Hiroki Mafuyu, and Ayumi Again

Today we were invited to the school where Hiroki Mafuyu teaches, Tokyo Communication Arts seemed like a clone of SCAD, but in Japan, of course.

On the subject of Mafuyu, I didn’t recognize his name, but some of his work I had recognized. The cover to “Calling” was the image that struck the chord of familiarity with me.

He himself seemed a very poetic person. I felt most of what he said was lost in translation, and it was a pity, but nevertheless it was still a very good motivational speech. He left us with “Draw until your heart reaches the boiling point.”

After some Q/A over his prints and originals, he invited us to one of his classes. We were all pretty stunned, and rushed to the nearest convenience store to get some lunch beforehand.

Not that it’s very interesting, but I had Takoyaki for the first time, alongside a Final fantasy Dissidia potion, which apparently debuted on this very day. I bought many more later to sell on eBay to other unfortunate Americans. I have to reimburse myself for this trip somehow.

But they tasted really bad. The black ones at least.

The workshop was prety interesting, it was mostly on cross-hatching, but what I was more interested in was seeing the Manga students.

But, I had to leave early as I had plans to see Ayumi one more time.

It was pretty fun to show off who I’d just been with. I showed them photos of the originals for Calling and her mother muttered some awe in Japanese.

We just went around Ginza a bit, specifically to a paper store in he middle. Her mom knew quite a but about calligraphy so I learned a lot about sumi-e brushes and their specific uses.

In Which There is Collaboration

I've been thinking lately... how incredibly cool it is to be at a school where collaboration is so encouraged.... or maybe it's just my major.

I got to be a werewolf in a friend's Vis. Effects film. Dressed up in this awesomely bad costume and run around in a graveyard. Then another friend who's in Interactive Something-Or-Other Game Design is creating a game (on paper) and was encouraged by his teacher to get friends to do some concept art.

Despite thinking I had absolutely no time, I did some anyway. I like this kind of thing. There isn't much pressure so I can just draw whatever. I even convinced myself I didn't have to take time looking for reference. True enough it doesn't make for a good drawing, but it helps to loosen up a bit. I need some time to draw for myself during project crunch time.
Since the game is based on Dante's Inferno, and there was no specification on what I should do, I had to draw Lucifer (Final Boss? Heck yes.). Of course, I spent no time on research so I didn't really remember what the 9th Circle of Hell looked like other than ice and Lucifer halfway encased in ice. So I just made a Biblical kind of Lucifer, like a pretty angel with horns or something. Nothing very creative.

He told me later about Dante's Satan having three faces and six wings that beat the air to get free and constantly re-freeze the area over.

So here's a more appropriate vicious dragon sort of boss. I don't really like the drawing though, so it's smaller.

Then a character design of Dante, based on said friend because he asked for it. I'm trying to get more stylized with my imagined figures, but this is ridiculous. So much for practice.