For some reason techno is fun to draw

[secondlina]

 Another "fandom" post. Lately it seems I just feel like drawing other people's universes or something. It's fun and relaxing. Kinda distracts me from contracts and comic pages though. Yeah. Probably should dial that down soon.

I drew a few characters from the Avatar the last airbender RP. It's a pretty cool story and I love the people i'm playing with, lycorne , earthstar_chan  and zenavvy .  I didn't have time to draw all the characters. But I do love how varied the designs are. I really love doing character designs. Especially multicultural characters. So many possibilities!




I also drew the "How to train your dragon" meme aurora_sky  tagged me with. 

It's ....special....






Hey look at that! I think doing sketches for Namesake, Rose and Jabberwocky (published comics) really helped me to put the whole "developing my own style" thing into overdrive. My drawings, right down to the sketches, look less and less like pure manga and more and more like a mix of a whole bunch of influences and a personal style. Which is quite fine with me. 

When I was 15 I really geared my art style from "european" comics to "manga" style. As much as I love manga and that manga taught me a lot about dynamic action and inking (seriously, they are gods of ink), after I reached age 20, it was pretty apparent in people's comments that if my style didn't diversify I wasn't really gonna go anywhere. That's kinda when the whole thing separated into a bunch of different "test" branches of me looking to mix the things I learned from manga with other art styles I liked. It ended up making my art style really versatile and flowy. I,m really proud of the point I am currently at.

Next step? Owning photoshop. Yeah.

- Isa

Comments

[ichiban-victory.livejournal.com]

I do enjoy anime and all (really! I'm just not really into the current stuff), but it kind of annoys me when 'Western' people just use the anime style for everything. I much prefer going for your own style as well. Anime sacrifices a lot of individuality in a way. I can't remember the last time I watched an anime that depicted a character with a nose that actually looked like a nose...

By the by, I came across this the other day. I imagine you might like to 'artgasm' some more. ^_-

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

I have a bit of problem with the "new" stuff these days too. I think, before, we had less therefore the more popular (and some of the better) series got translated. Nowadays, the manga and anime section of the bookstore feels like a cultural dumping. They just grabbed a bunch of books and threw it on. Japan as a pretty large production of manga every month. Translators obviously use a few series to cash in. Fortunately, a lot of people who work for those companies really do love manga and strive to translate the good stuff. But it's becoming harder to find the good stuff in the larger pile. Especially since, here, the more "lucrative" age group seems to be 12 to 17, despite the really awesome "adult" manga (and by adult here, I don't mean dirty. I mean complexe storylines aimed at an older audience with characters who'se ages match those of the audience). I think manga is a little weird right now because not even 10 years ago, the market was tiny. Suddentely, floodgates opened and "defenders" of comics rejected manga while "defenders" of manga rejected comics. We still need to balance out the market and have people understand that you can't judge a cultural phenomenon by it's stereotypes.

Weird noses... remember Escaflowne? Like clothing hooks!

[ichiban-victory.livejournal.com]

My gosh, do I know it! I did prefer the more 'adult' manga that was available back in the day (titles like Record of Lodoss War, they're not kid friendly at all!), but anymore when I happen by the manga aisle it's all just the same thing over and over...and yes, almost everything is aimed at preteens and teenagers. I need more 'meat' in my manga! XP (Because yes, I can handle things like character death.) I do still like to browse the Japanese manga over in Seattle since it's straight out of Japan, and there's so much more variety! Too bad I can't read much Japanese, but at least I know there's better manga to be had out there.

Gah! The noses in Escaflowne were insane! I had trouble paying attention to what little of the series I did see (subtitled, not the hack job) because their noses were so extreme. o_O