Okay, I am now officially expanding this story with an editor, and I feel like I’m finally in my own wheelhouse for once. Just hope I can manage this between the 3048461 translation deadlines I have in the next month

Also if you read it and like it, please comment!! I appreciate every comment I've gotten so far and I really need some external validation right now...

When you meet your childhood friend again, but a lot more has changed than you realized (1/6)

Thanks to everyone who read (and especially) commented! I tried to post this where my minimal JP audience could read and got crickets lmao…trying to tell myself it’s the shitty algorithm Over There but it is hard. Will figure out the translation for this soon…

Posting the Japanese version of this comic here for now. Will post the English in a few days or so (want to get it done within the month) (1/5)

The sad thing about the past year is that I can’t even be fully excited about getting business cards from editors anymore bc I am painfully aware that there is a real chance my efforts won’t lead anywhere I’ll soldier through regardless, but I wish I could be as blindly optimistic as I used to be

I want to translate the short comic I sold today and put it up for y’all but I…am unsure how to do it. I didn’t really think about how much of a challenge this particular story would be 😭

Not to anyone at Comitia: I will probably be back at my booth around 1:00!

Me and @mamoan.bsky.social will be at F28a during Comitia tomorrow! I will probably be doing portfolio reviews for the first couple of hours, so if you want to see me for sure I'd suggest dropping by past noon! I somehow finished the comic...only 12 pages, but still!

Let me tell you, nothing is a bigger hit to your confidence than seeing your work printed awfully

Okay. Gotta tone 11 pages in one day. I can do this. Phew.

楽紡☆。.:＊・゜

NEW SERIES ANNOUNCEMENT: The Princess Groom 🎀 It's time for one beautiful doll to give her new and very sullen betrothed a taste of true husband material! In this gender swapping romantic comedy, SHE takes the reins!

I will finish this comic even if I am consumed by self-hatred the entire time

It looks like I will miraculously finish my comic! Come by 東4ホール to see me and @sakaimii.bsky.social with her original comic on Sun. Feb 22!

Killing a French vampire with bread is painstaking.

trying to finish this translation so I can spend the next two days just drawing comics...I've been way too swamped lately...

I’m gonna defend Japan here and say that over recent years a lot of legitimately good restaurants with more or less accurate Mexican food have popped up, particularly in Tokyo. He has no excuse!!! I remember how dire it used to be…it doesn’t have to be that way anymore…

Ugh, my decision to not do the storyboards for this comic beforehand is biting me in the ass…suddenly the thing I planned out doesn’t seem to fit the tempo of what I’ve drawn so far

I'm so happy...their pies are so good and I was really sad when they closed!! Also I will never forget how Megatokyo was my first introduction to this place lmao

progress is being made

謎の萌え絵を描いてたらこんな時間…だと？ (気が向いたら手直ししてXに上げるかも)

Hazel and I gave a presentation for some senior illustration students at Emily Carr today! Unfortunately I didn't get any photos but I do have this slide from our powerpoint to share with everyone.

Over on threads someone just use ai;dr and we all need to adopt that right quick

finally watched psychopass season 1, which I enjoyed and is kind of a trip watching at this specific point in history. But why the hell is the best rendered scene in all 22 eps when Ginoza is going through the worst moment of his life. I can't forget his face. It was so beautiful and I am horrible

But it's just frustrating that it's endemic, like, everywhere. Maybe it's just my bad luck. Feels like I can't even trust things that look promising because I don't know when suddenly whoever I'm talking with will get transferred or suddenly ghost me.

In positive news, I have found a good community in the other mangaka I've had the pleasure of becoming acquaintances with, mostly women. Everyone knows how hard it is, so it's easy to talk to people. It's sobering that even the most successful creators I know have gone through some real shit...

Two weeks ago I went to several publishers to see if anyone was interested in working with me and hopefully picking up the pitch that didn’t work out at my last place but I only got one calling card and even then they weren’t too interested in the pitch.

Don’t have anything to link at the moment but I am a black manga artist based in Japan whose small goal is to put brown people in my published work even if it’s hard when your audience isn’t really expecting them without a “reason” lol

i'm on a real 90's rnb kick right now and honestly we really need to bring back the sheer degree of male yearning that were in those songs back, please

Whatever. Who cares

I want to watch and read more current anime and manga but right now it’s just reminding me of how I’m still in the pit of despair with my own career so I’m just going to have to catch up on, like, everything some time later

what I wouldn’t do for some lando at tanta right now

A bunch of women who look to be in their 50s~ are standing in front of me on this train. One has a big bright red itabag of Riku from idolish7

The truth of video game production is that production labor is a fixed entity; the work of production *must* be done for the game to ship and it will be done. The difference between good and bad producers is that good producers do it, while bad producers have it done around them.

I don't know why they need to make short AI films about the American Revolution when the perfect one was created 18 years ago www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbRo...

Managed to get a miracle extension on one deadline and immediately after I get a translation request with a super tight deadline lmao... I'm happy for the work, but when it rains it really pours, doesn't it?

Using a comprehensive dataset of posts from a major platform for anime- and manga-style artwork to study the impact of the launch of a prominent text-to-image generative AI, from Sueyoul Kim, Ginger Zhe Jin, and Eungik Lee www.nber.org/papers/w34733

I now see why I’m so bad at writing actual romance. I have, like, negative rizz. No I will not elaborate on that

Yesterday Aster my bard performed a sweet concert during D n D but, as is apparently in character for him, rolled super shittily in the beginning so I had him break his fiddle, take out his lyre and perform a riff so cool it resurrected a dead NPC

Day two. This time I went to Afternoon. As I expected, what I had to show was not up their alley but I had a great chat with the editor who liked the general idea of the other concept I’m developing (with the boy and girl I shared some days ago), and (cont)

Now I remember why I hated going to companies to show my work again…I have to do this tomorrow, too… I know I have to keep at it but I just feel at the bottom of my rope right now

怪盗さんと団長さん

幸せにしに来てくれたりば〜れさん🫶

A lot of this boils down to a severe lack of confidence on my part but I’ll admit it, I’m terribly intimidated of these circumstances. I thought I had figured out my niche and now it seems like it’s somewhere else entirely and I don’t really know where that somewhere else is.

Anyway, I'm doing a round of visits to different publishers this week. Today was shoujo, tomorrow is shoujo, and I have two seinen at the end of the week. We'll see where any of this goes

just to cover my bases, all I ever say here are based off of my personal experiences, so take that as you will I'm just one fledgling creator

It's less about topics and more about like...the way things are told, I guess? I'm having a hard time explaining this but at least as of right now, the wide majority of JP readers on the shoujo/joseishi side favor stories that they can, even if just slightly, self-insert themselves into.