A Nostalgic Encounter - Pokemon

I'm in a bit of a tough position. Today's topic has been covered again and again and again - how can I possibly put a new spin on it? Maybe the answer is not to. Maybe the best course of action is to start from the beginning, emerging from the moving truck in a brand new home, given a momentous task by a local scientist! You're eager to explore the world with this pet you received to aid you on your quest. A lush, rolling landscape awaits you, but be wary of the tall grass, for in them are dangerous creatures, and sometimes......ah! There! Behind that rock! Another like yourself has stepped forward! You've no choice but to put your mettle to the test!

Ghost-type trainers shouldn't be idling this early in the game, what on earth..........well, if it wasn't obvious already, today's post is about that worldwide critter-collecting phenomenon, Pokemon. I hardly should need to expunge on what Pokemon IS if you are a human being and you posses a pair of ears and cognitive thought, but for those not in the know, it is a video game franchise from Japan named "Pocket Monsters"; Pokemon is simply a cute shortening. The name derives from the ability of a user (trainer) to battle and capture monsters, which, when caught, they keep inside tiny capsules (Pokeballs) that can fit in their pocket.

You can see the appeal. Cute critters that you can carry around anywhere and make them do cool stuff? Sign every kid in the world up for that! It had something for kids of all shapes and sizes. The focus on making monsters battle each other in tournament-style bouts clearly shows the primary demographic was young boys, but the story and nurturing aesthetics of Pokemon helped make it accessible to anyone. It teaches kids responsibility and improvement through experience and perseverance, while still keeping their attention with fun monster designs and battle actions. Even adults can understand why kids go ga-ga for this kind of entertainment. I mean, I never ASKED to own a Pokemon game (at first). My wise family, alongside getting me a Gameboy Color for my 10th~ (approximate) birthday (which I also did not ask for), gave me a copy of Pokemon Blue, making it the first Gameboy game I could call my own. The last Pokemon game I played came out two years ago. So obviously I adored the game - why else would I continue to play it for the following 13 years?

This franchise was my childhood through and through. I played the game into the late hours of the night, beating just one more trainer before bed; or resetting every time my last Ultra Ball failed to catch a Legendary Bird, pridefully refusing to use my Master Ball before the coveted Mewtwo on the horizon. I was glued to the TV every Saturday morning to catch new episodes of the cartoon. Previously I've stated that Dragonball Z was the first anime I ever saw; in hindsight, it was actually Pokemon. I saw the (first two) movies in theaters, retrieving the Ancient Mew card from the First Movie. And yes, I collected the CCG too. My first rare card from my first booster pack was a 1st Edition Holographic Charizard. That doesn't expand on my love of the fandom - I just thought that was a really awesome thing. I even had a Pokemon Pikachu - Pokemon's answer to the Tamagotchi/GigaPets. Loved that little guy. Made you want to run and exercise to make him happy! Ingenious, really.

I praised Pokemon earlier for being accessible to kids of all ages and for teaching lessons while still keeping up the entertainment value. But I also said the last Pokemon game I played came out two years ago. Two more generations of the games have come out since then, but after years of catching monsters and making them battle, trying to make them the very best like no monster ever was, I was growing......tired. The fact of the matter is, the Pokemon games, while improving every step of the way, are basically the same game over and over and over again. For kids, that's great; each new generation of 10-year-olds will have a wonderful game to play. For me, now an adult, it's grown stale. I've gone through versions Blue, Silver, Sapphire, Emerald, Leaf Green, Pearl, and finally back around for Soul Silver. The journeys had been long and arduous, and I'd enjoyed them thoroughly. I had game experiences I'd never forget and fond memories of nights trading and battling with my friends; I even had my own #1 favorite monster (Gengar). And yet, over time I realized that I was playing a game that just repeated itself with each generation. I never once leveled one of my Pokemon to 100 - I would buy the next version before accruing enough time to do so, and then the older game would sit in the bin. I came to realize that, for me, such a mindless cycle had to come to an end; the point had been lost. So I made a conscious decision to purchase neither Pokemon Black nor White, and I quit the game for good. Several of my peers have continued the games unwavering, it's just simply not for me anymore. Perhaps you can blame my narrowing taste in video games, but my trainer days have come to a close. Do I regret playing Pokemon? No. My quitting is solely a matter of age and taste - they say nothing of the state of the games now. And I would encourage anyone curious to check them out. They kept me entertained for many long years and hopefully may do the same for you.

Most. Fun. Coloring. Work. Ever. I had so much fun coloring this drawing. It doesn't look like much, but it came together so smoothly. Gengar's triple shade pleases me beyond words. As for Sei, I'm not as happy with him......his legs aren't long enough, for one. His clothing is a little wonky; however his expression is PERFECT. I wanted Sei and Gengar's 'tudes to be in sync, and I think I captured that in the expressions. I debated giving Sei a similar toothy grin, but I decided that would be a little TOO in sync, to the point of being hokey. "Cool Berserker" is a reference to Sei's personality in my story - don't pay it any mind.

Creatures of the Coral Reef - And Happy Halloween!

Hey guys - I don't have any kind of profound or introspective discussion that coincides with today's picture, so instead I'm just going to apologize for not having a Halloween update prepared this year. Barring my Transformers tribute image, Nostalgia Week was also a total bust. I realize I have not been on the ball, but I'm doing my best to turn that around. You'll definitely see a Christmas related post this year along with any other regular posts to come - and they ARE coming, I promise! That being said, I hope you all have a happy and safe Halloween!

I've been debating for a long time whether to share this picture with you all. It was the first drawing I did after moving into my apartment, so I was still recovering from a period where I was so busy I barely had time to make updates or even draw at all, so it's rather messy. In the world of my story Gogyouo-Sama, there are many humanoid-like beings called youjin, as I expunged on for Kushiro's character profile. This undersea denizen is of a youjin species called [Insert Name Here]. Actually it does not have a name; I was hard-pressed for ideas of something to draw, so I thought, "I'll just draw a weird creature. Every story with creatures like this has to have an underwater tribe, right? I'll do that!" Of course, then my challenge was to design a creature that didn't look like a Zora, and I'm not convinced I succeeded. Honestly I'm happier with the coral reef and the rippling waves at the surface than with the creature itself. I'm still kicking myself for giving it antennae. Antennae: the go-to creature feature when you have absolutely no idea what they should look like! The plumes behind its head I guess are like a flower; I thought it would make the creature look somewhat majestic. Don't ask me what he/she/it is doing here. Perhaps they're beckoning you to come hither to spirit you away to their undersea village? Maybe they were out jogging through the reef and is waving hello - that would explain that weird headband thing I added for no reason. Can you jog in a coral reef? Apparently this thing can, whatever it is. As with many unknown specters of the deep, mysterious to us land-dwellers, it may be opportune to never find out.

Clearing the Beaches

We're seeing some changes around here. Mornings are getting cooler, the humidity is fading away, and late allergies are beginning to flare (at least here on the east coast). And that must mean......fall is approaching!

It's time for that beach holiday to end - it's back to work for the adults and back to school for the kids! Then again, many adults are always working - I'm one of those adults now. Summer, for me, used to mean the time of the year when I got to do nothing and not think about work. Now it's just another time of the year. I don't use it for vacation - I use it like I would use any other time of the year: work during the day, rest in the evening, take a break on the weekends. So I don't really have what you'd call a traditional summer vacation anymore. But that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy my summer. I got to go to two anime conventions just a few months apart; I made the big move out of my parents' home into my very own apartment; the workflow at my office has undergone many overhauls in the last few months which, although initially coming from negative events, highlight improvements moving forward. Everything is changing; a wave has washed over me and is dragging me along. I've yet to see where I will drift, but I'm having fun and making due along the way. I'd say this has been a more eventful summer than I was expecting because of that. I can't wait to see what changes fall is going to bring (not to mention I'm ready for some cooler weather!).

So how did your summer go? What kinda of activities or vacations did you take part in? Let me know! I hope it was an eventful one! :)

Actually, I didn't even go to a beach this summer! I'm not much of a beach person; and it seems that Sei isn't either if such events like the above befall him. This drawn by hand and colored in Photoshop. I'm still learning a lot in the ways of digital coloring, but I still feel like I'm improving. I'm not happy with the sky; I feel like it could have even a few slight shades to add depth to it, but I'm pleased with the rest of the work. I was unsure what kind of sandcastle Sei would build, so he decided to make a whale carrying a Pachi castle. How predictable of him.

When Nostalgia Meets the Eye: The Transformers

Some time ago you may recall me saying that this post would be a precursor to the next Nostalgia Week on Pachi's Portrait. Well, as Nostalgia Week hasn't yet become a staple of the blog and I don't want to make promises I can't keep, for now I've decided that during this time of the year (September/October/November) I will strive to make several of my posts nostalgia related, rather than doing three in one particular week. I chose this period because Fall always makes me look back and reflect on the things that have come before that year; I can't really say why. But that makes me think of nostalgia. So, here's the first of hopefully several nostalgia-related drawings/updates. You may have already guessed what today's is based on the title and image: Transformers!

If you're of the newer generation you're probably thinking about the live-action Michael Bay movies when I say that, but that's not what I'm referring to. Yes, they are a part of the Transformers franchise, but I personally don't like them that much. And why? Because I'm a G1 junkie. G1 refers to the retro-actively named first generation of Transformers toys and media that popped up from 1984 to 1991. I was born in 1987, so I appeared smack in the middle of its popularity. I didn't actually start to discover these toys until the G2 generation of 1992, but I soon found the original toys thereafter and Hasbro's cartoon series that ran from 1984-1987 - I was only able to see a handful of it in reruns and syndication. I loved it. It wasn't until years later that I was able to see The Transformers: The Movie (since it was in theaters before I was born), but I adored that as well; today I rank it among my favorite animated motion pictures of all time.

While I loved the toys and the cartoon, there wasn't a deep appreciation for them - I just thought robots were cool, especially robots that could transform. It wasn't until 1996 when another Transformers series, Beast Wars, aired on American television that I became a hopeless fan on another level. That show helped me respect the story and mythos of Transformers and truly see that there was more to it than meets the eye (sorry......I'll only say it once).

But yeah, there's not much else to say except that I love Transformers (as long as they have nothing to do with Michael Bay). I still collect the toys to this day and feel no shame in doing so as a transforming-robot loving adult. :) If you're a Transformers fan, which series/generations of them are your favorites? Favorite characters? Do you tend to lean more towards Autobots or Decepticons? Let me know! (I'm a Decepticon at heart.....Soundwave has and will always be superior)

I hope it's obvious enough, but I wanted to draw Sei and Suunu as Transformers....at first I wasn't sure how on Earth I could pull that off. As you can tell, there isn't MUCH that really indicates their own character other than the head molds and some of the symbols on their parts. Sei here is modeled after Soundwave, for little more reason than Soundwave is my favorite Transformer. Suunu is modeled after Wheeljack; his head mold had a design that I thought I'd be able to refashion until Suunu's unique hairstyle. Other than that there's no connection between the characters - Sei doesn't talk in a robotic monotone, Suunu isn't an inventor; they're just the models I picked. I guess this was primarily a test to see how well I could draw a Transformer than to make my characters look like one. I think they came out okay. I used my own Soundwave G1 toy as reference for Sei; for Suunu I used an online reference image of Wheeljack since I don't have the G1 version of him (I have his Transformers Prime figure, but I didn't want to use that model). Suunu came out a little darker than Sei which is wrong because Wheeljack is mostly white and Soundwave is a dark blue (not that you can tell in shades of gray, but I wanted to convey it accurately), but the two were drawn separately and then combined in Photoshop so their shading isn't quite on the same level.

Pachi Profiles 03

Hi everyone! I'm still alive, and I'm making an update that I promised months ago! It's the long-procrastinated third batch of character profiles! Only two of them in this set, sorry. I promise that more drawings are on the way, including one big one that's partly complete which will be a sort of precursor to this year's Nostalgia Week; which again, will be in October. I'm really excited to get this one done and rolled out to you! Anyway, if you would like to meet two more of my stable of personalities, click either of the two links below!

Profile #6: Wo Chun Fa
Profile #7: Wo Quan Li

Trapped in Nature Land or Summer Weather

Hey, guys! Sorry I've been away so long! There's been a lot of things going on, but I'm going to try and get semi-regular updates going again starting this week! But I'm back, and I now find myself........trapped in crazy summer weather.

A lot of people know summer as that time of the year when the temperature goes so high that you just want to lie back and do nothing. A time of rest and relaxation. Other people know summer as that time of the year when the elements go completely haywire on a regular basis. As a great cartoon teenager once said, "Summer rains, you can never predict them." And indeed it rains, it frequently rains. It can be hot and sunny in the morning and then overcast and rainy just a few hours later. Why do I bring this up?

Because the weather around here, in the eastern United States, was rather.....irritable a few weeks ago. For me, anyway. Every other day it seemed started out bright and sunny, but then devolved into violent overcast storms by late afternoon. I guess that's not really bad since we always need rain, especially in this time of year when it can get very dry, but the storms are what I don't like. I have a particular kind of weather I don't like, and that's thunder/lightning storms. Cliche as it is, I'm afraid of them. Part of it may be the thought that the lightning could be hitting somewhere, causing damage to something or someone. Part of it may be the fact that my sensitivities get shaken by those bright flashes and banging booms. I just don't find it calming in the slightest. I don't mind the rain.......just leave the theatrical additions behind, please.

Are there any types of weather you dislike or like for any particular reason?

NOTE: One quick thing - I've finally updated the Art & Sketches page of the site! So that's something.

I decided to make this image at the hate of my previously stated annoyance with all the thunderstorms we'd been having for awhile (at the time of preparing this post, the storms have actually been less frequent). I thought a fun idea would be to throw Sei headlong into a battle of clashing weather. Storms, wind, snow, heat, lighting, fire!! Okay, fire isn't a type of weather, but......it's hot! Designing Sei's outfit was fun - I wanted him to be too cold in some places but too warm in others. As you can see, he's not too happy about it. I don't know what the visor goggles are for. I just thought it'd be cool if he had some kinda headgear. Just pretend a big burning fireball of a sun is looming ahead of him.

Concerning Ghibli and Reviewers

Pre-post Note: I'm alive! Welcome back to the portrait, everyone! Actually, I'm still technically on hiatus. I have begun work on some new drawings that I hope to share with you all soon. Unfortunately, I still have yet to get a scanner in my new apartment - for now, the best I can do is use the one at my parents' home next time I visit them. I'm still adjusting to life in this apartment, but I've gotten into a pretty good groove, so I anticipate that I'll start settling into a regular drawing groove very soon! With that out of the way, I do have SOMETHING to show you; a small piece I put together with my tablet which was inspired from a very particular place:

What more can be said about Hayao Miyazaki and his animation company Studio Ghibli? They have created some of the most memorable and magical animated features in the world time and time again. The Ghibli films may not be what introduced me to anime, but they certainly helped me see how amazing anime can be. There's really no use for me to critique his films or go into depth about them - it's already been done countless times, and much better than I ever could! So I will leave you with this simple question - what are some of your personal favorite Ghibli films? For me, it would have to be My Neighbor Totoro, Howl's Moving Castle, and after FINALLY seeing it recently, I can add Castle in the Sky to that list. What about you? :)

For those who don't know, "JesuOtaku" is an internet reviewer featured on the website "That Guy With the Glasses"; she specializes in anime reviews. As part of a (two)month long event, she has recently been releasing a series of videos in which she reviews/retrospects on every single Ghibli animated feature, even the ones not released stateside. Because I am a big fan of her anime reviews (and I've always wanted to try drawing Totoro), I drew the two together in this tribute image. If you want to hear some in-depth analysis of the Ghibli movies and an all-around talented individual, you should check out her videos here on blip.

The color scheme is designed to be just like the intro frame that precedes most Ghibli films; this one. Totoro was a lot of fun to draw, although I ended up making him a bit too small next to JesuOtaku. Granted, we usually only see Totoro in size comparison with very small children, so it's probably not that off.

The Reluctant Spy or On the Move

Ever feel like you just gotta get going? Ever feel like the opportunity is out there and it's up to you to reach out and grab it? Or, do you have to get going because of a sense of urgency? You don't have any other choice? An external force has given you no option but to move? Whatever the reason, I have that feeling right now. And the reason is that I am finally leaving my parents' home (I've been living with my folks since college, by the way) and moving into an apartment on my own (with a friend). The build-up to this time has been consuming, it has been hectic, it has been worrisome, but of all the things it could be - it is exciting. Changes are manifesting at this very moment and I'm not entirely sure what they are going to bring - all I can do is charge forward and see what's on the other side. I hope to continue to receive your support from my new location, coming soon!

Will this be effecting updates? Erm.......maybe? I don't mind saying that I have the 3rd installment of Pachi Profiles planned to go up before the end of the month, but those aren't as difficult to plan as a normal sketch. Your safest bet would be to assume that updates will come at about the speed they always have, with only possible delay within the next couple weeks. Please bear with me until then - I want to show you as much of my art as I can, and I promise you many more will be coming after I'm settled down in my new home. Look forward to it! :)

This drawing began as one idea, then it became another! I drew this random young man (let's just call him Spy) and then a long, disjointed corridor behind him. I was envisioning a man running through the hallways of an abstract mind, with weird visuals and sites surrounding him. But then I was staring at the far end, and I thought it would look really cool if he was running from a billowing smoke cloud at the onset of an explosion. So he turned into a spy, stealing important documents and fleeing from an unexplained action set piece. I think the smoke came out a little better here than in the Rising out of Dreams image - probably because it's not as overblown as in that one. This image made me realize that when I draw males, I tend to draw very young adult males and little else. I want to alleviate that, so I gave Spy a small goatee; just to give him some character and not make him look so "teenager".

BONUS: Speaking of changes, I have something to announce concerning the future of drawings that will appear on this blog. Thanks to my dear mother, I received for my birthday a new Intuos4 drawing tablet from Wacom, specifically for the purpose of drawing art digitally! I hold traditional techniques dear to my heart and I'm not going to stop drawing that way, so don't worry if that's what you prefer. However, there are many pros to digital art that appeal to me, and my dabbling in advanced photoshop techniques the last few months made me want to experiment with enhancing the drawing step itself instead of just the after-effects. Again, I'm not going to exclusively switch over to drawing with the tablet, but I am going to experiment with it and see how it goes. In fact, I have a few sketches I did while testing out the tablet that I'd like to show you. These are just very quick, untouched digital doodles, but I wanted to let you see as I learn to use this new tool. These were done in Adobe Photoshop Elements 10, on an Intuos4 Large tablet:

Even though these were aimless sketches, I have to say I was quite impressed with the crazy Simpsons-lipped girl in the upper-right corner. Between her an Chung, I must have a thing for drawing crazy girls. XD

The Companions or Clothing

When I'm drawing one of my characters, there is usually one thing on my mind: the face. The face is the part of a drawing that I MUST get right before I can feel happy moving on to something else - if the expression is wrong, or the eyes are positioned incorrectly, it can ruin an entire drawing for me. This is because when I see a drawing of a person, the first aspect I am drawn to is the face. The subject of an artwork, the primary character, creates a mood for me based on their expression, and I seek out that mood. That helps me form my initial reaction of whether I like or dislike a piece of art. The surrounding and aesthetics come after - for me, I like to go to the expressions first. Even if there is no "characters" in the work; I seek the expression in whatever the primary character of the work is.

But what am I rambling about? This post is about accessories in a drawing, not the face conveying emotion. My point is, I spend so much time obsessing over the emotion of the face in my art, I often neglect the extra bits. This isn't necessarily considered BAD. There are plenty of artists who don't feel comfortable drawing certain things, and they often stick to particular tropes in their work. I in particular have a penchant for drawing characters with simple clothing designs and minimal backgrounds, if any. It's what I tend to draw more than anything else. I still put a lot of attention to detail and care in my work, but most of it goes into making the character look good. Due largely in part to my inexperience with the other aspects.

Oh clothing, oh clothing, why do I have such difficulty with you? Forget about the post details like folds and texture (I could get into a completely different rant about my difficulty with that - one at a time now), I just have a hard time coming up types of clothing to draw that look interesting. I'm not including plain old shirts/jeans/whatever in this because they're run-of-the-mill and take little to no thought to come up with. Best case scenario would be drawings like Union on this Night where I research a particular type of clothing and create a design mixing my own style and whatever I happened upon. Worst case would be ones in which I just make up the design on the fly. I know I've said in a recent post that drawing the first thing that comes to your head can be a fun tactic when you're low on ideas (trust me, I do it all the time), but when you get down to nitty gritty details and accessory designs, you really should have SOME kind of plan for them. It doesn't take too much effort to make believable clothing, but it also doesn't take much more than that to make clothing look ridiculous. Unless ridiculous IS your style - there are exceptions for everything. :p

That's about it this time. I don't have any solid advice for you on clothing because I'm not very experienced with the topic myself. ^^; But if I'd say anything, it's this - unless it's clothing that's not being worn, the item should compliment the owner wearing it. No matter what type of situation it's in - a formal suit, school clothes, casual wear, a weird outfit the character in question would never wear - ANYTHING can work, no matter how ridiculous or straightforward. It's all a matter of finding the thin line that makes the clothing look like clothing. The easiest way to find this line, in my opinion, is to draw your clothing around the character last. Don't start drawing their clothing right where the collar begins - draw them as if they were naked first. (unless they're actually supposed to be, but in which case my tirade about clothing does not apply to you XD) Finalize the pose of the body before doing any accessories - then you'll be able to more firmly accentuate the clothing to the lines you've just defined, rather than trying to figure out the shape as you're creating the clothes. You're performing two steps at once that way, and if you can do it, more power to you. But if you find that makes things difficult or you're just not happy with how your clothed characters look, try it the way I said and see if that makes a difference. :)

I decided I hadn't drawn the siblings in awhile, so I'm letting Chung and Quan share the limelight today. The focus for this one was, of course, the clothing! I had an early vision of the two in Lord-of-the-Rings-esque outfits, or anything that could be considered LoTR-esque. I think I managed that okay with Quan, but Chung....she looks a little more like a gladiator. Or a well-clothed amazonian. Do you guys think so? Ah well. I was going for adventure/fantasy clothing, so both of them fit it well enough. I especially had fun designing their weapons and the shield - they get across the style I wanted more than the characters themselves. For this sketch I tried out the older style of nose these two used to have - I don't know if I like it. I'll probably go back to my more conventional nose style in the future.

A Pachi Break: New Update Venue

Hey guys - no drawing for you today, but I wanted to give you a quick update on a couple things. In the near future, I am going to be moving out of my parents' home and into an apartment with a friend. The preparation is pretty lax right now, but when the time comes closing in, I'm going to be busy and will probably have even less than usual in way of updates. I do have about three drawings on the back burner that should get on the site within the next couple weeks, but after that it'll probably be high and dry for awhile until my move is settled. Hope you all understand. I have some big plans for my work and this blog in the coming year, so I hope you will all stay tuned! =)

In other news, I just recently started a Twitter account! You can find my most recent tweets on the sidebar to the right and a link to follow me. It won't be strictly just about the blog - I'll be talking about pretty much anything there. So in case you were thinking this is a strictly-business twitter, it's not! It's also my personal twitter, so I may use language; fair warning. If my blog ever gets to a point where it's kind of successful I may separate it so I have one Twitter for the blog and one for myself, but for now that doesn't seem that necessary. Anyway, I'll be making notifications about future updates there from now on, so feel free to follow me if you'd like to find out about my drawings that way. I also still have a follow-by-email link if you'd prefer to get your updates via email. Or just stop by every now and then to see if there's anything new. The choice is yours!

Dance Out Blue or Character Dictation

When someone tells you they "can't dance", what they probably mean is they don't "like" dancing. If we were to get technical about it, generic dancing doesn't have any strict style or form - if you simply move your body in some kind of rhythm, you can consider that dancing. Declaring that one can't do the waltz, or the twist, or ballet, is on the other hand justifiable, since a specific type of dance requires skill and practice. Me personally, I'm not a huge fan of dancing. I LIKE it - I think it's fun to dance. But I'm very self-conscious and I get nervous when dancing around a lot of people. But not Sei. I decided as a joke that one of Sei's favorite hobbies would be "dancing at raves". Because really, you look at him, and he doesn't seem to be the type to be into an outing involving mass social interaction. But he goes gun-ho about it; he takes it quite seriously. This is a situation where the technique of "author insertion" probably gets the most use - using our characters to do things we cannot do but wish we could. I am really nervous about dancing for long periods of time, but Sei can do it nightly and with no fear. It really is quite interesting to see how a character will appear and act in a situation you wouldn't expect them to be in.

And on that note, I'll segue into what I really wanted to talk about today - something I call "character dictation". I'm not talking about a character narrating a story, no no no. This is in regards to the art. For many comic artists, work doesn't finish when the chapter/issue is done. Quite commonly, characters have to be drawn for promotional art or greeting cards or holiday images or anything imaginable - miscellaneous works. A lot of my drawings are done in the style of miscellaneous works because I am usually not showing you scenes from my stories - I'm just showing my characters doing "things". I'll use my Summer 2011 pool drawing as an example. The Gogyouo characters are relaxing pool-side. But why? Do they ever take a break at a pool in the story? You don't know. There is no context for the image - it's just them doing "things" that they might do. And thinking about this made me wonder if artists ever have difficulty figuring out WHAT their characters will do. I don't really mean difficulty in picking the theme/setting of the drawing, but difficulty in deciding what character is going to do what in that setting. Group drawings especially are affected by these decisions. For me, character interaction is an extremely important part of Gogyouo, and I make no exception for character interactions in my drawings.

I have one rule/tip alone that I follow in making these decisions, and I hope you may consider trying it out if you're having trouble making them as well. What I call "character dictation" basically means to let the characters themselves decide what they want to be doing. I know full well you can't ask them, but you can consider the character and their personality. Think about their past experiences, their disposition, how they normally react to certain things. To go back to the pool drawing; Sei has fallen into the water and gotten soaking wet. Why is Sei the one to fall in the water? Why not Masashi, or Mikioi? The answer is simple - because Sei would be the one most annoyed by that action. Being the one who created Sei, I know that he doesn't like swimming, because it ruins his hair. So out of all the characters in that drawing, I took these factors into account and picked him because he would be the most irritated AND he would have the most childish reaction because he would be upset about his hair. Basically I decided that Sei falling into the water would provide the funniest reaction. Likewise, why is Mikioi the one relaxing in the shade? Why not Suunuku? Well, because Mikioi is vain - he would much rather sit back and relax when on vacation. Suunuku is the one who would be jumpy and energetic and want to goof off - that's why she's running up with the beach ball.

I realize that to a lot of people, this may seem like a backwards way of thinking. Most artists probably come up with a thing for each character to do last rather than picking a "thing" and then assigning a character to it. Actually, that's how I do it to. But before I start drawing them, I go back and really think about the decisions I've made. Would the character really do this? If not, is there a justifiable reason that is causing the character to do this? One thing I hate to do is to "force" a character to appear in a certain way or doing a certain thing that unrealistically goes against that character - I like to connect everything by reason. Even my most abstract works have reasons behind them - take The Woven Girl for example. It may seem completely random that she is leaning herself against the grip of a giant axe, but it's not; her character has a strong affinity to "weapons", and Suunu's favorite weapon just happens to be the axe. To be fair, you don't know this. Indeed, this whole process is one that usually will go unnoticed by the viewer - all they will see is the final product created from your decisions. But it can make getting their a whole lot easier if you let the character make those decisions for you. You created them, so let them decide what you're going to do with them!

I seem to be doing a lot of drawings with more and more steps taking place in Photoshop lately. To be honest, I think I'm going to go back to strictly traditional for awhile after this one, but it's been fun experimenting with new techniques. For this one, I had originally planned to go full-on traditional. But in order to capture the feel of a night club, there needs to be a lot of darkness. Darkness on paper requires a lot of graphite and/or ink piling up in one place and ruining paper quality. So for this drawing I wanted to try only half-completing the drawing and doing the rest on my computer. The only thing I drew and inked all the way was Sei himself - the crowd I kept in pencil and went to work on it in PS. The eventual result is what you see. At first I was just using varying shades of grey to try and emulate what I could have done on paper on a computer. But then I decided it would be fun to give the image a light hint of color, to better give the impression that Sei was on a dance floor under colored lights; so I went with a kind of greyish-blue. The only thing I'm really not happy about with the image is the way the bottom of the crowd silhouettes blend with the floor - it's not very clean. But overall this was a fun experiment. Please don't ask why Sei has a large ring around his wrist. Glowsticks I get, but large rings? I'll never understand his rave-accessory sense.

Pachi Particulars 02: Color and Blocks

Hey guys, hope I haven't been leaving you too high and dry since the end of Manga Madness! To be honest, for the last week I was unable to come up with any new ideas; not to mention I had a very busy work week so I really couldn't take the time to think about the blog. But I've got some new works on the way, so look forward to those. For now, here's two miscellaneous drawings I worked on recently. One is new, and the other is a twist on an old...

This drawing is featured in the blog gallery, but I never included it in a post. It's also the image that inspired my first From the Action Pages sketch. Anyway, I felt a desire to mess around with a color image again, and though one day I'm going to seriously start an image from scratch with the intent of coloring it proper, I decided to use this old drawing and try to make it look more exciting. Adding in these effects in Photoshop has been mostly self-taught with the help of some tutorial videos on Youtube, but I'm starting to feel like I'm developing my own way of doing it that works. Some day when I make a serious post about coloring images using Photoshop, I'll lay out the steps I take, but I don't really feel qualified now since I'm still a beginner at this kind of coloring. I can say this - even if it's hard, it's a lot of fun. It's very rewarding to see color appear on your characters - it's as if they're coming to life.

As a side note, his boxers are supposed to be a dirty yellow, but all of the shading made them look olive green. Sei would NEVER wear olive green boxers. >_<' It's obviously why he's so angry, right? Right?

I did come up with ONE new idea last week - a drawing showcasing the fact that I had no ideas. So I thought, what would be an ideal way to conceptualize my artist's block? Well, with a block of course. I felt like I was being oppressed by this block, so naturally it needed to be crushing me. The block itself ended up as an amalgamation of random stone shapes with one stone on each side representing how I felt in my current state. It wasn't pre-meditated - it just turned out that way. That's what happens when I draw with zero ideas - randomness. But even so, I still tried to make it look good, but that didn't go over so well. I wish I had left shadows out of the equation in this way, because I came out with an incredibly uneven shade all around. On the bright side, if any of my sketches had to suffer from poorer quality control, I'd rather it be one I wasn't doing seriously.

Now then, I'll answer the question on all your minds: what's with the anthropomorphic teeth? Well, they have arms and legs and mouths because that's funny. My teeth are oppressing me, with actual spite! Hilarious! Oh, no, you mean, why are they teeth to begin with? Let's just say I had a trip to a new dentist last week and the visit was......how do you say.....enlightening. New worries in regards to my hygiene arose that made it doubly difficult for me to focus on the blog, thus the double oppression on my poor anime-self. Speaking of, if anything came out well in this drawing, I'd think that my rendition of myself did. I went for a more cartoony style using fewer lines of detail and less attention to realistic shapes, and I think in that regard it looks alright.

Manga Madness #4: E.O. Catalyst

Welcome one and all, to the final week of Manga Madness! It's been a long month, but it's been quite a trip. We've been through an action adventure in an alternate world, the quest of a vengeful young swordsman in historic Japan, and a tale of horror surrounding a cursed police station. Our final stop is by far the most unusual of my stories - it is a tale of "connection". And so, today's final manga is a futuristic drama one-shot called E.O. Catalyst.

Synopsis: In the year 2187, the Great City of Progress looms over the countryside of the European nation no-one took the time to remember. It goes by the name of "Catalyst". An advanced cerebral chip tech known as the "E.O.", which allows people to link their minds directly to digital machinery, was invented and developed here; it is the lifeblood of Catalyst and the reason for its leap in progress. A complacent young girl named Esther Arghause, age 13, lives in this city, believing a world where everyone is connected to be the norm. But her illusion will be broken once she becomes intertwined in the plans of an embittered rebel with a vengeful past, as she comes to realize what truly is the catalyst for "connection"...

Origin:
At some point during my tenure in college - I saw an anime movie called Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo or The Girl Who Lept Through Time. Without giving too much away, it's a story about a girl who, well, gains the ability to leap through time, and the events that unfold around her as she uses this power. It's a wonderful, wonderful movie that I would heartily recommend to any anime fan who has not already seen it. It left a lasting impression on me personally - it was one of the first anime, of both series and movie length, I'd ever seen that moved me to tears. And I fondly remembered the movie as I was brainstorming ideas for the two new manga to follow Gogyouo and Hyozan. For the second, I decided I wanted to try a tale of drama. Not in the format of a series, but as a one-shot movie. My goal was to create the story of an anime movie that was as moving as Kakeru Shoujo - it held a strong influence on my story, which for the longest time went unnamed. However, it DID have the very lame and temporary working title of Middle School Murderer. Why that title? Read on through the Plot section to find out.

Plot/Character:
To explain the history of the working title of Middle School Murderer, I have to explain some of my own history. So allow me to get personal for a moment. I was always an introvert as a younger child. I still am, to a lesser degree, but I was very much an outcast back in the day. I acted a bit differently from the other kids, and because of that I was a target for verbal bullying through virtually all of elementary, middle, and about half of high school. It was a rough time where my family moved a lot (for unrelated reasons) and I kept hardly any friends. I hit an all-time low once out of depression, where I wished I didn't exist. Even though I did not enjoy it and I'm glad those darker times are behind me, I've drawn a lot of inspiration for my stories from them. The past of Sei from Gogyouo, for example, shares several elements from my own. But then there's today's story, which originally started as a kind of "revenge fantasy" against all of the children who had ever bullied me. Actually, I dreamed up this version of the story back in high school, long before I ever saw Kakeru Shoujo - I simply re-purposed it once I began brainstorming for new ideas. The original version of the story was about a man who had been absolutely shunned as a child - he was hated by everyone and bullied both physically and verbally by his peers. He wasn't good looking and he had no social skills - easy pickings. But then it turns into a tale of ugly karma, where this man grows up to become absolutely hateful and full of vengeance. He begins enacting a series of gruesome murders against those who wronged him as a child. It was an extremely basic slasher story from the split point-of-view of the killer and the law trying to take him down. But the horror cop story inevitably went to D/4-Laws; MSM went pretty much nowhere until I re-purposed it later on.

One thing I decided I had to do for this new version of MSM that I hadn't done for any of my other works was: use a female as the protagonist. From there I came up with the girl you see above (whom until now had been unnamed), Esther Arghause. She was now the main character of the story instead of the killer. One day, 13-year-old Esther is held up by some thugs on her daily walk home, but the man thought to be a cold killer appears and saves her life - by brutally slaughtering them. Esther runs in fright but is not sure what to think of the whole situation. Everyone in town knows about the man and that he is killing people, but it was never imagined that he may not be all bad. Keep in mind that Esther is wise for her age, but she is also quite curious to a fault; she is prone to making possibly bad decisions. Spurred by her curiosity, in the following weeks, Esther begins actively pursuing the man, and she eventually finds where he hides away. She decides to keep his hideout a secret from the police because she wants to learn more about the man and find out if he really isn't all bad, and maybe even convince him to stop killing people. From that point, the two develop a morally odd relationship as Esther begins to see the man as a mysterious big brother and the man sees her almost like a daughter to watch over. The story evolves based on Esther's actions and how she handles the idea of a killer that would spare her life for no apparent reason. It was kind of a morally bankrupt love story: two individuals who should not be related or attached to each other in any way do just that, and the story is what tragically culminates of that relationship.

If I may make a quick aside after that last sentence. I say "kind of" a love story because, well......Esther is 13. She doesn't really know what that kind of love is. And as soon as I said "love story" in context to a grown man and a 13-year-old girl, I'm sure everyone will be having certain thoughts, but........it really isn't meant to be anything like that. I just want everyone to know that I'm not positing underage relationships by way of this story - it's meant to be quite innocent, yet visually unnerving. But not in an explicit manner. The focus of the "relationship that should not be" is more on the fact that she's an innocent citizen and he's a convicted killer, not so much their age difference. I know there's no reason to defend myself because it's my own story, but I just want to be as honest as possible since this once hints at a subject some may find quite unsettling. But anyway.....even that story is not quite the final story I aimed to discuss today. Even that is not what eventually became E.O. Catalyst.

Themes:
Well, I'm fibbing a bit. Catalyst, at its heart, is a morally tragic drama about the relationship between two individuals who should never have any kind of relationship in a logical world. That is the heart of the story, but I felt it lacked context. It lacked any kind of world-building that makes this kind of story possible. Esther becomes enamored with a murderer for no reason other than she's a curious young girl. Maybe some people are okay with that level of simplicity, but I felt like the story needed something more to tie everything together. To "connect" it all together, rather. So I found it. There is one pivotal scene of the story in which the man shares his past with Esther on an incredibly personal level. I imagined a kind of merging of souls (again - this is all meant to be quite innocent); a moment where Esther truly was experiencing the pain of this man's past, and it breaks her heart. I took this scene and the idea of intimate connection to another level for the final aspect of the story - the technology. The world of Catalyst is set in a distant future, taking place entirely within the walls of a city (also named Catalyst) that has grown far in technological advancement. Their claim to fame is the "E.O", a data chip designed to be the missing link between man and machine. Many human beings born in Catalyst City are implanted with the E.O. chip (attached to the brain) and interface tools and become a subset of ever-growing test subjects. Everything in Catalyst is digitally enhanced, and human beings possessing the E.O. can reveal a connection wire from a small hole bored into the left side of the skull. This wire can be directly connected to any authorized device in the city; information is sent to the E.O. chip and amplified directly to the user's brain. This device provides the overall theme for the story - connection. In a future where connection has become all about technology and how to continually interface man with the machines they created, suddenly a morally questionable relationship between a young girl and a murderer can be viewed with more meaning. Because it's a REAL connection between two people not brought about by technology. That in a nutshell is E.O. Catalyst: it's a tale that warns against the advancements of technology that will eventually dehumanize the human race. How can we attempt to connect everything, if we forget how to meaningfully connect?

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And that's it, everybody! Thank you all so much for sticking with me for this month of manga stories. These were just sneak peaks into the worlds of my stories, so I hope you enjoyed the little glimpses I let through. As it is currently, I only have these four established stories running through my head, but I'm sure as the years go on I'll dream up more and more. And perhaps I'll share them here, too. But you can definitely count on seeing artwork from all of these stories appearing here at some time or another (though I imagine Gogyouo-Sama will still be my primary focus). With that said, we'll be returning to regular unscheduled updates for awhile, so thank you again for joining me on March Manga Madness!

One quick extra note: I've just added Email Alerts to the blog. Just enter your email address into the prompt on the side bar and submit and you'll be notified whenever I post!

Originally I was planning to do a rather artsy piece. It was going to be very minimalist - just Esther facing away from the viewer with her arms spread like wings before a burst of light, and in the foreground behind her would be a collection of symbolic imagery placed deliberately to convey the mood of the story. This drawing was being planned in my head several months in advance. BUT, I then did the Freebird drawing. Girl with arms spread was out. Then I did the drawing for D/4-Laws, where I tried adding a collection of symbolic images, and it came out ok, but it did not look very profound. That was out too. All I knew was that I wanted to draw Esther, with her attention shifted away from us. I decided to try an angle that I don't often draw full poses for: a direct side angle. It's another one of my weak points, but I think I did well here. As usual I totally fail when it comes to clothing. I can never seem to decide what kind of clothes I want a character to have, so I usually just throw some kind of robes or one-piece cloth on them, because they're easy to draw. One of these days I'm going to meaningfully plan out what a character is going to wear before I draw it, I swear. You can also see my amateur attempt at a "future city" in the bottom left. The structure in the center is supposed to represent the control tower that houses all of the connection wires that keeps Catalyst running. I don't know where a barren clif like this would be inside the walls of a technologically advanced future city.

Also, there is a dog. No reason, there's.......just a dog. I felt like Esther needed a pet sidekick, so I gave her a dog. :p

Manga Madness #3: Dead/Four-Laws

Here we go, Manga Madness Week 3! Today's manga is an action thriller that goes by Shi-Housoku, or Dead/Four Laws.

Full Title: Shi-Housoku
Translation: Laws of Death, The Four Laws, Dead/Four-Laws

Synopsis: Ryuusuke Yamanaka, age 28, is the newest rookie in Criminal Investigations at the Ebetsu Police Station. His goal is to become the best investigator in Hokkaido and stop at nothing to bring criminals to justice, as atonement for his late wife who lost her life in an attempted robbery. As the days grind on, Ryuusuke hears various tidbits and tall-tales from his colleagues; apparently, Ebetsu Station is cursed. Every 25 years, an ex-cop known only as the "Policeman's Ghoul", a man who is supposed to be dead, comes to town in late fall and makes people disappear. Ryuusuke barely pays any mind to their stories. However, one day he begins to hear whispers in the streets as he leaves work. And when a man wearing a cop's badge unlike any he's ever seen before begins tailing him in the shadows, Ryuusuke just might become a believer........

Origin:
For the longest time, Gogyouo-Sama was the only story to my name. My entire focus was spent on developing it and nothing else. But when I came up with Hyozan, I realized how fun it was to make up more new worlds and stories - I suddenly was driven to create a bigger library of characters to pull from. I started brainstorming and eventually dreamed up two new stories - the first of which being this one. Both Gogyouo-Sama and Hyozan were shounen action works at heart, so this time I wanted to try something different. I decided to try a horror/mystery action work, and I came up with it from a very simple concept: a pun. In Japanese the character for death (死) is prounced "shi". The character for the number 4 (四) is usually pronounced "yon", but in some instances it can also be pronounced as "shi". The two kanji have similar radicals as well. Because of this, 4 is a very unlucky number in Japan, and is often not even used in certain places since it gives allusions of "death". I challenged myself to create a story based on this, and Shi-Housoku is what came of it. I also give it the fancier English title of Dead/Four-Laws because the actual translation (Death Laws) sounds a bit too much like Death Note.

Character/Plot:
For my past works, I had already utilized a teenager and a child as protagonists. D/4-Laws is a darker story meant for a more adult audience, so I wanted to try out an adult protagonist. Enter Ryuusuke Yamanaka, a spineless wimp aiming to make it big. If I could compare him to any characters from my other works, I would pick Masashi from Gogyou; although he doesn't live in to the "spineless wimp" stereotype quite as strongly. He's a wimp, but he's also quite friendly and social, despite his insecurities (he's had those white streaks in his hair since his adolescence, and is constantly teased about them). He also has drive - in his early 20's as a young married man, he tragically lost his wife when a burglar broke into their home while he was out on the job (working as a night-shift security guard); the two had a struggle that brought about his wife's death. This event drove Ryuusuke to work towards becoming a full-fledged cop so he could actively pursue criminals, and hopefully prevent the same tragedy that befell his wife for others.

This is Ryuusuke's backstory that brings us to the starting point of the series, where he has achieved part of his goal and become a Criminal Investigations officer in Ebetsu. The story begins with its serious tone, but also rather light-hearted, as we see Ryuusuke adjusting to his new position and co-workers at Ebetsu Station. He learns quickly that several of his fellow officers are heavily into the occult and all things supernatural, forming a sort of "occult gang" within the station. It turns out Ryuuske's assigned partner is the president of this so-called gang, and he gets coerced into joining them in their hobby, even though he has no interest in the occult. While taking a weekend excursion to a ghost town, the gang tells Ryuusuke of the supposed "curse" of Ebetsu Station. In the early 1900's, there was a special cop who worked at Ebetsu Station who was sort of a spy; he would infiltrate criminal hideouts and leak information back to the police. He was a sadistic man who loved his work far too much; he would often kill criminals in cold blood without giving them proper trial, which gave the other cops reason to fear him. They called him "The Policeman's Ghoul" because of his pale complexion and sunken-in eyes. The man's corruption became worse and worse over time; he began acting as a spy not only for the police, but also for the criminals he was supposed to be spying on. The final straw was pulled when the Ghoul murdered a fellow officer in broad daylight. No-one knows what caused him to snap, but he went on a rampage, officers left and right, until the remaining police force of Ebetsu pinned him down and shot him dead. The incident became a legend in Ebetsu - and the Occult Gang is convinced that every 25 years, the Ghoul rises from the grave to seek revenge on the Ebetsu police. Ryuusuke, of course, thinks the story is ridiculous and doesn't believe a word of it, especially the '25 years' bit. But as the days go on, Ryuusuke can't help but let his mind wander back to the story; though he did not believe it, the story itself chilled him to the bone. The story continues to haunt him as strange things start occurring wherever he goes in town, and he discovers that someone really is haunting him. One day he is led by strange happenings and whispers to an abandoned subway tunnel, where he finds a man waiting for him. The meeting of Ryuusuke and this man sets forth a series of events that will plunge the town of Ebetsu into chaos once again.

Themes:
The title Dead/Four-Laws refers to a set of cryptic, unwritten rules that are the Ghoul's credo - the way he performed his work and how he balanced his dual nature as a cop and a criminal. In this story, the sides of right and wrong as defined by the "law" is a prevalent theme. Ryuusuke is a moral man - he always follows the rules down to the letter, and he vows to not let any criminals get away with "breaking the rules" after the death of his wife. So, what would happen if Ryuusuke himself were forced to break some of these rules? Or what if he was made to follow a new set of rules that contradicts the old rules? Is he still a moral man because he's "following the rules", regardless of what the rules are? These are the kinds of situations that D/4-Laws examines: satirizing the legal system by presenting its corruption as a supposedly antagonistic entity and a slew of moral dilemmas for those who uphold it. Honestly, the whole "occult ghost story" setup is mostly a backdrop for these bigger themes, but there are still plenty of supernatural themes and events in the story that ultimately drive the plot forward and will truly put Ryuusuke's morality to the test.

That's three down, one to go. Tune in again next week for the finale of Manga Madness, Part 4!

It took me awhile to figure out exactly what kind of image I wanted to represent D/4-Laws. The mood is radically different from my first two stories, so I wanted a mood shift in the imagery as well. After several test images and one re-do, I ended up with this image of Ryuusuke in despair, being towered over by the Ghoul (that's not really what the Ghoul looks like - it's just how I've chosen to depict him here). As for the imagery in the background: the sign on the right is a Japanese stop sign that says "tomare" (止まれ　- imperative of the verb "stop"); the words in the frame on the left say "Ebetsu Station"; the badge is based of the design of an actual Hokkaido policeman's badge; and the gravestone is meant to be a possible image of the Ghoul's grave. I know it seems really weird that they would put "GHOUL" on the grave instead of his actual name, but I haven't given him one yet and I was running out of ideas at this point in the drawing. ^^; Once again, the images for the logo were drawn by hand and then combined and touched up in Photoshop. The shading in the background was also done with Photoshop.

Clover in the Window

I'm taking a quick break at the halfway point of Manga Madness to wish you all a happy St. Patrick's Day! As a gift for you all, I drew up this image at the last minute. It's a little special this time, so be sure to check out the Linear Notes section for more on it. Other than that, it's a short and sweet post today. Whether you're out with friends, having a party, or just relaxing over the weekend, enjoy yourselves! ^_^ I'll see you next week with my third manga story!

The quality of this image itself I would say is kind of poor. I decided on Thursday I wanted to do a quick image for St. Patty's, so I drew this image of Chloe (the girl, whom I have chosen this name for just now while typing this). It was rushed, which is why the curtains aren't very symmetrical. I was trying to give an effect that there was wind coming from the left, but it hardly shows. It's not really a St. Patty's image so much as it's an image with something St. Patty's-related in it. Anyway, as you can clearly tell, I've done something very different in this image than usual - color.

This was also a last minute decision. I wanted to see if I was capable of coloring an image using Photoshop. The result is what you see above. One problem is I really didn't do it right. If I wanted to do a proper color image with Photoshop, the initial sketch would need to be straight-up lineart, with no shading at all. I had shaded pretty much the entire image. Again, you can tell that I decided to do this at the last minute. This was my first time doing this, so the final result is very amateurish. As it is, it's kind of a mix between a digital and graphite sketch as opposed to one or the other, which IS its own style. But one day I hope to be able to do color images that look crisp and clean. I am a beginner at this kind of thing, so any criticisms or advice is appreciated. Let me know what you think and if you'd like to see other drawings done like this. For now, I'm still going to focus primarily on grey-scale sketches as I'm more familiar with them, but I'd definitely like to try out color some more in the future.

Manga Madness #2: Hyozan

Good day everyone, and welcome to week two of Manga Madness! Without further ado, let's jump right into today's manga; a piece set in Japanese history known as, Hyozan.

Full Title: 魔滅する者ヒョザン (Mamessuru Mono Hyozan)
Translation: Devil Douser Hyozan (Iceberg)

Synopsis: The year is 1869 - the aftermath of the Meiji Restoration. In this new era, broken strands of the past continue to linger throughout the land. One day in the Kitakami Mountains, a village is assaulted by a band of marauders declaring that all who practice evil must appear before them to be 'judged'. But when an unknown wanderer passing through town wielding a samurai's sword challenges them in the village's stead, the marauders cast judgement on the entire town by burning it to the ground and killing everyone in it - as a lesson to the interfering wanderer. Only a young boy and girl survive. Without a home to return to, they now head out on a mission: to seek out the ones who destroyed their home and the man who provoked the destruction.

Origin:
For one of my lit classes in high school, we were given an assignment to write a collection of four short stories in a booklet. I put a significant amount of time into all four, but I made one in particular the main focus; the feature presentation, if you will. It was called, "Wandering Swordsman: You Who Stole my Pride". In it, a young boy named Toshi attempts to befriend a passing wanderer who sleeps in the streets - refusing lodging and food from the other villagers. In the middle of the night, a demon attacks the young girl Sakiko, who was out late in the fields. Toshi rushes to her aid but nearly gets himself killed, until the wanderer appears brandishing a sword and slays the beast. Toshi's childish pride is broken by the event, since he was unable to save Sakiko on his own and had to be rescued, and his curiosity for the wanderer grows into jealous hate. Toshi vows to become a greater swordsman than the wanderer ever was, and the story ends. A year later, I had another assignment for a different lit class in which I had to write a screenplay for a movie. The Wandering Swordsman story had left me with a rather delighted impression, and I was overcome with desire to revisit it for this new assignment. I tweaked the original story and came up with new ideas to make it fit the length of a movie, and it became "Hyozan: The Lost Soul Moves". "Devil Douser Hyozan" is basically the same as that screenplay, trimmed down into more of a regular series format.

Character/Plot:
Hiruma Toshi (his first name is Toshi; for this story I am referring to the characters' full names in the traditional way since the story takes place in a traditional setting) lives in a small village at the base of the Kitakami mountain range. The history he lives in is one that comes from the real history of Japan, but with some added substance and facts to suit the story I'm telling. For example, the Kitakami Mountains are a real location - they can be found in the Iwate prefecture in Japan. Pretty much all of the story takes place within and at the base of these mountains. The marauders who attack his village, however, come from a special group of individuals of my own creation. As Toshi will discover later on, they are called the Taimatsu Group. Little seems to be known about this rouge group of ronin soldiers other than their M.O. - they seek out individuals who have broken the law and punish them, often at greater severity than the committed crime and while exposing danger to innocents close to the guilty party. They exist in the hectic aftermath of the Meiji Restoration - I chose this part of history because it was a radical transitional period; the Hyozan story is just one such event that "could have" occurred during this time when the old ways were hanging by a thread to make way for the new. One day, these men of the Taimatsu Group come to Toshi's village. They take a young girl, Rurikawa Sakiko, hostage, demanding that a certain man of the village, who they claim is guilty of a crime, appear before them. Being a close friend to Sakiko, Toshi steps forward to save her, but he gets quickly beaten to an inch of his life by the gleeful Taimatsu. As they move to kill the girl for the village's non-compliance, a mysterious man with a sword appears and saves her life. The Taimatsu seem to recognize the man, identifying him as "Hyozan" (the same as the title). Despite saving their lives, the appearance of this "Hyozan", who seems to be an enemy of the Taimatsu, is quite unfortunate. In a rage, the Taimatsu label the entire village as criminals and they go on a rampage, killing everyone they find and burning the village to the ground. In the initial confusion, Toshi and Sakiko manage to run and hide from the attackers, and the man called "Hyozan" vanishes as quickly as he appeared. This all is the main bait and hook of the story, but the real content begins following these events. After that traumatizing day, Toshi's heart grows sour and cold; he vows to seek out the Taimatsu and the mysterious Hyozan and make them pay for destroying all that he held dear. Sakiko stays by his side, despite her desire to move on from the past and rebuild their lives, as they travel through the mountains to find traces of the two elusive parties.

Themes:
Hyozan is a study of adolescence and the inner-workings of a mind that sees the world through inexperienced eyes. Toshi represents all of the negative aspects of a protagonist that you can think of. He's selfish and immature. He's prideful and cocky. After the day he lost everyone except his best friend, he becomes a demon of vengeance - his eyes become focused only on the goal of finding the ones who ruined his life. And his true desire for seeking out Hyozan is as petty as you can get - he's jealous because Hyozan had to step in and save Sakiko, the girl he loves, for him. What I wanted to emphasize most of all in this story was how one's shortcomings can come to a head and make a bad situation even worse. Most notably this is seen in how Hyozan's heroic deed dooms the entire village. Toshi exemplifies this as well as he takes the situation of his entire family and village being destroyed and makes it worse by effectively destroying himself - eradicating all his other emotions except for his hatred. As he begins in this tale, Toshi is honestly heading down the path of the villain more so than that of the hero. This is why Sakiko is with him - she acts as his emotional weight; she takes every chance she gets to try and bring him back to the way he used to be. I think it's interesting to see a protagonist who is supposed to be a hero go down a rather dark, villainous road almost immediately. This is another idea I like to play with in this story: the undefined lines of good and evil. We're never really sure who is good and who is bad. Toshi is the "hero", but he's driven to the path of vengeance. The mysterious Hyozan suddenly disappears when the fires start as if he were suddenly unable to help anymore. The Taimatsu themselves are committing horrible acts, but they claim to be on the side of justice. These undefined lines only continue to get more scrambled as the story goes on.

The word "Hyozan" means "iceberg". I picked this name for several reasons. One, it sounds cool. Two, more importantly, it creates imagery of that well-known saying: "the tip of the iceberg". I don't use this analogy to imply that things are bigger than they actually seem, but rather that our preconceptions are often misleading. Our actions don't always have the outcome we expected. Saving the children seemed like the right thing to do, but it ended up costing the lives of everyone else. That situation is extreme, but I construct those situations to specifically be extreme to make my point. In this story, I would really want the reader to question every action the characters take; to ponder if it's right or wrong, and what could happen as a result. Define your own lines surrounding the characters and try to figure out who is in the right.

Thanks for stopping in again, guys! Come by next week for Manga Madness Part 3!

I didn't mention it above, but this series contains an element of sword fighting action, which explains the shounen-style of the image. The boy and girl in the bottom right are Toshi and Sakiko (the same girl from my Freebird image); the man in the upper left is Hyozan himself. This time, since I was already using Photoshop to create the logo for the series (once again, the main features of the logo were hand drawn, then touched up in PS), I decided to use it to add a few after effects to the image and enhance it, namely the gradients creating the shadow behind Hyozan's head and faded texture of his clothing past the draw line. I think it's done pretty amateurishly, but it was a fun experiment and I'll definitely try it out in the future. I was going to add a background pattern as well, but I decided it distracted from the image too much. The diagonal text under the title says, "Let it fly, Hazumimaki!" The 'Hazumimaki' is Toshi's signature sword attack (He trains in swordsmanship in order to stand a chance against those who he's pursuing), and it's also what he's doing in the image. The rotating object is after-images of his shinai (a wooden training sword found in dojos) being quickly spun around by his right hand. The other text is an author credit; but for this piece I decided to use a Japanese pen name I made up for myself some years ago: Souzou Daiguchi. It felt more appropriate given the more traditional backdrop of Hyozan.