Episode #0295 (15 April 2012)
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Episode #0295 (15 April 2012)
Episode #0295 (download MP3) (rss feed) (subscribe in iTunes)
47:05; 96 kbps, mono; 32.5 MB
Episode #0295! Hujio and Corey discuss Akira Toriyama's creative process, from how he drew the "Dragon Ball" manga series during its serialization to his current drawing methods. Many fans attribute the changes in Toriyama's artistic style to the differences in his drawing methods, such as the addition of a computer to digitize his manga, but are the methods from these two eras really all that different from one another? Can the addition of a computer really make that much of a difference?
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47:05; 96 kbps, mono; 32.5 MB
Episode #0295! Hujio and Corey discuss Akira Toriyama's creative process, from how he drew the "Dragon Ball" manga series during its serialization to his current drawing methods. Many fans attribute the changes in Toriyama's artistic style to the differences in his drawing methods, such as the addition of a computer to digitize his manga, but are the methods from these two eras really all that different from one another? Can the addition of a computer really make that much of a difference?
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Re: Episode #0295 (15 April 2012)
Whoa an episode without Mike? Whoa man.
Re: Episode #0295 (15 April 2012)
An episode without Mike? O.o
By the way, I guess the podcasts are being hosted on Kanzenshuu now? The server doesn't seem very quick.
By the way, I guess the podcasts are being hosted on Kanzenshuu now? The server doesn't seem very quick.
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Re: Episode #0295 (15 April 2012)
Want to talk about how lazy DBZ for Kinect's logo really is?
I made this in 5 minutes on Photoshop with a simple blend:
They seriously used Saiyan Sans, and I'm fairly certain they're retracing Shenron...
I'd post this in the Kinect thread, but I'm the last poster there and this isn't on topic for me to edit my older post.
I made this in 5 minutes on Photoshop with a simple blend:
They seriously used Saiyan Sans, and I'm fairly certain they're retracing Shenron...
I'd post this in the Kinect thread, but I'm the last poster there and this isn't on topic for me to edit my older post.
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Re: Episode #0295 (15 April 2012)
This is an interesting episode. :3 And one more new thing I like about Kanzenshuu; with the two sites merged, if one person can't make it to the podcast, you have others who can. Very cool.
About Toriyama and the sharpie; one possible reason why I could understand him switching from a fountain pen to a sharpie for use in Photoshop is it makes it a lot easier to cut out the digital inking portion when it comes to adding color. When you select scanned line-art and promote it to a layer, you're gonna have some loss, but the thicker the line, the less damage there is. If he used the fountain pen and scanned into Photoshop he'd have to spend loads more time doing touch-ups just to replace lost chunks.
About Toriyama and the sharpie; one possible reason why I could understand him switching from a fountain pen to a sharpie for use in Photoshop is it makes it a lot easier to cut out the digital inking portion when it comes to adding color. When you select scanned line-art and promote it to a layer, you're gonna have some loss, but the thicker the line, the less damage there is. If he used the fountain pen and scanned into Photoshop he'd have to spend loads more time doing touch-ups just to replace lost chunks.
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Re: Episode #0295 (15 April 2012)
I hate to be Mr. Internet Pedant, but I noticed there's a little typo on the front page, in the update regarding this podcast.
"With all these great leaps in technically over the past few decades it was only a matter of time..."
I'm guessing this should be "technology"? ^^;;?
"With all these great leaps in technically over the past few decades it was only a matter of time..."
I'm guessing this should be "technology"? ^^;;?
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Re: Episode #0295 (15 April 2012)
O.O My first thought was: Where did Mike go?! XD
This new game sounds pretty interesting.. especially the new anime footage part. But it's probably either going to be the 2008 OVA special or Episode of Bardock. Those two sounds the most reasonable as they were never officially released... Hmmmm... Guess we'll all have to wait till October.. (or earlier if some news leak out. )
Anyways, great episode as always.
This new game sounds pretty interesting.. especially the new anime footage part. But it's probably either going to be the 2008 OVA special or Episode of Bardock. Those two sounds the most reasonable as they were never officially released... Hmmmm... Guess we'll all have to wait till October.. (or earlier if some news leak out. )
Anyways, great episode as always.
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Re: Episode #0295 (15 April 2012)
Great job on the Podcast guys.
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Re: Episode #0295 (15 April 2012)
Had a great time as always. Next time I'll be a little more lively, we recorded this in-between my doing the timing belt on my car. So I was sitting there covered in grease, sore, trying to make the computer I was using work for me. Still, at least I actually showed up this time, right? ;p
Thanks again to Heathjio for the invite.
Thanks again to Heathjio for the invite.
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Re: Episode #0295 (15 April 2012)
Good informative stuff on this podcast! Always interesting to hear about Dragonball's maker. Oh and the ending in the podcast made me laugh.
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Re: Episode #0295 (15 April 2012)
Great job even without Mike! Cool topic, I love hearing about cartoonist process and things like that.
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Re: Episode #0295 (15 April 2012)
A Mike-less episode?! The end is nigh after all!!
While it was weird hearing Heath's voice in the intro, it turned out to be just as fascinating and shonen-fun as ever. It's like if The X-Files actually worked after David Duchovny left. (Though I'm assuming that Muld-- uh, Mike, will appear in most of the episodes and not just the series finale)
And, of course, Corey is always good entertainment value. I think y'all should keep him around more. Just put him upstairs when you're done with him.
While it was weird hearing Heath's voice in the intro, it turned out to be just as fascinating and shonen-fun as ever. It's like if The X-Files actually worked after David Duchovny left. (Though I'm assuming that Muld-- uh, Mike, will appear in most of the episodes and not just the series finale)
And, of course, Corey is always good entertainment value. I think y'all should keep him around more. Just put him upstairs when you're done with him.
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Re: Episode #0295 (15 April 2012)
Entertaining for sure. Definitely one of the most interesting episodes I've ever heard. I've become that much more inspired listening about Toriyama and what he does
Re: Episode #0295 (15 April 2012)
Awesome job guys! Another englightning and 'ever so slightly' entertaining episode. For anyone enamoured by the creative process like myself this was surely a discussion to have and be heard.
I didn't find Toriyama Akira no Hetappi Manga Kenkyuusho (鳥山明のヘタッピマンガ研究所) linked in the notes so without further ado:
On another note, that Kinect 'logo' or the cover art circulating doesn't evoke that this game is going through the same design protocols undertaken for previous games.
Concurrently, it seems the same for the production of the game itself. It's as if NAMCO Bandai are hurriedly recycling a previous iteration and making it first-person to simply capitalise off western 360 territories that I'm sure has been neglecting them thus far. Japan having already explored this concept through the Let's! TV Play games and numerous reports on the Xbox's fading existence there respectively support this.
I didn't find Toriyama Akira no Hetappi Manga Kenkyuusho (鳥山明のヘタッピマンガ研究所) linked in the notes so without further ado:
On another note, that Kinect 'logo' or the cover art circulating doesn't evoke that this game is going through the same design protocols undertaken for previous games.
Concurrently, it seems the same for the production of the game itself. It's as if NAMCO Bandai are hurriedly recycling a previous iteration and making it first-person to simply capitalise off western 360 territories that I'm sure has been neglecting them thus far. Japan having already explored this concept through the Let's! TV Play games and numerous reports on the Xbox's fading existence there respectively support this.
Re: Episode #0295 (15 April 2012)
The laziness vs. ambivalence thing is interesting. I think for his coloring -- just like the evolution of how he drew Goku from the beginning to the end -- just changed. If he wanted to color Bulma's hair purple or pink, he did what he felt. That's not necessarily laziness, despite him mentioning that he is indeed lazy and not that kind of referential of an artist.
One thing people don't realize is that there's no such thing as one color for, say, 'skin tone,' for instance. When you color something, you color to the mood of the piece. So if you're in a dark deep dank green cave, well, the hair might grab those greens... if you're in a bright blue sky, that hair's going to be a different color too. Mood seems to be what contributes to Toriyama's style more than anything else; what he feels is right at the time vs. on model.
The felt tip thing is interesting, which I find might be why the line thickness has changed a little bit. I assume the process you describe is close to how he drew the Kanzenban covers, since they were done around 2002 I believe? He probably did these pretty much exactly the way you said and this is an interesting look at his processes up through 2000.
I do think you guys should've touched on his coloring styles; there's some stuff in the first Daizenshuu where he talks about how his coloring processes changed from painting (I think?) to markers. You guys also didn't touch at all about how how shading style changed in general. I know I've said it before, but if you look at the early DB stuff, it's very much flat... lighter tones vs. the more dark, sharp, hard and contrasted shading of the Cell stuff which also mirrors his change to the more angular vs. round style. On shading alone, though, you can see how the Cell stuff has 2 or 3 layers of color on things like skin and clothing versus those very early promotional illustrations of Goku and Bulma that have a more soft watercolor look to them.
The other thing the digital art is missing is the paper textured that bleeds through on his old coloring techniques. If you look in the first Daizenshuu, you see a lot of paper texture bleed through which helps give a lot of art character. It's unique to every piece. A lot of the early Guilty Gear art is like this, too.
I think the main logical fallacy the whole podcast might cause people to assume, though, is that the way he drew in 2000 is how he draws now just because it's the last published report. That is probably NOT true. Artists, rather consciously or unconsciously always change. Even seasoned masters learn new things every day. Further, Digital art has grown exponentially since 2000. Photoshop barely had any kind of pressure support back in 2000, and Wacom tablets have grown in sensitivity. Now there's a million art tools to do art outside of Photoshop, even. At this point, he would probably be forced to change anyway, since Photoshop from back in 2000 probably wouldn't even run properly today, especially on PowerPC -> PC-Based Macs.
To give you an idea, the version of Photoshop back in 2000 was version _6.0_ Comparing Photoshop now to 6.0 is almost like comparing it to MS. Paint. I tried walking my friend who has 7.0 through masking techniques, and half of the tools aren't even there.
Looking at the DQIX art alone in high resolution, I cannot help but guess that he auto-vectors his lineart in Illustrator at this point. My assumption is that he draws on paper and then either inks or instead of inking, he drops it into the computer and auto-vectors it. The coloring is quite obviously photoshop, and it's very airbrushed, especially in the DQ stuff. I really wonder if he has a tablet at all or does it all by mouse. The problem isn't as much the linewidths -- which are thicker no matter how he inks -- but the bad tapering on the ends of lines. If he was just inking and scanning, the ends of lines would not just nub
out like this:
http://gamersblock.net/gamefluid/wp-con ... -Art-1.png
http://nationalpostarts.files.wordpress ... t-ix-1.png
The edges are just way too solid and perfect and digital.
Even if this was scanned from an inked drawing, he does some sort of technique to gives the edges some kind of solid edges and consistent color. Scanning inked drawings does not produce solid edges like that at 300 DPI, due to pen pressure and ink soaking into the paper. There is some process where he's likely converting scans into anti-aliased, completely black, digital lines, and just by looking at the bumps on the girl's shoulder, it probably auto-vectoring. You cannot get that clean and that solid of a line from a scan; there has to be some kind of tinkering done since ink bleeds into paper, and from the looks of things and, well, the lazyness factor that's been talking about, I'm figuring auto-vector.
Please excuse my inadequacies as an artist, I'm nowhere near as clean as Toriyama, but you can see here what I mean about paper texture (maybe even more)... I highlighted some of the cleaner strokes. Pen soaks into paper much the same way and flutters out.
Here is how ink affects paper:
Note I'm not saying this is all paper or all inks since there's tons of different paper and inks, but I hope you can at least see that scanning something like this... the edges and application of ink aren't going to be as perfect as the Dragon Quest stuff. He's doing something to anti-alias, solidify, and smooth out the edges almost certainly, which is probably why the ends of lines taper into balls. I figure he's either auto-vectoring or, maybe even weirdly, inking by mouse? I really hope not the second one.
I do wonder; these kinds of lines, especially here, where there's some bad erasure, bad aliasing artifacts, and just how the lines fit together at the end of the tunic, do not appear unless you're drawing or heavily meddling digitally.
One thing people don't realize is that there's no such thing as one color for, say, 'skin tone,' for instance. When you color something, you color to the mood of the piece. So if you're in a dark deep dank green cave, well, the hair might grab those greens... if you're in a bright blue sky, that hair's going to be a different color too. Mood seems to be what contributes to Toriyama's style more than anything else; what he feels is right at the time vs. on model.
The felt tip thing is interesting, which I find might be why the line thickness has changed a little bit. I assume the process you describe is close to how he drew the Kanzenban covers, since they were done around 2002 I believe? He probably did these pretty much exactly the way you said and this is an interesting look at his processes up through 2000.
I do think you guys should've touched on his coloring styles; there's some stuff in the first Daizenshuu where he talks about how his coloring processes changed from painting (I think?) to markers. You guys also didn't touch at all about how how shading style changed in general. I know I've said it before, but if you look at the early DB stuff, it's very much flat... lighter tones vs. the more dark, sharp, hard and contrasted shading of the Cell stuff which also mirrors his change to the more angular vs. round style. On shading alone, though, you can see how the Cell stuff has 2 or 3 layers of color on things like skin and clothing versus those very early promotional illustrations of Goku and Bulma that have a more soft watercolor look to them.
The other thing the digital art is missing is the paper textured that bleeds through on his old coloring techniques. If you look in the first Daizenshuu, you see a lot of paper texture bleed through which helps give a lot of art character. It's unique to every piece. A lot of the early Guilty Gear art is like this, too.
I think the main logical fallacy the whole podcast might cause people to assume, though, is that the way he drew in 2000 is how he draws now just because it's the last published report. That is probably NOT true. Artists, rather consciously or unconsciously always change. Even seasoned masters learn new things every day. Further, Digital art has grown exponentially since 2000. Photoshop barely had any kind of pressure support back in 2000, and Wacom tablets have grown in sensitivity. Now there's a million art tools to do art outside of Photoshop, even. At this point, he would probably be forced to change anyway, since Photoshop from back in 2000 probably wouldn't even run properly today, especially on PowerPC -> PC-Based Macs.
To give you an idea, the version of Photoshop back in 2000 was version _6.0_ Comparing Photoshop now to 6.0 is almost like comparing it to MS. Paint. I tried walking my friend who has 7.0 through masking techniques, and half of the tools aren't even there.
Looking at the DQIX art alone in high resolution, I cannot help but guess that he auto-vectors his lineart in Illustrator at this point. My assumption is that he draws on paper and then either inks or instead of inking, he drops it into the computer and auto-vectors it. The coloring is quite obviously photoshop, and it's very airbrushed, especially in the DQ stuff. I really wonder if he has a tablet at all or does it all by mouse. The problem isn't as much the linewidths -- which are thicker no matter how he inks -- but the bad tapering on the ends of lines. If he was just inking and scanning, the ends of lines would not just nub
out like this:
http://gamersblock.net/gamefluid/wp-con ... -Art-1.png
http://nationalpostarts.files.wordpress ... t-ix-1.png
The edges are just way too solid and perfect and digital.
Even if this was scanned from an inked drawing, he does some sort of technique to gives the edges some kind of solid edges and consistent color. Scanning inked drawings does not produce solid edges like that at 300 DPI, due to pen pressure and ink soaking into the paper. There is some process where he's likely converting scans into anti-aliased, completely black, digital lines, and just by looking at the bumps on the girl's shoulder, it probably auto-vectoring. You cannot get that clean and that solid of a line from a scan; there has to be some kind of tinkering done since ink bleeds into paper, and from the looks of things and, well, the lazyness factor that's been talking about, I'm figuring auto-vector.
Please excuse my inadequacies as an artist, I'm nowhere near as clean as Toriyama, but you can see here what I mean about paper texture (maybe even more)... I highlighted some of the cleaner strokes. Pen soaks into paper much the same way and flutters out.
Here is how ink affects paper:
Note I'm not saying this is all paper or all inks since there's tons of different paper and inks, but I hope you can at least see that scanning something like this... the edges and application of ink aren't going to be as perfect as the Dragon Quest stuff. He's doing something to anti-alias, solidify, and smooth out the edges almost certainly, which is probably why the ends of lines taper into balls. I figure he's either auto-vectoring or, maybe even weirdly, inking by mouse? I really hope not the second one.
I do wonder; these kinds of lines, especially here, where there's some bad erasure, bad aliasing artifacts, and just how the lines fit together at the end of the tunic, do not appear unless you're drawing or heavily meddling digitally.