Just some slayers...

[secondlina]

 Well, Slayers is back it seems. Many people among my F-list are re-watching this anime right now, and expressing their love for it. It put me in the mood to draw the whole crew again. Not to mention I needed to try sketching and finishing a cover for the Fanbook contest. So here are the sketches.



And bonus, a study of Lina's body type.



I'm not too sure what i'm going to do on the globe. I wanted the main group (plus Sylphiel, Martina, Zangulus, Xellos and Filia) on some kind of "world". But i'm too lazy to re-draw the world map. Plus i'm not talented enough to make a globe look good. So maybe it will just be a shiny sphere? After all, there's a lot of those in Slayers.

It's drawing like this that make me realize how my style blends manga with European comic style or Disney style. I actually give the characters body types. When I drew more "manga-style" all my characters pretty much had the same face and body. Nowadays, for instance, I clearly draw Lina and Amelia with different bodies. I'm not really saying manga style is bad. But i'm happy my style shines thru in little details like that. Before my style just wasn't so defined. Now it's starting to be.

I feel like I draw too much cutesy stuff lately. I kinda miss drawing my dark and gloomy stuff. Maybe i'll work on a creepy drawing for the next post. Because, seriously, everything is perky around here lately. Though I suspect i'm drawing happiness to keep myself out of the deep hole that is my brain when it gets depressed. Heh. We'll see. Either way, it's fun to draw...

- Isa

EDIT : Almost forgot. I caved. I now have a Twitter account. Add me if you dare! Prepare to be annoyed by my antics on yet another medium! http://twitter.com/Secondlina

EDIT 2 : My hatred for Twitter has died. Twitter is actually kinda fun.

Edit 3 : Hatred for facebook is still intact though.

Comments

[dqbunny.livejournal.com]

*points to icon and cackles*

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes. XD

[earthstar-moon.livejournal.com]

Hey, why don't you do some kind of creepy golden sphere, to represent the Lord of Nightmares. ^_~ I can see you pulling that off.

I kinda miss drawing my dark and gloomy stuff. Maybe I'll work on a creepy drawing for the next post.

Well, Halloween isn't that far off. You could use that for an excuse? If I see anything dark and creepy, I'll send it your way for inspiration. XP

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Yay, Halloween! It's my favorite annual event ever! :D

Yeah, it's probably going to end up being a big gloden sphere. Dunno how LON feels about having everyone's butt on her though.

[eveshka.livejournal.com]

Lisa Ortiz (Lina's English VA) will be at my local anime con this weekend.

[dqbunny.livejournal.com]

Yes, of which I am extremely jealous. Curse the inability to find an excuse to visit my family then drive three hours to Atlanta!

[eveshka.livejournal.com]

If you did, I'd be thrilled to meet you! ^_^

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

I'd come too, if I could! We use cons as excuses to meet people and see their giant doll collections.

[eveshka.livejournal.com]

/grins

I'm running two doll related panels at AWA too. ^_^

[brendala.livejournal.com]

Lisa Ortiz (Lina's English VA) will be at my local anime con this weekend.

Lucky!
Anime Weekend Atlanta has a sweet guest list! Too bad those New York VAs never come out to the California cons. :(

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Or Canada either.

[eveshka.livejournal.com]

Doesn't it though? And I'm not staffing this year so I get to see people!

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Neat!

[ichiban-victory.livejournal.com]

Hey, you have Photoshop skills! Just insert the actual world map onto the globe, and viola! You have a cool Slayers pic with the Slayers world. (Don't mind me, I've been working in Photoshop for the past few hours. Ugh, my brain!)

I know what you mean about manga style and how all characters have the same body type. I noticed it back when I read series like Sailor Moon. (Waaaaaay back in the last century.) It always bothered me since it made it really hard to tell which character you were looking at if they had nothing distinguishable (like hair, clothing, etc.) showing. Bleh. I know there are some good artists out there (like for Slayers - excluding more recent manga!), but for the most part everyone suffers from having the exact same body type. Think they all just share one body, or what? XP

I saw this morning you were following me on Twitter. I still don't like it. Like for what I just wrote up above, I would have violated the word count for a Twitter post. I like words. I don't like my words being restricted. I drop-kicked Twitter as soon as that class that made me take it was over. Maybe one of these days I'll pay attention to it. Naaaaah!

I hate Facebook so much more than Twitter, however. I'm counting the days until I can watch my page burn a horrible death. Mwa ha ha...

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Well, the idea was to just insert an image of the map, yeah, but I can't find a decent one. All the ones I have are yucky, low-resolution. Considering this needs tobe a nice 300 dpi to print... yeah, that plan was flushed out quickly. Unless you have a better quality version of the map somewhere? If you do I would be really grateful!

I like the chat aspect of twitter and kinda use it more for that. I would never stop posting here. NEVER! I need all the words XD

At least we agree about facebook. It's practical to keep your address book updated at least. And a few of my friends are pretty much only rechable thru facebook, so I end up using it more then I would like, but I barely post anything.

[ichiban-victory.livejournal.com]

Your first problem is finding images on the internet, since most image files will have a low resolution to save space. Your second problem is that you forget who you're talking to, Miss "I Was So Obsessed With Slayers I Have Just About Every Book EVER", and trust me, I do. ^_-; I do indeed have a map I can scan at high resolution. For sure I have a map that was drawn by Rui Araizumi, but it sacrifices geographical accuracy for things like landmarks, color, and a workable size to begin with. I can scan it later if you so wish.

I guess if I had people I wanted to chat with on Twitter it would be okay, but I still prefer the ancient art of talking face-to-face with people. At least Twitter isn't as invasive as Facebook though!

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Yes, I would love to have one of your map, oh powerful collector lady! *laughs* I don't have any of the books to scan. I have a few things and I flipped through all of them to try to find a map. The only thing I found was an odd thing is Aqualord. Meh.

Well, in cases like us, face to face isn't really an option (unless you count video chat as that) so i,m quite happy I get to chat with you guys through lj, aim and twitter.

[ichiban-victory.livejournal.com]

I scanned the map, but it's only of the barrier lands. (For the 'entire world', you would probably have to just draw it out as I did forever ago when I entertained the thought of running Slayers d20.) I guess I'll hold onto it for now since it's a fairly large file that might be better to do a direct transfer over the internet instead of taking forever to e-mail it.

Why do you think I pressed so much to get you and others to use video chat? Even audio chat is better than just typing since you can actually hear the person and get to know their voice even when reduced to reading mere words. ^_-

[brendala.livejournal.com]

Oh God, no! Twitter has taken another one of my friends!
Must....resist....bandwagon...


The body type thing was part of the reason I fell out of love with manga/anime once the novelty of it wore off. With rare exceptions (RIP Satoshi Kon), I end up liking most anime and manga despite their art styles and not because of them.

However, the Japanese aren't the only ones who are guilty of this. Most superhero comics don't seem to know how to make a woman look "sexy" without also making her look like an anorexic stripper. And it really REALLY galls me how certain artists (like Bruce Timm and Jim Lee) are great at drawing male characters with varied faces and bodies; but then all the women they draw look like the same person with a different hairstyle and a new coat of paint.
Sometimes I wish I had the balls to approach these artists at cons and shout "I can easily draw sexy women with varied faces and body types and I am WAY less talented than you! You have no excuse!!".

[eveshka.livejournal.com]

Some friends and I were walking the Artist Alley at DragonCon, and I commented on how many over-endowed and scantily clad women there were. It was really eye-opening how sexist the comic industry is in the US.

They're a homosexual couple, and one of them rolled his eyes at my comment and said he was hoping to one day change that.

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Heh, it's about what people want to see too. People like the sexy. We just need to show them the sexy comes in many shapes and forms.

[eveshka.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. Though they complain that women don't buy comics... gee, I wonder why.

/sarcasm

[brendala.livejournal.com]

Heh, it's about what people want to see too. People like the sexy. We just need to show them the sexy comes in many shapes and forms.

Maybe I should just drop an issue of Strangers in Paradise in front of them, bookmark one of the pages with a picture of Francine in a sexy outfit, and say "STUDY THIS!". ~_^

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Hey, don't resist the bandwagon. Just do what I do. Resist it until it's not fashionable anymore XD THEN JOIN when all the silly people are done! And only the actual people who post remain.

I still like anime and the style. But I do find the lack of diversity to be a bit sad. But like you said, it's not the style that sucks, since many styles have that cookie-cutter-females-thing. I guess it's just the lack of diversity.

[prettio.livejournal.com]

Ufff... I got very tired of big group pics after my submission for the book. I think I won't be capable of drawing another drawing like that in a long time ´=________=`

The thing I like the most about not the contest but the fanbook idea is to see lots of diferent styles to draw the characters of Slayers · w ·

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Hahahah! Aw. *pats head*. I,m amused because my best work are often group pictures. I draw groups more then singles!

Yeah, I think that's why I adore fanart. Characters you love in varying styles. It's so much fun to see their personalities shine thru!

[spankingfemme.livejournal.com]

LOL! What has the hate on for facebook? :P

Awesome sketches as always my sweet =D

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Because facebook tries to get into EVERYTHING.

[spankingfemme.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they are kind of usurping the internet a little bit at a time ;)

[rose.livejournal.com]

Ahh, hooray! Added you on twitter then! :) I'm ~honey

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Added you too! *twitter buds*

[angelchan-2004.livejournal.com]

...more reason to re-make my twitter account. D: I want to stalk Isa!

Love the Slayers art<333 I've recently rewatched the first season, soon to move onto Next!

Nothing wrong with cutesy stuff sometimes, but I do love your style when you do darker things.

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

I love my style with darker things too. The inking just works so well.

Stalk me? I stalk you! *stalks with love*

[noseless-wonder.livejournal.com]

Yay! SLAYERS! ^^;; Okay, I have nothing really constructive to add. Shiny spheres would definitely fit the Slayers theme though.

Twitter isn't as evil as I once thought it was either. There are still a lot of narcissistic people who like to update everyone about every little thing they're doing, but I'd say a majority of it is interesting, funny, or surprisingly useful.

(FaceBook isn't that bad aside from the bad choices the developers have been making lately, but it's a lot more useful for keeping track of real-life relationships. I've actually connected with some long-lost friends through it.)

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

I think the problem with facebook for me is that i'm already connected with most people in another fashion and that I have no desire to connect with "long-lost-people" with me, if they are lost, it's often because I want it that way. :( I'm a little mean that way.

Like you, I think I was expecting twitter to be a lot of narcissism. But turns out, it's no more then you average blog. ust shorter.

[brendala.livejournal.com]

I think the problem with facebook for me is that i'm already connected with most people in another fashion and that I have no desire to connect with "long-lost-people" with me, if they are lost, it's often because I want it that way.

I feel the same way. All of the people from high school that I wanted to stay in touch with I stayed in touch with the old fashioned way (telephone and in-person visits). Even when I moved to Colorado and Texas for the job I had a few years ago, I kept up with them via phone calls and e-mails.
That said, I'd probably get a Facebook if I ever moved out of state for a prolonged period of time again.

[snapdragon76.livejournal.com]

SLAYAAAAASS!!!! XDDDDD


And I am now following you on the Twitter. You may do the same if you wish: @snapdragon76


^___^

And I know there are a lot of people out there hating on Facebook. I mostly play the games on there. I do find it handy as a way of keeping in touch with friends I don't ordinarily have a way of keeping in touch with, so I find it handy in that aspect. I make sure to keep my privacy features pretty secure though...