The time is 2:36pm and I've been working since 9:45am on my dissertation in complete silence surrounded by other writers.

The experience is intense but interesting, and I urge anyone who is interested to write to do this with people who are just as serious.

My dissertation was roughly at about 2.5k words before I came here, and now I'm just a teeny bit over 4k words. It's a slow word output, but i've had to do some reffing, hah.

But still, it's been pretty helpful. Planning to stay in until 5pm tonight to get work done.

So here's me signing off and wishing I had lunch left!

Ever so busy these days, with uni and all that.
Internet activity is also shit these days, but aahhhh, can't be helped I suppose. It's my last year of my Creative Writing degree, and honestly it's maddening. So everything is on the back-burner until I get it done, around the start of May.

Also wanting to stay in Derby, so hoping to get a house with some friends...should be fun. But then I also need a job, something I haven't looked into much yet. Not going to until after the dissertation.

About that, I'm looking at the relationship between the author and illustrator. It's all pretty grinding, but I keep going away...got a few people to contact, hah.

Anyway, off for now.

So no, I'm not dead. I'm lurking. Enough about that crap though.

I wrote a report about how female characters are represented in manga a while ago for my course. Sounds fancy, right? I know it is. I can read comics, and write about them. Woo woo woo. I have to rewrite it though because essentially I wrote my argument all wrong, as in, the way I did write it. The points I raised were fair enough. I also forgot to mention I was looking just at shonen manga, but oh well.

So now I'm re-writing it, I'm looking at two shonen and two shojo manga series. Naruto and Case Closed/Detective Conan and Fushigi Yugi and Magic Knight Rayearth. I've been a lover of anime, but mostly manga, since Pokemon was aired on television years ago, and since then I've collected a crapton of anime DVDs (bordering around 50 by now, I think), and probably about 300 volumes of manga, discounting everything I read and watch online, of course.

I was sucked into the manga trap of having such a strong anime influence, and since the influence started at such a young age, it's continued throughout most of my drawing life until now. The one notable feature of my work, when I work at least by paper and draw for myself, is that I like heavy lines and sharp, triangular edges. I like pointy things. I've had life drawing lessons and use my body and photographs of me/people I know for references and I'm starting to use more curves and shit in my work, and thanks to Sai I can make things look all shojo styled because of tablet pressure.

But reading all this manga and watching all this anime has done what, exactly? One thing which is very easy to pick up on, and doesn't take a genius to work out is that it's a style which gives you very little room to work with. The only real defining qualities of some/most artists is how they draw hair and eyes, and maybe mouths...but even then it looks like someone else's work.

There's two people I watch on dA, and aside from how one draws bigger eyed characters than the other, they use what looks to be the same inner eye colouring style, the same thin-to-thick lines for hair and the soft use of body shapes. The art visually looks lovely, sometimes proportional errors on the part of the artists, but whatever, I make them too, but otherwise very similar. Are they copying each other? Doubtful. But I can pin the similarities to shojo manga and the newer 'style' that seems to have come about during the 2000s and since 2010. It makes me think of the FB style of drawing hair, with possible mixes of DN Angel added in there. Again, shojo styled.

I'm also aware from reading in a fanbook, I believe it was a Naruto one, that Shonen Jump magazine requires you work to a certain style. So, although you have mangaka like Oda, Kishimoto, Kubo, Akimoto and many others currently who publish in SJW, and despite the differences in time since some series were launched, there are still similar series, and the popular ones stay published while the new talent also gets published (since 15 series published in SJW are from 2000+). I've also noticed the progressive disappearance of the eyebrow. In older series, say around the 80s or so, it's slowly vanishing down to being a mere black like, just like a mouth. This is again, more apparent on the females and something I find myself doing. As I have DN Angel by my side, i had a skim through and Risa/Riku's eyebrows are just a little before lines, but still thin.

Of course, who wants to see girls with thick eyebrows? Men have them! But alas, they're also losing their eyebrows too, but at a slower pace. Perhaps it's just to add more sex appeal, since sex does sell. Perhaps it's the media enforcing the view on the female form. Since the media has a massive influence over there, as Japan is rather commercialised. But again, this is applying to a lot of manga, and this is what bugs me.

Where's your own flare? What makes your art special? My art, being as pointy as it is, makes me automatically jump to Enzai: Falsely Accused and the eye style they use. I like the style in Hellsing because of the lines they use. People seem to be focussing on the aesthetic and joining the popular, hyped bandwagon and then wonder why their illustration/art teachers are baring down on them telling them to stop drawing manga art. They probably don't care if you can draw it well, but if you can't draw in any other style what good is it to you? Drawing in the DBZ style doesn't count either. You may speak about being individual and how this art style reflects you and such, but does it really? Does not drawing in the same, or similar manner to other people not say that you're a bit of a 'sheep'  and actually, you're entering the manga safety net because the ego doesn't want to be told 'this is shit' or you need to improve. If people prefer the positive to negative, then I believe this rings true. You can deny, or you can actually mean it. Who knows.

I think I need to rant (again) about body image.
I'm yet to find a fat (not obese, there is a difference) or proportionate *female* character. Main, secondary. Minor characters (like old ladies who run that bath house or something) don't count for me. Not because they're old, but because they don't always have screen time, unlike the other characters. All the girls and boys I seen drawn are slim, it's like saying that only slim characters are beautiful. Even though they are slim, they don't even have that 'little' belly you have when you bend forwards, when the skin rolls in because you are bending over, and thus it is *natural* for it to crease, it's natural for body parts to hang. I'm used to seeing girls in strap tops with no obvious bra on. So why, when they're bent over, are their boobs not pointing down in the top? Unless of course it's a seinen manga where you get the fanservice, but even then it doesn't have to be sexual. Don't stick her in skimpy clothes if you do a pose like that, don't make them look attractive if you want that effect. I've heard people moan about that, and you say 'why give them that expression?' Because they're staring out at the camera with what look like faces saying 'come and take me now!'

Another thing which bugs me is bust size. I like boobs, they're great to lay on and squishy. That's fine. What I do mind is a cast of busty female leads, with no real distinction between then again, save hair and eye colour, and maybe possibly one is more aggressive than the other, and big boobs #3 likes having anal sex. That is not good distinctiveness, and when you do have a not so busty character...don't have them continuously going on, and on, and on, and on about how they wish they had big boobs and how it made them attractive if they did and how all the boys will like them. I find when drawn they often look fake, especially when they're just too out of proportion.

I'm sure boys may like big boobs, but if say, they suffocated them, it's not cool. I've spoken to guys before who've mentioned they may like big boobs, but it's just a fantasy. They prefer girls who aren't going to smother them with cleavage. That, and of course there's the issue of back pain. This same principle also applies to the crap about 'bigger is better' in terms of a certain sexual organ. I've seen hentai and there's some sex in a few of my manga, hetro sex. I don't like hetro sex in manga because it's all the same to me and seems less loving, but I'm not here to talk about hentai. When you see the characters go on about his guys wang being 'so big' and 'so good', I just sit and grin sheepishly. Bollocks to this crap. Again, it's another fantasy thing like boobs, but possibly a may fantasy. As a woman, I've never really cared much for size, but speaking from experience, bigger isn't /amazingly/ better than someone of average size. Actually, it can really hurt. Sometimes that's shown, but unless you're reading/watching something which either has someone being forced upon by another, you rarely get the girl saying this. But I digress, when you do see people drawing guys like that, I just shake my head and carry on.

I've been in stylistic crisis for about two years now. I'm sick and tired of the manga trap I fell into and I want other influences and to develop my own style. It's hard, and it feels I'm not getting anywhere, but who knows. I know my art will keep manga influences, and I'm fine with that. I just don't want it to be all that.

I'm going to continue to add facial lines, finger joint lines and keep my arms looking weirdly curvy to show muscle, since they do exist. I've been drawing more rounded people lately, and working on a new way to work with hair and such. It'll take time but I accept that.

I think this rant was much needed, but that's not to say that I fully hate manga style and it's the bane of my life. I like quirky styles (Dead Leaves for one), but there's just too much of the same out there, and it gets boring and bland visually very quickly. I suppose when abstract art was around, people got bored with that too. I also think each artist should have their own style, and even if you've had obvious influences, at least /try/ and make it yours. Maybe these people are, but right now a lot just looks like someone else's who's like someone else who's like someone else.

Anyway, I'm done now.