Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

[artistbettyanne]

Finally...I have all the figures sketched for this WIP and pasted into the mock-up. I'm ready to start inking, now, though I'll be making tweaks and modifications as I go along.

These last several figures have been one big effort in FAIL. I'm pretty sure I'm starting to burn out on sketching figures, because some of the mistakes I made in this last batch are stupid things I haven't done in a long time. I was going to post this journal last night, but then ended up nearly crying over how horrible some of these sketches were and went to bed instead. :( The small comfort was that most of these are really only visible from the waist/shoulders up in the layout, because they're background characters.

Let's take a look:




Sora and Yukari Wakanae (Family Compo) are Shion's parents and Masahiko's uncle and aunt/adoptive parents. I got Yukari pretty much right to the waist, but her hips are a little on the skinny side. Sora, on the other hand... T___T He might have looked like this when he was 12, and in that gangly, just-going-into-puberty stage, but ugh. Fail all over the place. There really isn't a lot to redeem this one, and I'm going to be making a lot of adjustments when it comes time to ink these two. I really have to learn how to draw tall people next to not-as-tall people. T__T



Taiki, Yaten and Seiya Kou, the Three Lights/Sailor Starlights from Sailor Moon. I...didn't even want to post this one, to tell the truth. .___. I started out okay with Yaten, but it went downhill from there. Taiki's proportions are HORRIBLE, and Seiya's are not awesome. I didn't even bother drawing their roses, because I knew the roses likely wouldn't show anyway. The worst part about the whole deal is that I was super proud of this one when I first finished it. .___. I was all, "This is epic! I bet I could 'shoop the roses in and make a standalone from it! I can't believe I did three figures of varying heights together and they all look good!" However, when I came back to it a bit later, after I finished drawing the rest of this batch, I immediately saw all the problems and sadfaced. :( Even all these years of art training later, and I'm still sometimes caught off-guard by how much of a difference getting up and away from your art makes. Thankfully, most of the problems exist below the waist once again, so these three look mostly all right in the layout.



Haruhi (Ouran High School Host Club) got chipmunk cheeks and bad hair from me. :( The Host Club would be most seriously displeased. At least this one won't be too bad to fix up in Photoshop - mostly fixing the facial proportions and smoothing out the hair. I didn't put the initials in the school badge on her uniform because they're going to be done in white anyway - I'll probably just use the text tool with a white font that looks similar to the Ouran font for it.



Elizabeth Swann/Elizabeth Turner from Pirates of the Caribbean. Admittedly, not one of my favorite characters in the series (I'm totally a Davy's girl all the way, and that other prettyful Flying Dutchman captain makes good eye candy) but she's still pretty kick-ass. Unfortunately she not only inherited the chipmunk cheeks Haruhi got, she got a tree-trunk neck to go with it. XP



Genjyo Sanzo (Gensomaden Saiyuki, Saiyuki Reload, Saiyuki Reload Blast) rounded out my group. Oddly enough, he's also not that badly drawn. (Do you suppose I've drawn him a few times fifteen thousand times before? XP) This is a huge relief, because I'd intended for some time now for him to work into the area behind Ranko-chan's tea kettle, and I'd have been super pissed if I'd have seriously messed this one up. The others I can let go (a little bit) because I knew most of the figure would be hidden anyway.

And now...how the paste-up looks:



"My Gender Is Not My Identity"

ilex9 on deviantART guessed correctly with the comment "Does your theme for this project have something to do with accepted gender roles?" The title of this work, "My Gender Is Not My Identity," reflects the feelings and frustration of those who feel like the world is making entirely too big of a deal of their gender identity. All of the characters in this work have taken harassment, prodding or undue interest from other characters in their story, fans of their story, or both, because of their gender. Ranma-kun and Ranko-chan took the prominent place because Ranma 1/2 has kind of become the poster child for gender-bending/gender identity stories. However, all of the other characters pictured also reflect struggles with overcoming the opinions of others regarding whether or not they "behave" like "their gender" or like "they are supposed to." Gender roles are entirely a social construct, and the diversity represented here shows how many times and in how many ways that social construct fails.

Onward to inking!