Please tell me if any of the links aren’t working
Faces:
Hair:
Bodies:
A Guide to Drawing the Human Body
Clothes and Accessories:
Creatures:
Dragon Hands and Feet Tutorial
Animals/insects:
Objects:
Nature/Food:
How to Create Stars (With Photoshop)
Colours:
Other:
Glitch Effect (with Photoshop)
Eleven years ago, I was the biggest fucking weeaboo on this planet.
Ten years ago, I sold all of my manga on Amazon.
I took my art seriously and was ramping up to attend art school, but every portfolio review I ever had said the same thing - ditch the anime. It’s flash in the pan, you won’t be taken seriously, no one will hire you, expand your horizons.
Telling a young artist to seek out new inspiration is never bad advice, but I was a tenacious little booger. I loved my manga - I finally, finally had a piece of media featuring young girls and women doing fantastic, heroic, amazing things. These women became my role models, and granted me access to tomes upon tomes of stories in a medium that was socially off limits to us young XX chromosome types.
But I wanted to be a professional artist more than I wanted literature I could identify with. I took the word to heart and, one by one, sold off my entire collection of manga to strangers on the internet. I couldn’t let it influence me any more.
Ten years go by. I do succeed in becoming a professional artist, but the influences are still there, skin deep, under my work. Well-meaning strangers complimenting my work when I draw in public, punctuating their compliments with “my daughter likes anime, too!” made me grit my teeth into a fine powder. I was not drawing anything so juvenile, so lowbrow, so amateurish. I was a real artist.
I would still attend and sell at anime conventions (“because my work is so unique and not anime, it stands out and sells well!”) and I would see rows and rows of tables selling merchandise of franchises I was not familiar with. Friends would suggest I watch Attack on Titan or read Death Note, and I would turn up my nose at them. I couldn’t allow my art to sink to anime levels again.
But then it hit me.
I’ve been working as a full time professional artist for nearly six years now, and I’ve talked to an art director maybe three times. Art directors, those nebulous vague boogeymen whose values and judgement on Japanese popular arts I spent a decade trying to mimic, aren’t affecting my career the way I was promised they would.
They are barely affecting my career at all.
So I went to my local library, meandered on over to the graphic novel section and was surprised by the fact it’s 90% manga. I’d always noticed that, grumbling under my breath, wondering why they didn’t make room for real comics, when it hit me. There is a ton of manga here because that’s what people are reading. Still. Over a decade after I ditched my manga roots in hopes of hoping off a train I was told would explode.
I picked up all my old favorites - Azumanga Daioh, Tenchi Muyo, literally anything by CLAMP - and I fell right back in love with everything.
I don’t regret spending a decade of my life away from manga and anime. I feel like I’ve grown as an artist and that growth would have been neutered if I had simply stuck with only media from Japan. However, I’m not afraid anymore. With very anime inspired productions (Bee and Puppycat, Steven Universe, etc.) being produced here in the States, it’s clear to see that an artistic career with roots in media you can see yourself in isn’t lethally toxic.
I’m not afraid any more.
for the next 4 days!
this is the program i’ve been using lately and it’s rlly nice
That’s all I got so far guys! I included the most well known terrifying places. Feel free to add to this list, in case I missed some special, horrifying place.
The horror doesn’t stop here though. I have lots more masterposts:
masterpost of creepy online games
masterpost of gothic/horror novels (yes I link you to a PDF version of the entire book!)
masterpost to make you feel better (when all the horror is too much)
masterpost of creepy wikipedia articles
The following aren’t masterposts, but they have an abundance of information
creepy meaning behind nursery rhymes
map of monsters/ghosts/cryptids in the USA
you are an incredible person
