Extraordinary Japan

Japan has inspired me a lot. This cherry blossom country has a very unique culture especially in their traditions, festivals, and arts. Their local people really appriciate their own uniqueness, even when international trends were coming in.

Japan's tradition never fades out, there where temples everywhere, in small village nor in big crowded city like Tokyo. They still believes in their strong belief on expelling demons away, by having a charm, praying in temple, drink a "holy" water, even in some part of Japan, parents thought their children to do a kind of "game" which someone pretends to be the ogre or the demon, and kids will throw beans to the ogre. This game were actually means expelling demons away from their home.

Japan also has a lot of festivals. It was estimated around 100000 festivals held per year. These festivals were usually held by temple or shrine, and each shrine or temple held at least one festival per year. There were lots of festivals type too, from religious festivals, fire festivals, dancing festivals, snow festivals, music festivals, performance festivals, and many more. They also had a quiet festival until a wild and dangerous festival. These festivals attracts so much attention from local people in town, outside town, and also tourists.

Beside that, Japan arts is extraordinarily famous. The modern manga, comic books, until the old fashioned prints they were super unique. People around the world knows it. Even international people starts too study them and one of them is me! I love mangas, i love how they are being draw. It has lots of difference compared to American's comics. Japan's manga has less realism than American's, which make it unique but still shows up as a human figure. Thats why I love it. I love extraordinary!

"Rise of the Guardians"

Rise of the Guardians, the best animated movie for me recently. It was based on William Joyce’s The Guardians of Childhood book series and The Man in the Moon short film. Produced by Dream Works animation and distributed by Paramount Pictures. I really love the storyline, how they make it interesting and how they make it as if the "Guardian" was real, not an imaginary form like in some storybooks, and especially how they implicitly made kids to believe not only Jack Frost but also the other guardians. They also made the guardians extraordinary by making them not usual guardians who only do their tasks, but a guardian who protects the children from nightmare like an actual heroes which has their own powers. 

Beside the storyline, this movie has a fascinating animation and design. Especially for the character design, it was very unique and attractive to all ages in my opinion because they make various character from the good looking one, Jack Frost, the pretty one like Toothiana , the cute one like Sandman, outgoing one like Easter Bunny, and the mean one like Pitch Black. 

I was not bored at all while watching this animated movie, since most of animated movie was usually boring because their stories were flat, too childish, and predictable.

studio ghibli's movie "Spirited Away"

Studio Ghibli is one of the famous animation studio in the world. It was originated from Japan and got famous all around the world because of their fascinating anime movie entitled “Spirited Away” which was directed by Hayao Miyazaki and music by Joe Hisaishi in 2001 and dubbed into English adaptation by Walt Disney pictures under supervision of pixar. This movie has gained so many awards because of its tremendous graphic and story. It even overtook “Titanic” on Japanese box office and become the highest grossing film in Japan box office history.

"Spirited Away" cover

It was a animated fantasy movie about a girl and her parents who are moving to a certain place. They got lost and found a long pitch-black tunnel and her parents huge curiosity made her have to go too. Inside, they found a village with no one there. Her parents saw a restaurant and eat there since there was no one watching them. As the time goes by, the sun is dawning and night is coming. Every people in that village is started to appear, and she ran to their parents in rush. It was a shock when she realizes that her parents became a pig. She thought that it was just a dream but unluckily it was a reality and the journey begins. 

Development in My Drawings

I really like to draw since in elementary. The main reason that I draw is because I saw my sister read some comic books, and the pictures fascinate me a lot. I was trying to draw by tracing, copying, and try to draw from my imagination. It was until I was a high school student, where i met many people who likes to draw and had some same interests with me. That was the first time I know the word OC which stands for "Original Character". I made some OCs and it were so bad for me, because I saw my friends OC had a really amazing ideas.

This is my favourite OC back then, her name was Enore. Well, these were my old sketches about 3 years ago.­ 

actually it was quite scary when i see this again.

And this one is Enore that I drew about a month ago.

For me, it was a huge change even it was not superb. I think looking at others drawings, watching some anime, or read some manga is a helping hand because I can see my mistakes, my lackness, and how to improve better. Also it was very necessary to ask to your friends opinion because sometimes you may not see where is the lackness in your drawing.