myOtaku.com
• Join Today!

My Pages
• Home
• Portfolio
• Guestbook
• Quiz Results

Contact Me

AIM
• tomboy2xxxkoy
E-mail
• Click Here
OtakuBoards
• tomboy2xxxkoy
Website
• Click Here
Yahoo! Messenger
• tomboy2xxxkoy

Vitals

Birthday
• 1990-09-10
Gender
• Female
Location
• Glendale, WI
Member Since
• 2005-03-12
Occupation
• student
Real Name
• chanthaphone

Personal

Achievements
• im a black belt!^^ won 9th place in an art contest
Anime Fan Since
• i know about animations(10 yrs. old)
Favorite Anime
• i have a lot: Ouran High School Host Club, You're So Cool, Fruits Basket, Fushigi Yugi:The Mysterious Play, Fushigi Yugi: Genbu Kaiden, Dragon Knights, InuYasha, Kare Kano, & Real Bout High School, Tsubasa, xxxHolic
Goals
• a manga-ka & to work anywhere that has something about drawing animations
Hobbies
• drawing, practicing tae kwon do, listen to music, hang out w/ my friends, annoy & make fun of my brother, argue w/ my parents, read mangas, & chatting
Talents
• drawing, coloring, and painting




Jump to User:

myOtaku.com: tomboy2xxx


Sunday, October 9, 2005

   School Essay
ok, dis essay is from 1 of my writing class
my teacher said dat i have 2 go public (means dat i have 2 show it 2 da public) w/ 3 of my essays by da end of da semester
so, dis it 1 of them
i suggest dat u dont read dis unless u'r REALLY REALLY BORED & have nothing better 2 do
but if u do.....tell me wat u think about it (tho i doubt it)


Drawing Japanese Animation
Holding a pencil in my right hand, focusing on the picture of a character in front of me, my mind thought nothing except to concentrate on my drawing. I was so focused on my drawing, thinking where each line should go and where to connect the lines, that I missed the feeling of something that I wouldn’t usually miss, and that was a presence of someone.
“Dang, girl, that’s good,” my friend, Claudia, startled me with that comment out loud that the whole class heard her. “That’s the character from Card Captor Sakura, right?” asked Claudia while the whole class rushed to my seat to take a look at my drawing.
“Uh-huh, yeah,” I replied with a cool tone since nothing seem to come to my mind because there were a bunch of people surrounding my seat. I was feeling so hot and sweaty both inside and outside of my body that I didn’t know what to do or what to say in front of the people. Ah…ok…thanks guys. But this drawing isn’t that good, you know. I can point out the mistakes that I made.
That was what I planned to say when people started saying “That’s really good, Chanthaphone” to me, or saying “She’s really good” among each other, but nothing came out of my mouth besides the word “Thanks” along with my cheeks turning tomato red.
With the good comments from my friends and my classmates, I started to feel proud and had more confidence in myself with drawing. I became fonder of Japanese animations and drawing the characters like fat kid love candies which was all I that could ever think about. When I thought about animes, my mind would be full of a lot of happy emotions, but also full of nothing at the same time as if my mind was blank of happiness. I would either smile, or laugh out loud softly when I thought about the funny parts from an anime. Those thoughts also calm me down when I was mad or upset because of the funniness of it would almost always make me laugh.
My teachers in my classes were talking, but I couldn’t really make out of what they were saying. My mind was drifting away somewhere else, thinking about animes, the stories, the fantasies, and about the characters. I kept on thinking about them so much that I wanted to be part of the story and the fantasy. That was probably what I wanted the most out of anything in the world.
As days went by, I started drawing more and more because I fell in love with the characters in the animations that I felt the need to draw them not only because I wanted to improve my drawings, but also because I wanted to get to know more about the characters. If I didn’t get to draw at least one drawing, then my mind would start to go a little crazy. I would start feeling guilty and kept on thinking about what I should have done what I could have done, and I would also start to get mad at myself for not listing to myself as if I were to blame for everything. If I felt guilty enough, then I wouldn’t care bout anything else; I would just pick up a paper and a pencil and would started drawing, not thinking nor caring about what would happen to me, or what people would say like ignoring the soft wind in the sky. Though I know that I should think twice about what I was doing, I wouldn’t regret that I was drawing something. I just wanted to get the guilty feeling out of me, and start feeling like I was living in a dream again by thinking about animes and had no other thoughts to interrupt me.
When I look straight into my drawings, I could see that my drawings were starting to improve. My characters’ faces were actually starting to look like a face, the bodies that were starting to look like a body, fingers that were starting to look like fingers, and other body parts. There would be a big, bright beam on my face, my heart would start pumping a little faster, and my mind would be full of happiness that I couldn’t really make out what I was thinking. Though my mind was full of happiness and me being proud with my drawings, there were still doubts that kept on pushing themselves into my happy thoughts. I tried to push those doubts away, but it always came back no matter how hard I tried. Looking back at my drawing in front of me, I could feel that those doubts were still there. That was when I decided that I would really look at my drawings carefully; not looking at the goodness of it, instead, I looked at the parts where the doubts kept on pushing me to look at. I then knew why the doubts were in my head because I started to realize and admitted the mistakes that I had made in my drawings.
By looking at my drawings, I could see that there was something wrong with them like seeing a 30 years old still going to high school. Despite what people said about how good my drawings were, I could see all the mistakes I made which would always make me feel uneasy like I was having a bad dream. I didn’t want to accept the fact that my drawings weren’t as good as the pro, but I had to accept it because I couldn’t keep on pretending that my drawings were good as I thought they were, or else those doubts would just start to come back into my head and I would start feeling guilty. Taking some time to think about how I could improve my drawings, I thought that maybe I should start pushing myself to my limit to improve my drawings even more. Thus, I started to check out books from the library that teach you how to draw Japanese animations.
All of the books showed me the same basics, which started to annoy me. The irritation was building up so high that I actually yelled at one of the books that I was reading: Man! Is there any book that doesn’t show me these same basics? Ahhh! Stop with these damn techniques already! OK! Fine! I’ll give it a try if it’s “SO” effective that the pros even use it.
Picking up my sketch book and grabbing my pencil and an eraser, I sat on my comfy bed, and started thinking about how I wanted my character (female) to be and also drawing the basics at the same time. I thought that I would start with the head basic first and then the body later. For the head basic, I drew an egg shape oval first, and then I drew a vertical line in the middle of the oval to make my character turn to the side that I wanted her to, and that was straight in front of me. After that, I drew a horizontal line in the middle to determine where my character’s eyes should be. When I was done with that basic, I started to draw in her eyes, her eyebrows, her pointed nose, her lips, her short wavy hairs that went down to about her shoulder’s height, and her ears. The drawing came out looking somewhat quite professional even though it was only a rough sketch, which made me feel like I was a pro and led me to think that I could accomplish anything. I had to keep on telling myself that it was only a sketch to reduce the feeling of being high because I would get high whenever I was feeling happy.
After I was done drawing my female character’s head, I started to think about the body basic. I wondered whether I should draw my character’s whole body, or half of her body. I couldn’t really decide at first because one part of my brain said that I should draw her whole body so that I would learn how to draw the whole body; but the other part said that I should draw half of her body because drawing the whole body would be quite challenging for myself since I was still a beginner, and that I should learn it step by step. I didn’t really know what to do, so I just went with my instinct like an animal which was to draw half of its body because I was only a beginner and I thought that I should take it easy. Besides, I wanted to finish the drawing quickly so that I could see the outcome of how effective the basics could be.
Erasing lines of mistakes after lines of mistake, the body basic was more complicated than I thought it would be, and it took me longer than I expected. Hold on, this doesn’t look right. May be I should move this line to the left a little, I gave myself a suggestion of how to fix my own mistakes; somehow, it got somewhat worst than before. Whenever I tried to fix my mistakes, it got worse most of the time. I was feeling so frustrated and annoyed that I thought nothing I fixed could ever go right, and that made me just want to give up on it. But there was an uneasy feeling inside me that kept on telling me not to give up; and I already knew that I didn’t really want to give up on it because of the irritation. The mistakes irritated me such much that I had to fix it to make it right, or else I wouldn’t be able to do anything peacefully. The feeling was like I want to give up, but I also didn’t want to give up. You’re so weird, I thought to myself, but I tired to fix the mistakes anyway.
Somehow, later on, my irritation was starting to drift away; I was starting to feel relaxation in my mind and my body, and started to enjoy drawing more than when I started drawing the head basic. Before I knew it, I was done with my drawing. The sketch came out great, and most of the lines were in their right place where I wanted them to be in the first place. Feeling how happy I was, I kept on smiling and thinking of nothing because nothing seems to come to my mind besides being happy and proud. Besides, I was concentrating on inking my drawing so that I wouldn’t make mistakes, which would totally ruin my happiness if that were to happen. After the inking part was done, I picked up my eraser and started erasing the pencil lines. Erasing and wiping away the waste of the eraser, I could start to see my drawing more clearly. An excitement was raising each time I tried to look at my drawing like I was expecting something really good to happen. After I was totally done with erasing, I just looked straight into my drawing. Unable to tear my eyes away from it, I just stared with amazement in my eyes at my first drawing using the basics. For a second, my mind seemed blank; then, a big, proud, happy smile came across my face. Dang, girl, this is really good! I complimented myself. I was feeling really happy that I went high and I just wanted to jump around, (but I couldn’t because I didn’t want to disturb my neighbor who lived downstairs). Not only was I feeling happy, I was also feeling like I was a pro though I knew that I wasn’t even close to being one yet.
Since that day on, I always started out with the basics, and my drawings became much better than before, which made me very happy and quite satisfied with myself like I was feeling on top of the world. Whenever I took a glance at some my finished artworks, a big smile would be on my face, thinking about how my drawings were really improving, and I would feel like I was in heaven.
I love to draw Japanese animations so much that that was all I could ever think about most of the time, even now I feel like that. Looking back at my old artworks now, I could see how badly they were compared to my artworks right now like comparing hand written papers to typed papers. How could my classmates and my friends had said that my artworks were good, when they were not even close to being good? Could they possibly have been lying to me? I don’t know. But then again, without their support, I possibly wouldn’t be this good at drawing Japanese animations. Thinking back at the time when I made fun of the basics, I wanted to laugh at myself for making fun of them. I don’t think my drawings would be as good as they are now without using the basics; so, I’m glad that I tried out the basics.
Drawing Japanese animations is my life. I can’t think of anything else that I would like as a career besides drawing animations. If I’m not able to read Japanese comic books and draw the characters for about two or three weeks, I wouldn’t feel like myself and my mind would start going a little crazy, along with the negative thoughts coming to my mind, such as anxiety, anger, and frustration. I wouldn’t mind drawing Japanese animations for the rest of my life, because whenever I draw, I feel like I’m living in a dream, a dream which I never really want to wake up from. My characters were (and they’re still are) starting to become real to me, and I would fall in love with them like nothing could separate a perfect couple apart. That was probably why only drawing animations seem to calm me down most of the time when something unpleasant happened. Though drawing might be tiring and restless sometimes, I wouldn’t regret it because there’s nothing else that I’m really good at, and actually like and enjoy the most besides drawing Japanese animations.

Comments (2)

« Home