Taste the rainbow!
The Moriya Shrine on the far left is by the incomparable U-Joe – one of Russia’s finest Toho illustrators.
A section was left uncolored because it will be replaced by the work of another illustrator, Rebecca Ree.
Gensokyo Rainbow (Complete)
June 16th, 2013Ten Desires Panorama (Complete)
June 9th, 2013
You other brothers can’t deny
May 21st, 2013Back in the day, when H.C.Staff was an anime blog, I lamented that the first glimpse America had of the wonderful art of the moe illustrator Goto-P was largely a waste of time.
Fortunately, Kantoku, one of the greatest moe illustrators of all time, makes his US debut with a series of much higher quality: The Hentai Prince and the Stony Cat. With the anime already showing and the translated manga already in print, it is one of two titles (the other being Daily Lives of High School Boys) that I am looking forward to buying for the first time in forever.
Scroll Project Backgrounds
May 18th, 2013Some of you may be familiar with the AWA Touhou Scroll Project, a collaboration project of various artists from across the English-speaking Toho fanbase. The objective is to create a scroll containing every Toho character from The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil to the present day, with each character illustrated by a different artist. I didn’t volunteer for the project because I’m not that good at drawing characters, but eventually I was recruited to do some backgrounds.
Here’s what I have so far:
Phantasmagoria of Flower View – Imperishable Night
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With characters
Forbidden Scrollery – Ten Desires
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With characters
Go check them out here because they’ll get covered by the characters on the final product.
Flower View
April 28th, 2013For this.
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Swords to Plowshares
April 14th, 2013
Use Your Illusion – Pages 03-04
April 7th, 2013A long time ago, I had the following conversation with my brother:
Me: My boss is a jackass. I want to quit my job.
Brother: Your job pays extremely well and quitting would make you lose your worker’s visa. Don’t be such a drama queen.
Me: Don’t you need a worker’s visa too? Why don’t you apply for a job at my company?
Brother: I guess I can do that.
(One interview later…)
Brother: Your boss is a jackass. Quit your job.
To tell the truth, my boss at the time was not really a jackass. He worked himself as hard as he worked any of us and donated a lot of money to advance education in poor countries. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t a nightmare to work for. He just didn’t understand the point of view of someone who used the job to pay the bills and needed free time to do what they really wanted to do. It never occurred to him that working Saturdays and Sundays for a month would not go over well with people who didn’t love their job as much as he did.
I quit that job.
Illustration: Sakana
Page 01
Page 02
Page 03
Page 04
You may notice that the font has reverted to the Autumn Children font and the screentone has disappeared. This is because I plan to execute everything in plain black and white first, then work with my publisher on the typesetting and screentone. (Those of you who bought the paper version of Autumn Children have seen that the font and screentone are different from the ones on this site – thanks to my publisher who replaced them herself.) I will be able to proceed from now on at the rate of two pages a week, like with Autumn Children.
Everybody wants Reisen
April 7th, 2013After finishing the second page of Use Your Illusion, I stopped. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go through with it. I felt like I had typecast myself, and should do something new, something with more action, something that wasn’t an optimistic story filled with round-faced children.
I contacted my brother (a far better writer than myself) and he promised to give me a story to work with.
Then, at Sakura-Con:
Sanae (male cosplayer with amazing outfit): Your Toho books are awesome. I’ll take one copy of each.
Me: Thank you.
Sanae: What’s your next book going to be like?
Me: I’m not sure. I started on a Youmu x Reisen book… (takes out a cheap inkjet print of the Use Your Illusion cover.)
Sanae: And of course it has Sanae.
Me: It’s a rule on Pixiv that all Youmu x Reisen pairings must be moderated by Sanae.
Sanae: I’m glad you know the rules. Just last week I read a doujin where Tewi gives Sanae a potion and she drinks it like this… (poses with a foot up on a box like Captain Morgan and pretends to drink a potion.)
Me: And Sanae turns into a small catgirl, and proceeds to troll the crap out of Youmu and Reisen.
Sanae: Wait, you know that doujin?
Me: Nyan-Pani, by Soichiro Hoshino.
Sanae: I approve the hell out of your Youmu x Reisen book. You better have copies for sale next year.
Me: I’ll think about it.
The Learning Pad (14 hours) – COMPLETE
March 24th, 2013Thanks to my allergy medication, I’m currently on a $2 per day “Breathing-the-Air Tax”, but despite the whole being dependent on medicine for a normal life thing, I’m actually feeling pretty good – neither spacey nor congested in the face of a high pollen count and looking forward to the convention.
So anyway, the world needs some more Cirno x Suwako:
It’s based on The Learning Pad in Port Washington, Wisconsin.
Sixten @ Sakura-Con 2013, March 29-31
March 16th, 2013
From March 29-31, I will be representing my publisher, DoujinPress, at Sakura-Con. I will be staffing a table and selling Fairy Ring, Autumn Children, and books by the other DoujinPress authors.
Also in attendance will be DoujinPress owner and yuri queen Kira, who is driving up from California, and fellow DoujinPress author Melanie Herring.
Spring is here and my allergies are worse than they’ve ever been. I’m spaced out from all the medicine I’m taking, although that’s way better than not being able to breathe through the nose. I also have a sinus headache that will not go away and keeps me from drawing or playing video games. In my experience I get used to the medicine after a while and the headaches stop, but right now all I want to do is sleep. I’m taking a break from everything except my job for the next week or so.
Things should be better by the time the convention rolls around. If you’re attending, I hope to see you there.
Edit: (March 23) Pollen counts are high but my medicine has proved equal to the task, and I’m neither congested not spacey. Let’s do this!