Alright, so I’ve been wanting to do some more music-related artwork for a long time now and this seemed like a perfect opportunity. You may have already heard, but last week Jack White finally released his first two singles from his upcoming third solo studio album and a release date for the record itself. The first track (and subject of this artwork) is titled “Connected By Love” and the other track was “Respect Commander”.

Both are a little bit of a new direction for White. “Connected By Love” features a significant synth part that drives the song, along with some of his signature guitar playing and some gospel backup singers. “Respect Commander” also makes some impressive use of synth and guitar, but is backed by a drum pad rhythm and is completely instrumental up until the halfway break in the song.

Needless to say, I’m pretty excited to see what the album sounds like. I’ve been a pretty big fan of Jack White’s career, from his breakout with the White Stripes, through his continuation with The Dead Weather and the Raconteurs, to his unique solo years as well.

If you’re interested in the music video (or even just the song), check it out here:
Connected By Love

*EDIT* 8/11/17 — Redid coloring job (because original was trash). You can still dig through my FA gallery to find the old version (GAH!). Anyways, continue.

Yup, you read that title right. To help balance the pure masculinity of Dragon Ball, I decided to choose my second fanart poster to be about something much more on the feminine side of things. Princess Tutu, created by Ikuko Itoh. Unlike Dragon Ball, Princess Tutu was an anime first and foremost (although it later had a manga made about it).

Don’t let its name deceive you, Princess Tutu is an impressively complex series. Like Itoh’s other famous work Sailor Moon, Princess Tutu technically falls within the “magical girl” genre (a form of Shojo), but is able to pursue some deeper themes that are not normally associated with the genre. An accurate comparison would be if a “romantic comedy” tackled some serious philosophical topics and expressed these ideas through stunning symbolism. This is actually pretty close since “magical girl” animes are very “romcom-esque.”

I would normally try to provide a decent synopsis of the anime, but I feel the opening monologue from the series does such an amazing job of it on it’s own…

“Once upon a time, there was a man who died. The man’s work was the writing and telling of stories, but he could not defy death. The last story he was working on was about a brave and handsome prince who vanquishes a crafty raven. But now it seems their battle will go on for eternity. ‘I’m sick and tired of this!’ cried the raven. ‘I’m sick and tired of this!’ cried the prince as well. The raven escaped from the pages of the story and the prince pursued the foul creature. In the end, the prince took out his own heart and sealed the raven away by using a forbidden power. Just then, a murmur came from somewhere. ‘This is great!’ said the old man who was supposed to have died.”

Princess Tutu‘s story revolves around a young girl named Duck, who transforms into the fictional ballerina Princess Tutu to help restore the heart of the storybook prince. Duck is also actually a real duck turned into a girl by the long dead author who had the power to make fictional stories into truth. The series tackles themes of free will, the individual emotions that the prince must regain, far reaching references and symbolism between certain ballets, and all the while still retaining a fun sense of humor and surprising plot twists. Easily its defining feature is its use of ballet over the traditional “magical girl” fights to resolve conflicts. Consider this, most famous ballets have conflicts between main characters, and yet it would be absurd for these characters to break out in a fist fight. Their conflict is symbolized an expressed through ballet and their dance. This is exactly how conflicts are handled in Princess Tutu. The result is a visually interesting and surprisingly moving experience that must be seen to believe it.

Like the Dragon Ball poster, I approached this piece like a simple, modern movie poster. A simple color scheme based off of Duck’s character color scheme and her three forms. Honestly I feel my Dragon Ball poster was more successful, but I’m still pleased with this one.

Unlike Dragon Ball, I think I would honestly include Princess Tutu within my top ten favorite animes. It truly is unique and is able to be extremely profound in what it has to say and precise in its impeccable sense of humor. A much shorter series (at only 26 episodes), I would highly suggest it to almost just about anyone. While I feel DBZ might be better suited to a specific demographic that really digs overly buff dudes shooting lasers from their hands in a fast paced martial arts action, Princess Tutu is able to draw a more varied audience (even despite its overly girly title).

Alright. So, anime and manga has had a HUGE impact upon me as an artist and even as a person. It opened the door to a whole other part of the world to me and a wide variety of friends for me to meet and get to know. Like video games and other “geeky topics,” anime is a very easy way for the many introverted people in this world to reach out and make some strong friendships. But Japanese manga and anime are much deeper than just a way to bring “nerds” together to wear spiky colored hair and wield giant great swords. The mediums have firmly established themselves as a distinct art form. There are significant themes, laughable tropes, distinct humor, and a wide range of art styles. To mistakenly refer to anime or manga as a “genre” would be the same as merely labeling every American film as a “Hollywood” film. There is an immense array of genres within anime/manga, and just like Hollywood films, there is something there for everybody.

Now that my boring breakdown of anime and manga is behind us, let’s dive into this particular manga/anime. Dragon Ball, written and illustrated by Akira Toriyama. Toriyama’s previous manga Dr. Slump was also a fairly successful shonen series, but it was Dragon Ball that would define his career. Building off of Dr. Slump‘s quirky humor, Dragon Ball changed gears slightly to focus on a different form of humor and eventually incorporate a sizeable amount of serious action.

Dragon Ball largely follows the adventures of Son Goku and his friends, allies, enemies, and eventually even his children. It’s worth noting there wasn’t really a “Dragon Ball Z” manga just an anime (not counting the animanga “Dragon Ball Z”, but animanga’s are kinda weird and I’d rather not dive off the deep end of that topic). Kinda like Naruto and Naruto Shippuden, the anime broke the Dragon Ball manga into two parts. The manga is just one really long 519 chapter story beginning with Goku as a young kid and ending roughly after he is a grandparent. The anime splits the story after Goku gets married to Chi-Chi and begins the second one when Gohan (Goku’s son) is now a young boy. At this point there is a notable change of pace, themes, and a reliance on action over humor (which was the driving point for the first part). To help sell the anime series, it was decided to split the two into separate series titled “Dragon Ball” (which follows Goku’s misadventures as a kid and growing up) and “Dragon Ball Z” (with Goku grown up defending the Earth against aliens and ever increasing threats).

The anime Dragon Ball Z was the first anime that I truly got into hardcore. Long before I became entranced in the complexity of Neon Genesis Evangelion, or amused by the absurdity of FLCL, or blown away by the polish of Cowboy Bebop, there was just little old DBZ. Of course calling DBZ little is kind of an understatement since it ran for like what…291 episodes (and that’s not even including the Dragon Ball, GT, Kai, or the Super series or the 17 feature-length films!).

My approach to the poster was to make something clean, eye-catching, and very modern, almost to resemble a movie poster. Goku’s Kaio-ken charged Kamehameha beam fight against Vegata is an extremely memorable moment for me, so I chose to depict that. I almost went with Gohan’s Kamehameha against Cell (I even have a rough sketch of this in my sketch book), but ultimately I felt this one was simpler and worked best with the style I was striving for. Also I definitely took some creative liberties with how I depicted the beam blast ^^;

While I would no longer rank Dragon Ball within my favorite all-time animes or mangas, it undoubtedly left an impressive impact upon me. It initially paved the way for me to dive headfirst into the Japanese media and fully immerse myself in their story telling and artistic approaches. It will forever cling to my nostalgia, and impressive tributes and amusing retellings (like DBZ Abridged by Team Fourstar) still bring a smile to my face ^^

What! Another fanart so soon?! Yeah…but I’ve just had a lot of free time and a serious itch for drawing (a dangerous combination to be sure!) :3

Since I briefly mentioned it last fanart, here it is: Slightly Damned by Sarah “Chu” Wilson.

Slightly Damned follows the tale of Rhea shortly after her unfortunate demise. Being neither good enough for heaven nor bad enough for hell, she is condemned to an eternity outside the gates of hell in the realm of the “Slightly Damned.” A pretty insignificant place besides a single, rather silly demon Buwaro and his pet rock Thadius. Things hardly stop there though as the two of them (three counting Thadius) eventually escape from Hell, encounter the cursed angel Kieri, and…well…I should probably let you read it for yourself ^^;

Twokinds may have been the first webcomic I read, but Slightly Damned quickly followed as my second one. Just because it came second didn’t diminish its impact upon me and definitely served as my co-motivation to start Mutt in the Middle. Slightly Damned also holds a special place in my heart as it was the only webcomic I read along with my younger sister while I was in high school ^^

Similar to Twokinds, Slightly Damned progresses and improved significantly over the years. Chu’s splashes of color are really breathtaking to behold and are all the envy of those boring black and white sketches (see MitM for example xD). The fact that most of my comic work is done in black and white makes me just that much more impressed with Chu’s coloring. Along with Slightly Damned, Chu has somehow managed to find the time to do other small comic projects on the side which are always fun to read along as well.

As for this little fanart I whipped up, well let’s see…Similar to the Twokinds one, I pulled from my graphic design posters for inspiration. This time I pulled from my experience with psychedelic posters, although this piece ventured pretty far from a more traditional psychedelic work. About all that’s left is some of the font work and the compositional elements like the layered characters and profile views. I’d like to say that I chose psychedelic design to pull from for inspiration because of Chu’s bright and vivid use of color, but it honestly might have hinged more on the fact that I was listening to Bee Gees all day…

Please go give Slightly Damned a browse through at: Slightly Damned Homepage. If Chu ever stumbles upon this, thank you so much for all your work and keep it up! ^^

Alright. Vinyl LPs are pretty cool, but let’s get to something I’ve been wanting to post since I created this blog: Tributes, Or “My Inspirations” (according to the category it’s listed in). Basically fanart that I’ve drawn to honor someone that has greatly inspired me in my artistic endeavors.

Let’s start this off with one of my all-time favorites: Twokinds by Tom Fischabach.

Twokinds is a webcomic largely following Trace, a blue-haired dude with amnesia, and Flora, a tiger keidran gal. The setting is a fantasy universe with high racial tensions between the humans and keidran. Trace and Flora develop a strong friendship and find themselves right between all of this conflict. While my poor description may play this up as another Romeo & Juliet clone, there is much more to it including Trace’s troubled past and an ever expanding cast that provides multiple viewpoints and side plots that at times become the focus. Trace and Flora provide an excellent central focus and plot, but I’m a huge sucker for side characters, and Twokinds delivers plenty in this category ^^

As time passes, I find more and more webcomics that really grab my attention, but Twokinds will always have that special nostalgia that can only be attained from being my first webcomic experience. With an astounding amount of 13 years on the internet, Twokinds has seen a lot of change. Sure, I didn’t get on the bandwagon till roughly the middle of Chapter 13, around 2010 (I think), but even since then a lot has changed.

I was still in high school at the time and I wasn’t much of a comic nut at the time, believe it or not. I would occasionally sketch some and daydream about some random action stories that never made it to paper. When I eventually stumbled upon Twokinds, it not only introduced me to webcomics, but also a proper introduction into the furry community (for better or for worse xD). It definitely ignited my initial passion for comics in general, which would lead me later to manga and graphic novels. It inspired me to sketch more often, eventually leaving me convinced to pursue (and recently complete!) an art degree at college over a tech degree. But most of all, it encouraged me (along with the help of Slightly Damned, but that’s a story for another fanart) to begin Mutt in the Middle.

When I began sketching more often after I began reading Twokinds, I wasn’t exactly super confident in my skills (heck, I’m still working on that problem…). But as I looked at Twokinds‘ humble beginnings (I mean that in the nicest way possible Tom!) and where it had gone, it gave me just enough confidence to put the pencil to the paper. If Tom had started in high school and had gone that far, maybe I could too! Of course I knew I was being a little optimistic, but I was willing to look like a fool trying rather than looking back at my life wondering if I could have done it.

Oh! I guess I should at least say a word or two about the actual fanart itself…
I haven’t been posting them here on this blog, but I’ve been designing several posters from different graphic design eras. I kinda wanted to give Art Nouveau another shot, and the concept of building a composition around Trace and Flora hugging came pretty easy to me. That said, I would normally fill the background elements with some complex designs (probably something nature-themed, leaves, flowers, etc.), but I was curious how it would look just left simple and clean like this. Also the hair, specifically Floras, not sure if I like how it came out. On my last Art Nouveau poster I did the hair long and stringy, more according to the style of that era, but I kinda wanted to keep Tom’s style and eventually it ended up somewhere awkwardly between the two…

Well, I’ve certainly been talking the night away and I better stop there before I unleash more boring “growing up” stories onto the depths of the internet. If you’ve never read it or never gave it much of a chance, please go take a look at: Twokinds Homepage. And if Tom Fischabach ever skims though this, HOLY CRAP!!! Er…I mean…thanks for everything! You’ve certainly made an impact on this random artist’s life ^^;