Wasn't this an Art Blog O.o?

It's been far far too long since the last time I've posted any of my art onto this blog. Shit I don't even update as much as I would like anymore. Spring has finally come (supposedly, although it did snow last week) so I cut up even more of free recreational time for working out. Before it used to be goto school -> go home and study -> Talk to friends through skype and play games together -> draw out my own non-school related art. So to fit in blogging I would I have to cut down on my studying hours or my gaming time with my friends. But now that spring has come and I feel a huge need to workout, I've decided to stop playing games so regularly and use that time to either draw/blog and use the leftover hours of the night to go out running. And with that I've made some nice strides in my artwork =). 

Tech pen and washed ink with brush

During the past few weeks I have made the gradual transition from the usual tech pen inking I do to the authentic doujinshi style with a quill pen/nib pen/dip pen lol I'll just call it the nib pen. It has made a huge difference in the way my lines behaved. Absolutely huge. I couldn't figure out why with all the effort I put into my drawings they never looked the same as a doujinshi. Heck even the lowest quality doujinshi out there had that "look" that separated itself from an American comic as a Japanese Doujinshi. The difference was simply the tools used, well the art style too, but the tools were the key things I was missing. 

 First 4-koma doujinshi, done with tech pen and ink wash

Didn't know how to end it so I gave it an abrupt one haha...

I couldn't figure it out until I finally took it upon myself to draw out a simple 4-koma (4 panel) doujinshi. It was my first one but by now I had all the techniques I needed to properly create one. No matter how I would thicken the lines and variate them I could not achieve the same Japanese looking quality I wanted. I mean it looked great when it was all finished, scanning it made the ink tones really transparent but in person it looked like a passable comic. 

First two panels Tech pen and ink wash only, 3rd & 4th are with quill pen

Here I used a quill pen for the first time, along with following a more accurate Japanese 4-koma format since the first attempt had some really weird measurements. Well I've used quill pens in the past before but the ones my teacher handed me were some god awful quality ones. To be honest I didn't really understand the concept of "nib" pens because I simply didn't understand what a nib was lol. It wasn't until I read a label saying it was a "quill" pen that I realized how I was supposed to use it. Unfortunately I didn't have beginner's luck with it. As you can see in the last two panels where it was used I had a really hard time controlling the lines and adjusting to the quill pen itself after using a tech pen for so long. In the 3rd panel I found out how careful I needed to be the hard way, so that would explain the huge blotch of ink spilling out on the top of the panel.

Quill pen only after a few days of practice

I had to do quite a bit of practice to get the pen under control. I'm glad I spotted the difference between tech pens and quill pens right from my 2nd attempt at 4-koma. It was discouraging to mess up so much, but I recognized how the lines behaved so well. With a tech pen you will always have the same thickness and quality in the line. It makes your drawing look very neat, but it will also make it look very lifeless, very inorganic. With a quill pen the lines can have slight variations in thickness without me having to even try.

One of my practice drawings

As I practiced more and more, the quality of the lines just got better and better. This one here is one of my best examples from my sketches. If I had inked it in with just a tech pen it would look so plain, blocky, and lifeless. With a quill pen I think I've gotten a whole lot closer to achieving the quality of art I've been looking for since the day I told myself that I wanted to create a book of doujinshi 6 years ago. 

... I just wish I had done this all sooner... The main reason why I had not attempted to continually make doujinshi is 1. My art sucked and 2. I didn't know how to properly make a doujinshi. I've only started now because I was becoming desperate. I honestly don't have much time left to draw so freely... I really need to make this year and next year count. If I can sell just one book at a booth at AnimeBoston then I will have achieved one of my life goals. 

Greyscale on left, Black only on Right

So now I'm more equipped than I ever was to draw doujinshi. I've been crunching out art a lot more casually now with less effort, so the aspect of diving into the world of doujinshi isn't as scary as it used to be back in high school. This one here is an unfinished one. I accidentally kicked my sketchbook (I don't know how..) and a piece of the page got torn, funny it doesn't show up on the scan =_=. But here its showcasing some of my next big hurdles in drawing. First of all, there's not enough content, so I need to get used to drawing smaller and fill in the panel with richer content. Second, is the ink washing I've been doing in place of toners. I hated using toners, but toners seriously give a huge boost making your doujinshi look an authentic Japanese one. Even when I was doing K-ON fanart I made it with toners and god, it looked like a page out of a manga. I'm pretty sure there's an example of one of my original works with toners. The art sucked but it looked good just because I used toners.

Technically I could use a computer to do toners digitally, but I just don't have access to that =P. I'm quite sure a lot of doujins apply toners manually. Maybe there's a trick to it... Because shit it wasn't fun spending 3 hours painstakingly cutting and pasting toners on finished inked panels. I kept accidentally cutting into the paper as well, it didn't show up on the scan but it noticeable in person.

Well this is good progress. 4-Komas are nice and simple, great for drawing out slice of life genre doujinshi. Hopefully this will develop into a daily habit. 

News on Current state of Anime-related things in Japan

People in Japan are stocking up on bottled water

It's been nearly 2 weeks since the last release of several series since the earthquake. Before in my last blog I had mentioned that it could be either the sources providing us with anime or the people themselves who help make the anime that could've have been been badly affected by the quake. Well I've just found out that it's the  mangakas, seiyuus, musicians... pretty much a broad variety of people within the anime industry have been affected in some way or another, and cannot continue work as a result.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/lv?hl=en&key=tlRwC3JdVoCl2MEjKOqPDUA&hl=en&f=true&gid=0

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?hl=en&hl=en&key=tJGqk96XYAsMueFout6fz4Q&authkey=CNjfz9sC#gid=3

Those are the 2 spreadsheets that I looked over to find that information. Hopefully the unconfirmed people are safe and sound, it has already been confirmed that Kakoi Hiroshi, the 1980 Astro Boy animator, former Macross series animator then producer, has died. When someone like the animator for Astro Boy dies, its just really really tragic...

I've been going down the list of unconfirmed people and I really think I'm going to go to church for once and pray for these people, seriously its a huge loss for anime fans everywhere if these people are in trouble. I really just wish there was another way to help them directly rather than donating =(.

Took a mini Hiatus

I went and enjoyed my spring break so I didn't really think about putting anything up on the blog during the time. I've been wanting to become more active about making blogs buuut I just kind of blew it off once spring break started. In fact I think it has been almost two weeks since the last post was made. But now that the week is ending I should get back to my usual old routine otherwise I'll wake-up grumpy without my 4 am bed-time and a 12 noontime awakening.

Anyways back to the topic on my mind. A lot of things have happened over the week that has had an impact on anime fans all around the world. Which of course is due to the earthquake in Japan. I think going into detail about all the politics and mishaps going on with the Japanese government atm should be saved for a real discussion rather than a blog... Prime Minister of Japan - claims to have extensive knowledge of nuclear power plants ( I /facepalm to that)... Okinawa news article saying that "Operation Tomodachi" was inappropriate... the operation was a basically a relief effort from the US military stationed nearby Okinawa, Okinawans were in  tears of joy when aid came. Even 2ch was humbled by it, people were more glad to see US aid than the SDF =_=, yet we were still criticized.

Yeah, the list goes on, but at least Japanese culture allows for recovery from natural disasters to be much smoother and more civil than other parts of the world *cough Katrina cough*.

So now how do I connect this with anime? Well for an avid anime fan that carefully watches every new series that gets released every season I've noticed some very scary delays in releases. I think a few days after the earthquake in Japan a good handful of new episodes weren't released on time, so it really makes you say "Oh shit... this is not right..". I read the newspaper everyday to follow financial reports and just to keep track of world news regularly, so when I saw the headlines about Japan everything just became so surreal.

Shamefully- I will admit the first things that came to mind were "Omg I hope all the studios are okay". =( I quickly dismissed that thought and reminded myself that this is a friggin natural disaster. But god I felt like an ass for worrying about anime.

Ironically enough I think it was 2-3 months ago, so perhaps last season or the season before that there was an anime called Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 that was basically a simulation of what would happen to Japan if there was an earthquake. I didn't finish the series, but so far the simulation seem pretty spot-on except for the Tsunami bit that actually happened. So yeah, the Japanese were really well aware that an earthquake was bound to come sooner or later (70% chance of an earthquake of a magnitude of at least 7.0- yup).

It seems like things anime wise are gradually coming back under control. But it has only been a week since the quake so we won't really know if every studio is quite okay. Because even if they are deeper into the mainland, there's always family and friends that may have been victims to the Tsunami and the quake. Puella Magi Madoka- the super duper amazing Mahou Shoujo anime by the legendary handsome Shaft Studios has recently been canceled. Initially there was a ton of resistance for the show to be canceled, and after awhile it seemed like the show was going to remain in production, but right after the quake it seemed like the committee threw their hands up and said "Fuck this, we just got hit by a big earthquake lets move on"- very understandable I have to say... but damn.. its a shame that the best anime we've seen so far since the beginning of 2011 and a good part of 2010 (if not 2010 as a whole) is going to be canceled.

But other than the star of year getting canceled, there are quite a few a series that haven't been released yet, or air-ed I should say.

As of right now shows like Kimi Ni Todoke, Rio Rainbow, Freezing, Infinite Stratos, To Aru Majutsu no Index II, Yumekui Merry have not shown up yet...at all. Even the torrents with raws haven't shown up. Usually they're out at night or early in the wee hours of the morning, and even when they're late they're out by the afternoon. So there are two things that might be going on right now-

1. Our "source" of anime Japan has been affected by quake. So even it is airing, there is no one to provide us foreigners with anime.

OR

2. The studios and broadcasting companies themselves have fallen due the natural disasters, so no one is getting anime.

I still feel a little guilty just going on about anime, but hey I'm just doing my part as a blogger, or in other words, an independent journalist haha.

Be back hopefully by the beginning of the week  can get back on track with the usual art stuff. Over break I've started applying what I've learned and put it in 4Koma Manga format, and it came out surprisingly well. I was thinking that if I can keep it up I can do a daily manga strip everyday. Well thats it for now, got to enjoy the little time I have left. No pictures this time... or maybe I'll just add  them in when I get home. It's boring to just look at a wall of text.

"I love you Kana"

What, you're 21? Hmm, how 'bout be we go for a drink tonight?

Odd title for a blog entry? I would agree as well. But its one of those days you can't help but feel that way. One of those days when everything in the world seemed right for once (I haven't smoked any weed in about a month so this mellowness is legit! =O).

I woke up, 5:30 in the morning- not hungover, not pissed, in fact I was feeling great. I've been meaning to make a post earlier in the week to put up some of my drawings and paintings up for critique and self-analysis, but I've been doing something much more important that has taken up all my free blogging time. And that would be me doing away with my horrible procrastination habits. That's right, damn straight, I didn't procrastinate for once, and it was great. I painted everything that needed to be done a day beforehand, did all my chemistry work, AND took 30 photos for my next assignment that was due a week away! 

"うん！いいよ。"－ And I was like "Awww yeaaa"

So I had a lot of free time to enjoy for myself. The greatest part about getting things done earlier is the fact that it relieves all that built up stress you have from worrying over work. Living with stress is actually one of the biggest downers in life that most people disregard. Instead I find that most people put the blame on the actual work thats due. But really I believe that it's just the stress going along with the work that makes it such a pain in the ass. So instead of saying "Damn, all this work is fucking my swag" it should be more like "Man if I don't get this work done the stress is gonna fuck my swag". 

One of my sketches, used a really soft ebony pencil for it

Hmm, I don't I've ever touched on the subject of love in this blog. I've spent the last 3 years ignoring it. Plus I've always deplored the aspect of pouring out my personal life on my blogs, especially after the old years of using xanga with my friends =_= ( /facepalm). But over the past few years of using this blog, it's really becoming a nice personal window to reinspect myself- a place where I can get away from my friends and just throw my thoughts out up into the air. So why not, it'll be fun looking back on this.

Inked in

I think it was after Jessica that I stopped caring about looking for a girlfriend. First it was Diane... but I dumped her because I knew that I just wanted to have a girlfriend for the sake of having a girlfriend (highschool lol...), and after realizing that I really really loved Jessica it was just wrong to keep going out with her. I get mixed message from Jessica after confessing (rejection or what?), then we try to give it another go after she opens up a little to me, then I get rejected again after the date... Since then I've forced myself to just focus on becoming successful. So after finally reaching a calm, which was today lol- I've given it some more thought.

It's not like I wasn't tempted to try again. Beginning of freshman year of college I was seriously considering on trying to go out with a girl who had a similar temperament like mine. She was really smart, she was chill, and she was sweet and we had a really easy time talking to each other. But literally a few minutes before deciding to try asking her out to the movies and whatnot I decided not to. I don't know why. All of the sudden I became disinterested. Since that day I've been extremely indifferent to love, during my terrible months of work I obviously had no time to even give it a thought. But now- after the calm after the storm... it's a sweet thought to have. Sometimes you just want someone there to be with you.

On a funnier note I DID WRITE A LOVE LETTER! And yes it was super effective =D, she wrote one back too! So love letters exist in America lol, maybe I'll upload it if it's still sitting around somewhere- none of my irl friends know that I blog anymore so no ones going to find out! It's gloomy to type this all out, but I can't help but laugh at the stupid things I've done or how out-of-character I've acted in front of a girl I like. And once in a while I wonder what'd it'd be like if I didn't break-up with Diane... or how different it would be if I was more of a mature person when I first asked her out... 

I don't know when, but eventually I'll meet someone with the same attitude towards life and love as I do. Someone to spend a night with drinking, talking about our day, someone you can spill out all of your true feelings and thoughts to.

Someone to grow old with... yeah...