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...

3 comments:

  1. Hello! I'm Leah. I love anime too! I'm so happy to meet another anime fan! I'm glad you working hard to follow your dreams. Do you mind if I follow you? I'd like to be a blog buddies.


    ~Your soon to be friend Leah.

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  2. just blog walking...
    nice post friends.
    visit me back...!

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  3. cute drawings
    tehe ones of my design books ended up having more photof then my designs XD

    I shoudl really make notes in class :3

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