AV_OhBearBeeBearBee_MO

This is the making of our Bearbee from our 2nd May ALT Poster, teased with an eye-coloring walkthrough here.  I'm using no inks, just Copic Ciaos on this.  This first bit's the yellows.  I like to go light to dark, although I've heard some kookoopants go dark to light...!!  I bought an even lighter blue to handle the wings, but I ended up wanting an even lighter blue!  None to be found at my local store, but I found a bunch of new flavors near the big city one day when coming home from a week in Tokyo.

Next we hit the fur.  If my colorset has an MVP, it'd be the E series of colors, the browns that handle fur, wood, and even hair.  These guys always end up doing heavy lifting, and I've even killed an E35 Chamois!  This one was fun because I was sort of freestyling the negative space for light, and the dark shadowed areas, just intuition.  I treated the head as a separate object, so I went in with an even lighter color for the muzzle. I screwed up on the darkness for the muzzle--I picked up the wrong color and so I had to go darker than I wanted, but I'd say I recovered pretty well, actually.  Towards the end I realized bears have pawpads, so I started ghosting in some space for dark, dark pads, since I could only go darker on the already-colored areas!

So here's where we go darkest on the main figure: dark nose, dark pawpads, then the deliciously red mouth, which is always fun to color, but also kinda scary cuz if you spike the red, there's kinda no recovering!  Red's a really powerful color, right up there with that E47 Dark Brown or that Violet Gray I used for the "black" bits. After that we get more fun reds on the pot and call it a draw!

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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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AV_anp.OhBearBeeBearBee

This is the second-campus version of our May ALT News poster.  This one's text covers the same ground, just more streamlined. Sections this month include New Expression, where we cover my favorite passive method of correction: "Maybe."  We also have a dissertation on free time (what's that like, anyway?). Our anchor features a more realized version of the quickly-drawn Jhonen Vasquez-inspired bee-based bear.  I had time to really go to town with my Copic Ciaos, but more on that later.  This month's title logo was all Zebras, and I'm quite happy with how it came out!

This is one section on famous Yalies.  Yalebrities, if you will. Yes, Batman's there. And I actually met someone who knows who Edward Norton is!  Claire Danes, too, but I decided to cut her for Meryl Streep, since she's prolly a bit more well-known...right?

Gosh, Paul Giamatti's neat, but I had no idea what "Cold Souls" was about...

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AV_BeeReal_Preview

Here's a sneak peek at sneaky peekers.

What could it bee?

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Fun_hws.PingPongChu

Here's some more homework sketches. 

These were fun since we got to get away from all the recent ghost talk. But still a lot of ghosts.

We've got a novel solution to the boredom of being at home watching TV when you'd rather be playing volleyball: VBTV.  We've got a pingpongchu.  We've got a kid training to swim with weights because that makes sense.  We've got a girl playing Wii cuz the Wii is for girls (kidding. I think...).  We've got a kid who's bored playing vidja games, imagine that! 

We've even got a winding TV game controller weaving throughout a worksheet, my gentle way of pointing out unused space on a worksheet. 

Can you spot the kid who visited an aquarium?  At least I think he did, I'm not completely sure that's what he was trying to communicate.  Anyway, it was a fun one to do, and I even got to hear some jKids swoon over it when the papers got handed out live (doesn't often happen; I usually draw these as island-bottled messages).

One girl was a fan of the Japan-originated Alice in Wonderland animation (not the Disney one!), so she gets a Canete-inspired Alice.  It came out a little janky, but works well enough...  One kid worked on his curve ball, so I drew him a baseballing scene.

Finally, my favorite of the bunch was a McCay inspired piece after a kid wrote about a cold dreamland the slept into or something...I love these kids' imaginations.  When they try, they can rattle off some neat stuff.  They just need to feel comfortable with the language, or just feel like rambling with the natural poetry that oozes out of their little brains like breath from their lungs.

Did that just get creepy for a minute?  The answer is yes.

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ZLM_SpecialRaunchy

Hey, hey, hey, let's keep it PG around here, aight, pal?

Zero Like Me #184:
Special Raunchy

Easter Eggs: "Yale" in panel 1. Today's setting is Chokubu Junior High School. Today's guest star is Umezawa plus good ol' kocho-sensei.

Fun Facts: Didn't realize this was my last YDN-run comic!  So off-throwing having the Japanese school year start in March!  Anyway, when I first landed in Japan, I was shocked to be invited to a "Special Raunchy" by smirking Japanese men...I didn't know what was going on until I realized they were trying to say "Special Lunch."  Was it special? Not really. Was it raunchy? I'll never tell.

(It wasn't.)

Baa: I have a ridiculously basic taste, and I greatly dislike even the smallest of frills in my food.  My burgers get advanced as ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise.  My pizza tops at pepperoni.  My quesadillas bet' not have anything more'n just cheese, please.  So when living in Japan, I have to make compromises.  I've found that by starving myself, suddenly everything tastes good.

Or at least tastes better than nothing--or rather, keeps you from dying better than nothing.

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AV_anp.Bearbee

Here's our first ALT "News" poster for May. Included is a special bonus comic originally aired here.

This was rushed a bit, can you tell? I needed to make this one fast so we've got an entire quadrant dedicated to print-outs of people loosely-to-tightly associated with Yale, and two quadrants dedicated to reprinted art.

Bears and bees like honey, by the way.

More to come...soon.

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Fun_hws.GhostTouch

The jKids wrote a lot about ghosts for what "surprises" them.  A couple of them mentioned horror movies.  But mostly ghosts (and even one or two obake). 

I trolled a kid who doesn't like English with images of a Zebra, coco, and something sunny, which are all Japanese things with English names.

One girl likes hamburgers so she gets a cheesy burger. 

But a lot of ghosts.

That long-necked rokurokubi is one of my least favorite yokai in Japanese lore, so I tried to draw an appealing one as a personal challenge. Did I succeed? Who cares.

As for what makes them sad, one kid wrote about getting his heartbroken after confessing his love, so I illustrated his tale of woahhh in a 5 cent comic.

But a lot of ghosts.

And Stitch for some reason.

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Fun_INTYWIDFAL

A shot of one of my desks. I know I've posted this delio before, but who's that tinkering in the background behind my MacGuyvered-out, jacked-up glasses?  I'll never tell. (It's Tinkerbell.)

If you squint hard, you'll find a draw I did on a kid's desk with his whacked-out Cruella DeVille style pencil.

And this is a drawing I made using chopsticks stained deep with food, sadness.

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Fun_hws.DreamRand

Almost out of the thick of the post-Tokyo time crunch.  But for now here's some homework sketches. Starting at the Panda and moving clockwise, here's what we have:

I turned a panda into a keychain after a writing prompt about a keychain.

Tulips fan gets two lips.  A kid writes about hitting the road with his friends, a shonen visual I'm a sucker for.  Next a fascinating description of a Japanese nightmare.  After that's a lionish stuffed animal in a crane game for a lion-fan.

A scooch to the left is a pooch with a besty, the jKid didn't know Woodstock's name so I transcribed it for her.  Under that is an extremely interesting piece that I hope was original but was probably copied off of something--anyway, it inspired me to drop in a rare Nemo. 

Following that is a sketch of a kid I can only imagine exists somewhere.  Beginning the upward swing is a pic for a jKid who cooks like an iron chef or not, I don't know.  Then a crash-course in homophones for a kid, and then we close with a pic for a kid who like a teacher's clothes. 

Ok, back to work,

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Fun_TestMatters

Studying that Nihongo, son...

Sketching that girl, son...

Catching up on delinquent posts...man.

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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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Fun_100VoltElf

I've been in Tokyo for the past week, so slowly but surely we'll get back on posting schedule. So here we go.

On the way back from Tokyo I stopped by a store to get some ink.  I got lost, but I saw a Bamboo tablet sitting around so I decided to try it out after hearing so much about the legendary just-a-notch-above-etch-a-sketch technology.  It was indeed a bit rough to use compared to my trusty Intuos, but still an interesting test.  Anyway, here's our draw from the sesh.  One of the staff even came by to watch me draw and then he asked if he could snap some photos!

Don't worry, the pics weren't cuz he liked the drawing, he just wanted to make sure I warn't stealin' nuffin...yeah...that's it...

I'm bad at taking compliments, sorry. (Good thing nobody ever compliments me--ZING!--see what I did there?) 

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AV_FaceSmash.Pt2

More expressions from last time.  This one's supposed to look "smart."  In a related story, why does nobody ever call anyone out on calling themselves smart?  I noticed there's a recent trend, particularly in comedy, of  people flat out calling themselves "smart" or just overusing the word to describe anyone who references a some decidedly unintelligent thing like a reality tv personality.  I've been wondering for a long time, since getting into Yale, actually--what does smart mean?  I grew up thinking it meant someone with great intelligence (or a kid talking back to an adult) but now I know: it means a dude with some mean glasses and phantom math etchings floating around him. 

This dude is surprised I'm still doing all this all these years later. Me too, but no surprise there.

This was maybe the trickiest.  It's Nervous.  I thought I nailed it, but guess not...y'know? I dunno.

This one was ridiculous fun to draw.  It's "cool," but really fun hearing what the jKids came up with.  My favorite guess of theirs was "wild" and/or "rocker."  Neat.  I was surprised to see these printed out and in color, but they actually look pretty neat on paper!

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AV_anp.BunzToo

Here's the sequel to our first foolish April poster.  I was strapped for time, so I decided just to copy over the last poster, with small fixes to the lineart, and most importantly, I decided not to ink this one.  The good think about going inkless is giving our Copic Ciaos a chance to take center stage.  I'm definitely going to try inkless again. 

This is our revamped anchor image.  I got a bunch of positive feedback on it, which is surprising since I still feel like the kappa stole the show.  Especially as I was painting the kappa, I got a lot of really nice heat on it from passersby.  But at this poster's intended school, people were buzzin' 'bout the bunny.

Anyway, a cool little thing to do: open this in one tab and the first version in another tab and compare and contrast.

I'd say this lineless version wins it.  Although I keep wondering if some solid black lines would be good here and there.  The old version had all lines inked, but with heavier inks on the light-distant areas.  So maybe the best compromise between techniques is inks in those darkest areas and not even pencils on the lightest areas (notice how I erased out some of the ears, paw, and head).

These are the doodads from our second May Poster. I really like that caramel egg, and I want to say the peep turned out better than last time, although I'd say the basket took a step backwards (partly cuz I wanted to kill my dying E33 marker, but also I didn't have a good intermediate blue between the basket and the shadow tone).

And here's our little kappa.  I really, really like how this guy came out compared with our old version.

But there's something...amiss.  Laughably so (see the full shot above for the giveaway).

More on that later.

This month's art was colored with help from new tech: after our first run on this poster, I added a few key colors to our team, including those oranges in the binocs and some softer and darker greens for the grass, flag.  Really happy with the new recruits, but after completing this one, I realized my blues still aren't quite up to snuff--the doodads' basket and pants were too intense, as was the jump in blues for the kappa's water, so I drafted some new, softer blues I'm really excited about.

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AV_FaceSmash.Pt1

We're working on updating the outstanding backlogged posts, but my statistician informs me this is my 800th post published. And it only took 5 years!  This is my first post using the new blogspot interface, too.  A bit jarring, but so far it's better than the atrocious revamp they did last time.

Anyway, here's a recent selection of art I did for a lesson on expressions and how you're feeling. So with that, let's get emo, shall we?

This one was fun because I love drawing people crying. The jKids got a good laugh on this one, which was great.  The pattern in the back is a riff on the Japanese symbological graphic for despair--that snaily shape.

This was one of the two I drew on the day-of. I lugged my gigantic laptop and my trusty tablet to school and jammed this one out as well as one we'll see in this post's sequel. I knew I was facing 2 hours of sleep, so I knew I wanted to draw this one the morning of the presentation.  I was slightly worried they might guess his emotion was "Drugged-Out-of-His-Skull," but fortunately they guessed "Sleepy."

Sleepy's one of my favorites.

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Com_Ricky

A ricky Commission.

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AV_anp.BunsHuns

Here is the long-awaited sequel to the first half of this ALT news poster.  This half has our main anchor image, featuring our main theme, Easter.  This month, I tried including a little prize pack thingie on the bottom right, full of extra handouts and stuff for the jKids to pick up, and that seemed to go well, so we'll try more next time.

Here's a close up of the Easter Bunny.

Apparently the concept is alien to the jCrew.

They giggle at the word bunny because in Japan they simply associate the word "bunny" with Bahnee Garoo, or "bunny girl," for the layperson.

Anything with long ears, a fluffy tail, and an affinity for carrots gets the label of "rabbit."

You're missing out, Japan.

This, as everything else, was colored basically completely with Copic Ciaos, except I lined it with my Staedtler pens, more heavily on the light-distant areas.  I've since picked up a lighter blue and gray, so I'm eager to try those out to communicate volume on white.

Here are our doodads from this half.  It's a chocobunny plus a caramel egg, jelly beans, and a peep, all collected into a Easter basket.  Easter Eggs: actual Easter eggs.  And M&Ms.  Really happy with that egg and the caramel!  The bunny's also nice for essentially not planning my color, just going in and winging it.

These are today's lines.

I have to say I've been underwhelmed with Japanese candy.  They absolutely get A for effort, as most desserts look delectable, but they typically taste pretty weak, almost nothing makes you clamor for seconds.  Only pure Ghana Chocolate or Meiji or even Morinaga have satisfying chocolate impact.  But chocobread, for instance underdelivers on the regular...miss you, US-choco.

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AV_anp.KappaNoFool

This month's ALT news is the first of the new school year, and it's my first, fully-illustrated joint. No Internet printing, everything's drawn and colored by me. Everything colored on the paper is tuned up with my Copic Ciaos, with guest vocals by my trusty Zebras. We've taken the Copics for a spin or two before, but this time we're utterly reliant on them.

Since there's so much art in this month's poster, we're splitting it up between two posts, this one focusing on the bottom quadrants (that's not a euphemism for something, you cheeky tanooki, you!).

I wasn't sure how to close the poster out, so I thought I'd try something I've always wanted to do with these ALT News posters: introduce a new, practical, non-text-booky expression to the jKids. As a rain enthusiast, I was loving the rains we've been having recently, so I went with, "April showers bring May flowers."

With that quote, I knew I needed an illustration to go with it. Something that celebrates the rain. Enter the kappa. I love rain, and so do they. Fuelled with the immediacy of the eureka moment, this draw just flowed, but then I mouse-cookied myself into having to Ciao it to the nines.

Coloring was ridiculous fun, and I could feel the leveling up, but it did tack on another day of labor onto the already vaguely-due poster. But I'd say it was worth it, I'm quite happy with how it came out and it looks pretty neat live.

This is what the kappa quadrant ended up looking like. Did you catch the cucumber reference?

Easter Eggs: Kappa love cucumber, so I figured he'd sport a cucumber-themed umbrella. But wait, there's more! The brella's bright yellow to mimic the elementary school umbrella "uniform" since kappa are often associated with young kids. Further defining him a good-guy kappa (as opposed to other sorts of kappa), his cucumber's cut into a smiley face.

Fun Facts: When discussing this piece with a Japanese man who saw me working on it, I out-Japwnd him on kappa trivia! Take that, Japan! USA! USA! USA!

This is quadrant III of the poster, a breakdown of April Fools' plus a description of how to Easter Egg hunt. I was running short on time, but I knew I wanted to try stylizing a bit, so I went with a traffic light coloring scheme on the fool illo and a restrained, graphic style for the Easter Egg hunt bits.

Next time, how we anchored this image, proper.

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Fun_hws.Yeahnimals

School's back in sesh and these are our first homework sketches.
Just warming up.

Just...

Yeah.

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AV_NoKappaNoPreview

I love kappa.

They're cute, but cool.

They're quiet, but strong.

They're sometimes known to emerge from Japanese rivers and drag unsuspecting, at-play children down into their murkiest deep blue depths, and after successfully drowning their helpless victim(s), these child-like creatures commence in a nigh-cannibalistic feeding spree on what is more-often-than-not confused for a weak kappa being furiously consumed by its former school of fellows, at least, as is discerned between plumes of freshly red-wrought river.

That last part is unrelated to why I love kappa.

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Fun_BoneInHisMouth

If you can think of a better way to show Japanese children that their pronunciation sucks, I'd like to hear it.

The dog has a bone in his mouth...

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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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