FanArt_ink.SparkHat

MTGinktober ignites and doffs its cap to Day 27, "Spark Hat," starring Sythis, Harvest’s Hand and Calix, Destiny's Hand!

This was a real treat to do, an homage to the classic scene in One Piece where Luffy gives Nami his hat, except this is (completely coincidentally) two hand-themed enchantress GW characters.

Fun Facts: While this is the second MTGinktober appearance this year of a leaf-haired character, this is these specific characters' debuts.

Easter Eggs: This is the one giant salute to One Piece, one of my major influences and inspirations early on.  I tried to keep text out of this as much as possible, but the quote is my name in Japanese plus the JP-formatted date.

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AV_anp.BurgerFool_Doodads

Some more doodads from our main May ALT poster and our second wave's here.   Note the One Piece Shanks Tanks from the tongue-twister section.
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Fun_OneGoku

I drew a quick little Goku for a jKid, coloring only with Staedtler and Zebra pens. It's Goku, but with a twist.  The twist is that he's about to don Luffy's hat.Clever, I know.  Reuxben

Fun_hws.DotToPlot

More art alters to that dot to dot sheet, this time riffing off the shapes they made.

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Fun_hws.buhDUMbuhDUMetc

Here's some homework sketches. We've got Beppo from za Haato Pirates, a T-Rex cuz I can't remember, Jaws cuz someone likes sharks I guess, and a character from Inazuma Eleven Go. I hate sports but something about Inazuma Eleven that's oddly interesting.

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AV_IDersSanjeez

Today's Card: Sanji.
Fun Facts: I guess Sanji isn't very pops here, but I still like him. AND I liked his 4kids, Brooklyn-accent voice. Anyway, this was maybe my favorite card and the jKid who received it also liked it.

So ends our parade of self-introduction cards I made to give away to jKids who will probably lose, destroy, or eat them. But it's all good cuz we made some jKids super happy. AND THAT IS HOW WE ROLL.

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AV_IDersChopz

Today's Card: Chopper.

Fun Facts: Ironically the jKid who got this card was like one of the two jKids on jEarth who just isn't that into Chopper, though the classmates went nuts, so that's something at least.

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AV_IDersLuffz

Today's card: Luffy.
Fun Facts: I draw Luffy and Chopper a lot, so to make this one more interesting, I tried to give it a realistic take. When giving these away, I tried to match the card to whatever the jKid giving me a card talked about. This card's recipient liked this one and the class was abuzz, too, so that was pretty neat!

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Fun_hws.BirdMountainMission

Here are some more Homework Sketches.

The wolf is from a band I recently got into a little, Man With a Mission. Nice guitars but the lead vocalist kinda misses with me.  Great English for a jRock band, though.

Next is a man of iron.  And then a baseball boy for a boy baseballer, and a key chain for someone who knows someone who's name sounds like "keychain." 

We've got a sketch of two cards I enjoy, Mortivore (done totally from memory, to horrific results!) and this dude from Duel Masters.   And there's a snowman for a fellow fan of winter (we just had our first snowy day, though it was more like hale and it didn't last too long)

Here's where it gets wacky--the badominton sketch is for a badmintonista who they say is a strong candidate for the OLYMPICS!  WHA??  Yeah!  I even saw her on the cover of Badminton Magazine!!  I don't know what's cooler, that Badminton Magazine gave her the cover, or that Badminton Magazine exists.   

To bring it home we've got a big gulp for someone who says he wants to visit the US to partake in its giant foodery (wonder if he's ever heard of a Big Gulp?) and a bird mountain for the coolest of the bird mountains this side of Akira.

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AV_wkst.Wally

This was an army of characters I drew for a worksheet about present progressive. The jKids have a sheet of these characters but half the names are missing so they have to look around the page for a character whose name they want to know and ask their partner, who has every name the OG lacks and lacks every name the OG has.  Thus the partners must interview each other using the present progressive to describe the character whose name they want to know.

For example, one kid digs j-Rock so he wants to know: Who is the [boy] [sing+ing] a [song]? The [boy] [sing+ing] a [song] is Yojiro (Noda).  Hiloonity ensues.

Many Easter Eggs, including but not limited to TV Reporter, RADWIMPS, Base Ball Bear's female bass player, Maximum the Hormone, the horrifically over-rated Ring, and Kaburagi. Oh, and Where's Waldo, which is called "Where's Wally" in Japan.  So pumped to get some jLaughs since even though the deadline was super tight, I took time to make the names and chars inside-jokey to the jKids!  The best part is when they excitedly chatter about getting a joke before everyone else then they break it to their neighbors and then they all enjoy it together.  So neat! Anyway.

Who is the boy whose art is making me the most happy?  The boy whose art is making me the most happy is Takeshi (Hosomi, sporting Ellegarden and The Hiatus gear, natch).

This was the one doodle I was most happy with.  It came out of nowhere, but I loved how he turned out. 

I'm not really into The Hiatus as much as Ellegarden (Hosomi's previous band which went on indef. hiatus in 2008, just as I became a fan of them soon after landing in Japan for my first visit here).

But I am definitely rooting for Takeshi Hosomi's success. And check out how fluent he is!!

This was also a neat one.

It's a splice of Naruto and Totoro.

Get it?

Got it?

Good.

In conclusion, I wish my Yojiro Noda woulda came out better.

Why is it that the ones you really want are always just beyond your fingertips?

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AV_FoodSanjiUnit

I feel like I make the G-Unit pun a lot. It's gotten to the point that I almost can't even remember where it comes from anymore.

All I remember is just that a lottttta white kids used to say it in middle school. But they'd stutter it, like, G-g-g-g-g-g-GEE-unIT. Soft g.

As in Sanji.

As in Sanji-ji-ji-ji-ji-ji-JI unETCETERA.

None of that has to do with the purpose of this piece.

Which was for a worksheet I made about food.

RIVETING.

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Fun_hws.BatchToTheBeat

Our first batch of Homework Sketches of the new trimester back at school.

We've got a snowman for a kid who's favorite season is winter, a to-scale technical drawing of my Intuos for a kid who I got to talk/write shop with,  and my first Chopper in a while.

The other three are neat cuz  they're based on an activity I made for the jKids.  I gave them some OriChars at random and then they had to practice third-person descriptions by extrapolating and describing those characters' characters! 

It was neat to see what they came up with having just a pin-up and a name to go off of (Chief made a great suggestion that we can even let them change the name--so cool to see their incredible, original names).  The RPG homework sketch was for a kid who wrote an interesting and quite accurate(!!) estimation of what a scrappy little monk-looking warrior named Garry was about. But I also included brand new characters that haven't even hit Removal yet (well, a version of Ko has...), so I was basically doing market research as to what the jKids dig in their characters--I was thrilled to see they really got down with our new female lead, Smile, so I sketched her on one of the jKids' responses.  This was such a cool assignment and I loved seeing the utter creativity of the jKids unleashed! 

But perhaps the coolest thing, though, was after the sessions, the Chief already made suggestions on how to make this assignment rock even harder next year.  Did you catch that delicious subtlety?  That feedback suggests they assume I'll be here next year, but for that to be true, they have to want me back for at least one more year, which the assumption implies is true.

Bum bum bum buhhhm,

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Fun_hws.LoveJapan

Today, four years ago, I first stepped foot on Japanese soil. I love Japan with all my heart. I am the legitimately happiest I've ever been in my whole life, including my Yale years. This is unbelievable to me.

But on to the show!  The jKids wrote little letters to me for their composition practice, their first time writing directly to me, rather than responding to some prompt and then me riffing on their responses.  So many jPeeps took the opportunity to ask for sketches, so this is a special, request-line edition of Homework Sketches.

First up is some K-On!!, a series I've heard much about and have seen a ton of incredible promo art for, but I've never actually read/seen the comic or show aside from clips from the JapanCast podcast.  But it's inspirational how accurate the art is to real-life: costume, setting, situation, all of it makes you want to see Japan, live Japan...be Japan.

One jBandito asked which comics I like, so I recommended the under-appreciated mangaka behind Oumagadoki Doubutsuen, Kōhei Horikoshi. He(?)'s got a new SF series that debuted just recently in Weekly Jump, but from what I've seen, it's not terribly gripping...hope it gets better! Speaking of animals, one dude asked about my favorite jFood, and it's gotta be that fish on a stick, easy.  All day, man, bring it. Fish on a momofuku stick.

An aspiring artist asked me for advice so I wrote back a bunch of tips plus titles/artists to check out, and even included a grammatical diagram for a new base word: "illustration." 

One jCat asked if I "played" kendo, and although I want to give kendo a ken-go, unfortunately I haven't been able to.  I think it's mainly a high school club sport... Anyway, for a kid who asked about my video gaming habits, I drew a hybrid Pokemario dealio. I haven't played vidja games with any intensity since maybe my first few months of Yale.

I got a request for a Zoro and a Luffy, so that was a snap. Trickier was a request for Brook, a character I had no experience with: when I left the US, we'd just met Robin on TV, and she was still a villain; in the comics, we'd just got Sanji on the team!  Next we got Naruto, who I had to squeeze in between lines of text.  The draw looks cool peeking out of the paper, though, sneakily like a ninja.  I have to say, I'm so used to the first generation of these time-jumped series, all my Choppers wear the cuter pink top hat, none of my Narutos are tall and lanky. Gotta brush up on the new hotness...

Last question I got: what do I think about Japan?  Guess, my little jCrew member, guess.

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Fun_LuffyMaybe

A jKid asked for a Luffy, but I had to leave early and I forgot to ask his name, so hopefully this reached him after I left it for someone on the regular staff to track him down as I ditched the eSchool to return to the big bad world of pre-high school thug life.

Maybe.

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Fun_LuffWafting

I visited me mateys at that tharr elementarry school, yarr?  Too much fun 'twas, yaarrrr.  Drew many a pirate, used many a medium, all for me mini-hearties...YARR!

We spoke many a tell of Duel Masters...er, um, Duel Mastaarrrrrrrs!!

YAAAAAARRRRR!!!

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Fun_SouperBuuper

After runch I thought I'd put on a show for the kids, sketching with the soupy remnants of my miso. Up first was Luffy from One Piece, a monster hit in Japan, but you've probably never heard of it/him.

If you have heard of One Piece at all, you might only be know this character, Chopper, but again, prolly not. Isn't that funny how something could matter so very much to an entire country, but be pretty darn irrelevant to another, aside from some loserish, clingy group stuck in the vast minority?

Buut enough about soccer.

Keep your Majin, nation!

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Fun_hws.BogartTheGirl

Here's another installment of Homework Sketches, art I scrawl on jKids' homeworkz against their thrill.  So we've got an illustration of the difference between "teach for" and "teach to," an emo-riffic tomato because the student reports she doesn't like tomatoes, a gentle ribbing of a commonly reverse-written d, and we've even got a Crayon Shin-chan shout out. Never seen more than a few seconds of the show, but as I understand it, at least in the US, it's a decidedly adult show in the guise of a kids' show, right? As far as I can tell, in Japan it's a straight-up kids' show.

Next we've got a camera for a kid who accidentally dropped his camera after his school trip(!), a Naruto headband, one of the ubiquitous Mono erasers, a guy getting dome-shot with a soccerball, a Mugiwara straw hat logo coloring-job, a Domo-kun, and then three riffs on my Pizza cat, including a Reborn version.

But our anchor piece is a riff on a hilarious student-written dialog written for a lesson on "May I, Could you." Here's their script:

お: Excuse me, Ms. [Redacted],

  May I speak to you?

た: Sure.

お: Could you speak Chinese?

た: I'm sorry. I'm [sic.] don't speak Chinese.

お: I see.

た: May I ask you a question?

お: I'm sorry. I don't like questions.

I imagined a poor member of the newspaper club earnestly trying to interview her slightly conceited, aloof senpai.  Tragic, adorable, hilarious.  These kids are really talented writers when they try, but also when they don't, but mostly when they do.

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Fun_hws.JitteIsntFrench

It's time for more homework sketches.  Up top, we've got a fellow Lugia fan and at right, an Anpanman fan.  What is Anpanman?  Anpanman is a hugely famous character (a man made of anpan--a Japanese bread [pan is Japanese for "bread" (Anpanman characters are named after, and have heads made out of, bread-based foods)]) in Japan that people of all ages love, far beyond its elementary-school target demographic.  Kids and adults like to draw Anpanman because he's a really simple design of basically just circles and semi-circles.  So since this kid wrote about his Anpanman fandom, I decided to try drawing a "real" Anpanman.  Japanese people call "real"--realistic--anything that is more than just stripped-down basic linework. Hope he was "enjoying," as they say.

Next we've got that frog guy from Chrono Trigger for a kid who likes Chrono Trigger.  I have no idea what that character's deal is, I just wanted to draw him since he's not the otherwise too-DBZish Toriyama character designs, which I would expect are too predictable targets of fan art.

Moving on, we've got an amusing report from a fan of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu.  You know Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, don't you?  Of course you do.  Fart some rainbows if you haven't already. I know I just did.

After that we've got some One Piecers followed by Mr. Umezawa himself, based on Mr. Moeller's depiction here.  The reason this post is called "Jitte Isn't French" is because when this card's set (Betrayers of Kamigawa) came out, the more famous Umezawa-bearing card drove me nuts because ignorant 'Murrcans kept slaughtering that artifact's name into some sick French-like pronunciation instead of more closely arriving at the Japanese pronunciation (which--surprise--is just as it appears on the card in English).  Not only did the increasingly erroneous tongue-spasmings annoy me, but that common and more heavily pronounced replacement sound was perhaps the most annoying sound language-speaking tonguemeat can make this side of any word that ends in a "Ch" sound--that horror "zshh" sound, as in the beginning of Zsa Zsa Gabor. 

Come to think of it, oddly enough, words that begin or middle with "Ch" sound cute, but I absolutely cannot stand words that end with that disgusting squish.  Oh, how "Ch" haunts "lunch" ...how I hate it so.

Tangent, tangent...chiperoo,

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Fun_ChopDotCol

Here's a prize pic I colored using just Zebras for a change, for the jKid unfortunate enough to spot it posted on my posterboard space. Who won it? Who knows! First come, first served.

Hate when people write it as "first serve."

Post-Tokyo ketchup continues...

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AV_DotToChop

Hello. Howayu?
Super busy, but I'll post up our very first AV for this new school year, if that's all right. I trust it is.

It's Chopper, of course.

The kids LIT UP when they saw this (well the above version, since they have to learn their ABCs via dot-to-dotting letters.), so it was just a lightning way to get back into the school year (the Japanese academic year starts in April, and then there's a summer break during which new ALTs, for instance, can rotate in).

This was served up short order, pausing the coloring I was knee (knuckle?) deep into, but it came out pretty nice, considering.

I drew two candidates for dotting possibilities, but our old Kappa pal here didn't make the cut.

I had a monstrously fun time drawing him, though. I printed out a copy of him and colored it to take a break from my other major coloring piece, and golly that was fun. There's something so Oaklandishly satisfying about green and yellow together.

But why kappa? More soon, but for now:

Happy 5th anniversary, Removal!

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