AV_anp.PengyPowa

At long last, this is the June edition ALT poster for our visiting campus.

This school tends to get fancier posters, I feel, since they don't actually give me time constraints to work in.  One of my pet peeves is when people rush me on artwork.  I feel like, if you want me to draw something nice, give me time to do it right or don't bother asking me.  This school doesn't even care if I don't submit a poster, they are that laid-back! You can see our main campus' poster had to be so rushed I even had to cut colors! 

Anyway, this edition has refined the old one's information but tweaked it to include more love for Motion City Soundtrack, a streamlined Movie Flop section highlighting Nemo, et al., plus a slicker "New Expression" section that boasts a bonus Radwimps sub-section explaining the English-slang basis of their name!  We also rebooted the booty-offer to the jKids who submit art to the board. This version includes a more colorful Mario-style question block plus a paper-craft Japanese-style red mailbox.  I've been wanting to incorporate 3D elements into the boards, and this was a nice little toe-step in that direction.  Who knows what this could mean for future artboards!  Wait, I do, never mind, stupid question.

Here's our anchor image colored up with Copic Ciaos.  I knew I wanted to do a sequel to the main school's anchor image, and I had planned to draw them actually playing their game of volleyball.  The "story" of that first image is that they're playing Janken (Japan's version of rock, paper, scissors) to determine who's playing first, as they do in Japan. Why volleyball? Because I had recently been conscripted into joining a couple games. 

But like last time's image was inspired by recent events just preceding its creation, this one got inspired by the intervening Sports Day I went to at this very campus.  In it, I saw them play a bunch of sporty games on their sporty grounds, but one that caught my eye was a kind of jousting game where three players tripod a fourth teammate up onto their shoulders and that top dog wears a helmet with paper bunches taped on.  Three of these squads rep their team as they run into the field trying de-bunch the opposing team's squads' helmets.  Once you lose your three bunches, you're booted from the game like a de-ballooned MarioKarter.  It's like flag football, only interesting.

So instead of drawing the girl and the pengies playing volleyball, I had them play that bunch-joust game.  The jCrew was even impressed when they saw my take on their game since I had only ever seen it once in my life and were delighted it had made such an impression on me.  The jKids also really liked this one, too, which just makes my day.  Score! 

Here's our anchor image's lines.  No inks on this one, aside from on the eyes; I really wanted to see what we could do with just pure Copic Ciao power.

Finally, here are some select doodads from the poster. We've got our title, "Hot Culture" because I could think of nothing else aside from my desire to do late 80s-early-90s neon atrocities with my Zebras. 

We've also got a detail on the new iconography for the booty offer, plus an explanation of the dear old Radwimps' name.

I've really come a long way in our time doing these posters. Can you remember when this was buzzworthy?  Man!  You never know how far you've come until you look back.

I love art. 

I love Japan. 

I love life.

Reuxben