Before I teach you a bit about anime and JF, run, do not walk to http://www.indymedia.org/ and learn up about stuff happening that you should be interested in. Also, each regional site under IndyMedia has exclusive content, so go to http://seattle.indymedia.org/ or the indymedia where you live. So now we can go on to the obligatory lesson. Today's lesson is half-arsed-ness and lips. First off, lips in profile view are important and more ...importantly... hard. Ya, have you drawn perfect lips at profile before? I can say that this is my first time. Look close, even zoom into your subpixel microscope and you'll see: nothing. *sigh* I put so much work into those masterful lips and they aren't even one pixel wide. Well, if your lips look right, they shouldn't be more than a pixel wide. So I guess the short part of the lesson is that if you can't do something, you have two choices: steal or go with half of your heart. It may sound like a bad decision, but half-hearted-ness is often the best way to go into anything. If you do anything too much, it's likely to kill you. Water is an excellent example. Too much water will kill a person. I'm sure that you or I do not know from experience, but the scientists say so and I'm convinced. So, if you don't know how to draw lips at profile view, just don't do it at all and it'll take care of itself. If you really want to do them right, check out a good manga or a live model (but don't just leave it at that, interpret what an anime person would look like). There's a crack in the lips, guys have the bottom lip out usually, girls have a curvy upper lip, and rarely they are talking at profile, but if they are, their jaw and their upper lip move. A person who only uses their jaw to speak looks stupid, but you can find them in real life from time to time. Try it yourself in the mirror and you'll see.
Scene 1, Page 1 Lo
Scene 1, Page 2 Lo
Scene 1, Page 3 Lo
Scene 2, Page 1 Lo
Scene 2, Page 2 Lo
Scene 2, Page 3 Lo
Scene 3, Page 1 Lo
Scene 3, Page 2 Lo
Scene 3, Page 3 Lo
Scene 4, Page 1 Lo
Scene 4, Page 2 Lo
Scene 5, Page 1 Lo
Scene 5, Page 2 Lo
Scene 5, Page 3 Lo
Scene 5, Page 4 Lo
Scene 5, Page 5 Lo
Scene 5, Page 6 Lo
Making Of JF
Pages 1-12 Lo
Pages 13-24 Lo
Pages 25-36 Lo
Pages 37-48 Lo
Pages 49-60 Lo
Pages 61-72 Lo
Pages 73-84 Lo
Pages 85-96 Lo
Pages 97-108 Lo
Pages 109-120 Lo
Pages 121-132 Lo
Pages 133-144 Lo
Pages 145-156 Lo
Pages 157-168 Lo
Pages 169-180 Lo
Pages 181-192 Lo
Pages 193-204 Lo
This was the first time I was ever far behind in JF. Scene 2. I decided to have a fan art instead of a page. But then I wondered if the fan art would be good enough. I thought: "These characters are really just half done and I haven't gotten the right animations for a decent looking fan art strip. Maybe I should just make it into an apology strip. I'll keep the reader's attention for two more days and I'll give them the real deal then." So I put it up and hoped it'd be okay. Well, nothing happened, so it didn't go over too badly. Anyway, you want to know what was going on when I was making these models. Well, it's pretty cool. I took two pictures of Tycho and Gabe over at Penny Arcade and make the models from scratch. They aren't bad, but they aren't perfected yet. I traced the eyes, mouth, eyebrows in Corel Draw and made a skin from that. It worked out far better than just using their actual pictures. I'm not sure why. Lesson One to be learned: when copying other's 2d work into 3d, redo the 2d work in 2d first.
This is a good looking picture, no? The girl is just a Rave Kiddie from Scene 2. She is not my girl friend in real life. I don't have a girlfriend in real life nor does Jav in 2014. But if you saw Scene 3, Page 1, you might wonder as sensei does: "Where is your love?". Scene 3, Page 2-5 will answer that or perhaps it'll just make a bigger question. Scene 4 may answer it. But how did I make this girl? As you can see, she's dancing in front of the local Discotheque (pronounced Disco-tek), "Don't Stop". Well, first off, the face was modelled vertex by vertex, triangle by triangle from an original 2d vector graphic. That's why it looks good at such a low polygon count. The face alone took an hour or two. I stole the body from the Tycho model (hahaha!) but officially, Tycho stole his body from this girl (hehehe!). It doesn't really matter who stole what from who, the fact is that they're the same bodies with the same skeletons. You see, MilkShape 3D uses a skeleton system that allows a modeler to move body parts just like they had a it in their hands. You just drag and drop the body part to where it ought to go. This girl is an awesome dancer. Weighing in at just 553 triangles, we're seeing a real lightweight beauty. Compared to Tycho's 578, Gabe's 608, and Jav's 486 she's about as lightweight as beautiful can get. Jav is very blocky, no wonder, he was modelled from boxes. This girl's body was modelled from a cylinder using extrusion of triangles. This is vital for any 3d work, really. So Lesson 3 is: start with a simple concept model like a cylinder then select triangles where limbs protrude and extrude them. For example, the arms are made by extruding two triangles on each side of the cylinder. For beginners, this tactic is tougher with cylinders. Try a box instead. Make a box chest, extrude twice for a neck, three times for each arm, four times for each leg and there you have Jav's body. Of course, before Scene 4 starts, I'm going to redo Jav's Body. No problem, though. Since everything is object oriented, I can recompile the entire manga in a matter of hours with the new Javantea.
***PageBreak1***
