Good little warrior, say goodbye now

Sadly, today is my last post. However, I have worked really hard on this last piece. The only shame is that you can see work coming through from the other side of the paper. Looking at this drawing next to my first one really makes me realise how much better I’ve got. I’m so hugely proud of this one I could leap right up into space. But I won’t because the lack of air and other physical factors would make me explode and I don’t want to do that right now.

My idea for this drawing was for him to be standing very proudly in the middle of a large field that is littered with mangled corpses and flowing red with blood. So kawaii. ^.^ Unfortunately I’m not skilled enough to even attempt to do a background like that so I have simply drawn him. I’ve finally managed to get several things right all in one drawing which is brilliant. The shape of both his head and hair (note the shading) are good; the body proportions are correct; his wings are pretty good; I managed to draw folds that look good in his shirt along with some tears and blood trickles; and his legs and feet aren’t too bad. So there is much happiness and jumping up and down. I guess like they say practice really does make perfect.

On a last and final note here is something really cool. This man is so amazing he has made this model of Gundam entirely out of paper. Be amazed.

Beware the attitude

Today’s drawing is simply of 2541’s head as I was focusing on trying to improve my drawing of it, especially the hair. I’m fairly happy with the result. I tried drawing a lot more hair this time and it really improves it. Having more hair at the back gives the drawing more depth and detail. His face is slightly more cartoon-like as I drew his eyebrows as triangles, which I feel works quite well. I also used a far more anime style for the outlining shape of his eyes. All of this plus the kink in one of his ears I feel gives him more attitude and character. The only thing I feel it lacks is a little shading, especially for his hair. Once more gomen nasai for the short post.

Fallen angel

This drawing is in much the same context as the one in the post ‘2541 remembers’, again he seems to be very upset and this time is actually crying. The knife has blood on it but whether it is his or someone else’s I will leave up to you; it could be either one. With him in this pose I imagine him to have fallen to his knees in shock and grief. Even I am curious what he has done to be in this state.

Well his wings are back to how I like them best. They match the feelings of this drawing, as does his limp hair. However, his hands are way too small again. I tried to make his toes look bent like they should but they still don’t look quite right to me, and neither does his head. His wings are definitely what I am most proud of here.

Fun fun fun

Now this drawing was a lot of fun. I went a little over the top with the number of weapons (11 I believe) but I swear it was all his idea. 2541 was enjoying himself slaughtering people whilst playing with his favourite toys. This drawing is obviously from when he was still in the army: note the military jacket (which even has a cut out bit so that the whole of his barcode shows), combat trousers, military boots, and assault rifle (apologies for my terrible drawings of guns).

I’m actually pretty proud of and very happy with this drawing. The shape of his face isn’t actually too bad; I’m very happy with his hair though it could do with some shading; and his wings are good except I wish I’d made them raggedy up the sides as well. I’ve always been intrigued by the roughly drawn bandages people put on their characters so I had a go at drawing one on 2541 even though he won’t need it for very long at all with those wonderful healing powers, unfortunately I think I carried it on a little too long.

Broken angel?

This drawing I’m not as proud of. It’s gone back to being too flat looking with not enough shape. Also the hand doesn’t look quite right and he looks too old for my liking. The only bit I really like about it is his wings. This style for them is greatly influenced by the beautiful drawings in an awesome manga series I’ve just started reading called Angel Sanctuary. These wings seem almost ripped up at the edges to me and also convey far more emotion. Gomen nasai for the short post today.

2541 remembers

Woohoo I am so proud of this drawing. ^.^ I had some help with the position from a friend though, she did a vague sketch of how I was sitting at the time and had me draw my character over it. It really helped even though I messed up a little on the feet and the position they’re in changed a bit. You can actually see his runes tattoo in this drawing too. By the way they mean ‘I trust you to kill me’ which I thought was nice and ironic for him. Death is a pretty big part of his life and he’s really comfortable with it.

His wings are smaller here because of how he’s sitting down and I didn’t know how I would draw huge wings on him like that. I’ve attempted to give his body a bit more shape this time by using this perspective and positioning as well as giving him muscle tone on his chest and arms and adding some shading to his wings. I think the hands are improving a little in this drawing too, so I’m pretty happy about that. Also, I’ve changed his feet so that they are more paw-like, though they’re slightly too small I think.

He’s looking pretty sad and upset in this drawing. His tail is wrapped around him in an attempt to comfort himself. I was imagining him remembering a bad experience from when he was a soldier; perhaps he was a little overzealous in a training session and killed his friend.

Here’s a coloured in version of the drawing that my friend did, she really wanted to for some reason. As you can see she’s much better at it than me and has added to the sad image by placing him on a little stool in the corner of a dark room.

Spaz day

Okay so I’m not actually all that happy about this drawing. For starters the hands are terrible as always and just don’t look right, they’re too small. The next bad point is his hair is way too straight now that I look at it properly. Also, the ears are too small, and his neck, head and legs are too thin. The wings I am reasonably happy with but I do feel that they seem too flat. So this drawing is a bit of a failure in my quest to get better at drawing, but they do say you learn from your mistakes so with any luck I will.

Here are a couple of bits of 2541 that I was just practicing drawing: his face, the eyes in particular. As you can see I attempted to draw an eye with a teardrop, though I’m not sure I succeeded in doing it very well.

Over the past few days I’ve been thinking quite a bit about 2541’s background story. You already know of course that he was created to be soldier. Well he actually quite enjoyed his life as a soldier because of how he got to kill a lot of people, like I mentioned in my previous post he’s a tad bloodthirsty. Well actually he’s very bloodthirsty, which is why you so do not want to mess with him. I’m not entirely sure how he ended up on the street rather than still being a soldier but he doesn’t mind all that much because he’s found there’s plenty of people who nobody would miss so he can satisfy his thirst with them.

That thirst for blood is quite literal with him at times too. I came to a conclusion on the reason for his fangs, which is that when his squad reached a certain age (whilst they're still teenagers) their CO had them all made into vampires so that they have accelerated healing and won’t age. This of course makes them the perfect fighters, they now have enhanced senses and healing as well as immortality on top of the superiority of their genetic make-up. The reason he has a scar is because it is from before they were made into vampires and sent out into the field on missions, he acquired it in a training session with a team mate.

On another completely unrelated but pretty cool note I discovered this treat on YouTube. It is a tour round the Nintendo museum in Osaka, complete with a couple of the men who work there and are creators of Virtual Boy, Nintendogs and Super Mario Kart.

Randomness...

Today I had another go at colouring one of my drawings in Photoshop. I even had a go at some shading on his hair. It’s still pretty terrible I know and how triangular his face is really bugs me still but oh well. I will just have to try and improve my drawing skills and style, which is kind of the point of this blog anyway.

Other drawings for today include a couple of random rubbish sketches as I was in a bit of a strange mood. The first is less scary I think. I just thought he might look good in a top hat, and for some reason for me top hats have to have an ace of spades tucked into the ribbon. Plus the whole card of death idea fits with 2541’s character, he’s a tad bloodthirsty at times.

The second sketch is so much more random and scary. Yes he is wearing a skirt. Yes that is a corset. No I do not know why. But you can see he’s pretty angry at me drawing him wearing female clothes, I think the clenched fists, gritted teeth and scowl give it away. I can’t help but find it amusing though, and I just love to torture people so I couldn’t resist.

Kawaii!!

Okay I’ve been thinking a lot about 2541 (no not in that way you freak) and I’ve decided I want to make him cuter so now he also has doggy ears. Isn’t that just so kawaii? I’ve also given him red cat eyes so that he intimidate people even more so. Also lately I have been having a little more fun when drawing 2541 and making some slightly comedic pictures, just to piss him off you know? I find it just makes him even more cute. So here are my two latest pictures of him. The second one annoys me a bit though because I drew his face too triangular.

Here is another drawing of him, however this is one my girlfriend drew (wow I have fanart already ^.^) from my description of him. We were just talking about him and thinking over what we could add to him, which is why his newest additions are only in her drawing and not mine. These are his little black glove on his left hand and the tattooed runes on his right forearm.

Sanjō! 2541!

On with the show woohoo! Okay so the idea I’ve come up with for my manga character is this green haired teenage boy who has these beautiful red feathered wings. He also has a tail, vampire fangs and a long thin scar down through his left eye. I think the scar is both pretty cool and adds some mystery to the guy. Another mysterious thing I’ve given him is a barcode tattooed onto his chest just below his left collarbone. The image I have of him in my head is that he was a soldier created by mixing various animal DNA. The name I’ve given to my character is actually simply a number: 2541. It was his designation in the army and he has never cared about having a real name so he simply doesn’t have one. Him being created by mixing human and animal DNA, and the barcode, is influenced by the American television show Dark Angel, which is in fact basically a copy of the manga series Battle Angel Alita with a few things changed.

Anyway here is my first picture of him along with one where I’ve coloured it using Photoshop.

By the way this is the exact barcode

Today it is sensei to you

Unfortunately after some consideration I have decided to just heap the whole history lesson into one post and make the absolute focus of my blog on drawings. So here is the brief yet hopefully interesting and educational post on the awesome history of anime and manga.

When people hear the word anime most of them immediately think of Akira or Pokemon, but how many people do you think know about where anime and manga originated from? When translated literally manga actually means “random (or whimsical) pictures”. It was first heard in the late 18^th century in reference to Suzuki Kankei's "Mankaku zuihitsu" (1771) and Santo Kyoden's picturebook "Shiji no yukikai" (1798). However manga-like simplistic characteristics are seen in drawings dating back to the 12^th century. That makes it pretty ancient huh? Modern manga has come a long way from its predecessors the woodblock printed books, one of the most well known series being Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji by the famous artist Katsushika Hokusai.

Around 1930 manga was made using low-priced paper and ink, and it wasn’t sold in bookshops but rather in children’s toy shops. After World War II ended the United States started to influence Japanese culture again. Osama Tezuka (known as the “Father of Anime” or the “God of Manga”) was influenced by Walt Disney and in turn influenced a great number of mangaka. He introduced story to manga, and is probably best known as the creator of Astro Boy, the first ever anime series. He began it as a manga series in 1951 and after its huge success it was remade as an anime series in the 1980s.

One of the biggest anime companies ever is Studio Ghibli, their first film being Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind. They provided the video rights to Walt Disney to a lot of huge feature length animes such as Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke (you must see this one if you haven’t already). This company opened the way for Hollywood to get into the anime business with Akira. The phenomenal success of Akira in the West made people aware of this different style of cartoons and comics.

However, because there was nothing as big as Akira following for years anime didn’t make it all the way, there were just occasional big hits such as Sailor Moon (although this was hugely edited in places), Dragonball, and of course Pokemon. It was Pokemon that opened me and everyone I know from my generation up to anime. It’s my ambition to somehow watch pure Pokemon that has not been dubbed, for we all know that dubs are evil. The effect that Pokemon had on the world was incredible, it was all over television, and I don’t just mean the episodes. Try searching for Ant and Dec on S.M.T.V. Live and Pokemon and there is disturbing evidence of their very own Pokemon battles…

Well class is over. Gomen nasai for the length and randomness.

Konnichi wa

Welcome one and all! This blog will be on the wonderful magical world of manga and anime. Isn’t that just so exciting? I am going to do two different kinds of posts a week, just to keep you on your toes you know? First off I will be looking into the history of manga and anime, its influences and the huge effect it has had both on itself and on the boring world of the west. Secondly I will be creating my very own manga character. Woohoo! *crowd goes wild* This will be a part of how I will explain and show the crazy things fans do to show people just how much they love manga and anime. I will also be talking about and showing the development of my first ever cosplay for my first anime convention this year. So have I lost you yet? Okay, just to put it basically for those who are lost (including me), there will be two angles to this blog: first will be on the huge effect manga and anime have had on the world, second will be how the fans celebrate it in their own crazy little ways (and yes I am one of them so maybe you should just get away now whilst you still can).

Now that the embarrassing introductions are over let’s get on with it. I’m going to start off with that second angle I was rambling on about: how the fans express their love for manga and anime. There are many different ways so I will only go briefly over the main ones. First off, they talk on and on and on about their favourite manga series or anime series, and I mean incessantly. Personally my favourite is the enormously popular series Naruto. This series about ninjas started off as just a manga series by Masashi Kishimoto, and when it was successful an anime adaptation began. Being the obsessive geek I am, I have of course watched every single episode of the series, including every fan’s pet hate: the fillers (random episodes created for the duration of the time when they had to let the manga get ahead for a while).

Okay see what I mean about the incessant geeky knowledge? Anyway, the next most popular way of expressing love for favourite characters has got to be drawing them, just check out sites such as www.deviantart.com, they’re full of fan’s drawings. Then of course there is cosplaying. This term means dressing up as your favourite character. It tends to be focused around anime conventions for the most part but it also happens for other anime related events and some fans dress up purely for the hell of it. This year at AmeCon I will be dressing up as Kazekage Gaara from Naruto. So far the only parts of my costume I have are the ninja sandals and a forehead protector (which may or may not be used). However, I have bought some white elastic for three white bands that are round Gaara’s legs and I am currently planning the best way to make his gourd. Lastly, there is also a huge amount of fanfiction out there depicting every character you can think of in numerous compromising positions. It’s scary.

My terrible drawing of Gaara