"To hell with the handkerchief."
Art
Hello, my name is Dev, and I have a problem.
Apr 30th
I have an addiction. Now, that’s nothing new. I’ve always had one, to comics and animation and whatnot, but this. This is something I can’t even explain. I mean a full-strength, life-debilitating addiction. For work by Rumiko Takahashi, and most recently, particularly her romance series Maison Ikkoku.
I got access to this manga series about…a week ago? Two weeks maximum. I hadn’t even planned on reading it in the first place, but a lot of users on myanimelist.net have it rated highly, and many in the manga/anime community in general claim it’s the best romance series out there. Now, I don’t know about that – I haven’t read enough romance manga to make that claim, but that statement got me to look into it and holy smokes, if it’s not the best, it’s damn high on the list.
Briefly, the series is about a group of people living at a boarding house. You have Mrs. Ichinose and her son and husband; Yotsuya; Akemi; and Godai. They’re an eccentric crew, and the story opens in chaos – which is also where the story ends up staying most of the time – and chaos is the first thing that greets Kyoko, the brand new manager More >
Bwuahaha. I am so funny.
Mar 13th
Finally!
Feb 11th
Gosh, this just took me forever, and it shouldn’t have with how simple of a piece it is. But I spent a lot of time learning things while coloring, about light and shadow and shape and whatnot. (I didn’t do perfect, but I’m progressing.) It was fun, in a strange way. I liked working on it, even when it was tedious.
I used this tutorial as a guide for how to color. It’s the same one I used for the previous colored image I did, but I think I did better this time around (I also just spent more time on it overall. That last one was just a doodle for practice).
Clicking the image links you to the piece’s deviantArt page. Please feel free to leave a comment or criticism here or there. Thanks!
How am I sick again?
Feb 5th
Seriously, come on immune system! Try harder! -_-
At least I have tomorrow off.
It’s been a while since I’ve done a photo-review on here (even though the images in my reviews aren’t really photos…). But I watched a perfect movie the other day and knew right away I was going to have to post about it.
It’s titled — hold on, actually. I just have to say, AwkwardS is near me playing MAG, and his character just told a comrade to rub some dirt on a wound. Who says that anymore?? Pfft lol.
Anyway, the movie I watched, with AwkwardS incidentally, was called The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and it was just wonderful.
First, the film is just gorgeous. This isn’t uncommon for anime, but The Girl Who Leapt Through Time just does a perfect job visually. The animation style is a little different from standard anime, but the animation and the background detail add a level of quaintness that a lot of anime and non-anime movies fail to achieve.
Second, we have the story, and while the movie is beautiful, it’s the story that makes it shine. Makoto is your average high school girl – she’s not particularly great at anything, but she’s More >
Hey look, I now have non-English speaking spammers!
Jan 25th
So A-kon is in 5 months and I have NO CLUE who to cosplay. Yeah, I’d like to be Edward Elric, but I still don’t feel good enough with my sewing to try that – that’s one I really want to save for when I can do it right.
I was thinking of getting my group to do Pokemon, and even Railz suggested I be Misty for a day, but I was never a huge Pokemon watcher, I only wanted the cute cards that my friends gave me for free, and I never really got into the video games. So I don’t really want to go as Misty.
I liked Sailor Moon, but never saw the whole thing, and never watched it in Japanese. Sakura’s too young/little for me. Haruhi either too plain in her school uniform, or too…Haruhi in the bunny outfit. Final Fantasy is like FMA for me. Gotta do it right or not at all.
Maybe Metal Gear. I’d love to try Snake’s sneaking suit…Hmmm…
But that’s still only one day! I have Ishtar’s dress from Vampire Game, but I don’t know if it’s con-worthy. It was a great learning experience, but she’s so little known…
Siiiigh.
Oh yeah, I signed up for More >
Affiliates, Assemble!
Jan 20th
Seriously, where are you guys? AwkwardS pops up every so often, but the rest of you just dropped off the face of the internet. What’s up with that? Not that this will get you to post. But I’ve noticed! You thought you could just sneak away…
Anyway, here’s my first attempt at cel shading!
I’m pretty pleased with how this came out. I’m particularly happy with how the hair looks. I know it’s all still very beginner, but I’m just going to keep practicing, keep trying to get better. I did notice that when I looked at this image on AwkwardS’s computer monitor, you couldn’t see the shading on the dress at all, so I’ll have to fix that eventually, but for right now I’m just going to leave it as is. Image links to the deviantArt page.
Pluuugs
Jan 19th
Lalala.
There hasn’t been much to talk about this week.
AwkwardS and Frozen have both been to see Avatar and said it was a good watch, but I just can’t bring myself to go see it. All the money they put into that movie went to graphics and more than one source has said the story is just a rehashed Fern Gully. While I liked Fern Gully well enough, I don’t really want to see it redone with better graphics. First, I love 2-D animation. A lot. Not so big on the 3-D or CGI. Second, if I’m going to spend money to go see a movie, it’s not going to be a movie I’ve pretty much seen before. I put graphics second to story, as you can tell by my taste in (old) video games, so this movie just makes me annoyed. I’m tired of this trend lately in games and movies of graphics coming before story. What a waste of my time.
Now I’m gonna plug a bunch of stuff!
First, since we’re talking about movies, let me just say Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky is brilliant. It’s an older film and does not need to be plugged at all, but I More >
Oh baby.
Dec 31st
What’s a flower without the sun? What’s a man without a purpose? What’s a Tablet PC without pressure sensitivity?
The answer is: not very much.
I’ve had no pressure sensitivity in any painting program since switching from Vista to Windows 7, and while I’ve believed this whole time that the switch was worth the sacrifice, I’ve always been a strong believer that technology should do exactly what I want it to exactly when I want.
And so I’ve been dissatisfied.
(AwkwardS can warn you not to get me started on my philosophy of dissatisfaction.)
Dissatisfied until now, anyway!
It’s a common problem and I finally just sat my butt down and said, okay internet, let’s do some research. I’ve tried to research it before, but I saw all the failed attempts and all the convoluted answers, and just quit.
But not this time. And here, internet surfers! I bring you the sacred scripture that has solved my problems.
Skim the first post to get the gist of things, but follow the second post – it’s cleaner and easier. I didn’t delete any drivers because Windows 7 was telling me I didn’t have any drivers to delete. So I just followed the steps after step 1 in the second post and More >
New WIPs
Dec 27th
Two new original characters (OCs). I’m practicing drawing straight into digital programs instead of drawing on paper and then scanning in. Digital programs intimidate me to no end. I really just need to pick one and learn it really well. This is a first attempt at doing that.
This is Mariella. Yes, she’s a moth. She’s a gypsy moth, in fact. I kind of had a weird perspective going (it looks pretty wonky, but whatever), so I didn’t really do anything at all with her clothes. I think if I draw her again, and I hope to, I’m going to play around with some outfits for her. She’s not very happy about being a moth. (Yes, I was listening to Kate Nash when I named her…)
And this is Nil. Obviously this is very much a WIP.
Neither of these are on deviantArt yet. I will probably put Mariella up, but I’m only putting Nil up if I get more done with this image.
I really need to cool it with the number of layers I use. I make it so much harder for myself -_-
(Edit: Mariella has been linked to where she was uploaded on dA. You can get a better view of her More >
dA Update
Dec 15th
Added a new piece to deviantart. It’s a fan art piece for the game Snatcher I wrote about on here a while ago. Katrina’s a pretty unfortunate character but she always seems a little too upbeat in the game.
So here she is in a slightly more solemn mood.
Clicking on the image will take you to the deviation on dA. Feel free to critique in a constructive manner – 1 positive comment, and then 2 comments on how I can improve. I want to get better and it’ll be harder to do that if no one makes suggestions for me.
Thanks for looking/commenting.
(This was the piece I said I wasn’t going to post any time soon because hair is hard. The other piece, the first I mentioned in my last post, isn’t finished being colored yet, and it’ll probably take me quite a while to complete that one.)
