#I really forgot how I drew this style in 2022 so the last one i drew(6) is obviously rougher than the others-_-||

[alhexiyansfist]

Finish This series of drawings of DJEMA5 and let me post a collection. Most of them were drawn in 2022 & First half of 2023(´-ι_-｀)

[watmels]

Shiratorizawa’s Spy (Reflection)

I made the first panels of my comic Shiratorizawa’s Spy in January 2022 on a whim, based on doodle requests from my Instagram Story. I didn’t think it would turn into a big project that would take over a year, but I’m glad it did! To finally wrap this all up, I wanted to organize my thoughts about my experience making the series.

🌞 Highlights ━━━━

Shiratorizawa’s Spy-noff + Shiratorizawa’s Spy-noff 2

It was incredible to see art and writing that others created based on the series. I was especially wowed at how several writers were able to capture what I wanted to convey. To see it written out... it’s unreal!

Comic style

I’m really thankful that I drew/colored the initial panels roughly, because this style let me work quickly. If it was full color / rendered... I probably would have burnt out.

Crowd-sourcing ideas

Many plot points and even the character Goshiki Toshiki came from my followers 🙌🏻

Reading comments

This was sooo motivating. Knowing that I made people laugh, or that people felt conflicted because of Oikawa... It made me happy that my work could touch people like that! 🥺

🌚 Lowlights ━━━━

Lack of Seijoh bonding

I totally understand how readers would feel that Oikawa should have stayed at Shiratorizawa in the end, because most of the comic illustrated his relationships there... I should have drawn more interactions between Oikawa and the Seijoh team to build a stronger sense of belonging. I really wish I had introduced Matsukawa and Hanamaki in the beginning. And I probably could have expanded on the Seijoh captain, but I was reluctant to make decisions about that guy...

Losing track of the timeline

I had a bit of a meltdown when I realized InterHigh was quickly approaching in the storyline.

Discovering again that Oikawa has an Android phone in canon

I forgot about this and gave him an iPhone. When I found out again, I was unwilling to change it midway... I don’t stress about this that much though haha

📝 Lessons about making comics ━━━━

Plan ahead

It’s fun to make spontaneous filler episodes, but it’s important to remember the timeline! After my meltdown, I carefully planned the rest of the story. I’m glad I had an outline of each part towards the end.

Comic boxes

I initially drew a new box for each panel. Later, I changed to duplicating & rotating the same box for most panels. This saved a lot of time.

Procreate stuff

My process for making the comic was to duplicate a previous file, keep a few things (series title, some boxes, my signature) and create the new part.

I wish I knew earlier to TURN OFF THE PROCESS RECORDING! As time went on, my files loaded so slowly... eventually I realized it’s because every file was bigger than the last, with ever-increasing video info 💀 thankfully you can purge the time-lapse recordings.

Text

I came to this conclusion before SS, but still wanted to mention it. I much prefer typing text over handwriting it when creating a comic. It saves time, it’s easier to edit, and it’s more legible for readers!

And... that’s it! Shiratorizawa’s Spy is my magnum opus...

✈️ Now some personal updates ━━━━

This year I’ve been making some life changes and want to make even bigger ones. So it works out well that I was able to end Shiratorizawa’s Spy at this time. Next week, I’ll be moving into a friend’s apartment for a few months.

After that, I really hope to move internationally to South Korea for... an unknown amount of time. I am thinking about quitting my job. I’m grateful for my opportunities and experiences thus far, but I feel lost as an adult... I don’t know what I want to do except that I want to try living in another country. I had an amazing vacation in Korea last year, so I think I’ll start there. I’m really anxious because I don’t speak the language though.

I have so much to learn about personal finance, fitness, beauty, growing as a person, etc. I still want to draw and post occasionally, because art is my first love and passion 💖  but not sure about the frequency.

👋🏻 Anyway ━━━━

Was reading Shiratorizawa’s Spy fun? Like, about as fun as buying a coffee from a shop or seeing a movie in a theatre? If so, I would really appreciate a tip on Ko-Fi. How else could a comic artist make money — maybe mostly drawing through Patreon...? 🤔

Thank you for following me through all this. I hope it was interesting! 

[stepswowdsen]

【Magi】 Judar in hanfu 🖤❤️🐈‍⬛

Doodles

Speedpaint

Intro Rambles

Judar skrunkly (rough colour draft) 🖤❤️🐈‍⬛

Judar Speedpaint 🖤❤️🐈‍⬛

Music: Mass Destruction (Persona 3 - Battle Theme)

Original time: 16 minutes

Sped up by 8x

It's just me filling in the base colours for now

Judar Colour Edit

Btw the colour edit of the Magi anime's Judar concept arts were done by me! The purple toned one, specifically. It has nice colours...

I love using teal/cool toned black + red combo in my arts 💗 So I used more blue tones instead

I like doing colour edits cuz it helps me harmonize colours and see how colours work together on the actual design itself. Love playing around with colours

I do love the teal toned black hair the Magi anime uses for him, but I tend to shift colours by saturating the colours more (shifting to cooler tones and saturating reds)

When I refine and redraw the rest of the drawing, I'll redraw the hair and clothes and add more patterns onto the clothes

Misc Rambles

Didn't feel like starting a new sketch so I'm just playing around with rough colour drafts. I think teal/cool toned black + red combo looks so nice!

I want to do more rough coloured sketches 🙏

Like the Douman doodle WIP turned out super nice. I think doing rough colour drafts is nice cuz I get to play around with colours

Also, I actually recorded me filling in the rough base colours through OBS, which is a free software that records monitor footage and streams well

But the video editor program I'm using, OpenShot, is usually ok but it's so doodoo with speeding up clips, it constantly stutters and skips frames so I'm gonna have to find a better free video editor first before I post it

It's been a long time since I recorded something!

Wanna doodle JuAli again soon… I miss them 🥺🖤❤️💛

Speaking of which, I haven't seen KuroEne fanarts with Kuroha's Manga Route 2 design, so I will deliver 🫡 Hopefully soon

Oh another thing I forgot to mention

I love using saturated red and hot pink~ Technically if you eyedrop pick the colour, the colour of the red ru (top of the hanfu) is red~ish hot pink. But cuz of the contrast against the cool colours, the teal/cool toned black daxiushan (coat jacket), the colour reads as red

I love picking colours. Sketching and picking colours are my fave part of the art process

Persona 3: OST

I love Lotus Juice and Yumi Kawamura's voices!!!

Recorded this last night as an excuse to shill my fave Persona OST~~

Lotus Juice (P3's main rapper) and Yumi Kawamura (P3's main singer) are my fave singers!!! I love P3's OST sm

Mass Destruction is my fave P3 track

Yumi's "Ooh yeah~ Baby, baby~ Dada-dada!" It's so catchy!!!

A song with singing parts that are just "Ooh yeah, baby baby, dada-dada~~" sounds amazing

Yumi has a very unique voice quality and really strong singing voice. I love how Yumi's "Dada-dada" sounds like "Dada-dadao" and "Baby, baby" sounds like "Babeh, babeh"

Art Rambles

I love picking colours 🥰 My fave part of the art process is sketching and picking colours

I use CSP's Oil Paint Flat Brush to line! I've been using CSP since 2016. The first thing I drew on CSP was a KuroEne comic page attempt on CSP back in 2016

It's a free brush. CSP updated the Oil Paint brush with a new one so you can find CSP's old brushes on the CSP Assets store

Ever since 2022, I prefer using textured brushes to sketch/line compared to soft opaque brushes and hard pen brushes

Makes it easier to control line weights for me

This brush has a flat edge so the newer Oil Paint brush makes it easier to draw sharper lines, but I have better control over this brush and I'm just used to it. It works with my art style well. I love weighted inky brushes.

Also dawg I just realized that I recorded Display Capture on OBS so it shows my tablet's button presses on screen and me opening folders and files oops 😭

I'll record just the CSP window next time with Window Capture

I downloaded ShotCut, a free video editor this morning and it's already better than OpenShot tbh. It can speed up the video without stuttering and skipping frames, and has more features too

If I was filling in the base colours for real, I'd use a hard brush to fill in the base colours (cuz as you can see in the video, the Oil Paint brush is slightly translucent so it'll create lighter spots and won't fill in the base colours completely)

So I duplicated the layers multiple times. Since it's just a rough sketch, I filled in the base colours manually since it's fine for it to be messy. I'm just getting an idea of colours so it doesn't need to be clean

But if it was more refined with a cleaner refined sketch/lineart, then I'd use lasso tool and magic wand by selecting the outside of the lines and inverting the selection

I like using the old Oil Paint Flat brush for sketching and lining, but just keep in mind it has a flat edge (so if you need something that makes sharper lines use the new Oil Paint Flat brush) and it can't blend for shading/rendering.