Pencilmind

My top 9 anime openings

2011-03-05T01:46:00.010+02:00

I recently waded through compilations of probably hundreds of anime OP's on nicovideo.jp, yet didn't really come across too many hidden gems. I didn't list the most technically impressive OP's I know, merely my personal favorites because they're easier to write about. Though some of these come with good songs, the focus is mainly on the animation/design side of the vid.

9. Naruto Shippuuden
Naruto is probably the only long-running shounen title with occasionally worthwhile animation, so some of the OP's are rather decent as well. I appreciate how lively the motions are here. The sketchy running part is neat.

8. Death Note
I generally don't care about styles that are overtly trippy, and this vid isn't particularly well animated either, but the overall attitude is so much fun that I can overlook the flaws. This is exactly how Death Note should look animated. Batshit crazy.

7. Hellsing
Maybe it's the music or simply nostalgia. I just have a soft spot for this vid. It does a good job summarizing what's so darned cool about Hellsing; ghouls, blood and grinning badasses. I like Seras and the knife.

6. Record of Lodoss War TV
I'm such a big sucker for Kazuto Nakazawa's artwork that even wind-posing clichés are forgiven this time. I usually find anime fantasy awfully gaudy but this is an exception with tasteful palettes, layouts and editing. I especially like the use of slow motion.

5. Shoujo Kakumei Utena
The style is so over-the-top 90's that I find it kinda silly, but the animation is still flashy and ambitious enough to make it a fun watch. A whole bunch of big name animators here as far as I remember, and they've certainly worked hard.

4. Princess Tutu
I'm just fond of the art direction here; the boldness to use dark, nightly backgrounds alone is what sets this apart from your average show aimed for little girls. The animation flows with grace while the subtle palettes and soft lighting create a very convincing fairytale atmosphere.

3. Cowboy Bebop
It's such a classic I won't even bother explaining.

2. Re:Cutie Honey
Probably the most entertaining OP I've seen. So much fun! Very much Imaishi's style with the fast cuts and crazy details and whatnot, and I love every second of it. The long pans of still images are especially clever. Bold use of a whole damn rainbow of colors as well.

1. Samurai Champloo
Every frame of this thing could be a desktop wallpaper. I find the combination of hip-hop and old Japan incredibly cool, so in terms of overall style this could be my favorite OP of all. It blends modern anime designs and traditional paintings seamlessly while the palettes and animation are very neat as well. I love the character montages.

Typography

2010-11-04T22:42:00.010+02:00

Still could use a little polishing but I like it anyway. Yippee! Props to anyone who gets the movie reference.

This was a school assignment and I have to admit I won't do this again anytime soon. I have a bad enough relationship with vector graphics (which is why my letters have zero curves) and painstakingly adjusting some 80+ characters with it wasn't exactly a pinnacle of joy. B, K, 3, 8 and v were especially difficult, and the software kept crashing (?!) every time I worked on the umlauts. Though I really love beautiful fonts, I don't think I have a knack for this stuff myself...

Speaking of typography, I have to spread this magical clip:

I was never hugely interested in oldschool calligraphy but this guy changed my mind a little. Oooh, what a steady hand.

Panty & Stocking

2010-10-03T23:57:00.011+03:00

Haven't been updating for a while, sorry! I've been busy with school and stuff, but I'm also having some trouble on deciding what to write about. Ideas?

Well, I just got my hands on ep#1 of Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt so I might as well put down my first impressions. Being the Gainax/Imaishi/Yoshinari fantard I am I've been anticipating this anime ever since it was first announced.

The premise is simple; an episodic show about two angel sisters who hunt for "ghosts" (aka monsters of the week). Panty is a blonde sex addict who's panties turn into a gun. Stocking is a cake-munching gothic lolita who's stockings turn into a pair of swords. Their boss is Garterbelt, a black priest with a huge afro.

With a whole cast named after underwear this is nothing too highbrow. A pretty juvenile show really, with the first episode already delivering a giant poo monster and countless dick jokes. As much as I love director Imaishi's wacky shenanigans I would've appreciated something more clever... but it's still fairly entertaining with the right mindset, and I trust that the best episodes are yet to come.

The visuals are fresh and cool, that's the main treat here. The art style borrows heavily from American cartoons and a bunch of animator superstars are taking turns going absolutely nuts with it. PSG looks awesome and it's full of surprises. The backgrounds are neat and stylish while the streamlined character designs work perfectly in the fast-paced action scenes, spiced up by typographic sound effects. There are bits of CG thrown in too, but they blend in almost seamlessly and are well used to complement the action. This is a real blast to watch.

ALSO, MAGICAL STRIPPERS.
(Gorgeous sequence animated by Atsushi Nishigori & You Yoshinari)

Some poor gags aside Panty & Stocking is an enjoyable piece of eyecandy and I'm definitely looking forward to future episodes. Might write another entry about this once the series is over.

Detail and shading

2010-07-21T21:26:00.026+03:00

This is a pretty fun thing to do; redrawing an old work to see how my style has developed. Yeah, I used to have that phase when I drew cutesy anime girls in fantasy outfits. Surprisingly there are still a few people who say the earlier version looks better, which kind of baffles me. Really? Are you sure? What about the improved anatomy and posing, and the more consistent lighting?

Oh right... the old pic is more detailed.

I know I wrote in the previous post that backgrounds are better with more detail, so this might sound a bit contradictory... But overall I think people obsess with detail too much. There's one English guy called "Otaking" who has even made it his personal crusade to declare that detail is the one and only measure of visual brilliance. Naturally he loathes modern anime because the art styles have gotten more simple over time, particularly the shading. He argues that even Disney films look bad for the same reason.

Never mind that his 80's examples are mostly still frame "money shots".
Those styles were a nightmare to animate.

His edit of a 2008 anime screenshot into a typical oily-skinned 80's equivalent

I thought this guy was an elaborate troll at first. Of course this is all a matter of taste in the end, but I can't help but facepalm a little. The whole medium of animation is hardly meant for super detailed drawings to begin with; the more detail you have in a character, the clumsier it will move. At worst you would end up with little more than a slideshow!

The simplicity is a welcome change in my opinion. Most anime, especially in the 90's, uses shading just for the sake of using it, so the characters are always evenly lit from somewhere above:

Like Miyazaki's films, where light sources tend to be kinda vague
(Mononoke Hime, 1997)

And then there are a few titles where shading is used in a very sparing, strategic fashion - to create a feel of space and atmosphere:

(Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo, 2006)

I have to say I prefer this approach. You don't need to use a lot of detail to make a solid, functional, appealing image. It's not a matter of laziness either, as some might argue; in fact a good simple drawing is harder to pull off than a good detailed drawing, since there isn't a ton of extra crap to hide your flaws with.

Having more to look at isn't always the better option.

Just my two cents. And I just happen to love flat surfaces anyway. Flatness is great.

Toulouse-Lautrec, bitches.

My blog was recently added to ani.mu, an online listing for Finnish anime blogs. They asked me to mention it, so here goes!

Backgrounds

2010-06-23T21:12:00.018+03:00

(One Piece vol. 46)

Lately I've been working as an intern at a local manga publisher, so naturally I've gotten my hands on tons of manga. I was catching up with One Piece and noticed how much the backgrounds had improven over time. The horror-themed Thriller Bark was especially cool! It really heightens the feel of adventure when you have rich environments to ogle at. When did Eiichiro Oda hire such hardworking assistants? That said, why can't some other popular authors do the same? I'm looking at you, Kubo. Goddamn you.

(Bleach vol. 13)

Call it minimalistic or whatever, but this just screams lazy to me. I hear it's gotten even lazier since.

So because of One Piece I kind of got inspired to kill myself with backgrounds. Not that I haven't been doing that before, as I feel there's no such thing as a background too elaborate. There's always room for improvement no matter how hard I work on them. And then it gets to the point where I spend four hours inking a single panel, crying a little, thinking whether I'm wasting my time after all...

Chapter 1 was easy because 95% of the visuals were practically disposable. Random baddies in a random hideout? Piece of cake. I could just come up with characters and furniture as I went.

Figuring out the right vanishing points
is a challenge by itself

But chapter 2 is completely different. It's set in the Cypress HQ, so I have a lot more design work to do. I won't allow myself to draw a crappy location now and hope to "update" it later; it has to look good right from the start. So I've been battling the architecture like mad, and it's not even enough that I get the outside appearance done. I also want to know how the facilities are divided for different uses, and how people move around between the rooms and floors...

Talk about last minute change. I originally intended this room to be big and round like a ballroom, but just as I was going to draw the first panel with it, I realized it was actually a really freaking stupid design. So many curves and diagonals! They are the worst things to have in a building, and I've learned to hate them with a burning passion! ...So the room got a more straight, angular look. It's still pretty difficult to draw though.

I haven't actually studied architecture for this project. Maybe I should've, but I figured it could be more interesting to see where my ignorance can take me. My research consists solely of keeping my eyes open on my way to work... though I don't want the city to end up looking too much like Helsinki. Personally I love both the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements, but I don't care to really study those either. Too much work, and I start to fear the chance I'm doing it "wrong" somehow.

Thus, Santa Luison is a vaguely European city with vaguely European buildings from vague time periods. As long as it feels like a plausible and familiar environment to the average reader, I'm pretty much content.

Handy hands

2010-05-28T19:37:00.007+03:00

For the whole length of Death Note I remember wondering how awful it must've been to draw. It's really heavy on dialogue; the characters are seen sitting around in their hideouts discussing and contemplating for the majority of the story, while any moments of action are few and far in between. This is tricky, because anyone who's done manga-style storytelling knows that info dumps and long bits of dialogue can be a chore to wade through - for the reader, and especially for the artist.

Panel after panel of people opening their mouths is not a fun idea. So how is this problem dealth with? How to draw a long conversation without mentally killing oneself?

Keep their hands busy!

There were a lot of fan theories to explain the quirky habits of the three detective masterminds, but I believe it was mostly to make Takeshi Obata's job easier. It can be hard to draw idle characters, so basically you need to have some kind of physical thing going on if you want to make the talky bits visually interesting. It gets dull just having the characters sit still and exchange their lines. Something more needs to happen, even if it's just a bar of chocolate.

(Billy Bat)

Naoki Urasawa's works tend to be an exception though. His manga has a lot of dialogue with the occasional page full of talking heads. He knows how to handle this "lazy" approach, though; it makes sense to use a bunch of closeups when you want to make the conversation more intense. Backgrounds lose their purpose when you focus on the tension between characters.

Again, I'm reflecting the subject to my own projects! Incidentally the second issue of Phantomland has so much dialogue that I'm constantly at my wit's end trying to deliver it all smoothly. As a consequence some of the characters have become coffee or tea drinkers... although I kind of hate drawing dishware.

That said, there are also things like Jon's smoking. He didn't always smoke in my drawings - some of my earlier story plans actually had a completely abstinent Jon. But he's not that smart anymore, partly because the fact stands that smokers have better poses available. It's easier to look cool and dignified when you have an item to hold.

Like Freud.

You Yoshinari

2010-05-09T17:09:00.012+03:00

This awesome crossover fanart kept bothering me for years because I couldn't find out who drew it. Turns out it was You Yoshinari (吉成曜) all along, none other than my favorite animator! No wonder the style looked familiar. I couldn't imagine he'd have a thing for American cartoons.

Born in 1971, You Yoshinari had his animator debut in 1992. Soon after he did action scenes for Evangelion, and has been known as an in-house "genius" at Gainax ever since. His works include animation, illustration and character/mechanical design, but (almost) no directing at all. Maybe that's why he's kind of an obscure name for everyone but animation geeks.

Incidentally he's drawn most of my favorite parts in FLCL and Gurren Lagann. There's just this beautiful flow and rhythm in his animation. It's a great combination of realism and style; he has a good understanding of physics while managing to make every little twitch look flawlessly cool.

Gurren Lagann Parallel Works #8 is a rare direction work of Yoshinari's, though I can't tell how much of it he drew by himself. It's all very much his style though. All the robots in the series were his design too:

Yoshinari also has a trademark lush illustration style which is mostly seen as promotional art for anime, but a couple of videogames too (Grandia III, Valkyrie Profile 1 & 2).

There's so much detail it almost makes my eyes hurt... but the palettes are rather nice. He really loves those purple hues, eh?

Sources:
http://www18.atwiki.jp/sakuga/
http://www.creativeuncut.com/

Getting smaller

2010-03-31T22:25:00.013+03:00

While I do like my comics inked, I can't say I really enjoy the inking process itself. It's pretty tedious in fact. Most of the time I need to have audiobooks, podcasts or stand-up comedy playing in the background to ease this chore.

Maybe I could partly blame my tools for it, though. I bought my first G-pen nib a few years ago and have been using them since. It's the default mangaka nib after all and even my art teachers praised it's convenience, so I didn't think much about it. G-pen it was.

What about Maru pen then? I knew about it's existence all along, but assumed it was just a gimmick for some super anal people who draw each strand of hair separately. "I have no use for this puny little thing", I thought, "it probably breaks just from looking at it".

But a few days ago I finally bought one for myself and... yeah.

As an experiment I inked this doodle using both nibs (click for full size). The gun was done with a regular marker though.

Maybe my nibs are getting worn out, but small details like hair and eyes are especially a nightmare to ink with the G-pen - to the point I often clean them up in Photoshop afterwards. Maru pen feels much more smooth and cooperative, the only downside being that it can't do very thick lines. The ink also seems to stop flowing when catching the tiniest speck of dust, though I could be wrong (EDIT: my ink was too thick; adding water helps)... in any case, this is pretty amazing for something I've had absolutely no practice using. I just hope the nib doesn't wear out too fast.

Thinner lines will be useful in Phantomland because I've begun drawing smaller panels. Issue #1 is 60 pages long but I still got comments about how brief it feels, which is no wonder when there's only around 3 to 5 panels on each page. 3 to 5! I really wasn't thinking then; I messed up with the storyboard and drew the layouts way too loose... but it won't happen this time, so in issue #2 I'm aiming for 6 to 8 panels per page. Here's a little preview, in fact:

Fear and loathing

2010-02-16T00:14:00.017+02:00

A little while ago I drew this chick based on the plumage of the black-throated loon. I like how it turned out. There's a good balance in both the colors and the composition. One of my best standalone works in a while, I thought...

... Until it turned out a friend of mine had the exact same idea a year ago. It's not a coincidence - I remember seeing her work back then, I just had completely forgotten about it. It's not the first time something like this has happened either, so I get a bit worried.

I realize that all art is based on things that exist, but it's still always been important to me to strive for originality. I'm constantly trying to invent something new within my limits, believing that there's no point in drawing if I'm just repeating myself or nicking ideas from elsewhere. My own imagination should be good enough fuel, I've thought, and even if my imagination didn't run too wild (which it doesn't), at least I could take some pride in the method itself.

But I can't be so sure anymore. Anything I create, even my most brilliant ideas, may be nothing but subconscious imitations of things I've seen. I might be a complete fraud and there's nothing I can do about it! What a scary thought.

There's a saying that goes "good artists borrow, great artists steal" but I'm still too stubborn to believe in it. It just sounds like a poor excuse to exploit other people's achievements.

The Third & The Seventh

2010-01-17T00:02:00.010+02:00

This video has gotten a lot of attention lately and I have to admit it's mesmerizing work. Not only are the shots beautiful, but this is done entirely in CG (except for the guy and the birds I think):

I don't know much about 3D modeling or animation but I enjoy looking at any attempts at photorealism with it, searching for the tiniest flaws and thinking ha, I'm still not falling for your petty illusions!

While repeating textures are still easy to spot in the video, it looks frighteningly convincing to me otherwise. More convincing than the stuff in movies, even (possibly because it lacks any characters though). Apparently one handy trick is to vary the depth of field like a real camera would, and it's certainly been used here generously.

Once in a while I play with the idea of studying 3D modeling so I could some day end up in a videogame job, but looking at the making of clip makes it all seem so painfully complicated... and from what I've heard it's a rapidly evolving field too. I might be too dumb and lazy for this.

Kaoru Mori

2010-01-04T22:44:00.003+02:00

Kaoru Mori doing some inking for Otoyomegatari:

Why is she so slow? I once saw Shirow Miwa's inking in another video (lost the source though) and his pace wasn't any better. What's the deal here? Are all mangaka this slow or is it just something they do on camera? I thought the point of using nib pens was that each line would be complete with a single stroke, yet she's putting so much work to the outlines... then again, this isn't a page of the manga but a separate illustration. In any case, my mind was kind of blown by this - I was under the impression that killer deadlines would force the artists to become super fast at their work.

I enjoy Mori's works, although her character art bothered me a little at first... the faces tend to look too plain and similar to me (to the point that I keep confusing some characters with each other). But the style grew on me eventually: it's very elegant overall and the drawings have certainly improved over time.

Otoyomegatari has some surprisingly good action panels too.

Most of all the art does a great job complimenting Mori's narrative. The stories aren't anything groundbreaking but there's always this warmth to them that wins me over, not to mention the interesting historical contexts. I like the fact that she created both Shirley and Emma simply because she's fond of housemaids and victorian England. Instead of trying to calculate a formula for success she seems to indulge herself by drawing things that she's personally interested in, all the way to the smallest details; it works great, and I believe it's really the best way to draw a comic. I guess most mangaka aren't as lucky to have such a privilege.

Horrible noodle people

2009-11-21T16:05:00.044+02:00

Bayonetta intrigues me. I can't say I'm much of a sucker for action games, but this one's got a glasses-wearing badass MILF as the main character, complete with sexy poses and a faux British accent... oh yeah, and she equips guns to her feet. And bazookas.

I may have to buy this game once I get a PS3. I have a soft spot for things that are stupid and brilliant at the same time. God Hand, anyone? I think it had some of the same developers too.

One thing that constantly catches my eye, though, is the character design; namely the body proportions. These people are so tall! Bayonetta herself looks well over 2m in height yet she's not even the tallest of the cast.

Game proportions vs. normal proportions (my edit)

When a female character appears in an action game, her limbs often seem thin and short. That is why I tried to make her more appealing as an action game character by adjusting her proportions and extending her limbs.
-Mari Shimazaki, character designer (source)

Of course there's no requirement for game characters to look realistic, but this lady's still supposed to have a very "ideal" feminine build so I can't help but feel bothered by the tiny head and massive torso. Oh well. The long limbs do seem to work great for the action though.

CLAMP is famous for their proportions too

So I've been kind of pondering about the relationship between characters and height. Aesthetics aside, there seem to be some baseless assumptions associated with height too. Especially in drawn fiction like comics and animation taller people tend to be more strong, successful or mature, possibly more intelligent too - unless they're portrayed as comic reliefs because of their height.

Like Nono from Diebuster, for example,
but in this case being tall only adds to her appeal

I want my designs to match the characters as closely as possible so I find myself falling for these patterns too. Most of the Phantomland cast have their height determined by their position in hierarchy: Chie the rookie is somewhat short while the Cypress leader is tall. The rare exception is Elias who's a little taller than Jon despite being his subordinate. I actually thought a lot about this while deciding his height! "Why is he taller than Jon? What's the implication here exactly? Is it because he's more smart and upstanding?"... sigh. Can't stop trying to reason every little thing I do.

Bleh

2009-11-06T20:45:00.013+02:00

I recently featured a poll on this blog asking what you'd most like to read about. Thanks for the votes! The results seemed pretty even on all options, though, so I doubt the poll will necessarily affect me in the end. I doubt you guys are too picky with my text anyway.

I haven't been updating lately because my confidence issues are surfacing again and I realized I'm taking too much pressure when writing for this blog. Another problem is that Phantomland is really keeping my head busy these days - I could ramble for hours about the thoughts and views and philosophies behind the comic - but it's not wise to reveal too much about the project, so I don't want it to dominate my entries either. I still do have other interests after all, and this blog is a fine excuse to concentrate on those every now and then if anything.

Anyway, I'll try to write my entries shorter and less ambitious from now on. Hopefully they'll become more frequent too. Sorry for the wait.

Meanwhile, here's a bit of animation I've worked on.

Making of behind the deleted scenes

2009-09-22T01:58:00.022+03:00

People come up to me and praise how "professional" Phantomland looks. That's all good and dandy, but it almost gives me the mental image of working in a fancy studio with all sorts of cutting edge tools and neatly organized this-and-that...

The truth is that my current setup is actually somewhat ghetto, so I'm going to burst any bubbles you had with a little look behind the scenes.

Here's my desk at the moment:

~~*this is where the magic happens*~~

This was the one and only "artist's desk" from IKEA that came with the convenient piece of glass in it. You can see it's quite cramped, but I'm fine with it for the most part...

My ruler is too short.

Except for this goddamned spread I had to sketch on the floor, getting a back ache in the process. Yes, that's three pieces of A4 paper taped together...

This is what my "storyboards" look like:

These wordless little scribbles only make sense to myself, so obviously I can't get them proofread by anyone even if I wanted. Planning this comic is basically a constant juggle between writing the script in a text file and drawing page layouts in a Photoshop document. I know it sounds rather flimsy and unorganized, but I like this method because it allows me to make changes on the fly easily. Nothing's 100% certain until I've actually drawn and inked it - and even then I'll probably edit some bits of dialogue later.

More stuff from the planning stage:

I often do some test doodling in advance to see if I can deliver a particularly interesting scene exactly the way I envisioned. Some of the ideas here were later changed or scrapped, though.

I might post another entry later with pictures of my sketching/inking process.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFF

2009-09-09T14:48:00.004+03:00

I literally couldn't hold back a maniacal giggle when opening the boxes.

FUCK THEY'RE BEAUTIFUL

I can't even comprehend this level of awesome. Shit, I made something! All by myself!

So if you're coming to Helsinki Comic Festival next weekend, make sure to drop by my table! For those of you preferring mail order, I'll update the Phantomland website with instructions next week.

Voice acting

2009-08-27T00:16:00.014+03:00

Phantomland #1 is printing! Ahh, I can just sit back and wait now... feels good man.

My Day by Eamonn O’Neill

This animation caught my attention. I love how expressive and atmospheric it is despite the simple and angular style. The voice acting is great too; I've never heard anything like it! Where do they have an accent like this?

I know this isn't exactly relevant to the drawing/illustration theme of my blog, but I've become somewhat interested in voice acting lately. Before I would simply accept any voice that wasn't horrible, but nowadays I've learned to appreciate originality. Characters are just that much more interesting when they come with unique voices or speech patterns.

I don't get why modern western animated films are so obsessed with celebrity voice acting. I mean, what's the point? Angelina Jolie cast as a tiger? Who cares? I think it only proves the blandness of the character if your only way to get the audience to care is to attach some big name to it... and better yet, some big name with a completely average voice you won't even recognize unless it's pointed out to you! Why not just, you know, focus on the character itself and give them a distinct voice that adds to their personality? This is what stuff like Looney Tunes and The Simpsons did and obviously they created some of the most iconic characters in animation history (although I don't really count the latter as proper animation per se). Why is it only the comedy series that put some effort into this?

Distinct voices made Pasila great too.

I'd like to claim anime tends to suck at this too, but I'm not all that fluent in Japanese so take my words with a grain of salt... It just bothers me that anime characters rarely sound or talk like real people. The acting is good but, on the other hand, so predictable that it's almost like listening to a bunch of machines; maybe it's the script or lipsynching to blame but most of the time it just sounds more like repetition of old patterns than actual performing to me. You know that small "eh" sound the characters often snort out when they make a happy face? That sort of thing. Also, you can often just look at a character and take a pretty good guess at which mainstream seiyuu will be cast as them. Grim boy? Romi Park. Sly guy? Akira Ishida. Beautiful lady? Kikuko Inoue. Strong female? Michiko Neya. Manly villain? Norio Wakamoto. And so on.

I think FLCL and TokiKake are good exceptions though.

I don't know, it's just music to my ears when almost every character has a unique voice and speaks in this nicely "loose" manner unusual to anime. Interestingly though, some (if not most) of the actors here are also doing liveaction as far as I know. So this is kinda like the opposite of the western situation then? Well, what do you know.

Let's pretend we don't exist

2009-08-09T15:28:00.009+03:00

Sorry for the lack of updates. Phantomland is eating up most of my time and energy right now; hoping to get it printed by Helsinki Comic Festival next month so I'm really really busy. We'll see how it turns out.

In other news, Batman: Arkham Asylum kinda pisses me off. It's not like I'm ever gonna play it, but...

The Animated Series vs. Arkham Asylum

Jesus, what have they done to Harley Quinn. I have to admit I'm not terribly familiar with the Batman universe but I've always liked Harley's design and character. This redesign is just... no. No no no. I can see they needed a more "realistic" outfit for the game, but making her look like some trashy mall goth clusterfuck isn't really doing anyone a favor, is it. Not to mention I get irrationally angry whenever I see pigtails like that.

Eh, just my two cents! I'll be back with more entries once I'm done with the comic.

Easytoon is a hell of a drug

2009-07-13T18:25:00.042+03:00

My newest .gif animation, the "Stumble":

It's getting popular at Deviantart so I might as well make a blog entry about it!

So, I got stuck in the animation limbo once again. I've tried to avoid playing around with Easytoon because the primitive b&w pixel graphics make it somewhat "pointless", but this time I concluded that the program actually suits my purposes... because I know I'd never bother making quality animation to begin with. Colors? Layers? Sound? Pffft. (Flash may be an option though, I just haven't learned to use it yet)

I'm self-taught. I used to think animation was some kind of rocket science you need years of intense studies to handle, but it's really not that difficult once you get the gist of it. It's just a lot of work - even this short clip has around 150 individual drawings.

I'm not particularly original with my animation though, merely imitating what I've seen in the countless anime I've watched over the years. I love all the little tricks Japanese animators pull off to liven up their stuff so that even low-budget productions may have some really cool moments. I'll point out the techniques I've used here.

Anime technique #1: A bit of dirt flying off movement and collisions
Anime technique #2: Shaky image when there's action near the camera

Anime technique #3: Slowdown for dramatic effect
Anime technique #4: Zooming speedlines
The jumping silhouette looks simple but it was probably the hardest part in the whole animation! I just had no idea how the legs and arms would move in midair, so it took me a couple of tries.

This cut I started off with a rough sketch to figure out how she's supposed to land. She falls on her right side, rolls over in midair, hits the ground again and then rolls sideways. The whole motion isn't very realistic but I think it's okay as long as it gives the right impression, i.e. some kind of a fast twirling mess across the screen.

Anime technique #5: Sharp accents around the collision
Finished cut with some added frames. It's important to draw the shadows below or it's hard to see where the character moves in relation to the background (especially if it's blank).

Anime technique #6: Tremble (easiest ever - just draw the same frame twice)

Anime technique #7: Laughter; similar to the tremble but bouncier
It's a bit too fast here, but slowing it down doesn't work either because of the crappy framerate I work in.

Working with perspective seems complex but it's a surprisingly straightforward process. The trick is to pay attention where each step lands, then draw the pose according to that while matching the character's size with the perspective. It's not perfect here, but it does the job.

Animating could be a fitting profession for me because it's an activity I get absolutely 100% immersed in. It's so stupidly addictive that I forget everything else and the next thing I know it's already morning and I haven't eaten for seven hours. Even videogames never do this to me.

I doubt I'll ever become a real animator though... even if I did, chances are I'd end up working on some boring saturday morning cartoon. I'll rather stick with the comics.

Rip and tear

2009-06-30T17:37:00.014+03:00

A spontaneous sketch from last night.

The absolute hardest part for me when drawing Jon is making him look heavy and imposing enough, so I'm happy I managed to pull it off this time. The trick was mostly in the extreme angle, but I also figured out that I need to exaggerate the size and flow of the coat a lot until it does the guy justice.

I wanted to put focus on the hand. I like to draw him with these stiff fingers, like they're about to rip something apart. The villain in the Cowboy Bebop movie did this too - I thought it was a cool detail so it kind of stuck with me.

I had trouble with the composition though. I wanted the sword to fit better in the picture so I moved the drawing to the right, but... something bothers me about it. Probably the lack of balance.

Another version; I thought the first pose didn't make much sense so I rearranged the hands and sword. Placing the sword across the picture like this seems to create a nice line of motion to the composition, so I guess I'll settle with this one.

This could make for a cool promo poster to go with the comic, so I probably won't let myself finish it until chapter 1 is done in case I come up with some changes to the uniform. The sword won't even appear until chapter 2 so I'd feel a bit iffy drawing the final design this early... ah, sucks to be a perfectionist.

Comedy fail

2009-06-25T01:23:00.016+03:00

According to feedback I don't complain enough about anime in this blog; point taken, I'll do more of that. Here's my latest anime-related nitpick.

I've been watching Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood recently. It's pretty loyal to the manga storyline so I'm curious to see how it turns out. So far it's been fairly decent overall, and I like how they're also making it much less angsty than the first adaptation.

But goddamn these gags are so lame. And they're everywhere! You can't just slap a bunch of over-the-top SD (super deformed) blobs here and there at random intervals as some lazy attempt to lighten the mood. It doesn't work. It's really awkward and distracting.

I'm not even a big fan of SD,
but Arakawa is one of the few who do it right.

The manga is able to pull this off, though, because SD gags work better in manga by default. These crude little drawings don't translate well into animation because the format itself is too sophisticated for that - which ruins the joke, basically - and you'll also have to consider things like movement, sound and timing... yet Brotherhood still insists on having poor imitations of manga gags instead of coming up with it's own way to deliver the funny. It's a shame because I really enjoyed the manga for it's sense of humor.

I can't expect everyone to agree with me, though. Different people laugh at different things... but it's still hard to imagine a sane person genuinely amused by stuff like this:

I mean, symbols on top of a character - sometimes they're useful when you need to convey mood without showing the face (although body language alone could've worked in this shot). But are they funny?

... Damn, I actually chuckled a bit when drawing this. But still. Out of all the repetitive generic things anime and manga get away with, repetitive generic gags have to make the least amount of sense.

Stock expressions

2009-06-19T04:35:00.002+03:00

Happy Midsummer (for those of you celebrating it)!

I came across something interesting at 4chan.

Glad to know I'm not the only one bothered by this trend in Disney/Pixar films (and most American mainstream animation for that matter). The stuff is technically impressive otherwise, so why do they still end up using the same handful of stock expressions? What's their excuse? This crooked-eyebrows nonsense is probably the worst in my book because it hardly even occurs in real life - yet the artists keep spamming it everywhere, apparently to convey some kind of a smartass attitude without realizing how overused it is.

That said, I went to see Coraline recently. I expected it to be a pretty fresh-looking film judging from the few images I'd seen beforehand - and fair enough, the visual style and design was nice, but...

Oh look it's that face again.

I just love to whine about this. But it's important! You'd expect American animation to be capable of unique facial expressions because that's kind of an entire principle about it - because after all, the characters are supposed to be caricatures of people, right? And caricatures work on the principle that people are unique, right?

... right?

I mean come on. Those are expressions, sure - but not only do they lack resemblance to actual people, they're the exact same artificial fluff we've seen on the face of every Disney character ever. It's like the artists deliberately ignore the awesomely complex science behind facial language just to draw these painfully generic mannerisms over and over again. I can't figure out any sensible justification for this.

My point is that it's not particularly impressive when a character's appearance is constantly reduced to flat one-dimensional concepts like "happy" or "sad" or "surprised". People aren't that simple at all; why should drawn characters be? The great thing about facial expressions is that they can reflect much more than just momentary feelings - a well-drawn face also holds a distinct statement about the character. You can read lots of interesting subtleties from a face that words can't deliver. It's very useful in any kind of visual narrative.

Ehh... I feel like an ass using my own drawings as an example, but there wasn't anything similar available:

This is still somewhat basic stuff because I'm too much of a weeaboo to draw actual caricatures, but well - you get the idea. All four of these are technically smiling, but each has their own character-specific way to pull it off, and they smile for different reasons too. Chie is forcing her smiles more often than not, for example. In an ideal situation I'd never have to describe these guys and their inner workings in detail because you could figure them out through careful observation instead. We'll see what kind of crazy misinterpretations I'll eventually run into, though...

Desucon report

2009-06-15T20:57:00.010+03:00

Wow, my reader count keeps on increasing... Already 17 followers through Blogger alone. Thanks for reading, guys! <3

Recently I spent a weekend at Desucon. Most Finnish anime conventions I've attended in the past few years have left me with feelings of boredom and cynicism in the vein of "oh god, I'm too old for this nonsense", but Desucon felt really fun and cozy in contrast. Everything worked and there was lots of stuff to do and see. I'm probably biased, though, because I witnessed the planning and birth of the event pretty close and did a bit of my own contribution too (graphic design & artist's alley correspondence).

I had some time to draw while sitting at the artist's alley. The cutesy maid is a quick commission while the secretary is one of my regular attempts at drawing increasingly sexy ladies for Jussi. Hmh... either I was too tired at this point or my proportions tend to suck in pencil drawings. Maybe I'm too used to fixing stuff with Photoshop on the fly.

(photo by Lauri Kosonen)

What really surprised me was the popularity of Desu-kun, the mascot of Desucon. I assumed the promo illustrations of him were well received, but apparently things got completely out of hand once our guy cosplaying the character co-hosted the opening ceremony and cosplay show. The fangirls were so impressed by his cute behavior that they showed no mercy when harassing him afterwards. Can't blame them, though... his portrayal of Desu-kun was spot-on and I can't imagine anyone doing it better.

Anyway, shit was cash, would go again. We're already planning for next year's Desucon II - so if you missed the first one, I recommend attending next time!

First Trico trailer

2009-05-21T01:07:00.021+03:00

Ooooh!
I'm so excited. Even though I rarely play videogames these days, I've been eagerly looking forward to this one ever since it was announced about two years ago.

For those of you who aren't hopeless nerds, "Trico" (working title) is the new game from Team ICO, i.e. the extremely talented people behind ICO and Shadow of the Colossus. Until now they hadn't revealed practically anything about their latest project - but yesterday, a whole freaking trailer leaked out of nowhere.

Turns out this is actually early footage from a year ago, so it's no wonder it seems a bit unpolished... what with the boy lacking in details and having Ico's voice, for starters. Nevertheless it's just as awesome as expected. I love how they've once again made a game so incredibly down-to-earth that it hardly looks like a game to begin with, yet it's still easy to tell how it's going to play. If I'm making any sense here.

Anyway, ICO puzzles with a SotC giant? Oh hell yes. Can't wait to see what they'll show at E3 in June.

Squee, etc

2009-05-20T14:02:00.005+03:00

I came up with this cool sidestory featuring loli Chie and I'm secretly going all tee-hee over it. Time will tell whether I'll ever get to make it canon, though. Sigh. At least I can doodle.

Speaking of doodles, I rarely draw kids but I kind of enjoy it when I do. Guess it's because of that certain sincerity in their character that adults tend to lack... You can draw kids with huge expressions and motions and it never seems out of place, I think.
Body proportions are a nightmare though! I can't even tell myself what age Chie's supposed to be here. Four, five?

There's something 'bout blue

2009-05-17T02:40:00.012+03:00

I have all these drafts piling up but I can't seem to polish any of them into a decent blog entry. Might as well write a quick post about my least favorite color while I'm at it. Interesting, right?

Ultramarine blue.

I've never liked this color in any context. I feel slightly uncomfortable just looking at it. This is weird because I'm not particularly opinionated with other colors - not as much as having a personal favorite, even. What's so bad about this shade of blue? Do my nerves somehow glitch at the specific wavelength? Or could it be psychological, like a childhood trauma? I can't think of anything to associate the color with, though... maybe some obscure corporate logos at most.

This doesn't sound like serious business but sometimes I think my dislike of the color is actually crippling my enjoyment of things.
See the woodblock prints by Hokusai, for example. I went to see them at an exhibition and while I did find the works pretty impressive, I couldn't bring myself to fully appreciate them because the bastard just had to stick that annoying shade of blue in every single landscape.

Aaagh.

Motivational boost

2009-04-29T23:43:00.024+03:00

Today I used the school printer to test how the screentones in Phantomland turn out on paper. There's always a risk they'll get messy if the dot pattern is too small (big patterns look ugly too, so there needs to be some balance) - but I finally managed to overcome the problem by making the right tweaks, so the pages should be foolproof now. Phantomland will be printed in A5 but I've preferred to work with bigger files just in case, which actually made things a bit complicated until now.

Anyway, when I got home I took the test page and stuck it on a spread of another A5 comic book I had. The illusion was perfect.

FFFFFFFFFF

I know it doesn't sound too amazing, but this is the best part when making comics and somehow it always takes you by surprise. I see my finished work in it's intended physical form and then it hits me - BAM - that this thing actually looks like a genuine professional comic. I have to admit it's a pretty emotional moment. It's rare for me to feel this happy and accomplished.

Occasionally I've stopped for a moment and wondered whether I'm wasting my time on this project in the end. It's insanely tedious work at times and the financial benefits are practically nonexistent even if I get all my copies sold, yet still... I really can't complain, this is a pretty damn good hobby for me if anything. I'm learning a lot.

Don't expect Phantomland #1 to be anything groundbreaking because of this wank post, though. It may seem polished work but it's actually pretty silly and there are plotholes and crap dialogue and everything.

I hope you'll still enjoy it.

Universe PV & Gekidan INU Curry

2009-04-19T01:23:00.032+03:00

This is a 2007 music video of Maaya Sakamoto's; designed and directed by Gekidan INU Curry, a creative team of two artists nicknamed Doroinu and 2shiroinu. They take inspiration from oldschool Russian and Czech animation styles and apply their own Japanese flavor to it.

And hot damn, does it work. Although the pacing isn't all that exciting here, this has to be some of the prettiest art direction I've ever seen in Japanese animation. Kind of reminds me of LittleBigPlanet - it's rare to see animated graphics with such a lush, handmade feel (and in digital media no less). You really have to pause the video at times to catch all these weird details drifting by.

I even bothered to take these screenshots myself from the higher-res Nicovideo version.

The character designs are impressive, too. It takes real skill to come up with cute characters that stand apart from generic Hello Kitty aesthetics. These little fellows have a lot of personality to them - some even turn out to have flaws on a closer look, like bandages or a drooling mouth. Despite the warm and fuzzy atmosphere there's a subtle Junko Mizuno type of darkness going on here. It's really intriguing.

So, any more projects by Gekidan INU Curry? Not much that I know of... They hosted some kind of a homepage called Decoblog - a somewhat confusing site content-wise - and I can't go reinvestigate either because it's been down since. Shame.

But while they seem like a rather obscure duo, I'm certain that one of them is actually Ayumi Shiraishi, an animator whose work was last seen in Gurren Lagann. She was responsible for Nia's flashback sequence and episode titles in the second story arc:

It's not like the style's easy to confuse with anyone else's.

Some past contribution for the Gainax top page, too.

Still, it's frustrating to find so little information on such talented people. I can only hope that they're just new on the field (they were described "young" in an interview) and will eventually get more publicity in the future.

Manga workshops

2009-04-04T23:44:00.016+03:00

I'm a fairly easygoing person but I still love to complain about meaningless stuff to entertain myself. One subject is how western culture (mis)interprets anime/manga as an artform - I can rant for hours about this when I'm in my best mood for some elitist nerd rage.

Recently I held my second manga drawing workshop session at a library. I don't know how familiar these workshops are outside Finland, but basically you invite some local schoolkids to sit down and draw together and possibly teach them something about manga.

It's... kind of a botched concept. It almost worked back when the word "manga" was only familiar to manga enthusiasts, but nowadays half of the kids coming to such workshops don't even read manga - or even better, aren't that much into drawing either. I don't know why they bother coming in the first place! I guess they like the cute "chibi animals" in those "manga tutorials". Hrrr. What has the world come to.

I'll need to write a whole entry about these books. I thought their existence was tragic enough until I saw them being literally fought over at the library.

Gee, I wish the kids had more passion in the subject because I can't hope to teach them anything meaningful otherwise. I just end up drawing pictures of angels and catgirls on request so they can watch and repeatedly ask me "how I've become so good" at it. Oh well. At least I get paid for this.

Why do we need these manga workshops, anyway? Why not arrange workshops for drawing in general? I'm getting tired of how the public still insists on treating manga like it's some kind of outlandish cryptic witchcraft you'll need special knowledge to handle. It's not. These are just comics, guys. Comics from Japan. And for the six billionth time: big eyes are appealing. Ok? Ok! Get over it! Let's move on! Yes!

Hedgehog in the fog

2009-03-15T21:26:00.015+02:00

I was surfing around and stumbled upon this 1975 Soviet animated short film.
Strange that I've completely missed it until now as Hedgehog in the fog is apparently a very famous and praised title worldwide. It's no wonder, though; I'm not even interested in paper cut-out animation because it looks too clumsy to me, but this one has a lot of life and charm to it. Not to mention how pretty the foggy backgrounds are! Remember folks, this was back in '75 - no CG anywhere.

The fog effects were created by putting a very thin piece of paper on top of the scene and slowly lifting it up toward the camera frame-by-frame until everything behind it became blurry and white.
-Wikipedia

I should get my hands on more Soviet animation although it seems pretty difficult to find. For a change it's interesting to watch something that isn't strongly influenced by the Disney school of aesthetics.

Big brats

2009-03-09T03:34:00.017+02:00

Amber and Jon are fun to draw because they're so angry and silly together.

Sometimes my Photoshop fails to recognize pen pressure which results in zero variety in line thickness and opacity and such. Usually I just reboot the software but this time I felt like doodling anyway.

I remember a number of people in my past, including art teachers, who claimed that lineart with even thickness should be avoided because it looks "dead". I understand their point, but it always got me thinking... like, what, there are rules to this stuff now? Can't I just use the dead lines if I want to? Having done inking with varying thickness for so long, they start to feel new and refreshing instead.

Ugh, I'm running out of time with the comic. Haven't been doing new pages for a while because I got hit by the thought that chapter one might actually suck. I'll probably need to rewrite parts of it.

(Semi-)realism

2009-03-06T04:40:00.051+02:00

I feel a little conflicted about Nia from Gurren Lagann. I don't care much for these shallow cutesy girls and she's not a particularly well-written character either - yet still, somehow, she's a fresh enough portrayal of an innocent little princess that I actually like her in some twisted way.

Granted the voice acting and character design kind of make up for Nia's lack of depth because they're both unique and spot-on. She's got "sweetness" written all over her - I love the curly blond-blue hair and flower pupils in particular, not only because they're totally weird (even by anime standards), but they also defy all logic. Hair and eyes don't work that way! I bet she's a cosplayer's nightmare.

Official artists seem to be fond of the character.

Seeing bizarre 2D designs like this often makes me wonder what they'd look like in a more realistic 3D universe which I sometimes attempt drawing out of curiosity. Usually I'm just doodling around, but then there are times I get carried away and work on them for hours on end:

Nia has this haircut and outfit for only three episodes. I'd just read a good doujinshi that was set in this point of the GL timeline so I thought why not.

...In these cases I'm too obsessed with realism to the expense of creativity, though. While I do like how Nia and Simon turned out, this is pretty plain stuff once you get past the technical challenge and effort - and I get this small feeling of guilt whenever I've done something ambitious yet essentially "pointless". At least I always learn new tricks with big digital works like this; it's the first time I painted entirely in grayscale with separate coloring, for example, which turned out to be a practical method.

Gainax top page illustrations

2009-02-24T03:05:00.028+02:00

I'm insanely busy but I'm posting anyway! Ha-ha!

Call me a Gainax faggot but I really like how they handle the visual side of their productions. It is a rather commercialized anime studio yet they still seem to respect their individual artists more than most other places (or then they just hire the better ones, I don't know). See the promotional art, for example; they're not too obsessed with consistency and often let the artists do their own thing. The results are sometimes very unusual and impressive.

But well, rather than focusing on the actual animation works, this entry is dedicated to the illustrations seen on the gainax.co.jp index page. The image is drawn by in-house staff or a guest artist (often a mangaka or such) and is changed every few days. After that it gets moved to a separate gallery - but here's the catch; image resolution is much smaller there. So if you want every pic in the highest available resolution, you'll have to keep checking the site every now and then!

...Which I've been doing for a while, yes. I have the perfect collection in a neat folder (downloaded the previous ones in a batch), a total of 369 images at this point. A lot of them are pretty mediocre stuff, but there's a bunch of really good ones too. Here are some of my favorites:

The Dogs author, too. Nice.

FLCL manga author, I assume.

Wow, I actually recognize a lot of these styles. I'm such a geek.

Phantomland sketches

2009-02-14T21:25:00.009+02:00

Taking a little break although I should be working now. I'm not much of a Valentine's day person but I'm eager to use any excuse to slack off, hehe.

So, you guys were hoping to see sketches?
I'm actually not too comfortable scanning those because I get tired of the stuff really fast... in fact even these scribbles were polished a bit just in case:

You might've noticed earlier that Jon isn't the only one wearing this uniform. It's basically given to the most talented folks in the organization; at first only Jon and the fabulous guy (who probably looks too much like Klavier from PW4) belonged to this rank - but I'll need a couple more characters, so this black lady could be a possible addition. I'm not sure of her role or background yet.

Naturally the elites must have the coolest outfits. I'm still not sure whether I'm satisfied with the design, though... my idea was that the coat should appear pretty big, thick and heavy (yet light enough to flap in the wind, obviously) but I'm having some trouble capturing that.

Manga = profit

2009-02-05T21:29:00.037+02:00

Although there seems to be some amount of shame associated with manga among artists and designers, I don't have a particular need to get rid of the influence. One of my excuses is that I'm currently filling a niche with it.

See, Finland is a small country - so whenever manga-style illustrations or comics are needed for whatever purpose, there simply aren't too many people to choose from (among well-promoted names, at least) - thus I get contacted fairly often. If my stuff didn't have such a specific label on it, I'd have far less work opportunities to be honest.
In that sense it's convenient to be one of the dreaded "manga-artists"; it's actually somewhat profitable.

Recently I've done all kinds of graphics for Desucon from logo design to promotional artwork, and I'll be in charge of the artist's alley too. I'm pretty much volunteering as I'm friends with the organizers, but it's an interesting project nevertheless.

Naturally I keep thinking how much of a sellout that makes me.
I try to add some personal touch to these works but they always turn out looking too bland and generic for me to feel particularly proud of. Granted the typical manga look is easy to draw and easy for clients to approve, so that's all that really matters, right?
But where's my ambition? Sometimes I can't help but feel I'm supposed to pursue some magical artistic breakthrough even when I know exactly what I'm being commissioned for.

Nah, guess I'm just being too hard on myself. And what's the point in whining when I still have the chance to improve?

EDIT: On an unrelated note,

"The head has a pleasant appearance while the expression is rational"
Are these facts or opinions? What is this I don't even...

Videogame covers

2009-02-02T00:58:00.048+02:00

All right, let's focus on something else than my own works for a change.

Videogame cover design and their localization is interesting. It tells something about the differences in marketing but also in culture and aesthetics. Or well, at least when it comes to the east and west - namely Japanese and American markets. This is one thing that reinforces my belief that Japanese game developers tend to be miles ahead at art direction. A lot of times the covers of western editions look definitely inferior and I can't help but wonder why they didn't go with the original art to begin with.

USA cover of Megaman for the NES.
It's hilarious. Doesn't even resemble the game.

This is by no means a new thing. Oldschool games were plagued by incredibly ugly cover art, but then again I find it kind of understandable; the industry was so much smaller back then that they could get away with it, and it's not like the actual games looked too impressive either - so, let's not go there.
It's a lot more baffling when this happens with modern games, so here's a few comparisons of post-millennium cover art by region.

Zero / Fatal Frame / Project ZERO

The original cover art is pretty but looks more like mystery than horror. Back in Japan the selling point of this series were cute girls rather than their undead friends, I assume. The USA edition is nothing short of tacky and cheap with the bad typography and giant floating head. The European cover is the most accurate in terms of atmosphere, but it's still pretty mediocre.

Silent Hill 4: The Room

Not a lot of difference here. JP cover is appropriately creepy while EU is a bit too vague in comparison. Gotta love the American influence here, though. "It's a horror game, dammit! Horror is angry stuff! Make it more angry, grrr!"

Touch! Kirby / Kirby: Canvas Curse / Kirby: Power Paintbrush

Japan likes their design cute and simple. The western world... not so much. Since cute equals "kiddy" and simple equals "boring", even a character like Kirby needs to show some badass attitude until the common white guy can buy his game without looking like a faggot. Granted the alternative cover looks more like the actual game, but it still lacks the fun boldness of the original.

Final Fantasy IX

Oh come on. Final Fantasy is a quality franchise that everybody knows and loves. Wouldn't the logo on a white background look classy and recognisable enough? No, gotta throw in some characters. The layout? Whatever, just put them in a row, that'll do.
The irony here is that FF9 wasn't very popular in the west partly because the characters looked too weird.

Sudeki

Here's the catch - Sudeki isn't a Japanese game at all but a JRPG-inspired title entirely developed in the UK (and I'm shocked to learn that the lead game designer was Finnish). The original art is a textbook example of "let's slap on some blue hair and it'll look totally Japanese". Sigh. Not that the cover isn't stupid in other ways too - uninspired layout, clumsy typography, terrible color palette.
From the looks of things the Japanese weren't too impressed. Can't blame them.

ICO

Ah ha ha ha. This is awesomely ironic because ICO is often quoted as one of the most beautiful games ever made. Many of it's core developers were artists themselves, so a stylized cover paying homage to Giorgio de Chirico kinda makes sense. A completely generic cover with ugly CG models does not. Apparently the North American release came out so much earlier that the intended cover wasn't yet available, so they put together this sad thing instead.

Biohazard 4 / Resident Evil 4

I thought the stylish red & black cover was the original but turns out it came only with the European release. The real Japanese cover is unusually drab and boring even compared to the North American one. What. And this is RE4 of all things! The actual game looks amazing!

Artpad experiments

2009-01-17T03:27:00.026+02:00

Artpad is a fun little toy. I just rediscovered it after a long while and did some quick doodles. Not very interesting pictures per se, but now you can see how I draw things if you were curious. The animation makes the process seem delightfully easy though, so don't be fooled.

Stuff like this I can usually pull off without a base sketch unless I'm working on difficult poses or layouts. Most Phantomland characters are so familiar to me I don't need to think much when drawing them.

Watch animation

Yes, I start from the eyes every time (unless I'm using reference maybe). If I start from anywhere else, stuff gets wonky! I know it's pretty stupid - I definitely should learn other methods - but I'm lazy and stubborn and keep doing it regardless. On the other hand it kinda suits me since I'm obsessed with eyes anyway; they're my top priority when drawing faces.

Watch animation

Needless to say Jon is a bitch to draw from certain angles because of the eyepatch. Ach!

Watch animation

Tried a bit more realistic and polished style. Nah, this ain't no Photoshop.

I'd love to see more people do these. Please show me your own Artpad sketches if you've drawn any!

Horse and I, we're dancers in the dark

2009-01-07T19:04:00.001+02:00

Illustration is harder than it sounds.
Although I enjoy doing it I occasionally have such a fear of failure that it's difficult to even begin working. Most of the time I'm just being stupid but in my current job the problem is frighteningly real.

Why?
I'm illustrating for a horse novel. Aaaahh! (A "manga-style" horse novel, yeah. I actually did this once already but now's time for the sequel of the book!)
When I first signed up I figured drawing horses was no big deal since they'd asked someone like me to do it. I can draw a horse, sure. A pretty convincing horse, I thought. But then the author told me that every horse breed is recognizable from the shape of the head alone. I was screwed.

Now, anyone can look at a drawing of a person and immediately tell if something's not right, but when it comes to animals... you'd better spend your whole life around one to get that familiar with it. And the writer and editor do indeed, but not me, the illustrator. Almost every horse pic I send them is wrong somehow and I can't for the life of me figure out what exactly needs fixing.
It's a tough job but this time I'm gonna study like crazy and hope for the best.
I visited a local stable to snap a few photos but they didn't turn out too well. Only four were good enough for reference:
Finnhorses and a fjord horse. They were very charming but I'm telling you, these are some fucked up animals to draw.

The Beginning is the End is the Beginning

2009-01-03T19:04:00.001+02:00

22:55 <@Amph> Hmh, I was on fire this morning thinking yeaaah, I'm gonna start some kind of a combined rant/sketchblog
22:56 <@Amph> And it would be the best blog ever and I'd have the best writings ever
22:56 <@Amph> But then I got rid of the sleep debt and unfortunately I now have a more realistic view of the idea
00:23 <@niidel> DO IT FAGGOT
00:23 <@niidel> Like they'd say on 4chan
(translated from Finnish)

That conversation is from months ago, I think. I'd like to keep a low profile on the Internets but starting a new blog could be fun too, so what the heck. I'll just quit if it doesn't work!

Before going to the actual content I figure some kind of an entry with further self-introduction would be appropriate. Most of the people reading this probably don't know the first thing about me.

A story from my childhood.
I remember this one time when I was maybe nine years old and my mom took me to a flea market. Nothing really caught my eye except one thing; a toy. Not just any toy though, it was this simple yellow boxy thing where you push buttons and some animal figures pop out. "Don't be silly, you're way too old for that" said mom, yet I kept begging like a snotty brat until she gave up and bought it.
There was no way such a toy could've entertained someone my age, yet with some twisted logic I was convinced that the toddlerbox was totally worth the money. Why? I doubt even mom got a sensible explanation from me. But looking back at it now, the reason is very clear:
The design was cute. The animals looked so phenomenally charming to me that I needed to own the damn thing!

I guess that's just about the definition of superficiality. I judged everything by the cover and hardly realized it myself - yet it doesn't end there; it's not like I played much with any of the rare beautiful toys I got. I didn't mind spending hours and hours just carefully examining and admiring them.
Perhaps my childhood was unfathomably boring but I enjoyed simply looking at things, paying close attention to every shape, color and motion. Nature was one thing but I was especially interested in man-made imagery.

Candy Candy was among the first anime I saw. I loved the dresses.

In a way I haven't changed much from those times. I'm still passionate about visual arts and entertainment such as comics, animation and games. Of course I also have a very personal relationship with drawing and illustration - after all it's something I've always loved doing myself and am looking into making a profession.

So, any clues about the future content of this blog yet? Look forward to entries such as:

Personal views and demonstrations on composition, colors, design, etc
Features of artists I like
Analyses of stuff I've read, watched or played from a visual standpoint
Phantomland: thoughts and sketches
Image posts of whatever random things I dig

Basically it's all about opinions and taste; people might disagree with me a lot but keep in mind that my word doesn't have much weight to begin with. I'll write this blog mostly to challenge myself to think and learn, but I hope someone else finds it an interesting read.