No bike.

Today I took part in a karate competition. The low point of the day was that I had gotten a lift to Tallaght and had to I wait four hours after I had finished competing for same back home. The other passengers were a bit drunk and blaring every god-awful pop song they could find on the radio at ear-splitting level while I looked out the window and thought of England.

Adelie Teens

hilarity of adelie penguins molting is unlimited. although I can't help but find adelie penguins funny in general and I feel guilty sometimes. It's their little penguin body language.

動物

Uh.. I don't have a favourite animal. But I really enjoy native wildlife and maintain that badgers never get enough love. So here's a badger with a cup of cocoa.

stone in a well.

The  other day I found an unofficial English copy of Murakami Haruki's Pinball 1973. This is a quick sketch of my impressions of the first fourteen pages. It's very Early Murakami. All the hallmarks such as casual dips into the surreal, animal-centered mini-missions, mysterious knowing nameless female characters and a sense of quiet futility.

Speedpainting

Some speedpainting I did yesterday. The characters in the top picture are Niamh's lovely pirate couple. They're a lot of fun to draw.
COLOUR ♡♡♡♡♡

Newsprint parade

 

I scanned a bunch of pages from my sketchbooks for my portfolio this week. Here's a few plus a Yanappu/Pansage. Happy Pokemon Week.

Guilty sketch dump

Started trying to watch Peep Show in order. I think it's really a show you need to watch with someone or it can be kind of painful. Ah well. I drew this with Sakura fineliners - those pens that people use to ~ink their beautiful manga drawrerings~. I feel like there's a floaty-haired, long-lashed shojo manga goddess crying somewhere.
Next some sketches that I was mucking around with in Photoshop instead of doing film work :C

 

 Oh I remember why I started distracting myself: OH MY GOD NEIGHBOURS MAKE YOUR BABY STOP CRYING WHAT ARE YOU DOING FFFFFFFF.

On the objectification of gay men in manga for female readers.

Quick doodle. I hope this comes up for every moron that types 'yaoi' into google image search.

Charatypes .01

During the summer I had a go at the 20 favourite characters meme. I found it really difficult because I realised, rather than have an affinity for a specific characters of specific shows, I just have a tendency to like character types; certain habits or idiosyncrasies or behaviours that I enjoy when they are apparent in any character in any setting. I don't think I could make an exhaustive list, and anyway sometimes these are only any good when combined with other characteristics. The other problem was that often I only liked characters as part of a pair. In the end, for the meme I ended up drawing characters that either stood out to me because they didn't fit inside my set perimeters of interest or characters that totally defined them.
The point of this post is to start to archive some of these character types.

01: Ridiculous, over the top villains who have a high opinion of themselves, are prone to dressing pompously and have a silly villain laugh. Often in series they 'happen' to show up wherever the heroes find themselves to compete with them. The cornier and more extravagant, the better.

A perfect example is Elena-san from Teppan-Shojo Akane. A daft drama about a girl traveling around Japan taking part in cook-offs in search of her father. Elena-san, her corporation people and fleet of five-star chefs would always be there attempting to buy out some poor cuisine-based family business. Of course, we all grew up on cartoon villains like this. The silliness just has more impact live-action, I think.

02: Bat-shit insane screaming monkeys. I don't mean the kind that spout meaningless garbage like say, GIR in Invader ZIM. Just characters that somehow seem to be oblivious to what is acceptable behaviour, a bit socially retarded and end up screaming their feelings out at everyone. Like above, ridiculous and silly. I know there are plenty of characters like this I have loved but they are all eclipsed in my mind by the one character who personified it down to a T.

Delicious Gakuin's Nangou-sempai. Most of his dialogue is screamed, he is over-dramatic, prone to cheesy posing, and half-assaulting people he wants to talk to but somehow still manages to guide his four kouhais through the mad cookery school. The whole school (drama) was mental. It was run by four teachers who called themselves the Delicious Kings. I still can't type that with a straight face. Incidentally, it was written by the same guy who wrote Teppan Shojo Akane. I admire him for sticking to what he knows: overblown nutter characters and cooking.

03: Smug, pretentious overzealous twats. The kind of character who has grand illusions about themselves and who or what they aspire to be though it is apparent to everyone else that their desired status is comically out of reach. They can never manage to hold the act.

Favourite examples (of different flavours of) this character would be Hidari Shoutarou of Kamen Rider W and Basil Fawlty. Shoutarou inherited a small P.I. agency and fancies himself as a hard-boiled detective like someone out of American 1930s crime fiction, dressing and posing the part, spouting silly monologues that are interrupted by other characters, typing up his exploits on an old-fashioned typewriter at the end of each episode filled with hackneyed phrases and drinking innumerable cups of black coffee. A running gag of the series is other characters 'mistakenly' calling him a 'half-boiled detective'. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As you've noticed, there's a certain amount of overlap and variety. In addition to which there's an over-arching comedic theme going here. I'm definitely much more susceptible to comedic characters than tragic characters.

Brown Bag Lecture

 Today I attended a guest lecture in college by Darragh O'Connell of Brown Bag Films. I like listening to lectures but I'm bad at watching them because something about listening to someone speak into a microphone from a podium generates a powerful urge to draw and I become too absorbed in drawing to look up. Sometimes I can't actually manage to draw anything and then I suffer through the lecture in a state of artistic constipation but today was a good day and I filled five pages of my pocket notebook which you can see here along with my coherent and relevant notes! Wow, it's like you were there too ですね。I was watching pokemon last night. Can you tell?

Small change.

Sketches of my main character from my film project. Got all stiff with my drawing. Trying to loosen them up again. Also, a picture of a Drifblim that I did for Pokemon week.

I went to see My Husband is a Spaceman in the Project Arts Centre last week. I drew his before the performance started and curiously, the part that came closest to the content of the play is probably the chicken in the spaceship.

The less that's said about this night, the better C:

Dead Zoo

Went to the Natural History Museum for a little while yesterday. Too many things I wanted to draw at once. Will go back again soon ♪

新。

Rachel and Niamh bought me a [rebuild] Shinji figure ♡ He stands with Deneb and Suicune at the corner of my memo board glaring down at me.

It's Chris!

So it is. Scribbled on the back of a menu at work some while back. To add to the c.u.n.t. house-family I drew ages ago.

FSF*01

Bought a new sketchbook while I was in Cork for 99c. Here is some of the things I put in it. The top and bottom ones are to do with my ideas for my grad!film. The middle ones were observational. I forgot all about Dancin' Dave. I think everyone in the Cork area knows of him. Nice of him to put in an appearance the day I was in the city for the first time in a half a year.
On the whole, I find it very difficult to gauge whether I've gotten better or worse at drawing since I started college.