New manga markers!

For my birthday, I bought myself some new manga markers with the Amazon gift card my parents gave me. I am so excited to learn how to use them! I also bought some new manga paper to see how it differs from the multipurpose computer paper I usually use.

Things purchased:

• U.S. Art Supply 9"x12" manga-marker paper
• Master Markers Manga & Primary Tones 24-pack
• The Art of Vampire Knight - Matsuri Hino Illustrations

Rather than be reasonable and practice in short sessions with the markers and paper, I dove in and recreated one of my favorite panels from my other favorite manga/anime: Vampire Knight. It turned out better than I anticipated, so I decided to post it as a new milestone in my mangaka journey.


Some notes:

• Yup, I am aware the Day Class uniforms are black. At the moment, I only have a weird mix of primary colors and grays. No black marker in the set. So I improvised with blue! Same with Yuki's hair color, improvised with the sienna brown marker I have. 
• Character names are Zero and Yuki, brought to you by the incredible Matsuri Hino. 
• Therefore, this is fan art...while I try to figure out my own style. 
• The paper I purchased does NOT let you erase once you have inked, so I'll be looking for a different long-term paper. Hence the pencil marks.

I hope you enjoy the new art, which will be posted sporadically as I find time on weekends between teaching, my doctorate studies, and life in general.

Yuki and Zero from Vampire Knight.

I anticipate that my own art and characters will be a hybrid of Hiromu Arakawa + Matsuri Hino + Hayao Miyazaki, since they are the artists I enjoy the most.  

"Hmmm, your characters look a lot like another manga I have seen..."

I need to give kudos where kudos are due. (Now I want a KUDOS bar, dangit!)

Until I get better at drawing, my characters will continue to resemble the characters of Fullmetal Alchemist (FMA to crazy fans like me), my #1 favorite manga and anime. #2 is Vampire Knight, which I am only slightly embarassed to admit.

Hiromu Arakawa is responsible for both writing and drawing FMA, and she is amazing. No copyright infringement intended, or any of that legal nonsense. Every artist knows that you only get better at something the more you do it, and the best way to improve is to replicate the work of artists you enjoy. So the better I get, the less my characters in The Industrious Hygienist will look like FMA.

On a side note, my husband and I attended the Phoenix Comicon in May 2011, and I had the opportunity to meet Vic Mignogna, the talented voice actor for Edward Elric from FMA and Zero Kiryu from Vampire Knight. We waited in line for about an hour and a half to meet him and have him sign one of my FMA books, and it was worth it! He was the most pleasant individual I have met in a long time. They were selling his CDs while we were in line, and I was able to get the last one (which made the teenagers behind me very sad). We're going again in 2012 and hope to see Vic and Michael Stackpole (fantabulous author from Phoenix) there.