BIG BIG BIGGEST OF SHOUT OUTS TO @zenhero FOR DRAWING THIS COMMISSION OF X6 FOR ME @ YOUMA! Absolutely bless man thank you so much!!!! Go check out his art!!!
I'm glad you dig it, thanks for stopping by!
Drew my girl Cassie for Inktober and added some color as well.
Shinzo: So, another thing I think about a lot is how far along my favorite older artists were when they were my age.
Asano: I don’t think there’s much point in thinking about that sort of thing. The fact that you admire those artists means that they’ve mastered their art — you can go back and reread them later when you’re the same age as them, but you still won’t find that you’re any closer. I used to chase after artists I admired like that, but over the years you eventually stop thinking that way.
Shinzo: Really?
Asano: As you go on drawing manga, there’s this stage you hit where you come to understand your skills and your tics, and it all becomes a matter of looking back and honing that stuff. Once you’re at that point, the way other people draw becomes irrelevant. I said earlier that I don’t read manga anymore, and the reason for that is because it stopped being useful to me.
Editor: Is there anyone in particular you wish you could draw like, Shinzo?
Shinzo: I’m starting to realize that that’s not a good way to look at it, and that I need to be true to my own style… but then at the same time, I just can’t quite seem to escape from Taiyo’s influence.
Asano: I imagine Taiyo himself is constantly adapting to fit whatever series he’s working on, though.
Matsumoto: I am. I used to want to make perfect manga, but after a while I figured that that wasn’t possible, so now I try to think of things in terms of the overall whole — maybe I’ll draw something really cheerful for a while, then go on to do something really dark, and hopefully it’ll all balance out well in the end.
Editor: Are you talking about more than just your artwork here?
Matsumoto: Yes, I suppose I mean everything. I didn’t even like my own manga back when I was in my twenties — I thought it was ugly. Like, I’d go to draw an airplane and it’d come out looking soft.
Asano: One might see that as artistic style, though.
Matsumoto: Well, no matter how many times you’re told that that awkwardness is actually good, it doesn’t seem good when you’re the person drawing it. Really, the only answer is to keep working on improving your technique. Looking back from where I am now, having improved my technique somewhat, my older work seems… awkward, and like I thought I had everything all figured out. With Hanaotoko and I suppose with Tekkon Kinkreet too, I was pretending like I had all the answers, you know? But now I can see that as maybe kinda cute, in a way.
Asano: How old were you when you started feeling that way?
Matsumoto: My late thirties, or maybe around 40. You almost start to see your past works as if they were made by another artist, I think.
Asano: I see — so as you get older, you start to see this young artist trying to impress people as cute?
Matsumoto: Yeah — cute. Or maybe earnest is the word.
Asano: Oh, I think I see — he comes off that way because he’s so earnest.
Matsumoto: So earnest you’re almost embarrassed for him.
Done! A lot of stuff will be covered with words later, which is unfortunate, but that’s comics.
This comic is essential.
Hey, there! I love your work. And I'm particularly interested in your process of using scripting to generate fractals for some of your imagery. Could you share how you got started incorporating them into your art? Any advice on how to get started experimenting would be deeply appreciated too!!
Absolutely @zenhero!
The scripts I use for my comic are all done in Python 3.6. I started learning it for work but decided to take it home and experiment with it by myself. I don’t know enough about other programming languages to talk much about them (but all my experiences with Perl have been… bad) so everything is this post will be Python centric.
Anaconda is a great Python distribution. Just download the version you want and it should be ready to go. I think more people use version 2.7 but 3.6 is the latest version so that’s what I use (Also! Python 3 scripts tend to work in Python 2, but not the other way around). Anaconda comes with most of the modules you’d ever need, plus stuff like scipy, where you can have scripts next to a workspace so you can see your results and tweak them (I tend to just have the script open in notepad++ and run the scripts in a command window, because I am lazy).
If you’re completely new to programming, there’s a ton of tutorials on youtube to get started with. I just typed in “python tutorial” and got good results. A nice thing about Python is that it has a large community of people behind it so it’s easy to search for solutions to problems.
For the fractal part of the images, the Wikipedia page for Julia sets is a great starting point. It’s got pseudocode and links to even more in depth stuff. You can also search github for code that people post, most of it is available under creative commons, and it’s a great learning resource.
Anyways, I’ve pasted what I used for the latest page below the cut (with the image size turned down for speed) in case you want to use it.
Anyone can use this by the way! It’s just a tiny code and there’s a million like it though.
ACT NOW: Only hours remain to stop Congress from sneaking in massive new NSA spying powers
There’s only hours remaining before Congress will vote to renew the Section 702 powers that let the NSA conduct mass surveillance; powers that expand in 12 days.
The desperate backers of NSA mass surveillance know they have to get a vote through Congress or the NSA will be stripped of its powers. That means we have real bargaining leverage – they’ll take any deal over no deal.
Help EFF swarm key Congresscritters with social media exhortations, and call/email your reps through the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s action center.
It is with great pride that I’d like to announce the full release of Broken Worlds, the Kill Six Billion Demons RPG!
This is the culmination of more than a year and a half of writing, playtesting, drawing, and tinkering on my part, but I haven’t done it alone. Josh Raveling, a patron and a gentleman, has done the beautiful layout work, and Sam Chabot has designed the excellent character sheets. I must also give credit to the Powered by the Apocalypse system by Vincent Baker for the innovative and influential dice and move system.
Having run this game many times, I’m a huge fan of the way it works. You can play a character such as the Beggar that fights with a ladder and gets drunk on anything, you can play a character such as the Law who can literally walk through a building as long as they are pursuing a criminal, and you can play a character such as the ninja-like Hunter, who can spend power to appear anywhere at any time, watching from the shadows, with absolutely no explanation (that would reveal the Shadow Arts, of course). These and much more await inside!
Within, you will find the rules for running a campaign in Throne or another inter-dimensional, wuxia-style setting, the playbooks (characters), a huge repository of never-before-seen lore, and a starting adventure hook. Thanks to Josh’s hard work, it’s all fully indexed, bookmarked, and hyperlinked for your convenience.
You can grab it over at Patreon for any pledge level, and it will continue to be up there for all patrons indefinitely.
Enjoy!