The name, the girl, and the early days

Before all of this I was and I still am: a gamer. When I was 10 I got my first computer that I didn’t have to share with my sister. I still have it too. A Windows XP with an Eighty GB hardrive and a 1024×768 flat screen monitor. In my free time I would play online games, watch flash movies, and watch anime on youtube. Then I got into a show which started it all called Code Lyoko. I loved it so much that I visited the official website. Then I found the forums and became a n00b (a term used when you have little or no intelligence of the online world). After a lot of posting and roleplaying (one of my addictions) I started to make my own forums from free hosts. Then came Dreams of Twilight, a name I just saw from somewhere else and my only successful forum. Then I found out some of my posters used Adobe Photoshop to make their graphics. I wanted to use it too, so I searched how I could get it. Turns out that it costs a whole lot of money, so I searched for a free version. Then I got into Torrents and happily downloaded CS2. It wasn’t until I was 12 when I found out that it was a bad thing to do, but it was too late to uninstall it because I was just getting into my little graphics phase. After that, I got into freewebs and I wanted to make my own website. After failing multiple times and stealing bandwidth…which I had no idea was wrong, I learned how to code in HTML and CSS when I was 11 and 12 by looking at the coding in premades and I actually understood why every code was there. When I was 13 I asked my mom to buy a domain that’s happily bought from Dreamhost. After hosting Ashikiyoko through many many horrible free hosts in its earlier versions I found my home at Host Gator. The name Ashikiyoko popped into my head because I love japanese anime. I had no idea what it meant so early on I wanted it to mean Lovely Dreams, but it seemed way too generic. Then I looked up the meaning of each word: shiki which can mean “colorful” and yoko which can mean “injustice”. All together I have an awesome and original name: A colorful injustice. So I ran with it.

The Site and it’s purpose on the web

When I started out with Ashikiyoko I used to apply to many sites for affiliation and accept any application that was thrown at me. I wanted to just to get my name out there and have some sort of hit value. Once I grew and grew I dropped many of them and some moved on. Then I started to get accepted by sites that I really admired and were bigger than mine, which made me really happy. Today I am more serious about my affiliations and only accept and keep the ones I’m interested in. Now, Ashikiyoko is Master Pogi’s icon and PNG site. It started January 8th 2007, and I worked my way up to where I am now. Ashikiyoko is a hobby for me right now, but in future I could make web designing a career. Ashikiyoko isn’t in a competition with other sites in the community, it’s just my thing I do on the www. Ashikiyoko used to display everything I played with in Photoshop. After a while a lot of sections in Ashikiyoko died, so I made it my Icon and PNG site, mainly because I love doing those two things the most. I also was inspired to make Icons more than anything. I saw a lot of icons primarily on Livejournal.com and wondered how I could make my icons very spiffy like the ones there. So I read some icon tutorials and expanded my Iconing skills. With a lot of cleaning of my old Icons and revamping I’m really good at Iconing and I also get a lot of praise, which makes meh happy. My intentions and my outlook has changed since I first opened Ashikiyoko. Though I do take constructive criticism in consideration, I used to shape my whole style around it. I was always thinking if the visitors would like it and I would get discouraged, but who makes them the expert of design? I noticed that I myself have to like it first right? So, I don’t want to please the public as strongly as I used to anymore, every artist has to have their own personal style. I also made Ashikiyoko because I thought having a site would be awesome. I’m not going to lie, I also wanted to be popular and known in this corner of the web also. I don’t put my graphics up for the sole purpose for others to use and I don’t aim to please. I just do it because I like it, and most of the time if I like it it will be liked by others, and if not, they can learn to like it or not. So that’s about it. Ashikiyoko is one big website that may get me some money in the future, and I absolutely love it. :D

She wants a new name! Call the police

When I turned fifteen I noticed that I began to want an English name for my artwork site. Ashikiyoko is a great name, don’t get me wrong, but I grew tired of the Japanese craze I had when I was eleven. I still love anime of course, but after some changes in my prospective of design I really wanted a cool, all-in-your-face English title for my site. When I was thirteen I attempted to change my site name, but my Mother suggested that I stick with Ashikiyoko since it had been around for over a year. Besides, at the time, almost everyone in this corner of the web was tearing their sites down and changing their site names to something different frivolously. That too discouraged me from changing my name as I would be another “one in the crowd”. One day, August 13, 2009 to be exact, I was inspired to brainstorm a new design. It became a natural progression to reinvent my name. The genius of my affiliate Shi.R Designs, new name of the former Ruolin of Kyohaku, also spirited me to take action. So, now we have the glamorous (inky);paper. I always loved the word inky. I just had to include it in my new site name. After brainstorming, the name Inky Paper emerged epic. Adding flair resulted in my penning (inky);paper. The design is just awesome! Exactly what I was aiming for. On a more practical note, I named my site (inky);paper because I always write in pen unless I am doing mathematics. I always bear down more than the average person on my sheet of paper out of habit. If my pen bleeds through the paper because of the applied pressure of my bearing down then my text looks a bit messy, and my paper will have small blotches of ink on it. In conclusion I would have to turn in inky paper to the teacher. Hah, you see what I did there? The catalyst of the fantastic (inky);paper.