Writing introductions is a bit tedious so....just take a look at my first post if you want to know more....

....and if you get curious about the name of this World or my posts, check out the second one.

Not Perfect is Good

So, I have to amend my last post....Heroman isn't a Studio Bones original. It's written by Stan Lee. And while that's totally freaking awesome, it kinda takes away from the, "Oh they did a good job being accurately American!" factor. Oh well, I still liked it. Second episode of Star Driver was kinda ridiculous, but I'm gonna keep watching it for now. Also, they had another series that I can't believe I forgot about, Darker Than Black...

...which I didn't get to watch when it was first out for some reason, and then couldn't find when it came time for the second series and the OVA. A teacher (yeah....) gave me DVDs of the whole set a couple months ago so I'm finally getting around to it. Only 2 episodes in so I can't say much about it, but it has the typical depressing Bones feel so I think I'm gonna like it...

I didn't get to draw as much this week as I wanted to, but I felt so good about my Alfred from the other week that I drew Arthur without any reference too.

He looks too young & I still can't do much more than his face, but I've decided on a way to work on this stuff so hopefully there will be progress this fall.

I met some otaku in a bar last night who have cosplay/dance/anime song events at a club near where I live every other month. That was kind of crazy. But also, really great. I'll probably go to the next one at the end of this month.

There was something I was thinking about this week (weekend?) that seemed like it was important for writing about, but now....it's gone...I hate when that happens...Halloween's coming soon and I have no plans. That's nothing new of course, but I wonder if I even want to have any? It seems like every year I think I don't care about it & then it gets to be about a day or so away & I wish I had cared sooner. I wanted to do a Halloween themed page for my school's art club magazine too, but the kids said they haven't been putting it out recently. I can't find the inspiration for exactly what to draw anyway so I guess it's a good thing...

Aha! I knew if I waited around long enough I'd remember what I wanted to say! I talked about Bakuman a while ago...

...it's got an anime now! Watching it reminds me of why I had a hard time liking the manga at first. Waaay too many gender role stereotypes. But now, it's almost entirely focused on manga writing so it's a lot better. I love the way that every time they talk about a certain writing or drawing device they actually start using it in the manga itself. It's definitely a cult manga b/c of that though. I'm impressed that it's so popular, but then again, there are a ton of Japanese kids who dream about drawing manga for a living (and adults, and non-Japanese...) so I guess it's not so surprising. I've found that whenever Mashiro-kun is having drawing issues his answers always help me with my own work. I'm guessing I can't be the only person this works for either. When he realized his drawings were too dark I noticed the over-inking in some of my own. Currently he's working on speed. I've been worried about my own speed for a while now so I was really happy to see it in the manga. First b/c it was reassuring that it's not just an amateur who never went to art school (although, neither did he...) who has this problem & second b/c the conclusion he came to (don't put all the details in the pencil sketch) was the same one I did! It was really cool that he got the idea from his assistant (esp. b/c Shun is sooo adorable!) and I was even more reassured by the fact that Saiko realized he couldn't do it quite so bare-bones as Shiratori-kun, and set about finding his own sketching limits.

Kids, and sometimes teachers, ask me a lot of questions about drawing. Not just, "why do you like to draw?" or, "how long have you been drawing?", but serious ones like, "when you draw where do you start from?" or, "how can I get better at drawing?" At first it was hard for me to answer them since I felt like I didn't have any real expertise in the area, so I just talked around the issues or said I didn't really know. Eventually I started explaining the way I do things, but I still always tell them, "That's what works for me. You should try and find the way that works for you." b/c I like to think that there's no "right" way to do it. I'm sure someone out there would say differently, but I've always been big on doing things my own way. And letting other people do things their own way. It works best if you figure it out yourself after all. Just keep drawing and drawing, even if it looks bad at first, if you don't try....well, you know...

Rather than not doing it so that you'll have regrets, it's better to just do it.