Writing introductions is a bit tedious so....just take a look at my first post if you want to know more....
....and if you get curious about the name of this World or my posts, check out the second one.
- Created By Sailor Nevar
Countdown to the End: 1 (Only Mercifully)
I thought I had nothing to say & then I realized...wait, no, I actually have nothing to say. I just haven't posted any of my Gilbert sketches and since he's the next character I'm working on...yeah....here they are...
...front view...the shape of his face is all wrong, but I was drawing it in a meeting (which I had decided to NOT do w/these b/c I KNOW it lowers the quality) so I guess it's excusable?
...side or 3/4 view...I was trying to draw him in a hoodie b/c he always seems to wear one in doujinshi, but....yeah, not quite right....
I almost fell down the well again last week...but we had a 4 day weekend for me to get my head straightened out again. That was lucky. All 2 day nightmares should be followed by a mandatory 4 day weekend. It's my new rule. In reality, the yearly torture was not as bad as it has been in the past. I got up extra early (& stayed extra late) both days so I wouldn't be stuck on a tiny train w/a bunch of people I hate, took my DS and some Starbucks along, and somehow the time went by faster than I expected it to. When it started feeling slow I just worked on these to keep my mind off it...
...Gilbert, practically the same as the hoodie pic, but w/out the hoodie...I swear I didn't notice till I got home...
...a bit older looking Arthur, didn't have time to finish him since it was the end of the day, and I don't really like that style of eyes...
...pouty Alfred...I'm trying to make him more innocent looking & Arthur more worldly b/c I don't really like the popular fan perception of Arthur as a girly tsundere who cries over everything. Yes, he does get upset sometimes, but...that somehow leads people to draw him looking really effeminate and make Al all suave and predatory which is totally wrong. Hmm...there's a lot more I want to say about that subject, but....I think I should leave it alone for now. If I get started I'll end up talking about things I don't want to just yet.
So, last for today...I got more fanart!
This great drawing of Marco from One Piece is by animesick, please go give hugs here! I seriously don't know why people give me stuff...I don't think I do anything worth getting presents, but I appreciate them all the same!
I am me no matter what others say. This is the proof of my strength.
Not Perfect is Good
So, I have to amend my last post....Heroman isn't a Studio Bones original. It's written by Stan Lee. And while that's totally freaking awesome, it kinda takes away from the, "Oh they did a good job being accurately American!" factor. Oh well, I still liked it. Second episode of Star Driver was kinda ridiculous, but I'm gonna keep watching it for now. Also, they had another series that I can't believe I forgot about, Darker Than Black...
...which I didn't get to watch when it was first out for some reason, and then couldn't find when it came time for the second series and the OVA. A teacher (yeah....) gave me DVDs of the whole set a couple months ago so I'm finally getting around to it. Only 2 episodes in so I can't say much about it, but it has the typical depressing Bones feel so I think I'm gonna like it...
I didn't get to draw as much this week as I wanted to, but I felt so good about my Alfred from the other week that I drew Arthur without any reference too.
He looks too young & I still can't do much more than his face, but I've decided on a way to work on this stuff so hopefully there will be progress this fall.
I met some otaku in a bar last night who have cosplay/dance/anime song events at a club near where I live every other month. That was kind of crazy. But also, really great. I'll probably go to the next one at the end of this month.
There was something I was thinking about this week (weekend?) that seemed like it was important for writing about, but now....it's gone...I hate when that happens...Halloween's coming soon and I have no plans. That's nothing new of course, but I wonder if I even want to have any? It seems like every year I think I don't care about it & then it gets to be about a day or so away & I wish I had cared sooner. I wanted to do a Halloween themed page for my school's art club magazine too, but the kids said they haven't been putting it out recently. I can't find the inspiration for exactly what to draw anyway so I guess it's a good thing...
Aha! I knew if I waited around long enough I'd remember what I wanted to say! I talked about Bakuman a while ago...
...it's got an anime now! Watching it reminds me of why I had a hard time liking the manga at first. Waaay too many gender role stereotypes. But now, it's almost entirely focused on manga writing so it's a lot better. I love the way that every time they talk about a certain writing or drawing device they actually start using it in the manga itself. It's definitely a cult manga b/c of that though. I'm impressed that it's so popular, but then again, there are a ton of Japanese kids who dream about drawing manga for a living (and adults, and non-Japanese...) so I guess it's not so surprising. I've found that whenever Mashiro-kun is having drawing issues his answers always help me with my own work. I'm guessing I can't be the only person this works for either. When he realized his drawings were too dark I noticed the over-inking in some of my own. Currently he's working on speed. I've been worried about my own speed for a while now so I was really happy to see it in the manga. First b/c it was reassuring that it's not just an amateur who never went to art school (although, neither did he...) who has this problem & second b/c the conclusion he came to (don't put all the details in the pencil sketch) was the same one I did! It was really cool that he got the idea from his assistant (esp. b/c Shun is sooo adorable!) and I was even more reassured by the fact that Saiko realized he couldn't do it quite so bare-bones as Shiratori-kun, and set about finding his own sketching limits.
Kids, and sometimes teachers, ask me a lot of questions about drawing. Not just, "why do you like to draw?" or, "how long have you been drawing?", but serious ones like, "when you draw where do you start from?" or, "how can I get better at drawing?" At first it was hard for me to answer them since I felt like I didn't have any real expertise in the area, so I just talked around the issues or said I didn't really know. Eventually I started explaining the way I do things, but I still always tell them, "That's what works for me. You should try and find the way that works for you." b/c I like to think that there's no "right" way to do it. I'm sure someone out there would say differently, but I've always been big on doing things my own way. And letting other people do things their own way. It works best if you figure it out yourself after all. Just keep drawing and drawing, even if it looks bad at first, if you don't try....well, you know...
Rather than not doing it so that you'll have regrets, it's better to just do it.
Creeping Limit
It's almost October. Somehow when I wasn't listening the nighttime sound of cicadas has been replaced by crickets. The sun suddenly seems to be down more than it's up. In the space of a week I went from not wanting to open my balcony door due to the heat, to wanting to keep it closed for fear of getting cold. It would seem that fall has come to Shizuoka....damn, and here I was hoping it could be summer forever...
Beth came and went. Three wonderful days of that familiar fighting and not making up b/c we don't need to. It was.....[insert meaningful adjective here].....to think about the ways in which we've both changed in the last year since she went to Australia, 2 years since we saw each other, 3 years since I came to Japan, over 10 years since we graduated high school, nearly 15 years since we met....they all blur together...
In some ways we were becoming (have become?) each other, possibly to the point that we've traded certain parts of our personalities. It's weird to think, "Oh, I used to think that way. I wonder when I stopped and she started? I wonder which way is better?"
I finally went to see the modified Gundam (since it's been in Shiz for nearly 2 months now...I'm such a bad fan...) and didn't really stay as long as I would've liked. There was just something weird about doing it in the place where I live...
Oddly, I feel almost no stress at the start of the new school term. Suddenly my anticipated busy fall schedule seems to have a lot of free days in it. All the things I thought would take a lot out of me back in the spring seem like nothing. Not "nothing" in the way that I'm super confident and just know they'll go well. Nothing...in the way that I barely even think about the fact they're going to happen anymore. It's not as though they've become unimportant, I'm sure I'll still sweat a bit when the time comes, but I've lost the feeling that I constantly need to try hard to make things go well.
It's the first sign of boredom. Beth said she thought she could understand why I wanted to live here after being in Australia, but she also said that after thinking about it she'd still be terrified to move to a non-English speaking country. And then she said that was the difference between us, "Katy needs a challenge." Funny. My mom always put it, "You can't be happy unless you have something to fight against."
huh....
I have some fanarts I need to post, but I'm being...lazy? nah, I'm being sneaky is all, waiting to post three at once for the popularity boost. Yeah, I'll admit it. I was drawing at an incredible rate in the end of August/beginning of Septemember, but then I caught a cold, and Beth came to visit, and....yeah, I got lazy for real. Time to get back on track. It's alright though, fall's good for that kind of thing. It makes me want to decide big things.
Don't be focused on what's at your feet, look above you...
The Fearless Child
I should really just put all my posts in the Hetalia category, huh?
...but before I get obsessive again...
...my girls (who also love Hetalia of course!)
...and my Hachi (who made me super happy by requesting this Kakashi fanart.
So, anyway....I got to draw Al again
This was a request from a 6th grade girl, who watches (and reads?) Hetalia with her mom. And so I must wish a whole lot of awesome on this, the third pair of mother-daughter fujoshi I've met in Shiz. Well, I say "met" but I haven't met the moms, just heard about them. But let's face it, they're awesome. I ran out of pages in my sketchbook and had a few hours of work left today so I started doodling on the back of some unimportant ones...
...and these are the results (now you see why they're not worthy of fanart posting, people? there's marker all over the back that's showing through!) Neither of these is that great (nor is the posted one, it looks like he has a lazy eye...) but I'm still pretty proud of them. I know I don't talk about it much (b/c it's kinda embarrassing) but most of the stuff I draw usually has one or two references that I'm looking at or combining. I always say it's b/c I'm doing requests and I don't want them to come out crappy, but maybe it's just a crutch. (I'm sure Al wouldn't do it if he was an artist...). I've only ever tried drawing from my head with Kakashi before & was only marginally happy with the results, but this....this is something I can build on.
Sure, there's a lot wrong (particularly the shape of his head I'm now noticing...) but it seems I'm destined to be in love with the idiotic personification of the USA for a while, of course, he's not my number one, Arthur will always be number one b/c he's me, but Al, well, he's the hero after all, you can't help but love him. So I guess I'll be getting a lot more practice at drawing him.
If you're an enemy I have to defeat, I will. That's all.
Heroes Can Save You
My apologies to anyone who reads this blog simply because they're my friend but have no connection to theOtaku whatsoever.....I've gone into obsessive mode and this may bore you quite a bit.
First: here's the final version of this fanart I posted yesterday. It's for the pre-summer issue of my old school's art club magazine, and ranks my 6 favorite characters. Somehow Arthur came out being the hot one while Al is just cute. I guess that solves my, "I can't draw the one who's like me," complex. Not really satisfying when I wanted to make Alfred look sexy, but....oh well, his personality is cute so I guess it just came through in his looks.
Second: I can't stop watching this amv...
Third: Here is what I've learned from Hetalia, I should have paid attention in History class more when I was a kid. But, just like everything else I've ever hated (or loved for that matter) once I'd decided that was it. I was going to hate it forever. I have a vague memory of being interested in the Phonecians in World History when I was in 9th grade. I wanted to research something about them being the first people to have ships. I can't remember what I thought was cool about it at the time, I'm not all that interested in ships or sailing. I skipped out of European History in 10th grade much to my mother's displeasure, but I was much too interested in music and math at that point to care. Turns out it's kinda interesting. Of course I know that Hetalia isn't an exact historical account, but then, depending on who you ask, neither are most history books.
Friends have sometimes questioned why I don't like History since I love stories so much. After all, it's just a big bunch of stories about people who used to be alive, right? And Hetalia has finally managed to get that point across to me. I think it's because the storytelling is romantic. Not cheesy Disney movie romantic or angsty high school vampire novel romantic, but real romanticism. Like the stuff I studied all those years ago in England, Byron and Shelley and Blake, they had a way of making things seem amazing, no matter how they made you feel....kinda like this...
the fall of Prussia
what's in a National bird...
EDIT: After skimming over recent entries I realize I may have been boring people for quite some time now....oops....
