Pachi Review Night: Free! Iwatobi Swim Club (Service of the Fans)

It's the eve before that most haunted of days. To tantalize your sensibilities and chill you to your very bone, I have prepared something terrifying, something that will make you jump out of your skin in abject horror. That thing is......BOYS SWIMMING. WOOOOooooOOOOooooo~!!!!

Truth is I don't have a Halloween post this year. I just have my review of the anime Free! Iwatobi Swim Club, which finished airing a few weeks back and as per my schedule of procrastination, the timing of posting said review comes up now, the night before Halloween. Oops. XD Anyway, that's all I've got for you tonight, but I hope you enjoy it! I may do another short summer anime review soon, but for now don't expect anything else until the current season concludes.

I've realized that for quite some time I haven't been indulging in this blog for any purpose other than anime reviews as of late. And while I enjoy doing them, I feel that I've drifted from the blog's original purpose, which was solely as a venue to share my art. Lately I've only been drawing for reviews and not so much drawing for myself, which I regret. I can't promise a lot, but I will try to return to more art for the sake of art posts in the future. Having a purpose in mind when I'm drawing is nice, but sometimes it's good to just draw freely. Hey look, I tied everything around! On that note, on to the review! :D

Free! Iwatobi Swim Club

Say goodbye to summer, kids - this drawing has the last of it you'll see for quite awhile. I wasn't able to escape my crippling fear of drawing the human body below the neck on this one, so I dove in and did the best I could. Sorry about your hands, boys! ;_; It was more important to me to bring across the difference between Makoto's abs and Haruka's abs specifically, rather than make them look well-drawn. Pachi Penguin is replacing Rin in this image - hence the shark teeth! One of the biggest changes on this piece in comparison to my others is that I took a backwards approach to the shading. Normally I go a darker shade from the base to add shadows, but this time I treated the original base as the shadow, and instead went lighter to create a sun sparkled effect. After all, these are glistening male bodies, they gotta look shiny! As a motif, I wanted a kind of nostalgic feel since the show relies heavily on nostalgia, so I added a desaturated filter to give the look of a photograph.

Pachi Review Night: The Eccentric Family (Be Interesting!)

Happy October, friends! I've got two anime reviews coming to you this month, and tonight comes the first. Follow the link ahead to check out my review on the unusual slice-of-life-comedy filled to the brim with furry critters: The Eccentric Family! Hope you enjoy it! :)

Take note that I have updated the Reviews page. It now displays the art I have drawn for my reviews, starting from Blast of Tempest; so now the page should be a little more interesting to look at beyond just a series of text links! ^^;

The Eccentric Family

I wanted this drawing to be an ode to fall, and though North Carolina where I live doesn't look anything like this yet, I thought it fitting as The Eccentric Family showed off many beautiful styles of nature through the changing seasons, but their depiction of the late fall enamored me the most. The shrine gate here is rather small, but let's assume it's a gate specifically made for tanuki or something. Finding the right shades of red and making them contrast with each other was a lot of fun. Adding lights that equate the hustle and bustle of a city in the distance was a neat idea; it's a lighting technique I'd like to try out in the future.