Meme: 5 Day Art Challenge (Day 1)

There’s a meme going around Facebook lately, and since I’m busy drawing manga pages, I thought this would make a great update here.

Nominated by: Jaden Kaiba and Bokimkatje Komiks
RULE: If an artist nominated you, you have to post at least 3 artworks per day for 5 consecutive days & nominate an artist each day.

Ok then, let’s start with some of the first uploads I ever made on the internet (aka the times when I had no knowledge of photoshop or wacom tablets):

Rurouni Culture Crash is my first illustration that was ever published in the local books. I drew this as a thank you to the people in Culture Crash for putting up with my questions for my thesis. They helped me out a lot as well in terms of illustrating manga. I still remember how Sir James told me to “play with the camera” when I draw my panels.

One Day, Isang Diwa was drawn for CFAD - Red Cross Youth’s activity where we invited CC’s artists to talk about manga in UST. There was a bit of a crowd, but our marketing was all screwed up at the time, and most of their fans found out too late. (We couldn’t help it… there was a lot of massive red tape to go through.)

Peace of Silence is my fan art contest entry at Canada’s Anime Evolution 2004. I won first prize at the traditional arts section, and they let me keep the original illustration too! They gave me a Sailor Moon pin as a prize, hehe!

More embarrassing illustrations coming up tomorrow! Watch out for it..? Maybe?

100 ARAW ng KOMIKS: The Beginnings of “Karma”

As part of the ongoing 100 Araw ng Komiks (100 Days of Comics) campaign to promote Philippine Comics, I would like to talk about my very first attempt with manga, “Karma”.

Karma was a story that came from a horrible experience. During my third year in Fine Arts, our professor was angry with another class, and decided that she would fail our class’ final grades. I was striving for the honor role, and getting the lowest passing mark from her class would have landed me a Cum Laude at least, but alas, her mind was made up, and with it my dreams of ever being in the honor role.

That summer, still angry with what had occurred, I picked up the latest issue of Culture Crash, which was calling for entries for one-shot comics, 8 pages long. My initial thought was “that’s impossible! How can a story start and end in 8 pages?” But I decided I needed to take my mind off of my professor and my school work, and this was the best way to focus on my real dreams: to become a comic book artist.

This was in 2003, and I didn’t own a computer then, but that didn’t stop me from trying! And so, Karma was created; drawn in oslo paper, inked with UniPins, lettered in the same way, and colored with watercolors. I was warned that watercolors are one of the hardest media to master, but the soft shades were all I needed to create the effect I wanted.

Sadly, perhaps thanks to my constant pestering in the CCCom Office, Karma was never chosen to be part of the historic comic-magazine. However, in 2008, I decided that hey, this is my first work, and I am still proud of it, so I might as well post it online.

I translated the original Tagalog script to English to cater to the international audience. Although the current version’s computerized lettering looks… terrifying… it is still a learning experience! And now that Chapter 2 is currently being worked on, I plan on re-drawing Chapter 1 and expanding it so that the story makes a little more sense!

That’s it for now! Come back tomorrow and I will tell you more about the characters and some random trivia about the series!

Kurohiko's Art Journal

...do you think I improved? ^^; I am not so sure...

Template: [link]

All manga, except Twilight's Calling, can be read for free online. My website/blog is still a mess so feel free to look through here:

• A.illusions (on hiatus for doujin): [link]
• Karma (one shot, finished?): [link]
• Mote-Mote (on going): [link]

- kurohiko (dA 2009)

One Day, Isang Diwa

My Diwa fanart from Culture Crash's One Day, Isang Diwa. ^^

Inked the watercolored by hand. This piece was used in a promo poster for Red Cross Youth back in 2003-2004. It's old, but I still like the way the colors turned out. ^^

- kurohiko (dA 2006)

Rurouni Culture Crash

This was my first ever printed work... ^^ If you're a fan of Culture Crash Comics, a Philippine Anime-Inspired Comic Magazine, then head over to issue 12. You should see this same art piece in the fanart section... ^^

I love Culture Crash Comics. I idolize Elmer Damaso, and was honored to meet him personally. They helped me out when I was doing my thesis, and so I made this for them.

This piece features the staff of Culture Crash. All their names along with surnames of the characters they are cosplaying are written below. Done in brush ink (my first, and my last... manual brush ink is very, very tricky and my hands are somewhat heavy). ^^

This was probably the start of cosplayer type art pieces for me. I love drawing cosplaying characters... :3

Hope you like it. ^^

- kurohiko (dA 2006)