I noobed out and forgot to tag on concluding remarks. I must’ve been really tired at the time.
Part 1 consists of the bulk of it anyways, so yeah this is the concluding remark that should’ve gone at the end of the Overall.
As a reviewer my job is to be as abrasive as possible because it’s entertaining. OVERALL -
the stories were bland or badly written and the art overall was bad. None of it really stood out, after reading Gen-Atto’s submission I wanted to stop and wasn’t remotely interested in what the rest of the issue had to offer, it was that bad. There is also a number of typos throughout. Is it really that hard to proof-read your shit before you zip it in a folder and submit it? “Bussiness?” Fuck off until you learn how to use spellcheck, why should anyone bother reading AD when the author doesn’t respect their readers enough to make sure they spell words correctly? If English is not your forte, ask for help or make an art submission, it’s plain rude to have such a high level of grammatical inaccuracy.
The art submissions and Eclair’s was notably better than the rest art-wise. Overall there was nothing that really made this stand out for me. It was just bad. If you want me to say something nice, it was better than AD5B. But that’s not much of a compliment.
It’s that time of the year again!
Fresh meat…
This may be dumb for a person whose had little luck finding motivation to finish their own doujin to be criticizing others. But it’s nice to know other people’s opinion of your work (and I do other stuff anyways). I was a bit miffed at the delay. It seems kind of irresponsible to have a one week delay on a 6 month project that realistically could’ve been done and out the door in 4 months or so. Made me think – “this better be good.”
Small breakdown – This release has 7 doujin submissions, 5 comic submissions and 2 art submissions. comics by Lisu, Cookie, Eclair, Nameless Fairy and Gen-Atto. Two art submissions by Nitro-Powered Kappa and VIVI. I’ll review these individually this time.
Before I get started I’ll say this again, a successful comic is one that has a good story that is complimented by suitable art. Excellent art cannot save a manga from being boring, but poor art cannot save the manga from being ignored. It’s a combined effort of the two.
<may contain spoilers>
Tea Time Trouble – Lisu
Silly story + little text = light read. Nothing special really to say about it. I like colour pages, it’s nice. Other than that, the story suffers from lack of thought. The plot development is poorly thought out and the resolution to the conflict between Koakuma and Sakuya seemed too childish. For instance, why didn’t Koakuma and Sakuya simply take turns using the leaves? Have you made tea before? Is there a point to this? It felt inconsequential and therefore easy to forget.
Art level floats probably a bit above your DeviantArt average, it’s not good at all, but it’s not bad to the point where it would sear your eyes shut to block out the destructive imagery.
Between Heaven and Hell – Cookie
As I type this to you now, I cannot remember what this was about. I hope that says something. *rereads* oh yeah, ok, It’s the beginning of a long story, retelling of Subterranean Animism. Nothing remarkable or noteworthy happens since it’s the beginning. The cliffhanger at the end didn’t feel like a cliffhanger.
It’s fairly well thought out (or at least when compared to Tea Time Trouble) and could turn into something interesting, but My feedback would be to stay away from long stories, it doesn’t make sense to do them in a publication released once every 6 months, I won’t remember shit even if they were masterfully written with professional art.
Speaking of art, the framing is kinda clunky, sometimes I don’t know if I’m supposed to be reading left to right, or left column first and then right column. Also, art could use a lot of work as always. It’s a bit above your regular DeviantArt-standard material. So it receives the same comment from me as TTT – terrible.
Cirno’s Challenge – Eclair
Very short. It doesn’t make me feel like I’ve wasted my time after I’ve read it. That’s a good thing, I feel guilty when I read too much manga/watch too much anime. Straightforward, to the point, something you can enjoy. Artistically it’s notches above everyone else. Only reason to not really like it is because of stylistic preferences, it’s very solid otherwise. First page catches the eye, the other two uses simple frames which works for something this short. If I really had to complain about something, it would be that it uses an old tired joke. The world does not need every conceivable variation of the “I’m CIRNO IM THE STRONGEST LOLOLOL” joke. let it go.
Shadow of Cirnobyl – Nameless Fairy
I have no idea what this is about. It has a play on names in the title, and I’ve read it since chapter 1. But I don’t know and I honestly don’t care enough to flick through the old train wrecks that is AD1-5 to find out. No more long stories. They’re not interesting because we can’t remember what happened. Artistically…I actually really like it, its very simple, sorta like all the stuff I watched when I was a kid. It’s just that it’s very obvious that the artist cannot really draw instead, they rely on stylization and story. It’s nothing a bit of hard work won’t solve.
Reimu and Marisa Make a Henta – Gen-Atto
It’s long, the longest submission. But for it’s length offers surprisingly little content. The art improved, no longer am I made to look at MSN doodles. There are now coloured pages as well. It won’t stop me from calling the drawings bad though. The content is really “uh.” I understand the western-randomness brand of humor. I do not get this. You have to draw the line somewhere between random and “I don’t know what is happening”. Perhaps it’s me, I didn’t like it. The only thing I liked was comparing the bosses, Suwako fight, Giant doll….large fish (this segment is ironically also the most pointless. It made too big a detour from what is actually going on, it has nothing to do with Marisa, Reimu or hentai). The rest just lost me, a lot of it was just plain crude and not funny. If it was supposed to be crude, at least make the drawings erotic.
The main problem in this submission for me therefore lies in storytelling+content, It wasn’t interesting and took too many detours. Why the hell should I care that nobody likes Alice or that Sanae flashed ZUN and won her place in TH12 with giant knockers, it has nothing to do with the title and it wasn’t funny. Maybe I’m getting old and don’t find this shit funny anymore. Also my last gripe is that it’s too out of character, again, even if you want to twist their personalities up a bit, draw the line between “zany” and tasteless.
This is a real hit-or-miss submission. Only people who really like this type of humor will enjoy this.
Memory 34/56 – Nitro-Powered Kappa
Breath of fresh air. Instantly increased the value of this issue for me. I like how there’s been an upgrade from pencil sketches to full colour CG. Most pictures were given a background, that’s an added bonus. Art would benefit from a dive at colour theory in addition to paying more attention to drapery.
A Flor Fantastica – VIVI
Also something else I really liked, I really liked the colours. It was very well done. Definitely a lot of work was put in. I can appreciate that, but something I’ve always had a gripe with was that the people were too super-deformed in a way I can’t bring myself to love. To be specific, the faces. Too anatomically out of whack to ever say it’s a “style”. Otherwise it has colour usage and application I would expect from a children’s picture book, it’s very nicely done and easy on the eyes.
Overall
1 – It needs an increase in overall quality with storytelling/content and art, so some quality controls would need to be put in place for AD to ever be taken seriously and to attract any other contributors.
2 – Lay off long stories unless you plan to release AD with greater frequency. Even then 1 chapter every 4 months is pushing it.
3- Give overused jokes a rest.
Filed under: Art, Doujinshi | Tags: Touhou, loli, Ero, Reimu Hakurei, Hentai, R-18
Noticed there was 4k pageloads on the counter. I really need to think of ways to gain more attention. Nothing worse to an artist than to have nobody look at what they do.
At anyrate, this is good for me at this point in time, so to celebrate. Reimu porn. Sparked by some desire to practise figure drawing and having looked at some ero earlier today. Xration, you are one huge sicko. But i love you.
Changed style to make this more fappable, my original style is not fappable. Hence this.
This took about 2 hours to do. Bit faster, but i can still afford to speed up. Good practice.
Filed under: Art | Tags: Fanart, Okuu, Pantsu, Photoshop, Touhou, Utsuho Reiuji
Done. 2 days on a picture that would’ve normally taken me 4 hours. I have a headache.
Well, I certainly hope that’s the end of the artblock. I’ve sacrificed 2 days to make a picture that would usually take me 4 hours; in order to appease the God of artblocking. A deity who finds sick pleasure in seeing ugly pictures.
Normally what I do is I paint in SAI and then export my fail into Photoshop to kira-kira it up. Finally realized how terrible SAI has spoiled me with it’s easy blending. For the record, neither SAI or Photoshop handles like paint on canvas, or even pastel (of any variety)/charcoal on paper. Photoshop does however seem to be more in touch with reality out of the two. This explains why SAI is so popular (awesome line quality aside) and why suites like Photoshop and Painter are less so amongst people who have never felt giddy for art supplies before.
How I(rediscovered how to) blend shades In Photoshop
I didn’t colour long with Photoshop after I bought a tablet (Graphire 4, but upgraded since then.) it all went into SAI. But going back to it was fun. It was like learning how to paint all over again. Took me 10 minutes to figure our how to blend colours. Set tablet sensitivity on opacity first because Photoshop defaults pressure sensitivity to brush variation only. My magic bullet it seems is opacity+flow set to 60/40 and adjust hardness for what you want to paint. Then slap it onto your base/undercoating whatever you want to call it.
supposed to be Okuu…
This happens to me far more often than I would like to have happen. But it seems I have a block again. I coloured that over….must’ve been…3-4 times? Still looks garbage. Maybe a short break is in order. Or at least until I find another way to blow this one up.
I’m probably the only one who feels this way. But I’m slightly anxious to read the new AD6 release to see how they have improved (art wise), also I’m guilty of wanting to read it because I know it will be bad, it’s probably not something many people will admit to because it’s rude and cruel, but I say what’s on my mind; often times it’s not something nice. I liken this feeling to wanting to watching a bad movie just to see how laughably bad it is. The overall sentiment seems to be that people think it’s a bad doujin publication due to quality issues, well I say to them – me too. But I’m interested in whether they will surprise me with something good or whether the bar will be lowered another notch. Only time will tell. In the normal world, something that takes 6 months to do and a 1 week delay should in theory be of higher quality. But this is AD.
*shrug*
Lately I’ve realized that the amount of original drawings (non fanart) I’ve done was lacking. So I decided to draw something original. Background is a bit lacking but I think it’s fine, since it’s not the focus. The content on the other hand is inexplicable, I just sort of went with the flow.
Only way to explain it is I recently finished some marimite and wrote a scathing review on the moe style…rather the people that draw it on my DA. Anyways, kouhai trying to get cozy with a sempai. GL kouhai-chan!
Well…how bout that? this took me….10-15 hours? Done completely in SAI, no Photoshop. Currently watching GA. It’s an awesome little gag anime, the humor rings with me and it’s nice to see some art related knowledge thrown in here and there.
I’m a loner here in this city. I left all my friends in Canada. Back then I had a social life, I left anime behind me and drew much less. Now that I’m in Hong Kong I don’t have a job (yet) so I don’t go out in order to save money. And by extension I don’t have any friends here. Most of my friends from highschool here are either abroad or we simply do not see eachother. I’ve been getting back into a lot of my old loner habits, I draw more, I’m a bit more shy when I speak, I’ve been watching more anime now. I guess the fact 2D has and still is a big part of my life wont change. I remember growing up with things like Doraemon GeGeGe no Kitaro, A few old Gundam, Patlabor and Macross…still a few more obscure series I cannot remember…
But I’ve been watching a few anime lately. Finished watching Bakemonogatari awhile ago. If anyone still hasn’t watched it, go watch it. Animation is cheap as hell but the author is good so despite the cheap animation. It’s still a good series.
Also watched Bounen no Xamdou. It made me sad because of how unpopular it is. It started as a PS3 series commissioned to Bones by Sony. The production quality is stunning, fantastic backgrounds, very thoughtful character designs. Some may beg to differ, but I think they were splendid, it throws away the concept that main characters need to look flashy, instead opted to keep them normal looking but found ways to develop their character instead. Family is a strong recurring theme which makes it a very heartwarming watch. But I assume that due to how unpopular it was. The second half of the series was given the fast-forward treatment. The pacing was too fast as if someone was behind blowing the whistle on the project…It would’ve been fantastic as a 52episode series (it’s 26 instead), it has a great soundtrack to boot. It makes me sad to see that something with so much quality, potential and creative energy was treated so crassly simply because people never wanted to give it a chance, because they couldn’t stand to part with their loli moe moe yuri for 10 seconds to appreciate a high caliber piece of animation that isn’t full of moe loli fetish. So in the end great ideas like this get shafted whilst more harem pedo crap get the green light.
God I wish I didn’t have to class myself with the same name as those people….Otaku…makes me fucking sick.
Plans to watch Marimite season4 soon and G.A. I don’t know why I haven’t watched Marimite 4 yet…Although I remember watching half of it and mysteriously stopping…maybe I was busy? I dunno but I’ll be watching those.
Didn’t think I wouldn’t doodle something right?
I doodled this whilst listening to Kylee’s VACANCY. She’s 14 >____> makes me wish I had some sort of talent to sell. Anyways. This thing took me like an hour and a bit to draw and colour. And another hour and a bit to fiddle with in photoshop because I’m a perfectionist. I need to boot that habit. It kills my output rate.
Filed under: Art | Tags: Fanart, Parsee Mizuhashi, Touhou, Yuri, Yuugi Hoshiguma
I spent a tonne of time on this….fantasizing what they’d be saying to eachother….nosebleed.
Filed under: Art | Tags: San Marco Square, Touhou, Venice, Yukari Yakumo, Yuyuko Saigyouji
It’s been a long week, this took me a heck of a long time. I would’ve finished earlier if I wasn’t so tired/busy this past while.
back ground heavy ref from photo. Made several minor changes. YukarixYuyuko
This took well over 20 hours to make not including the breaks I take every 10 minutes because I have a short attention span. I sized it and slotted in black bars so it’s 1920×1080, So I hope it fits the screen of 16:9 aspect ratio users out there. I’m going to take a rest now. ~____~
Filed under: Uncategorized
I haven’t be able to update this place as much as I wanted to. I’ve been super busy lately with things like interviews and going to temp jobs and being dragged to do family things. A person has to make some money somehow yeah?
But I am still working on the Touhou picture that was featured in the last update with the Basilica. It’s nearly finished >___<!!!
