Oekaki Dump & Some Interesting Info

Interesting Reads for Heta-Fanatics
Confessions of a Football Hooligan (Dec 1985)
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Written in '85, from what I've been able to gather as the end of the decade or so of prevalent, media-hyped football hooliganism in the UK (and just before the rise of something worse?). In reaction to THIS event of the same year.

A lot of other countries do it too, for other reasons.


Love your Football.
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Also while you're at it:
Britain's Mean Streets (Mar 2008)
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Brings you the awesome quote, "Culturally, Britain just doesn't like children much."
Kinda depressing but illuminating all the same.

Adieu!

On Methodology

What About Colour?

This is apparently an issue that a lot of people have when they draw anime-ish stuff. You learn how to get the lines right, yes... but how to colour it all in? It never looks finished unless there's some colour slapped on to your particular piece of work. Yet if you finish line in fine liner, what colour CAN look good with it?
Watercolours? Really expensive fancy markers?

I'm stuck at a crossroads here. I got a set of monochrome Prismacolors a long time ago and I've just about got the hang of how to use them, but that's a long way from perfecting the skill of colour use in markers for that really authentic manga-cover look. And I'm not sure it's an investment I'm willing to make (how much CAN you colour anyway, before the ink runs dry and you have to pay another $15 for one new pen?).

So I've always been one for scanning things at whatever sketch stage they're at and colouring them on computer.

As you can probably tell from the way my colours look, my home ground has always been the Oekaki.



Left is done in oekaki, right in SAI. Right clearly imitates the method I've developed in Left.
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However PC colouring, you kinda need to have the lines done digitally as well. Works for a rough sketch that I redraw on PC, but retracing the entire image on the computer (to get smooth, distinctive colour lines with that "digital" feel) after having retraced the picture 2-3 times by hand to get it right just seems like a waste of time.

And, in some cases, a step backward.

I really like the depth of line that happens when I do something in ballpoint pen, which is my native medium really. The shading, thickness of line and the way the picture evolves is pretty much exactly as I want it to, minus things I can easily erase.


Ok this is pencil, but you get the idea about depth & thickness? Maybe I want to fineline it, but I certanly don't want to do the entire thing AGAIN in one flat colour on computer.
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Problem: Digital according to my method, looks good when its lines are done, usually in flat colour, on computer.
Analog lines look good, but how do you apply colour?


The Solutions
One thing I've recently been up to is doing things in (very faint) coloured pencils. This involves taking a pen drawing / fineliner trace, and tracing over THAT with a faint blue pencil. This pencil line is then built up with very gradual layers of faint colours, usually made up of the primary set from my Derwents box.
The result is quite pastelly but has a nice balance to it.

This is the first method I've ever had for getting lines AND colour all done manually. YAYOMG! :> :>

Probably I only have this problem because I have no markers / paint skill or experience to speak of, but at least this is one solution I'm comfortable with.




Pale & Pastelly Coloured Pencils
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This is my coloured pencil look. This is from a semi-secret triptych that is 1 year overdue from being sent (as a bribe) to a connection of mine that lives Stateside and occasionally helps me get my greasy paws on games for half the retail price in this stupid country.

They're all packed and ready, along with Timtams, ANZAC bikkies and a tube of vegemite, and a pleading letter to get him to fix my busted external hard-drive. Ain't I sweet? :> :>

Creativity =/= fun?

Creativity used to be a fun hobby.

But being creative full-time, under the restraint of briefs and everchanging teachers' opinions; being forced to create in a certain way, at certain angles, about certain things irrespective of your own strengths and interests, can get very draining very quickly.
Ambition and novelty can get you through the first semester, but they won't carry you for three years.
So you tend to be drained at the end of a day and not even remotely interested in pursuing all those things you thought you were put on this earth to pursue.
So you either find your own way and cling to it in every brief, or get by until the holidays. Something about it all though, makes me desperate to assert my own hobbies and passtimes on a schedule that can't really bear it, because expert validation in this world is a long, long way away.

AKA I'm beginning to once again get frustrated and bored out of my socks by coursework! When will it all end?
When can I stop having dreams about amazing rivers I've never known and crews I've never worked with, about white soft powdery snow up to the waist on a special black run off the piste that I practically grew up on these past few years?


Anyway. Either I'll get the better of this or it'll get the better of me. There's always deferral as an option...

On my way home

Things I need to prepare for poking around at home:

- Some form of knitting / crocheting gear. :)
- A multipocket folder to organise my sheaths of drawing paper
- urrrm, catchup on missed classes?


Hmmmmm alright. Just enough NZD to take care of everything and a bunch of cash in the bank yet to keep me going when I get back. Shoes from America? Maybe...
Also need to:
- Make some delicious cookies and
- Some TTGL pictures and
- my busted old harddrive to put together and mail to my agent over in the ole new country.

In perfecting my quiet-night-inness, have finished most of the books I brought over, which I thought were way too many - done with Henry Esmond and Voltaire's Candide, and now ploughing through Empires. All of which are set in similar periods for at least part of their durations, which means you get bits of them referencing each other.
History is like some really, really complicated branched-out series that's been evolving over years and years, so convoluted that if you miss 30 seconds the season is effectively ruined for you, and yet you have literally thousands of years to catch up on before you even start paying attention.

British Empirial Rallying Cry: If you can't beat them, make them join you!

Good day from real winter

Minus 6 degrees on a fine morning in July, strolling around and checking out the facilities, and thinking "this is what losing 2 hours feels like." New Zealand didn't give me a passport stamp. :<
What is it like across the tasman?

Like Oz but not. :/

I've almost finished that pesky book that kept me entertained through a good 7 hours of waiting for and riding on miscellaneous planes. Henry Esmond, indeed. For seconds, Voltaire, I'm looking at you!

Funnily enough the shuttle driver knew my address and took me to the doorstep, her own house being 3 doors down from where I would be staying. I'm quite sure I got the unit number right... the door was locked so I left my things behind and went walkabout.

Time for a coffee, and some more of Harry's melodramatic misadventures.

I've figured out that 3 days ~ $180 or so for a lift pass to one of the given mountains, with free bus from the centre 10 minutes from the house. That and I can get a multiday pass with friend discounts, maybe.

We'll just see how much money I have left after it's all over. This funny New Zealand paper money.... check me flicking through it with no sense whatsoever of the value of each pretty colour note. Kind of like our money but different colours and fonts.
Money's funny like that, before its intristic value sinks into you through the rote repetition of a hundred thousand little purchases in a hundred thousand little stores.

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I have a massive ego, but that doesn't necessarily mean I have a high opinion of myself. Indeed in my experience ego is there to compensate for self-esteem. You compensating for your own perceived lack

~ Cats & Cradles ~

= Regarding the Prehistoric History of Britain =

Where are the British countries, anyway?

When did England and France begin as nations?

A lot of pondering (and some fun with character designs) going on his afternoon.

I could spend hours just reading about history on Wikipedia. :) More on that when it's scan-ready.

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Wartime Uniforms - Great Britain WWII

Since I dedicated a significant part of my holidays to APH-fangirling, I've become a good deal wiser (and more well-resourced in terms of wonderful art-sites) and expanded extensively upon my uniform fetish.

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= Fortuitous Forged Talismans Aplenty =

Another thing that's passing the long hours at home away from work and school is playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2. I'm naughty and haven't finished the first one yet plot-wise, and this next one is bugging me in various ways that I'm sure will improve as I get further in the game.

1. I need recruits and can't get any. I have a finicky habit when it comes to FFTA, and that is good name hunting. I want good names for the members of my party, the only thing I can't change.
2. You can play the game any way you like but you always play it KNOWING what you SHOULD do is plan out carefully what abilities & jobs each party member will cover. A party with the maximum number of members should just about cover every job available, if each party member masters 2 jobs. Complicated? Sure, but us Otaku like the finicky details. Annoying? Hell yes, especially when I'm bogged down with the first 6.. and... can't... accept... bad names....
3. Unlike the older game, I can't powerplay. I don't do it on purpose, but I find the plot tends to come second to training and mastering abilities when I play. So I tend to bog myself down with silly side-missions when I could punch through the plot and get those items that I need to make the tools that I need to get the jobs that I need... for the crew I don't yet have.
   

ARGH games. They're supposed to be for fun, aren't they??

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The most awesome bit of miscellany today.

I washed the blanket that my cats love to sleep on (soft and light wooly Pokemon blanket, would you believe), the one that usually lives on my carefully crafted and perfected layering of sheets and blankets and quilts. It invariably gets gunked up by their frequent visits and is covered in cat fur and dust and bits.
I added wool softener and my bathrobe for kicks and it smells like the best of clean cuddly laundry.... and the smell is so strong (maybe I didn't dry it properly?) that it has rubbed off on my cats.
So dear Genya cuddling up to me while I was eating dinner in front of the TV with my little DS Lite (Spicks and Specks was crap the other night, btw ;/ ) smelt like wool softener.

So... so delicious a smell for soft wooly cuddly cats.

This made my day.

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By the way, both Shiina and Genya are very muscly cats... their strength surprises me sometimes. True their father was definitely a feral tomcat and their mother from the lineage of a feed store cat (where country people buy food for horsies and things, you cityfolk!). My cats are quite large.
When Genya was cuddling up to me the other night and doing that claw-kneading thing kittens do to their mommies, I noticed how his arm (leg? paw?) was all sinews and one big chunk of hard muscle. Crap, kitty, you are strong...
No wonder he pushes me around when he shares the bed. Shiina, you are getting too big for my lap!!

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