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.