Mistakes of Youth: The Blog (Powered by EXCELLENCE!)

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Well here it is, Mistakes of Youth’s 200th comic. In the end, it didn’t really turn out as nice I wanted it to. After looking at it for a while, and having it run by other people’s eyes, there’s a bunch of things I’m pretty unhappy with. But overall I feel it’s not too bad. I don’t remember if I’ve done a Bakemonogatari-centric comic or not, but I figured I’d do one now since I’m still a bit high off of the end of the series, and I am rather fond of Hachikuji. There is actually a Hachikuji doujinshi in which the punchline is Senjougahara looking at Araragi in disbelief has he thrusts into the air.

That said, I’m not sure if anyone but me will find this comic all that funny.

I’ve been trying to get posts up on the blog in a regular fashion lately, and for once managed three posts in a week. One is a BLACK★ROCK SHOOTER review, another is my lame tribute to Kon, and lastly I looked at some C78 trailers from a few weeks ago. I do have lots of things I want to blog about, but it’s just a matter sitting down and doing it. Maybe if I can swing three posts a week for three weeks, it’ll become a habit.

Anyway, that’s all. Later.

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This review is actually real, and you can read in its original Japanese here. As you can see from the actual post, it actually has a substantial amount of comments, but it wouldn’t be funny if I actually did that. Thanks goes out to kransom for translating that review for me.

This comic turned out better than I expected after doing the sketches, but it’s still not very good. I think what bothers me the most is Yamakan’s hair–it being divided into two giant locks on either side doesn’t seem very natural. Hair is one of my many weaknesses, but I was thinking I was getting better at it in the last comic.

The next comic is the 200th. I kind of have an idea for it, but I want to artwork to be very good, so that may delay its release.

Later!

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I want to go back a bit and supply a spot of commentary for comic 196, since I didn’t really get a chance to do so. While this comic as a whole makes no attempt at any sort of underlying plot, Rets and Tina have in fact been attending college, and I figure I’d put a cap on that. I’ve also been wanting to make this joke for a while, so this comic provided the perfect opportunity. I’m not totally happy with the artwork here, but I’m not unhappy either.

As far as this comic goes, I’m quite happy with the art and the writing. It’s incredibly dirty and stupid, but I had fun writing it. But yeah, since I’m happy with the art, that must mean something is wrong with it, so if you could I’d appreciate crits in the comments section. Every time I get too happy with something I’ve done, my work tends to regress rather than progress.

My Otakon 2010 report is finally up, and can be read here. I have more blog posts planned out, but whether I’ll be able to get them out or not is up to fate. So stay tuned… maybe.

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Here is your Otakon report comic. It is 100% accurate! The big written report should hopefully be up by tomorrow… I already have some photos up: safe for work ones, and not safe for work ones.

The next comic is all drawn up, and I’m quite happy with it, so hopefully it should be up on time!

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Just a quick update before I take off for Otakon. Incidentally, if you’d like to see me at Otakon, details about doing that can be found here.

I was going to watch an episode of Strike Witches before taking off, but my computer fucked up and I ran out of time… guess I just have to watch it on the train over there!

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A new comic, and only a month too late! It’s been busy over here at Mistakes of Youth Headquarters, okay? And it’s still pretty busy, but not too busy for me not to throw together a little comic here on the sly.

But even if I say that, this comic took me longer than usual because I was just so out of practice. And it doesn’t even look that great! Anyway, in case you forgot, this comic is actually meant to follow along from the previous one. I was planning to just have the normal one week between the two strips, but things happened. It seems that despite previous hints towards the contrary, Tina is in fact not a fan of guro. Or is she? She’s probably doing this all completely intentionally to just fuck with Rets. Dude deserves it, as he’s a terrible person. Next week’s comic will be very depressing, so I hope it manages to garner some chuckles!

I also made another comic this week, but not a Mistakes of Youth strip. If any of you are familiar with my past comic-making escapades, you’d be familiar with some comics my friends and I made in high school. Well, I saw those old friends again this week, and we threw together another comic for old times sake. Here it is. There will probably be more, but I can’t say anything about regularity. If we end up making a substantial amount, I’ll make a page specifically for it. As you can see, while my work here at Mistakes of Youth tends to be very safe (by some twisted standard) my friend’s and my work here is quite different, and rather twisted. I hope you can enjoy it, as we had fun making it. For those not in the know, it’s based around the three of us. You can probably figure out who’s who easily.

Switching gears here completely, Mistakes of Youth will be at Otakon 2010. I wasn’t really gonna make a lot of noise about it at first, but I just found out a week ago that I have a panel there. It’s the same one I ran at Anime Boston–The Life and Times of Akiyuki Shinbo–and it’s at 9pm on Saturday in Panel IV. With luck it’ll be an improved version of what I did at Anime Boston, so come and visit! I’ll probably be hanging around that panel room some time before my panel starts (there’s some dead space before and after the panel) so stop by and say hi! I’ll probably be wearing a Zetsubou Sensei shirt. Probably gonna leave the Strike Witches cap at home… maybe…

…not…

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I am not terribly happy with how this comic turned out art wise, so I won’t even talk about it! An exchange like this did happen between me and a friend though, and I thought it’d make an alright comic.

I think this has a part two. I say “I think” because I’m not sure if I like the part two I have for this. Anyway, you won’t be seeing it next week since I’m going to be somewhat busy relocating myself back to my home in DC. And with that, I will fully transform into a NEET.

Yay!

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Yeah, I don’t expect anyone to get this comic, and even if you do, it’s not terribly funny. I was stuck between Rets mentioning all of the porno movie theaters in Ikebukuro and him mentioning the Shakey’s there. As you can see, I chose Shakey’s because it, well, owns. I guess this comic doesn’t actually say anything about Durarara!!, which is an issue I’ve been struggling with. It’s kind of difficult to turn your opinions on a show into a comic, so instead I of doing that, do dumb things like this.

I thought the art in this was going to turn out better, but in the end it’s rather crappy. I do like the folds on Tina’s shirt, though!

But yeah, that’s it. I’m probably going to go through all of the summer anime offerings, pick out the ones I want, and write a post about it. So look out for that… in a few hours I guess? Later!

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I suppose for most cosplay photo-shoots, it’s not that difficult to find a setting which meshes with the character, since most anime these days takes place in modern-day Japan. However, for a show like Strike Witches, it’s a bit difficult. This combined with the fact that cosplayers such as Lenfried are far more concerned with showing off their nearly naked bodies than they are concerned with accuracy, makes for photoshoots like the one Rets is complaining about. I honestly don’t care, but Rets is a stickler for shit, so he does. His loss, I guess.

I’m pretty happy with how the artwork turned out in this comic. It’s  not perfect, but it’s not totally awful.

That’s all for this week. I’ll try to get more posts down on the blog, with hope.

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If you can’t tell I tried to ape the fuck out of Shinbo with this one. Did it work? No.

The joke is pretty straight forward, so there’s no reason to elaborate.

I haven’t felt very talkative lately… but with hope I can get some blog entries out that I’ve been meaning to do…