j103 – The Evolution of J-san

[6/19/2006]

These two images show the gradual (okay, maybe not) change in J-san’s appearance over the course of Nonsense Wars. The first image shows his evolution during “Classic” (old) Nonsense Wars and the second image shows his evolution during the comics that are currently posted on this site.

Notes on the “classic” evolution: The first image is J-san as he appears in the first episode of “classic” N-Wars. Note the funky ponytail, which was eventually ditched because it was hard to show “realistically”. J-san then wore sunglasses for a while. Note the variant of the sunglasses version, which remains one of my favorite drawings of J-san to date. I’m not sure why. The final image in the “classic” evolution is J-san as he appeared in the last of the “classic” comics. You can see that I unsuccessfully tried to recreate how he appeared in the variant of the sunglasses version.

There’s no particular reason for these images, other than that I’m surprised at how much my art has changed.

dupdate 060727

[060727]

I like J’s idea of an update. I’m going to do the same.

I don’t know what time frame J defines as “Classic NWars”, but most of the most interesting D-san developements are prior to the launch of the NWars website.

So here we are in early 2004. This is me in a Statue of Liberty spoof. It’s not even really a D-san picture for that matter. In fact, no pre-nwars pictures are actually D-san pictures because I don’t call them D-san pictures until the start of NWars.

This is still early 2004. This is D-san as of the first of four Starcrossed Author’s Notes. It’s pretty much a generic early Starcrossed character, with nothing more to distinguish it from others than a slightly different mop of hair.

04/04/10. Now we have an exact date. You can see the drastic change (Note I didn’t say “improvement”) over the previous picture. A short decline facial anatomic accuracy follows here…

04/05/24. This was one of the best D-san pictures at the time. Note the elongation of the chin, and the general stretching of the face. Such is the defining characteristic of this era of my drawing.

04/06/22. Now the entire face is generally getting longer, pointier, and uglier. It isn’t half as bad as the next picture, but it is already pretty much near the bottom of this decline I was talking about. It’s kinda sketchy too.

04/06/27. Just a few days after the last one, and ewww. I mean… the eyes, the chin, the everything, it all screams ewww. Things can only get better from here I suppose.

04/08/30. Yay! NWars! You’ll notice the eyes are back to their normal sizes. The forehead and chin are still terrible, but it’s a start. The next image is a drastic improvement.

04/11/02. At this point, I’d like to say that this is “second generation” Nwars in terms of art. I mean, look at that picture compared to the previous one. It’s not perfect or anything, but it’s certainly better.

05/08/30. We jump almost a year ahead. This is a one of kinda D-san picture. The styles involved in this comic are not duplicated anywhere else. I was either having an off day, or just crazy.

06/02/05. Erm… somehow I forgot to crop that one. But anyways, this is largely the end of D-san developement. Everything here is basically as it is at the present, which is not that far ahead.

Today. I drew this one half an hour ago. Yeah.

j102 – NW Election Posters

Nonsense Wars Election Posters!!

[6/18/2006]

Well then, here are some “spoof” posters that I created during the school elections. They feature our good friend, Sam. What’s funny is that the images you see here were created by drawing, scanning, printing, and then scanning again (there’s no easy way to get a Word document into a picture cleanly). Other notes on the posters:

Poster 1: Sam didn’t use the phrase “You fail” until we told him to use it. You may remember him saying the phrase in Voice Techno 1.

Poster 2: This poster grew out of two conversations that Sam and I had. In the first one, I tried to tell him about tri-star locomotion. He confused “tri-” with “try”, and kept asking me, “What’s ‘star locomotion’?” In the second conversation, we discussed a hypothetical material that absorbed all incoming electromagnetic radiation. (We eventually concluded that since the radiation would all be converted to energy in the atoms of the material, the material would eventually turn into plasma, or else become very, very hot.) Since Sam was the one that came up with the concept, I named the material “Rudellium” after him.

Poster 3: Sam actually spoke like that one day.

Sam was not elected Evil Overlord; he did not appear on the ballot. I claim it was a conspiracy set up by the school to crush any emerging autocracies, but Sam said,

“Evil overlords aren’t elected; they appoint themselves. And to do that they need to be an evil overlord already. VICIOUS CYCLE BEGINS!! AAAAHH!”

dupdate 060721

[060721]

The 5AT is complete. Brickshelf Gallery once moderated. See 5AT.co.uk for more information.

So anyways, this was a pain. It didn’t need to be a pain, but nonetheless, I took it apart and rebuild it (Almost from scratch) about three to four times before I came up with something that I was happy with. And even then, it was only very small external changes from version to version. Much of the part that I was unhappy with was with the internal structure.

Once the new wheels came, I could get effective pictures, though my camera doesn’t seem to be doing very well lately…

I had to dismantle my old motor unit in order to get all the red needed to build in the tradtional DB color scheme. Now I have a Hogwarts Express motor unit. Oh well.

Anyways, I’m surprised J wrote so much.

The end.

j101 – Cancelled Comic

[6/17/2006]

This is the pencil artwork for the comic that I was originally going to run instead of this one. The comic was supposed to go like this:

Notes
“text” = speech
= thoughts
*text* = setting and actions

Panel 1:
*Lesser Demon’s co-worker, Lesser Demon, and J-san walking, in that order from right to left from the reader’s point of view*
Lesser Demon’s co-worker: “Hang a left, hang a left…”

Panel 2:
Lesser Demon’s co-worker: “Which way was left again?”

Panel 3:
J-san: *Holds hands out in front of him (see random floating hand in picture for hand position)*

Panel 4:
J-san: *points to his left (reader’s right)* “That way.”
Lesser Demon:

This comic was canceled for a few reasons:

1) The joke is awkward. It depends on the reader knowing the “trick” of figuring out which way is left by holding your hands out in front of you the way J-san would in the comic: The left hand’s thumb and forefinger will form an “L”. Not everyone knows this trick, but that wasn’t what stopped me; It was the fact that D-san, who uses this trick all the time (I’m not sure why), couldn’t figure out the joke.

2) I would need to explain where the Lesser Demon’s co-worker came from. She wasn’t present in the previous comic, so her appearance could be somewhat confusing.

3) The Lesser Demon’s co-worker is not really needed for the mini-arc, so she would be pretty much extraneous for the rest of the mini-arc. On a related note, her presence would force me to draw an extra character every few panels for the rest of the mini-arc, and we all know how lazy I can be.

Other notes on the pencil artwork:

The words “Rant: T-shirt+jeans?” in the center of the image are a reminder for the rant I was intending to write, which was actually used for this update.

Only one of J-san’s hands has been drawn. I was intending to flip the drawing over in Photoshop to make the other hand when assembling to comic, to save drawing time.

Wow. That was a long rant.

EDIT [7/10/2006]: Alright, now I’m going to make this rant longer by presenting:

Results of Nonsense Wars poll #1

Who is your favorite character in:

J-san’s half of Nonsense Wars?

J-san		4 votes
Chris		3 votes
The Lesser Demon		3 votes
The Lesser Demon’s co-worker		2 votes
D-san		1 vote
Other		1 vote

D-san’s half of Nonsense Wars?

J-san		4 votes
D-san		2 votes
Young-sensei		2 votes
Z-Dawg (Mr. Duong)		2 votes
Chikara		2 votes
Mad Scientist J-san		1 vote
Other		1 vote
Aerith		0 votes

Total votes: 14

It’s interesting that D-san, who appears in both halves of Nonsense Wars, finished differently in the two halves of the poll. I need to use him in comics more often.

Also, I wasn’t expecting J-san to win both polls. The last time he appeared in D-san’s half was in this comic. (The last time he had a line was in the comic after that one.) As evidenced by the poll results, I consider J-san and Mad Scientist J-san as separate characters. I wonder if people got confused and voted for J-san when they really meant Mad-Scientist J-san…

Anyway, thanks to all who voted! We might have another poll in the future … If I can think of a good question.