Manga, Colorings And I

(Proofread by my girlfriend, Tristana.)

Time to take a little break from the usual reviews I do and take a trip down a palette of a memory lane.

Colorings Lane, to be exact.

Nowadays I’m busy with games, anime, manga, learning Japanese (Human Japanese is a great app), and this blog here. Been watching anime and reading manga from ages ago and had started learning Japanese a while back in late January, if I recall correctly. I can proudly say that I can now read the sound effects while reading manga!

I think it says ‘Kaaa~” there.

Anyways, there was a period during which I wasn’t that into PC gaming. Had no consoles at the time as my multiple PS1s and PS2s had both died and I skipped gaming altogether during the PS3/Xbox360 generation. All I had was a Pentium 4 desktop up till early 2012. And then, through hard saving and numerous loans from siblings, I managed to build myself a Core 2 Duo desktop after the death of the Pentium 4. Ran it till late 2014. Then I built my current rig. It was a fun experience. Learnt a lot – especially, ”When in doubt, fuck RAM.”

Before I got my current rig all I had for fun were binging animations and reading novels and comics. I’ve got a decent library of novels now, man, but I haven’t bought any new ones in the last 5 years. Got more into manga, I guess. And since all of my cash started going into my rigs, I couldn’t spare money on novels anymore.

One day… I’ll be back novels. I’ll be back!

I mainly watched anime at first. One day, I found Beelzebub. Absolutely loved it. Until I got to the ending that is. It was an absolutely rushed fucked up job. So much so that I was willing to go on Reddit (urgh), of all places, and rant about it. But first, I decided to Google it. Turned out the manga was still ongoing. So, for the very first time in my life, I read a manga. Beelzebub’s manga. To this day, it is my #1 all-time favorite series and a little part of me died when it got axed.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Though, anyways, back on track.
I came across a character called Mamon in the Beelzebub and I instantly thought to myself, “Boy, he would look great in colour.”

And, well, that’s what I did. I colored him. Using a an online Photoshop clone called Sumopaint I had found before reading the manga, I spent 30 to 45 minutes just messing around with the a crop from one of the last few chapters. I hadn’t had fun like that in a long time. When I was done, I was actually really damn well proud of myself. A rare thing, that’s for sure.

The whites along the outline. Awwww. ❤

This is probably the first and only time I got skin coloring and shading right.

After I got all caught up with Beelzebub, I decided to check out the world of manga some more. I got onto Mangatraders (a pirate’s life for me) and downloaded Ichigo 100%. Really liked that too. Except for the ending. Fuck the ending. Fuck Junpei. Fuck.

The worst coloring I have ever done. This is what Junpei deserves for the crap he pulled with Aya.

Next, came practice with a bunch of drawings a good artist buddy of mine. Around that time, we both had decided to make our own manga-style comic. We got to make 3 chapters over a couple of months but then, sadly, stopped due to time constraints. That’s also when I stumbled across Bakuman. and got a slight taste of what a mangaka’s life is like. Especially Mashiro and Takagi’s case. Friend and I were both in middle school at the time. It was fun while it lasted. I’d post some of the stuff we did together but I keep forgetting to ask permission so… Yeah.

I then got more invested into manga. Wanted to learn about panel placement and all that jazz. I found this manga called Tenjou Tenge by ONE. It had some downright jaw-dropping art. The raw details and creativity that went into his art was just spectacular. That manga might have gotten from good to crap in terms of story near its end but I will always remember it for its stunning drawings and excellent flow when it came to portrayal of combat.

I then colored the MC of Tenjou Tenge.

I’m not sure exactly what I was trying to here with this coloring. Oh well, it turned out okay in the end, I guess.

Then, it was time for some nostalgia and continuations. I don’t how many of you all here have ever heard of History’s Strongest Discipile Kenichi. It was one of the first anime I ever watched that I actually knew was an anime – like we watched Digimon without knowing it was a Chinese cartoon. The anime ended at 1/20th of the manga’s total length. I decided to hit the manga and, boy, it was lewd as all hell. Shigure, damn.

Kenichi ’bout to beat yo ass up.

Sad to say, though, I never actually ended Kenichi’s manga. I think I’ve got a 100 or so chapters left. Maybe I should finish it seeing as how the manga concluded a year or two ago.

This is from Zombie Loan. Probably the laziest coloring I have done to date.

Bill Gates is proud of this, I think. Or he will be when I e-mail this to him. He’ll be overjoyed. Ehehehe…

MOVING ON, I then decided to mess around with backgrounds and make some of my own. It was around this time I had finally acquired Photoshop.

DJ Lain courtesy of the anime And OST album cover. Which is best? Or do they all suck?

And now, we’re back to Zombie Loan with a new and upgraded sense for color!

I think I’m seeing a pattern here.

Plant more trees, bitches. Seriously though, please plant more trees. I need fresh air. Lots of it.

I then took a break for a while. Got hit by the inevitable reality that one always gets bitch-slapped by when middle school is about to end: what highschool to attend and choosing career subjects. Had no more time left for this hobby. I still read books and such whenever I could, though. Gotta have fun every once in a while. All work and no play makes Jack dead inside and lusting for the sweet release that is death.

When exams and all that pain in the jazz ended on a high note, I finally had the time to get back into business once more. Immediately, I colored the bleeding ‘kyootie’ that is Karin Maaka from the manga about a nose-bleeding Vampire called Karin (Chibi Vampire for the English cats).

oWo wut dis

You may have expected this by now: I took another break. My PC died and I was left internet-less for almost half a year. Unlike most teenage dirtbags my age, I did not own a cellphone. All I had to comfort and entertain me were my suit-book-case (I had no bookshelf so I stored my books in a suitcase) and my jolly PSP. Damn… I miss my PSP now.

When I finally built my current rig, I tried going back coloring stuff again. This time, I didn’t go far. I managed to do only two pieces.

The colors are weird because my monitor at the time had a yellow overlay. Hardware issue. I asked my friend for hexcodes to colors I needed and that moron sent me entirely other codes for half the image. For example: asked for wood brown and got this light purple instead.

The funny thing about this is that I realized this a whole few months after initially uploading it and sharing it with my friends. None of them had pointed out the absurdity of this picture…

A month after this somewhat disastrous project, I read the wonderful manga called Koe no Katchi. I had binged it in a single night. It was just sooooooo damned good. So much so that I just HAD color one of the last few pages from it. I had spent over a week trying to get everything. It turned out much different than I had originally envisioned but it’s still my favorite project up-to-date.

Behold!

The third one and no background are the best ones. The last one was just me fucking around with filters.

As amazed as I was by how good it had turned out, unfortunately, I had stopped coloring manga stuff altogether right after. Just lost the drive for it. My GPU had finally arrived from abroad and PC was ready to kick some major graphical ass. I immediately got lost in the world of MOBAs.

I recently tried to color a double-spread from Oyasumi Punpun, another brutally honest read, but it seems I have lost what little touch I had. Took much longer on it that I should have, as well.

Spoiler alert?

I don’t know if I’ll ever get back onto Groove Street again.
Maybe I will.
Maybe not.
I don’t know.

What I do know is that this Punpun coloring is why I wrote this blurgh post.

Scusi.