Union on this Night

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On this night, hand in hand, they look to the stars. They see their future waiting in that far-off magnificent world. And they vow one day to return to that place, on the road forged through the snow and into the sky, together.

Merry Christmas everyone! In-between the excitement of tomorrow morning and tearing through wrapping paper to your gifts, I sincerely hope you will keep in mind the true spirit and goodness of this time of year. This is a time to be with those you love, just as Seikun and Suunuku are doing. Whether it's your family, your partner, or a friend, be merry with each other! My gift to all of you is the above image I worked hard on for the past month. No "About the Image" section today, as I don't want to keep you longer from your holiday activities. :)

As a side note, I've finally updated my archive page. Sorry for the delay on that!

This will be may last update in 2011. I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to visit this blog as I'm figuring this stuff out for the past 5 months and who supported me and my art along the way. You can expect to see even more updates and more art in 2012. Thank you again so much, and have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Love you guys~

A Pachi Break: Censorship

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The Assault Unseen

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"What's going on? I felt his punch hit me, but he clearly missed!"

No deep meaning or alternative topic behind this one, folks. Just a little action scene I put together over the last three days. :)

About the Picture:

I had a lot of fun with this one. One of my favorite types of drawings back when I did nothing but doodle in my notebooks, next to profile shots, was action scenes. It's been a long time since I drew a good action scene, so I wanted to give one a shot. My thought process going into this was, "I want someone punching Sei in the face, and I want Sei reeling from the attack in an over-the-top fashion. I couldn't pull it off with the same intensity as I'd pictured in my head, but I was able to capture the "movement". A lot of times it's difficult to convey movement in a drawing because, well, a drawing doesn't move. Usually when I draw a person in motion it looks either completely realistic, or it looks as if they were frozen in that position rather than moving into it. But I can feel the motion in this one, so I'm happy with it.

The reason I've named this drawing "The Assault Unseen" requires explanation of Quan's abilities. Quan isn't physically connecting with that punch on Seikun - I probably should've made him smaller to make the gap between them more obvious. However, Quan possesses a power he calls the "Magical Fist". Using his energy, he can manifest an invisible extension of his fist when punching. Even if he misses, the Magical Fist will extend beyond his physical range and still connect with the same force. This was my first time displaying Quan's ability on paper, and I was struggling over the best way to represent it. Truth be told, this version is not what I originally designed his power to look like, but I decided that doing it this way would be a time-saver since I spent so much time on the characters themselves.

Come Home, Come Home

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On a chilled night, the rain splashes against the walls - and you can only watch the drops pitter-patter down through the glass. The hour is late; you've done all you can. Technology can't bring you comfort. All the other thoughts vanish except, 'Where are you?' With no outlet for answer, you pace and pace and pace. Like clockwork you peer through the shudders, expecting the light to finally be coming up your street this time. But nothing. The wait is extended. Prayer is your one true friend, and you consult him again and again. The rain falls unyielding to your pain, and it goes on through the night.

I sincerely hope I didn't upset anyone with the above passage. But this is the feeling I hoped to convey with this drawing. I am a very excitable, nervous person. Sometimes I jump to conclusions. There has been more than one occasion that my parents would go out in the evening, on their own, and I alone was left to look after the house. Unforseen delays can always occur, and for whatever reason they didn't always return at the planned time. Sometimes I would try to call them and find out why, only to get no answer. At these times, especially at nighttime and in bad weather, I would find myself drawn to the dining room, where there are two windows facing the front yard and the street. I become glued to this room, pacing and looking out the windows every 10 seconds for a sign of their car. They've always eventually returned, and they've always had good reason for why they were late, but during those times I enter a dark place where suddenly nothing else matters except the well-being of my family. I'm sure everyone has experienced this kind of pain and worry at some point in their lives. A family member doesn't return home when they say the would, a pet runs away, someone scheduled to come to your home on a visit doesn't show up, any number of things. This drawing is meant as a symbol for that emotional period when you can't help but wonder...

And before you wonder - no, I have not had this situation happen recently. I just decided on a whim I wanted to draw something depicting this emotion and situation.

One other thing - I won't be doing a holiday update this week, so I want to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving in advance! Eat lots of turkey and then sleep a lot on Friday! =)

About the Picture:

The first thing you may notice is that it consists entirely of new characters. I've never used either of these characters before - in fact they never existed until this drawing. I decided for this drawing I wanted to test advanced shading techniques and alternate hairstyles. All things considered, the hair isn't THAT inspired, but I think they came out okay. I don't know if these two are supposed to be related or not, but let's just say they both feel the same about whoever is "missing". I liked being able to give a character facial hair - I want to experiment with that more in the future.

The key piece of this image is really the reflection in the sliding glass door (I really hope it actually looks like a reflection). This is why I took so long to get started and finish this drawing - I locked my brain inside a room of bouncing ideas to try and figure out the best way to draw a reflection. To be fair, it should really be much closer to the real body if we want to be realistic; but I screwed the rules so that the reflection would be visible at all. I also had difficulty with the rain, because I had to teach myself to draw/shade an object that did not have an outline (the rain drops). All in all, this drawing was mostly a test to see if there were certain techniques I was capable of conveying, so if there's a downgrade in quality from previous updates, that's why. The bed was supposed to have a floral print pattern, but it turned into a bunch of squiggly lines and you can barely see it now anyway because of my shading. Also that's water coming off the umbrella, not blood. Without shading it would've been hard to see.

Everybody Hail to the Great Pumpkun King

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Every Halloween he rises out of the pumpkin patch cornfield that he deems most sincere, and from his wake he releases many a tortured soul to steal Christmas away from Sandy Claws and his elves, all while wearing a chillingly frightening William Shatner mask............no, I'm sorry, it's just Seikun with a pumpkin on his head. Please don't mind him, folks - he's a tad strange.

Do you love Halloween? I do. Do you trick-or-treat? I...don't anymore. But I still love Halloween, and the traditions that come with it. Whether you go out for candy, have a big party, or just put on masks and try to scare people walking down the street, whatever you're doing, I hope you all have a safe and happy Halloween tonight! Just don't spend it waiting for the Great Pumpkin. He probably won't come.

Here's a trivia question! Can you guess what famous horror movie poster Seikun is reenacting in the picture?

About the Picture:

I had already planned to do a "Halloween"-themed image for today, and I got the inspiration to do one of Seikun shambling like a zombie after looking at the aforementioned horror movie poster. Originally it was supposed to be comical. The two in the foreground (Seikun's school friends, Ako, who has already been featured here, and Mori) were always running away scared, but with less raw emotion. And Suunuku was going to be to Seikun's left, jabbing him in the side for being such a goofball. But after I drew the pumpkin face and Seikun's figure, I realized that it actually did come off creepy - it really looked like Seikun might be possessed by some other worldly construct. He's coming out of a corn field for two reasons - one, I think corn fields are creepier than pumpkin patches; two, it covers a lot of the page so it saved me some work on the background. The inking process was painstaking on this one because I tried to make the lines less defined and more atmospheric, but I think it turned out well. I've also realized that Ako and Chung kind of look alike sometimes. I'll have to be careful about that.

Nostalgia Week Part 3: The Backyard

Greetings everyone, and welcome back to the final installment of my Nostalgia Week! To close out the week, I'm going to be looking at a more personal memory that is not a franchise like the other two, but I'm still hopeful that some of you will understand the kind of thing I'm talking about. Anyway, today's topic is........the backyard.

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Sounds rather simple, I know......but yeah, the backyard. At my current home, my backyard is very small and on a hill. Not to mention that over half the yard is covered with pine straw for our plants and trees. And it's tightly fenced in from all sides, even more so than when we first moved here. So there's not much room to run around to play. But I'm an adult - I don't do much "playing in the yard" these days anyway. The only reasons I usually go back there are to sit and mingle with friends in the fresh air or mow the lawn.

11 or 12 years ago, before I moved to my current residence, my family had a different backyard. This yard was big, and I mean big. Almost the length of a football field. And it had very few trees, so most of the yard was clear to the sunshine and looked even more expansive. When I lived in that place, I was still in my video game Nintendo binge as you'll recall from Wednesday's post, but when I wasn't playing games, I wanted to go out into that backyard. I felt like I was staring into a wide open plain when I looked out the window there, just begging to be explored.

And explore it we did, my brother and I. We found all kinds of things to distract us in that backyard. Most of the space was clear and clean, but in the back were all kinds of treasures. There was a tool shed that came with the house where my father kept all his equipment. It was in front of that shed that him, my brother and I would play baseball and frisbee together. Behind the tool shed was perhaps the most bizarre find of all - a tiny shuffle board court! We have no idea why there was a shuffle board court, it was just there! With all of the objects needed to play it, no less. And we did indeed play it, sometimes. Behind the court, there was a ditch leading into the woods behind the house. We would often pass through a small opening on the right side and get our shoes dirty in the mud after rainstorms - I liked to pretend I was an adventurer uncovering unknown lands. Adorning the covering of the ditch were a wall of honey suckles - I always looked forward to getting to taste them every spring/summer.

In addition to the many fun places that were already there, in time our parents added other goodies that made our time in the yard even more exciting. One year, we helped our father (though he did most of the work) build us a tree house. It probably never got used very much now that I think about it, but I fondly remember keeping toys and games up there and having little "meetings" and hang-outs with friends. We even got a trampoline for that yard, which was perhaps the greatest thing ever given to us to play with. We bounced for hours and hours and hours. We did some crazy things on that trampoline - there were a few times where we sprayed water on it and had extra fun slipping and sliding as we bounced. In hind sight, that was an incredibly dumb thing to do and we could have gotten hurt easily; but hey, we were kids. Kids do dumb things, right? Our house never really became "the popular house" because of our backyard; we never had very many friends in that town. But I can recall one birthday where we had a lot of acquaintances over and every one of them wanted to jump on that trampoline forever. It was a really great feeling - it made me feel like our backyard was really special and that it had the potential to bring people together to play.

Pretty much every memory I have of that backyard is a happy one. I miss it all the time, but I'm glad I don't have a big backyard NOW. I really don't have time to be playing in the yard all the time anymore, so I suppose it's a bit bittersweet. Did you ever have a backyard that was really big, or did you know someone who did? Was there any kind of special thing about your backyard - any kind of thing that made you excited or filled you with wonder? That made it so you couldn't wait to go out and play? I'd love to hear about your own experiences. :)

About the Picture:

This picture only took a few days to come together (I usually only spend two hours max a day on drawing)........but it was a toughie. I knew from the start that I wanted this to be a scene picture - it's not just the characters in a white void, they're in an actual place. Unfortunately that meant I had to be more liberal with shadows and I picked a rather intricate set-up for shadows to play upon. There was no room to draw the sun, but I decided it's about directly overhead Doron (the one lying on top of the structure). The proportions of the tree aren't exactly right.........I think in the end it doesn't really make sense for there to be that many branches left above the tree house - surely most of them would have had to be cut down, right? To try and counter that, I would say that this is a very big tree; so try and imagine that the tree house is small and built in the middle of the tree, so it's almost hidden by the branches if you were to look at it from farther away. But it doesn't look like it has enough branches for that, does it, there's not enough thickness......oh well. It's very unprofessional for me to say these things - a truly good picture would speak for itself, but this is why I'm an amateur. Drawing the characters in their positions here was fun. Doron was the very first thing I drew. I've never drawn anything in that pose at that angle before, so I was super nervous it was going to take me many tries - but it actually came out perfect on the first sketch. I'm not one to brag most of the time, but I was very proud of myself for that. As a side note - this is not what the tree house from my old backyard looked like. I can't remember at all what that one looked like exactly, so the one in the picture was just designed in my head as I went. They all look a little old to be playing in a tree house, don't they...?

And that's it for Nostalgia Week! Thanks so much for sticking around and checking it out - the next update will be a return to "one-post" topics. But let me know what you thought about this themed week format. I'm definitely considering doing more of them in the future, so your feedback is appreciated! And if there are any precious memories from your childhood you'd like to share, feel free! =)

Nostalgia Week Part 2: Nintendo

Welcome, everyone, to Part 2 of my Nostalgia Week! Today I'll be reminiscing about a pastime very dear to my heart - video games. In particular, a certain company that revolutionized the industry with their classic games like......

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......well, not QUITE like the above, but they have one that is very similar. You guessed it - I'm talking about Nintendo. This one is long because I have a lot to say on the subject, so if you don't like video games, I suggest you skip today's post.

When I was a child, there were many times we would visit friends and family throughout the year. I remember one of my cousins, five years older than me, loved to play this game called "Super Mario Bros. 3" on a Nintendo Entertainment System. Or......maybe she was playing "Super Mario World" on an SNES; my memory is fuzzy in that regard. Maybe she had both. Regardless, this was my first introduction to the world of video games. I still have faint memories of the classic music playing as my cousin cruised through Bowser's castle. It was through our friends and family that my brother and I became aware of this kind of gaming, and we loved trying it out every chance we'd get. At our cousin's, we'd play Mario and a volleyball game that I think was Kings of the Beach. At our mom's friend's place, we'd play Duck Hunt with that curious orange and gray gun. A little later from those years we made friends who had a Super Nintendo, on which I remember playing the original Mortal Kombat and Jurassic Park, and one who had a Sega Genesis, where I was first introduced to the Sonic games, respectively. We were fascinated by these games and wanted to play more. But at the time we could only play when we went to visit someone who owned them. We did, however, own several games for the PC, but these were old DOS games that I could go into a whole separate discussion about, so I won't bring them up here.

My first gaming console I could call my own was a handheld - a GameBoy, given to me by my parents. With it I got my first personal experience playing as the famous Mario in Super Mario Land, and I contracted the fever known as the Pokemon craze (which hadn't yet taken off) through my copy of Pokemon Blue. The GameBoy and its many reincarnations has always been a staple of my gaming collection, but my real big step into the world of gaming didn't happen until one birthday in 1997 (I think - again, my memory is a bit fuzzy here). My brother and I knew we'd be getting it for our birthday - we had asked for it. One day, not long before that birthday, we came home from school, and as we entered the house, we saw it. Our parents had decided to give it to us early - a Nintendo 64. They were playing Mario Kart 64 when we walked in the door - they were curious, too! The Nintendo 64 was beloved in my household, and I still own one to this day. On it I played many classic games I still love such as the aforementioned Mario Kart, Super Mario 64, Starfox 64, Cruisin' USA, Goldeneye 007, Banjo-Kazooie (my favorite underrated platformer of all time), both Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask (my favorite Zelda game of all time), Kirby, F-Zero, Donkey Kong (technically Diddy Kong Racing, but I file that under Donkey Kong), and a host of others. The fun never seemed to stop in those days - it seemed like every time we got tired of one game Nintendo was releasing a new one with completely different, wonderful worlds to explore and play in. I was aware of the Sega consoles (which were beginning to die out anyway), and the looming menace of the Playstation; but to me, video games were nothing but Nintendo, Nintendo, Nintendo. At that time, I truly believed they were the pinnacle of entertainment.

After my experience with the N64, I was hooked. I was a thoroughbred Nintendo fanboy. So it came at no question that I had to have the next big Nintendo console, the Nintendo Gamecube. I also still own a Gamecube and will occasionally pop in a disc to power on some nostalgia of my teen gaming years. But gaming was never going to be the same for me again - my brother had already begun moving on from Nintendo, and soon was doing most of his gaming on the Playstation 2, and eventually the Playstation 3. Our enthusiasm for Nintendo would probably never get quite as high again after the release of the Nintendo Wii. I was so determined to get a Wii for my brother and I that I actually camped out on Black Friday to get one in a store that only had ten units to sell. By this time, the Xbox, Playstation, and the new age of PC games were dominating the world with stunning graphics; and I was discovering that my friends and those who I talked to about games didn't like Nintendo so much anymore. I realized that in the eyes of the masses, Nintendo was no longer the gaming juggernaut they once were - and since then I've felt very alone in my continued love for them. I find myself getting nervous whenever they do anything or whenever I want to get excited over a new game or console - because the majority of people I speak to about it will vehemently oppose Nintendo's actions and ridicule them. Soon, my own opinions were beginning to change.

I freely admit that my general taste in gaming has evolved. I've seen the library of games released for the Wii and the DS, and honestly, there are only a select few that I own. There isn't a whole lot being released currently by Nintendo that can keep my interest. So, over the last few years, I've become a PC gamer almost exclusively when it comes to current releases. In fact, I game a lot less than I used to - partly because of the trials and tribulations that come with PC gaming, partly because I'm an adult now and I'm trying to fill my life with more than just games. But I still keep Nintendo close to my heart; not in the same way I did before. Not as a hardcore fan, but as a lover of all games and out of respect and hope. Nintendo were the roots of my passion for video games; I respected them back then and I still respect them now, even though there's not much I want from them at this time. I want to continue to give them a chance because I still believe they're trying their hardest to come out with new and creative ideas, even if they don't always succeed. I seriously want to give the Nintendo 3DS a try someday, and I want to find out more about the Nintendo Wii-U slated for next year. I will continue to watch Nintendo closely and cheer them on for more success, but it's undeniable that my strongest love for Nintendo lies in their past. And it is my sincere hope that one day, just like Mario grabbing the top of the flagpole, I may see them reach that pinnacle again.

About the Picture:

For this image, I seriously debated whether it was better to draw Mikioi in the style of a character from the Mario universe, or draw him in my style wearing Mario's clothes. I tried the former, and I found the large nose to be a little too ridiculous, so I went with the latter. I designed the background after stage 1-1 in the original Super Mario Bros., including the odd little shapes and patterns in the bushes and ground, like you can see in this image. The Goomba is this guy, Kushiro (whom will also get introduced in a Pachi Profile soon). He's the only one of my main characters who is also sort of an animal/creature so it seemed fitting. I'm not sure why he's so scared - Miki's boot isn't that big!

Thanks for sticking around for the long one! Check back in this Friday for the final installment of my Nostalgia Week. I hope to see you there! :)