Carl's four-paragraph biography.
I am a mathematics major at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, now a senior, and president of MIT Anime (formerly publicity). From an early age, I enjoyed drawing... aaah, no, that's not true. Actually I hated it. Pictures never came out like I wanted, and the teachers were so terrible that I swore off art for life in middle school. Then came junior year of high school, and I started reading Elfquest. By senior year, I'd figured out that art could tell a great story -- if one could figure out how to use it. Once more, I was back on the case, although it was only in my spare time and never enough.
About the same time, I started watching anime. Well, not exactly anime. It was Robotech, the one we all know and love. But it was close, and I made up for it on next rental: Urusei Yatsura movie 2: Beautiful Dreamer. It made no sense, but it was intriguing, and I was soon off to college having seen every anime tape from "Video Station".
And then there was MIT Anime... It took some time for me to get into the scene completely, since everyone knew more than I did. But after a semester or two I starting working his way up, from Ranma to Sailor Moon to Maison Ikkoku to Slayers to Slayers Next and on from there. All the time, I was drawing from anime and manga. Eventually, my skills were noticed and I was drafted to help the cause by drawing posters. No, that's not true either. Actually, I volunteered, and there wasn't anyone else to do it at the time. And that's my drawing experience: a year and a quarter of anime club posters. Pretty sad, huh? I tried taking a real art course once, but they cancelled it out from under me. The official reason was that it was undersubscribed, but I know the real reason was that my "art" inflicted physical pain on the teacher.
My current favorite series is either Slayers or Slayers Next, depending on whether I'm in the mood for humor or drama when you ask me. I'm a Hayashibara fan and a Takahashi fan and proud of it. I don't speak much Japanese yet, but I will hopefully by the time I go there, which I hope will be in about a year. This doesn't stop me from buying manga, the latest of which was Rayearth 2. I intensely dislike coloring without a computer, and also drawing freehand with a computer, which makes life fun without a scanner. I use only Macs and am usually the one who works on these web pages. I hope you enjoy my work.
| This is the first image I drew for MIT Anime, from over a year and
a quarter ago. Seems like forever. The color was added only recently,
as you can tell from the signature, in my first big coloration
attempt. A lot of firsts, this picture. Anyway, there are quite a few
things I would do differently now, with the shoulders, the back, and
the, er, lower front, especially. Overall not too bad, but not too good.
The subject looks like Ryouko from Tenchi Muyo!, but is actually the copy based on Zero, Dr. Clay's robot. This is why she looks so down and pensive, an expression we seldom find on the original. The black and white poster had Dr. Clay's symbol in the background, which made this obvious, but I removed it in this version for no good reason. Maybe I'll add it back sometime. |
| The heaviest project I've done so far, this image is the design for
the back of the 1997 MIT Anime t-shirt. The line image took maybe
twenty hours including all planning and roughs, but the colorization
and tweaking took perhaps seventy or eighty, not including the time
spent learning how to use Photoshop (mostly done by making the above
image).
Anyway, I am mostly pleased with this image. The original plan called for Van, in back, to have wings, but in the end I decided that the wing effect was overused nowadays and anyway I had run out of steam after two weeks of full-time work. I especially like the two Hayashibara characters feuding with each other in front. This is sort of how it looks on the shirt. |