My first Animé Convention - How To Draw Manga - Basics

There was an Animé Convention held at Southend Library today and it was their first one. I have never been to one of these before and have always longed to, so once I found out I finally had the opportunity I jumped at the chance.

The library held a variety of activities, such as an Art Workshop, Basic Japanese Language, How To Make Sushi, Film Screenings, Cosplay Competition etc. As you all know, I love art, so I took the Art Class!

My teacher was a professional Manga artist who went by the name of "Nana Li" (I assume she's Chinese) and she's a freelance illustrator who has a degree in Bio Engineering. I kid you not.
She's a very talented artist who has drawn for Shakespeare Manga "Twelfth Night" plus other things, and if you're into Art or feel the need to get in touch with her, this is her website, blogspot page and Twitter:
http://nanarealm.com
http://nanarealm.blogspot.com/
http://twitter.com/LiNana

I recorded practically the entire class for all you budding artists out there. You'll have to turn the volume right up to hear her though, I'm afraid.







As you will see in one of the videos, Nana asked me about DragonballZ characters and asked me to draw their sort of hairstyles on the board. I decided to draw Vegeta's hair since it's the easiest, as it's basically tall and spikey. She then asked me to draw Goku's which is a tad more complicated...but anyway. She basically said that this sort of hairstyle was an exception in Animé, as in most Animé's the hairstyles are more normal, i.e. not defying gravity, and that "DragonballZ type hair" is not what we would be studying. Haha!

Towards the end of the session, Nana Li held a competition. You had to draw a character that was a Ninja, but had to incorporate another theme to it, such as Vampire Ninja, School Girl Ninja etc. She said the winner would be based on creativity and originality, NOT technically.

Drawing with a dodgy pencil and no rubber is pretty difficult, I'll admit, but I somehow managed to draw a School Girl Ninja. It really wasn't my best effort (er, at all) but we only had about 20 minutes and it was basically the best I could come up with. I mean, Ninja and School Girl?? Kay...
(Funny moment of the day: Calum was drawing his picture and was really concentrating on the face. Nana Li said we had 7 minutes to go and Calum was like "No!! I have to draw the body yet!! OMG!!")

I wrote annontations next to my drawing so Nana could see why I chose them and that I actually put thought into it (although my notes are quite lame. Funny, but lame.)


SEEEEE???

Shocking.

Anyway, we handed our pieces in and we waited anxiously as Nana judged them. There were to be five winners and the five lucky ones would win one of her Artworks. I honestly thought (and still do) that my drawing was a bit poo and never expected to get called out, so when I did I was pretty amazed and was like "No way - REALLY?"

This is the Artwork I chose:



And this is one of the demonstrations Nana drew in class:



And these are some other drawing's Nana has done:





Honestly...CHECK HER OUT!

Loituma - Ievan Polka and Ready Brek

I've been listening to this Finnish song for over a year now. I first heard it when I saw this famous Animé Animation called "Spinning Leak". I'm sure there are several people who have heard of it. A bit more YouTubing and I found the original song from the original group.

They're not exactly your typical looking band, but you can't deny the talent they have (see second video). The song itself is very catchy and has a great, humerous video to go with it.



The song itself is about a mother's daughter going out and getting with a guy. To view the Finnish lyrics and the English translation, click here: http://www.lyricsdir.com/loituma-ievan-polkka-lyrics.html
Going by the lyrics, it does sound more like an old folk's poem which is what I like about it, because it's a different song to what's out there.
The chorus isn't actually Finnish, it's just a load of gibberish (the "ya tata, ya dibbi dabbadilla, badaroompa badaroompa, dilli dadoh...etcetc...) and that's why you won't find it on the lyrics page, so don't get confused like I did!

This is the acapella version which is just as amazing (and a bit different from the video version).



I was at work and just cleaning out a screen (I work at a cinema), but it took a long time and the adverts had already started. I was just about to walk out when I heard the Ready Brek advert:



I stopped and had my mouth open! I couldn't believe it. I heard the advert earlier this year but having known the song for a year, I was pretty stunned to hear a Finnish song on a British advert. But most of all I felt pretty proud for knowing it and where it originally came from. I was telling my workfriend about it but I don't think they paid that much attention, nor did they really care or probably understand.

Oh well. I was happy.

Portraits For Pleasure - Blue Eyes

For this project we are doing for Mika, I didn't intend on drawing for his song "Blue Eyes", but found myself increasingly thinking about it and wondering what to do for it. My mind wandered to the images I saw in his EP book and tried to draw inspiration from them, but found nothing.

I was at work one day, when I decided to grab a bit of till paper, a ballpoint pen, and doodle (I tend to do this quite often). This is what I ended up drawing.



This piece became my blueprint and started to work on the actual piece a couple of days later. The pictures in Mika's EP show pictures of a girl with an intricate jungle-like background (and other various pictures, too) but I couldn't come up with any full length pictures of my own, so I just decided to focus on the eyes instead. They are the windows to your soul, after all, and can speak much more than words sometimes.

As suggested by another artist I know, I tried to use "The Grid". This is where you get the drawing you want and place a grid over it, and then draw a grid on the paper. You then use the guidelines to create your picture. I wanted to use my own eyes in this picture:



However, the printed picture was in A4 and the paper that I wanted to draw on was A3. It was difficult, an absolute mess and a total nightmare so I scrapped it. I won't even show you the picture of it. That's when I decided I should do freehand all the way! I don't use A4 paper anymore.

However, instead of doing realistic eyes, I chose to do Animé eyes. I figured that an upset toon is easier to look at than an upset real person, but still decided to use greyscale with a splash of colour. This is the first draft.



I like the realistic shading mixed with the cartoon-like features. One thing I didn't like was that I shaded the nostril too prominently, and it made her face seem chubby (or is that just me?) and mixed too much realism with the cartoon-like effects. I used watercolours for the eyes and the hair, and even for the big black outlines, but sometimes I also used a black Manga Pen.

I decided to give this woman red hair because I see the character "Blue Eyes" as someone who used to be strong but became broken, as suggested by the lyrics "Your heart is broken to your surprise". The red hair represents her strong and unique character, but the blue, watery eyes suggest a damaged soul.

This is the final piece.



I decided to do the background completely black and hide a lot of her face because then it's like she's drowning/being swallowed into her own despair. Plus it also concentrates on the eyes, which is what I wanted. I wrote the lyrics on the side because it's like there's a tiny voice - whether it be hers or someone else - trying to get through to her.

I quite like this piece. It's deep. In my opinion anyway :-)