Mighty Morphin' Comic Rangers
When I'm not drawing comics, I save the world from alien invasion. I (the Purple Squid Ranger) went on vacation with my super-team, the Blue Bunny Ranger, the Black-and-White Spare Tiger Ranger, and the White Glasses Ranger. Unfortunately, the White Dino Ranger (center) couldn't get time off work, but he did take an awesome picture with us.
And we fought Bunnyzilla! O_O
Our hotel:
GEYSER!!!
Endor!
Japan!
Morocco!!!
Germany!
There's more, but I'm too lazy to upload them all. Ha ha ha. XD
God, I'm retarded...
So I decided to get a paid account. It's only $20 (tax deductible!), and I get sweet new backgrounds! And the whole space for uploading pictures thing. And I think it makes me cooler than people who don't pay for Live Journal. That's how the internet works, right?
At any rate, one of my favorite hobbies is reading the Tokyopop forums, where I get such awesome pearls of wisdom, such as:
• Do I need sequential art in my manga?
• I can't believe the VA Tech shooter was asian / I would've thought it was a white, mexican, or black guy (I'm dead serious)
• OEL manga sucks, but my manga will change the way people feel about it
• Keith Giffen is an Enemy of Anime and Manga (I want that on my business cards!)
• You don't need backgrounds in your manga. Everybody just looks at the characters.
The last one is my favorite. Okay, they're all pretty good, but I'm talking about backgrounds now. They are crucial! I can't stand looking at comics that don't have backgrounds. I don't know where people are. Personally, I try to have at least one background per page (it doesn't always happen that way, especially during fight scenes, but I try). When I worked at CPM, I was proofreading Comic Party, and I thought one of the stories had cute art, but there was something lacking. I looked at it again, and it was all headshots and no backgrounds. Yay. (CPM's Comic Party was a dojinshi collection, and most of the comics were sub-par, if you have no idea what I'm talking about.)
Sometimes I feel like I rely a little too much on photo reference. Sometimes I feel like I can't draw a background without having a photo reference. I had some photos of my neighborhood that I was using for a scene, but I couldn't figure out how to do them at a certain angle, so I went out and took more pictures. I guess it's better than having shitty backgrounds. Anyway, here's one of my super-referenced backgrounds:
I kinda fail at drawing cars, apparently. Gotta work on that.