Thursday, September 10, 2009

Things I Like - Illustrations, Manga, Doujinshi

Illustrations

There's a lot of digitally colored illustrations that mimic traditional media or mix both traditional and digital techniques. For example an artist may draw their outlines by hand and scan it into the computer and color their work using Photoshop or OpenCanvas. Sometimes I really can't tell if something has been made all by hand or by computer. But I really like the techniques that mimic the look of markers or water colour paints. I'm particularly fond of Japanese anime characters and Marvel Comics characters.


Pictured: Sora from Kingdom Hearts (videogame) - Produced by SquareEnix

Manga (Japanese comics)
Manga are always in black and white, there may be the odd pages in color on special occasions. They are quite different from English comics. First of all, they read 'backwards'. If you picked up an English comic, the panels read from left to right, whereas Japanese comics (and books) read from right to left. It's actually quite easy to get used to. Anyways, I quite enjoy the boldness that black and white comics can have.


Pictured: Naruto Shippuden manga page by Masashi Kishimoto

Doujinshi
A spin off from manga, is doujinshi. These are fan made comics that are published quite professionally and are available for sale. Copyright laws in Japan aren't as tight as the western world. Characters from popular manga/anime are frequently featured in doujinshi and usually the subject matter is humor, romance or sex. I love doujinshi because you can see your favourite characters drawn in a number of different styles and you pretty much get to see all the things you wish would happen in the real story. There are some really talented fans out there!


Pictured: Naruto doujinshi page - Artist Unknown

1 comment:

  1. the first image is really nice. i remember the cover of kingdom hearts catching my attention years ago...but have never played it

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