And she was beautiful as ever.
So I just got home from my very first anime convention. (Yahoo, finally!) I've been a fan of various anime and manga series for so many years now and it's only today that I get to be in an actual anime convention. I totally missed out on a lot of things. But no, I'm not gonna talk about the convention itself. That can be summarized in a few words, really. Anime. Cosplayers. Merchs. Auction. Humans. Everywhere.
But there's a particular part of the convention that really caught my eye : the doujin group area. You give them a certain amount and they sketch (and/or color, depending on how much you gave) a drawing for you. All you need is a reference picture and you're good to go. Pretty neat! And they're all soooooooo good. Damn, I get shivers when I watch them. Their ability to "create" is humbling. Customers usually present pictures of their favorite anime character and have them drawn out, but I had another thing in mind.
I had to make them draw Amy.
Amy's the female protagonist of this Visual Novel entitled "Lifelines" that me and my friend's been trying to lift off from the ground for some time. We've tried working on it almost full time last summer but we didn't quite make the cut. Neither of us were really artists so the graphics part was also a problem. We did, however, receive some concept art for Amy from my partner's friend, which were fantastic! I still remember the first time I saw them. The joy and excitement of seeing something that basically came from your head drawn and colored in real paper was overwhelming. After that, summer ended and we never really got to focus on Lifelines again.
I always thought, and still think, that majority of the blame why we're not achieving milestones on this project is me. Not that we're supposed to be blaming. (Blaming sounds like a really negative word, by the way.) It's just that I'm the one who pitched in the idea for story's initial concept and I'm supposed to be mainly in charge of the script. Up until now, I've only got bits and pieces of the story in my head. They're just always replaying on my head again and again and again. But at the end of the day, I've only got a few rough drafts penned down. Just thinking and thinking about it, but not actually getting it written down. It's always been like this for me and it's really disappointing. Along the way, my guts to actually continue this kind of just...faded away, I guess.
But when the artist finished her sketch of Amy and I got a good look at it, my heart just welled up with surreal happiness. It's very same excitement that I felt back when we received the very first concept art of Amy. Then in an instant, a tinge of shame crept in. Shame due to the fact that I'm actually overjoyed by someone else's work when I feel like I haven't done mine.
As of right now, Amy is nowhere near complete. But I'd be damned if I don't finish her and this whole project. I've become really attached to Amy, Max (the male protagonist) and everyone else in Lifelines (ok, not all of them. i'm not even sure of some them yet). Even though they're just pieces of my imagination, I feel the responsibility of bringing them to life. They all deserve to be molded into the amazing characters they're meant to be. Who knows how long this flame will burn and how it'll get rekindled when it dies down, but what's the use of worrying. I'll just keeping building Amy and the rest of the gang, one word at a time.
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