because it's been awhile, and this one's on top of the pile

i was tagged by the hentai king, porn guru, loli enthusiast, nami fanboy, the one and only perverted oversized egg, EGGY to say ten things about my doodles.

so please excuse my ego and let me spout out 10 things about my doodles:

~ 1. i have no style. i'm a woda (wannabe oda), as eggy said. but what can i say? he's my manga god. there's nothing wrong with wanting to be like the divine being that you believe, right? it's like christians who want to be like jesus. very very noble. kinda like that. almost. not quite.

~ 2. i used to not be able to draw women at all. now i am a bit better, but i am still unable to draw what i would consider a good drawing of a woman. a good drawing of a woman is one that when someone of the male species looks at her for the first time, the first thing that comes to his mind is "i wanna do her." THAT is a good drawing of a woman. it becomes an EXCELLENT drawing of a woman when the woman isn't drawn slutty, or skanky, or in a tight skimpy clothes with massive boobs, but is still able to give out that "sexy" vibes that makes a man go "i wanna do her."

eggy said that reading hentai doujinshi helps a lot in teaching someone how to draw women curves. eggy was right. if there is anything i would ever thank him, it's for that particular wisdom of his. all hail eggy the hentai king.

~ 3. i first picked up drawing in 4th grade when a good friend of mine taught me how to draw dragonball style. i failed miserably, but i kept drawing and drawing. in 6th grade my drawings were still terrible but my ego was big enough to convince me to start making comics. so by plagiarizing dragonball storylines and ripping ideas off toriyama akira, i made 6-page comics every week. a kid whose face i can't forget until now always buys my comics for 25cents. then i used the 25cents i collected from selling crapwork to that poor kid to buy more dragonball cards. i was a terrible 6th grader.

~ 4. aoyama gosho was my first influence in 7th grade. he's the dude who drew yaiba and detective conan (and will forever draw conan). i've never picked up yaiba, but i was quite into conan for awhile, even fell madly in love with haibara ai, and hence started drawing ai (which i failed) and shinichi. for two years i drew shinichi with the same pose over and over and over and over but whenever i looked at what i've drawn, it never gave me the same vibes aoyama's shinichi did. so i called myself pathetic and gave up on drawing forever.

or so i thought.

~ 5. the person who got me going again after the slump in 8th grade was no other than my manga god, oda eiichiro. i just started college (four years after i gave up drawing) when i discovered the beauty of DC++, which allowed me to download directly from UCLA kids at 10megaBYTE persecond. so while i was downloading hundreds of DIVX movies at the same time, i found a dude who has a folder called ONE PIECE shared in his PORN section. it consisted of twenty volumes. driven by curiosity, i downloaded the entire twenty volume (which took no more than 2 minutes). i thought it was swimsuit porn, as the title suggested, but it was better. it was what injected life in my doodles until now. that very night i gave up porn and picked up pencil and paper again.

well, i didn't really give up porn. i just draw more often than i watch porn.

~ 6. i have a tablet, but i don't like digital work. the tablet's sole purpose is to doodlewar/chat. i am a purist when it comes to drawing. i want to have a hardcopy that i can look at and be satisfied at, and printing just doesn't do it. i still have the original copy of everything i posted here, even the very first drawings. i used to just draw straight up with a 2B mechanical pencil, but now i sketch first with a 6H, then sometimes when i feel good i go ink straight with the micron. if i'm afraid i'll make mistakes or my hands are shaking from too much sugar, i "ink" with an HB first, so the micron work will just be outlining and not drawing.

~ 7. i don't like screentones. in fact, i have never tried using any. so i think it's more of "i'm afraid" rather than "i don't like". some does screentoning digitally, which saves cost and embarrassment, since using manual screentoning requires buying different kinds of tones and having the skills to apply and cut the tones, but digitally screentoning my drawing conflicts with my need to have a hard copy i can look at and be satisfied at. and like i've said, printing doesn't work. so one piece was again my saviour. oda taught me that a drawing can have as much if not more effect even without screentone. his line shading i adore, and line shading is one of the many techniques i'm trying to perfect to compensate for my fear of screentones. there should be a term for that. screentonephobia or some sort.

~ 8. i've never had any previous education in art. the only drawing lesson i've ever had was the three lunchbreaks with my friend in 4th grade. after that i just draw whatever (which is why it was crap). when i picked up pencil and paper again in college, i realized i needed to learn to draw other things as well; like background, anatomy, still-life, shading, etc., so i put my desk in front of my window so that during night time the window acts like a mirror and i can be my own model whenever i want to draw something. the ladies across the building were probably confused and disturbed, but they did anything more than giving me weird looks, so i took that as a sign of interest, rather than disgust. after all, if one didn't care, one wouldn't bother giving weird looks.

~ 9. being my own male model was easy. all i needed is a mirror. but getting a female model is extremely difficult, especially since i have no girlfriend i can ask to pose for me. so i learned a lot of female anatomy by stalking female UCSD girls who walk by from classes to classes. wearing sunglasses is a great way to avoid getting slapped or peppersprayed because they won't be able to see which way your eyes are looking at. consider the sunglasses as a DEFENSE MECHANISM rather than a TOOL OF MENACE, because we all know that girls won't buy the "it's for art!" excuse we scream at them when they approach with intent to hurt us.

~ 10. i like humor. i like to see people smile. even better if they laugh, because this world is a fucked up world, and without more people smiling, we will never get out of this fucked up state. hence my focus on humorous comic strips. i think that is also why manga like one piece and eyeshield are so dear to me. i may never reply to simple comments like LOL or HAHAHA, but do know that those make my day, because even though you're probably not laughing in real life, you bothered to type it out.

~ one more thing to mention: i AM verbose. sue me. kekeke.