WEEKLY UPDATE 10.22.2009

HELLO WORLD!!! well it seems that I am on time! ....for the most part! Sorry about being late last week but I am soooooooooooo happy that a lot of our friends are paying a visit and stopping by! It really warms our hearts *sniff

but seriously, we love you guys *sniff




****SO i am sure you folks believe that 'studio moshin' is like some kind of STUDIO with secretaries, elevators, water coolers, vending machines, refrigerators, ramen noodles, and 3 different coffee makers with office cubicles kinda like this one here:

But contrary to popular belief *cough*, it really isn't! lol David and I usually work from our own houses, on our own computers, and sometimes the occasional coffee shop (for pizza pretzels and coffee mmmmm coffeeeee.....) We are really working OUTSIDE of real life to try our best to bring this concept all to life!




Check out these random "at the studio" shots of us working hard at the "office"-
This is I:

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And this is David Liao!


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Upon taking these photos randomly one day, we realized that our outfits are for some reason....very "coordinated". I have red chopsticks and eating strawberries with a red shirt on, while dave is wearing the green with green chopsticks and eating green apples *hahaha just kiddin, there were no apples
....but there was rice.....and it was delicious XD

so HA- i hope you enjoyed our color coordinated introductions to the blog! this is as real as it gets folks! lol

*So i bet you folks are wondering WHO the heck are those NEW faces on the banner????? Well I would like to introduce to you 2 more characters to Megane Moe. I can't disclose tooo much information other than they both are classmates of Megs and Elle.

the girl is Caroline Orane- same grade level as Megs and Elle.


the boy is *are you guys ready for this????-----------
JON KAZAMA- upper classman


yup that's right. and you guessed it, he bears a very similar resemblance to *** ******.

Their personalities and character traits etc etc will be revealed soon! I just thought to tease you with a few new faces here to appease your appetite for more! bwahahahahahah!* Don't worry, we got a few more characters to reveal as well as elaborating more on these 2. SOOOO stay tuned for more updates!

Here is a small tutorial about the "coloring process" in some of my renderings for the manga. There are many different looks and ways to go about coloring a piece, but here is a basic/simple way i learned when I started getting into digital coloring. It's nothing groundbreaking, and I know many different artists have different techniques BUT here is probably one of the easiest ways to get the wheels turning.

First off, the process is going to be the same, with a draft sketch much like this one. Use a lot of shapes and figures to create the overall layout of the subject.

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Then I create a new layer to draw my fine line work. I put the previous layer on a lower opacity so that I can distinguish the difference between the sketch and the inks.

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Next i create a NEW layer UNDERNEATH the ink layer so that I can add my base painting. this is prolly the biggest and most important aspect of the coloring bcz if you choose awkward colors or colors that are either too BRIGHT or too DULL, the finished product will not look correct. one must decide what colors to choose well especially when there is a background involved. I am definitely guilty of spending soooo much time on an animation cell only to realize that the bg and the cell DO NOT MATCH!

in other words, catch the problem before it becomes a disaster.

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Next is simple! just like the last tutorial i gave about different shades of black and opacities, you are going to follow the same premise. create a new layer on top of the base color layer with an opacity ranging between 30-40%. Choose a dark color for shading (preferably black or a tone very similar to it) and whites for those hilighted sections.

You can always create more layers for shading if you want more depth. I implemented this technique with the banner for this week. You can see that there are more than one "depth" layers on the image.

I hope this helps for those who are interested, and I hope it's interesting for those who already do it. Thanks for visiting our update for the week, and I hope to have another here soon!

thanks a MILLION!
davidliu

Hello, Greetings from the Other David

Hello Everybody,

How are you doing on this fine Thursday. This is my first post so I'll just say hello and introduce myself real quick. This is the other David. I work with David Liu to bounce ideas around towards making Megane Moe. We've both been really excited about working on a comic for a while.

Thanks very much for those of you who have checked out the blog. There's still a lot of work to get done before next month so look for things to really take shape in the upcoming week.

David will probably making a new update today, so definitely look for that.

Talk to you soon,
David

Weekly Update 10.15.09

Hello world! Sorry about the tardiness of this update. I was a little backed up at the moment. Today will be a small update BUT I will be posting more content in a few days as well! Sorry if the banner i drew looks kinda pervy....it's not supposed to be... *shakes head in defeat

Right now, I still want to retain a small sense of secrecy with the characters we are unveiling, SOOOO i will not be revealing any new faces as of just yet. *im sorri but it will be better in the end-that is, if you are following all of this.

I will be going a little bit more in depth with 2 of our main cast members- Megan Lee & Eleanor Li. Soooo I had them fill out a few questionnaire surveys to tell you a little about them. *lol


Name: Megan Lee
Nicknames: Megs or "Megan-Lee" *don't call me "Meg" bleh. reminds me of family guy
Favorite Food- Japanese, Chinese (Cantonese style), pizza
-LOOOVES noodle soups like pho and ramen mmmhmmm
Favorite Hobby- Reading manga, watching anime, online gaming**the free mangas/animes on the internet are the best! gotta love fansubs!
Favorite Dessert- Red bean ice cream and frozen mochi ice cream balls
Music- AKB048, Shiina Ringo, *gotta have Utada Hikaru&Ayumi XD* + more!
Favorite things to wear- tshirts and jeans kinda girl. keep it simple and cute. Give me those uber cute "anime" print shirts! - i wear one underneath my school uniform sometimes lol
Addicted to- surfing random internet videos, Angry Video Game Nerd, deviantart.com
Dislikes: Jerks, a-holes, message board spammers, gamers online who make it a point to ruin your game. grrrrrrrrrrrrrr i hate'm!!!
Cats or dogs??- hmmmm....that's a tough one bcz i love BOTH! *and foxes
When you grow up you want to be...- hmm either a videogame journalist, game developer, or something in and around anime (i can't really...draw......TToTT)
Guilty Pleasures- singing to all my songs on my mp3 player, air guitar, blogging


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Name: Eleanor Li
Nicknames: Elle, Elley, Elley-Li *lol
Favorite Food- Mexican/Tex-mex, Chicken Parmigiana, whatever asian food my mom makes *don't know what it is, but it's goooooood! & KimChi!
Favorite Hobby- watching True Blood, Saturday Night Live, drawing/art, photography & ANIME!
Favorite Dessert- warm chocolate cake, oatmeal raisin cookies, tres leches mmhmm!
Music- hmm that's tough...here are a few- the Roots, incubus, daft punk, postal service, brand new, saves the day etc etc. too much music!
Favorite things to wear-skinny jeans, hoodie, nice scarf, simply fashiony style clothes?? don't know how to word it out.
Addicted to- getting music from bittorrents *tsk tsk lol, drawing cute chibis! awwww so kawaiiiiiii!
Dislikes: certain pop culture songs (lame), having to study for math and science blehhh,
Cats or dogs??- CATS FTW! i can haz cheezburger niao? lol!
When you grow up you want to be...- manga artist, greeting card artist, graphic designer, or something in advertising..advertiser-artist-person??? iono
Guilty Pleasures- status updates on facebook, bootleggin movies i prolly won't watch, pokemon....i know...


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OKAY! so there you go! David Liao and I are working on the page so please be patient! We will also be posting up some more behind the scenes type things. That update will be out in a few days hopefully! Here is a step by step look at some of the process that we are implementing for the manga. Our style will not be as clean cut as most mangas are. Since the artwork consists of one artist, ME, I will have to rely on the quickness of hand the the telling of the story (David Liao). Together, we should be able to make it all happen pretty smoothly! *plus we both have other full-time jobs/lives too. But that's not keeping us from pursuing MEGANE MOE!

Sooo "How is this manga different than regular manga?" Well for those who don't dabble in that sort of artwork, traditional manga *even digital* makes expert use of "tones" for shading and detail. (That's the dotty looking-ness you see on printed manga). It's like coloring and detailing with only ONE color in your pallette- BLACK or lack thereof. - newspaper style.

The only drawback to this technique is that it is extreeeeemely time consuming because what you lack in color, you make up for in detail. That means lines, shading/toning, and inkwork have to be perfect! Now since we are primarily updating this story for the internet, we can play with a few different techniques as well- time saving techniques if you will. Instead of shading with tones, I will just simply be using different shades of black (i.e.- 40% black, 80% black, 10 % black etc.). Instead of working with making perfectly handdrawn lines, I will use the "thinline" approach. If done tastefully, it makes the artwork look more relaxed with no sacrifice to a lot of the details in the image.

Posting "toned" artwork online sometimes comes out.....awkward. That look and feel of the "dots" will not be seen most the time since it just appears to be grey- that is unless you zooooom in reaaaaaallly close to a HI-RES image. But that takes a lot of space and memory SOOO we will reduce it to our technique. Hopefully so, we can achieve a solid comprimise between story telling, detail, and quality.

This is an idea of what I am talking about:

*this is the first step, just sketching out the simple line work for reference on the 1st layer

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***here is the cleaned up linework that i redrew on a NEW layer. 100% blk btw with 1pt. pixel pen tool

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***then i create a new layer underneath my redrawn linework to create the first round of shading. i set this to 39% opacity and painted in the areas i wanted to be shaded. I set my color to BLACK but as you can see, with a lower opacity, it appears grey.

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***I repeat the last step but place it onto a NEW layer with a different opacity. this one was set at 70%. It may seem a little much bcz 39%+70% = 109% black. well i used a blending tool to soften that look up. in other words, the "water" tool simulates water being part of the brush so it would come out at a lighter opacity. so atleast if i wanted to paint a reallllly dark area, then i could ;D.

****All these images were drawn and crafted in PaintoolSAI. i love that program.

SOOOOOOOOOOO I hoped you enjoyed my long art rant and the behind the scenes look at the process of the manga. You can see that with these simplified techniques we can still achieve a nice product soooo i hope you guys understand! I wish i had the time and money to make this OFFICIALLY manga style but we will start out small and then see how this rolls out.

See you at the next update in a few days!
mr. david liu & david liao
ps-********************
and for your viewing pleasure- here is a teaser animation I put together to showcase the upcoming release of MEGANE MOE!

Weekly Update 10.08.09-

Hello world!
We have a brand spanking new header up top showcasing a very special girl- Eleanor Li. She is one of the main characters in Megane Moe and Megan's "BFFE" if you will. Production is moving but I am sad to say, at a slower pace than I would like. Making a manga is time consuming with work, life, significant others, and other art projects! But David and I are doing our best to unveil this special manga to the rest of the world!

By now, I am sure you guys are wondering "Geez, Dave, what the heck is this comic about? It looks like a bunch of school girls." I would have to say to you, "Yesh, yesh it is." Most mangas (especially in Japan) focus a lot of their material surrounding Japanese HS life and the drama and romances which surround it. We are taking the story COMPLETELY away from that premise. The reason those mangas do so well is because people who read them relate to them because that's what they grew up around.

For an American audience, people don't necessarily relate to Japanese HS life, so we are bringing you a story about an American highschool student. We are taking moments from our life growing up in an American highschool- the fun moments, the FUNNY moments, the awkwards moments, and everything inbetween.

SOOOOOOOOOOOO Here is my point- as of this moment, we are starting a small contest: send us your "highschool" moment or story that holds that special part in your heart to us for a chance to have your "moment" cameo in our manga. You will also have a character cameo designed after you to showcase your story. Well what KIND of moments???? Send us the funny, the awkward, the time you farted during a test (lol). We would love to hear it! And you don't have to say who you are so don't worry about your privacy etc etc.

Send all your entries to us on facebook (studio moshin) or a note on deviantart (angryangryasian).
We would looooove to hear what fun stuff you have to share! We will have more details as to when this will be implemented into the story soon.

And as promised, here is a production update showcasing Eleanor:



And here is a random drawing of her again. It's kinda...eh.



Ok thank you for stopping by and visiting us! I will have more artwork next week. I should have MORE of it up too and I will also be featuring another new character. Sorry about the secrecy- you will learn more as we get closer! *hehehehehehehehe

davidliu