Archive for October, 2005
Bad habits - I’m full of them! The engine I use for this weblog is called WordPress, it’s a personal publishing system built on PHP and MySQL and the license is free and I love using it. It has allowed me to fully customise every part of my site, is not too hard to configure and use, well documented, well supported and a PAIN. I can edit my we(blog) from the dark side of the moon if Icould get an internet connection there, but I forget that it doesn’t cache. The significance? You may well wonder, which brings me to bad habit number one. For the second week in a row I have had to recreate my entry because I didn’t save it! ARGH!
Bad habit number two you already know if you have been reading my weekly we(blog) - procrastination. I have paying work to do and outstanding homework (no its not finished yet) and what have I been doing? Well, yes, procrastinating, but my font collection is growing daily and my hard drive is bursting at the seams with pictures and stuff that has caught my eye. Pay attention Thatch, it is probably time for that 120Gb hard drive you have been tempting me with. We will leave the multitude of my other bad habits to be catalogued another day.
Today’s topic is Manga. The Japanese style of drawing cartoons. You’ve seen it I’m sure, androgenous characters with huge eyes, tiny pointy noses and big hair. I found a discarded newspaper at work and needing something to read over lunch I snaffled it. Inside was an article teaching children how to draw manga characters and, myself being game, thought I would have a go. It would seem, sadly, that I dipped out when the powers that be were ladling out the drawing talent. So I won’t inflict any of my efforts on you today. Instead we will look at what real artists are doing with the style.
Manga is now pretty universal with people from everywhere applying it to their art. Here follow just a very few examples of the style:
This is the work of Watashiji Synn whose website Sky on the Water is written in Japanese. There is supposed to be an English version, but I had some trouble finding my way around it. He has a page devoted to some character called Caranthir who could be a role playing Avatar or more possibly a character from a game called Elemental World. There is a picture of Caranthir dressed as a mace wielding priest, well…you just have to go and have a look.
Next on my list of pretties find Disanthus a collaboration between an Aussie (Annette) and a Hollander (Doris) I think it is. Lovely moody work that has has one foot in the realism camp as well.
This next site belongs to Bettina Marie Kurkoski of Dreamworld Studios She really has some eye popping work and I don’t mean the ones with the adult content warnings either.
Meredith E. Attaway as Elaine Fair offers us a fansite dedicated to never growing up. I love her manga versions of characters from Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and um … Sherlock Holmes.
Four separate and vastly different sites hawking their act and their art on the net. There are hundreds more I could show you, (if you want to see more in this style - drop me a line.) Meanwhile to keep your appetite whetted, dip into DeviantArt. Don’t be fooled by the name of the website, it is art alright, and here are artists each with their own gallery to amaze and beguile. Terrific website, fast and easy to get around in. Just be warned you can lose hours here.
This we(blog) wouldn’t be complete without some links to real manga/comics. Make up your own mind about these.
Two Women by Brion Foulke.
Megatokyo by Fred Gallagher. This is Thatch’s favourite and is often the source of mirth issuing from his workroom.
Takahiro Awatake’s Web Page Several manga to choose from and all in Japanese.
Finally for anyone who would like to have a go themselves, try these great tutorials from Polykarbon.
Happy drawing and I’m logging off,
Jools