As the year’s ticked on, my concept of what Sunshine is has become more ambitious. It’s crept up from being one small project of many I was planning this year to being a big freaking deal, most likely the main thing I will make all year. The bar’s gotten much higher. I’m now going back and perfecting imperfections I would have previously let slide. Overall it’s a pretty good thing because it’s meant I’m much happier with the quality of the illustrations. Every fixed line and adjusted colour has me feeling better about the work, like I’m actually getting to voice the story in the way it deserves to be told.

Thumbnails of all 12 pages of Sunshine, as it looks as of this moment.

The problem with raising the bar is knowing when to stop. After six months of working on this comic I should be well and truly ready to share it. If I average it out, each page has taken over two weeks to finish. Pages of The Otherwalls used to average between one and three days, which still felt like ages. Sure, I’ve had other commitments this year (Full time work, that manga class I ran, knitting, re-discovering how great books are), but that doesn’t change the fact I can’t perfect pages forever and soon I’ll have to get ready to let them go. Really soon. This is starting to get a bit silly.

Short format comics are very different to the longer webcomic epics I’ve written (and abandoned) before. With the long format it’s all about building the story, and the exact quality of a page is perhaps a little lower to compensate for the speed at which the work is produced. It’s also finished one page after the other, as it needs to be updated chronologically. With short format I’ll be releasing it all at once. I have time to sit and think about my technique across the whole comic and make sure it feels cohesive from start to finish. This is great, because it’s an area I’ve previously been quite weak in.

Even though It’s taking forever, I’ve learnt so much. Next time will definitely be faster. I’m completely sold on short format, it’s deliciously addictive. I’m finishing my final pass correcting the last niggly bits of the lines and colours. Then all I have to do is put the words on and get it ready for the internet. Undoubtedly they’ll both have their own delightful series of tears and steep learning curves.

I can’t wait!

The first couple happened pretty easily and effortlessly. I put the word out, and folks turned up with drawing and stories and nibbles. All I had to do was provide the tea.

Since then it’s become difficult to keep in touch with everyone at once. We’re all busy folks with lots on, so coordinating a time that suits is tricky. So far the thing that’s working the best is having a Facebook group to post to and set up events through. It’s not perfect, but at least it’s a way for us to stay connected.

I’m hoping once we get into the habit that things will get easier. It’s difficult being an illustrator sometimes, because it’s quite often a lonely job. Having a space to sit, draw, and share with other people going through the same artistic toils is something I’m really enjoying. I’m hoping soon we’ll even be able to contribute to a collaborative project together. I’m all about the collaborations.

A recap, in pictures.

A snapshot of a couple of sketched pages

All twelve pages sketched out and ready for inking.

Detail of the inked lineart

A moment from page three

A challenging fork. That fork was so difficult to draw. All the angles and things. Not for the faint of heart.

Finished pencils/inks for page two! One of my favourite pages to work on.

After I scanned in all the pages and was preparing them for colour, there was one page in particular that stood out as being screeds crappier than the others. Page Seven, the turning point in the story. It should be a strong example of good storytelling, as the mood changes here and things begin to get darker. I was getting absolutely none of those feelings from this page. I decided to re-draw it entirely with the help of my good friend, Creative Commons.

Page Seven. In all its uninspired glory. In my initial thumbnails this was stretched over two pages, but I felt that condensing it to one improved the flow of the story. I neglected to adjust the composition effectively to match, so it ended up feeling cramped and rushed. The top illustration is also the only outdoor one not drawn from reference, so it doesn’t match the illustration style of the rest of the comic.

New Page Seven. With improved design and a picture drawn from reference. All the other Wellington locations have been referenced from photos I have taken. I knew the shot I wanted for this illustration for quite some time, but I haven’t had the time to get the photo myself. I used a photo by Virginia McMillan as reference. Yay, Creative Commons!

Sunshine will be licensed CC-BY-SA when it’s finished, just like the rest of my illustration work is.

I’ve given myself a deadline of three weeks to have Sunshine finished and ready to share with the internet. I’ve got the colours, lettering, and design of the final web layout still to do. Three weeks should work out fine. Yep.

In the weekend I went on a wander up Mount Cook to search for inspiration. I saw Wellington from angles I’d never seen before. It’s amazing how so close to town we have all of these amazing parks, hills, and forests. Walking through them feels like being in another world (I took photos, but they weren’t that great, so you just get words). I could write a whole blog about how great it is up there, but that’s possibly for another time, or for some love letter to Wellington.

I came home and dug out my old nib pens. Here’s a small segment of my practice.

This pretty much decided that Sunshine needed to be more analogue and less digital than I was originally anticipating. I haven’t been happy with any of the colours I’ve been working with so far, so now I’m re-thinking things, with emphasis leaning towards linework and away from colouring.

This was done with india ink and nib pens with a yellow marker to add a bit of colour. This is closer, but the harsh white of the paper isn’t working for me. I’ve since bought some creamy watercolour paper which should do nicely.

I’ve been working on thumbnailing out the pages, too. I’ve had two drafts so far and will be launching into full-size pages tomorrow.

I know I’ve JUST finished saying the comic won’t be in full colour, but this illustration is a bit separate from all that. This was a sketch that decided it wanted to be a finished illustration. It’s going to work as a good character reference, as I feel like they both finally look like themselves.

I had a quick read over my last blog post, which was about how things were feeling hard. Things still feel hard, but as I’ve had a lot more drawing time this week, they’re starting to already smooth out. This habit shall now be stuck with me until this comic is over, which is only 12 or so pages away. It’s a mountain, but I’m sure I can do it. Then I just have to think of the best way to share it. (suggestions are welcome)

In past years I would send hundreds of pictures down the path every day. It stayed smooth and wide and meant that the actual effort of drawing something was very minimal. I would just think it and it would be there. As long as I could make a good picture in my head, I could make the picture happen on paper in a close-enough kind of a way. It meant that I didn’t have to think about the act of drawing and could focus on thinking of more challenging things to draw (Not that I did much of that. The same girlface forever!).

Last year I got a job. I didn’t get a dream job, just a regular job. Somewhere to be 5-6 days a week and get paid for it. This has meant a great deal to me, much more than I can sum up in words. I am a stronger, healthier and happier person because of it. I have learned so much and beaten demons I never thought I’d conquer. It’s difficult to explain how different things are for me from year from a year ago, sometimes I don’t think I’m even the same person.

Unfortunately jobs take time and energy. When I get home all I feel like doing is curling up with something comfortable – like a book or knitting – and not doing much else. This has meant that I’m not drawing hundreds of pictures a day anymore. It’s a struggle to even draw every day. And after each long stretch it is so hard when I pick up the pencil again.

My path between my head and my hand has become overgrown and is covered in brambles. Ideas still get sent down, but some seem to be getting stuck. The movements that get to the other end are stunted and unsure, and it is the most frustrating feeling in the world, to have the pictures in your head remain stuck there. Especially when they used to flow so effortlessly.

A part of me just wants to curl up and give up, but then the other, bigger part of me knows that’s actually impossible. It doesn’t matter how hard it gets, I will come back fighting. The path may be brambley now, but I won’t let it stay that way. I will take all of the learning I’ve done in the last year and combine it with regular drawing. And all of it, even these artblock angsts, will make the pictures that get down the path even better than ever.

I’m tired, but I’ve been tired before. This is a shadow of what tired used to mean to me. It’s time for me to stop resting and start making. 2012 is the year of making things.

I am going to be tutoring a manga and comic illustration class this year. I shall be co-running it with Su Mon, and it will be based at Hutt Minoh Friendship House. Classes start on 29th of February and will run from 7-9pm. We’ll be covering lots of cool stuff like character design, panel flow, scriptwriting and composition

It’s $150 for the 8 week course, and is aimed at an audience aged 12 and over.

We only have 15 spots in the class, so if you’re interested, register your place now by emailing minohmanga@gmail.com, or contacting Su on 021-264-7274.

I think I’m starting to get the hang of him here. Although I’m still struggling to draw him the same way across multiple sketch sessions.

I feel that it’s very important for this story that it has a setting. It needs to be based somewhere real. Partly because the dialogue is so poetic, but also because I feel that backgrounds will help me to tell a better story and will help me say more about the characters. When I’ve limited myself to so few words and only two characters, something else needs to step up and fill the space. Finally, finally, it’s time for scenery.

I started a couple of small paintings of Tenki and Oliver on different parts of Wellington’s waterfront. If I was unsure before, I definitely know that the story is set here now. I’ve been working my illustrations from photographs of locations. This technique does mean I’ve got a bit of legwork in my future to collect some more backgrounds, but that’s all a part of the fun.

One of the important locations in the book is Oliver’s flat. I’m playing around with how it might work at the moment, but I expect it to evolve quite a bit as I do some more research into it. I can’t base his flat off my own, because I don’t think this is somewhere my characters would inhabit.

I’ve been playing with watercolour, and while I love it I am still not sure it’s the right feel for the project. I haven’t found my colours yet, but I’m having a lot of fun trying to find out.

I want to share the draft script, but to be honest it sounds better when it’s read aloud than when it’s written down. I am partway tempted to read it and record it for youtube or similar. I’ll decide by the next post…

I’ve had this short comic idea in my head for a good while now, but it’s only begun to materialise in the last few weeks. Essentially it’s a little mermaid story about a girl who travels the world in search of sunshine, and always leaves when it gets cold. Until one sunny day she falls in love with a boy, and so she decides to stay and see what winter is like. In my original idea she was more of a magical sprite, but recently I’m more drawn to the idea of her being a real girl that just feels magical to the narrator.

The script happened pretty much instantly, and in one go (I love when that happens, that pretty much never happens). Here it is handwritten on two pages of sketchbook. I think this shorter format really suits my writing style, I’m keen to stick with it for a while. I’ll share the draft in the next post.

This picture slightly predates me beginning to work on the comic. I like to do small speedpaints in photoshop occasionally, to play with colour and stay sharp with the program. It was only once I started working on the comic and planning her design that I clicked that that was who my Yellow Ukulele girl was. At the moment her working name is “Tenki”, but that might change.

I pretty much instantly know what I want her to look like. She is small, yellow and has hair made of circles. I want her to have a vintage feel, but to not harken too strongly from any particular era.

Her dresses are 40′s-50′s influenced, and her hair is supposed to look like exaggerated 20′s hair. The exact details are still in development, but you can get a pretty clear idea already who she is from these sketches.

If you’ve followed my art for any length of time you’ll notice I don’t often draw boys. I find their proportions awkward and alien and I feel like my attempts always end up feeling clumsy and stiff. It’s incredibly important that I get over this for this comic, as my male character narrates the entire thing. It’s important he is expressive and easy to relate to, and matches the female lead.

Meh.

Nyeh.

There, he’s starting to look more how I want now. Originally I thought he should be more angular to offset Tenki’s circles and curves, but I think that being oval and elongated gives the kind of feel I’m after much clearer. Also I think I’ll be able to have a lot of fun putting expressions on his face.

There’s still an awful lot of work ahead, but I am enjoying the direction these sketches are going in.

More soon!

My goals for 2011 were pretty simple. I wanted to be employed and healthy. I honestly thought they were borderline impossible things to want, but I’ve been able to prove myself wrong. I get to ring out this year with a full time job, and the ability to stand on my own two legs for all 8 hours of the working day. This is a bigger achievement than I have words for, and probably needs its own post at some point.

Now that that’s done, it’s time to get back into the art. 2011′s been a bit fail in regards to actually completing illustration work. I finished very few pages of my comic The Otherwalls, even though I’d planned it to be its biggest year ever. I did finish a few things and sold a few things, but it never felt like enough. I’m not sure I can quite capture with words how it feels to not be able to draw. It’s like a vacuum, an anti-thing. It sits on me and fills my heart with emptiness that no amount of socialising, money, friends, or good times can fill. Until I’m making art again, something will always be missing. Always.

Even though I haven’t been drawing as much as I’d like, I have been thinking about it constantly. I’ve had time to reflect on who I want to be as an artist, rather than just creating a constant stream of noise, like I have up until this point. Now I feel like I need to edit my work a bit more, making sure it’s going to contribute to a bigger story.

I guess this is all part of maturing as an artist. It feels pretty good, especially now that ideas are finally beginning to solidify and projects are starting to take shape in my head. They’re all stories with very clear direction, and while I should probably try and do one at a time, they all link together in some way, so they need to be executed simultaneously.

I’ve started a brain-book to help me plan out the projects I have in mind. At the moment there are about five major projects all with overlapping links that tie them together in some big and little ways.

They’re largely collaborative projects, which has me very excited. They’re also all on awesome things. Comics, stories, history, fiction, non-fiction, New Zealand, Japan, print, web, poetry, magic. It’s all going to overlap and be amazing and I’m going to make sure it all happens. I’m dusting off this blog and I’ll be sharing the progress of things as I go. It’s all going to be very awesome and exciting and I just can’t wait.

2011, you were great, but 2012, you’re going to be awesome.

It seems to me it’s a season of celebration, so I’m putting a bunch of prints up for sale! Half price, even! The Sale will run until Friday the 28th.

$10NZ each, plus $5 for shipping worldwide.

Below is a slideshow of the illustrations available as prints. The set is also viewable here. Others in the ‘Shiny Stuff‘ folder can be made into prints by arrangement.

Please email me at jem.yoshioka@gmail.com to order. Payment can be made either through Paypal or by Direct credit to my Bank account for New Zealanders.

Thanks everyone!

Lots of cool stuff’s been going on, too. I’ve released all of my work to creative commons. My entire flickr stream and all of my webcomic The Otherwalls are up for use under CC-BY-SA licensing. I timed it to coincide with the awesome Mix & Mash, so people could use my work to remix if they wanted to.

I painted for seven hours yesterday, while listening to Sophie Madeleine’s 30 Days of Covers playlist. Nothing is quite as awesome as completing a painting that’s been unfinished for ages, and have it turn out even better than I thought it would. That doesn’t happen very often at all.

Also: TWITTER IS AWESOME.

I had no idea what to put on the other half of this painting. And so, like with most problems in my life, I turned to the internet. My friend Brock suggested Dinosaur, which seemed pretty ridiculous to combine with my existing illustration.

Well, I do like a challenge.

I really love how it turned out, and it’s a completely different direction to how I would have taken the piece.

I’m planning to auction it off, perhaps via twitter, or using trademe. I’d appreciate any suggestions for how to handle it.

It should be mentioned that I had a couple of other awesome suggestions, including Dapper Anthropomorphic Bunny. I think I’ll have to put him into a different illustration, it’s too good of an idea to waste.

There’s still a lot that I want to be doing better at, but if there wasn’t things would sure get boring. I still get upset with some of the things CFS has taken from me, but it’s actually given me a lot too, in its own ways. I’m pretty grateful for the person I’ve become through these experiences. I’m so much stronger than I would otherwise be, and getting better all the time.

Thanks, 2011, for being so amazingly excellent to me so far, and you’re not even over yet!

Projects like making birthday hats for my 16-year-old brother. (Modeled here by me)

I’ve been attempting to snatch drawing time as I can find it. This has resulted in a small set of images I’ve been tagging #morningSUSHIsketch. It’s quite an excellent constraint to see what I can come up with during my morning coffee.
See the rest of the set here.

Projects keep piling up. I’m helping start the Midori Sushi Facebook page, which is a new and exciting challenge. I’m working on running manga classes for high school students. There’s amigurumi and knitting and preparations for craft 2.0. I keep having ideas for short one-off comics which makes me feel I should begin making and collecting them together somewhere. Probably here.

Characters like this one are showing up and quietly demanding small stories of their own. They are very clear that they’re most definitely not Otherwalls characters, thank-you very much.

And then there’s The Otherwalls itself. My sleeping behemoth of a story. I have scripted chapter 5 and am currently working on the thumbnails. I’m not sure exactly how I’ll go about producing these pages, every chapter seems to like to be a bit different from the previous ones. I’m excited to find out. And since time doesn’t seem to magically be freeing up anytime soon, I guess I’ll just have to force Otherwalls in.

Along with my sushi job I’m now working three days a week at Holland Road Yarn Company in Petone. I love being surrounded by so much amazing colour, it’s a real inspiration. I’ve been making Amigurumi, which I will be selling at Craft 2.0 on July 2nd. I shall also have art prints and a few other goodies.

After having been out of regular work for so long it is incredibly refreshing and rewarding to have two such amazing jobs to go to on a regular basis.

I’m still working out the best ways to juggle my time to make sure I still get enough illustration time in. I haven’t managed to update The Otherwalls for a couple of months, and I’m starting to get desperate to work on it again. I did some quick thumbnail concepts yesterday, which has scratched the itch but also made me yearn for more time for it.

I have a couple of other projects quietly cooking away, which I will be looking forward to talking more about soon.

I have a job now, and quite a different one to what I was expecting. I’m working as a sushi assistant at Midori Sushi on Willis st. I handed in my CV there in November but heard nothing from them until now. I was kept on file because the daughters of the owner wanted to meet me since I was an artist! I believe that this is officially the cutest way to get a job.

It’s quite intense work that requires a lot of focus and stamina. There is a lot to do and remember, and it all has to be done exactly the right way. I’m finding the transition into work quite unusual (because I’ve been unwell since before graduating, I haven’t ever had a normal job), but at the same time really rewarding and motivating. I’m enjoying things like mornings, serving customers and having many small tasks to focus on. The morning routine becomes almost meditative.

I love that the job is incredibly Japanese. Behind the counter everyone speaks Japanese, which has improved my listening comprehension unbelievably. I feel like I’ve stepped into Japan when I get to work, and only clues like the voltage transformers bolted to the walls and the chicken sushi give away that we are actually still in New Zealand. I could write so much on this weird transplanting of Japan overtop of New Zealand.

This is the Nigiri machine. I love how it proclaims it has the TOP Power of rice!

My work has to be both quick and presentable. If I focus more on one I get told off for the other. The only way to improve at this is for me to gain experience. Every day I improve a bit more, and every day I forget something different. I work with really lovely people. While they’re strict, they’re also understanding.

The downside of having this job is I’m being pulled away from my creative projects. The Otherwalls feels a bit forgotten, and preparing for Armageddon and Craft 2.0 feels like an uphill mission.

I’m hoping once my hours settle and I get better at my work that I will be able to claim back some of my brain power to use for creating. At the moment I’m running on a mix of sushi and the pop radio we listen to while we work. I love the sushi, but the radio makes me feel musically malnourished. Still, if the radio is the only thing that I don’t like about my job, I guess I’m doing pretty well!

Learning to draw good clothes is pretty much like learning to draw an entirely new character. They say so much about the wearer instantly. When a character is naked (as a lot of mine are), they’re timeless and untainted by genre. As soon as you dress a character they’re gong to get judged for what it is you’ve put them in. Even though nakedness expresses more vulnerability, as an artist I feel far more self-conscious about posting characters who are dressed.

I don’t think I’m all that good at making sure the clothes I dress my characters in speak clearly about who they are. I’ll often draw them in watered-down versions of what exists in my wardrobe, since it’s on hand at the front of my mind. It doesn’t help I currently find what I own very boring.

This clothes mismatch is the main reason I dislike my last watercolour. I don’t think the clothes say anything exciting about who she is. It’s my job to make sure that everything in the picture is playing an equal role in telling the story, so it’s time I learned how to speak through style.

This is the fun part though! I get to do heaps of awesome research followed by tons of practice! I’m serious, I love this part SO MUCH. And there are few things more inspiring and original to me than a blog on Japanese street fashion, so what better place to start?

I’ll probably throw some of The Sartorialist in to the mix too, once I’m in a good flow.

If you have any other suggestions for awesome fashion blogs (street, high fashion, runway, editorial, male, vintage, New Zealand), please let me know! I am a sponge for visual information!

Oh, and a huge big thank-you to everyone who responded to my last post. You guys are AWESOME and so incredibly helpful. This is why I know the internet is the best place to call home.