Friday, April 9, 2010

Busy week as usual, but there's always room for fun.

I don't I can ever get used to how irregular the weather is in New England. The order of events makes sense.. but the weather changes so often that it really screws up my mood =P. Like for example one day it'll be really nice and sunny, and the next day it'll be pouring down cold hard rain... And to make things worst I wouldn't dress properly for the day lol. On the sunniest and hottest day of the week I had a jacket and a polo on because it was chilly in the morning... when the sun was up I was sweating my ass off... the next day I wore just a T-Shirt and a beater underneath... it rained. But I still found ways to get around all the homework and office appointments to find time to draw and practice a little bit here and there. I sacrificed a chunk of my library study time to read up a bit on different techniques in sketching and learn about interior design so I would be able to draw out rooms for my characters. But in the end I just continued to work on fixing the body proportions of my characters, and I'm happy to say that success can be seen.


Here's my first attempt for the week at improving my proportions. I had a little advice from Hana saying that my torso's were a bit too short. So since I had no other leads as to why my characters looked so odd before, I got straight to work. Here in the picture above I drew out a boy and a girl, obviously I extended the torsos, and in my opinion it was a little too much lol. The guy doesn't look too bad, he's probably just a tad bit too long in the torso area, like as if the area around his stomach and down were dragged around. The girl has the same problem except its a little bit more severe. Plus her head is fat.. lolol.


So just because it didn't come as I wanted it to be right away, doesn't mean it wasn't a step forward. I don't know if its just me, or manga, or art in general- but goddamn... the subtlest changes in a picture can make a big difference. It still looks off but it still looks a bit better than what I had drawn before. So I was right, there really were hurdles I wouldn't be able to overcome within a year of practice. I mean I would've gone on for another 3 weeks resizing the leg, making it longer and making it shorter only to find out that its still not right- after those weeks I'd go about doing something else which still may not be the solution. Hana's little bit of advice went a long way, I finally came to terms with that and I went out to the library to read some GOOD drawing/sketching books. So I practiced this time making thumbnails!! =D I did a whole lot of them, and to be honest it was a lot better making thumbnails than drawing out detailed drawings bit by bit.

After going through 5 pages completely filled up with messy thumbnails I gave it another try. It was really "meh" quality. I didn't put much effort into making it look good, for the most part I was focusing on getting the right proportions throughout the bodies. At least I felt a whole lot more comfortable with drawing a full figure. Yet it all looked jumbled together. I had all the pieces to the puzzle, but couldn't put them together neatly and smoothly. Soooo it was back to thumbnails, eventually I got a little bored of drawing random still drawings, so I made a bunch of thumbnails for panels.

I drew a bunch of thumbnails for some panels but this was one of the few I through with. The top half of the pic is inked in, but the bottom half was left alone because of laziness lol. It was pretty mediocre, but the idea behind it was not bad at all. I remember when I was over my friends house at a bbq, some guy asked his girlfriend to make him a sandwich. So I thought hmm, how about the guy make the sandwich for the girlfriend lol.

Here's the second lucky thumbnail that was published into a drawing. I really wasn't happy with how the first one came out so I drew this one out with a more comfortable mindset. It's a weird thing that's hard to describe.. like when I draw my characters with the goal to give them moeblob-esk eyes, bodies, school uniforms, and faces- they always turn out to be unauthentic looking (probably because I compare them too much to the real deal). Here in the picture above is how I draw my characters the way I've naturally done so before last year when I started to attempt to go more into those moeblob styled characters. I think less, try less, and feel less exhausted after finishing a drawing in my own style rather than following what other people have done. It doesn't look bad but.. I don't know if it'll fit well with slice of life genre manga lol. But in the end I was happy with it. So I went ahead and gave another push to improve body proportions.

I must say, this has to be the most successful attempt I've made to date. I liked what I did in the panel sketch above this one so I took those characters and redrew them out on a sketch I made of Boston Common the day before. Once again I brought out everything I learned and did my best to make it look proportional AND too make it look good. I would've been pissed as hell if I screwed up again and made them all look like a bunch of scrambled together body parts. But alas I didn't screw up, the trio came out great. I didn't draw their feet, but everything from the feet and up look good. All in All I'm very satisfied with the progress I've made after this week. Just judging from this pic it looks like I've just about jumped over another hurdle on my way to mangaka level drawing, and man it feels good.

Haa... Not a bad week.. not a bad week at all. Played poker, got work done, not too much stress, nice and easy going... hehe. For next week I'll have to force myself to ink... I'm still too scared to do it.. but my drawings are improving so its about that time to ink more. Hmm it wouldn't be a bad idea to find a book on it too, oo I should buy nibs to see how those work. But what's really been on my mind is my guitar. It's buried under a mound of clothes and its E string has been broken for months. Ever since the second season of K-ON!! came out I've been itching to play. Their new songs look like a lot of fun to play to. Learning and playing Cagayake Girls was friggin awesome, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to pick up the guitar again to play. I just don't like the reason I began learning how to play my guitar... I learned it in order to play tunes to my favorite anime songs lol. Yes sir, that's right, I learned to shred so I can play along with a bunch of anime girls. It just sucks when people ask me to play an actual american rock song... /facepalm.

So many things to look forward, if only school wasn't in the way. Finals are coming in less than a month *shiver* =[ At least I have a long summer vacation and a trip to France to look forward too hehe... well its time stop typing and watch all that anime I've been downloadin during this blog.

6 comments:

  1. I think your drawings are great. You should be lucky it the sun comes out where you live. Its always raining where I'm from.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for cheering me on, dude!

    Do you really think I'm a guy or a girl?

    Your new friend,

    Seiichiro Sano

    Ps: I really like your drawings. I never seem to have any time to properly draw mine...

    ReplyDelete
  3. cool!

    i think your drawing is good.

    for the first drawing, i find the guy really hot!

    the torso was fine to me

    ReplyDelete
  4. Your panels have so much humour to them. I lol'd so much at the girlfriend's and boyfriend's faces when she asked for a sandwich XD

    I can definitely see improvement in your drawings. Drawing separate details is difficult enough, but tying it all together is really tough and you've done that so well within this post. I love the final group sketch.

    ReplyDelete
  5. tehe face palm

    and i like playing poker although i always lose :(

    and great drawings ^^
    tehe I just played my drums after not touching it in a couple of months :p
    I need to change my guitars strings come to thinka about it aswell

    sweet post ^^

    ReplyDelete
  6. first off i want 2 thank u 4 givin me a nice comment on my blog!!! second ur drawings r awesome!!! i wuld post some of mines but i either 4get 2 or im just 2 lazy to do it X3

    ReplyDelete