What Happened to This Week?

This is a bit of a continuation of last Friday/Saturday's post. XD My plans to do a lot of crafty things went completely out the window, as did keeping up with my normal web stuff, which included my blog. I pretty much spent the entire week in vacation-mode. It was a weird, but good experience. Usually even when I go on vacation, I'm working on art or crocheting something. Instead, I slept.... a lot. And, I watched anime... a lot. This was a very good thing because I also spent most of the week feeling ill, so it was nice to not have any immediate demands on my time or energy so I could rest up.

Now, if I was a much better organized person, I'd have had several pre-written blog posts that I could have snuck in, but that fails at the organized-requirement. I've never been a super organized person, so yeah... no pre-prepared posts here. Everything's written pretty much real-time. The plus side is that everything I post is pertinent and recent. On the down side, there will inevitably be times where I miss posting. Usually it won't be as bad as this where I miss a whole week--I think final count is this: I completely missed posting anything Monday and Wednesday, and today (Friday) and last Friday's posts are just random, why I didn't post anything pertinent posts. There will probably be vacation periods where I miss posting. Also, around convention times it's entirely likely that I'll be missing 1-2 posts right before the convention. That's just how things are around here.

This past week, my mom and I watched all of Ouran High School Host Club and all of Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood. We also watched a couple of episodes each of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and Soul Eater. She enjoyed all of it, especially FMA. It was fun rewatching both series. To any who have not seen them yet, go watch them.... now. For real. That's about all we did though, so that's about it for this post. =P We'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming Monday.

Kung Fu Makes Everything Better

This Friday's blog is brought to you by all thing's kung fu. I think martial arts is awesome. I've always wanted to take lessons for martial arts in some form or another--I'm not picky. My parents weren't too in to that idea, and I took ballet lessons instead for most of my early life--not that I'm complaining; I liked dance. I just wanted kung fu lessons too. I can only blame my parents though for the earlier years. Now I'm older, and I still haven't gotten around to taking lessons. That's my fault. XD One of these days I'll change that. Maybe I'll find a place where I can sign the whole family up once Logan gets a little bit older and capable of better following directions.

Considering how awesome I consider kung fu to be, it's no surprise that Forbidden Kingdom ranks up there as one of my favorite movies. Seriously, it's Jackie Chan and Jet Li. How could a movie with such a pair of awesome kung fu artists not be great? This was one of the few movies I actually went to the movie theater to see, and the only reason I really wanted to watch it was to see the inevitable battle between Jackie Chan and Jet Li. The movie did not disappoint. I got awesome kung fu scenes; the story line and dialogue were also fun. Next to Lord of the Rings, it's one of my favorite movies to stick in when I'm working on the more tedious and mindless parts of cosplay or art projects. Another good martial arts movie is Kung Fu Hustle. If you can't tell, my favorites do tend to be the ones that don't try to take themselves seriously.

This also ties in with one of my favorite additions to Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood. (No, this really wasn't an excuse to fangasm more about how much I love FMA). With the addition of the Xing Characters, Ling, May Chang, Lan Fan, and Fu, FMA got more than a little bit better. =P For realz, kung fu makes everything better. So do zombies for that matter, and FMA: Brotherhood added those too, but that's something for another blog. Not only did FMA add straight-up martial arts with Ling and his pair of ninja bodyguards, they combined martial arts and alchemy with May Chang's alchehestry (or however you spell it) techniques. *squee* Okay, I'm going to stop now.

In short, I really enjoy a good martial arts show. It appears in many, although not all, of my favorite movies and anime. You can see homages to that in the fact that I have three martial arts based designs in the character archetype set: the Ninja, the Wise Master, and the Drunken Master. I'm planning to do a few more archetypes; maybe I'll work in a few more with kung fu themes. I might even do a Forbidden Kingdom bookmark set. How awesome would that be?

FMA on Etsy

If you can't tell, I really like FMA, and I really enjoyed watching Brotherhood. That should be fairly obvious considering this is now the 3rd blog post on this subject. I thought it would be fun to share some of the neat creative things anime fans on Etsy have made for FMA. I was a little saddened by the large number of people who just printed official art screenshots put it on a t-shirt or keychain or whatever. I don't want to jump into the debate over fanart--I appreciate seeing fanart of my favorite characters on Etsy and in Artist Alleys, but I prefer fanart where I can see an artist's unique style and interpretation of a character. So anyways, onto a sampling of some of my favorites from what I found.

Full Metal Alchemist Keychain by naniwear	Cosplay Onigiri by MerlinEmrys
Edward Elric Plushie by MongrelTerritory	FMA State Pocketwatch Logo by aradiadiane
FMA - Happy Al Button by zelas	Roy Mustang by thedogandmonkeyshow

If you're interested in checking out the big treasury, you can here.

Credit for the code for the mini-treasury goes to Autumn2May. Find out how to make your own mini-treasury on her blog.

I Am So Drawing FMA Bookmarks

Over the last couple of days I have been attempting to finish watching Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood. I just finished Disc 5, and I have 3 more discs in my possession left to watch. The last two don't come out until July, so I'll either have to wait for those, or succumb to the temptation to watch it illegally online somewhere. XD So far, I am in fangirl heaven. I love (mostly) what they've done with the story and the characters. In this blog, I'm going to try and highlight some of the cool and new aspects of Brotherhood without giving away too many spoilers (I hope).

First of all, Brotherhood follows the manga's storyline, at least that's what I've been told by someone whom I'd consider to be a credible source. I'm not going to say the original anime's story was bad--in fact, I'm going to try to not to offer any kind of comparative judgment here; I honestly think both are good. Anyways, some highlights of things that make Brotherhoods story different: 1) The homunculuses (homunculi?) are different, or at least made differently--I think this is cool because it makes it so they can add new twists and unexpected turns to the plot. 2) The motivations behind the villain(s)--keep in mind I haven't finished the series yet--are different, therefore their schemes and plans lead to new plot developments, and old events from the original FMA story that make it into Brotherhood are altered. 3) The plot of Brotherhood (at least in my opinion) is less Elric-centric. I'm not saying this is good or bad, but the plot in Brotherhood is bigger than the Elric's goals and motivations, which were the central focus of the original FMA. Personally, I love that FMA: Brotherhood is different from the original FMA. I'm glad it's not a literal remake of the first with the same characters and plot. Brotherhood's plot has a lot of new and exciting twists that keep me on the edge of my seat; it recaptures a lot of the excitement I experienced watching the first.

I'd also like to highlight another aspect of Brotherhood that I've enjoyed. Brotherhood includes the original cast that I grew to know and love in the original FMA, but it also adds a lot of cool new faces to its character lineup plus gives some older characters either more of a role or different roles within the story. Brotherhood introduces the countries that border Amestra, the country in which most of FMA takes place. In particular, we get to meet two characters from Xing. My favorite was May Chang--she's cute, adorable, uses healing alchemy (under a different name), and has a pet dwarf panda; how could I not love her? The panda alone would be enough to endear me, not to mention my attraction toward priest and healer classes in most games. I also liked Ling with his pair of ninja lackeys. These two made an excellent edition to FMA (adding kung-fu to anything makes it better right?) XD I just got introduced to Olivier Mira Armstrong--Alex Louis Armstrong's older sister--and I have high hopes that she will be just as awesome as her brother.

I don't want to say much more--I don't want to give too much away because you should go watch this anime. =D I will say that as soon as I finish beefing up the original design art side of my art table, I am definitely drawing an epic FMA bookmark set which will probably include at least 20 bookmarks. FMA is still filled with a lot of awesome characters; I'm not sure I could honestly narrow it down to a smaller set because there are just too many characters that I like. I'll stop now before I go too far into my fangirlish side. In conclusion FMA: Brotherhood is excellent; go watch it if you haven't. 

FMA: Brotherhood

This past weekend, my cosplay group got together to work on our cosplays and skit for Animazement. Only one of us actually got cosplay work done. I got sick again--that's my excuse. I spent Saturday curled up in a ball on the couch trying not to be too close to anyone. We did get our skit written, so I won't say the day was a complete flop--at least as far as intended work goes. One of our members had recently acquired Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood, and she brought it with her. So, most of us spent Saturday distracted by that.

Sketch by Christopher Sabat

I've heard all kinds of comparisons between Brotherhood and the original FMA, from art style to story and so on. I'm not going to compare the two. The original FMA was awesome. I will concede that the ending was a bit weird, but compared with, say, the end of Evangelion... I could live with it. Otherwise, the story was good. Above all, I loved the characters in FMA. I especially loved Armstrong--off topic: At Anime USA last year, I got a signed sketch by Armstrong's voice actor! *squee* It lives next to my sewing machine (see picture).

*cough* Back on topic... I think the only thing that disappointed me about the original FMA was the fact that it ended. It left me wanting more... a lot more. I was very excited to hear about the release of Brotherhood. Supposedly it follows the manga better. I've only read the first 3 volumes of the manga, so I can't say. I can say, however, that Brotherhood is giving me exactly what I wanted. I'm getting more Full Metal Alchemist. It's kind of like reading a really good fanfiction, except better, and it's official instead of fan-produced.

If I had to choose, I do think I like Brotherhood better so far; I like the faster pace, and I feel like the characters are a little more dynamic. For example, in Mustang's fight with Lust, he transmutes the air into hydrogen while Havoc tosses in a lighter (Mustang's gloves are wet, so he can't do his standard snap explosion thing). To my knowledge, Mustang never did anything other than the snap explosion in the original FMA. After watching this combat, I was like: =O I didn't know Mustang could actually transmute something other than "make it go boom" (even if indirectly something still went "boom" in this fight too). I still like the original, but I have to say I'm completely enamored with Brotherhood, and I can't wait to watch the rest.

The Evolution of Anime Tarot

 The process of deciding what characters to put in each slot for the Anime Tarot set has been ambiguous at best. It is something that has been in a constant state of modification--at least until a card is finished; then, for my sanity, the card is set in stone. As most good writers can attest, you can go back and edit and tweak stories (or in this case the card list) endlessly. I drew the line at the point a given card is finished.

Originally my husband and I had brainstormed a long list of characters and just pulled from that. We were just trying to find enough characters to fill all the slots. At this point the list consisted of primarily characters that we liked (which means it was at least 75% Bleach, Full Metal Alchemist, Final Fantasy, and Clamp). This more basic goal changed. After the Major Arcana and the Swords sets were finished, I started reanalyzing the character list I was using to assign slots for the set. Instead of keeping to the original list, I decided I'd rather see how many different series I could represent in the set. There are some cards from the Majors and Swords I would have changed out, but they were already finished, and I wasn't about to touch that. So, I highlighted all the characters from series I had already drawn from or had multiple characters (exceptions being the Kings and Queens). I sat down with a committee of friends and we rehashed over the remaining three suits.


Some characters stayed the same--for example the King and Queen of Cups, Sakura and Syaoran from Tsubasa Chronicles. I already had Fai as The Star and Kurogane as the Eight of Swords, so Sakura and Syaoran were high on the list of characters I wanted to take out. I spent a lot of time looking for replacements. However, the King and Queen of Cups represent an emotionally mature man and woman--anyone familiar with anime can relate to how difficult it is to find one character with that quality, let alone two from the same anime. And so, Sakura and Syaoran remained the Queen and King of Cups.


For a lot of the slots, we did find adequate alternatives. For example, the Seven of Wands was originally going to be Light from Deathnote. He had been highlight since I had already drawn L as Death. Several suggestions came up while discussing this card. The first replacement for Light was Kamina from Gurren Lagan. Kamina eventually moved into the Three of Wands (leads by example) replacing Hikari from Magic Knight Rayearth--it was determined that I had way too much from Clamp even if they were spread out over at least four different series, and I'll admit I'm guilty there. What can I say, I'm a big fan of Clamp's stuff. Heero Yuy was suggested along with some explanation for how he fit the card from a couple of friends who had seen Gundam--as of yet I still have not watched even one episode of any version of Gundam.


In conclusion, we tried to put a lot of variety into the Anime Tarot set. The choices were, in the end, still limited by what we (myself, my husband, and a couple of friends) have seen--I will be the first to admit there are many anime series out there that I have not even heard of. Then, the selections were also affected by my personal tastes--when there was a choice between several characters, it frequently boiled down to the one I liked best, or wanted to draw the most.