Manga-style art in the Lost Library

[lwf58]

A young lady who is the daughter of one of my pen pals likes to draw random pictures of a number of characters she's created over the years. I think she's rather talented, and could use some encouragement to stretch herself a little more.

Any comments you'd like to make to her will be forwarded. Direct contact is impractical because she doesn't speak much English at all. Her name is Melissa Fujii.

http://florestica.com/art/mfujii/index.php

I'm hoping to coax her into creating some original mascots for the Lost Library someday. If she gains a little more confidence and improves her technique with objects, her style has the kind of feel to it that I would like for the site.

More art and additions to the explanations will be added as I get them. And yes, they are displayed by permission.

[Sunshine Temple]

Very nice.

I think their expressions are the best. Shows emotions and them interacting well. It's very fun. Clothing and coloring looks really nice too. Solid work.

Wish I had more constructive comments.

Thanks for putting these up, and thank Melissa for drawing them.


These don't count as fanart, but I wonder if a shadow post there would help draw more attention, up to you Larry.

[lwf58]

When I posted this, I looked over the folders carefully before I decided to put it here. We really don't have provisions for original art in this forum, and when you get right down to it, that's as it should be. The focus of this forum is mainly on fan fiction and fan art related to it.

Plus, it'd be hypocritical of me to post an off-topic thread in Fan Art and get away with it just because I'm an admin. Better to leave this one as is.

I think you made some good comments. I'll be sure to pass them along. You're actually reinforcing something I've told her before: she has good instincts when it comes to colors and facial expressions. When you consider that all she has to work with is a black pen and a set of coloring pencils, she does an excellent job. The one area that she needs practice is drawing interior shots and objects. She doesn't do anywhere near as well with those, judging by the picture "Nabe nano ka Sukiyaki nano ka".

[Spokavriel]

As far as characters expression go some of these images rival Norman Rockwell. But I'm biased for the style. He did things as true to life as possible.

I really like the one with the 2 younger cat girls rushing to keep up.

http://florestica.com/art/mfujii/nekonohanami01a.jpg
This image has allot of good shading but there are a few places where you can almost tell she got in a hurry just to get the color where she wanted it. Like the pink haired catgirls left arm. The banding on her arm or the motling in her face don't seem fully intentional.

All the clothes are well done and nicely detailed with a good sence of gravity and past motion going into the folds and shadows. If anything she just needs to take her time more and get a bit more consistancy going with the shading using the coloring supplies she chose. I've seen people sell things that wern't as well done.

Maybe if she took a room showing a corner it would help in figuring out the lighting for it...

She does so well on the characters but leaves out environment. Hope she gives you more images to add to the site.

[lwf58]

I've got three more pictures in Melissa's folder; they are in the first, third and fourth positions. (Cross-kun to Mau-chan, and the two Simushir the Librarian pics.)

I'd like some feedback about the two Simushir pictures; they are proposals of her as the new Lost Library mascot. Given that she has to draw them on paper and send them to me by mail, all I'm really looking for are "yes/no" type responses. Do you think they would make good site illustrations?

I'd be much obliged if you'd all take a look and tell me what you think. BTW: ignore the uneven coloration due to the use of coloring pencils. I'll edit the images to fix that before I actually use them as site illustrations.

[Sunshine Temple]

It's really good.

I think they would make good illustrations. As long as you're okay with them being more youthful. She is very cute.


First one has very good expressions too.

So that's a yes.

[Darth Thanatos]

I agree on the Simushir number one. That one is a keeper.

Number two is not bad, it simply is not as nice/good as number one. Good you don't intend to use them in the same page. Number one would make number two look not-so-good. And it's good.

[lwf58]

Yes, my mother also likes the first one better than the second. I think that she did a better job on the books in #2, though.

One of the places I use an image is the 404 page. That's the page that comes up if you try to go to a broken link or a page that doesn't exist, and I think picture #2 would be perfect for it, since it's a shot of Simushir looking through a dozen books for something. To see the page as it currently is, use a nonsense link like this one:

http://florestica.com/anise/

Then imagine that picture there, instead of the shot of Digiko I'm using now.

[J. St.C. Patrick]

Do you think they would make good site illustrations?

Yes. And the second one would be good as you propose for the 404 page.

As I somehow missed this thread before...


I like the characters Melissa has drawn. They are all full of life and interact with each other well.

My favourite drawing is the one in the second position at the Lost Library, titled "(Kodakusan? Mau)
Family? Mau". With "(Shimushiru no hanami)
Simushir Looking at Flowers" coming a close second.

[Darth Thanatos]

Yeah, she needs to start drawing objects. Even the wings on the picture she made to cheer you up are... sketched. Anything not related to people needs a lot of practice.

She also should start considering giving her characters some movement. The pics are very static.

But her character drawing is awesome. I wish I had half her skill.

[lwf58]

Here's the second Librarian picture after some work with a blurring tool to remove the worst of the coloring lines. I may also color the background to match the page background. Does this look good enough? I don't want to alter the pictures at all, just clean them up.

[Spokavriel]

She looks great, I just wish that the books would have either been complete or given a more uniform edge idea. Look at where they fade out the asumed edge made by those fadeouts is a really distorted shape.

[lwf58]

I plan to pass the comments along to her soon, when I can catch my breath. I'm working two jobs now, and although neither one is full time, I'm in the middle of my training for the second job. That's eating up my time, since I have to do a lot of homework.

So, the blurring of the colors works?

[Spokavriel]

Yes it does but you might want to show the blured (I prefer blended) appearance of the image to her as well just to see if she would want it darkened because the blending with the little bits of white does still have an effect on the overall shade. Not allot but enough that I think she should be asked about it too.

[lwf58]

Got a couple more pictures up in this girl's folder, but more to the point, I've started using the Simushir librarian pictures as the Florestica site mascot as of today.

There are three of them, on the main index page, the art index page, and the 404 error page.

No more borrowing of various anime characters for the job!