Time Drawn: Fall 2006
It’s been about six years since I drew this, and I still like the attitude in this piece. There’s just been a classic western shoot-out, complete with tables used for cover and even someone still draped over a table, and this oddly-dressed fellow has poured himself a drink and is posing.
You can probably see a bunch of my influences in this piece. The odd clothes, especially the large number of completely unneccessary belts, is straight from Final Fantasy games (though, I should point out, nowhere near a direct copy). The western setting is from the anime shows that were big when I was most into anime; Cowboy Bebop and Trigun, mainly. The framing technique is from comics (again, not a direct copy). The overuse of wood grain and textures, though, is all me. I love doing fine details, perhaps overly so.
These sorts of things are actually common influences for artists of my generation, and even more for those a bit younger than me. I got into anime before it was mainstream (don’t worry, not a hipster), when it wasn’t on any television stations and you could only find the VHS tapes at dealers rooms at conventions and comic shops that stocked videos. It was interesting to see them hit the stores in larger and larger numbers, then transitioning to DVD, and now, well, the DVD store I used to visit closed a while back and I haven’t bothered finding a video store since then. Hulu and Crunchyroll are serving me just fine, now.
Now, pretty much everyone knows what anime is, though far too many Americans probably still think it’s a cartoon and thus for kids. The Adult Swim content on Cartoon Network helped that, at least, though it looks like they got rid of the anime in their late night stuff, so they may have ended that at some point. I rarely watched it anyway. At least I found it better than most of the “edgy adult” cartoons Americans keep producing that rely far too much on crude jokes and stupid protagonists. I really can’t stand watching people get into trouble because of their stupidity, and find it worse when it’s played for laughs. I solidly prefer intelligence in my heros. And decent stories, for that matter.
Anime tends to win on both counts, which is why I tend to prefer it. It might be a bit formulaic at times, but then, what isn’t? You just have to look at TVTropes to see that nothing escapes formula, and well, if it did, it’d be so out there no one would like it. Formula has its place. It lets people know that this show will likely develop in certain ways, so they have a clue whether they’d like it in the future or not. And breaking the formula in the right spots tells a stronger story than avoiding the formula entirely. You have a known framework to work around that helps the odd things stand out.
Oddly enough, I tend to prefer the “Shonen” formulas. Shonen translates from Japanese into “Young boy”. There’s also a “Shoujo” set of formulas, for young girls. I tend to avoid those. I’d much rather take tales of adventure, action, and friendship over tales of romance and finding yourself. There are also more adult genres, though they aren’t as popular and tend to be much deeper. They also tend to be based in real world and adult themes, such as jobs and marriage issues, which I’m just not as interested in. So despite being a young woman, and solidly into my adult years, I think I’ll keep watching the shows featuring oddly-powered people exploring the world and fighting enemies.
