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
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and for your viewing pleasure- here is a teaser animation I put together to showcase the upcoming release of MEGANE MOE!