How I see

by

Choux’s guide (not really) to seifuku

Ah, the Japanese school uniform. Since the 19th century, they have been spreading, and now they are a staple part of school life, not to mention various kinds of eye candy. Bakemonogatari has helped me discover my love for school uniforms, so here I am, presenting an image dump disguised as an informative post on school uniforms in anime, manga, and eroge. Of course, these will all be female uniforms. You have to admit, the male uniforms are all kind of boring (I don’t like gakuran much, and all non-ugly blazers look alike). There are two main categories in the school uniform. The first is the sailor fuku, and the second  is the blazer. In some series, particularly in eroge, they really push the envelope in insanely ridiculous outfits. But I’ll get to that later. Now, let’s start with realistic looking sailor fukus. This piece is by Kishida Mel, for the anime Hanasaku Iroha.  Continue reading →

by

5 kinds of surprises

This is just me and my weird brain, but I’ve found that, when looking at game art, there are usually 5 kinds of situations where I’m surprised at an artist’s work. Of course, seeing an artist for the first time is always somewhat surprising, but I’m going to focus on artists that I already know about for this. BTW this was written late at night and I hold no responsibilities for anything bad that happens.

The 5 main situations are as follows:

1) Complete change

2) Company makes all the difference

3) YOU LIED

4)  Going back in time

5) It’s personal. Continue reading →

by

The one (s) that changed my mind

This doesn’t happen often, but sometimes, I see an image, and it completely changes my perspectives of an event or an artist. Eventually, there was enough of these little occurrences, and, coupled with me feeling too burned out to draw, resulted in this post.

Note: this post gets more NSFW as it progresses…

no.5 1948

This doesn’t look it, but it’s supposedly the most expensive painting that has ever been sold. It taught me the valuable lesson that value itself cannot be defined by just one person. $140 million… I can’t believe it…

For me, Zinno has always been an artist that’s just THERE. I see his work around, but they always seem simple, fanservicy, and generally not that impressionable. I’ve always had a soft spot for the Tama-nee image above though (now that I think about it, I can’t remember her actual name anymore, I know know Tama-nee).

This impression didn’t change as I saw the art for tenshi no tamago.

However, somewhere around 2008, Zinno’s art changed quite a bit. So much so, that I had no idea it was the same person when I saw the art for Signal Heart plus. And as boring as the story for that seems to be, the art definitely speaks to me. Obligatory sad girl in snow picture~

There was this glow, this sparkle to the characters that hadn’t been there before, not to mention that they look older and lankier (he also got better at drawing guys, although I can’t find a good and safe example). I’m pretty sure the bottom one’s a trap BTW (I say “pretty” because the hcg is kind of…well…) *cough, anyway… Lesson learned: even if an artist seems to be settled into a certain style, they can always change~SO cute

Continue reading →

by

How I see an artist: what they do.

This post was written a while ago, but I didn’t publish it because I thought something was missing. I still don’t know what to add, but it’d been sitting around for too long, and I’ve put too much effort into it for me to just leave it, so here it is.

Anime: Diebuster/Gunbuster 2

I’ve been planning to write a series of posts about various things that artists do for a while now, and I think that just can’t be done without first looking at the various ways that Japanese 2d art gets published, and how each method affects the styles.

For this post, I will feature a typical anime-based artist, manga-based artist, novel-based artist, magazine-based artist, visual novel-based artist, and internet-based artist. This will be focusing mostly on character. Continue reading →