its only a day or two since my birthday money books came but i've already finished 2...*tries to be slower on the rest*

admittedly they're pretty much both comics so they don't take very long to read ^^;;

i read 'japan ai: a tall girl's adventures in japan' and 'after school nightmare' vol 1.

i liked japan ai altho i would have preferred it to have been an actual travel book, with illustrations mixed in, rather than a very simple holiday diary that didn't really say much at all. the illustrations were cool and funny, but rather than thinking of this like a travel book i reckon its best to think of it like one of those funny books you get, like 'the joys of engrish' - one of the ones you can pick up any time for a bit of a laugh, not something that's going to have you absorbed for more than a few minutes.

i really loved after school nightmare! i think i'm on a bit of a 'schoolkids meet supernatural shenanigans' trip at the moment what with playing persona 3 too XD luckily for me i got a belated birthday card from an auntie of mine so am now able to order the next four volumes! :D

after school nightmare centres around a student who has the top 1/2 of a boy but the bottom 1;/2 of a girl. he/she is living as a boy, with no-one knowing his secret, until he gets called in to participate in a strange after school club, where it seems like several more unusual students are getting a kind of therapy... (this is a really crap plot explanination as i'm trying not to give anything away - go read a proper review if you want to get a better idea of the series as it really seems good!). the artwork is also top notch, it has a sort of otherworldly strangeness at times but the linework is always sharp and everythng is always well drawn ^^^

i've just started the embalmer vol 1 now so i'm excited to see if its any good!

Tags: manga
aroundabout now, i am: kinda tired

yay! we just spent an fun little while posing our new pocco revoltech figure! oo... she's just gorgeous! <3 i can't get any decent shots of her as its too dark in here but here's a detail of her upper body - she so nicely painted!



she's from the art book 'sweet dreams' - here's some marketing shots which i think do her more justice than mine XD (i love her legwarmer thingys! )



*phew!* now that's done and we've gone food shopping i'm a bit nackered to do any drawing o.O; maybe i'll just play a leetle bit of persona 3.... ^_~

Tags: random
aroundabout now, i am: tired

my birthday money amazon order arrived!!

~ waaiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!! ~   *zooms around room in excitement*

i'm loving some of these covers and i can't wait to get stuck in to my lovely new books! here are a few of the varied yet gorgeous covers from the things i got



i love the covers to suppli! <3 i really hope the story is good as i'd love to have the whole series sitting on my shelf - we shall see ^^



i think i might try to do inking like this for my RSoM entry, altho with tone rather than colour over it *hmm...thinks to self* - i love the cat! XD



beautiful paintings on the outer and inner cover to this one! (seems very much like something denji and theorah would like XD ) the stories also appeal to me - if its good i can see this one being passed around my family and being read by everyone ^^



i really like the graphic design of japan ai's cover - and the sunburst is all sparkly and silver in real life! XD

....i also got after school nightmare vol 1, all nippon airlines and kitchen princess vol 1 :D

now all i need is an insanely long summer holiday in which to sit, iced green tea in hand, and read my way through these at my leisure....shame i'm going to be spending all summer working hard all day and comicking all night :P (not that i'm complaining -i can't wait to get stuck in to more comicking! XD )

today is a good day ^_^

Tags: art, manga
aroundabout now, i am: ecstatic

i've been going back to mechanical pencil lately. the left bottom 3 are quick ones and i quite like how the top two of those came out. the top right one started out quite quick then i just sort of zoned out and kept doodling on it for ages o.O; i quite like the top left one, which was done a few days ago, altho the pose is strange lol!

the bottom right one was today's and would have been better if her legs weren't way too small! XD i might do a couple of quick ones later but i've got a bit less time today so i might just have to plug away on 3D instead...

i'm just starting to feel like i'm getting more of a flow with drawing girls, which i think shows in the torso of today's one (yeah just forget about the legs ^^;; )

a note to any comickers out there who might be interested - this month's imagine FX mag has a section on figure drawing (bodies) with some tutorial videos on the DVD. there's also a section on use of colour theory and comicker jamie mckelvie (of suburban glamour fame) covers exactly how he takes a comic page from script to finish. so all i all if you don't pick it up often, this might be a good month to get hold of a copy (oh yeah and there's some iron man stuff and a free marvel magazine but i don't care about that stuff ^_~ )

Tags: art, life drawing
aroundabout now, i am: busy

our poseable sweet dreams figure has shipped!! *yays!* (we pre-ordered it in like march o.O: ) its going to be both fun and difficult to get her into a decent pose methinks...i can't wait to see her!

my emma vol 6 had shipped too

*is happy*

Tags: random
aroundabout now, i am: excited

i ordered volumes 6 and 7 of 'emma' with my birthday money and vol 7 has arrived but not vol 6! its now staring at me from my shelf willing me to just skip ahead and see what happens...but i shall be strong! on a side note vol 7 of emma is lovely and chunky! almost double the thickness of some of the other volumes! apparently there's also going to be a vol 8, which will include some short stories about some of the side characters. i'm quite excited about that, but its not even listed on amazon yet so i'm guessing its going to be a while before it comes out o.O;

recent manga musings...

i re-read and finished all of dramacon over the weekend! it certainly is dramatic, and i was pretty much glued to it until i finished all 3 volumes. however the drama is pretty much all of the 'will they won't they' college kids romance variety - given a bit of a twist as all of the events are set around an anime con ^_^

the creator goes on a bit about whether manga made in the US can be called manga, which i thought was a bit unnecessary as it did nothing for the actual plot or characters of the book, and i don't think within her own OEL series was the best place for the creator to vent her frustrations about the ongoing debate.

book 1 was definately the strongest, with the best character introductions and most balanced storytelling of the lot. however the other two volumes still kept me hooked and even tho there were a few bits i didn't think were overly necessary (like introducing a new character in book 2 and giving her much more interesting coverage than the main character) overall it was really enjoyable!

recently i've also read volumes 1-5 of emma and i adore it! just stating the premise doesn't do it justice at all. basically it's set in victorian england and its about a maid called emma and her growing relationship with a man of much higher social standing - will they ever make a relationship work, as they come from two different worlds? i'm sure a lot of stories with this premise have been written in novel and play form but this is the first time i've read one personally.

i'm tempted to say the story and artwork are gentle - the pace is relatively slow, there's certianly no big action sequences or melodrama - but somehow this series gripped me utterly, and as it goes on it becomes totally absorbing and heart-rending at the same time.

the creator has paced her art and storytelling very well together - the backgrounds and costumes are very well researched and drawn, and she's very good at picking up on the detail of the characters' activities (things like emma carefully taking off her glasses before going to bed) without making the comic boring in the slightest.

seriously, i can't wait to read 6 and 7 - in fact i think i'm going to re-read all of them again as i think i flew through them a bit fast on my first reading. i want to know what happens between emma and her man, but i'm not sure if it will be a happy ending, which is probably another reason why this series is so good - i have no expectations about what might happen next, which is a very rare thing with all the cliched stories around at the moment

---

and in other news my liking for spoonbard's art has been growing more lately - i hope i don't go all 'fan'-like over it o.O; i really liked this comic cover - the pose is cool and the character has got 'weight' to her (it feels like she's really there, not that she's fat XD )

aww...i would have embedded it but the option is turned off on this deviation...anyway it can be seen here on his DA --> http://spoonbard.deviantart.com/art/Anna-Mercury-Cover-II-85500642

Tags: art, manga
aroundabout now, i am: busy

( chatting about persona 3 and a couple of PC games - i've included screenshots of the games i talk about too ^_^ )

Tags: games
aroundabout now, i am: still too hot!

we've had my folks round this weekend for a joint birthday celebration of mine and my dad's birthdays! (his is coming up soon) - they bought me a gorgeous le creuset cast iron wok (in orange no less!) <3 <3 its this one -->

we're going to make so many lovely meals in this! XD

this morning we finally went to mill road for some asian foodstuffs shopping! (i can't believe we've lived here nearly a year and a half and not done that yet o.O; ) mum loves loads of hard-to-find asian ingredients and spice mixes (her fav is red poast pork mix - she bought *so many* packs of that! XD ).  they used to live in luton which has a really diverse ethnic mix, then they moved back to cheltenham which didn't have a single asian grocery store in the 80s o.O;  she also has a million food intolernces (wheat, dairy and caffiene being the main ones) so she's often hunting for things like rice noodles, cornstarch noodles and bean curd noodles....

anyway we bought, like, all the asain food! we've got

- enough curry paste jars to last at least 6 months i think (biryani spice paste! *drools* )
- a couple of bags full of frozen dim sum stuff (mmm...turnip paste, dumplings and bao!)
- a new bamboo steamer (i didn't dry my old one properly and it mouldered in the cupboard >.< )
- pocky! XD
- loads of jars of stuff like hoi sin and char siu sauces which they don't sell at tescos ¬_¬
- a bamboo brush to clean my new wok (its seasoned so no scourers or soapy water allowed!)
- tom yum soup paste (i've never tried making it and it looked good in neo the other month...)
- a few flavours of instant ramen i've not tried (plus tonkatsu flavour for wren XD )
- a few bottles of iced green tea and guava juice drinks...i love these on a hot day
- a carton of juice from a fruit i've never heard of, yays!
- mango ice cream mochi! XD

...aaaand i can't remember any more but i'm sure there was some...i'm so excited to have loads of fab different ingredients in the house! (we were getting a bit stuck in a food rut...) - we used to get to our local chinese supermarket in bournemouth quite regularly to pick up stuff like dim sum, so i really missed having that available....now if we could only find a sake set - wren bought some sake for her yakitori marinade so me n banemoo have to drink the rest up (oh noes!) ... we're drinking it out of chinese tea cups at the mo o.O; 

Tags: food
aroundabout now, i am: full

some curvy girlies i've drawn recently...a few days ago now but not a lot more to upload as its all been neo planning and parents visiting in the last couple of days...



the three leftmost ones and the second one at the top are quick copies of poses from the 'sweet dreams' art book we've got. i adore the girls in this, their proportions are lovely! <3 i have to say tho most of these were drawn on bad drawing days...they were all kind oif annoying to draw and i don't feel any of them came out that well ¬_¬ but hopefully i'll be back onto good drawing days soon. the last one on the right and the two in the middle were done with a brush pen very quickly to try and capture the form - i'm not great at this kind of sketching as its really difficult to get the proportions right without a lot of pencilled in planning o.O;

Tags: life drawing
aroundabout now, i am: too hot!

ah what a fab day! i'm taking the whole day off every other form of work and errand and planning my neo comp entry! (as well as randomly boogying when ever i feel like it on wren's new dance mat XD )

so far i've got the idea and style sorted, planned where all the panels will go on each page and very briefly sketched what will be in each panel - now i'm working on finalising my initial sketches, then i'll be showing it to lee before i start the proper pages. lots to do but i have to say i'm in love with this comic! all the influences are so up my street its unbelievable and i feel like i haven't had to hold myself back on any crazy graphical ideas either.

its a shame i can't post up any development work but hopefully once the comp's over i'll be able to post up a cool timeline-esque development dump which might be interesting. it's nice to work on actual comic pages as i'm usually sidetracked into standalone projects or life drawing practice (or *ahem* planning yet more comics and never managing to draw them ^^;; )

apart from today, i'll be trying to fit work on the neo comp into my free time so as not to get in the way of my 3D work, but with both neo and the RSoM comic i've decided if it gets to a certain point (maybe mid-june with this one, which has a july deadline) and i haven't really made any progress, i'll just work on it full-time until its done ^_^ this one especially will be good 2D concept-y work for my portfolio so i've got no problem with spending extra time on it ^^

i got a fantastic birthday picture from rodentnetworks - thanks so much to nattherat!! i wasn't expecting anything like that so i'm really chuffed *^^*

i got some cool presents from wren and banemoo this morning before they headed off to work including all the homebrew enabling stuff for my DS - i spent the first few minutes of this morning installing 'colours!' which i've now got working - now i can join the ranks of those at wednesdayAnime who peruse their laptops/handhelds in the break XD

i also got persona 3 for the PS2! i read the booklet while eating breakfast and it looks *so good* o.O; so i'm sort of stopping myself from starting the game til i get my thumbnails done, or that'd be me for the rest of the day i think ^^;;

i got books 2 & 3 of dramacon and to terra! very different series but both are 3 books each so i can now finish each of them which is very cool ^^

i also got the box set of the entire series of speed grapher!!! XD XD ooo...shiny! i can't wait to watch it through again (we've only watched up to maybe episode 7 so far - i have the first 2 DVDs already) - so if anyone wants to offer me a decent price for the first 2 DVDs of speed grapher then please do, otherwise i'll probably bring-and-buy them next con ^^

~skips off happily~

Tags: competition, random
aroundabout now, i am: cheerful