Tuesday, March 30, 2010

I love reading Sankaku News

Top 10 Worst Things to Find in Your Boyfriend’s Room


1. His toilet’s dirty
2. His last girlfriend’s things are still around
3. There’s rotting garbage about
4. The bathroom’s dirty
5. The bathroom’s mouldy
6. He has products intended for women around the place
7. The kitchen’s dirty
8. He’s not put out his garbage

9. He has anime posters

10. A cockroach came out
 I just love reading the Sankaku news even with all the occasional disturbing hentai images >.> But they always have the most interesting articles and news for Otaku's or people who are interested in the weird side of Japanese culture. I don't know who holds these surveys but they're done on a large-scale level so it's pretty dependable information. Here they asked Japanese woman to rank what they don't like in their boyfriend's place. Looking at the list, it seems that I'll be guilty of having anime posters =P and even more once Anime Boston comes around. Sankaku has other fun surveys too like The Top 10 Worst Things to Find in a Girl's Room and so on. I just can't put up a link since the site is kinda 18+ in some parts...

Other than surveys they also cover a lot of odd world events. By Odd you could say disturbing or plain fucked up shit. One time there was a story of a guy in China that got stabbed in the head because he wall-hacked on Counter-Strike >.> they even showed the head. They do also showcase artists that do anime/doujinshi types of work, and various other forms.. *cough cough*. The latest artist they showcased made me really want to blog about it.

His pen name is Vania 600. Most of his work is consists of girls in train uniforms, girls and trains, girls, and a train... yeah this guy loves his trains and his girls. Apparently in Japan there are Train Otakus, pretty weird stuff but oh well, this guy is a great artist. What I like the most about his stuff are the colors he picks out for his art. It all really blends well together, vibrant in many ways, its hard to describe. Here's a few more pics.

It's really great stuff, it makes me want to take more care and put in more effort into drawing out the environment around my characters, even if it takes a lot more time.

hehe these two were just too awesome to not mention. Looking at other people's work is a good motivator, even on a crappy rainy day like today. This guy loves to draw trains, weird ya but he loves it so he does it, its a good motto to follow.

Alright, I blogged my mind out, time for Homework and then some good practice...

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Moar Art !

Workin on a Sunday kinda ruins the day-off feel of it. It was really nice out this afternoon but I was stuck working again =P.

Well I finally found some time and energy to sit down and scan my progress in my attempt to make a doujinshi. Inking is still one of my biggest problems along with drawing out a human body. I've gotten a good amount of practice when it comes to drawing bodies but inking hasn't seen much improvement. The quality of each line still looks awkward whenever I attempt to draw a few panels. Here's an example.

The lines still look hopelessly thick and unnatural, as a result the whole thing looks fake =_=. I had to draw (with pencil) in a few shades in it to make it look better and more lively. And I did make a few minor mistakes on their faces but those kind of things could be easily fixed if I just paid more attention. But the inking still stands out to be the weakest link in these panels. I was thinking that one of the reasons that the it looks unnatural is because of how empty the panels are. If I added a little more to background it would look a lot more lively, but that's a real obvious flaw that can be fix with a little bit more time spent on it. Another thing I thought of is putting more variation on the characters or some more up close shots of their faces with more detail. The style of doujinshi here was following the way Kagami Yoshimizu does work. There's little variation in between panels, but A LOT of toners to fill in the gaps so that the panels look like they have a little life in them. I just don't have the money nor the patience to use all those toners so instead I'm going to try follow Sakuraba Coharu's layout instead. She uses toners very sparingly outside of adding some levels of tint to hair. To make up for it the panels have a good amount of variation plus she fills up the panels with good close ups to keep the reader happy.


On the top is Coharu-sensei's work and on the bottem is Yoshimizu-sensei's work. When I put it up to my feeble attempt at doujinshi there's a big difference lol.... Although I really hate copying or even just sparingly take something from another artist, it's going to take me a long time to get anywhere near their level if I just sit here going through hundreds of panels before leveling up lol. Looking at my work so far it seems that I'm going to have to variate the way my characters are positioned from panel to panel. Coharu-sensei's and Yoshimizu-sensei's stuff are very very simple compared to the typical shounen and shoujo mangas today, which is the way it should be since their category of work falls in between - the "Slice of Life" genre =). So on the issue of variation I'll probably put more effort into making my panels more interesting on my next attempt.


Well here some doodles that I made while practicing. The picture on the left has three characters on it, from left to right I changed the style of manga from the typical moe-moe to tsundere moe-blob and finally the style I've been used to drawing all along. It was a pretty fun exercise because it help me to realize that I am still improving little by little and I've gone over some significant benchmarks. I remember in the past I would really struggle to draw any sort of character in any style - off the top of my head. Now it's breeze and instead of being proud of  that I'm worrying about how it looks compared to the real deal =P. On the right is a quick sketch of my favorite characters from Minami-Ke, Kana-chan and Yoshino-chan hehe. I friggin love those characters to death, and it feels good to do a little bit of fanart once in a while. After all most people who get into drawing in manga form start off doing fanart, its a great feeling when you see your favorite character come to life with your own hands.



But ya.. the inking problem.... I still can't figure out exactly why it looks so awful when I attempt to draw a few panels. If it turns out to be something that I won't get over without years of training then I'm gonna cry =P I'm no genius when it comes to drawing... in fact I'm pretty far from it, its all tears and blood baby. Hmm well, looking at the sketch with the 3 girls, the inking looks considerably better than the work I did before on the panels. The difference between those two is the fact that I worked on a bigger resolution. Haa.. maybe thats the problem.. (blogging helps you think better me thinks) lol. Both were drawn with the same size pen, since I decided in an earlier post to stick to one size, but maybe I need to change size accordingly with what resolution I'm working at. Real mangakas often work with large pads of paper, so that they can draw things in fine detail without squishing it in. I remember that when I took that summer class in a college level art school. So hey- maybe drawing either with an even smaller pen or just drawing BIGGER will make things look more natural.

I gotta keep reminding myself of the biggest reason I want to draw manga... its so that I can create my own story in the form I love and enjoy the most - Manga. One day I'll have nothing to read, I know what kind stuff I want to read, so instead of fantasizing about what to read I can draw it on paper and read it to myself. Ahhh.. man that'd be awesome...

On another note I need to get off my ass and buy some notebooks for class. The Japanese writing in the pictures above were notes from japanese class. The sketchbook I have now has more notes than sketches lol. I wonder if I could sell my notes... When I look around my class I usually see people taking really bad notes. I know mine are messy but it's very detailed and instructional, like how notes should be. My way of notetaking is basically writing down the important points of the lecture and than rewriting my own explanation for each point in words that I can easily understand. So when I go to review it's nice and easy. Especially if the professor gives exams that are similar to the chapter review questions. By doing all that I always scored an A or better on my math exams last semester. This semester I'm not doing as good... because I take messy notes in my sketchbook >.>.


Alright I've got 3 new episodes lined up for me to watch.. time to sit back n relax...

Saturday, March 27, 2010

What else is there to look forward to...


I just got home from a nice night of poker with the guys. I haven't hung out with them in some time but we're all still the same people, and of course its a great change from my usual routine. Breaking away from the norm got me thinking again, that's how it usually goes when I decide to take a break from being a robot =P. IF I didn't have anime or ran out anime to watch and manga to read what the hell would I do with myself. I can't go out everyday so that's not an option, and I'm really really not much of a party go-er either =P.

Hmm, well I guess it'd be just replaced by another hobby. After all hobbies are there to fill in the gap in between work and leisure. Sometimes I worry whether or not it was a good thing for me to fall so in love with anime. I'm not the only one who sometimes feels ashamed that they love to draw manga-styled characters. Whenever I look at great realistic or abstract paintings I feel a little sad for not being more normal and practicing that kind of artwork or at least american-style cartoons. Even my mom and her side of the family all did oil painting when they were young. When I showed her my stuff she told me bluntly that it was crap =(, but she didn't stop me from doing it. Instead she just let me draw w/e I wanted, but it had to be original. The last time I showed her a piece of fanart she grabbed it and threw it out >.> But then again there's always the side of me that says "Fuck what the world thinks 'n do what you luv bro" - and I usually follow that line of advice. Shameful or not I find myself at peace when I come home after school, make sum tea and watch a few episodes of "Slice of Life" anime.



This is practically what most people do anyway... go home drink beer and watch TV. But I think the main problem here and one of the reasons anime is looked down upon is the fact that Anime is made to bring fantasies to life. Whether if its an action packed life or a cute romance, its all made to make you feel and sympathize with the protagonist The difference between american cartoons and japanese anime is the fact that the characters in anime feel like they are on a more personal level with the viewer, so you feel like there's an actual connection. That's where people find anime disgusting =_=, whenever it comes to something that aides you in some way to take a trip off away from reality it's looked down upon. I can't disagree there...but.. I dunno anymore - reality bores me to the point of wanting to commit suicide. I have a good grasp of my life right now, but its all so uninteresting.

But that doesn't mean I don't know a way to enjoy what I have now. On Thursday I took a 2 hour walk around Boston by myself. I walked through the park, through Chinatown, I took a look in  the bakeries and ate some pho. It was a REALLY good day for me. I don't think I was meant to live in small town all my life, or even in the same country. Walking around seeing new sites is on par or even more satisfying than watching a good episode of Minami-ke. So I gotta get a decent job one day and make enough money travel around casually everyday. Mmm I can imagine it now.. sweet pudding everyday from bakeries... a nice cup of coffee and manga... small things like that is all I need to live a comfortable life... I'm sure of it.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is why its good to blog... let my mind unroll even if its embarrassing.. If I don't then bad things could actually happen =P I keep thinking about a friend who almost commited suicide like 2 or 3 months ago. The guy was one of the funniest people I knew, and he really tried to kill himself. Actual real life drama right there... the kind that no one wants- even if it was for attention.

Well anyway I gotta make sure to put these two videos down.





I got bored and watched a 2 hour Vocaloid concert (synthesized voices, not human not autotune). I liked one song particularly because of its beat, which is the song above. The video itself was pretty sweet. It's obviously geared towards the shoujo fans but even I liked it. The second video is a compilation of some great Japanese amateur singers on Nico Nico Douga, good stuff. Alone the singers aren't all that special but they sound great together.

Well that's it for tonight.. got another day of work tomorrow morning. I got some new drawings to put up too. Puttin em up on the internet is good idea since i keep trashin em irl =_=

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Art update #2!

Lol.... the most fun thing I can find to do now is just trying to improve on my artistic skills. Good thing its a productive activity.



I remember when I was 8 years old. Man I was obsessed with doodling, I would draw over any piece of paper I could put my little hands on. I don't know why I did it, but I doodled away and naturally I began to like a certain way of drawing. Which ended up being Anime characters =P. I'm so glad that I kept almost ALL of my old anime drawings since 7th grade. I still have first sketch, my first attempt at drawing someone, which looks god awful now but I was so proud of it when I was a little boy.... What's really interesting is looking how a person's skill and technique become better and better as they get older. Each one of my sketchbooks represented one year of drawing (until my junior year when I doodled through sketchbooks like nothin). Each year I noticed that I would improve in certain areas where I was weakest because I hated lookin at how ugly my drawings would be. And each year after that I would notice new things about my old artwork from last year that needed improvement that I had not noticed the year I drew it. Pretty neat stuff...

So I did some research and it turns out that your brain subconsciously goes through your thoughts when you sleep and basically sits there and ponders over it so that when you wake up you'll have a better grasp/understanding of it. So that means when I draw a picture in one year, I may not be able to pick out its flaws until I have another year of experience in art. That's probably why we have Professors rushing us to steamroll through books with their guidance... Learning to improve my art alone will obviously mean that I'll be practicing for years and years before I can get on the same level as the mangakas themselves.


Well I finally went out to buy some new pens and a nice big drawing pad to work with. With all the ingredients for a page of manga-styled drawing I got to work and came up with the pic above. Things really come to life when you ink it in and use some toners. Looking back on pencil sketches were nice but nothing can beat a fully done job. I'm just really surprised at how clean it looks when its scanned because when I was puttin in the toners I didn't use the right kind of knife... so the whole thing looks REALLY butchered up when you look at it up close IRL. But yeah.. it was a fun thing to make, its a nice representation of my break from WoW, Kruloc is the name of my character.

Theres definitely a lot I need to work on though.. One of the biggest things that separates authentic looking manga and mediocre doujinshi is the consistency of the line quality. Like the lines can be thick and ugly but as long as its consistent, it really looks like an authentic piece of manga. Here my lines are shaky and they're in different sizes. Probably due to my inexperience with inking =(. I'll just stick to one pen size for now and let the toners do the rest.


Tried to scan it in black and white like Connie said but it didn't work =(

So I figured that I needed to practice inking a lot more. It turns out that one of the biggest causes of a bad ink job is "lack of confidence" lol. I was too scared of screwin up so the pic with the toners and everything looked unnatural. Here I did a quick and harmless sketch and inked in a little bit without stressing over anything and they looked a lot better. Buuuut I still got to work on getting the right body proportions down. Deep down in my mind I can tell that something is really off proportion-wise, therefore making the whole character look freaky... its just that I can't pinpoint what it is because I haven't practiced enough =_=

I'm going to have to search up some kind of Manga-related art program to help me do this stuff because toners get used up quick and they can get expensive. Having a tablet and knowing how to use all those complex programs will probably cut down the time to make a page in half. Toning and inking things can take up a whole day of work =P.

If I drew more every week during high school I'd probably be a lot better now. But nope... late nights and video games were a real cock-block there...Well letsee... work on inking and bodies. If I keep practicing heavily and not screwing around maybe I might be somewhat decent by the time I'm 22 or something. Bleh who knows...

Break? What Break??



Well spring break has been over for 2 days now, and I'm back to the usual everyday routine. Spring break wasn't even that much of a break. I still had to go to work, nearly everyday Sun up to Sun down and then go home to play a game I don't even enjoy anymore. Now once again I find myself genuinely 100% bored. 

Things have been becoming really really uneventful. I read back on this blog and I noticed that the times I would post about what would happen during my day were the times when I had nothing much else to do but blog my time away - and usually it'd be about random things I didn't really even seriously care much about, like the Harajuku fashion post.  Then when I got home on those days that I would blog I'd just study and then play a little bit of WoW, which I now find to be a waste of time if I'm alone. It's like I've hit rock bottom with my gaming hobbies =P.

But what I still do enjoy is watching anime and drawing my little anime characters. Of course I feel some shame in admitting it but its still the truth =P Too bad most of the world looks down on otakus as creeps when some of us are pretty normal people. Well at least I don't find my comfort in gambling or anything that bad, being an otaku is pretty harmless as long as you can tell the difference between fantasy and reality. Anime really is just a cartoon reflection of an ideal world for people where they have something to do and things to look forward to when their real lives aren't as eventful.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Well that was a fail.

Urgh! Right after I made that last post I realized that mid-terms were coming up the week after. In the end I had like 0 time to put aside to make anything decent. Instead I would just randomly doodle around in my sketchbook with anything that came across my mind. It's a lot of fun drawing random short skits. If I had more time I could have made longer more elaborate scenes, if I HAD time I could have done a full job of inking and toning everything instead of a dirty pencil job lol.


Here's the first sketch I made, I got hungry and couldn't find the right ingredient to make a sandwich, hence the inspiration for this situation lol. I had to sharpen up the lines since it was all done in pencil. Not sure why it comes out so light when I scan it.



Another doodle that I got a bit carried away with. Didn't have a pencil with me so I had to use up a bunch of ink out of my ballpoint pen. I started drawing it after thinking about how memories accumulate and we sit back and think about them. Never had the chance to finish it though =( after all it was just supposed to be a doodle lol. I had so much studying to do at that time that I was like "Shit wut am I doin?" It's just as bad as dozing off or watchin youtube videos when you're suppose to study.



Another sketch I made for fun. I drew it after I lost real badly in a game and lost ALL of my sleep over it =_= Not sleeping at all made me feel so weird and out of touch from what was going on around me. God it was awful, but hell after makin that sketch I realized it was pretty funny and stupid lol. I don't know where the BoyXBoy manga concept came from... too many gender bender manga reading maybe..


I drew these 3 in a row, at first I was doodling randomly as usual and then I drew a little small mask. I thought it was pretty badass so I drew it out on a guy in a suit which was kinda weird... and then I drew it with a girl in a dress. Using a regular HB pencil for drawing is pretty bad. The damn thing kept getting dull and I end up being to lazy to sharpen it =P. In the sketch of the girl in the dress I drew her head to her shoulders with a sharpened tip and gradually it dulled out as I finished the rest of  the body.

Hopefully I can make something good over spring break. I spent like 30 bucks on toners and they just sit there and rot. Plus I lost my K-ON! fanart where I inked and toned everything =_= god I was so proud of it. Anime drawings really come to life once you "complete" it rather than drawing random headshots in pencil or pen.

Well that's all for now... 2 exams left - must study.