87542 [4.5.2001]
-~ } s t o r y { ~-

Ever since i was small, i liked to draw. I hope i can work as a comic artist one day! (well, maybe part time or something..) :D My style is influenced by many artists, especially Japanese comic artists.. . Before, i used to try to draw like American comic artists like Jim Lee or Arthur Adams.. American comic artists seem to be cautious of drawing REALISTICALLY. Japanese comic artists, OTOH,seem to be not afraid of drawing in different styles such as big eyes,or even exaggerated facial characteristics. I find that their style ismore "FREE" and has much more "IMAGINATION", which is something that probably fits me more... Else, a little dot can't represent a nose.. :D

When I was in elementary school, I would usually draw rainbows and animals.. Especially unicorns.. haha.. Unicorns were my favourite "animal". In my childhood, my parents bought a Sega Master System for my brothers and I. Playing video games, me and my brothers began to appreciate the art in video games. My oldest brother Tom and I would pause a game and copy the picture of the characters on the TV screen on some paper. We would do that for many video games and even write the name of the characters under the drawing! So its like a catalogue of creatures/monsters.. . However, the art that really impressed us the most was the art of the Sega Genesis/megadrive RPG game Phantasy Star II. The art and character designs were very beautiful.. Even the robots and creatures looked good too!! This art, of course, is in the "Japanese anime/manga" style.. Characteristics of big eyeballs, coloured hair of all sorts of colours.. etc.. The game too was very good. I had some of my favourite characters, and i tried to draw them.. even though they didn't really show a good full picture of the characters.
Also in my childhood, my brother's friends got us into reading American comics. We borrowed many comics from our friends and we eventually went and bought our own. Some of our favourites were Moon Knight and Punisher. X-men, Spiderman, and lots of Marvel comics were good as well. Of course, my brother Tom and I began to try and draw some comics too.
Some of my brother's friends also liked to draw and even created his own game booklets, which contains the story of the game, instructions on how to play the game, the characters, the stages/levels , and items. Basically, it's a GAME BOOKlet.. just like the ones that come with a game!! :D One of the booklets is a game with my brother TOm as the main character.. Of course, its really funny.. . with other friends portrayed as different characters/ villians!! Some of the levels were crazy such as going to k-mart or going to Tom's house.. Some of the enemies even included my grandma (with her golden broom!) Anyway, looking at these very funny/creative game booklets, we were also influenced to make our own. And my brother did... with his "GOOD DOODS" series.. (a parody of the real platform game "good dudes") He made the game booklet for GOOD DOODS I, II, and III! well, as for me and my brother warren, we never did finished ours!! -_-.. i still have it somewhere in my desk.. i think...
Another thing that my brother's friend did was to draw his own comic book!! OF course, its not professional.. it was a piece of the regular 8"x11" paper folded in half. It was also drawn in pencil. And that.. well you guessed it.. influenced us to draw some comics too! My brother made a comic called "Funny Betty".. which is a comic about ME. Its a crazy comic series that i don't remember much about. I think that he only made about 3 comics.. and each comic contains maybe about 5 pages (including cover and backcover) of less than a 1/2 sheet of 8"x11" paper. The company name of the comic is "MARBLE COMICS" (parody of Marvel comics, i guess.. sweat drop rolling down) He also did some other comics.. like "SEARCH"(incomplete). However, as time passes, and people grow up.. . my brother Tom probably hasn't touched his comics for a long time. ..

Of course, i did the same too! I made a 2 issue comic of "COMIC MAN".. a comic about my brother Warren as a super hero!! haha.. I was still working on the 3rd issue.. and it is still incomplete and somewhere in my desk today. I also made a comic called "SUN KNIGHT", which is sort of a copy of Marvel's "MOON KNIGHT" (which was one of our favourites!!). I think that SUN KNIGHT is the best of my work.. even though it copies so much out of Moon Knight (and it is supposed to be that way!! sorry!!). I was also working on the second issue.. but it is incomplete and is also somewhere in my desk.. (@_@..) BTW, the comics that we made are totally in pencil.. and are not inked.. Of course, its just for fun! What i really liked about making comics was the part when i stapled the pages together and let my brothers read them.. I felt very good when the comic made them laugh or say "I can't wait for the next one." I was quite impressed that i could make others laugh just by reading my comics. Of course, each of our projects are "top secret" so that it can be a good surprise when one reads the completed project. I guess that is why i don't really want people to see my art work and i tend to "hide" them since they aren't complete.. .


As the same time as our comic reading phase, my brothers and I were taking a class at the Chinese Community Center on Chinese Painting, largely due to our parents (i think). It was a free class and we would go there every friday from 3 to 6 PM. Our teacher, Ms. Seto, was very nice and patient, even though we were the only kids in the class. I was around eight years old at that time. My brothers were 10 and 12 years old. Indeed, Chinese paintings did require lots of patience (which us kids didn't really have). We had to paint bamboo over and over again, using Chinese black ink and brushes on newsprint paper (paper of newspaper, which we had to buy from the Sacramento BEE- the main newspaper company of Sacramento). Doing the same tedious things everyweek was kind of tiring.. so sometimes we would doodle..like painting the "Eyeglass Man" from our class! However, painting bamboo is not very easy. We had to develop lots of control to make the right strokes.. especially the bamboo leaves, and also learn to control the amount of water in the brush. We couldn't really go over our strokes, because if we did, our teacher can see it clearly! Each week, we had to copy our teacher's paintings over and over again. She would look at our paintings and tell which one she thinks is the best among them.

When we were good enough, our teacher would promote us and let us do something new. Basically its painting bamboo, then orchids, chrysanthemums, plum blossoms, grapes.. all with black ink. I don't remember how many years it took us to get to use COLOUR!! But with colour, we had to get special thin chinese watercolour paper. Mixing and getting the right colours weren't very easy. We began to draw all sorts of things like roses, wisteria, irises, carnations, narcissus, grapes, squash, morning glories, maple trees, insects .. The "advanced" level (I believe) were painting birds, fishes, ducks, pine trees.. . Even though we were just copying our teacher's paintings, (she had hundreds of examples!!) it is no easy task. Sometimes, it took me a few weeks to finish a painting!!

I think that we took the class for about 5 years, until we took a break for a few years (because the class had a $20 fee or something like that). Then we went to the class again, since the class was free again. We found that out from our cousin .. who wanted to take that class (if i remember clearly.. .) However, as we got older, school took more time... My brother Warren didn't really go anymore.. but he didn't seem to have that much interest in painting or art.. My brothers graduated from high school.. and went to college... then my brother Tom left for Hong Kong on the Educational Abroad Programme, leaving me the only one to attend the class. My classes in high school were also getting harder.. such as AP chemistry.. so that i didn't really feel like going anymore because of time or laziness from the end of the school week.. Then one year, the class required to have a $20 fee/ month (?) again.. so i decided to stop going to the class again.. even though the teacher said to me that i didn't need to pay for the class.
Even though we didn't go to the Chinese watercolour painting class after that, my brother Tom and I occasionally did some painting of our own.. not necessarily Chinese paintings, but also art from comics..

Anyway, my brothers and I used to ride bike to the comic stores once a week and read many comics. One day, in the $1.00 bargain bin, we found a comic called "Silent Mobius" by Kia Asamiya. The comic was in colour, and the art was quite amazing and different compared to the American comics that we read. We bought that comic and wanted to find more issues. From that point, we found other English translated Japanese comics for sale.. and we started to read/buy those too. After getting Silent Mobius, i really liked the art, which i compared to Phantasy Star II's art, and tried to draw like Kia Asamiya, whose style is very detailed. When we discovered Rumiko Takahashi's comic Ranma 1/2, I discovered that art does not have to be so detailed. Takahashi's art is indeed quite simple compared to Kia Asamiya's or many American comics, but it is still good. From that point, we discovered more different Japanese comics, and black & white comics became readable... We used to never read any black and white comics before.. Of course, colour comics are very different from black and white comics. I think that you need more concentration to read and interpret the pictures. I find that there are many effects that black & white comics can have that can't be done in colour. Instead of colour, many artists use "screentones" (for example, designs of black dots, flowers, or lines) for shading or filling space. In my free time, i would copy many of the pictures or try to draw some characters on my own. My beginning drawings are really horrible. However, i still kept some of them. I keep a file of my old "good" or "perfect" (*.* ) works... basically, its stuff i thought was very good from different periods of my life! I like to look at the old pictures and laugh at them.. :D!! (haha!! "perfect"?! >.< )


Another factor that influenced my art is being one of the artists for my high school's newspaper X-RAY. There, i learned about inking drawings. The way you ink a drawing or apply the black really does affect the drawing in many ways,.. such as [impact]. For newspaper illustrations, you want a drawing that will draw the readers attention to the article. That way, you need to make the drawing to have more thicker lines. I guess that newspaper illustrations and comic illustrations are quite different in that aspect. Anyway, so there, i learned to ink in my drawings better (level up!!).. And that is how i actually got some of my works "published"!! hahaha!!! Its really funny when i think of it!! (BTW, my friends were in the newspaper staff, and they asked me to do some drawings for them...) I did get a few comments on them from some classmates.. :D. . i also had to stay "overtime" at school to finish some deadlines all the time too... ( such as until 10 PM)


COMIC ART: I have lots of influences in drawing comics. I used to copy all sorts of art from various artists (from Fist of the North Star, to Sailor Moon or Marmalade Boy!!), but now, .. i think i developed my own style! Actually, i don't really have one set style. It depends on my mood. I don't really draw really "cute" characters with huge eyes and bulky/chunky hair though.. these days, i like more realistic styles, with fine hair and more normal eye size.. I don't know.. it seems as if anime has gone so "mainstream", that i subconsciously do not want to follow its flowing waters.. People just look at big eyed cartoons and think "oh, so you like Japanese anime like dragon ball z... " etc.. Are all anime/manga styles like that? Of course not, but I don't really want to take part in this stereotypical style. I *try* to draw in my own style.. Sometimes, it is so easy just by looking at someone's art and think "oh, this person likes CLAMP (artist.. " etc.. Of course, its hard not to try to "borrow" some ideas... Its good to develop your own style.. I remember the days when everyone was copying McFarlane's and Jim Lee's art styles.. it seemed to get out of hand that all the art style homogenized.. . and it wasn't special anymore..
I guess my major influences are:
Kia Asamiya, Rumiko Takahashi (minimal detail is OK! ^_^) , CLAMP, Amano Yoshitaka, SNK artist Shinkuro (for more realistic type of drawing, and to draw more males!!), Artist of SPRIGGAN, Mamoru Nagano (fine hair, clothing, facial expressions), Murata Range, etc..

SD (Super Deformed) ART: SD art is the big headed, small bodied style of drawing. I guess my major influence in this style is from my TURBO PASCAL computer science in my high school. When we learned about graphics, we had to draw a picture.. The basic commands are drawing circles (or partial circles, filled with colour or just plain lines), ellipses, and straight lines.. So what to draw? I drew an SD picture of a girl in a Sailor fuku!!.. The head is basically a coloured 1/2 circle!! The hair and eyes are also drawn with only circles!! haha.. well, i need to screen capture the picture and upload it!! :D

PROPORTIONS: If you were to see some of my old drawings, the body seems all "messed up".. its that the hands or body is too big or too small. One day, i was staring at a American comic book. I was thinking "what is the difference between a man and a woman?" Of course, i always had trouble drawing males. I drew females much more than males, but my brother drew more males than females. I guess maybe since i'm female, i feel more comfortable drawing females!! I then noticed that the female's waist is much thinner than that of a man's.. After that, i noticed that the width of the female's waist is the same as the width of the female's head!!! I then found that for a man, the width of the waist is twice the width of his head. So i grabbed some other comics and found the same result..!! I couldn't believe that proportion is based on such an easy measurement!! The legs of a character is usually 4 lengths of the head. 2 above the knee, and 2 below. A character's eyes (depending on the artist) is usually about 1 or 2 eyes apart.. But still, i still have problems with proportions .. hands, body, arms.. aa..

FASHION: My great realization of clothing designs came from looking at the comic "The Five Star Stories" (by Mamoru Nagano) that is running in the animation magazine Newtype. My brother Tom commented about the art in that comic, and when i took a close look, I was amazed about the detail in the backgrounds, character design, the very fine hairs, the fine shading, and the very elegant clothing designs! You can even see the fine embroidery on some of the costumes! From that point, i liked to experiment with fashion designs.. even though my designs are quite... bizarre! I also began to appreciate fashion designs and costumes of different time periods.. I even did some character designs of Romeo & Juliet, and some Civil War soldiers for my school projects! Nowadays, I just like to draw characters in their school uniform (because of King of Fighters!!! ) or try to design some nice costumes like the ones Visual Rockers wear!

BACKGROUNDS: OK, this is a great weakness i have!! I don't usually draw backgrounds often because i just lazily sketch characters usually. I draw the character, and i'm so lazy for the background. Its hard to come up with a good idea for a background!! So.. sometimes i like to fill that space up with some trees, or plum blossoms.. well, lets just say that i need to practice on this subject. I don't get much opportunity to do so,.. unless i start on my comic. I did do some rough sketchs of my comic some time ago.. and boy! the backgrounds are horrible!! I was so lazy to draw the backgrounds... So many details!!! I need lots and lots of patience... . eeugh.. well, i can now see why professional artists have assistants to draw the background for them!! :D :D :D I really need to imagine and create the whole city or setting before working on my comic!! When i read comics, i'm always amazed by the great detail in the backgrounds!! However, I notice that "shoujo" comics (or "girls" comics) tend to have "minimalist" backgrounds, emphasizing on the delicate lines of figures. I can't really do such minimalist style.. especially since my lines aren't so beautiful looking.. =_=.. I think some of the best examples of beautifully rendered backgrounds are SPRIGGAN, and Five Star Stories.

ACTION: ... as i said earlier, my renditions of human anatomy does need some improvements. (sweat drop rolling down) So! I am "studying" some comics for action sequences! "how can they imagine such a cool pose?" "how can they render movements so real?" are things that i try to examine. I am no good at drawing the action lines either. Some very good examples to study from are Hong Kong comics.. such as the martial arts ones (Tin Ha, Jademan's Blood Sword, etc..). . Plenty of fancy kung fu moves, speed lines, .. (sigh) Other than those (which i think that they are much less well known than Japanese comics), I also look at Fist of the North Star (hokuto no ken), Tsukasa Hojo's City Hunter, Slam Dunk (see how incredible Takehito Inoue [who used to be Tsukasa Hojo's assistant, i heard] depicts the tension and excitement of basketball!! in the last volume of the last game.. there is basically *no* dialogue.. just showing the game!!!), SPRIGGAN (haha..), and Kujaku-ou (emphasis on finger positions for executing mantras)..

*NEW* Since I'm taking a kung fu class, hopefully it shall help me draw fighting scenes!! :D :D :D :D :D hahahahah <--(evil laugh)