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Where in Time is Toji Suzuhara?
Toji Suzuhara
Southern CaliforniaRegistered User regular
Southern CaliforniaRegistered User regular
As per demands, here's some of the stuff I've been working on recently:
My major goals recently have been...
- Improving perspective/placing figures in scenes
- Backgrounds
- Inking technique (when is this not a goal?)
I've been kind of backing off from worrying about anatomy so much. I think that's been a major contributing factor to the stiffness of my figures. I'm seeing where that'll take me.
Maybe I have it all backwards, though. What do you guys think?
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As for what I've been doing for the past while, here's a snapshot:
From earlier in the year:
- Various Doctors Who: One Three Six Eight Nine
- True Hi-School Romance. Probably the only complete comic story I've ever drawn (in collaboration with a friend).
- An awkwardly cobbled together website update, too. That's got some more illustration stuff on it.
A pitch for a comic series that was either rejected or ignored by the places I sent it: Alpha Flag. Coloring by a friend who executed my vision a lot better than I would have.
And more recently, a couple of collaborative comics (where we alternate drawing a page a time without talking about what we're going to add to the story) I've been doing with some friends while I figure out how to continue tackling professional comics-making:
- Bastard of a Year
- Poison Pen Letter with the inimitable Squidbunny (I really did try imitating her and it's just impossible. Fair warning, those who wish to try)!
(SubEx is one, too, but Spex hasn't replied to my first page. /GUILT [I'm kidding. Take your time. {I'm not kidding. /guilt}])
My major goals recently have been...
- Improving perspective/placing figures in scenes
- Backgrounds
- Inking technique (when is this not a goal?)
I've been kind of backing off from worrying about anatomy so much. I think that's been a major contributing factor to the stiffness of my figures. I'm seeing where that'll take me.
Maybe I have it all backwards, though. What do you guys think?
---
As for what I've been doing for the past while, here's a snapshot:
From earlier in the year:
- Various Doctors Who: One Three Six Eight Nine
- True Hi-School Romance. Probably the only complete comic story I've ever drawn (in collaboration with a friend).
- An awkwardly cobbled together website update, too. That's got some more illustration stuff on it.
A pitch for a comic series that was either rejected or ignored by the places I sent it: Alpha Flag. Coloring by a friend who executed my vision a lot better than I would have.
And more recently, a couple of collaborative comics (where we alternate drawing a page a time without talking about what we're going to add to the story) I've been doing with some friends while I figure out how to continue tackling professional comics-making:
- Bastard of a Year
- Poison Pen Letter with the inimitable Squidbunny (I really did try imitating her and it's just impossible. Fair warning, those who wish to try)!
(SubEx is one, too, but Spex hasn't replied to my first page. /GUILT [I'm kidding. Take your time. {I'm not kidding. /guilt}])
Toji Suzuhara on
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Uh, anyways! Looks excellent Toji, really love your inks, they make me want to color all over them. If you are looking to ditch some stiffness, maybe you should look into doing some quick ink gestures rather than intense anatomy studies. Im sure other people can recommend how to go about it.
True high school romance is my favorite.
Also I always thought anatomy was one of your strong-points, as are you inks, obviously.
INSTAGRAM
But I'm getting sucked into Vortex nipple guy(s)
honestly I really like what you have of bastard of a year, and want to keep reading it.
Also, Bastard of a Year is probably my favorite of your current projects.
You should keep doing these labor intensive projects that have no guarantee of payoff, for the sheer fact that I enjoy them.
Even though I know you said you're not worrying too much about anatomy right now, the only thing that distracted me a lot were the hands. The first comic's hands aren't bad (even though the guy's pose in the first panel is awkward - handwise -and kinda blocky)...but in the 2nd comic, the girl on the right has a very awkward-looking bunch of fingers, and in the comic below that, BigDude's fingers seem too short, and MultiDude's hand-in-profile looks a little sausage-y and odd.
Your inks are, of course, great though. And it looks like you've been hella busy. Good to see new posts from ya!
@Adam: I think the general consensus was that the story was too quiet and internal to be salable at the length it was supposed to be (12 issues). Definitely fair criticisms--especially since the main character can't even speak when spoken to for the first couple of issues. The recommendation was that I should cut my teeth on shorter, more marketable stories. It was a disappointment, but I can definitely see where that's coming from. I hadn't ever considered marketability when I was working on it.
I'm glad you like the stuff, though! It gives me hope that I won't be toiling in obscurity forever. I'd settle for toiling in mostly obscurity, though. Internet serialization is starting to look better and better, these days. (I'd love to be compared to Paul Pope, but I'm nowhere near as brave as that guy is with a brush. Maybe one day!)
@Aumni: Thanks. They're after your soul.
@jpeg: Thanks for following my stuff! Lines of action. Definitely. I'm going to have to bribe some guys with cake, but I'll get some models. I'm currently doing a few pages of my fellow BoaY collaborator's webcomic, but once I'm done with that (or when I invariably get bored in the middle) there'll be another BoaY page.
@Fug: Doing labor-intensive projects with no guarantee of payoff has been the advice I've been getting from all sorts of sources. Once I work out a sustainable way of not starving to death, I think that's going to be my plan. They could always materialize into something money-y in the future, right? Right?
@Kochikens: Thanks.
@ND: I'll pay extra attention to hands (except for the thing I'm going to post right below this oh god I look like a hypocrite). I really do need to pay extra attention to hands (and feet!). They're a big visual marker for my semi-realism deal and the ones you point out are really throwing that off. I'd really like to figure out a good visual shorthand for them when they're not the main focus of the panel, but it's obviously not there yet.
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Since you guys said you liked Bastard of a Year, I figured I'd make Arthur and Model One the focus of some looser ink sketching to see where it'd go if I stopped being so obsessive about line. I ended up applying some white gouache, too.
I love your style, but you know that. I think some of the fold marks in your clothing are extraneous though. Take the second Doc in your first post for instance, the marks on the main body of the coat seem almost entirely unnecessary.
I've commented on virtually all of this before but I'm glad you're posting here again... and finish the rest of those Doctors, especially McCoy!
Probably not the best things to post to say "I've really been thinking about hands and extraneous folds a lot lately" since they don't showcase hands (and were drawn in November) and they still suffer from some extraneous fold, but I figured since this was the only place I posted the pencils I'd follow up.
Getting a little bored of the watercolor texture difference layer + bright colors thing with these, but I need to see it through to the end. There really have been too many Doctors.
(I feel kind of awkward about crossposting things all over the place. I clearly need to do mountains of more work for you guys.)
I've been working on new Alpha Flag content for the last month or so... but I can't really post that. It's the evidence I've been more fold-minded. Argh. I'll be back with something more substantial soon. Something with hands and new drawing.
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Here is that something more substantial. It doesn't really do a good job at highlighting hands... because they kind of uniformly suck in this. Same old problems.
From Poison Pen Letter with Squidbunny.
i really like this Poison work