2010 Brief Review

Sorry, I've been kind of busy lately pretending to be busy. I promise that will no longer be the case. I'm geared up n' ready to shine. So, as the year winds down and we start to break cracks into a new one (the next one as it is), I'd like to mention a few things I feel helped me grow artistically this year.

-Re-reading Scott Mccloud's Making Comics and Understanding Comics. I highly recommend both of them to anyone interested in any kind of artsy activity. They help to put a lot of things in perspective for me and begin to expand greatly on the notion of what a comic really is and can be.

-I watched a lot of really good films this year, some of which inspired me a great deal. I had several fits of extreme writing (which I didn't do a whole lot with..) that ended in me drawing a lot of design sketches or starting a few projects that, at the very least, served their purpose nobly. But it also lead to a few decent short comics I did this year.

-Most importantly was probably drawing with Adam. There were quite a few nights I would have just wasted without drawing if it wasn't from him. I've learned a lot from him artistically and personally, and I've tried to pull a lot from the way he handles shape, form, and figure. Positioning and movement is natural to him, which is incredible because those are what I seem to be struggling the most with.

-And of course, what little I've done with this blog here (this blog which is entirely Jeremy's fault (who is also a great artist check out how much he's grown in such a short time). It's nice to talk about art, even if only to myself. Hopefully I can muster more of that.

I'm also interested in anything you felt helped you this year with your endeavors. So here's to a good birthday for me tomorrow, and a great next year for everyone!

Artists I Like: Obata Takeshi

One of my favorite artists of all time is Obata Takeshi. I first discovered his work when I was back in middle school and Hikaru no Go was active. I remember initially being impressed by both how solid his style was, and how well he did at drawing that goban at several different angles riddled with stones. I also remember falling in love with his use of line to shade, as opposed to just toning things.

One of the most impressive things about reading Hikaru no Go to me was literally watching Hikaru grow up from a round faced kid to a jaw-having young man. I had never seen a character physically develop intentionally throughout the course of a story. It left a huge impression on me, because I'm not entirely sure the idea had even crossed my mind at the time.

But he wasn't my favorite artist then as he is now. I didn't realize how utterly impressed I was with him (and likewise, how impressive he really is) until Death Note started in 2003. At first, I didn't even notice it was from the same artist. The only thing the two works really have in common is how amazingly solid they are artistically.

 
Death Note is a much darker work visually and implores a more realistic style because of it. I've been taking most of my influence from this style for about eight years now. The way he draws facial features like noses and eyes has always interested me greatly, especially the stark difference in the way these are drawn in Hikaru no Go and in Death Note and his subsequent works.

From that point on it was pretty much a matter of finding and reading everything he was involved with*, which unfortunately isn't a whole lot. He's had amazing success since everything he seems to get himself into recently turns up as a hit. I even hear the one-shots he's involved with garnish a good amount of attention. He's also praised often for making his characters very up-to-date-fashionable.

Ral-Grad, while indeed overly fan-service-y, was never not fun to look at. Though, I suppose those two statements don't contradict each other very much, if at all. 

He also did character design for a Castlevania fighting game that wasn't.. exactly the best, but goodness was it fun to look at.

It is also of note that Takeshi is almost always just the artist for the works he's involved with, not the writer. Do be surprised if this isn't the last time I talk about him at great length.

*note to Alexander: I have started Bakuman finally but am going at it at a snails pace, but this statement isn't a lie so don't call me out on it

Two Helpful Things

There are two things I feel have probably helped me more than anything else on improving my sketches. The first is Posemaniac's 30 second drawing exercise. Drawing form quickly and not spending a lot of time over-thinking everything too much greatly improved my quick-sketching abilities. I used to try and do at least 20 (10 minutes) of these sketches a day but recently I've really kind of fallen down on that, and I plan on getting back into that habit again. And if 30 seconds feels too daunting (or not daunting enough), you can always adjust the time in which the next sketch pops up, between 10-90 seconds, or there is the random pose viewer which will let you look at an image for as long as you want to.

The second is The Eyeballing Game. I find it useful for off-the-cuff perspective and helping to make things look right. Being able to visualize where a line is going and how to make something seem square or correct without the use of one, two, or three point perspective is also very useful for sketching more elaborate scenes. The 'center of the circle' exercise helped me make faces seem less lopsided (a problem I still have, just not as bad) by helping me realize where the center is. And like most things in life, the more you do it the better you get at it.