Deathnote Movie + PPG Anime + Host Club anime = Summer Anime Overload

I think I need to sit down before I hyperventilate. Seriously. I am so thrilled I could squeal.

:: Deathnote Movie ::

I was cruising around in Newsarama, and my eyes were alerted to a possible Deathnote movie this summer. Have I been living under a rock? Why have I not heard about this until now? Here is the official movie site. If this is huge, I hope it means good things for the possibility of an anime series in the near future. But a real-life L to crush over? Mmmmmmm. I was nervous, but he looks like a hottie. And it looks like a Misa is cast, so I wonder just how far in the series they plan to go in the movie, and how much plot will be cut out.


:: Power Puff Girls Anime ::

I had seen a link about this a while back, but dismissed it as a funny hoax. But no, it will really come out starting this summer! With 50+ eps! Is this why Cartoon Network has laid low on showing old PPG eps or making new ones? Because of the spin-off anime? I hope not, because the original style and writing is so nostalgic and endearing. The idea of it Japanified is interesting, but Professor X as a kid? Sounds a little too Jimmy Kudo for me. A poster link here, and a good link with extra pics here.


:: Host Club Anime ::

I've already talked about this today, but I thought I'd share my glee once more!

Host Club Anime?!!! God Does Exist and He Loves Me!!!

I am ashamed to call myself a Bisco Hatori fan. For some reason, I did not know they had made Host Club into an anime until today!!! and there are already four episodes out!!! Oh, the shame. I am a bad chicken.

I guess I assumed that if a series as beloved as Fruits Basket can become mysteriously snubbed from being animated, halfway through no less, then what chance did a series as screwbally as Host Club have? I wanted it made of course, but I didn't dare to hope. I knew the manga-on-tape or whatever the term is—where they have respectable voice actors read the chapters for distribution—had gone over very well in Japan, so the prospect for this series becoming an anime were good, but you never know. Already this summer is turning out to be one of the best ever!!!

How do I describe the opening credits? I just wanted to squee and hug all the characters, they look so cute. I love that the way the characters are drawn in the anime is so complimetnary to the original manga's style, yet refreshingly different. A perfect opening for an anime that I would love to have catch on in America. (It probably won't, but if Elfen Leid and Loveless can, then the field is wiiiiiiide open.) The look of the opening matched perfectly with the style of the manga, and I loved the opening song. I will be sad when this opening changes, unless we get an even better one, and then I will mentally hug the animators. =)



I actually love the ending credits, to my surprise. In the past, the way original manga artwork was placed in the credits (Fushugi Yugi and Saiyuki are two examples that come to mind) always looked so juvenile and made my eyes hurt. But this. . . I loved it a lot. If I made ending credits I would probably do them this way myself. Elegant and classy, and I loved the patterns. As a rule I despise most gradients, but the ones here actually worked. And I loved all the cuts, I thought they were edited well. I didn't like the ending song very much, but maybe once I see it on a TV screen I'll warm up to it.



And this person's site about the anime is very awesome; if you like Host Club (or Ouran High as per the official anime name), then you will love her site. She has a ton of screen caps up from each ep and a good ep summaries. I would love it if she keeps this up, but that is an awful lot of work. I'd better let her know of my appreciation, and I'd suggest that all you lurkers out there who also love Host Club do the same.

Creativity :: Part 2: Where Have All the Genuises Gone?

:: WARNING: Super-long post ahead! I wrote this over a period of several days; if it takes you that long to read it, I will completely understand ::

It's been a lot time since my last post on creativity, so I thought I'd return again to posting a passage from one of my fave books, "Orbiting the Giant Hairball," by Gordon Mackenzie.

The very first chapter of the book deals with the loss of genius. He starts off with talking about the elementary school assemblies he visited, in which he showed the children a hobby of his, creating steel sculptures, and demonstrated how to make them. Each time he put on an assembly, he would ask the children in the audience how many of them were also artists. He says that the responses he got were always the same: In the first grade, all the children vigorously responded that yes, they too were artists. But the numbers diminished noticably as the grade number increased, to the point that by the time he reached the sixth graders, maybe one or two of the students would respond, and then only guardedly, as if afraid to be revealed as a "closet artist." That is where I will begin the chapter:

:: Chapter 1, pgs. 20-24 ::

I would describe to the sixth graders the different responses I had received from the other grade levels. Then I'd ask:

"What's going on here? Are all the artists transferring out and going to art school?"

(Ususally, in recognition of my little joke, the students would laugh.)

"Uh-uh. I don't think that's it. I'm afraid there's something much more sinister than that at work here. I think what's happening is that you are being tricked out of one of the greatest gifts every one of us receives at birth. That is the gift of being an artist, a creative genius."

They could reclaim their creative genius, I'd tell the students. It may not be easy, but it will always remain doable. We'll get further into that later on.

The point now is: Every school I visited was participating in the suppression of creative genius.

Why? Why would anyone want to supress genius? Well, it is not intentional. It is not a plot. Genius is an innocent casualty in society's efforts to train children away from natural-born foolishness.

There is a fool in each of us, you know. A rash, brash, harebrained, audacious, imprudent, ill-suited, spontaneous, impolitic, daredevil fool, which in most of us, was long ago hog-tied and locked in the basement. If you want to see a full-fledged fool in action, watch an undisciplined child. (The more undisciplined, the better.) Oblivious to concepts of appropriate behavior, driven by rampant curiosity and innocent lust. Raw genius, resolutely stumbling into hurt and wondrous discovery. Inspired, annoying, rapturous, petulant. The creative savage of our being.

Savages, fools, do not a society make. So we tame the little Yahoos. We teach them the meaning of the word "no." We teach them the benefits of boundaries. We teach them the value of learned lessons. When our teachings fall short, our society begins to unravel, and the quality of our culture declines. So tame, we must. But we have been slow to learn how to tame the Fool without also interring the Fool's innate creativity and inborn genius.

With the bath water, the baby is cast out.

The Diamond Cartel, which exists to keep as many diamonds underground as necessary to maintain the market value of diamonds at an artificialy high level, operates with as low a profile as it possibly can. It wishes it could be invisible, but, alas, its existence is known.

But! There is at least one invisible cartel: the Genius Cartel. Shall we expose it?

To endure, a society needs a vision of what it means to be normal:

NORMAL, a. [L. normalis, norma, a carpenter's rule] 1: of or conforming to the accepted model, pattern or standard. 2: not normal.

But creativity and genius have not so much to do with being normal as with being original:

ORIGINAL, a. [L. originalis, origo, origin or beginning] 1: having to do with an origin, source, or beginning. 2: never having existed before. 3: created or invented independent of already existing ideas or works.

Our creative genius is the fountainhead of originality. It fires our cumpulsion to evolve. It inspires us to challenge norms. Creative genius is about flying to new heights on untested wings. It is about the danger of crashing. It is amorphous, magical, inmeasurable and unpredictable.

Threatened by all of this, our society appoints its clandestine cartel to put a cap on imaginitive briliance.

As old as civilization, the Genius Cartel is an originailty-suppression agency that permeates our lives. It tyrannized Galileo into recanting the fruits of his own scientific genius. It handed Socrates a cup of hemlock, put a match to Joan of Arc, and fomented the crucifixion of Christ.

Among its collaborators, the cartel numbers lawmakers, lawkeepers, bureaucrats, clergy, teachers, parents, siblings, husbands, wives, lovers, co-workers, bosses, friends, acquaintances and total strangers. Anyone who, having surrendered to the status quo, has become adverse to change.

From cradle to grave, the pressure is on: BE NORMAL.

Those who somehow side-step that pressure and let their genius show are custimarily ridiculed, reviled or otherwise discountenanced. Small wonder that by sixth grade, hardly anyone will admit to creative genius.

But we need our genius to bail ourselves out of the messes we continually get ourselves into. So, individually, we must override the cartel, set aside our herd longing for security through sameness and seek the help of our natural genius. Yours and mine.

Having trouble with the idea of your own genius? My guess is that there was a time—perhaps when you were very young—when you had at least a fleeting notion of your own genius and were just waiting for some authority figure to come along and validate it for you.

But none ever came.

Of course not. It is not the business of authority figures to validate genius, because genius threatens authority.

But there is still hope. You are an adult now. As an adut, you can choose to become your own authority figure. As such, you will be in a position to redeem the creative genius in you that was put to sleep when the Fool was being tamed.

Reviving the creative genius in you is the beginning of Orbit.

::

Mmmmmmm, are not those words a balm for the soul?

I don't think they ever meant to, but in my childhood (and I'm sure in others' as well) the very people I thought were supposed to nurture and support my creativity in those formative years were the very ones who unintentionally let me down. For me, it was less my family, who were amazingly supportive of everything I did, than it was my teachers and peers, those unrelenting, unforgiving authority figures of youth. I'll give one example of a turning point from my own life.

In fourth grade, we wrote journals every week and our teacher would call on different students each week to share theirs. (I loved this teacher btw—she read to us the "Indian in the Cupboard" series, and made different voices for each character. I think I fell in love with the series because of her. The admiration I had for her made me value her opinion very highly.)

Well, as I child, perhaps because we got to visit the ocean or the Baltimore Aquarium a lot, or because I loved swimming and was on a swim team, I had a lot of recurring dreams about sea creatures turned monstroous in creepy enclosed pools. Instead of freaking me out beyond all reason, I was fascinated by these deliciously frightening dreams. Around this time I also discovered the magical literary worlds of Bill Brittain, as illustrated by Andrew Glass. I loved escaping to the world of Stew Meat and the devilish creatures that resided there. So my mind somehow melded these two pieces together, and I came up with a story. I conjured up a diabolical man who was recording down the greatest, most murderous traps he had made over the course of his life. Of course, those traps were the very ones I had seen in my dreams. The story was written as the journal entries of the man. At the end, I would reveal that he was writing these entries from prison; he was trying to feverishy record his masterpieces of malice, to pass on his genius before he was to be killed. (You could say I was channeling the macabre whimsy of Lemony Snicket or Tim Burton, I suppose, but this was long before Lemony Snicket existed or I even knew who Tim Burton was.)

So one day I decided to begin writing down the story that had been bubbling in my mind in my journal. I even remember drawing in the illustrations of what each torturous room looked like, since they were so vividly etched into my mind. I may have drawn the man himself, I think. That fateful day I was called upon to share my journal entry. Proudly, flushed with excitement, I stood up and began reading my story out loud. Perhaps it was the length of my entry, or perhaps it was from something else, but my teacher cut me off before I had finished reading. And when I looked up from my journal to see her face, my heart sank and the world momentarily stopped. The look she gave me—I can't describe it, but for a budding artistic child, the look was everything heartbreaking all at once. And I could see from my fellow students' faces that they thought I had gone mad. (Can you already tell that I was not the most popular of children in elementary school?) My feelings of pride over my blossoming story turned to abject shame and humiliation. I remember sitting down and wishing I could run far, far away. I rested my journal on my little desk, and as far as I can remember that was the first and last time I ever worked on that particular story.

Because I was such an independent and insular child, even then, I didn't go crying home to my mother to hug me and make it all better; that just wasn't in my nature, then or now. Looking back I wish that perhaps I had, though, because maybe she would have known just what to say to make the sting of the abject rejection I was feeling less painful. But instead, I burrowed into myself and internalized all of those swirling emotions, and this affected my willingness to make or share anything creative for a good long time. I was a budding poet, writer, and artist at the time, but a fear of being too creative, too abnormal had begun to take its hold on me, and began poisoning every artistic gift of mine it touched. I became afraid to explore the depth of my own creativity, to plunge my hand into those wells and see what I could find, in the way that every true, unfearing artist should. And when I shared anything artistic, even if I felt it was great, my fear overwhelmed my pride. I relate a lot to the boy in "The 6th Sense," whose feelings in the movie mirrored my own as a child: afraid of the reactions his class pictures got, the boy simply stopped drawing the pictures that fueled those reactions. But in both our cases, those pictures never truly left us.

(I hope anyone reading this is not thinking to themselves "wow, you are so stupid, how could you let one silly moment get to you like that? What a waste." But that is the point I think, that everyone along the way has those formative moments, and whether or not they appear stupid to an outsider, they are painfuly real and hurtful to the child experienceing them. Does not everyone have regrets from their childhood of times in which they let the feelings of others dominate their own will or good sense? Ye without shame cast the first stone, I think.)

I think the reason I love this chapter so much is because of what Mackenzie acknowledges: the need of all bruised artists to address past hurts and to re-validate their genius if they wish to heal. And I love his affirmation that the process of losing your genius can be reversed. A lot of those artistic gifts I once had in abundance as a child have since faded, by my own hand and to my own personal grief. But I do believe that if I choose to work hard at them, I will be able to get all those gifts back someday, if I wish to. (I have found new artistic loves along the way, like ceramics, but there are some old loves I would like to return to.) And as hard as it is to do, as an adult who wants to make a career out of being creative, I need to, and am working on, letting those moments of rejection fade from my psyche. Like Margot at the end of "The royal Tenenbaums," I am trying to rediscover the potential for genius I had as a child, and reclaim my discarded gifts. I hope that doesn't sound too optimistic or sappy, like an after-school special, because frankly life doesn't wrap up as neatly as it does on TV. But at least I've realized all this now, I suppose, while I can still do something about it, and try to avoid wallowing in regret when I turn 80 over the things I could have done or been.

In this era of the internet, I think has become easier for people to find communities in which to nourish their creative genius. Deviantart and web comics are great examples. It is not as difficult anymore to find people who share your vision and who celebrate the things you have to offer artistically. And that hopefully will lead to finding new, untapped ideas from people whose gifts would otherwise remain unshared. At least, this is the future I yearn for. =)

::

Another thought I had from re-reading Mackenzie, that I think would be good to bring up in this section and goes along with the cartel idea. but I'm not sure if I will get my true point across. Oh well, here goes nothing.

I believe that everyone has the potential for genius within them. But I think that we as a society incorrectly idolize a few select geniuses more than is healthy, thereby supressing the budding creativity of others and perpetuating the viscious cycle of the genius cartel.

Admit it, we as a society revere the creatives to no end; just look at the worship people give to artists like Shakespeare, Picasso, Einstein, Elvis, or J.K. Rowling, to name a few. (If you have seen Picasso at the Lapine Agile, you will know why I included Einstein; he too is an artist, albeit in a diferent way, and his contributions are no less great.) Do these artists deserve the praise they have garnered? Of course they do. But I think that the way in which we idolize them creates incorrect assumptions about the nature of genius in our society. By lauding them too greatly and by placing their acheivements on too high of a pedestal, we undermine our own ability to create equally great works. It generates the "Well, I never could have thought of that," or the "I'll never be that great, so why try?" kinds of thoughts that nip in the bud the potential genius of a lot of people. We assume they are geniuses because we don't know where to begin ourselves, so we just stop trying. (I suspect that many of the artists themselves promote this myth, because if we all became geniuses, the supply of genius would be greater than the demand, and those artists would lose their lucrative paychecks.) When we supress and undermine the genius inherent in us all, we, like the diamond cartel, cause a lot of the imagination in the word to go untapped. As a result, those who do manage to ignore the pressure of normality and who by luck, connections, or sheer determination get to present their creativity on a world stage are quickly heralded, and the vicious cycle of assuming that genius is given to a select few—rather then all of us—begins once more. (I think I may have overused the word "genius" a bit too much in this paragraph; my apologies.)

Case in point, which I've talked about before: when I was little I thought you had to have a natural artistic gift, apparent from day one, to seriously consider a career as an artist. I did not draw people very well, and it was implied to me that such a talent was born, not made. so I never tried to master the talent of drawing people, since I didn't think I could. Luckily for me, I had some good art teachers and a sis in costume design, that have since helped me realize that this is not the case at all. Elicia, bless her and all her gifts, has not been in the past the greatest drawer in the world, especially when it comes to people. But from her design classes, she has not only learned how to draw well-proportioned people, but has also learned how to make them come to life on the page. She has done this simply from the proper training and drawing figures constantly, not from some inherent knowledge of the human form. (Thanks to her stubbornness she has taught me not to be afraid to draw people anymore, hooray! Because you can't do manga and not draw people, for the most part.) And with my own design work, my stuff has improved immensely from the time I was a freshman. Most of my first designs are, to be kind, laughable; if I had dismissed my novice skills as proof of an inability to design, and erroneously believed that I couldn't learn how to design myself out of a paper bag, I never would have gotten to the level I am at. In portfolio reviews, there is a reason why you rarely see the artist's older works; it is because they improve so much, what was once considered acceptable is now embarassing.

I went to Elicia's portfolio review last night, where a lot of grad students presented their portfolios. One costume design grad student in particular interested me. She has won national collegiate awards for her designs, and her stuff looked great and very professional. A really sweet, unassuming girl. One of the profs said in her critique that he feels she has reached a level in her design skills where she can aggresively compete with any other designer nationwide for jobs and get them. (Because of his credentials I am inclined to believe him.) She got emotional when he said that (she is pregnant, so she joked that her tears were due to the hormones.) Anyway, she told all of the students there that were beginners in the theater program to just keep trying to be the best they could, to constantly work hard to improve, because she never imagined in the beginning that she could ever reach the level she is at now. (It sounded like she has been through a lot emotionally in coming to grips with her abilities, which I could relate to.) It was a very small little speech, but her words were so encouraging that I took them to heart.

She made me think of the oft-too-repeated (yet annoyingly true) quote by Edison that says, "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." Or rather, genius is more the work you put into making the idea real than the idea itself. Flashes of inspiration that descend from the gods are a pretty picture, but in truth good ideas come from all the work—the research, the toil, the attention to detail, the sacrificed time—that their maker is willing to give.

So it is with all creative skills: we all have undiscovered genius within us, we just have to find it.

::

Speaking of creativity, here is an old but good link from the Gaping Void (this guy draws cartoons on the back of business cards, v. cool) where he posts his own advice on how to be creative and counteract those who would stomp on your creativity. A good, inspirational read. (Link found via Humid Haney's creative rants blog, like a year or so ago.)

Extreme Advertising the "Still Free" Way

Gotta love friends! One of 'em told me about the "Still Free" campaign ad, which is an interesting idea to say the least.

You'd think as far as marketing and ads go, I would have seen it all by now. After all, cutting a poster into your skin is hard-core design at its most bizarre; Stefan Sagmeister is surely the king of extreme ads, no? (Warning: if you click on the previous link you may see more of the designer than is palatable for your taste; just a head's up.)

But I have got to hand it to Marc Ecko, the guy can create a compelling campaign. With "Still Free," Marc tries to answer the question of "how important is the ability to get art out to the people? So important that I will tag Air Force One to prove it!" (That is my Cliff's notes version of the campaign's message. The preceding link is to the YouTube video, which I am embedding below. spoilers about the campaign follow the vid, so be careful; I'd suggest seeing the vid first before you continue on in the post.)



Apparently the air force even investigated this, because the plane in the ads looked spot-on. I just think that Marc should have kept the fact that this was a strategically staged campaign a secret, and waited to reveal how he did it until a later date, because the subsequent speculation and publicity would've been that much more heightened. (If you are dying to know: he bought a Boeing 747 and recreated the shell design of AF1 on one side, then staged the tagging on that plane, not the real one. I assume that if he had attempted it on the real thing, we would be hearing about his funeral services and/or jail time by now.) But then again, here I am talking about it, so perhaps the message's delivery is just fine. To read a good article discussing the supposed tagging go here.

My Work :: Part 6: AngstyBishy Ed

Yay, Ed is done! As always, I was so afraid I would get bogged down in the little finite details no one else notices but that keep me up at night, so I decided to be brave, and just do a "the heck with it" and post him anyway. If those little details still bother me, I will just go and fix them later at my leisure.

I have officially decided that I will post the AngstyBishy characters every Friday, not every Wednesday as originally planned. I just felt too rushed for my taste to get Ed out this week, what with having work as well to occupy my days, so posting on Fridays will give me plenty more time to get the AB pics exactly how I want them. And it is still one pic every week, so no complaints, right? Right. So Fridays it is! Another reason for me to look forward to the weekend. =)

Anyway, on my DeviantArt account I said in Ed's description that he was much harder to do than Sasuke. That is no lie. I think it has been very good for me from a design perspective to do the AngstyBishy series, because of those very problems; they are the same probs I have dealt with in many design projects, and so they are good to work out since they keep me in shape design-wise. I am talking about having to make two very different objects have a similar feel and style. In my design classes, we began learning this by making pictographs: three separate icons that need to work in unison with each other. That was one of my very first assignments, both as a student and a teacher, and the lessons gleaned from those projects apply just as much to AngstyBishy as to any other icons I have had to make since.

It is very easy to do just one character; if I had just done Sasuke and called it quits I would have been fine. But in doing a series, I have to make sure that while each character has wildly diffferent hairstyles, clothing, and accessories, that they all still retain the same style and expression I had orginally set forth in AngstyBishy. Trust me, this is turning out to be easier said than done. That was the biggest challenge with Ed: how do I make him fit into the pantheon of the AB world and enhance it?

The biggest differences I had to address between him and Sasuke were the colored eyes and hair, the coat, and the boots. Little additions like the braid actually were less than a problem that I'd thought they'd be, and while the belt took a lot of different reference photos to get it right, it frustrated me far less than the other things.

First: the hair and eyes. I will openly admit that part of the ease of doing Sasuke was that important details like his hair and eyes turned out to be very simple: since they are already black in the character, leave them filled in and call him good. but with the Ed, of course I could not do this, and had to find another way to solve my hair and eye solutions. The lines of Ed's hair probably took the most tweaking of the entire icon, except for maybe his belt. I knew I wanted thicker lines on the outside of the entire character—this is an art style I love and which I feel unifies a character's overall look—but how thick was too thick, and what about the interior lines? (So many challenges, plus I realized halfway through that I needed to redesign Ed's bangs where they attach to his forehead, which angered me since I thought I had caught all the subtle Ed details.) The eyes, of course, have been the biggest agony. Ed's golden eys are a huge part of the series, and I really wanted to include them. But in spite of my numerous tweakings they refused to fit well with the overall design. Adding color reduced their solidness, so the eyes lost their hook as a major focal point. Nothing I did managed to remedy this, to my frustration.

But last night, as I was poring over a printout of Ed, dissatisfied for the umpteenth time, I had an epiphany: part of the point of AB is to show that while the characters are wildly different in looks and background, they all share a common angstiness. And since we are told that the eyes are supposedly the window to the soul, it would be much more important to show the collective angstiness of their souls than to fret about a minute detail like eye color. I realized that giving them all the same dark AB eyes supported that common thread I was aiming for. As an added plus, it makes the whole design stronger since it helps keep the viewer's eye on the character's face. So, with some sorrow, I put the idea of coloring their eyes to rest. I hope anyone who feels I made in a huge mistake in doing this, will at least now understand my reasoning behind such a blasphemous decision. AB is less fanart for me than anime-themed pictographs, and therefore their message is more important than any one individual detail or character. Sometimes as an artist, to quote one of my profs, you must kill your babies—your ideas or preconcieved notions—no matter how cute they are or how much you love them. That is what I have had to do—it was a tough decision to be sure, but ultimately is the correct one.

On to other problems: the overkill of black that Ed wears, while very stylish, caused a design conundrum. The great lines I made to indicate Ed's boots and pants were all destroyed when I began to add color. Coloring the lines of the boots in red just added unnecessary details and distracted from the focal point: Ed's face. So all my work studying Ed's boots was for naught—though I did get to keep their shape in the final pic. (But does the top of the boots come across as boots or simply rolled up jeans? This detail has also bothered me. Ah, the wonders and horrors of design.) And while I wanted to add grey lines indicating the shiny leathery texture of Ed's pants, alas these details were also distracting. But as Elicia kindly pointed out, I didn't add highlights to the hair, so leaving off the highlights of the pants is no loss. Stupid black! The same thing happpened with Sasuke; I drew all the lines of his hair, but just hid them by making all the hair black. Thought I do think having all of the solid shapes makes for a much stronger image, so I can live with it—for now.

The coat was easy to draft, harder to make look right. The sleeves took a while to tweak but I am happy with them. The hem was originaly much straighter in my original drawing, but once I curved the hem to match how it would drape on a real person, it looked much much better.

One last detail of Ed's I made a note to get right was the hairtie. In the FMA art book, Arakawa mentioned that Ed's hairtie is red, and that she wouold often forget to color it in, to her chagrin. So I really wanted to make sure I got that detail right. =)

The nice thing about these initial AB pics is that I will be able to take pieces of them—the coat sleeves, for instance—and use the same piece on other characters. Things like that will help the other characters get created faster. A good example of this will occur in the two AB's I plan to do next. I am switching the order—I will be doing Sanzo first, then Inuyasha—but since both have the same long kimono sleeves, I will just copy Sanzo's finished sleeves onto Inuyasha, and voila! New sleeves in a fraction of the time. Another great reason to do all the AB in a vector-based program like Illustrator. =)

I think that AB has been an excellent project for me, for both my inner graphic designer and my inner manga creator. The inner designer loves practicing her skill at pictographs and Illustrator manipulation, and the manga creator loves studying the details of beloved characters to discover what makes them so iconic. After all, God or the devil is in the details, depending on whom you ask; by studying these details I can already sense myself becoming a more astute artist. And I love it when that happens.

Minding the Store: Merch up for Sale

Well, we finally did it! We got our products up Saturday evening exactly the way we want them. I am so thrilled! No sales yet, but who cares? Now we can buy the products we have been dreaming up in our heads. We just have to save up some money and they will be ours.

The hardest art about getting the merch up was that I had to familiarize myself with the specs and procedures for uploading the t-shirt images onto the site. With products I've made before, I could always give the printers an illustrator or eps file, and it got taken care of. Not so with CafePress, blast them. Luckily they had some tutorials on how to upload the images, so I was ok (I looked over the image guides, but a lot of that stuff I already knew.) I'm still worried that the products will look funny in real life, so I really want to quickly buy some just to see. But we chose direct printing for the shirts and I did the resolutions right and everything, so it should be fine.

Yesterday was a good day for my creative juices; I got three of the angstybishys' final sketches done, and thought up new bishys to draw. The next ones up will be Ed from FMA, followed by Inuyasha and Sanzo. Sanzo is just so cute I could squeal. It's been a while since I saw the series, so I was afraid that I was making him into an AB when he night not really fit that description. But then I remembered the tragic flashbacks, and Elicia reminded me of the depressed rain episode, so I knew I was safe. =) good, because I can't wait to see him finished. Again, I will only put out one AB at my Deviantart account (and a thumbnail here) a week, since that gives me a decent time frame in case I get swamped with work. So look forward to those! I'm thinking every Wednesday hopefully, and Fridays at the latest.

My Work :: Part 5: AngstyBishy Sasuke

Well, that was quick, huh? I promised I'd get Sasuke done, and here it is, two days after the final sketch, and he is finished! It is an April miracle!

If you read the other AngstyBishy post, you know how I made him, for the most part. I did a few things different, though. This time I only drew with my Wacom the parts not already on the original AB (I will shorten AngstyBishy to AB from now on, as I will be typing it a lot.) Then I placed those into Illustrator and redrew them with the pen tool. Since my original AB is already made of a bunch of broken up shapes, all I had to do was take the original and add the new Sasuke bits, and delete the original bits I didn't need. Then I did my cheating color fill technique; I just drew quick shapes above all the lines, roughly matching the shapes I wanted filled in and in the colors I wanted, and sent those shapes to the back. I say this is cheating because I probably should have grouped my different pen lines together to make large shapes, then filled those in. But I chose the faster, messier way. I'll fix it later, but for now I'm fine with it. And for those of you who didn't understand a single thing I just said: don't worry, I will now stop talking designese and return to normal speech.

I like my Sasuke for the most part. The only problem I have with him is the eyes; they seem too close together. I mean, I know he is stylized so it is okay, and it was sort of on purpose, but in real anatomy there should be an eye's space between the two, and there so isn't. Oh well, I may just have to live with it for now.

What's next for AngstyBishy? I guess just pimping him around, though I am the worst at promoting my stuff and always have been. T-shirts of him up soon, hopefully. And I hope to get an AB fanart character up each week; I am looking at working on Ed or Inuyasha next. I've written up a whole list of the AB's I want to do, but what will I do once they are done? I'm hoping people actually send me requests for more AB's they would like to see, since my list really only consists of the AB's I know and love. And the equal opportunist in me would love to draw some AB girls, but the only two I can think of are Buttercup from PPG and the red-haired chick from NGE. Can anyone think of more? And Elicia wants me to make a whole series of characers for each anime in the same exact style; so even though guys like Shikamaru aren't really angsty by nature, I would draw them that way. (Actually I already sketched out an AB Shikamaru, and I have to admit he looks awesome.) If I did that I would definitely do one of the Naruto characters, and there are a couple of other series I am pondering as well.

I hope to maybe, if I can, get t-shirt designs submitted to CafePress this weekend or at the latest the end of next week, depending on my work/play schedule. They won't just accept Illustrator files, curse them! And all my t-shirt ideas, of course, are in Illustrator. So once I get that squared away I will send the files off. I may have to order one of each design just to be sure they print correctly, but wasn't I planning to do that ahyway? =) I mean, why make something I couldn't see myself wearing at some point? And I can always give them as gifts to friends (if they turn out right) if I don't want to keep them for myself. So hopefully the CafePress thing will be happening soon.

Blogging is Crack: An Outsider's Perspective

It is frightening how similar I am to this woman—minus the fact that I have zero fanbase while apparently she is raking in the love, and minus the fact she wants to be a serious novelist and I don't. (Well, a visual novelist anyway, but that's not quite the same thing.)

I mean, I could write the greatest, most insightful blog entries in the world, but until I get a story scripted, boarded, and finished, can I truly consider myself a manga artist? A wannabe maybe, but not the real thing IMO. I mean, if I can get blogs up, surely I can get Elicia and I together and start making manga, right? I want to say yes, but the sad truth is that until Elicia's semester is over, I am at the mercy of her fickle mood swings and her ever-changing class priorities. Maybe that's why I am jumping on the t-shirt store thing; it is the one thing besides sketching and research that I can do on my own.

All this introspection really stems from running into an old anthropology professor of mine today. We ended our conversation talking about how it is bad to get comfortable in your work. Apparently, even though his wife, who I also know and love, is in a prestigious job and is busy and enjoys it, she is also fielding job positions in other places and possible career moves. Whereas I don't even have my professional portfolio up and running online, which in my field is like the minimum you do to promote yourself. I have gotten complacent and comfortable, which concerns my prof, and me as well. (Though I did run into an old graphics prof yesterday, and I might line up another teaching job through him, as well as opportunities to go on art trips to New York and Europe. So, I'm not a completely lazy artist I guess, but still I need to be vigilant in my own artistic progression.)

Anyway, I just wanted to post an interesting article that gave me pause this evening on my goals and current procrastinating behaviors. Not a funny or informative post, but nevertheless an important thing to think about.

My Work :: Part 4: Oh, the Angst! AngstyBishy on the Loose

Well, we are finally moving forward on AngstyBishy. I got brave and decided that I have been scrutinizing the design too long, so I have now checked him off and called him done. Phew, how liberating!

I posted our guy at DeviantArt, so I hope to get comments on him soon. I only have one but it was very nice. =) I wrote a short blurb there (well, short for me) about him, how he came about and how I created him, but I'll expound on that here. To be honest, I still can't believe he turned out as well as he did! Not that I am surprised that I could create something good, since I have some faith in my ever-honing skils, but because I love the style of him so much. I based his overall look on our Ello logo's style, and I am so proud of how both have turned out.

While I love the scribbly art styles of, say, the Danger monsters, the Ugly Dolls, or Bono's Peter and the Wolf Illustrations, I wanted a more controlled and polished look. On the other hand, I love the computerized sleekness of images from Robots and Angels, Peter Hoey, and Ryan McGinnes, but I wanted to have a more humanistic, hand-drawn look. So I'm so happy that I somehow managed to combine the two. I think that taking a Japanese Calligraphy course in college helped a ton, as I learned how the brush naturally flows, and somewhat imitate that when I draw in Photoshop.

On to process: I scribble several versions of the guy onto scraps of paper; I originally wanted him at an angle, hands in pockets and slouchy, but obviously that changed. I did an offhand sketch of him with arms folded, and I knew that was the body language I wanted to use. I scanned in the finalized pose into Photoshop, and used the brushes to redraw the lines in a more calligraphic style—this took as long as the sketching, because I wanted the brushes just right. Originally I had a pulsing vein icon on his head, but removed that as we felt it was an unecessary detail that drew too much attention to itself. Then I took my tiff of the guy with the final brushstrokes, and placed him into Illustrator. I redrew him with the pen tool, tweaking the brush lines until I was satisfied. And that's how the AngstyBishy character was made!

For the font, I didn't spend as much time as I would like choosing one, as I wouldn't allow myself to buy any new ones right now. =) But the Futura font is a pretty good fit, I think. I added a curved stroke to soften the font's edges, to better match the organicness of the guy. Again, I'd love to fuss more with it, but it is good enought for right now so I'm forcing myself to stop messing with it. There comes a point where the changes are more destructive than not, and I can sense myself reaching that point. Maybe in a month or two I will have an epiphany and change something, we'll see.

That's all for now on AngstyBishy. As stated in the Ello Studios blog, I am going to start working on the first character in my fanart series: Sasuke from Naruto. Is he not the perfect choice, since he is angst personified? I finished his final sketches last night, so I hope to have him up soon. I will post him at DeviantArt too, so stay tuned!

My Work :: Part 3: Sketch of a Girl

I have absolute faith, from past experience, that no one will come to my site, but since I just made my first sketch post ever to DeviantArt and mentioned this site in my description, I had better attach the image in question! =)

For the sketch: I just used one of those cheap Bic self-sharpening mechanical pencils on some sketchbook paper, nothing fancy. Here is the description I wrote on DeviantArt, to go along with my sketch:

"Just a sketch of a random girl to practice my proportions, especially foreshortening, and dynamic poses. I used a panel from Naoko Takeuchi's Sailor Moon, final volume, for a starting reference point, though it is quite modified. I think because I was watching the Olympic speed skaters and Bleach that day, they also worked their way into the sketch. My first sketch posted to DeviantArt ever, and one i'm surprisingly pleased with. Too see the Naoko panel inspiring the sketch, see my blog."

So see, watching the Olympics was a good thing! =) Hah, I will find any excuse. If you've seen Bleach the answer is quite obvious, but I think she turned out looking an awful lot like Orihime. I watched Bleach in the afternoon and sketched this while watching the Olympics that evening, so I find the resemblance of the two very funny. Definitely not on purpose, but I'm glad it happened, as I think it gives the girl in my sketch a sweet vulnerability, in spite of the alarming situation, whatever it is, she is currently in.

I actually drew and compiled the jpeg I'm uploading to this blog a long time ago, way back in February. But as I wanted to attach it to a long post on plagiarism I was writing, which has yet to be finalized, it never got up. (Stupid hulking post, I will get it up soon, if only to get it done with.) I have another image for that post all ready to go, so I feel okay in including this one here.

I basically, in posting the Naoko pic and my pic, want to talk about the rule of borrowing others' images in your own work. One of my teachers put it this way: you are allowed to use another artist's pose/layout/idea/design as long as you change a certain percentage of the image to make it your own. I cannot remember the number anymore, I think it was around 20% but that seems awfully low. Anyway, the basic idea is that you can use images as references, but any artist worth his or her salt will take that reference image and change it to make it uniquely their own, in whatever way they deem best. Very very true.

Anyway, you can visit me at DeviantArt by clicking here, if you like. The sketch can be found by clicking on the "Scraps" icon. I actually like my blue kitty icon there better, because of the way I cropped it, but I'm too lazy to change it here and I like having the two. I am still so new to DeviantArt, but hope I'll end up liking it. If I even get one helpful critique of my work, it will be a site well worth it. Ciao for now.

Burying, Not Beating, Dead Horses

Some quick wrap-ups of old posts I always planned to write:

:: Olympics ::

Wow, so long ago. I never finished watching the Closing Ceremonies all the way through, so I kept putting this one off. Well, no more. I hope everyone was as happy as I that Arakawa won the ladies' gold—she skated beautifully, and I hope helped heal the wounds of the Japanese, since it was their only medal of the entire games. I am glad there is a new world player in figure skating, it sounds like—the very best Japanese skater was too young to attend, so I'm excited to see her in four years—and it won't be just the Russians and the Americans in women's skating all the time. I honestly don't think I could've handled it if Cohen won gold. I try to be a good person and think good things about everyone, but there are those people for whom your good thoughts fail, and for me if she is one of them. She's just never struck me the right way; maybe if I knew her in real life I would love her to death, but then again maybe not.) I would have been so angry if she had won gold and then smugishly declared it was just because she wanted it so bad, or something equally stupid, in reference to accomplishing what Michelle could not. Happily though she fell (oh wow, I am a horrible personfor saying that!), though how she got silver is beyond me; oh well I can handle that. I think it is very interesting that two of the greatest skaters and rivals of their generation, Kwan and Slutskaya, both got silver and bronze but never gold. It is fitting somehow. And, once again, PLEASE get rid of the judges; the way the lady judge simpered over Sasha's performance, flawed as it was, but dismissed the other routines—particularly those by the Japanese—was just sickening. Is she racist, nationalistic, or just very biased when it comes to Sasha? Either way she has to go.

And Apollo, I love you forever! I thought it a fitting end to his Olympic run and his Korean rivalry that he skated a clean race and got gold. I am so proud of him I could still Squee! Hmmm, being cloistered can have its benefits!

The closing ceremonies were okay. The morning deejays the day after had a field day with it, though. And I have to agree with them that the Toronto presentation was everything we were afraid the SLC games would be. Somehow we pullled those off and made them classy; I hope the designers, events planners, and even Mitt Romney got extra kudos for that.

It is always sad to see the olympics end; now we wait for Beijing in two years. Frankly, though, if the Chinese don't stop displacing historical dwellings and thousands of people in their building for the Olympics, it will be tinged very bitter for me. I realize we do it everyday in America, but it is still heartbreaking no matter where or how it happens.

:: Oscars ::

I didn't see it this year, which is sad as I really wanted to judge for myself whether John Stewart could pull it off; now I will never know. (No, I don't have Tivo or whatever, and yes, I realize that I am still living in the stone age. But maybe I like the stone age. Not really, actually.) I used to post a lot on IMDb's site, and I predicted there long ago that it would be down to Corpse Bride, Howl's Moving Castle, and Wallace and Grommet; I am so happy that I was right! Each was good in their own way, and I was proud to make the call on Were-Rabbit winning. I hope it makes up for the fact that they lost a lot of their old props in that horrible fire; if I lost as much of our work as they did, I would be comatose for a week, I think.

:: Laptop Theft ::

Speaking of losing work: my laptop was stolen from a friend's apartment in December. Have I mantioned this already? One of the most horrible things to ever happen to me. Not because of the expense to replace it, but because of the things contained within it that are irreplacable, since I was an idiot and never backed them up. Priceless photos, manga writings, some design work, private writings—I felt like half of my soul was ripped away. It's been a tough road, full of anguish and frustration, but I've learned a lot of tough lessons in the process. So a smalll sliver of a silver lining, but nonetheless one is there.

::

That's all—phew they are over! I can now bury these posts and move onward and upward, excellent.

Busy as a bee. . .

I've been so swamped with stuff, I realized today that I hadn't posted anything in forever! Which implies a false lack of manga ambition—we have been working on it steadily, though at a much slower pace than normal. Elicia has finals and projects to start attacking, and I had lots of work things to get off and running this month. But I can take a breather today (phew!); I stayed up last night 'till 4 a.m. prepping for a meeting today, so I am allowing myself a blogging break. Hopefully I will get some well-deserved catch-up sleep tonight.

Thank goodness for Whitney and pop candy! She finds little artistic gems every now and then that are great and boost my creativity. Like these shirts that I am kicking myself for not thinking of first, since the idea is so simple yet brilliant. And this great music video (linked below? It swears Blogger can do this but we'll see), which I found via her link to the vid of Jack White's new Coke commercial. I'm thinking that the music vid came before the ad but I'm not sure, and I am ashamed to admit I cannot place the original inspiration for either of them; maybe the famous modern artists, particularly the sculptures of Duane Hansen? Frankly, I can't believe Coke would go so Target in its ads; refreshing or knock-offish? You decide.



Anyway, in spite of not posting current inspirations I have been very inspired lately. I'm continuing the redecoration of my apartment again (I had to break for winter and lack of funds), and the creativity that this requires somehow spills into all the areas of my life, to my delight.

Seriously, if I didn't want to be a graphic designer or a manga artist, I'd love to go into interior design, it's a very soothing pastime. And everyone is afraid of color it seems—except those people on the home docoration shows who do those crazy home makovers, of course—but since color has always been an ally of mine and does not intimidate me, I think I'd be great at it—minus all the professional schooling I lack, of course. (I got to teach interior designers last year basic Adobe Creative Suite skills; it was fun and I learned a lot from them. I also learned that an interior designer's wardrobe and grooming are light years above what I, a so-called feminine tomboy, would ever be capable of maintaining—for example, the students were told by their professor to get manicures in preperation for a guest speaker's arrival! What other class would demand that?! Insane.) Anyway, design fun aside, sketching out how my finished rooms might look is also good practice for drawing perspective and buildings. Which I don't do nearly enought of. I realized this the other day when Elicia looked over my sketches; she couldn't believe that I knew how to draw perspective; my own sister for crying out loud! As I explained to her, just because I don't want to do it, and am leaving it up to her in our mangas, does not mean I cannot do it. (Sigh.)

I also watched movies for research—and yes, this counts. =) I wanted to familiarize myself with the things in the genres that do and don't work, and the typical visuals and the famous scenes, so we could steer away from the rote and do our own take on things. I had to watch a lot of bad, albeit "classic," movies, but it was time well spent in spite of that.

I finally saw the movie Frida, and was blown away. I knew of Julie Taymor, of course, because Elicia studied her this year, but we had no idea she had directed a movie! And what a movie—the paintings practically come to life before your eyes! And Salma was perfect, she even looked like her. And IMO her performance was more arresting than Nicole Kidman's, who won the acting Oscar that year—stupid academy, but then again when are they ever perfect? I was already biased that year—I thought Julianne Moore's performance(s) were far more breathtaking—but I had no idea how much Salma was robbed. Give this woman good films, and stat! And give us more films like this, please! Life would be much more beautiful that way.

I am also beginning to sketch out the important details of our character's lives that flesh out who they are—the weapons they use, the objects they prize, how they clothe themselves—in a way that I never did before, which is really quite fun.

I am also going through the monumental task of getting my finances in order—our old car died so I had to get a new one (Goodbye Chester, I love you and always will!), and of course tax season is a pain now, since I can no longer do the E-Z form over the phone. To deduct or not to deduct? That is the five thousand dollar question. >(

So yes, I am working bit by bit in all areas of my life, and am loving it. Dare I say it? In spite of the odd transitions of family, friends, career and so on, I think this is the happiest I have ever been in my life. Don't worry pessimists, the euphoria won't last long, I am sure. But In spite of everything life isn't all that bad sometimes.