Ending the Chase Early

This chase has gone long enough! Not really... I've delayed it too long that I'm going to end this arc where Saber Lily is chasing Mikuru for putting her in Haruhi/harm's way early. I had a lot more ideas with motorcycles and skateboards, but I can't find them anyway, so whatever! I'll just get to the point earlier and not delay this development any further. So no more talking... Here are a couple of new 4komas!

BIG Plushies

Lookit the size of that thing! Yep, for some reason I got myself a big grunty even though I have a small one already. I bought it years ago on impulse. I just couldn't resist getting him because he looked really cute for its size ^^; Now I don't have any room, lol.

Saber's Fake Birthday Party

Friday the 13th, 2011... It's Saber's birthday, but I can't even post it properly since Blogger is down. Such misfortune... Anyway, Blogger is back up and now I can finally post about Saber's birthday party! I planned on just only making one 4koma but ended up with a couple more ideas XD Doesn't it make you curious what's going on above? :3

Edit: Not really Saber's birthday on May 13th unfortunately. I've been supplied with a fake date... orz. I apologize if I ever created some kind of confusion regarding this date. Her actual birthday is unknown... But since I already made it, let's just have fun with it!

My Plushies

Ever since I was a little kid, I've always loved plushies. Teddy bears, puppets, stuffed animals, you name it! I would give them names, talk to them and... Uh... Make them talk to me... I'm a very imaginative kid, to put it lightly.

Plushies are also one of the most essential things in the otaku world. Many would kill to have these cute, soft, huggable versions of their favourite characters. Myself included... Okay, I probably wouldn't kill, but you know what I mean. Here, I'll show you some of my favourite (and ones that I was able to carry to this one spot from my bed) plushies.

The War on Several Fronts

Yes, I'm still doing my 4koma series... I'm just so very busy lately. Or is it lazy? It seems like both. My work shift has finally been settled for nights. That makes it difficult for me to do anything during the day since I feel like I won't have enough time for my freedom before work. It's also been quite hot, which makes me very lazy in doing anything since I'd sweat too much.

Coloured Bunny Girl Mikuru

Art by Yakuri-Moe

Coloured by Lightning Sabre

My first Photoshop line art colouring project is finally done and even approved! This Bunnygirl Mikuru was beautifully drawn by Yaku and posted on Halloween of last year at DannyChoo.com. I spent about 6-7 hours colouring from December 23rd to 24th. Surprisingly it didn't take me as long as I thought it might've been, so I've delayed the project until I had enough time to do it over the 2 weeks off I had from my office.

The first obstacle I had was that I only had the low resolution art from DannyChoo.com... Darkening the lines was priority, but then the gray pixels started showing up, ah such a pain. It's not too bad though since the line art was pretty clean in the first place ^_^

Then I was stuck... where do I start colouring. Easiest part was the bunny ears. So red and I also added dark red for shading (which is the only place I shaded lol). Oh and I also read somewhere in Newtype that one of the popular artists in Japan created a layer of colour in Photoshop so that he can use that colour over and over again. I don't remember who it was though, okama or Range Murata, not sure. You can see my palette below.

Looks very ghostly, eh?

Ok after the ears I have to move to the bigger parts... then I realize I should've closed some of the gaps which made colouring so much easier. The eyes are very cute, but a bit difficult to colour because I could never draw anime eyes before in the first place, let alone colouring it, so I went and surf the net for eye colour references for Mikuru. I also realized something as I was looking through the pictures. She needs a star-shaped mole on her chest! It was good I looked around first. Oh and here's a secret... I know how to make a star in Macs using Zapf Dingbats, but for the life of me I couldn't make one in PC, so that's actually an asterisk lol.

After much of the colouring was done I decided on the stocking which was surprisingly easy to do, so I challenged myself. I was in over my head though... Fishnet stocking, which is what I wanted to do when I first seen this art. I had no idea how to do it. I was a total nub at colouring and drawing. I can probably do it outside the computer, but how the hell do I do it in Photoshop?? This is the result which involved a lot of duplications and memory eating on my computer. It was sluggish as hell XD What do you think of the result?

The last few details is a bit of a shine on her hair which I've seen a lot in anime arts. If I had a tablet I can probably do it better. Using mouse is hell for this btw. Oh and some art also has these reddish shine on their knees and joints. I duplicated that effect here. I showed this to my friend, who doesn't looks at a lot of anime art, and he asked me why her knees are bruised... I explained that it's one of the anime styles. Then I sorta realize what he may have implied with the knees, carpet burn perhaps? XD

I also made a couple of variations because I can play around with the Photoshop layers :P I need to learn shading for sure... I just don't understand how lighting and shading works, thus why there's no shading here, except for a few parts.

Bare legs!

White Bunny Suit variation

So a first (somewhat) successful colouring project done. Hopefully this won't be the last because it was quite fun. I'll be working on Mikuru here and there though since I'm an editing fiend!Special thanks to Yaku for supplying the great art and the approval ^^

Duelling Pantsu Figures

Alter 1/8 Franco Il Nero

The first time I saw this was unpainted prototype from one of Danny Choo's WonderFest pictures. At first I thought it was from the Sakura Taisen series, but Daniel aka RadiantDreamer from Anime Figurines Network on Facebook told me otherwise. Especially with the excessive pantsu showing lol. So I tracked it down as it becomes finished and found out that it's Franco Il Nero, and proceeded to pre-order her ASAP!

When I opened the box, there were two twist ties wire that held the box together, which is kinda rare for PVC figures. One of them was actually the stand, don't wanna lose that. Her hair is really soft for a PVC, I was extra careful in handling it. And since this isn't one of those normal PVCs that stands or just sit, it's got no flat surface to put her down properly. I mused over how to place it down and it became an akward position for her ^^; A truly dynamic pose!

Now the thing that concerned me about this figure is that there's only a little plastic tab attaches to the wall to support this Franco! I'm VERY concerned. It looks wobbly and wonders what would happens if it falls. I hope Alter thought about the long run when this figure is displayed for long periods of time. I wasn't sure either if I've put in the support properly or not. The smoke and bullet holes on the wall are quite a nice touch.

I really love the sole on her boots. I mean I do like the obvious thing that's shown on this figure *cough*pantsu*cough* but this figure looks very good overall! And it's only when I opened the figure I saw how cute her futomomo (thigh) looks. One of my favourites of the bunch, plus I do have a thing for Cowgirls too ^^

Hmm, maybe I should've put them facing each other so it really looked like they're duelling ^^;

- = ≡ = -

Her futuristic counterpart is
Toys Works 1/8 Mikuru Nazume from Zero In

I have no idea why I bought this... Probably because it had a similar pose to Franco Il Nero. So I had an idea of putting them together in one photo for some reason. It looks cute and has a similar look to one of Yoshizaki Mine's Keroro Gunsou characters, but I really have no idea where she's from... It's a good pairing I guess. She doesn't really need that base either, so I can probably display it right underneath Franco ^^