I finally finished the drawing for the HIOS Life V cover. All that’s left is to color the thing.

Well, I finally produced a sketch of one of the characters in HIOS Life V (beta name). If you compare my old style to this new one, you’ll notice a huge change. Mind you, this is only a sketch, and I fully expect my art style to evolve even further.

Haven’t pumped out much art in a while, so I decided to do a fanart for once. I think it turned out alright, especially using a cheapo tablet.

You know, I thought that months of no drawing practice would have rendered me drawing-handicapped or something, but this came out to be a surprise. This is the actual first color drawing I did on my Jam Studio tablet – and it didn’t turn out too bad. Mind you, I have a long ways to go, but, wow. Hahaha, of course, the first thing I draw is a naked guy. Hahahaha! Seriously, though, this is the new design for my online manga alter-ego, Heihachi. Taking a cue from the new HIOS Life manga I’ll be making, this design was inspired by the old saying, “write what you know”. In this case, I’m applying it to my drawing as well, drawing what I know. Maybe I don’t look like this yet, but my hair is slow to grow, and I’ve already decided what I want my hair to look like when it finally reaches the desired length. Also, I reflected the face design off my inner feelings, how I feel, right on to my face. It’s uncanny how I don’t look like this on the outside, but when I hold in my emotions, this is the person on the inside – intense, vulnerable, alone, and most of all – serious. Drawing, I suppose, is easy on computer. There are no pencil marks or smudges to worry about. I’m in my element, using all the PSP tools I am familiar with at my disposal. With care and patience, I can spit out a drawing like this in a couple hours. Just imagine what a small panel will look like. If all my drawings can look like this – it’s gonna be fun in the future. Oh, yes. Mind you, I still don’t think I’m ready enough to start the manga, so I’ll just settle for doing a drawing like this every night or two. I hope.

Taking a cue from my new art sensei (who suggested that I draw real life as opposed to anime), I decided to give it a try. Mind you, the face still ended up anime-ish. Well… nothing I can do about that. My brother is the one with the skills to draw real life, not me. Anyway… I think it turned out well. I grabbed a picture of AV actress, Kazano Maiko, whom I’m sure all you AV otaku out there know and love, and sketched it as the basis for my work. It didn’t turn out half bad, but my biggest problem is drawing without guidelines. I think I need to work on that, since guidelines are the main reason why my work is too unbalanced. Darn, I was never good at geometric shapes. But, it’s like they say, you can’t draw a ball if you can’t draw a circle.

WARNING! Tasteful nudity ahead.

2006 EDIT: On second thought, this turned out pretty bad compared to my usual drawings.

Wouldn’t it be funny if I wasn’t? Well, the survey is now accessible through MugenHAN.com, which just went up this morning. If you don’t know what HIOS Life is, go here! Have fun!

EDIT: Unfortunately, the survey doesn’t exist anymore, since the move to Blogger. As a result, all the possible results are posted below.

I decided to be adventurous and experimental with my artwork this time around, so I drew entirely in Adobe Illustrator. Holy crap, never even used the program before (well, I’ve started it up and boredly played with the tools a little bit), and I think I’ve got the hang of the tools! I did up this picture in a 5 minute timeframe. Mostly because I wanted to go to sleep. So, don’t flame me if the lines are a bit squiggly. I was half-asleep and using a mouse! I seriously can’t wait for my Wacom Intuos…

Here are the four new characters for the untitled manga series that will be replacing HIOS Life. If you compare this art style to my previous one, you’ll notice a lot. I’m actually using guidelines! OMG! Anyway, I’m not comfortable with this style yet, so I’ll be posting new artwork regularly until I’m ready to draw the manga. In addition, there will be more characters to come! Keep checking back!

Nic Kleyh
New character design for Nic! He also gets a major personality overhaul fitting for the new series, and will be the fish-out-of-water character.

Hirose Kurumi
Kurumi is one of the main female leads. This girl will take on the character traits of my mother as discussed in the 2002-04-04 rant. I plan to give her one blue eye and one green eye.

Sakura Ryosuke
Ryosuke is the main male lead of the series. He’s basically the typical protagonist of bishoujo games, but has other darker sides to his personality. Details are sketchy at the moment, since I don’t even have a clue right now. ^_^

Hagiwara Azumi
Azumi is another female lead. She will be genki, oblivious to everything, and kawaii as possible. I plan to give her some child-like innocence and other qualities.

I decided to emulate those famous “Calvin Klein” ads with this wallpaper, and it’s quite simplistic. The only thing I did was cut You-sama out of her background. Is it a coincidence that her last name starts with a “K”? ^_^

For copyright infringement avoidance purposes, I renamed iMac to eMac.

UPDATE: Today, Apple has a computer called the eMac. But, since this was created before the fact, there shouldn’t be a problem. Anyway, this is a doodle anyway, and most likely won’t get published or sold.