All Sorts Illustrator

Actual Illustrations I did on my Wacom Tablet

newgeekphilosopher — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 08:18:03 +0000

Because showing you my work instead of just telling you about it gives me cred.

I’ve been working hard on my illustrations and design lately, and so far the Chibi Up Emo Kid one pictured above is one of my best yet. It’s licensed under Creative Commons as Some Rights Reserved, and hopefully it will become the internet meme it deserves to be.

On the other hand, this sketch on the Wacom tablet I did called Girl In Electric Town Pigtails shows my progress in depicting the human body instead of just the head. Hopefully the trend of my somewhat good craftsmanship continues.

You can find me on Deviant Art as Elfandhappiness. Now I will do some more sketches and hopefully I will improve.

Short Post on Taking Up My Pencil Again

newgeekphilosopher — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 08:52:45 +0000

At Last! My Right Arm Is Complete Again!

October 27, 2008

Took up my pencil again and did some drawings. Maybe I have a shot at this illustration business after all. To me a pencil feels in my hand what a razor feels like in Sweeney Todd’s. And no that’s not a double entendre.

My drawing style varies depending on the quality of the pencil and the amount of time spent on the drawing. Give me enough time to draw something and it’s beautiful. Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of time for sketching because of my studies for increasingly approaching exams, but I do what I can.

Note to budding manga artists: If you ever buy a book called How to Draw Female Manga Characters you should stop staring at the anatomically accurate nudity and actually draw the arms and legs properly. I know it’s tempting. I mean, every guy wants to draw big breasted Anime characters when they start out drawing manga characters because that’s what manga characters look like, right? Well, it’s not that simple. You might focus all your artistic attention on the bust but neglect the limbs to the extent that your manga girl looks like she’ll fall over. And if she was capable of telling you how horrible you’ve made her look she’d probably throttle you before you got a chance to rub her out.

Another thing, just relax. Nothing good gets drawn in a rushed hurry, only if you want drawings to look like Ralph Steadman‘s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas illustrations.

Finally an Update! (And Simone Legno’s astounding advice)

newgeekphilosopher — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 12:13:03 +0000

This is my illustration blog for when the opportunities for Anime blogging posts dry up occassionally, but also to share with you my experience of becoming an illustrator and improving my work over time. Now usually I’m drawing, and most of it is rubbish, but in a day I get about five good images I can either use as a reference for another illustration or the basis of a work I can polish off for a quality print or something, which I’m a long way off achieving at this point in my career. What I can tell you is that I’ve reached the point in my illustrating career where you realise you have talent but you also realise just how small you are in the scope of things, because you haven’t even made your first quality print yet but some of your sketches look great.

Sketch every day, jot down ideas, I came up with a few today for t-shirts that I’ll share with you later when the final drafts are done. Yet something entirely unexpected occurred in my inbox today which changed my day’s direction from a run of the mill day of study into something inspiring: I got an email back from Simone Legno, the tokidoki designer:

Dear Jacob,

hope you are doing well. thanks for your eamila nd sorry if I will be pretty quick since I am in san diego for tradeshows and trying to clean my ton of emails that accumulated during those days.

I think there’s not many secrets or tips to be a graphic designer. it’s a matter of dedicating your lifre to it. it’s not a jobm, it’ sthe way you have to think watching things. even when I wake up I try to focus on new ideas or all the boring heavy things of the business, behind every simple object can be a great idea. i always used to work from morniog to night and even during weekends. outthere there’s so much compewtitiojn that you have to really be one of the bests to get far. it’s important to be humble cause you never stop learing asnd getting into a style perfection and evolvement.

Wish you good luck with your studies and lot of energy whn at the b eginning things will go pretty hard or wrong (happened to me a lot…it’s normal)

Ciao ciao

This is the same Simone Legno that appears in this video. So you can imagine my excitement when I recieved a reply from him (even Neil Gaiman, official Nicest Man on Earth, hasn’t replied to my fan mail), in a few days no less, record time for a response from a celebrity. I took on board his advice and started drawing, again. And this time I was being more relaxed about it knowing that even he had a difficult start to his career as a designer. I also learned from this experience that sometimes there are famous people in the world, particularly creative artists, who actually answer fan mail, so try and contact as many designers and artists as you can whom you like, you never know what will happen next.

Back from Kinokuniya

newgeekphilosopher — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:22:43 +0000

Bought two volumes today, the Starman Omnibus Vol. 1 and the OMAC: One Man Army Corps omnibuses. So far I haven’t been able to read much of them, but from what I’ve seen they contain a high level of awesomeness in unhealthy doses.

For instance, OMAC says: “I’m OMAC! Evacuate this section, I’m going to destroy it!” on his first appearance. No explanation, he just shows up and says this, with his daft looking haircut and blue outfit.

I mean who DOES THAT? I have never seen a comic book hero do that in my life. Not even Superman does that. Besides, he’s too polite. Perhaps I should read more to find out how OMAC got to that point in the story in the following pages.

As for the Starman Omnibus, there’s apparently going to be six of these hefty bricks to collect, which means it will cost me a pretty penny to find out what happens in the end. Oh well, the book is nice and the artwork doesn’t look like it was drawn as a webcomic, they actually tried with this one. And having looked through some of it I think they succeeded.

Having posted my current thoughts on the two tomes I will go to my bed and read them. Hope they stay fresh.

It’s Not an Anime Blog! But It’s My Other Stuff I Like!

newgeekphilosopher — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:33:36 +0000

This is the new space I have to talk about things that are not related to Anime. My Anime blog, Asperger’s Anime Blog, is where I usually talk about Anime, but I haven’t had a space to talk about other things as well for a long time.

Here is where I’ll be talking about what I think is good illustration, my art practice, and general things that wouldn’t fit in an Anime blog. Hopefully my Aniblogosphere buddies visit because it would be interesting to see what they like that isn’t just talking about big eyed bishonen characters.

I appreciate music, and also books, both illustrated and non-illustrated. Before I started blogging about Anime with my other blog I was a big fan of the Graphic Novel, and as I grew to appreciate Manga despite it being black and white my illustration became a blending of the capabilities of these two art styles. So you’ll see a few page pictures from comics that my good acquaintance Chris Sims covers if they meet the “Awesome Imperial Standard”.

Anyways, just letting you know about this new side-blog I have before I go to bed.