Chobits Characters!

Hello! Or as the Japanese say, "Konitchiwa!"

Lately I have been inspired from reading some excellent manga series to practice my figure drawing skills.
How is it that the Japanese-style method of drawing the human form has become so prevalent? It's amazing how cartoony, and yet how real characters can look when drawn manga-style, isn't it?

Here's a picture of my most recent sketches, my favorite characters from the manga/anime series "Chobits".

The basic premise of the story is that it takes place in an alternate universe where computers are so advanced they can be made to look like actual people, and Hideki, a 19-year-old student who's almost broke, happens to find one of these "computer-people" lying in the trash. The "persa-com" (as they are called in-universe) is shaped like a beautiful girl, and Hideki names her "Chi", because at first that's the only word she knows.
Eventually Kideki teaches Chi more and more about the world, and he discovers that Chi might actually be a "Chobit", an artificial-intelligence with the ability to learn and think for itself.

The other character shown in my drawing is a "laptop" named Plum. In the story she's about the size of a doll. She is the most adorable thing I've ever seen! ^_^

I hope my drawings have piqued your interest enough to get you curious about this awesome series. Fair warning: it's got a bit of mature, sexy content, but then again, what good manga/anime series doesn't?

Paint Post/Doodle Collection

Hey there! I'd like to show you a few new works.

---> This is Adam's paint-by-numbers project from last post, all finished by Shira. It was just taking too darn long for Adam to do it himself. I know that I didn't have much to do with this, but I thought it was nice enough to write about in my blog.

<--- Now this is something I did. Originally I just had a fancy sun shining on the forest, but it had too much color and it didn't go with the rest of the painting, so I turned my sun into a sunflower. Now the squirrel and the deer have a giant flower to look at! I wonder how big the seeds would come out? (I love eating sunflower seeds, unsalted) I think it may be one of the first watercolor paintings I've done that didn't involve a stick figure me (standing under a rainbow, holding hands with my mom, or in a giant flower garden. You know the way a young kid thinks. Or maybe that's just me).

Below are three instances of bishoujo manga experimentation. Bishoujo is japanese for "beautiful women", in case you didn't know. I love drawing manga, because it's like cartooning, only slightly more artistic looking. However I find it a bit challenging to draw all the hair and the big eyes and stuff. Hopefully if I practice I'll get better. In the future I hope to create more of my own original manga characters for my enjoyment.

---> I copied these out of a manga book by Christopher Hart. He has dozens of "how to draw" books to his name, and his writing style is nice. The undated one was made May 26. I like the way I did both of their hairstyles, even though they are copied. This kind of drawing gives me great practice for getting comfortable and confident in my hair and eye drawing abilities.

<--- Original character, coming through! I am both proud and slightly embarassed to show this to you. On the one hand, I pride myself on the hair, winking expression, and ruffled sleeves. On the other hand the arms are doing nothing, the proportions of the body don't look quite right, and the boobs are obvious. Of course in bishoujo manga, all the women have big boobs, but they only show on revealing costumes. I don't want it to be obvious under a simple frilly top! Oh well. What can you do?

If you like what you see (or not), please feel free to comment (or not).

My Doodle Collection #8

Hiya peoples! I haven't been very good about keeping up with my doodle posts, so to start it rolling again, here are 5 new pencil drawings that you haven't seen before!

Oldest to newest:

---> Here is a kind of test drawing I did when I was learning about the effects of light and shadow on a sphere. I haven't practiced very much at that, in fact I think I copied it from the book. But I did add the ants and the blades of grass, so that makes this piece an original. September 17, '08.

<--- This one is a blatant copy from a "how to draw manga" book that I took out from the library. It was fun to draw, but I can't help thinking: how does someone come up with a character like this? I have no idea whether this was based on a real person or drawn from imagination, but either way the original artist has mad skills! April 10, '09.

---> I am learning that to be a good artist, one has to practice, practice, practice. It's especially good to practice subjects that you don't pay attention to normally, so you really see what you're capturing on paper. That's why I copied this chameleon out of a book of reptiles, because I normally don't think about chameleons. I think I did a very good job! April 14, '09.

<--- This one was extremely satisfying to accomplish. I have drawn a human eye! A woman's eye! Not my eye, a magazine model's eye. It's not on a face, but who cares?! I think this is a product of reading a "how-to-draw-manga" book yesterday at the library and studying the different eye-types that artists use to convey expression. I have always wanted to draw eyes perfectly, because they're so challenging, and I believe this is only the first out of future well-drawn eyes to come. I did it. Yes, me, I did it. Aren't I awesome? I even gave it a clever title, and I have a scrawl to my signature. April 21, '09

---> This one was drawn several minutes later from the same magazine that I drew the eye from, only it was an ad for Smart Cars. They are so cute and tiny! I would like to own one of these babies one day, but I still need to earn my driver's license. I wonder if the tires came out right here? Oh well. It's still cool, huh? Tell me it's cool!

Well there you have it! Almost a month since I last posted attractive hand-drawn doodle posts on this blog, and what do I have to say for myself? Please forgive me!