I'm having a hard time looking at manga art without seeing flaws now :/ I always saw it as a 'style' thing before but now it's not even that, i keep getting drawn to the poor proportions and thinking that the shortcuts(like just doing one eye or not finishing the bg) are just lazy. There are still some styles i like though, usually the seasoned artists.
hm, iiinteresting. This might be sacrilige, but the reason I first had trouble getting into american comics was because there was too much background. I like the "two desks in the background to denote that it's a classroom" thing. It makes it easier and faster for the eye to register… I get bored when I have to stare too long at a panel (it kills the cinematic feel of comics!!)
For me, I can tell if I'll like a comic just by looking at a few pages. It's generally style, not specific proportions, that bother me. (For instance, Antique Bakery=vomitous style; Gravitation=the epitome of all that is wonderful about manga. But then, Gravitation is one of those really professional-looking manga.)
And re, the Jessica Alba debate, she was prettiest in Dark Angel, that tv show from… perhaps late 90s. She looks too monochrome now… all caramel-colored. If you paint a wall tan and place Jessica Alba in front of it, she magically disappears.
Man, I've been haunted this weekend by this story idea… unfortunately it seems like the same story I always, always write (teenage boy meets older man, friendship/surrogate fatherhood ensues, falling in love (this is a new step; usually just a subtext in my other stories), falling out in the end where older guy completely fails and proves to boy how alone he is) but for some weird reason I just want to TRY to get it right.
Also one of the characters (the hot older guy ;D!) is Russian, but I'm worried I'm getting a little too into the whole "Russia" thing. And also, idk why the whole "father" issue interests me so… it's weird, it's perhaps the strongest theme in both of my comics. Well, you'll *see* in the Optimist. (I wonder how many people actually read the first page, in which I blatantly state that the father dies on the very day the majority of the story takes place?? Not many, I guess.)
