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.

A little bit of improvement. =]

UGH! This has to be the most topsy-turvy week I've ever had all year long. Its one of those weeks where you have a lot of good things happening and a lot of bad things (>.<). I COULD NOT GOTO THE ANIME CONVENTION FOR FRIDAY AND SATURDAY~TUDHIUQE@IHOE# !@#@ !H#UO Y U*O#Y!I!!!!!111!!111 I had absolutely no one to cover me at work for the those days.. and the people I thought who could cover me apparently had other plans =(. *sigh* at least I can goto Anime Boston on Sunday...

Besides the papers due, exams done, and the financial office visits - putting those all aside, I've managed to do quite a few sketches in this one week. And I gotta say I'm pretty happy with what I've done. It's a small bit of improvement but it's a sign of progress, which means that hey- its not impossible for a regular guy like me to create a doujin or manga, or w/e terminology it was. This week I focused pretty heavily on working with the upper body. I played around with my characters a little bit, I had them scratch their heads, put an arm around another, make gestures, approach evil lightbulbs, etc. Briefly by the end of the week I began to do a little work on the lower body as well, which proved to be a very good challenge.

Here was the first sketch of the week. At this time I was pretty frustrated with awkward my characters would look when I tried to draw them in an actual panel. It was as if they were slightly off in proportion in some areas and perfectly fine in others. Last post I concluded that it was because of the size I was drawing at. Drawing in really small spaces can screw up your senses when you're trying to fit in those small details. So for the first sketch of the week I was like alright, I'll start off boldly with a full paged drawing of an entire figure. Surprisingly enough it didn't come out so badly. I took note of all the areas I had the most difficulty of, which would be the shoulder width and the legs. The shoulders were easy to deal with since all I had to do was shave 'em off little by little until they looked right, but the legs.... they were a pain. I don't know if its just the way I look at it but it seems to me that the legs are just a litttttle bit too short, and a bit thick around the calves. Although they may actually be completely fine in terms of thickness considering how little effort artists tend to put into the legs of a character they draw. Sometimes the legs are really slender but look completely fine with the whole picture. But it may be an issue with the leg length alone...

On the night I played poker I never mentioned what I was doing after I lost.. My friends persuaded me to draw some hentai as a treat to them =_= And so I did, and was very surprised at how well it came out and how much better I understood body proportions after that. Maybe I just need to look up more reference images of bodies to get a better understanding of them, afterall, they do have you draw naked models in art school for a good reason. But I never drew out the mid section in much detail, I just couldn't do it =_=, shit I really don't want to draw real hentai, but because of that that may be why I have difficulty filling in the gap between the torso and the legs, making the legs seem short. =P

Alright moving on..

After the first sketch I pretty much went on and on sketching randomly... it was decent practice, but I didn't "finish" any of the work at all. So basically I'm still lacking a lot of skill in my inking. The first picture in this set has some inking, but not much really. At least it looks better then what I had before, but it's not even in a panel. The second picture I was thinking about doing a short quick comic, but I digressed and it turned into a sham =P. By the time I got to the 3rd sketch in this set I figured that I haven't drawn a man in a while since I was in high school, I was afraid I would've been a little rusty, but hehe it came out fine. All I had to do was take off my shirt 'n flex lol.

These two sketches were freshly etched out this afternoon before I closed up my store at work. I was in the working mood so I went a little further with my sketches and tried to draw the environment around them. The picture on the top had a lot more going on than any of my other sketches. I drew a girl sitting down cross-legged with cards out to play, I drew out a dresser, a pillow to sit on, a rug, and a clock in the background, so it looked pretty nice and cozy. It would've come out better if I used a ruler for some of the lines. Right next to it is a shot in a neighborhood, typical suburban setting in Japan with Two-story buildings surrounding the streets and I made sure to have the telephone poles and its cables around to keep it realistic. On the bottom side of the sketch is a little fanart of Tainaka Ritsu from K-ON! hehe. Now for the bottom picture, it was purely a sketch done out of fun of boredem... I drew a guy all geared out and ready to pull out a lightbulb, and on his right is a girl about to yank on a 

big evil lookin bulb. 

This is the last one I sketched up for the day. This whole time I haven't put any effort at all into paying attention to the faces and hair of my characters. I was focused solely on improving their bodies so I quickly sketched through their faces on a whim. So I figured I needed to brush up a bit and properly draw their faces. And believe me, its a really satisfying experience to design a character properly. It's like, on one sheet of paper you may have some good figures drawn out but they seem have no impact, or to be exact no "soul". When I design a character its pretty much a process of thinking about their personality, and then disecting their face, their hair, and body bit by bit and then putting it together. I'm not sure other people do it but I'm most comfortable with this method. And when its done- It feels as if I actually created an anime character hehe. But of course in reality people draw their prototypes over and over until they come to a decision. 

I have a lot more sketches.. but they're just sketches not even any thumbnails if I wanted to do a few panels =_=.. I've done almost no inking at all this week~ /shame on me. SO next week I've gotta summon up all my courage get to work on that, no bitchin out this time, if I ruin a fine penciled in piece of work, who cares I'll jus draw another one, ~I gotta work on inking, drawing environments, and lower body proportions.

Yup. Me 2 Kuroi-sensei. Feels good when its done.