Concepts and Drafts-- Not in a Military Way

I managed to come up with two pretty cool concepts, and they're both heavily based from two things : "I want my creations to touch your heart" and "Visual novel-like, plot-heavy interface". Well, the second one doesn't really touch the second statement but it bears a little bit of that element.

This first one is of course, heavily imitating your usual visual novel format. While this format is not your exact conventional visual novel format -it looks more like something like this-, I decided to use this form of dialogue output to simplify things. The dialogue box will convey my very first message with the text "I want to touch your heart" and the character name box will have "Me, Designer" inserted inside. A character will reach out, with his or her hand partly 'coming out of the screen' to well, touch you, with a simplistic background.
The second format is basically a sideways view of the first format, with few differences. No visual novel-like thingies, focusing more on the emotional impct of things. The character shall wipe a 'player''s nose as he or she cries /or maybe even blows his or her nose/ with a handkerchief from inside the computer screen, and I shall add a tablet pen illustrating his or her to give the understanding that THAT'S my intention of creating characters.
I've pretty much desided to go with the second one because the very first concept is pretty plain and less invested on "touching hearts", and to be pretty darn honest "I want to touch your heart" sounds kinda suggestive.

Mood Board

So here is my moodboard, comprised by many different elements that I wish to include in my final illustration.

First, at the top left corner, I found the image by inputting ‘healing art’, because as I have once said before, art helps me rejuvenate in a way . The reason why I include it in my moodboard is because I find it visually appealing, and it sparked an idea within me.

Right to the right of it, is a graphical edit of Eren Jaeger from the anime Attack on Titan…. But when I attempt to trace its creator my results were pretty much blank. /so if anyone knows who it is please inform me this is not mine I’m so sorry/ This conveys on how I want to be able to edit my own graphics myself, and want it to be pretty similar to this style of editing.

At the top right beside Eren, it’s a scene from the famous tear-jerking anime adaptation from a visual novel called Clannad. The reason it being here is that I want to be able to make people cry, smile and laugh with my own visual novels with powerful plot and art.

Underneath Clannad, there’s the animated sequence of Disney’s Enchanted. Enchanted has been one of my favorite Disney movies, and it’s mostly because of its optimistic and idealistic outlook of life in general itself in modern setting. That magic still exists even now. Ahem.

At the righmost corner, there’s a montage of screenshots from the visual novel style video game Ace Attorney. Again, it has an amazing narrative and the fact that they recycle their sprites and animations again and again through the whole game, it doesn’t turn the experience dull. It actually enhances the whole gameplay.

Under Ace Attorney is the female heroine from the classic RPG game Legend of Mana. I’ve always been fascinated with how archaic yet beautiful the concept art for the whole game are. I wish to also create visually and charasterically imaginative characters myself.

Right to the left is a screenshot of an infamous PS2 visual novel port called When Cicadas Cry. It’s probably the one thing that finally convinced me that I should take the artistic path when it comes to my further education.

Lastly, the at the bottom left corner, there is Puella Magi Madoka Magica, infamous for seeming  like a cute and cuddly magical anime girl unti, well, let’s say hope is shredded to pieces in the next few episodes. Again, the fantastical designs and elements of the anime, especially the stunningly illustrated backgrounds whenever the Puella Magis -the magical girls- enter a Witch’s -their foe in this show- barrier.

Wow, that’s a surreal compilation, isn’t it.

You're The Inspiration

When I was just a widdle fiddle kid, I used to spend my time playing videogames. One of my most beautiful childhood gaming experiences is from the RPG game Legend of Mana. As your chosen adventurer, you will be able to traverse around the world of Fa’ DIel, encountering from bizzare beasts to sneaky merchants to breathing and living eccentric tea pots and lots, lots more fantastical randomness. And one of the best aspects of the game is how pretty and imaginative the art style and characters are and how breathtaking the scenery illustrations - or rather scenery porn which is definitely not an overstatement- are.

I now introduce you to my idol of a character designer and illustrator, born 23 March 1972 Shinichi Kameoka, also the man responsible for the art for Legend of Mana, and also for enriching my budding interest in creativity

And here are his gems for the game:

He has also established a company called Brownie Brown and was president. The company created games under his wing, one of them one of the earliest DS RPGs, Magical Starsign. But he soon left the company.

I wish to at least have his level of creativity when developing my designs. I mean just look at all the intricate details, the gorgeous strokes, the memorable outfits -those hair sticks-. Just, just look at all these and try not to be blown away.

A Mindmap of Me Thinking About Me Being a Designer

I know it's a little bit hard to look at, so please do bear with it as much as you can. IF you can. 

-whimpers-

Now, I wish to be a character designer out of all the types of designers known the most. It's because that when it comes to characters, living beings that are able to interact to move the plot forward -basically putting my human psychology knowledge to practice- is something that I am moved by the most, considering I am used to light souls up by writing. I also still have quite the interest on editing graphics, because basically I like beautifying stuff that I believe and can beautify.

And because I am pretty much a compound of both an illustrator and an author, my dream that incorporates my designer dream is for me to be the creator of a moving visual novel. I don't mind if it does not gain financial success, all I wish is for it to flourish and lives on as a legend in the visual novel industry.

I am of course mainly inspired by anime as my main illustrating style /and probably the only decent one/, but Disney animations have always been something I've always had an amazing interest in. I want to make sure that my works have some sort of magic Disney beheld, all the special,sparkly pixie dust.

And what I mean by 'therapeutic' is the fact that most of the time, art a.k.a designing a.k.a creating has always been an amazing healing essence whenever I feel mentally down. I'm prone to anxiety attacks, I'm very easily depressed, heck, every single day I struggle to suppress my defect mentality from showing up. And art helps, maybe not so visibly, but it does. It's one of the very few things that actually have this ability. Without art, maybe my my life would have been much,much more bland and blue, and knowing what kind of person I am, I know I won't last long in a world without art a.k.a design a.k.a creating.

But then in the downside, I always compare myself to others and has this huge self-contempt building up day by day, to the point that whenever others compliment me , I always have doubts about their words. Trying to turn this unwanted automatic function of mine is just so unbelievably difficult. And sometimes, instead of easing my pain, art a.k.a design a.k.a proves to be counter-intuitive instead, a double-sided sword.

And that's why I vision my future as not a whole extension from designing. Because of this seriously tacky but existent dilemma.

I'm sorry, rant done :'D

And I'll be posting these on my tumblog as well, you can pay a visit at: shrillcriesofcicadas.tumblr,com

But warning: I'm DEFINITELY a whole lot more... Unstable.

But I think you've always known this anyway, right?

Major Inspiration Source, Huh?

In this particular blog post, I am going to elaborate on those that have inspired me to traverse this path I am currently taking in AIT. I have TONS of inspirations, but mostly are inspired by the modern Japanese culture if that isn't obvious enough to you all by now.

I have always been torn apart between two main career branches. One is of course to animate, and one is to study literature. The causes of this particular conflict are basically:

Passion: Art-ing>Writing

Talent: Art-ing<Writing

And the reason why I am here now instead of some English university somewhere else is most likely because of this PC-adapted-to-anime-adapted-to-manga--adapted-to-novels-ported-to-DS-and-PS2-and-has-PS2-and-PSP-spin-off-games-and-spawns-off-frigging-mahjong-machines visual novel called 'Higurashi no Naku Koro ni' or 'When Cicadas Cry'. And no, it's not a graphic novel.

Basically here's a screenshot of what it's like in software.

It's a famous horror visual novel in Japan, and is actually one of my favorite pieces of literature ever.  It has this really, really strong yet unpredictable story and will get you emotionally involved ( read: play with your feelings) with the whole thing. It'll live on ( read: haunt) with you for the rest of your life. Basically, generally good anime or manga tend to move me the most.

Wait, why am I talking about writing now, you ask?

Well, it's because I find the addition of these minimal graphics to the work to be much more effective and interesting rather than novels without any imagery, yet I can still employ my usual use of pretty foxy linguistics.

Basically, it made me realize that my ideal dream is not to just illustrate or write. It's to compose something by illustrating and writing it myself. I want to either animate or design a visual novel, or even open up a commercial studio specializing in these two and produce things that will blow away people. I want to always be heavily involved in both illustrating and writing, and since I suffer from a  major lack of talent in the arts, I believe I need to be educated severely in this aspect to ascertain if I really have what it takes to  pursue this as a main or secondary career path.

So that's why I'm here and that's why I'm typing this post.

Me : Designer?

The kind of designer I see that I will be is most likely a character designer. I've always been into manga and anime, and I've designed my own original characters and plots. They're mostly fun side projects, but when I work on them, I've never felt so serious and alive about anything else in my life. Especially when you create complex, convoluted yet beautiful crafted characters and the rest of the world mostly responds well to your design, fulfilling your self desires would never feel so good. I'm not a graphic person because I'm very touchy feely and too artistic and I'm also not a 3D designer person because I feel this special connection I have with the arts only with 2D.

In five years, which will be in 2019, which is when I will turn 21 and wow I'm getting older, I have three options: to be either enrolled for a higher degree in animating, enrolled to get myself a teaching degree, or get a full time job, which may or may not be in my desired industry of animation. The first option will be something that I only take if I believe my skills have grown to a level I deem acceptable to pursue a full time career in the industry, the second option if my -kind of secret- dream to become a teacher is still something I seriously wish to pursue, and the third option is only when I realize I STILL can't create anything good and just pursue my dreams as a part time job.

POSTCARDS LOOK OKAY BUT I DUNNO WHAT U THINK

Heyyyy.

I'm here to show off my final designs for my non-objective and themed postcards!

Unfortunately I can't show the final postcard here because I finished the whole thing in college and I forgot to save and I can't do it with my laptop because my Adobe Illustrator is outdated.

Yes, I'm screwed. ✿◕‿◕✿

The color theme for Death is supposed to represent sadness, depression and possibly grief, as it is my personal belief that all deaths will be mourned deeply. The arrangement for this particular theme is supposed to be messy and chaotic as it is to represent the soul that just left the physical realm is confused, as we humans are often confused of the unknown possibilities of that death can bring upon us, tinged with negativity as fear of the unknown. And if you're re-reading this a certain someone you can skip the next paragraphs if you want to.

And for some reason for this I got inspired by HER.

Death also reminds me of pure, unadulterated  evil.

The color theme for The Last Judgement is supposed to reflect stability. With that I use colors that remind myself of the courtroom, as that is where judgements are usually passed. I decided to mirror and rotate the mirrored part upside down and combine both parts together to signify that the results will end in drastically opposite results -being sent to Heaven or Hell- and how this particular judgement is of unusual and supernatural taste.

 TauVertex's version of an Ace Attorney courtroom.

I know they're not really similar- heck THEY'RE NOT AT ALL- but after seeing this image I was like, you know what, I wanna spin some green in it /as money sometimes spins the law but we are talking about a sentient courtroom Cynthia what /.

And I get inspired by Ace Attorney cool game check it out I wanna download Ace Attorney 5 but noooo I have to have a 3DS Nintendo jerks.

The color theme for Hell is supposed to represent the most famous depiction of what sort of form does it take: Flames, flames that burn. I make sure that the arrangement looks like the shapes are all raining down, to signify the downfall of the soul sentenced to hell.

I get inspired by Dangan Ronpa a LOT for this class

And it's mainly inspired by this execution scene in the Dangan Ronpa series. Poor girl.

And I can't show you my last postcard because I'm a frick, I'm sorry but I'll get to it soon.

The color theme for Heaven is basically a lighter and softer version of hell, as to say that heaven is similar but is not  hell, as they are both places where souls may be sentenced to either one of them, and as to state that it is a lighter and softer place. It is the Hell piece mirrored horizontally as to make the shapes seem like they're ascending up, the complete opposite of hell's shapes arrangements. Also, in Hell there are black pieces, while Heaven has white pieces in their place to represent evil and holiness within respective domains.

Thanks for reading, and have a good day!