It's New Day

I hate awful blogs. Like the one below this one >.<. It's really awful lol. I can't even look at it. More over I'm surprised that people have read it, but thank you to the people that have.

I guess you could say I'm in the midst of picking myself up, and I've decided a good way to go about it is to try something completely new. Which is.... writing =O!

Reading Manga, short stories, web articles, it's one of those little productive things you'd do that don't really get mentioned to friends. Before I was really big on drawing and everything, but lately it's been hard to sit down and try to create something that I really can be satisfied with. Everyone has their own little thing that they do in order to please themselves. Everyone has something that they do so that at the end of the day they can nod their heads and say "Hmm, yup that looks good to me." Maybe even after all these years, graphic art isn't for me =(, or maybe I just having been going about it the right way. Either way, it's become a bit too much of a hassle to try to put aside time as well as gathering materials to make art. So I thought, hey, maybe writing will be more convenient.

Being a big critic on anime and manga, I'm pretty sure I'll tear myself apart when rereading the crap I write. I went onto some community forums and the advice they gave me is to basically write my balls off and read a shit ton which I'm glad I already do.

This is probably why people make those blogs full of random stories. A while back I used to browse blogs to burn time and once in a while I would stumble upon blogs that would make absolutely no sense. There would be no beginning thought and concluding thought, and each entry seemed to be entirely different from one another. It was only until I did some minor detective work (searching further back in their history) to find obscure comments of what they liked and what they didn't like about their writing, that I understood that what they were doing was just keeping work in a safe place- the internet.

Not a bad idea, I did something like that too except with anime reviews. Most of them were awful, but the Minami-Ke one was my particular favorite, the best one I've made, and the last I've made since lol.

Well time to turn on some music and just make my fingers do work.

Living a life of Satire

It's been a constant downward spiral. I really wonder how low I'll keep going until I finally pick myself up. I wonder why I stopped visiting my own blog. The internet is such damned place sometimes, maybe that's why I try to stay away from expressing my thoughts through blogging, after all anyone could be reading it. But maybe that's why I get the urge to come back once in a while and do a blog, only to delete it when I realize it's really stupid to share my pointless thoughts. How many times have I done this? Too many =P. It'd probably be better to just keep a personal journal. Shit, but the allure of someone on chance to stumble across this blog is so attractive and exhilarating. They would be like "haha, get a load of this shit guys". Being a little cynical here? Well it's true isn't it? I can't count how many times I've shared those "fail" videos and images to my netizen friends. If anything at least it's proof that they've acknowledged my existence.

But honestly I only get the urge to actually go out of my way to blog when I get that "forever alone" type of feeling. That's kind of how I feel today, it's been a horrible day. Such a shitty day. Before I blogged because, you know, it'd be a fun little project to record my thoughts over my life. But sometimes it's not just fun, sometimes its fucking necessary to reach out- even a little bit, to prove to yourself that you're still alive.

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I don't know. Today sucks. I won't say why, because I'm talking to myself here. I already know why. But leaving a note behind saying that this specific day sucks will be well worth it. My life keeps spiraling down. How will I be in 2 - 3 years? I don't know, I really just don't know. I hope that if I do happen to look back at this blog maybe I'll be able to finally come to terms with myself and just do SOMETHING.

I feel like I'm in a silly satirical cartoon. Ever watch the movie Taxidermia? That stuff is like a big mind-fuck. And my mind is doing some serious fucking right now. Nothing good has been happening. I don't have anything good to share. Well maybe I could say I'm a fucking amazing actor, for putting up a smile while working at my shitty job, and saying "How are you doing today?" as if I'm the happiest person in the world. Shit the liquor store guy next door seems to have been pulling it off for fucking years and he looks just fine.

At least I'm not alone. I read a blog about a 28 yr old guy who works at a pizza place as an assistant manager. He makes $37,000 a year. He has not finished college, nor is he enrolled into a college. All his friends have moved on. They have good career jobs. Some are married, some even have kids. And here he was, all alone, at the pizza parlor. He reached out to his community to ask for help. They gave good advice. Just DO SOMETHING.

Do something. Good idea. I don't know when, but one day I'll do something.

Or here I go again. I almost deleted the blog. I lay back in my chair. Brood over my cynical thoughts. Maybe I should try to pick up writing? What an awful writer I'd make, haha. I lean forward in my chair again. I highlight the entire blog. I don't hit the delete button. Lean back into the chair.... Well today must be a really shitty day for me to actually do this....

*sigh* =_=

What is Normal?

I'm tired, I really am. Maybe it's just those random mood swings or something. This has been the most fucked up week I've ever had. It's not life drama or anything, it's just so abnormally surreal that I don't know what to make of it. I don't even know where to start to describe it. At the beginning of the week I knew I had a ton of work ahead of me, I was super pumped to get it all done. I had a nice schedule put out for me to divide up my hobbies and work. My intention was to go quickly and thoroughly through all of my homework and review notes, and then play games and relax. But after I finished my work I didn't play games nor did I watch anime. Instead I just sat there and aimlessly surfed the web like a robot. My body was doing one thing and my mind was doing something else. I was thinking about what to do, and kept looking over to the clock and watched the hours past by. Eventually I picked up the guitar and played til 3 in the morning before I went to sleep.

The next morning I woke up and was like "WTF" out loud. I went to school, then to work, and returned home. This time I didn't study, I just sat there and watched Starcraft commentaries and anime- but I didn't even touch any games. The next day and night were the opposite. What the hell is going on with me... Then I started to go through that "thinking" phase again, FFS I friggin hated it. I sat there drinking tea and just drew in my sketchbook. I didn't sleep at all for 2 days straight, 2 days after that I went to bed at 4 or 5 in the morning everyday. Obviously I couldn't go to class in the morning in that condition, so I missed out on the last few classes of the semester.

Now I'm here sitting in the library trying to figure out why I haven't been myself lately. Today I ran into Connie and we talked for a little bit. We bumped into each other at a pretty bad time though... Well she asked me what I was doing around Downtown Crossing, and I told her I was just walking around- she gave me a funny face and said that I shouldn't be walking around "on a day like this". That totally caught me off guard, I was just walking around aimlessly just thinking about what the hell was going on with my head. I didn't even realized that it was a really cloudy and gloomy out today until she said that. I don't know why but I was really freaked out by it so I told her I had to head off- which I regretted right after because 1. it felt a little rude to not talk a bit more with someone you haven't seen in a while and 2. I kind of needed someone to talk to, not about my weird mental crisis but just to have a normal conversation. After I ran away =_= I went to Chinatown to get some Avocado Bubble Tea and met one of my economics classmates. I had never ever talked to him before but he greeted me nonetheless, and I greeted him as casually as I could. I actually really enjoyed talking to him, he was my kinda guy to talk to. I'm positive that we could have been great friends, but we had only just started talking today... at the end of the semester...

So I went home, on my way home I tried to figure out what was bothering me in a logical fashion. The days and nights when I was just acting abnormally, I felt very lost, very frustrated, and very confused. I'm not saying I was depressed or anything  because I really wasn't, I just sat there trying to figure out what the hell was going on with me, why the hell would I suddenly lose the spirit to study, go to school, and play games? Plus I'm very biased towards the topic of depression, I've got that "Man up, and move on" sort of attitude towards it- hence why I sat there trying to figure out a way to fix myself rather than dwelling on it like a diseased shellfish. But I couldn't figure it out at all until I had a few hints from that afternoon. When I bumped into Herman and Connie I felt happy to see them unconsciously even though in my mind in the moment I was more like "o.o Er..uh... wut... oh heeeey! * =] * ". So why is it that I felt better once I started to talk to other people?

My goal after high school was to live a normal and uneventful life. I didn't want to go to parties or anything, I just wanted to live normally. Go to school, study, work, go home relax, hang out with friends once in a while, and enjoy what I love to do on the side. Hmm.. but now I see that my friends department has been lacking compared to everything else. What is Normal? Really what is it...? If what I typed up above me is the definition for a normal life then shouldn't I be fine with that?

Here's what I've come up with: Everything I've experienced and gained this year in terms of School - Work - Hobbies has increased in value. A simpler way to put it is that say for example: in high school my nominal values of school, work, and hobbies could be measured in monetary units (at least for this example)- So School would be worth $50, work could be measured by $40 and hobbies at $100, these values are adjusted according to how happy I am with those categories in my life. This is an extremely macro-economical way of thinking so it's a good brain exercise. This year these values have increased to the following: School - $100 Work - $60 Hobbies - $300. So basically this year I'm happy with classes I take, work is less of a pain, and I thoroughly enjoy my hobbies a lot more than I did last year. So I should be significantly happier right? Well I found that there's another category, my social life. In High School my friends were around me all the time, in college, all my old friends are scattered, and after seeing Connie and then Herman right after, I realized that I have made ZERO new friends in college. I made myself realized that just talking to them in class is not okay. I need to make real new friends that I can consistently talk to about school-life and other things in general while I commute or just walk around Boston like I did today. My social Life last year: $150 My Social life this year: $50- Conclusion? I occasionally talk to old friends but no longer have any solid friends to talk to consistently.

So the deficit of happiness in my Social department may be the problem here (I logically think to myself...) I only have myself to blame for that... Just focusing on school and coming home to play isn't enough I guess. Everyone has their own version of happiness. I'm probably still too young to figure out my version of it, but little by little I'll figure it out, and once I do I can start getting to work on making it. Ya know what, this is why its good to blog. As cheesy as I find it to blog about this shit, it really does help. Blog first for yourself before others. I remember when I used to use xanga, I would try to make it more popular, I socialize with total strangers like 100 times a day for that interweb attention. So stupid. It's another reason why I despise using facebook, networking is fine (that's why I have to use it) but I get the feeling that a lot of people use it for that publicity factor.Ugh, well I'm just biased in that area so *shrug* w/e. I took my blogger link off it recently, I wanted it there just incase people were curious about what I was up to- which was good for the first few weeks but then the wrong people started reading it, and its just really embarrassing....

I feel better now. I really do. But sometimes I feel a little crazy when I think about this stuff, but I need to remember that I'm not alone in this matter. A lot of people have these kinds of problems too... Thank god I'm smart enough to take care of myself, even if its through blogging (so lame imo) =_=. Well what to do now... maybe now I can get some sleep, my face is really puffy from the lack of sleep. I'm still a little confused, but things should work out somehow...

A Shy 16 year old Boy

Lol. A few days ago my dad's friends came over with their family to hang out and relax. They made some really good fish stew and some other fish cooked with rich sweet sauce, I'm not too sure what the name of the dish was. What was really interesting about that day was the fact that one of their daughters, or maybe nieces was the same age or a little younger than my little brother. My little brother is a week away from being 16 and the girl is probably either 14-15 years old, she was pretty tall for her age =_=, but then again I'm pretty short. Anyways my little brother refused to walk around the dining room and living room and stayed in either his room or the basement. I literally had to bring him his plate of food and drink to his door. The kid was so shy he didn't want to come out lol. To be honest I was a little surprised. He's going through that phase in High School where you establish your personality and make your temperaments well known. Lately he gives me an attitude now and then, but I completely ignore it, he hasn't seen the world yet so I'll forgive him for the disrespect.

But because of that attitude I thought he'd be more assertive towards other people, or at least more comfortable talking to others. Hmm its tough to figure out.. When I was 15 or 16 I was fine talking to anyone. Before that I was shy and sensitive when talking to girls but after I made some really close girl-friends it all went away. In my little brother's case I've only seen him with 2 girls! Well outside of school of course, I have no idea what he did inside. But judging from his super obvious shyness on that day I'm a bit worried about him lol. It's fine not to be an aggressive-assertive type of guy to charm  girl, but being shy of girls is a problem. Whenever I feel a little down about a sensitive issue I turn to my girl-friends for help rather than talking to the guys. Guy on Guy talk is... kind of awkward so it's nice to talk to a girl. For that reason I don't want my little brother's shyness to get in the way of making friends with girls. I wonder how I should fix this...He keeps to himself whenever I have girls coming over too =_=, well they're older and more mature so it could be understandable for him to be timid... God I hope he doesn't become the worst kind of NEET.

I'm pretty sure the majority of the few readers that come to my site are girls, so this will be a nice new POV of how boys can be shy to girls lol. I find it pretty funny and cute, its like one of those comedy/romance anime where the guy has so much trouble just talking to the girl he likes. I've had this issue though... ugh makes me want to bury my head under a mound of sand... it was my freshmen year and I had this huge crush on a girl. I could speak perfectly fine with any other girl, but that one girl had me sweating and stuttering. God if I could go back in time I would just take a shovel and smack the side of my head. I wonder if girls have the same problem. Being shy of guys, I haven't seen many girls who are shy of men around my age, even in high school. The only time I might have seen it is when girls around 13-15 come over with their parents to visit and they're a little shy of me, I just wanted to feed them and make them feel welcome =[ (cmon everyone loves Kim Chi Ramyun!). But maybe it has more to do with how much exposure people get to the opposite sex that determines how shy they are. 

Well here's this weeks set of sketches. Yet again I've barely managed to make some time to do some sketching. I've got a research paper coming up, economics test, and a fatass Math Exam to study for. At least it's really good practice in time management. for this sketch above I actually did some inking for once. Sadly I failed to but more detail in the clothing to make it more interesting, but more importantly I figured out a new flaw in my drawings. From the front or the side the flaw would be tough to spot, but from the 3rd angle view I realized that my waist (especially for girls) were waaay too small in width. The wrist was also a bit too extented but that can be easily fixed. What's great about this piece is  the inking. I was pretty happy with the sweet inking job I did, it looks very empty but at the same time very neat and tidy. If I were to tone it in it would look almost perfect.

Here's a great pencil sketch. Using what I learned I made their hips wider and managed to keep their love handles in check lol. The main reason my waist were so small was because I didn't want them too seem to overweight. I changed that and it is looking really good. Because my clothes looked so plain and ...boring I had to do something about it. Here I added in those creases you would see on anybody that's not wearing skin-tight clothing. It's a real challenge to figure out where the creases go, but one of best ways to get around that is look at your own clothes and think about how they hang off your body.

I'm seriously getting really really comfortable with drawing full body anime characters. A few months ago, drawing a character in a pose like this would be a pain in the ass.But now that I understand where the joints are, where the legs are suppose to be, it was too easy baby xD. Nothing special here, simply just another sign that I'm making good progress on the mountain sized Learning Curve for manga-style artwork.

The last sketch here was an attempt to draw my characters in different sizes. So here's the onii-chan and imouto-san. I made her arms thinner, smaller hands, compact shoulders. If I drew her standing up with her brother I think she'd only be a little shorter than the guy, or I could be totally wrong and there would be a head-sized gap between the two. I honestly think I should put more effort into the hands now though... I follow a pretty systematic method to draw my hands with ease, but it still takes a good amount of thinking and effort to sketch them out cleanly. Her hands in this one were acceptable (minus the fact that I forgot to erase some lines) but I should start to experiment more.

I wish I could blog more often, these long blog posts take up a lot of space =_=.

It's a Balancing act!

Final weeks before exams... busy as I expected it to be lol. My hands were so tied up with work and play that I could hardly find any time to blog or even visit any other blogs. It's been a really eventful week this time around. Eventful as in busy, productive, and best of all~ fun. When a week passes by so quickly its got to be a crazy week. Literally, I honestly thought that yesterday was Tuesday, but today is already Friday o.o. The week started off with a presentation, massive amounts of homework coupled together with studying and general work at the store. I usually don't openly complain about excessive amounts of work, but this time around I was fully justified to do so lol. But just because I was super busy doesn't mean I didn't sneak in a few hours of play. I just love my friends, without them I think I would have gone crazy a long time ago.

Well apparently my guy friends were able to find this blog... I'm completely fine with my girl friends reading it but its embarrassing as hell when the guys get a hold of it. We all have different images in society, and we tend to choose which image to put on in the face of another person. In real life, I'm probably seen as a carefree guy, my mind up in the clouds, just living life aimlessly like a lot of other guys. Not a lot of people would expect me to be blogging so extensively with proper spelling and uppercase letters (not to mention the length of these posts =_=). I avoid publicizing my blog because I don't want people to have that awkward underlying opinion of me. There are certain stereotypes out there for people who blog. For example in my English course my classmates and even the professor himself were bashing on the blogging community for being "Self-centered, egotistical, attention-whoring, negative monstrosities" =[ . So yeah, that made me pretty timid about using my blog... However when my friends found it (when they did I was SUPER embarrassed) and read it they were very understanding of it. They weren't like "wow you're such a fag, this shit is so stupid" or "Who the hell do you think you are?" kind of thing. That's why I love 'em so much, true friends can learn to accept these hobbies without making any further judgment on your character. So thank you Andy, Hugo, Tuan, Harry, (there I mentioned you guys lol) and anyone else who happens to read this blog. This is who I am, and I'm glad that you respect it.

So what did I do when I snuck in those few hours of play? I PLAYED FRIGGIN STARCRAFT II BABY YESSSSS!!!!! Again, my wonderful friends provided me with an invite beta key for the game, and I went completely nuts. I threw aside all the homework I had that night and went wild with the game. But... the fun didn't come without a few consequences. I ended up procrastinating heavily by Wednesday I had a whole night of Homework to finish off, I was so busy that I couldn't even meet up with my classmates to work on another presentation (I had to schedule it for next week). So I spent a sleepless night getting a mound of homework and studying done. Thursday was a nice day of relief. I finished everything and only had night classes to worry about. So I went over to Harry's house, ate Wendy's, and played Starcraft II for like 4 hours. In other words we had a "Bro-Out" lol.

Despite all the work and Starcraft II I had on my hands I still managed to find a little bit of time to scratch out a few panels. I couldn't practice extensively but I was still able to make a few panels for fun. It was also a good way to make myself more comfortable with drawing out a story.

I did a whopping 5 pages of panels! The story pretty much revolves around a Tsundere character being teased, which is one of my most favorite fan-service themes lol. It's not properly done obviously, I really didn't have any time at all to make straight lines with the boxes, or even do any inking- forget toning lol. But what I really loved about these 5 pages, is the fact that I went beyond the one-paged sitcom and extended it. It can be seen as another step forward =), in other words- Progress. Of course it's littered with inconsistency and messy work as usual but overall I'm pretty satisfied with how it came out. I'm gradually getting more and more used to drawing characters using less and less effort to do so. Eventually it'll be second nature and I can focus being more consistent with character design. Plus once the summer comes around I'll have time to sit down and tone things in, regardless of how bad it may be- when things get toned in it brings them to a totally new level of quality. I really wonder how much more I'll improve throughout the rest of the year...

Alright that will be enough for this weeks blog. I still have a lot more I want to get out of my system, but its already 9 PM (got home at 7:30 PM from work) and I want to watch this weeks new wave of anime. Lately I've been watching a shoujo anime.. yes a guy watching and enjoying shoujo. I rarely do genuinely enjoy shoujo because of how they portray the guys some times; like entangled men embracing each other at an onsen =_= There was also this one time I watched an anime with no prior knowledge of its genre or even a synopsis. The first 5 minutes consisted of two men (who I thought were women at first) in bed sweating and groping... my eyes burned out from my socket lol. But then again I can't complain since some ecchi anime do equally gross things for the girls =P. Lately in my opinion the ecchi has been getting out of hand... I'm guessing the ecchi genre couldn't find new ways to adapt to this new era of Anime and decided to make it borderline hentai. Its just awful =(.... sweet Kaichou wa Maid-sama! just finished downloading. Yet again its time to sit back and  relax... haaaa~

Getting Older

Yesterday I went to a party, played some beer pong- I had a blast. Today I woke up in the morning, cleaned my room, and went off to work. I got home did my homework and put together my financial papers and study abroad application papers. I'm all ready to start the week. But it hit me... I'm being more and more responsible. And my days are getting duller and duller.

I'm in college now, the most independent years of my life, my prime years. It's pretty damn safe to say that I'm nearing the peak of my youth. In a few more years I'll be working my career and I'll be looking for someone to marry, --> in a few more years. Sure I still go out to eat and hang out with my friends but never before in my life have I ever worked so much and had so much on my mind. Not only do I have more "actual real" responsibilities but I also perceive things differently. When I was in high school, like in my sophomore and junior years, school and the friends I made in school were my whole world. If I were to picture it in my mind it would be me stuck in a globe surrounded by images, memories, and friends- on the top of a mountain. Now I visualize my world as me standing over a cliff, my memories of high school and my friends are behind me, and a massive valley of nothingness is in front of me. I take a step out over the cliff, and the cliff expands with new memories made, new ideals, new values, and different morals. I look over my shoulder and say "So High School is over eh?"

 So what got me thinking about this... Well the events of the past few days, weeks, and over the year have been new and has changed me a little bit inside. In other words I matured a little. When I pick-up my little brother from high school I look at all the kids running around. I realized that High School, at least to me was a sheltered place shunning my eyes away from how REALLY big the world is. I was already curious about what was really in the world at that time. I questioned things like, "Is High School Drama really important?",
"How shocked should I be when someone gives me 'Shocking News'?". Some people in school obviously embraced drama and some others began creating their pretentious images. I always just sat in the back and asked why? Of course I never made any of that known to anyone, if I started ranting wouldn't that make me another one of those pretentious fools? So I just kept it to myself, which was good, it helped me see whats important and what isn't. If only I found the energy to study lol.

And so I graduated... Picked up smoking and quit since it caused problems for me when I worked out. IMO smoking really is just a social thing to do rather than something to enjoy- at least until you're hooked. But ya, I was free of all those questions I had in High School, I didn't even keep a High School Year Book I didn't want any of those memories to drag me down on my way up to success. One of the greatest realizations I made after High School was how big the world really was. After traveling to Vietnam, walking down the poor streets, I think the problems kids have their are far greater than ours. They have greater obstacles to climb in order to reach their dreams, unlike here in America.

Other than looking at things that way I noticed that things around me are changing. For one thing is the respect I get lol. One time I was looking for my little brother at school. I spotted some of his friends which are probably around the age of 15 - 16, and they talked to me.. really politely. It's like how a underclassman would talk to his senpai in Japan. I was really surprised, when I was at that age no one talked to me in a polite formal tone, it was always the friendly informal one like you would have in a normal conversation. But they talked to me like I was a teacher almost o.o That wasn't the only time I've had High Schoolers speaking politely to me, even with some underclassman I knew were pretty formal, unless of course if I joked around with them. But if it was a proper conversation they'd be pretty attentive. Even adults put me on the same level as them in a conversation. In high school you could get the feeling when an adult would talk "down" to you. Now I talk on par with them. It feels very normal when you don't think about it, but when I realized it I was kinda taken aback.

 *sigh* I'm blogging about getting older huh... Right now I'm looking at how I was when 16 and reflecting on it... years from now I'll look back on the day I hit 18 and reflect on it... and then on another day I'll be looking back on my memories as a 25 year old. I just hope that by that time I'll be traveling around the world. I hate being confined to this state, and to this country. It all seems so small and insignificant. I went to Vietnam and it opened my eyes a little. When I go to France to see the other half of my family that I've never seen in my life I hope that'll open my eyes even more. And then I study abroad in Japan I hope that it'll further broaden my horizon.

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.

An Otaku's Harvest

Today, was a good harvest =D

Woke up at 6:45 in the morning SUPER pumped for the convention- and then went back to sleep when I realized it was Sunday and missed out on a lot of the good stuff =(. Well me and my buddy steven got up at around 8 and were off by 9:30. When we got there our spirits (well maybe jus mine, steve was a little burnt) were raised with the groups cosplayers and anime fans of all kinds walking by.. I was surprised that there were still so many people going to the convention even though it Sunday. But then again because it was a Sunday most of the really good cosplayers were gone, so as retribution I filled up Steve's camera with pictures of guys lol. I can't wait til he uploads em and sends em to me. 

And so moving past all the cosplayers and folks I went on my hunt for K-ON! merchandise, mainly posters. God I love K-ON! I'm very open about liking normal Slice of Life anime, like Minami-Ke, My Girl, Lucky Star, but K-ON! is my secret moe series that I love more than anything. I downloaded all their albums and play them obnoxiously loud in gangster neighborhoods on my way to work for fun xD lolol. Haaa~ So yes I was determined to leave the convention with a few pieces of K-ON! merchandise. And luckily enough I found some very nice high quality posters and prints.

The Loot

 I managed to get 3 high quality prints (with the help of Steven, man I owe him for this). One of them isn't a K-ON! print but it was so well made I just had to get it. Besides that I found a very very rare DVD of Blame by the genius artist Tsutomu Nihei, it's even a rare fine as a torrent so to find as a DVD for only $5- it was one hell of a buy. The two little cards with pencil drawings were commission from the Artists Alley from a girl who graduated from my High School. It was pretty nice seeing that someone from my school actually opened up their own booth in the alley, one day I'll open my own up too hehe. That's pretty much most of what I got from the convention.. being a college student results in the lack of capital funds to invest in my growing collection of K-ON! merchandise =( But there's one more! The Best for last!

 For $25 I bought an excellent water scroll of the girls in  the beach episode of K-ON!. The thing is a little over 1/3 of the size of my wall so its just full of awesome. Haa~ my very first official poster, man it feels good to have one. My mom hasn't walked in my room yet so I'll have to figure out a way to explain to her why its up on the wall...

Overall the convention was "okay", the lack of a good concert pretty much brought the experience of it all down. The year when Kalefina came to Boston was amazing, totally made my day, I managed to grab Keiko's attention by repeatedly yellin her name and blurting out japanese ^o^. Well hopefully next year or the year after will be better, I got a lotta wallspace to fill up.

Alright, its a brand new week, time to get ready for it.

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.

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...