Manga Jiman 2014 (Part 1): Stacey's Crush

Greetings everyone! Today, I'll be showing you my latest project that I'm working on other than my web-comic. This is post will be about the comic that I'll be entering for this year's Manga Jiman Competition. It is held by the Japanese Embassy in London. This year's theme is "Once in a lifetime meeting" or "Once in a life-time encounter". In Japanese it is "一期一会" .  On the day I found out about this year's theme I got started on working on the story. Surprisingly, I wrote two stories based on this theme and hopefully if I have time to complete them in comic form I might enter them for the competition. 

The first comic is about a girl in her late twenties called Stacey and her ordeals during her job. The story is based on something that I went through sometime last year during the month of July. I have been hoping to write this story since last year. Some part of it is real and the rest is is fiction. When I began the initial sketches of Stacey, I thought of what she could wear in the comic as well as her hairstyle. The chosen hairstyle is based on the 80's musician Bette Midler. I really liked her hair style in this video and I thought I'd pay hommage to her by using it. :):

This next page is of Stacey's facial expressions.:

The next character designs are based on her friend Leanne. I decided to go for the fouth character sketch because. I yearned for something simple. The clothes that she is wearing will be what she and Stacey will be wear in the comic:

Here are the facial expressions of Leanne. The middle facial expresssion was the one I found very appealing:

The final character to this story is of Stacey's Crush. Unfortunatley he doesn't have a name. I chose to leave him anonymous. This is because I felt that only this is necessary since the comic will be only way of how he would be visualised. These are the sketches of how he is visualised. For hairstyles depicted in this drawing I looked at current hairstyles for men of this year.:

For the facial expressions, I decided to make him a older. So far it look pretty good. I'm quite impressed with the chibi character on the bottom right.:

Currently, I've finished the comic in pencil and in ink. I will be working on adding screen-tones from today and the rest of the week. There will be another post about the second Manga Jiman entry that I'll be entering too. For anyone who is living in the UK, you can also enter this competition too. Have a look at the website by clicking here. Give it a go! Thank you for visiting my blog and please leave a comment. :)

Three Year Anniversary in Job and Initial Sketches for Manga Jiman Competition 2013

Hello Everyone! Today marks three years since I have been working as an Event Steward. To celebrate I created this digital drawing. This sketch was created during the second to last week of September, then edited on Photoshop:

Along side this drawing there was going to be a short silent story about one of the experiences that I had while in this job. But I couldn't do it since I have my Manga Jiman competition entry complete. So I felt that it would be better to show you the initial skteches for each of the characters that will be in the comic:

Here are the first initial sketches of the main character Laeticia:

* This is the chosen character design for the main protagonist Laeticia. Here are the facial expressions of this sketch:

The next main protagonist was the senior doctor Derek. This character I felt was very very difficult to do, the facial features were OK, but what I felt that was difficult was to find a suitable hairstyle for him. I did a couple while standing at the bus stop on the way home from church, the remainder of these sketches took place while I was at my lunch break at work and also during the train ride home. 

In total I made about twelve sketches, here it is:

From the sixth character design I created facial expression for each of them:

* The chosen character and facial design indicated here was at first going to be the chosen image. It was heavily influenced after I watched this cologne advertisement, while waiting for some music videos to appear. I was mesmerised on how this guy looked and  I felt he looked quite sleek. When I completing the sketches I decided to say 'No' because I felt the hairstyle was commonly used. I was left gutted decided to choose the last character design.

**After completing each character and facial expression, this chosen image which will be how Derek will be depicted I felt was the right one.

Only one character and facial expression design for one of the character Cain is shown here:

The final character for this Manga Jiman entry is the character SelenaMay:

*The initial sketch here is the chosen character for the manga. Here is the facial expressions:

I'm currently nearly finishing the comic in pencil. By the end of this week the pages will be inked and imported to photoshop for the next stages.