Liam

Some of the cons don't even really have to be anime based to have a huge anime turnout. In atlanta we have Anime Weekend Atlanta (AWA) and we have DragonCon. Although DragonCon isn't based on anime (It's Gaming/Scifi/Fantasy/Comics) It usually has a large Anime turnout. There's usually a few web comic artists, a few screenings of anime, and a butt load of cosplayers. (I hated having to break it to the guys that were tetris pieces that they were russian in orgin, and not Japaneese. LOL they tried so hard) Then there are TONS of vendors there. If your intimidated by Cosplayers But not stormtroopers, (there were 31 in full costume at the parade) I would suggest trying to hit up a con like that first.

I have to agree with Lore. I went to Art school for 6 years, and after all teh expensive markers and pens I went through, I still wind up using just a variety of cheap rollerball pens and Sharpies. I will say this though, try changintg the type of paper you use. Go to Office Max/Depot/ect and Buy a ream of Vellum Bristol paper with atleast a 60lb press on it. It's quite a bit thicker, but once you get used to it, You'll find that it'll hold quite a bit more ink before it runs. You can usually find a Ream of the stuff for between 4 and 7 bucks. The only note to it is that you have to pencil lightly before you ink, because heavy erasing will leave HUGE fuzzies.

Aha! I've finished up some accessories which spawn ALL kinds of new ideas. [IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v16/Dalai_liam/Iimo/strings.jpg[/IMG] Since I couldn't decide on one type of stringed instrument, I figgured I'd allow him to play them all. In a string-section-no-justsu fasion, kind of like Kage-Bushin. This is the ultimate in wailing and rocking out. [IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v16/Dalai_liam/Iimo/tessen.jpg[/IMG] As for a weapon, I decided that the Hidden village of ROCK! is pretty artsy and performance based. I decided to go with Fans since traditionally they are performance based in the asias. To make them combat worthy, I decided to go with the tessen. A tessen is a metal war fan used by fuedal genrals to dirrect troops. I figgured if we polished them up real nice we could use them to reflect light, blind opponents and signal to team-mates :) I decided to modernize the design a bit and give it more of a switchblade look though. [IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v16/Dalai_liam/Iimo/squid.jpg[/IMG] And lastly but not least I decided all good ninjas have a summoning technique. So we present Limaru, the squid. :) There was no bishonen planned so I figgured, Bishi+tenticles=teh win! Limaru used to be a star of the smash hit TV dramady "Sex in the Squidy" but when the show went belly up, some of his investments went belly up and he was forced to go to work at the department of summons. I figgure every mission he can appear atleast once and give advice about "This one eppisode..." that probably won't really be relevant at all. But hey.... I hear he's number 1 with the ladies! I guess next up is to flesh out a cast of supporting characters. Squads come in 3 so I decided to add a Drummer and singer, one of which must be a girl according to naruto law. I decided that a sexy but robustly strong girl drummer would be nice roll reversal, and we could give the singer role to a fairly androgenous guy.

"when You Superglue Your Hands Together, Your Not Supposed To Sniff Them!"

Nah, it's Ok to ask guys out, this is the 90s... no wait... Yeah it's still Ok. Aggressive chicks are kinda hott.

I wish I could count. Hm m I guess I should start about how I rescently ruined my life. My best friend and I were both working at a lan center. This girl that my friend had met before came up to us. We both liked her. That night I was giving my friend a ride home and we were talking about her. He said he would back off of her for me. I told him "nah... go for it." Being blind to my friend's bad traits, because he was well my friend, they hooked up, and started going out. I started seeing alot more of her, and one night I said, Let's go to Chilli's. He couldn't go so, she and I went. We were sitting there and I notice her eyes dialating while she was talking to me, so I called her on it, and she said she liked me. And I admitted I liked her. We talked about it for an hour or two, and We agreed we shouldn't tell my friend about it, or let anything happen between us. He was afterall my best friend and her boyfriend. So... she tells him about it. He starts being more distant from me but never says why. She and I start hanging out more and more. I fall in love with her, and still let them have the relationship and all that. She starts complaining about the relationship to me. I tell her not to, because I'm biased and would try to break them up. We agree that we're not going to talk about this with him. So.... she talks about it with him. He tells me he's writing me out of his life. Just like that. She complains more about the relationship to me. I tell her I'm biased, but she shuoldn't let him treat her like that. He breaks up with her saying he needs to get his crap together, after like 2 weeks of her NOT being able to talk to me at all because he won't let her. So she calls me crying and leaves a message. I was in ATL for christmas, so Eventually I get ahold of her. I told her I missed her and came clean. I drove back to Florida christmas day just to be near her and wound up having christmas with her folks. Afterwords we went to see a movie, and she came over the the apt. We wound up spending the night together, and going shopping the next day. After alot of personal moments durring that day, she dropps me off at the apt, and says she has to go do soemthing and will be back soon. I again called her on it. I asked if she was going over to the lan center to see her Ex, she said yes, for closure. To make a long story short she tells him everything that happend. Comes back to the apt, hangs out for like an hour and then leaves to go home. I don't see her (and wasn't able to get in touch)for 2 days, then she comes back and tells me that she's getting back with Him in a week. She tells me I got her drunk and that's the only reason she was with me(when she was sobered up and clearly making the moves on me)Which I know are his words. I was destroyed to the point that I left town, and moved, jsut so I wouldn't have to see anywhere that reminded me of her, or him. This was less than a month ago. I hear they're married now.

N/p. Been doing it for a while. It's the quickest fastest way to do it.

I admit it, I may break the rules with this thread. I'll probably post right after myself, but since it's basically being broken down into chapters, Most of thise will be seperate posts, and if they're back to back. Sorry. I hope that's forgivable. I suppose I'll start with creating a character. I'm not a writer, so I usually try to tell the story with how the character looks. Step 1, inspiration: Alright. Last night I was chatting with a freind who plans to cosplay Naruto characters, SO I'm sitting there doodling cyborg parts on an unrelated tangent. Well I decide that maybe something Naruto-ish would be fun. So I set out to create some sort of ninja character. Step 2, Jotting: This is the general brainstorming part. like writing, most people see this as a point to write down a jot list. For me this breaks down into brainstorming and doodling. Since life is a satire, I decide to make fun of things in most everything I do. I decide on a name and a genral idea with a few gags! We'll call him "Iimo! The hard rock ninja!" (So I can have him whine "I'M NOT EMO!" all the time) Then I take a few of the naruto elements and parody them. Forehead protector, check. Jacket/shirt with Big collar, check. Looks young, check. Rocking out to the Fighting Dreamer theme song? I'm already doing it baby. [i] I appologize for the crap-titude of this part here, all I had on hand was a ball point pen and some printer paper. I had to take a photo cause I just moved and the scanner is still packed away somewhere[/i] Step 3, The face. The face is the first thing people look at when they meet you. Your face is probably the most defining point. So here's my quick face jot sheet as I tried to make a few planned elements work. [IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v16/Dalai_liam/Iimo/headshot1.jpg[/IMG] My first idea was to give the guy the classic emo haircut, it says alot about a guy to have a fairly unkept appearance. I've decided that Iimo's just a bit lazy, and can only really focus on one thing for short periods of time. Life's hard with ADD. At first I thought maybe long hair would be cool and I'd try to do something distinguishing with that, I didn't like how that worked out. With the shorter hair, Putting the forehead protector on his head wasn't working out, amde him look very Sakura-chan. :( I later decided that taking it off and moving it somewhere was the safest option. I went with the neck, because A) it protects him from vampires. B) it's not so mainstream. Everyone wears a forehead protector on their forehead. Would he do that? No. as far as facial expressions go, I like to try to set my characters apart with them. I know in alot of older anime, the only way you could tell characters apart was by hair and color :p. Anywho. I decided small round eyes would be good. It's an uncommon trait that rarely gets used, so I decided that would be a nice starting point for distinguishing Iimo. He's not too particularly happy ever, because well he IS Emo, so I set his face with either neutral or sad expressions most of the time. I also decided to add a little line under his eye, to show that he's got some bags, and didn't get much sleep last night. He was probbaly writing about bands that suck on myspace all night. (Note: Check out the Hidden village of ROCK forehead protector) *Throws up the horns* I decided the top right one worked best. [i] again... sorry for the craptitude[/i] Step 4, Garb: By garb, I mean clothes. Clothes say alot about a person, almost as much as the face. [IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v16/Dalai_liam/Iimo/clothes.jpg[/IMG] At this point, I decided that I'd have to drop the Emo-ness a bit. You can't dress Emo and Ninja at the same time. It just doesn't work. So I went with a metal/goth look at first. A scuba shirt was easily workable. Give him some baggy shorts a few little accessories, and your done!... aside from the fact that I forgot the manditory BIG JACKET! For inspiration here, I looked at real clothing (It's usually a good place to start) So I went to my closet, and pulled out this Black Nautica winter jacket I'd had for a while. It's Big, waterproof, and warm. Function meets fasion. I decided the jacket would be a big part of displaying the personality, because it's versitile. With the hood up, it says things like "I want to be alone", "I don't want to be noticed", or even "It's raining". With it down it's more along the lines of "I can be approached", "I'm paying attention to you", or "This is what I'm nnormally like". Lastly I decided I could leave the thing half way done up for more fun loving or angry moods. Next up : Accessories. I'm kind of torn between giving him a guitar, an Axe, or a more traditional japaneese Biwa. I'll add weapoons too because they tella bit about capabilities.

blah... Man I typed up a REALLY long post on how to do this in photoshop last night, but I guess it didn't take. So now you get the condensed version. 1) create a new text layer for EVERY speech bubble. this way you can move them around/resize and adjust all the text to make sure that you maximize picture area. 2) after that's finalized, make another layer under all the text (call it "Speech bubbles" or something) Take the polygon tool, set to circle and make sure fixed aspect ratio is off. Now drag yourself a little oval behind one of the blocks of text, you can see the dancing ants in the selected area, letting you know where the bubble will be filled in. Go to fill 100% white. Now take the polygon lasso, and make a carrot to the speaker that overlaps the oval you just made. fill that white too. 3) repeat for every other speech bubble. 4) Go to layer options on your "Speech bubbles" and set it to stroke. Set the stroke distance to 1 or 2 px. Make sure to change the stroke color to black. (it's defaultly red) ------------------------------------------------- Notes: ------------------------------------------------- If someone's yelling and your using a huge font, set the stroke distance to something like 5 or so. It gives a thicker border. If you need to connect bubbles to other bubbles, just create a new layer over "speech bubbles" and draw in the lines with the line tool with a minimum width of 5 px, then go to layers and merge down. If your doing sounnd effects in the backgound, just select the layer that that text is on, go to layer options and stroke it in white.

I'm going to be the other side of the coin. I'm going to say yes you do have to watch some stuff with subs. :P Not because it's with subs though. No I'm not saying that because I'm elitist, or a"Purist" Or because of the fact that I speak enough Japaneese to follow along. I'm going to say it because toonami/Adult swim is pretty limiting. It's good stuff. I saw it a few years ago in fansubs, and I'm watching some of it again, now. But at that time I origonally saw it, I was also watching ALOT of stuff that hasn't and probably won't make it to america. I would probably say you like those series, but I wouldn't label you as an ANIME fan.(A fan of those series, maybe) I still have trouble labeling myself as a fan or otaku(And I'm watching somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 new anime series). :P For example I like the Florida Gators, And used to go to all their games. I didn't paint myself orange and blue and go shirtless in the winter. I wasn't a _Fan_. In short I think your kind of focused in on just a few anime. Expand your Horizons :P

I figgured I'd post this. I thought I'd finish it at some point, but I'm just too busy now adays. It's about 3% fishished. Oh well here's to devoting more time to digitasl painting. I got little more than throwing down some armatures, base colors and shading. Took about 35 minutes before I had to go to work the other day. I just can't seem to get excited about it so Here it is. Still need line art, Coloring, More shadow depth, ect. Blah.

I remember doing this on the MegaTokyo boards a while back but it seems to have died down there. Basically the idea is to introduce a character of your own, and toss them back and forth with the other artist, usually in a sequence each artist does a page alternating.(Heck you could even get 3+ artists in) Whie the subject can be anything from a fist fight to a daily conversation with gags to an expidition at the shopping mall at christmas... It doesn't matter, all the creative twists test the skills of the other artist. In the end you come up with an elaborate creation. with a somewhat continuing storyline. After 10 or so pages, we can elave it up to viewers for a vote. Any takers?

Fortunately there were 4 attempts to catch Artimis as he plumitted from the rooftop. Unfortunately none were particularly coordinated.