So many trees are in bloom now. It's like a real life animeee~ Ovo
<- This photo was taken in 2007. There are these awesome young cherry trees in front of my house and I love them. The pink ones are the "classic" pink Japanese sakura trees you can always see in romantic anime.
2008. I can't really remember when these trees were planted here, but as an avid nature and tree lover person, I was so happy when they started blossoming every spring.
2009. The white ones are so pretty here.
This is also from 2009, but the other side. These trees are more beautiful because a lady who lives in the other side of the house took care of them and she was watering them a lot.
2011. They were still quite pretty in this year, but the summer was hot and their leaves started becoming yellow earlier than they should have. We kept watering them that summer. However, they grew only a few flowers in 2012, I didn't even take photos of them that year.
2013. I see this and it breaks my heart. They are dead, DEAD. All of my beloved pink trees are dead on this side and most of the white ones too. It's the end of April and only two of the white trees are blossoming. I blame myself because I was working all summer last year and didn't pay that much attention to the trees. I think I was the only one on this side who actually cared about them, but then even I abandoned them...
3 trees on the other side are still quite beautiful thanks to the neighbour lady, especially the one next to the lamp - that one has always been the most beautiful. However, even one of those trees seems to have died down and the one in the back doesn't have leaves or flowers on the highest part of its branches anymore. Maybe they were actually infected with some disease...
So yeah... I'm a simple person who can easily get happy or sad because of small things like this. I was hoping they would at least grow leaves eventually, but they are still naked, ugly and dead. :( I feel that the entire world is slowly getting ravaged around me. The places where I used to play as a child are getting destroyed, plants and older people I used to know are dying. Everything is changing and I don't like it. Sometimes I wish I could go back to those happy carefree times when I was a child, everything was simpler yet more colourful and even time passed more slowly. Ugh, growing up sucks...
Ok, I'd better stop rambling about nonsense and post a few sketches...
Roy and Riza, my holy OTP, yeaaah. I did this like... over a week ago, but stopped working on it for some reason. I originally wanted to do a lineart for it, but I like the sketch too much and I'm afraid I'd ruin it with a bad lineart. So I think I'm gonna clean and refine it a bit more and then slap some quick colours on it.
I'm not gonna tell what inspired this... -___-;
And this is a crapstatic Judal/Judar from Magi. I tried to draw some random pose I normally don't draw, but I messed up his right leg. I have a love/hate relationship with this character. I think he's shallow. He doesn't get to be in the spotlight enough to become deep or lovable enough to me. But sometimes he's kind of cool...? Or just so eccentric and rude that it seems cool. And I like his character song. :O
I don't have any more to post atm because I'm frigging lazy. I should really finish up and post that Sinbad I did about 2 months ago (you know, the one where he's in his alternate orange outfit, which looks kinda like a rag that is about to fall off of him), but I already have so many sketches of him it's getting ridiculous. I'm not even a Sinbad fangirl, he's just too fun to draw, gaaah... And I miss drawing my precious brother-obsessed baby, Vincent.
My internet is utter crap lately. I'm currently using Skype to determine when I can click on things without having to worry about getting a "page not found" error. (The small green icon usually turns gray when my modem disconnects.) I wanted to link some songs and a cute animation, but my connection is so bad at the moment that I'll be lucky if I manage to post this entry... :B
Magi Tarot - I want to do something like this with Pandora Hearts characters. I'm not kidding. I had this idea for a Tarot fanart series like... a year ago. I don't think I'll ever be good, patient and persistent enough to realize it, but maybe I'll try one day.
Ideas for stupid crossovers: Neon Genesis Evangelion x Pandora Hearts Ouran High School Host Club x Pandora Hearts Magi x Fullmetal Alchemist Pandora Hearts x Fullmetal Alchemist x Magi
Do a short comic thing of Vincent and Gil from Pandora Hearts. I have an idea for a pretty cute (?) short story of them and my dream is to turn it into a short doujinshi one day, but I need to learn how to draw comic pages first.
I just wrote this down as a reminder to myself. All of these would be pretty big challenging projects and knowing myself, I won't even attempt working on them. Though some of the crossover fanarts would be relatively easy.
I did a quick sketch of an old girl character of mine a couple of days ago. Holy crap... I've improved. My style changed so much and my anatomy is better, though it still needs work. But making things like these help me feel that I'm getting somewhere. Really slowly, but steadily. Lately I draw other ppl's characters a lot and I'm beginning to miss drawing my own characters. I created this character many years ago after having a strange dream. She is a pretty girl with dark skin, but she has a boyish attitude. She likes to fight and compete with others and she's very outgoing and friendly. She is the only daughter of a rich merchant family. I thought of naming her Darya or making it more masculine and name her Daryl, but then I found this Indian name Darshana which would also fit her somehow. :B
I just made up another character, her attendant. He is a couple of years younger than her. He is a good-natured but slightly wimpy guy. He truly admires his lady and would do anything for her, though he constantly worries about her and has a hard time having to put up with her antics. She likes to tease him.
And now I have a bunch of stories about them in my head... O___o
I drew this unfinished portrait thing in March and thought it was bad. I was experimenting with stuff. Like mixing my sketchy sketch style with semi-realism and pastel colours. Now I think it didn't turn out that bad after all. Also, is it just me or does he really look kinda like Jack Vessalius??
Here's a random doodle of waka!Sinbad. When I'm feeling uninspired, I do a quick sketch of Sinbad. :B Actually, this "version" of Sinbad doesn't even exist in the canon Magi story aside from a few flashback panels and I'm not sure if there is a detailed official design for him. But I really love this outfit because it totally looks like something I would design. I'm a little obsessed with short jacket-things and all. XD;
Fast scribble of Alibaba and Morgiana. HOW DO HANDS WORK??! JESUS CHRIST. I think this is one of those scribbles that will never be finished because I just can't get the poses/expressions right. Too bad because I love these two. :(
And another waka!Sinbad just because. I even slapped some colours on this. I guess waka!Sin can be any age between 14 and 28 (though it probably took him a couple of years to establish Sindria and get it work as a country). I usually try to make waka!Sin appear more like a teen because he's cuter than that dirty lewd old guy he is in Magi (XD), but I don't really like how he turned out here. I know I draw him too much lately, but there's something in him I love. To tell the truth, he reminds me of an old OC very much.
Oh yeah, and apparently, we're gonna get a new manga series featuring shota Sinbad as protagonist starting in May. I'm a little skeptical and afraid the young Sinbad will be kinda like "Alibaba 2.0" since there are so many parallels between them, but I'm looking forward to it.
AAAH I'VE BEEN OBSESSED WITH MAGI FOR ALMOST HALF A YEAR NOW AND DON'T KNOW HOW TO DEAL WITH IT. DX I was hoping it would be like my random Tiger & Bunny obsession which pretty much faded away when the anime ended and I didn't end up drawing any T&B fanart, but I think my Magi obsession is just getting worse. I've been sketching the characters quite a lot. I don't know what the heck is in that series that turns me into a pile of fangirling mush, because it isn't even good. It's mediocre at best. I blame the fandom. Yes, it's because of the fandom, I guess.
Magi fandom > actual series.
I actually got into Magi last November when there were only 3-4 episodes of the anime. I started watching it and I was hooked right after the first episode. This rarely happens to me, almost never. I just found the characters adorable, it was funny, it was silly, it had adventure and action and the magical world of Arabian Nights was very enticing too. In fact, I found the beginning of the series very good and compared to the good start, it can get a little boring later on.
Here's a video with scenes of the first episode + opening:
Magi will disappoint you if you expect random adventures and adorable silliness. While it continues to provide a few humourous and random bits here and there, Magi turns into something more serious pretty soon with long story arcs, political debates, economic, moral and ethnic issues and wars. However, despite trying to bring up more serious themes, Magi is still a mainstream battle shounen at its core, which means we get plenty of battles, power-ups, friendship speeches and the main characters wanting to get stronger. And despite the good build-up, conflicts tend to get solved ridiculously easily. Good guys are good, bad guys are bad. Though there are a few characters with some pleasant moral ambiguity to them. (No, not Sinbad, though he does look deliciously evil at times.)
All in all, Magi isn't something I'd definitely recommend because it's just another battle shounen with plenty of flaws. :B
Some awesome sketch logs by awesome people:
http://drawr.net/syobobobon - Mostly Kuroko no Basuke, but plenty of Magi stuff too along with fanarts of other series.
http://drawr.net/moratorian81 - This artist draws mostly Fate/Zero and Magi. I actually love Fate/Zero too, though F/Z yaoi is not really to my liking. :I
http://microcrack.blog99.fc2.com/ - AAAAA THIS ARTIIIST. I've seen so many of her (I assume it's a she?) drawings on tumblr, but she was never credited, but then I finally managed to find a post where they linked to her blog. I'm so happy now. I looove that little sketch series where everybody is kissing Sinbad. XDD
http://dan.er.ro/ - I don't even know what language this blog is (Korean??), but adorable little Magi doodles everywhere~ Yes, it's Korean. I copypasted the 2nd row into Google translate and got this: "Sinbad the center of all the logs. Sometimes comes up in other genres." XD
MAKE ME STOP FINDING THESE, lol... Btw, I did a search on some Japanese site some time ago and got these results for fan sites about Magi characters: Aladdin - 78 Alibaba - 168 Morgiana - 51 Sinbad - 289 Ja'far - 225 Judal - 143 Masrur - 44 Ren Hakuryuu - 44 Ren Kougyoku - 20 Kassim - 24 XDDD I guess this sort of proves the theory that Magi fandom = SinJa fandom.
Ok, I'll stop now. Here, have a Code Geass song because I finally got the OST today. Despite being a Code Geass fan for about 4 years now, I never listened to the OST until today. It's not the best ever, but pretty good with classic tunes and some calming songs featuring vocals.
3 trees on the other side are still quite beautiful thanks to the neighbour lady, especially the one next to the lamp - that one has always been the most beautiful. However, even one of those trees seems to have died down and the one in the back doesn't have leaves or flowers on the highest part of its branches anymore. Maybe they were actually infected with some disease...
