Monster)

2008-05-30T23:30:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Full Metal Alchemist - Monster (Pop Art)

So I figured I'd celebrate DA!'s 8th birthday with a bishounen wall, and I liked the uber-angsty pose of Edward in this scan and the fact you couldn't see his face. Plus: BELLYBUTTON. Anyway, Ellegarden's alternative stylings are totally super emo-factor and perfect for the wall, so I chose the song "Monster" as the theme... [more]

Happy 8th Birthday, DA!

2008-05-25T12:54:00.000-07:00

DA! turns 8 years old today. It's rather a scary thought that I've had this site around for that long. It started when I was just entering college, and now I've already got a Masters degree and have been at my job at Google for over two years. Just crazy.
Anyway, as with previous birthdays, I celebrate by giving DA! a new layout. This year, I decided to go extremely over-the-top with Web 2.0 sensibilities (or insensibilities depending on your views.) This means shiny chrome, lots of soft gradients, and oodles of reflections everywhere. I was originally going to keep the rotating headers, but never found any other images that seemed to fit the header as well as the Kino no Tabi image that currently graces the top. I figured the slick 2.0-style UI was a nice about-face from the previous Zen, Chinese classical layout, of which I remain quite fond of (I almost wanted to keep it for another year, but decided that change was still good.)
I removed the resource section, since I hadn't updated it since two versions ago, and wasn't really planning to ever do so. I replaced it with a local syndication of this blog, mostly because one of the things I've learned to do at work is syndicate Blogger feeds in all sorts of static HTML files. I've always wanted to integrate the blog more into the look and feel of the website, and with Blogger feeds this is really easy. Of course you can still view the blog on Blog*Spot if you feel so inclined. This ensures that all sections of the site remain fresh and interesting.
Well, I'm off to another day at Fanime con. Hopefully I'll finish my next wall in a few days, but as you can see, I was a bit busy with this redesign.

1 new wallpaper (Keroro Gunsou - Keroro Laundry Service)

2008-04-21T22:16:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Keroro Gunsou - Keroro Laundry Service (Scenic)

My entry for Which?Waller Round 5: Leap Year. The scan amused me, so I traced Keroro off of it. I was lazy and didn't want to do a full background so I traced a bit of the background, recycled some clouds from my RxJ OMGPONIES!11 wall, and encircled everything to look like a sort of badge... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Katamari Damacy - This is how we bowl)

2008-04-20T22:25:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Katamari Damacy - This is how we bowl (Minimalistic)

I originally drew this katamari for work... It reminded me of another illustration I did that involved bowling for Lava Lamps. Except that bowling with a katamari would result in some... interesting outcomes... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Jigoku Shoujo - Hell Flowers)

2008-04-14T21:33:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Jigoku Shoujo - Hell Flowers (Minimalistic)

The inspiration for the setup of this wallpaper came from oPtion$, the Fake Steve Jobs book about the Apple back-dating options scandal. In one of the first chapters, (fake) Steve describes his Ultimate Frisbee uniform: "black shorts, black socks, black shoes, and a black mock turtleneck T-shirt with a tiny black Apple logo silk-screened on the shirt, a shade darker than the shirt itself, so that you can barely see it. In other words, classy." I liked the "black on black" concept...[more]

1 new wallpaper (Okami - Conflagration)

2008-03-30T17:29:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Okami - Conflagration (Ukiyo-e)

I liked the image of Amaterasu leaping towards something, so I traced that. Then I needed for her to be leaping at something, so I found a neat scan of a warrior (Akakabuto), and traced that. Since the Akakabuto had the kanji for fire on its helmet I then found a third scan with some smoky spiraling fire and traced that... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Kino no Tabi - Mixed Signals)

2008-02-26T22:50:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Kino no Tabi - Mixed Signals (Scenic)

Nowadays the world feels like its full of extraneous signals that tell you exactly what you should and should not be doing, most especially on the roads. Flashing lights and even sound cues at walk signals can lead to an informational overload of mixed signals. When I saw this image of Kino perched on a traffic light, I decided to make a wall in that vein... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Aa! Megamisama - Le Soleil Radieux)

2008-01-21T19:51:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Aa! Megamisama - Le Soleil Radieux (Art Nouveau)

Another fun AMG wallpaper in Alphonse Mucha Art Nouveau style.
I liked the curve of Belldandy's wings in the original scan, and figured I could use in a Nouveau-style framing with a sun-in-glory complementing the arc of her wings. So I did just that... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Katamari Damacy - Katamari in the Snow)

2007-12-29T00:01:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Katamari Damacy - Katamari in the Snow (Scenic)

While randomly browsing the Namco Katamari Damacy site, I got sucked into playing the character matching game, which introduces a bunch of new cousins. One of them was a snowman, and I figured it would be an excellent base for a new Katamari wall, with the Prince rolling up the poor unsuspecting Snowman into a new katamari... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Artist: Hyung-Tae Kim - All That Jazz)

2007-12-09T14:50:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Artist: Hyung-Tae Kim - All That Jazz (Art Deco/Minimalistic)

A fun, sexy wallpaper of a jazz singer, inspired by some taxi advertising for a local Jazz/Blues lounge. I thought the original image by Hyung-Tae Kim was a good fit, and basically flattened out the colors to give it a stylized, more Art Deco type of feel... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Romeo x Juliet - Take Flight)

2007-11-29T17:53:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Romeo x Juliet - Take Flight (Scenic)

I haven't done a fluffy bishounen wall in a while, so here it is. Pretty boy! With wings! And OMGPONIES!!!!!11!!1one1eleven [more] [dual screen version]

1 new wallpaper (xxxHolic - Small Spider Weave)

2007-10-23T23:40:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
xxxHolic - Small Spider Weave (Art Nouveau)

Another Art Nouveau wallpaper, this time in the delicate styles of Aubrey Beardsley. I started this wallpaper a year (and a week) ago because the original scan of Yuuko reminded me heavily of Beardsley's "The Peacock Skirt"... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Wolf's Rain - Dogs and Angels)

2007-09-12T23:10:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Wolf's Rain - Dogs and Angels (Art Nouveau)

Another Art Nouveau-styled wallpaper, because I can't get enough of that vintage look and feel. And from Wolf's Rain, which has plenty of great scans to fit that style to a T...[more]

1 new wallpaper (Utena - Lust Us)

2007-08-11T19:38:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Shoujo Kakumei Utena - Lust Us (Minimalistic)

One of my walls for which?waller round 3 ("Commercial sellout"). Originally designed as a Maybelline ad ("Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's Maybelline"). I figured Utena had good, stylish art for a cosmetics ad... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Tenkuu no Escaflowne - A Girl in Gaea)

2007-07-14T00:08:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Tenkuu no Escaflowne - A Girl in Gaea (Art Nouveau)

Another fun wallpaper in Art Nouveau style! Escaflowne movie art already has the dynamic lines suitable for Nouveau-styled images, and I had begun this several months ago. I recently rewatched all of the Escaflowne TV series, which motivated me into finishing this...[more]

1 new wallpaper (Nodame Cantabile - Rhapsody in Blue)

2007-06-19T23:05:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Nodame Cantabile - Rhapsody in Blue (Art Deco)

After making a Nodame wallpaper in the Art Nouveau style I figured I should make more Nodame "posters" in other art styles. Art Deco is also a favorite style of mine (I am fond of the curvilinear forms, abstract geometric designs and influence of steampunk) and was an obvious next step... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Kino no Tabi - Orange Explosion)

2007-05-24T23:30:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Kino no Tabi - Orange Explosion (Pop Art)

What better way to celebrate DA!'s 7th birthday than with a wallpaper from my favorite series? ...I liked the pose of Kino and the more pop-art American comicbook styling of the image, and started to trace it, but never got very far with it. Recently I decided to finish it once and for all...[more]

7 year retrospective

2007-05-24T23:02:00.000-07:00

It's official: DA! Desktop Anime is now 7 years old. That's a scary thought. I mean, this website's old enough to hit the second grade! How many websites run by a single person on their spare time do you know of that's been updated monthly for seven years?
This site is older than Wikipedia. It's even older, by a few months, than that other "DA" site, DeviantArt.
What a wild ride it's been. When I started this site I had just begun my first year of undergrad. Netscape was a cool browser. We had just learned there was something called "CSS" that was supposed to get rid of those <font> tags for once and for all. I really, really liked Fushigi Yuugi and Pretear.
Now, I've got my Master's degree and a lovely job at Google, Netscape has disappeared almost entirely into a footnote in history of the Mozilla project. New buzzwords like AJAX and RSS are making the rounds. I have almost completely stopped watching any anime series, except for a rare few (Nodame Cantabile and Mushishi, namely.)
But don't start getting up! The captain has NOT turned off the seatbelt sign. I don't plan on stopping any time soon, so you'd better hang on because I'm toasting to another seven years of hearty wallpaper goodness.
Because some time ago (it's been long enough that I stopped counting the time gone by) I made it a tradition to grace DA! with a new layout once a year on its birthday. So here you go. Enjoy the Zen goodness of version 9, which includes a lot more ways of finding wallpapers. I dumped the ratings, which never felt like they were doing anything for the site, and added links to the wallpapers on Minitokyo and AnimePaper. I also added all the widescreen versions of walls I made this past year. Because dammit, widescreen is wiiiiiiiiide. And very, very good.

Happy Birthday, my dear little website.

3 new wallpapers (Aa! Megamisama, Okami, Idolmaster)

2007-04-22T18:29:00.000-07:00

3 new wallpapers:

Aa! Megamisama - Heavenly Dance (Vector/Abstract)

I wanted to go back to the walling styles from the early 2000's, and emulate Cynical126's popular formula - clean scan, soft gradients, abstract background, and sparkling bubbles... [more]

Okami - Samurai Snakes (Vexture/Minimalistic)

I just love Okami artwork, and have been wanting to make a wall for it for quite some time. It took a while to figure out what to do, though... [more]

Idolmaster - iDOL (Vector/Scenic)

I have actually been wanting to make an Idolmaster wall since Dom kept contending that the Go My Way dance could be interpreted as football referee signals... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Nodame Cantabile - Nodame Noveau)

2007-03-22T21:13:00.000-07:00

1 new wallpaper:
Nodame Cantabile - Nodame Nouveau (Vexture/Art Nouveau)

A Nodame Cantabile wall in the Art Nouveau style. You can never have enough Nouveau. Basically, I thought Nodame's pose in the scan was well suited to an Art Nouveau style portrait. The skeletal trees in the back had a Nouveau vibe anyhow, which is what tipped the scales for me. Also, I wanted to play with framing, where part of the character is inside the frame and part is in front... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Clover - Concert for a Little Bird)

2007-03-10T17:29:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Clover - Concert for a Little Bird (Vector/Minimalistic)

I just wanted to make something with an Art Deco vibe, and decided to create a concert poster for Oruha... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Paradise Kiss - Lonely in Gorgeous)

2007-03-04T12:47:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Paradise Kiss - Lonely in Gorgeous (Vector/Minimalistic)

Just a simple wallpaper. I saw this interesting photo when browsing Stock Exchange for unrelated stocks, and liked the striking color combination, and the strong diagonal lines in the image. I wanted to make a monochromatic wall with the purple and yellow the image had, and figured that something from Ai Yazawa would be bold enough to go with the scheme... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Takamichi - Under the Sakura)

2007-02-14T23:50:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Takamichi - Under the Sakura (Painted/Scenic)

My entry for Paint-o-Rama's "Let there be Light" contest. Yes, it's loli-tastic. I dedicate it to Osi just because of that. Actually, I chose the scan because I decided to go for the "light filtered through trees" sort of lighting, and because it had a nice spring theme to it... [more]

1 new wallpaper (Katamari Damacy/We [Pixel] Katamari)

2007-01-21T00:58:00.000-08:00

1 new wallpaper:
Katamari Damacy - We [Pixel] Katamari (Pixel Art)

In a time when people are vectoring like mad to achieve a crispest effects, or painting like made to achieve the smoothest effects, I have decided to take a step back and wholy embrace the unloved quanta of digital art, the pixel, in all of its boxy glory. Thus I present to you a vision of what Katamari Damacy would have looked like had it been released 10 years ago -- in other words, Katamari Damacy meets SimCity 2000.... [more]