分类： 美舰本·Pacific

Or what should be titled, the difference faces of a shipgirl.

I’ve mentioned before that Pacific’s really a long-term creative project. The things we want to do – the world creation – takes time to build. As we go ahead and create each shipgirl, though, we do make sure that what we’ve made already meshes with the cast of characters that we’ve built.

What this means is that certain characters who possess strong character traits tend to be used as “yardsticks.” For instance, an important part of a character’s personal ideology is, of course, politics. If I say, make a new shipgirl and go, is she more leftish or rightish, then I’ve immediately got a set of characters whose political viewpoints we’ve mapped out pretty carefully.

I could tell you, she’s “right of Sanny.”

Well, that’s not very helpful. Sanny’s the ur-example of the tree-hugging hippie archetype. She might not be obnoxious and not lacking in common sense, but her obsession with say, recycling, is still played for laughs within the team today.

But if I tell you, she’s “right of Sanny, left of Washington,” then the picture emerges to be more clear. Washington’s from a state with a massive independent streak, after all. Someone right of Washington would probably (in modern day terms) fall under the left-leaning libertarian camp.

Something like this contributes quite a bit to how we design emojis and characters for each shipgirl. We want an emoji to “capture” a key trait or aspect of the shipgirls in question. Along the way, we’ll play with memes and other fun things or whatever’s on Sima’s mind.

Whether that’s Florida being smug (it’s certainly apparent in her only “Pacific” appearance – in 2016)…

or New York’s “DON’T BOTHER ME, I’M WORKING”

Or, well, this.

What you’re going to find is that over time, you tend to build up a collection of character “responses,” and then it kind of snowballs from there.

Here’s an example. While you can see all of our artists got her neutral “portrait, smile for the camera!” face fairly consistently, she’s actually got a pretty big range of facial expressions. From the creeper-*drool* expression to the “I’m so much better than you, thanks” protests to the uh, JOJO face (unfortunately I can’t convince the guys to turn our shipgirls into Fist of the North Star parodies after that. They like to draw cute girls instead of MANLY MEN after all…) when she sees SOMEONE didn’t recycle…

We create each of those pictures for a specific context and a specific occasion. Taken together, though, and I’m pretty happy to see the emerging picture. If Pacific’s like a sword, we’ve only now managed to gather enough supplies to begin melting for the ingot. Gonna take a lot more beatings to get it to where we’d like it to be. 🙂

(Busy these days, so sneaking a question in. Sorry this one should have been answered… 45 days ago xD)

I had the pleasure to recently acquire one of your books and I must say it’s really something. I would like to try my hand at creating art too. Now, since I’ve not an ounce of artistic talent, where do I start? How do I learn? Do I just buy a tablet or something and start?

Hoo boy. Thanks for writing in. This is generally not something I, or anyone else could really answer. I think the big question is whether or not you want to put in the time and effort to practice and just do it.

Specifically, drawing is one of these things where you just simply get better as you draw more, but you’ll plateau eventually after sinking in maybe about twenty or so thousand hours of concrete drawing. Then you’ll figure out if you’re a master or just a good artist.

I did ask our guys, and the unanimous response is that they felt that art school was beneficial to them in some fashion. Sima received formal training in France. November’s “self-taught” (as in, self-taught, but he was naturally talented enough to get into China’s best fine art academy, then got additional training and education after that). In fact, the only one with no formal experience on the team would be me (My training is in mythological literature not in creative writing) and Zero (he just religiously hunts down new ideas and tries a lot of layouts).

However, our artists also do art now professionally as a career. November’s been super busy and he works now in the Chinese film industry. Sima is in some kind of advertising. (I haven’t left out St. Bernard, don’t worry – I just honestly don’t know that much about her so I don’t want to give the wrong information!) In that way, their education was a formal part of their “job training,” so that comes with a caveat. Unless you’re super rich or have a trust fund set-up or want to do art as a career, then you might not consider a heavy investment into art school unless it’s actually a good one.

The other thing of note, as they’ve suggested? Draw on paper. A tablet or electronic canvas have a LOT of advantages like being able to erase mistakes, but the ability to apply force and the nuance is lost on a tablet. As November puts it, if you draw on a tablet you’ll improve very quickly for the first six months and then you’ll stall and plateau. In order for you to draw and not simply trace, you need to learn the basics.

Then here’s an example of St. Bernard’s art. She’s relatively “younger” in terms of art level, and so you can see she has a habit of storyboarding on her notebook. She goes through plenty of sketches before actually putting it on paper, too.

So, yeah. To sum up?

1. Get help (like classes or whatnots) if you decide the cost and benefits are good.
2. If you draw, start with the basics.