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More Yu-Gi-Oh!

I’m fifteen for a moment

Caught in between ten and twenty

And I’m just dreaming,

Counting the ways to where you are….

Time does fly, and here I am doing #1,500—my goodness. At least there’s a clearer idea for #1,600. ^^

Was ripping a bunch of my older CDs to my computer and got majorly nostalgic—“ 100 Years” by Five For Fighting might be the title song, but on the list of songs that just hit me hard while I was listening to them and working on this:

Restless – Allison Kraus and Union Station

Anything But Mine – Kenny Chesney

Trip Around the Sun – Jimmy Buffet and Martina McBride

Days Go By – Keith Urban

I Go Back – Kenny Chesney

Young – Kenny Chesney

And I love how a song about nostalgia (“I Go Back”) makes me so super-nostalgic now—that was back in the early 2000s, when I was on the other side of teendom, Saturday mornings were a solid block of cartoons, Shonen Jump was still printed, we were making our own CDs with me hauling my CD player and headphones everywhere, Pokémon Ruby constantly going on my Gameboy Advance SP, years lasted forever—and Yu-Gi-Oh! was the hottest thing on TV for me. Five million really excellent shows, movies, and games hitting the stands all at once, finally able to get my hands on some comic books, and the biggest demands on me were a handful of chores and my school. I so very much miss that time—and I think what I miss the most was that constant feeling of adventure. All those shows I watched, I was invested in—and convinced everyone went to the same school, because darn all those schools looked alike inside. I was honestly heartbroken when Yu-Gi-Oh! ended—cried like a baby. I haven’t had a show do that to me since.

Granted, I can look back now and see where there were flaws with the show—we’re talking actual flaws, not 4Kids! translations. To my dying day, I will always despise the DOMA arc—that decision Yami made would have made sense three seasons prior, but not then; the whole season was just tossing around the idiot ball, honest. And the obsession with the past with no consideration for the future—probably the only ones looking ahead were Kaiba and Téa; Kaiba was vilified for that decision and eventually fell to obsessing with the past, and Téa was mostly brushed off. Granting Yami—and maybe even Bakura for the redemption arc—the opportunity to finally live their lives out would have been great. As it was, the ending was so abrupt I wonder if Kazuki Takahashi didn’t get tired of it—Darkside of Dimensions gave us some much-needed closure—and allowed me to finally let go a little and focus on other things—but it shouldn’t have taken ten years.

Speaking of that movie—it gave me that same feeling I used to always get on Saturday mornings, of being so excited and jazzed that I had to run around the house to burn it off during commercials. I miss being that excited about shows, about the adventure they posed, the mystery—Yami at that time was an enigma, and there was always a thrill that came from finding out more about his adventures. I was obsessed, and that show made me certain that I wanted to be a cartoonist and draw for Yu-Gi-Oh!—I was under the impression that I could work for the show like you would work for DC or Marvel. I had very little concept of either copyright or the differences between American and Japanese cultures at the time.

And then there was this episode, that I emulated here in this piece—where Yugi sets Yami up with a date with Téa. I had started following the show around episode three (didn’t get into it right away because I thought it looked weird, watched it once because it was between Pokémon and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and that was all she wrote), and this was the first episode I could recall seeing that didn’t focus exclusively on duel monsters, or some big bad—it was just Yami and Téa hanging out.

I knew right then that if they never picked up another card and turned the show into a situational series, following the characters from day to day and adventure to adventure, I would still watch it. And I honestly think that was the episode that convinced me that the cards weren’t important at all—and to be honest, I can’t think of a single time where I was focused on the card game. To me, the characters were the important ones, and the moments where I could see them shine were the best. Full Sail University may emphasize plot over any other point, but to me, the order of importance is: characters, world, plot. Because it’s the characters that we get emotionally invested in, and how they react to the world they live in provides us with the plot. It’s why I could never really get into the later spin-offs—Digimon pulled it off, because they focused on the characters and made sure to give them a proper resolution, unlike Yu-Gi-Oh! (even if I always missed the last episodes, darn it). Being so focused on the card game was like replacing Bo and Luke Duke in The Dukes of Hazzard because they thought the car was the star (I kid you not).

But sometimes the most you can learn from someone is what not to do—like failing to focus on the characters and giving them a proper resolution. I’ve been focusing more on my original work Glint and the Pirates for a while, and I know where they start, and I know where they end, and I know the scenes that I want to be the absolute most satisfying scenes in the whole show, and the notes I’m going to have to hit to get there—now it’s just a matter of filling in the blanks. I want to make a show that gets people as jazzed as I was every Saturday morning, that makes them cry when it ends, but in a good way. It may take me another year before I can start pitching it to people, but my goodness, when I do I want it to be the very best like no one ever was. And I’ve ended up sharing my Yu-Gi-Oh! stories with the world anyway, so win.

But I’ve talked for over a page and a half about the reasoning behind the piece—now to talk about the piece proper.

Used what’s turning out to be my favorite painterly brush and banged this out in a few days—and used the same colors for highlighting and shading to tie everything together, which was nice. What wasn’t nice was Téa’s face—it took three times for me to get her face looking right. The first time I had spent about thirty minutes on it before erasing the whole head and trying again, and then the second time the mouth wasn’t looking right, so erase and try again. It was fun painting with a focus on the underlying structures of the body though, and keeping the manga look while still giving attention to basic structure and shading. And then including thirteen more people in the background, with enough detail to their silhouettes to make them identifiable, but not enough to take away from Yami and Téa having a moment—so it kind of looks like they’re talking about them. And Mom likes the effect I got too, so that’s nice.

And holding my hands the way Yami does there so I knew how to stack them—posing for the win! Why didn’t my first college pitch our art classes like that oi.

Is that it? That’s it, I think. And I suppose I should take my own advice—look to the past, but the future as well. Here’s to deviation #1,600!

Yu-Gi-Oh! © 1996 Kazuki Takahashi

“ 100 Years” © 2004 Five For Fighting

Done in Adobe Photoshop (with a Wacom Tablet!)

FanFiction | Etsy | Patreon | AO3

Fifteen there’s still time for you

Time to buy, time to lose yourself

Within a morning star.

Fifteen I’m all right with you

Fifteen, there’s never a wish better than this,

When you’ve only got a hundred years to live….

Description

More Yu-Gi-Oh!

I’m fifteen for a moment

Caught in between ten and twenty

And I’m just dreaming,

Counting the ways to where you are….

Time does fly, and here I am doing #1,500—my goodness. At least there’s a clearer idea for #1,600. ^^

Was ripping a bunch of my older CDs to my computer and got majorly nostalgic—“ 100 Years” by Five For Fighting might be the title song, but on the list of songs that just hit me hard while I was listening to them and working on this:

Restless – Allison Kraus and Union Station

Anything But Mine – Kenny Chesney

Trip Around the Sun – Jimmy Buffet and Martina McBride

Days Go By – Keith Urban

I Go Back – Kenny Chesney

Young – Kenny Chesney

And I love how a song about nostalgia (“I Go Back”) makes me so super-nostalgic now—that was back in the early 2000s, when I was on the other side of teendom, Saturday mornings were a solid block of cartoons, Shonen Jump was still printed, we were making our own CDs with me hauling my CD player and headphones everywhere, Pokémon Ruby constantly going on my Gameboy Advance SP, years lasted forever—and Yu-Gi-Oh! was the hottest thing on TV for me. Five million really excellent shows, movies, and games hitting the stands all at once, finally able to get my hands on some comic books, and the biggest demands on me were a handful of chores and my school. I so very much miss that time—and I think what I miss the most was that constant feeling of adventure. All those shows I watched, I was invested in—and convinced everyone went to the same school, because darn all those schools looked alike inside. I was honestly heartbroken when Yu-Gi-Oh! ended—cried like a baby. I haven’t had a show do that to me since.

Granted, I can look back now and see where there were flaws with the show—we’re talking actual flaws, not 4Kids! translations. To my dying day, I will always despise the DOMA arc—that decision Yami made would have made sense three seasons prior, but not then; the whole season was just tossing around the idiot ball, honest. And the obsession with the past with no consideration for the future—probably the only ones looking ahead were Kaiba and Téa; Kaiba was vilified for that decision and eventually fell to obsessing with the past, and Téa was mostly brushed off. Granting Yami—and maybe even Bakura for the redemption arc—the opportunity to finally live their lives out would have been great. As it was, the ending was so abrupt I wonder if Kazuki Takahashi didn’t get tired of it—Darkside of Dimensions gave us some much-needed closure—and allowed me to finally let go a little and focus on other things—but it shouldn’t have taken ten years.

Speaking of that movie—it gave me that same feeling I used to always get on Saturday mornings, of being so excited and jazzed that I had to run around the house to burn it off during commercials. I miss being that excited about shows, about the adventure they posed, the mystery—Yami at that time was an enigma, and there was always a thrill that came from finding out more about his adventures. I was obsessed, and that show made me certain that I wanted to be a cartoonist and draw for Yu-Gi-Oh!—I was under the impression that I could work for the show like you would work for DC or Marvel. I had very little concept of either copyright or the differences between American and Japanese cultures at the time.

And then there was this episode, that I emulated here in this piece—where Yugi sets Yami up with a date with Téa. I had started following the show around episode three (didn’t get into it right away because I thought it looked weird, watched it once because it was between Pokémon and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and that was all she wrote), and this was the first episode I could recall seeing that didn’t focus exclusively on duel monsters, or some big bad—it was just Yami and Téa hanging out.

I knew right then that if they never picked up another card and turned the show into a situational series, following the characters from day to day and adventure to adventure, I would still watch it. And I honestly think that was the episode that convinced me that the cards weren’t important at all—and to be honest, I can’t think of a single time where I was focused on the card game. To me, the characters were the important ones, and the moments where I could see them shine were the best. Full Sail University may emphasize plot over any other point, but to me, the order of importance is: characters, world, plot. Because it’s the characters that we get emotionally invested in, and how they react to the world they live in provides us with the plot. It’s why I could never really get into the later spin-offs—Digimon pulled it off, because they focused on the characters and made sure to give them a proper resolution, unlike Yu-Gi-Oh! (even if I always missed the last episodes, darn it). Being so focused on the card game was like replacing Bo and Luke Duke in The Dukes of Hazzard because they thought the car was the star (I kid you not).

But sometimes the most you can learn from someone is what not to do—like failing to focus on the characters and giving them a proper resolution. I’ve been focusing more on my original work Glint and the Pirates for a while, and I know where they start, and I know where they end, and I know the scenes that I want to be the absolute most satisfying scenes in the whole show, and the notes I’m going to have to hit to get there—now it’s just a matter of filling in the blanks. I want to make a show that gets people as jazzed as I was every Saturday morning, that makes them cry when it ends, but in a good way. It may take me another year before I can start pitching it to people, but my goodness, when I do I want it to be the very best like no one ever was. And I’ve ended up sharing my Yu-Gi-Oh! stories with the world anyway, so win.

But I’ve talked for over a page and a half about the reasoning behind the piece—now to talk about the piece proper.

Used what’s turning out to be my favorite painterly brush and banged this out in a few days—and used the same colors for highlighting and shading to tie everything together, which was nice. What wasn’t nice was Téa’s face—it took three times for me to get her face looking right. The first time I had spent about thirty minutes on it before erasing the whole head and trying again, and then the second time the mouth wasn’t looking right, so erase and try again. It was fun painting with a focus on the underlying structures of the body though, and keeping the manga look while still giving attention to basic structure and shading. And then including thirteen more people in the background, with enough detail to their silhouettes to make them identifiable, but not enough to take away from Yami and Téa having a moment—so it kind of looks like they’re talking about them. And Mom likes the effect I got too, so that’s nice.

And holding my hands the way Yami does there so I knew how to stack them—posing for the win! Why didn’t my first college pitch our art classes like that oi.

Is that it? That’s it, I think. And I suppose I should take my own advice—look to the past, but the future as well. Here’s to deviation #1,600!

Yu-Gi-Oh! © 1996 Kazuki Takahashi

“ 100 Years” © 2004 Five For Fighting

Done in Adobe Photoshop (with a Wacom Tablet!)

FanFiction | Etsy | Patreon | AO3

Fifteen there’s still time for you

Time to buy, time to lose yourself

Within a morning star.

Fifteen I’m all right with you

Fifteen, there’s never a wish better than this,

When you’ve only got a hundred years to live….