[4/10/2006]
See this comic.
As mentioned in the comic, today’s comic idea brought to you by Comet (see episode 003).
N o n s e n s e W a r s • A n A r t b l o g
[100406]
I think this is really well drawn strip. Very appropriate for the rant I’m about to write.
Tommorrow (04/11) will be the third anniversary of my first recorded attempt in drawing in the anime/manga style. When I draw nowadays, I always ask myself whether my current work is an improvement over my previous work, and the answer varies (Improvement really comes in fits these days, but nonetheless, I think I’ve come a good ways in three years) Unfortunately, it wasn’t always this way.
I think I’ve mentioned it several times already, but for much of my drawing life (And by that, I really think only up until three years ago, and that’s three years out of about 13, BTW), I’ve only concentrated (And that’s a relative measure) on drawing machines. Comics in the ‘old style’ (Started in 07/98) were not taken as seriously (As the machines, which the seriousness of is also a relative measure) for almost five years.
If you didn’t understand that paragraph, it basically means that I didn’t put a lot of emphasis into figure drawing, nor did I care about any sort of active improvement in my drawing in general. Hence, the figures in the first 1998 comic are basically the same as the figures in the last ‘old style’ comic of 2003. This is a scan of the last ‘old style’ comic, completion dated in spring of ’03.
It was around now that two of two things happened. I was already familiar with the whole anime style (Pokemon having been around for a number of years, the American version of CCS having aired on KidsWB in the meantime, the American version of the Yugioh TCG having been around since late 2002, and having owned a number of Sailor Moon and Hello Kitty/That frog guy – Keropi? VHS’s), but I never really believed I’d have the ability to draw in that style, being vehemently against drawing anything “natural” up until then.
Like I said: two things. A friend of mine lent – gave me a copy of the two TV seasons of Akamatsu’s masterpiece, Love Hina. My sister got into anime/manga for about a year, and bought a copy of Clamp’s Chobits.
Huh.
Wow.
I think part of my never drawing in the anime/manga style was that whenever I experienced it up until that time, it was always animated, and for a novice artist such as myself, that was probably intimidating on some level or another, hence my belief that I could never draw anything of that caliber (and even now, I could never animate anything to the extent that they do in an anime, even if I studied Flash in detail). However, when I encountered the drawings on paper, such as in the manga version of Chobits, I thought – huh, why are my figures so crappy compared to this? I thought I could do better than what I was doing.
I think I’ll continue next week. I’m tired.
[060406]
I had something good planned for today, but I was too lazy to carry it out. So we’ll wait until next time.
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=138339
[4/4/2006]
HNNGRAAR!
There’s a reason that I particularly like this update. Now, most webcomics have a format that, if put into a book, would be relatively normal. The power of the web is used only as a handy way of displaying the comics and often attatching rants or comments to them. See, in this update, I have harnessed t3h awesome power of HTML to have J-san leave not only the panel, but the table that the comic is in as well!
Of course, this coolness came at a price. Due to issues with older versions of Internet Explorer, I am unable to bring you J-san casting a shadow on the page. My struggle with this issue, before giving up, is the reason that this week’s update is late. Sorry~!
