Ah, those fangirls...

[secondlina]

This comic by french artist Boulet really cracked me up. So true! Selective free hugs XD
Boulet really likes to mock fangirls. It's like his fifth comic on that *laughs*

So yeah, still looking for work. Still no job, but the pool of jobs to choose from is truly expanding. I find much more jobs now then I did even a week ago. This is looking good!

I also finished two contracts this week, including one where I had to draw pages and a cover for a comic called "Highwaymen" The cover is simply amazing and the art too. I'm hoping this will go somewhere, but if it doesn't, it was still fun to draw XD



I'm trying to get my portfolio website up this weekend, and maybe finish a few paintings. Monday is going to be a quest day; i'm going to go subcrive to Art Temp and buy some paper and art supplies. And then maybe apply to more jobs. Woo!

p.s. I know i'm behind on like a million emails - it's been a weird weekend.

-Isabelle
 

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[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Click on the link to Boulet's site, you'll see a bigger, better version.

I really don't know where the free hug thing came from. However, being curious myself, I checked out the world's greatest pop-culture reference tool... Wikipedia.

What it says about that:
The Free Hugs Campaign is a social movement involving individuals who offer hugs to strangers in public places.[1] The campaign was widely publicized in 2006 by a music video on YouTube by the Australian band Sick Puppies. The campaign is an example of a random act of kindness, a purportedly selfless act performed by a person for the sole reason of making others feel better. Although not claimed as such, The Free Hugs Campaign is an incarnation of the story told in a book by Claude Steiner "A Warm Fuzzy Tale". The story itself is an introduction to key concepts of transactional analysis (TA).

They even have a free hug campaign web site. (now if only political campaigns offer free hugs).

According to a few anime websites, the free hug campaign is what started the free hugging at anime cons (one could protest it comes from another source.)

Apparently, a few japanese girls started it after seeing the campaign. Then another group of japanese girls started it because an anime character on a popular magical girl show did it (I could not find the show refernce).

In america, apparently some people did it because they knew of the campaigns, and others just emulated it because japan did it (which is, of course, the basis of an anime con). We got our own phenomenon though, the Free Glomp phenomenon, which is pretty much rooted in nothing more then net speak and fangirls, but a clear demonstration of how the free hug as been assimilated to pop culture, mainly anime pop culture.

One could debate the reason for the glomp signs now, independantly from the starting campaigns of Free Hugs. Some people kinda see it as sexual harrassement. I personnaly would never have a sign like that. I only glomp my friends, and even that can be hard for me (LARGE personal bubble issues). But a few shrinks that wrote about anime cons (and not always in a negative light) suggest that the popularity of the glomp/hug phenomenon is caused not only by it's surreal idea or interesting debut (which many people don't even know about anymore) but also because people NEED hugging, especially "geeks" who, according to a few shrinks anyways, have more trouble connecting with "normals" and kinda use the free glomp also as speed dating... To skin the masses of geeks at a con to find compatible friends.