End of days :D

Finally~~ the 30-day drawing challenge is finished! \^o^/

I'd thought to be more experimental for the last 10 days of the challenge, hopefully that much is obvious from the more solid inking as well as introduction of some colours ^^;;

All drawings for this challenge were done manually, hope you enjoy them as much as I had fun making them! :D


Day 21: Something you want

"Wanna help clean my sword, wench?"
Ohohoho! ^///^ *Viking fetish mode on*


Day 22: Something you miss

*sniffles* It's been a while indeed... T__T"


Day 23: Something you need

It's not an easy task juggling the many things happening in your life at once.
But maybe I'm just terrible at time management.
...Or spoiled.
Or lazy :P


Day 24: A couple

Ladies and gentlemen, meet brother and sister Julian and Jillian Soh! :DDD

Jill is nine years older than Julian (the mysterious 'Agent Soh' from The Fifth Columnist) and the two were born of different mothers. This scene is taken from Soh's past when he was just a troubled adolescent living in Chicago :)

(I hope to turn this into a doujinshi somehow, but with the current lack of cohesive plotline and premise... it probably won't happen anytime soon ;____;)


Day 25: Scenery

This is a watercolour painting of Glen Etive in Scotland, though it's supposed to represent a glen my ex-boyfriend and I passed en route to Inverness from Edinburgh in 2004.

Despite the lack of vegetation and its rather unpredictable weather, Scotland commands a breathtaking landscape combining layers of brownish, terracota, greenish and bluish hues.

I regretted not taking any pictures during the car trip -- all I have are pictures of 'Nessie' taken aboard a ferry cruise across Loch Ness (and we didn't see Nessie for real anyway, he was just a half-floating sticker glued onto the ferry's windows to take picture -- and fool people -- with! XD).


Day 26: Something you don't like

Many apologies to Team Azzurri and their fans, but that greasy hair is just legendary! (to me at least) XD
Italy's no. 6 as pictured above is based on Francesco Totti -- though Totti's real hair isn't probably that greasy :P


Day 27: Someone you love

A quick pencil sketch of my mother, based on a recent photograph.
When I showed this to her, she went: "Can't you take out the wrinkles a bit?" XD


Day 28: Anything you'd like

Sen: "What, there's a hole on the wall?"
Sword: (smirks) "Shall we make our escape?"

Awww, don't they look so cute together? X3

Unlikely couple Sword Fish and Sen Owari met inside Under 'Grand' Hotel (UGH), a fictional underground prison and the title of one of Mika Sadahiro's most renowned yaoi works. (Yes it's YAOI, people! You've been warned! XD)

I was recommended the title by a friend and upon reading it, wasn't exactly sure how to feel... it started off very dark and grim -- as a prison yaoi would -- but ultimately revealed a very touching lesson: that hope springs eternal! :)
UGH is fast becoming my second favourite yaoi series (just after Ai no Kusabi), thanks to its relatively original premise, beautiful art, and brilliant plot twists. Once again, this is YAOI, people, so deal with it! X3

Coloured with Copic markers on paper. I love how Sword's braids turned out :)


Day 29: A place you want to go

I've developed a fondness for outer space since kindergarten, and at one point in my childhood I really aspired to become an astronaut. Hopefully space tourism will start to take off in the next few decades or so, cos I truly wanted to go out there before I die ;_;


Day 30: A congrats banner for finishing the challenge

Had no idea left for this one :P


Phfew, so that's about it!! How are you progressing in the challenge? Would you like to recommend other drawing challenges we can embark on next? Feel free to do so ;)

To sign this post off, lemme wish my Muslim friends a very Happy Lebaran this year! \^o^/
See youuu!


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The Fifth Columnist 1 half-time assessment :)

FINALLY, IT'S OUT! *tears of joy*

After several months of waiting (which felt like forever!), the release of Fifth 1 in the Indonesian manga market on Jan 13, 2010 came like a huge relief for yours truly. This has been my first manga release and to be honest, I wasn't quite sure what to expect.

Admittedly, one of the best things about having your work out in the open (ie. displayed in the bookstores right next to Masashi Asaki/Yuma Ando's Kunimitsu and Jun Mochizuki's Pandora Hearts! >,<) is the feedback you can expect from readers -- both the negative and the positive. These precious opinions are exactly what a manga artist needs in the quest for producing better and greater things.

So, without further ado, here's a very brief summary of the real-time and real-life feedbacks on Fifth 1 hitherto (as per Jan 22):

Plus points:

* Attractive cover
* Interesting, enticing storyline
* 'Fresh' espionage theme
* Distinct drawing style, not necessarily manga-esque but not typically Indonesian

Minus points:

* Finishing: inking is often sketchy, distracting and confusing

* Story is built up to take a clichéd romantic direction

* Puzzling backstory due to large number of non-present characters

* Content does not closely resemble cover

Then, on to some interesting points:

* A majority of readers consider Helix their favourite character because he's "cool" and "gentlemanly"

* One reader expressed fascination to Bishop's bust size X3

* One reader questioned artist's motive for using a Japanese-sounding last name (how observant! ^^)

* A couple of readers thought the cover drawing is reminiscent of Manhwa-style art

Response to feedbacks:

I will definitely try my best to consider all the above points when editing Fifth 2 -- which was originally scheduled for release in February but could now come out as late as March or April! One emphasis would be on making sure that all loose ends are tied and another could be on patching up/redoing some pages to improve drawing quality (oh nooooo...)

That's it for now, my humblest gratitude to everyone who has read/bought/borrowed the book and given their comments! ^^ Feel free to add your personal opinions below; constructive criticism is always welcome :)

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Mad about inking

Each manga artist has his/her own demons, and for me that's got to be INKING. This particular process takes up the largest portion of my drawing time and even if I've been doing it for nearly two years now, for some reason I still can't get it right!

I've tried using 'real' manga pens before -- the G-pens, maru pens and saji-pens -- but being a 'Wood Rat' by birth (mind you, I don't normally believe in horoscopes, either Chinese or Western ^^), I'm bound to have my fair share of jinxes when dealing with water-based elements. So I switched to mechanical inked pens, those cheaper versions of Rotring you can normally find in any bookstore in Jakarta. Yet this still hasn't salvaged me of my inking hell.

For one, I will almost always make erronous strokes in each panel and end up having to use up bottle after bottle of Pentel's blue metal-tipped white-out, which almost certainly runs out after a chapter of 32-36 pages or so (or up to two chapters if I'm lucky).

Not only does it bug me to have to wait for the white-out to dry before continuing to ink, some pen brands SMUDGE VERY EASILY when applied on white-out, which deserves its own rant (read: blog post) some time in the future.

Also, the build-up of thick white-out layer on the drawing paper makes it difficult to create smooth lines afterwards. Of course, you can always clean it up digitally on Photoshop, but this takes up valuable time which could have been used for rendering dialogues and speech balloons (yet another manga artist demon).

An example is as follows:


Image 1: Raw scan converted to grayscale


As you can see, plenty of 'defects' here, even when the image is scaled down to fit standard pocket manga dimensions.


Image 2: Cleaned up in Photoshop


See the uneven strokes on his eyebrows? Those were inked on thick build-ups of white-out. So were the two strands of fringe on the right, which resulted in those rather greyish pseudo-strokes (don't know what to call them!) If you guessed that the neck and shoulder part were also inked on white-out... you guessed right! Cleaning up has taken its toll on my patience :(

...All this, and we haven't even touched on the problem of transparent blue underdrawings? Oh well, there's always another post.
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