Australia is on FIRE!

Heyo everyone!

Man, is it hot! It's so hot Australia is LITERALLY on fire. Huge pieces of it, too. It's as if the whole place underwent spontaneous combustion. The sky looks as if a volcano had erupted, even in a place that is relatively far away from the actual fires. Well, the firemen have their work cut out for them and we all respectfully salute their valiant efforts. Incidentally you should pick up the 'Firefighter! Daigo of Company M' manga if you can. It's brilliant writing and really gives a whole new light to firefighters.

So, what else has been happening? Well, I've been to the ballet performance of Swan Lake. You know... there's a reason why that's the epitomy of ballet. This year I was seated pretty far away, so I couldn't get any close-up views but a more panaromic one of the entire performance. Ah, the talented... Also attended a Christmas party at which vast quantities of alcohol were consumed and friendly poker games were won. Even got a look at that newfangled Wii! Generally things were good, but I'm having lots of difficulties getting home in time for my cousin's wedding. Vexing, indeed.

Anyway, let's briefly run through some of the pictures. I'm really sorry but some are terribly messy and even uncomplete. However, there is quantity. I'm finding that using the mechanical pencil and 2B pencil method of sketching tends to generate fairly messy pics. I'm also not very happy with shading using the 2B pencil, especially when it's scanned... but it does the job I guess. I need to start going back to blue-pencil and inking.

The first three are a continuation after the last post. What can I say? It was a bikko frenzy that has gone now. Still, there's a huge amount of art on her out there, and I was just putting my own style out. The first one's my own fairly original concept of her browsing through some music titles. I must admit that in retrospect that 'peg-leg' I gave her is REALLY ridiculous. I should have drawn a proper crutch, except I don't know how to.

The fourth risque pic is inspired by one of the sequences in the OP of xxxHoLiC. Now, I haven't really seen much of the series yet, and that bizzare style of LONG people seems to put me off... but the music at the start and end are REALLY catchy. Plus there's that risque duo (they're minor characters) really made me stop and really want to draw them out. Of course, if you look around there's probably better art somewhere, but... I tried.

I've also included one I've done on Zero Louise (pic 6), from the anime Zero no Tsukaima. Cute as heck, but too short! It was great fun watching, though. My sketch doesn't do justice to the real anime (none of them ever do! You should know that by now!) so really... go watch it. Anyway, between Bikko, Maru and Moro, and Zero Louise, which do you think would be something I should work on? I get the feeling that if I should ever sneak into an anime festival again, I'd like to leave one (or more) of these characters lying around in the art room.

The fifth and last pic are just some experiments I've tried of different angles. The fifth resurrects some old characters I'd created when I started (more than a year ago) to try a top-view of some action scenes. The last one was supposed to be a bottom-up view... and I did like it enough to want to try adding in more grand backgrounds with giant spaceships, ruins and all... but I got sidetracked and lost interest. There you go... unfinished.

Well that's it. Let's see how things develop. Might think up a story to commit to paper one of these days.