Some recent sketches, done in school at night, during lunch, or in-between classes, as I am trying to get back in the habit. I got quite inspired visiting the 10 year retrospective of Katsuya Terada「寺田克也さん」aka Doodle King「ラクガキング」here in Kyoto, and later reading a bit into his style of working for a school report.
Speaking of such, I just learned I was supposed to hand in a several page report today, which I wasn’t even aware of until right now. I was so busy with other stuff for school, I completely neglected reading a freaking hand-out specifying the deadline for the report. Great, just great. It’s not like I am able to whip out several pages of Japanese text within 60 minutes! Argh. >.>

Slightly bigger, here.

So, as I have read on the news this morning, Microsoft has released their new gaming console home-entertainment system XBox One. Well, this might be quite a good coup and I am starting to seriously worry about the future of japanese companies such as Nintendo, and Sony’s seemingly withering niche in the console market. However, the news really actually got my attention were about the photo-sharing website Flickr. Surprise, Yahoo! has simply changed everything. Even though it is just like a fancy new “hat-system” which sits on top of the old blue, pink and white website it certainly does make everything look a hella lot more shiny.

In a nutshell they’ll provide any member with a supposed 1TB of free photo-sharing web-space, which is most certainly clever math only as a rare minimum of user will ever attempt to upload 200.000 plus full resolution photos. The user-interface has been streamlined, even though it just sits on top of the old system. This is potentially a good thing, as also all permalinks to your old photos and sets etc. have remained as they were. Photos have become generally more accessible with sets being presented in over the whole of the browser-window and single photos instantly zoom up to full-screen width if desired. The old PRO membership has been canned and replaced with an entirely new and sadly much more expensive subscription system called Free, Ad-Free and Doublr. So, all in all the new flickr seems like a very positive change, especially because I had been considering to make the jump over to Google due to more free space, or 500px for a better presentation of content. I am glad all my active blogposts linking to flickr have kept me from making a transition to a different photo-sharing website, after all.

If you go to the current PRO website, you’ll quickly notice Flickr is suggestive about downgrading to a free account before August 20, 2013. This is in order to get people out of the old subscription system, but not meant to screw your out of your money as you’ll be eligible for a refund of your remaining subscription period.
Admittedly, I have been a bit confused what would be happening to my remaining 1 year plus subscription to the old Flickr, but if you have any doubts about what is going on with an old PRO subscription read this. In short, Flickr is logically not allowed to change a running contract and as long as you still have an active PRO you can keep on renewing it for the old price. Keep in mind an old PRO account still has unlimited storage and costs half the price of a new ad-free subscription! Isn’t that nice? ^^

Taking a break from writing a report… I present thee Mr. “Super Asymmetrical Demon Face”.

学校で竹宮恵子先生の授業で色々のマンガ技を勉強しています。先々週からハチングやスクリーントーンを練習して宿題は一ページのマンガ自己紹介でした。僕はちょうどスカンニングやふくだしを書く終わりましたのでブロッグで見せるつもりです！自己紹介の日本語はまだ治してませんでしたからすみません！

I have been trying to come up with a possible cloth pattern. First try I went with three different faces of an Oni. The process can be seen below, final print should be grey on black. It’s been fun… new cycling jerseys are already calling me! Hehe!

I have been playing with a design for a cycling jersey, recently. As I am a big fan of japanese mon I tried to incorporate a cycling themed mon into the design. Hopefully this will end up on our groups jersey’s shoulders within this cycling season.

Here’s a few sketches I did for the 「Cycling Kyoto!」mon, alongside a finalized version I built on a larger scale in Photoshop. Next step is going to be a mock-up on a jersey template, which we can send to a jersey manufacturer for an inquiry about production costs. I am not an Adobe Illustrator guy, so a savy friend is going to take matters in his hands this time. However, I am starting to like the idea of make more jerseys, possibly producing limited runs of rather illustrative jerseys. I wonder if this would have people interested…

五年前で日本の留学中で短い漫画ストーリーを描いて始まりました。上の絵はめちゃ昔のバーションです。国に戻ったときで卒論制作で働くないと行けませんでしたから、その４ページのストーリーがアーカイブしました。卒業後フリーレンスの間８ページになって来た漫画がもう少し描いて続きていましたけどもうすぐも一度忙しかったです。じゃあ、今はもっと時間にあって採取的全部を終わってと思います！こちらは今までのページやスケッチです〜

またもうすぐもう一回アップデートしてつもりです！！

Beautifully arranged rice-cake and matcha tea. It’s been time for a small celebration, as I have finished drawing, scanning, editing and lettering the first latest 30 pages of my story. This version will go into a publication by Kyoto Seika University, but I still need to work on countless tidbits, such as fixing grammar, line weight, patterns, coloration and ultimately start working on the next 40 pages before this will be finally finished. Here’s a sneak peak into pages 07 to 12, in Japanese.

Another 2 pages to go, then it is time for lettering the first 30 pages. Meanwhile, I scanned all finished pages and built a Photoshop droplet, to quickly adjust levels, layers and other extras for all of them. A quick screenshot of my desktop, bigger version here.

No scanner at hand, splash page.

Penciling.

I am not happy with a lot of panels in my current project, hopefully I can fix some problems in the next stage, lead pencil!

The friendly people of Yomi No Kuni.

In the next few days I am taking part in a show, the 26th Kyoto Art Festival, which is held at the Kyoto Municipal Art Museum ANNEX. You can find more information on the exhibition here.

Some drawings I have done for my recent show at university, a long-nosed Oni, a trash-collecting Kappa and some Saru on the run.

You can see a 1600 pixels wide version of the Kappa here, and Saru there.

Our current international graduate exchange students exhibition at Kyoto Seika University is ending this week. I have taken a quick photograph with my phone today. There’s 3 new drawings among the batch, which I will scan after taking the work down on the weekend.

You can read more about this little show, here.

Is it me, or does the iPhone simply take really crappy photos? Anyways, I am taking part in a small exhibition entitled FIGURES at the 3F Project Room in Kyoto. We’ve had a relaxed opening party last night, and if you are in Kyoto, feel free to drop by for a look and chat. I will be in the gallery several times this week, and there’s detailed info on my portfolio site.