The Anime Blog

They say laughter is the best medicine. In fact recent studies have shown that laughing at least a few times a day significantly lowers the the chance of developing heart disease. If that’s the case, then fans who enjoy art should mosey down to John Su’s DeviantArt pages for their daily dose.

John has a unique sense of humor. Click on most of his pieces and you’ll laugh while simultaneously wondering where he gets these ideas. Take for example “Butter Knight”. A slip of the tongue, an idea was manifested and a picture was born. His style of anime art compliments his quirky sense of humor. After getting a week’s worth of heart prevention in from visiting his web pages, I talked with John about his process for his work.

Rachel: Can you describe the moment you decided you wanted to become an artist?
John: Probably not. It’s not like I was sitting on a bench one day and had the notion to become an artist. As I was growing up I found that I enjoyed drawing, and to this day I still do. Growing up is a very vague and undefined moment, but I guess that would be it.

Rachel: Why did you want to become an artist?
John: ‘Cause it’s fun! That’s probably the most honest answer I can give – the “decision” was made very early in childhood, so my memory’s a bit fuzzy.

Rachel: Where did you learn your skillz?
John: Time. I learned from years and years of practice, and leeched off the fruit of other peoples’ years as well. The first skill I learned was to copy – this has proved to be the most valuable skill since from then on the rest of my skills have been based on what I’ve observed and stolen. Anytime I see a piece that intrigues or amazes me I look for something that I can take from it and make a mental note to incorporate it in my future drawings. This is pretty much how I refine my anime technique.

Rachel: I see you create animations. Which do you prefer to create; animations or drawings and why?
John: Oh, drawings by far! Animations take much too much time, ranging from days to weeks. Months? Maybe, but I’ve never dared to take up something that large. Drawings, on the other hand, I can finish in a matter of hours. The reward is just that much closer. Plus, animating gets tiresome after a while – I can only draw the same character so many times before I grow weary of them. This is why I have virtually no recurring characters in my gallery.

Rachel: Two of your animations (Gift of Ages, Resanctification) have deeper, more spiritual messages to them. How does faith influence your work?
John: Ah, those two. In both cases the animations were requested by people from church; Resanctification was for a friend’s brother who was in need of something to illustrate his point in seminar, and Gift of Ages was for the coordinator of the Christmas program. Only those made for church have any faith-related material in them, which saddens me a little. I aim to be able to incorporate some values in my future animations, though not as obviously. I’ve seen some angry people on the net who’ve been harassed by Christians – I hope that the misunderstanding can be corrected subtly.

Rachel: How much time do you usually invest into a drawing or animation, from the time you get an idea, research it, sketch it, tweak it, and color it, and/or animate it?
John:The conception phase for drawings can be anywhere from spontaneous to, oh, say ten minutes. Then maybe another ten minutes to sketch a layout with character poses and positions, fifteen to find a satisfactory design, and an hour to do the line work. Then coloring and shading could take roughly an hour, and if I want to add a background, another hour. There’s a lot of deviation from this time scale, though, as I’ve completed pictures in under an hour and taken as long as a day to do another.

Animations take a lot more time. First I need to find the music I want to use; since I’m not a musician, I’m limited by whatever I can find, so browsing through my library can take a while. Ah, all this timing is reminding me of gate logic race conditions! Let’s just say animation = very long.

Rachel:Could you describe your process for drawing and animating?
John: Alright. Let’s start with drawing.

Assuming I have an idea of what I want, I open a blank document and proceed to scribble some hot-dog figures on it to get an idea for the posture and anatomy. I might do some rough erasures or some scaling, and when I’m done I fade the image so it’s barely visible. Then I proceed to the rough draft.

I sketch a rough image of the characters over the hot-dog skeletons, getting down most of the details of their clothing and hair. The face I leave alone. Once this is done it looks like a very basic picture and I can move on the final draft.

For this I use a smaller brush size and zoom in. With the roughs reminding me of the scale I should be drawing in, I proceed to “trace” the line art, maybe making small refinements and adding small details like folds, wrinkles, scratches, etc.

When that’s done I copy the lineart to a layer just below it and lock the original. The new layer becomes my color layer where I bucket fill the empty spaces with the appropriate colors. Once all the colors are there I go about cel-shading it using the brush tool to draw new regions and the bucket tool to fill them. I can be pretty sloppy here, sometimes crossing lines, because the line layer above it hides it from the finished product.

After that I follow a similar process for the background, though it’s shorter since there are no lines. I pretty much make shapes with the brush and fill them in with the same color, then use a lasso tool to select portions to change color, hence shading them. I prefer to do it this way since I don’t want it to compete with the foreground and I don’t want to work zoomed in all over the picture.

For animations it’s a lot simpler. Typically I’d make very quick, very rough sketches that just represent the basic anatomy of the moving person. I make a sequence of these and lay them out in the timeline, adjusting, removing, or adding them until the movement is as I want it to be. When I’ve gone through basically the whole animation and am content with the pacing, I’m ready to start.

The moving characters are done in a single layer instead of two (like in my drawings). It’s essentially the same process, except I use the sketches from before instead of making new ones. It’s basically a one-shot run. I need to keep a copy of the lineart in the clipboard to paste back down when I’m done coloring, so sometimes it gets complicated when I forget to copy it prior to coloring.

Backgrounds are done in pretty much the same way as for the drawings.

Rachel: What programs do you use for animating and, possibly, for drawing?
John: For both animation and drawing I use Macromedia Flash. I’ve grown quite comfortable with the shortcuts and layout, so I find work to be easier and more flexible when using Flash to draw – plus I enjoy the resolution independence.

Rachel:When you draw, what do you do to concentrate on your work and inspire your style? For example: some people listen to music, other people draw in the park, some people head down to a coffe shop, etc.
John: Since I have no scanner, all of my work is done at the computer and I don’t have the option of changing environments – the best I can usually do is browse through my mp3’s and listen to one that fits the mood of the picture I’m working on. But other times I just work in silence, since I already know what I’m going for.

Rachel: What or who is the biggest influence on your work?
John: Um…in terms of style, it’s difficult to pinpoint. I’ll just say I draw inspiration from anime/manga as a collective entity. Whatever thing I enjoy tends to have an effect on the way my style turns out.

Rachel:Most of your work is quite humorous; why do you draw more comical fare?
John: ‘Cause I like it. There are tons of artists out there whose work is of greater quality than mine, but they don’t quite catch my interest because the content doesn’t. To me the artwork is a medium which conveys a message, and if there is no message or the message is an old one, the artwork…falls short. I could draw an amazing picture of a spoon and impress no one. But another dude could draw a crude spoon in a crude situation and make everyone laugh. So rather than compete with all those awesome professionals, I choose to make an impression via humour.

Rachel: What can you say about your sense of humor?
John: I’d say it’s a bit satirical and at times a bit simple. Some of it is simply word play and puns, and other times it’s based on deriding myself or feigning arrogance. I’m really not sure what to say on it – if I find it amusing, I’ll share it, but being the teller makes the matter less funny. But the responses I get seem to indicate that I have a decent sense of humor (or my desperation shows so much that they shower me with pity laughs). On a side note I will say that Brian Clevinger (of 8-bit Theatre fame) is an inspiration for me; not just his comics, but the blogs he writes as well. His sarcasm rocks.

Rachel: How would you like people to view your work?
John: With both hands on their gut and not in their pants.

Rachel: What’s it like to be able to show people the random thoughts that float through your head, as illustrated by your drawing, “Genius”?
John: It’s a blessing, I say. It’s fun to be able to capture a moment of your life and even more so to have it entertain someone. As an introvert this may be my only means of sharing such things.

Rachel: If you didn’t explain some of your pieces, what do you think people would get from the picture?
John: They’d go “Aw, that’s cute/interesting/scary.” And that’d be the end of that. Thinking back on what I said about artwork and messages, I guess I’m implying that my artwork doesn’t convey a message well enough that I wouldn’t have to explicitly state it.

But there are times I really wish I could just let it speak for itself.

Rachel: When you do draw or animate a serious piece, what are you thinking and what do you prefer as your subject matter?
John:Hm, typically when a church member requests something the matter is faith-related and I don’t poke fun at it. When the work is requested by myself to be serious, it would be because I’m trying to capture a mood and don’t want it overpowered by humour like ketchup. I guess the theme would be…goth or fantasy. Hm, that’s a strange combination now that I put them in the same sentence…

Rachel:How does anime factor into your work?
John:It’s everywhere! Almost all my style is derived from anime.

Rachel: Why did you decide on this particular style of art?
John:When I was young, it looked really cool, and being an impressionable youth, it was impressed upon me.

Rachel: When you first started to draw, who did you base your first pieces from, if anybody?
John:I first drew out of a sketch book of basic shapes that my mother helped me with, but if you mean anime, then my first source would have been Robotech. From there I went on to Dragonball and Sailormoon, then practically every imported anime that made its way onto American networks (excluding cable).

Rachel: What can you say about your sense of humor outside of your art? (“Active Desk Top Recovery” almost made me snork coffee)
John:Ohoho, excellent – I am pleased with the coffee snorking. Anyhow, I like to hope that my humour is the same, since I don’t change identities with medium.

Rachel: Could you describe your work in five words?
John: It Would Most Definitely Be…

Nope, I fail.

Rachel: What do want to achieve with your work? (world domination, best artist eva, more money than you know what to do with, etc.)?
John: Hm, more money than I know what to do with sounds very attractive. But putting awesome selfishness aside, I hope that my work can expand concepts and open people’s minds to new directions.

Rachel: What’s your favorite style of art and why is it your fave?
John: lurves teh chibi. It is moé.

Rachel: What kind of routine do you have when you draw? What kind of schedule do you have if you have any?
John:Since I do this as a leisure activity, I have no schedule or routine. I just do it whenever it’s convenient and I have something to draw.
Or if I’m really bored and want some attention.

Rachel: I’ve noticed kanji in some of your pieces..what can you say about your language skillz?
John:Well, it’s been nearly 4 years since I’ve stopped taking Japanese and I haven’t written kanji since. Kanji would be my weakest point, and I have to use the computer’s IME to get it out. I can still recognize some characters, but only the basic ones. But I do have some chicken-sized confidence in my conversation ability.

Rachel: Can you describe your work station at your computer or drawing board?
John:There’s the computer, a mouse, and sometimes a tablet. Oh, and a keyboard. I’m there, too. Most of the time in a chair.

Rachel: Hypothetical question: You have access to a time machine and can meet any artist you want to; past, present future. Who would you like to meet and if you could ask them one question, what would it be?
John:Hm…maybe I’d go to the future and find an artist who was up to date on history and ask him what the most profitable stock of the 21st century was to be, preferably one that nobody today has heard of. $_$

Rachel: What do you do if you ever get “writer’s block” or in this case “drawer’s block”?
John: Would you try to poop if you had no poop to poop? No. You wait.

Rachel: If you had to label yourself, what kind of artist would label yourself as?
John: A dreamer. Like a dream, most of my art has whole worlds behind them (or partial worlds) but are rarely connected and almost never revisited.

Rachel: How do you use your drawing talents outside of deviantArt?
John: I draw to keep myself entertained when I have nothing to do, like before class (or during class).

Rachel: What would you like to use your drawing skills for overall?
Enjoyment! Mine and others’.

Rachel: What kind of art do you do besides drawing if you do other art?
John: Hahaha, if…

Rachel: Where do you see yourself at 15 years in the future with your art?
John: I see myself as an electrical engineer who draws as a hobby and has a small fanbase online, waiting for the day a prestigious artists opportunity jumps out at him that can support him and his family financially as well as or better than his current engineering career.

Rachel: What do your friends and loved ones think of your art?
John: They like it and hope I don’t waste it. Some are terrified that I’m not pursuing a career with it, but I’d rather not be drawing with the pressure that if it doesn’t sell I won’t be eating.

Rachel: Who is your harshest critic?
John: Me! At least, I’m the most voiced one. But if my ego inflates, this will likely not be the case.

Rachel: Where are you from originally and where are you working from now?
John: I’m from Orange County, California, and I’m currently studying at Los Angeles.

Rachel: What kind of anime and manga do you like? What titles?
John: Some titles off the top of my head would be Mushishi, Princess Tutu, and Hidamari Sketch. The first couple seasons of One Piece were also really awesome.

Rachel: What is your favorite genre of anime/manga and why? Ditto for least favorite.
John: I’m inclined towards seinen, slice of life, and comedy (mostly comedy) genres. Cuteness is a plus (Binchoutan~!). My least favourite would probably be romance. Their constipated emotions sicken me.

Rachel: It’s a fight between anime and manga; which would you choose?
John: Manga! It’s higher in the hierarchy – dubs -> subs -> manga. I can’t watch these things in the opposite direction.

Rachel: If you’re a video gamer, what are your favorite games and why?
John: I used to like rpg’s when I was younger, but nowadays I just don’t have that kind of patience. I suppose my favourite games are the ones that don’t fit in any genre, because they’re bold and pioneering instead of trying to milk an old formula for all its worth (*cough* X-box *cough*).

Rachel:What type of music do you listen to?
John: Generally anime OSTs and some old videogame tracks, sometimes arranged.

Rachel: Who’s your favorite band or musician?
John: The Kukeiha Club makes some pretty neat stuff, and Yoko Kanno is an awesome composer.

Rachel: I read on your DA profile that your fave genre of music is ondo. What do you think of the Pokemon Ondo? Do you ever participate in Bon Odori?
John:The Pokemon Ondo is the awesomest Pokemon song evar. Despite my claims of loving ondo, I’ve only heard four, all of which were from anime or video games (Binchou Ondo, Pokemon Ondo, Ichijou Ondo, and the Koopa Counting Song, which might not even be ondo at all). And no, I’ve never been in or seen a bon odori.

Rachel: What’s your favorite food?
John: Mayonnaise~! Not sure if that quite qualifies as food, though…

Rachel: If you had to choose a fave color, what would it be?
John: Blue. It’s easy on the eyes.

Rachel: Name some of your hobbies for us.
John: Drawing, programming, watching anime, reading manga, sleeping. I’m doomed to an early grave.

Rachel: If you eat Japanese snacks, what’s your favorite?
John: Hi-chew! That stuff is freakin’ awesome.

Rachel: What is/are your favorite movies?
John: Tough to say; I’m not much of a movie goer, but…I guess My Fair Lady was a very enjoyable one for me.

Rachel: What pets do you have and do they factor into your art?
John: My new pet laptop will now be my main drawing machine, if that counts.

Rachel: What do you do when you aren’t drawing?
John: Whoah, that’s a lot of stuff there. But if I had to say the one that took up most of my non-drawing time and that wasn’t essential and wasn’t extra sleep, it’d be procrastinating. How long do you suppose this response was ready before I sent it?

Rachel: What would you say is the most interesting thing about you that people might not know about?
John: My big toes have calluses.

Thanks John! John also shared some of his favorite pics with us with an explanation for the process of each:

1. Hollow Jacks
This is the latest of my “quality” pieces, so I’m quite proud of it and how it turned it. For this one I was listening to the opening theme of Bartender when trying to find a pose for him. His design is largely inspired by Vocal from Watanabe Michiaki’s Violinist of Hameln manga. I’ve attached a few pictures of the intermediate steps that I mentioned earlier.

2. Kurenaino Kyojin
This is one of those things where I like to broaden the image of a given character beyond their typical confines. Was this in a good direction? Not necessarily. But it was sure hella fun.

3. Wait
I also like to mix the mundane with the absurd. There are some modes of humor that throw all sorts of randomness out there (eg, Hale nochi Guu), but my preference is to sometimes bring it a little closer to home.

4. Mére Cabot
This was an effort to capture a feeling that wasn’t funny. It’s sort of a vague grasp at the mysterious; for this Mushishi was a great inspiration, as it managed to present the unknown in such a way as to instill a sort of wonder at something that wasn’t supernatural, but not natural either.

5. Belyzabess
Ew, kind of old, but the content remains to my liking. Like usual, I enjoy mixing contradictory material: the cute with the creepy. This kind of culinary blasphemy is a hobby of mine.