AV_PuffnStuff

I did a little illo of Puff the Magic Dragon and Jackie Paper for a little worksheeteeoh. No, I don't approve of the song (nor do I even like it in its suicide-inducing un-ironic folk stylings), regardless of what the (dead) author says it's about--it's quite clearly about drugs, you hippie. And yet here we are seeing it appear in a government-enforced textbook, using it to teach jKids English.

The spot started off as a tiny little sketcheroonie in my noto and then I inked and tweaked it in PSE. Haven't done any straight up digi stuff in while, and this guy got me going.

I feel pushed/pulled in too many directions lately and I never know which way's worth exploring to get me to that next level.

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Fun_LeafSong

I saw a display next to an improvised art corner complete with multi-colored paper leaves and chunky markers at the station's waiting area and thought I'd take part while my catbus chugged its way to me.

You see, there's this holiday in Japan where you write messages on leaves and...well, you know the rest.

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Fun_Guerillayon

I decided to (actually) try crayons for the first time in ever. What better place than the local watering hole?

These crayons were a little classier than your typical Crayolas, devoid of cheap paper labeling, just a logo seared into the wax itself. There were a ton of crayons open for sampling, so I just went with a 2 cent face sketch in black on a pad preoccupied with some Japanese. Then I ultimately Mouse-cookied myself into a full coloring.

I left it on the sample pad to browse the watercolor pencil section down the aisle (SERIOUSLY considering buying a set to test the waters--but the normal or the expanded set to start off with???). To my surprise some non-me-affiliated schoolgirls popped by the crayon section shortly after I left. They cheerily chittered over the (horrific) doodle they discovered and even annexed it for themselves! I didn't expect such a weak piece to get such a positive reaction, so I am happy for the little guy and that we could entertain some jPeeps!

So what did we learn? All I know is crayons are fun to visit, but I can't imagine dealing with such a stacked finicky-to-expression ratio too much in the future, unless I discover some mystery more-potent technique. I found crayons to be not as limited as I remember them from kindergarten--a nice excursion from PS and Copics--but if I want to try a new tradish medium, I'm gonna bank on pencil watercolors.

I've seen even Jim Lee struggle to truly unlock crayons, so it's probably just a dead end to go any further than a freebie sketch at art sample central. I know watercolor, regardless of my interest in the medium, is supposed to be a nigh-essential part of an artist's development, so I do feel it's inevitable I get on that crazy train. I tried watercolors over a decade ago and as I understand it, watercolor pencils are that, but more controllable, which is mouth-watering, if only for the bg or texturing possibilities.

Speaking of which, this concludes today's episode of "Nobody on Earth Could Possibly Benefit From Reading the Preceding."

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Com_RwarSwish

I digi-inked a Japanese artist! This is from a special project I'm working on. It was really fun because it was so raw and loose a base drawing. Aside from changing the queen crown to a king's crown, as per instruction, I only did minor touch-ups, but for the most part I stayed pretty on-mark with the lines.

I also inked the raw calligraphy that went with the above. This one was harder because of all the little trailing bits. It says something like, "Now is the time for winning!!"

Duh.

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Fun_DanWings

An early sketch of Dan that I liked, but we ended up going a slightly different direction with his costuming. The hair and part of the face remain in the final version, but this was a nice starting point that was technically a middle point.

Don't forget to smile...

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ZLM_MatesOfStates

At least now you can add self-pitying to your resume's special skills section.

Zero Like Me #185:
Mates of States

Easter Eggs: "Yale" on menyu, the Magikarp salesman's been working out (still a fishmonger, though). Today's setting is actually the first place I ate at when I arrived here, and I was so relieved the food was actually pretty solid, for a soup! The shoulder puff in panel 2 is Umezawa. I don't believe I've ever heard Mates of State, but I do enjoy their name. The classmates in the states mentioned in this comic are fictional. Some are not.

Fun Facts: This restaurant is actually three fused together--the second panel is a from-memory of the exterior shot's eatery, and the third panel is a combination of an octo-ball-and-ice-cream joint mixed with my favorite pizza shack. I contemplated going back into the exterior shot restaurant for photo/gastronomic research, but decided it wasn't worth the culinary risk. I do see eating (particularly at restaurants) in Japan as a quasi-gambling experience, you know.

Irasshaimase, by the way, is something shopkeeps and clerks of all stripes shout at you to get your business. It's like, "Welcome, please let's do bizniz," so it's supposed to be inviting, but sometimes they say it reeeeeeeally loudly and it freaks you out. And by "you" I mean "me."

Baa: No matter where I am on Earth, I hate eating with people. The squishy sounds they make as their lips and cheeks smack pockets of food, the way they have to push their witty vocal diarrhea from behind globs of undigested food, the way they constantly click-clack at their food with determined chopsticks and jerk the precarious load of food into their saliva-swinging mouths...I imagine the sound of chopsticks must fill many people with fond foody memories, but I only associate them with a hassle-y technology that makes it harder to shovel food down my gullet at my usual lightning pace so I can get back to not having to orally dodge creepy textures and flavors apart from the nescapably sampled fleshy chunks of my own tongue. I feel so primitive eating with chopsticks, like a monkey stabbing sticks into an ant mound hoping to luck out and acquire grub when not losing out to gravity most of the time. But sometimes the food is great. Have you had Japanese stew? That's money. Instantly makes me think of my imaginary childhood growing up in Japan when my mom would make us stew on chilly autumn--or best of all winter--days. And everything felt safe.

Man, I miss being an imaginary Japanese child.

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AV_GhibzTotonari

Dis is da finale, kid, as Lt. Soij famously said. This is last of our Ghibli set Episode Sway's here, A-NoKay's yore, and the Kikz chronicles koko desu. This one's is based on one of the very first anime I ever saw.

It was so confusing...but at my young age, I couldn't put my finger on why it was so different than anything I'd seen before. It was like they were in some world that was like ours (being that the US is/was the world to me back then) but not quite--Why were they boiling themselves?

I don't want to suggest Totoro is hacky at this point, but he was far and away the easiest one for people to guess, but jPoppers really liked it! Particularly since Totoro is so iconic I tried to mask him with the composition, which seemed to add to their joy when they invariably detected him.

In the sketch he was a bit more feline. I didn't want to just redraw the same old Totes everybody knows, but we lost a bit of that scrappiness in the final.

So it goes.

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Fun_Sinisterling

I love Endling's work, style, etc. and recently discovered his guide on how to clean up pencil lines--turns out he in fact never inks!--and fascinated, I tried out his method, even stabbing at his monochrome coloring technique, too. I believe he's the reason why I decided to mainly stick to grayscale comics, although I added a couple key colors out of guilt for having that be possible, and to make the online version feel more exclusive.

Fun Facts: This is an old drawing (inspired by Endling's style), by the way, done about a year ago during a meeting I had to go to. Well, the waiting period before the meeting, since I got there early.

Like your mom.

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AV_GhibzJuss4Kikz

Here's the third of my four and a half part Ghibli series I did (Sway be here and A-Nokay's 'ere.). Today's quarter-A3 poster's from that one with the girl with the ridiculously cool name. You know the one.

I knew a girl in college who went by "Kiki," but I could never bring myself to collar by anything thinner real name, which was also crazily cool (I feel weird calling people by nicknames unless they explicitly invite me to call them by that name). Anyway, something neat, they say she's the granddaughter of a certain famous singer...one whom I always confuse with the original singer of this song.

These are the pencils. You'll notice these are quite different from our sketch. That's because I had forgotten my sketched-on envelope at school, so I had to go offa memory, particularly on this freshest sketch. And since I felt more moved by the early stages of these pencils and time was ticking on the deadline, I just went with this take. I ended up really liking the expression here, but I do miss the mini-stories present in the sketch.

This is the sketch in question. It wasn't even drawn with the original four--it was drawn off on in the distance on the long envelope, away from the cluster of OGs since the original Beatle slotted for this space got cut. I didn't even show this sketch to my AD, I just went with the green-lit pitch from our initial meeting "How about Kiki?," churned this out, and it ended up being one of my favorites. So I guess everything turned out well.

Just one Ghib remains to jab. What could it be????

Whatever.

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AV_HowsEveryLiOlTing

This was one of my original four sketches I pitched for the Ghibli project, but not a single Japanese person could identify the movie! Can you?

Rather than rework the image, we decided to just go for an infinitely more fun Ghib to draw...but more on that Friday.

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AV_JustLeft

I can't quite remember what these illustrations were for, but I'm am pretty sure they were of or relating to either "still" or "just," as in Did you get Ichiro's autograph? No, he has just left, but the big fan is still waiting. or I have just read a scary story.

But that doesn't make any sense...

...like your mom.

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AV_GhibzANoKay

Here's another installment from the Ghibli series I did (Sway's here), this one's from that one movie where everything's A No-Kay.  The final version was on poster board, about a quarter of an A3 sheet and just black and white, but I thought I'd throw on some thematic colors for the digital version here.  What did the "final" look like? Why, like this, you silly goose:

This one was hecka relaxing to ink, all the leaves and moss and stuff. But it sure took a while...!  Fun facts: Yale-drop-out Claire Danes did the English voice for this character.  Isn't that neat?  Don't answer that, you party-pooping jerk.

Here are the lines, which I debuted on youtube, actually, hence the more prominent url.  Although I'm not really into movies, this is one of my favorite "escapism" sort of movies, where you turn it on late at night as you're rebelling against sleep, and then you get taken to a nonsensical world that you couldn't even decipher at full alert.  Maybe you succumb to sleep before the credits roll, maybe you make it to the end.  But either way, you've escaped the real world for a bit and feel oddly inspired to match the movie's beauty in your work and make dang sure to surpass its confusion.

This was our sketch, measuring about four thumbs-end-to-end long by two or three thumbs tall.  I forgot my sheet of sketches at the office the weekend I drew these, so I was going off of memory from the sketches.  Got pretty close, though.  I sketched this off the top of my head, so the forest here was just off of memory, not entirely sure what the in-movie forest looked like, of course did my research for the final.

The jKids and jCrew liked this one.  Gonna be a hoot to show the elemKids this, bet they'll like the kodama. 

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Fun_KappaTales

I drew this a while ago and colored it up in several versions. This pure Zebra marker version's a recent iteration to inspire jKids to do art and tell stories (in English).

It was a fun challenge writing a story that basic English-learners can get, while still striving to make it as interesting a story as possible. I was inspired by the elementary school textbook's telling of the Peach Boy story. It was beautiful and poetic, but everything you needed was there, even if in its most primal, basic state. "I am strong! We are strong!" goes a long way, for instance. So the goal was to approach that kind of code-worded storytelling to fire off imaginations without using a single word that could stumble the jKids.

I had to travel for work last week and we had to write a skit with some older jKids, and it's this whole writing for English-learners angle that really gets you thinking about story essentials. What tale can you communicate when your chief weapon--language--gets dulled at the forge before you ever get to wield it? It's a fun exercise, and we managed to tell a great story AND even work in wordplay (even winning an award for it, but I felt a bit guilty since it was more my idea than the jKids') but I am glad to be out of that damping zone and back writing more language-empowered stories.

In any case, regardless of how many arms I must have tied behind my back, I do love scratching that story-telling itch.

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AV_NewSnowEndys

These are three more intro cards from my intro card set that I gave away.

Today's categories are Club, Season, and Food!
Really cool thing I didn't see coming: once people saw that I was handing out not only cards with non-rudimentary drawings on them, but each of the 10 was custom-made and tailored to whomever I was meeting (i.e. a black card for someone who likes black), I got swarmed with people wanting to meet me for my cards! People even stopped to watch when new people introduced themselves to me, just so they could see me unveil new cards! Golly! It's almost enough to make a cripplingly introverted hermit not shun society!

Almost.

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AV_GhibzSway

I drew a series of Ghiblis for a recently wrapped project. This one's "Spirited Away," a movie I never really got--but that's true for all Ghiblis, except for maybe "Porco Rosso," but I can't even remember that one too well. They're primarily just beautiful and fascinating visual arts to me. I am suspicious of anyone who says they get them though, unless they're Japanese, in which case, I just smile and nod politely.

I do love No-Face, though. I absolutely love the rules involved with mythology and folklore--that's why I have a fascination with Kappa, for instance: what do you do--what must you do--when you encounter this creature? Don't screw up, or you die! I love those strange, secret rules that you either know or you don't, and if you do, then you survive only because for some reason the cold-blooded creature is bound to respect those semi-arbitrary rules governing its interaction with people.

jKids never know what this movie is by its English title; the Japanese title is quite long. Speaking of which, the finals of these Ghibz were on posterboard about a quarter of an A3 sheet big, so if you outstretch your palm the piece is the hand's length from heel to the middle finger's tip, by the length from the origin to your thumb.

I was originally going to have the bath house in shadow and just have the lights in negative space but as I roughed in the details to make the ensuing silhouette accurate, I ended up just keeping the details in. Since I had to get these done at a relatively quick clip, I decided to freehand the house, but had I known I was going to keep the detail, I probably would have wanted to use more ruler, cowbell.

Here's its sketch, which is about the size of two thumbs tip to tip, and one thumb tall. It is so hard to preserve the energy of a sketch through to a final, but this one still got oohs-and-ahhs from the crowd, so that's a victory in my book.

Now that this project is wrapped, I can finally start working on some comics!

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Com_Jasper

An ancient chardesign commission.

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AV_FalLoftLateMilk

These are three more intro cards from my intro card set that I'm giving away.

Today's categories are Season, Place, and Drink!

*SPECIAL LEGAL NOTE: These intro cards and their associates are in no way affiliated with, endorsed by, or pikachu'd hereinto by Loft, Co. Inc. Ltd. LLC. ASCAP. etc.

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AV_anp.PengyPowa_MO

Here is the making of our anchor image for that one ALT Poster. You know the one.
So these are the pengies, inspired by Eiichiro Oda's pengies. Really fun to draw them, but agonizing trying to color them without losing the lines' vivacity.

This is a close up of the anchorgirl we markerpainted. Experimenting with coloring skin. My current color palate only allows for whitish skin colors, but I'm gonna see if we can start getting some darker tones up in this hizzy without it lookin' all...ya know.

Here's a more contextual look at the making of her.
Sky's still a challenge, but I believe we got pretty darn close to nailing it in our next piece...

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AV_Kikz_Preview

What are you looking at, my dear?

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AV_ZaBullBlx

We've got a mini design challenge on our hands. The mission: I must have ten 5x10cm quasi-business cards to introduce myself to 10 Japanese people at an upcoming event. They suggested that besides listing my name and 4 things I like, I might include a little drawing on the card. So with these parameters in mind, I set out to make my introduction card.

Rather than make 1 design and copy it 10 times, I decided to make 10 and copy them 0 times.

So on each 5x10 is my name plus four things I like chosen from the categories color, place, food, drink, club, or season. And squared away on the remaining space is a little illustration of one of those likes. This post's categories were food, place, and color.

Miiiight ink these...we'll see.

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Fun_hws.BlueNoda

This is a Homework Sketch I did to wrap my blue period.  It's of Radwimps' Yojiro Noda.  you don't know what 3/5 of the last sentence's words mean and that's a shame.

Speaking of some rock you may not be familiar with, in the latest episode of Let's Japan, we've got an extended cut of one of The Ivy League's songs, "Burn it Up Baby," see if you can spot it here amidst the gooey treats and socially abominable trading card game:


The great Ivy League was helmed by Adrian Simon, who has unfortunately gone on hiatus from his site.

So Simon says.

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Fun_BlueSummerNo.6

Ok, this is the last batch of Homework Sketches.  Well, there's one last draw from the set, but more on that later. As I mentioned last time, my red pen finally died so I swapped over to my night-never-used blue pen, which was pretty exciting in my sad, boring little life. For these homeworkz, the jKids wrote about what they will do during summer. So we've got a watermelon, a fish, and a fishing rig.  Plus an Owls of Ga'Hoole for a little Ga'Hooligan. 

They also wrote about whatever, so thanked me for a drawing I did for him way back, so I followed it up with the little chameleon, Leon, for him.  I also drew a dancing dog for a jKid who just asked for a drawing without a prompt.  Compare that with the more specific request for the character Gintoki from Gintama.  jKids, I implore you: if you want something neat, be specific.  I'm in the business of making memories, here, and sometimes they're so good, they are actually remembered. And that chases away the blue.

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SLS_TheLastDinosaur

Hold your breath waiting for gun law reform, it's Sick Little Suicide #24, "The Last Dinosaur," in which we have a second gun-related outrage on President Obama's watch.

It's like our nation is a grown child clinging to his blanky just because he's only ever grown up with it in his grip, even though he's well past blankie-bearing age and all our decent playpals in the global schoolground  haven't used blankies in forever, don't miss them, and face vastly less blankie-related injuries as a result.

Fun Facts: I learned of this story little by little on Twitter, but had no idea what was going on until Saturday night, Japan time, once more less-cryptic Twitter posts emerged. When it became clear what happened, I could most succinctly describe it as unreal.

This comic came about from listening to the President's subsequent Unity speech and feeling anger that this could have been prevented if not been greatly lessened in severity had he actually meant that he had interest in doing all he could "to ensure the safety of all of our people." There was already a high-profile shooting he had to deal with before, and here we are again with another one.  What gun laws have been changed in the interim?

Baa: I am incredulous and humbled that I haven't felt sad in a long, long time, and in fact, since moving to Japan I am the happiest I've ever been in my life, but I felt tears well up as I heard President Obama indicate that even children were entangled in the Colorado theater shooting.

I also felt anger towards the US, my homeland, for permitting this event to occur with its insane sanctity of guns.  People act as if modifying the second amendment will somehow plunge us into some 1984 world, when there is clear, undeniable evidence across multiple countries with varied cultural fabrics--including famously the very country I am living in right now--that stricter gun laws means greater peace.  Slaves were 3/5 a person until we decided that part of the Constitution was wrong, so we changed it.  How blind or stubborn or idiotic are we that we can't come together as a country and agree that widespread gun legality is bad?  I don't understand: there is no mystery, we can study these post-gun countries for concrete evidence, and then make an informed decision.  Yes, there are unique cultural influences that also play into it--for instance Japan's culture runs on the idea that "we're all on the same team, don't be jerks to each other," whereas the US's culture is more based on the individual--but that doesn't mean it's a discriminating case.  Pursuing stricter gun laws in the US should not be an impossibility or in any way an alien idea.

It is beyond me how we can still justify or succumb to those who justify widespread legal gun ownership in the US. I currently live in Japan where it is ridiculously safe. You can purchase guns here, but everything--guns and ammo--is registered with the police and you need a hunting license, the whole deal. I would say even that is too much, but at least it beats this absurd naivete we have in the US. Even if we simply must have guns, why can we not limit the kinds of guns that one person can purchase? The amount of ammunition? If we can limit the amount of alcohol one can have in his system, or limit the kinds of things one can ingest that affect only the user, why can we not limit the kinds of machinery that serves only to harm? How many guns does one person really need? How much ammo?  It's like talking to a spoiled child.  Guns are horrific and you should be ashamed of yourself for defending them.

I hope whoever sold the shooter his guns and ammunition bought something nice and shiny with the money from those sales.  And I hope that if the thoughts of the people who died because of your life choices don't keep you up at night, then I hope that at least the glare off your shiny trinkets makes it just a little harder for you to find rest.

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Fun_hws.YeahBoyAndAllFace

Just when I think I'm done, they keep pulling me back in slash giving me more papers to correct, so here's what I thought was my new final Homework Sketches. But then I got even more papers later, so this is still not our final batch.  But if you look carefully, you'll see the final pic I did with my trusty red pen before it died (Chopper x Zoro) mash. Followed by the first draw I did with my new red pen, 'arry Po'er. But we've also got a ghostly Michael Jackson, a heartsy-fartsy soccer ball, a shocktacular Pikachu, and Totoro because someone actually asked specifically for one, what a relief!

What happened between red pens? Curveball coming next Homework Sketches time...

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AV_wkst.FightingFoodons

Oddly proud of this illo for a worksheet. My challenge: make it look like something you could actually see in a textbook--an "exciting" not-exciting pic.

I will say, though, that Japanese textbooks usually have killlllller art direction. Quite jealous of what the jKids get to work with. Perfect comparison is my learn-Japanese textbook, they got one guy to illustrate it all and it's some of the most boring art you'll see in Japan.

Also, Fighting Foodons.

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Fun_hws.GreatTeacher

Here is our final homework sketches for the school term!  The jKids have been hard(ly) at work these past few summer months, and come next week, we're finally on summer break for a couple weeks!  You should see how much they freak out when I tell them in the US we get 2-3months off!

Anyway, here we go.  First we have a girl for a guy who wishes he had a girlfriend(!).  Next is an quick little illustration after a jKid hipped me to Nichijou. We've got some Mickeys I drew and modded for a worksheet.

Then we've got a hamburger for a student who asked me to draw something for her but didn't specify what (as well as a squirrel thing for a similar unspecified request).  Then we've got Buchyake from Duel Masters Victory V.  We've also got an Anorith and Chikorita for a jPokeFan and a bananamod from that same Mickey worksheet.  They're bananas talking about Duel Masters...ya know, like they do.

Finally the anime-y dudes in the set are the teacher from GTO, Great Teacher Onizuka, which has been making the rounds amongst the jKids since its dorama recently launched.  I drew from the manga, though, cuz believe it or not, I'm not great with likenesses and I don't really enjoy drawing real people anyway.

Oh gosh, it's getting sweaty here in Japan...

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Fun_Ben8

Here's a new version of art I actually debuted on youtube first! It's Ben from Ben10. He's kind of an underground hit here in Japan...jKids either love the show or have no idea who he is. Funny how it took uprooting my life and flying to and living in Japan just to find people I can actually semi-talk to about stuff I'm interested in.

Speaking of Ben10, doesn't it sound like they're saying Ben10 in this song, or is it just me?

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Com_Antiquaintance

An antiquated commission.

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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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