Osamu Tezuka

Well as you probably have noticed I haven't been very active with this blog lately.
Well I'll cut the fat and tell you the truth. I was kidnapped and raped by pirates...yep there ya have it folks.
How have I been able to release the HAHAS on time? Well fortunetly enough they are fans of the series and allowed me to work on them between rapings.

Don't believe me? Go to bed.
Anywho there HAS been another reason I haven't been working on this blog much. Another project actually....
So lets rap up this long " Why I decided to become a cartoonist " thing going on.
To put it short. One day in high school I discovered Osamu Tezuka. The " god father " of comics in Japan.


Osamu Tezuka was born in the 1928 around the golden age of American animation.Tezuka wasn't an ordinary kid he was awkward and was often bullied in school but he always kept his head up and in the clouds. At a young age he was fascinated in American cartoons and comics. Thus giving him a passion for story telling and drawing. He would grow up and graduate medical school and was even licensed as a doctor. But his passion for drawing couldn't be put out. So he decided to take the risky path of being a cartoonist. (Anime and manga were not popular in Japan in that time. To be a cartoonist was to pretty much throw your life away ) Unfortunetly in his teenage years his country would be involved in WW2. Young Tezuka would be forced work in a military camp were he couldn't draw and if they found him drawing he would be severely beaten. during this sad period he also watched many of his friends and family die. (Seeing all this death before him would give him a strong sense of the importance of life. Which was apparent in many of his later works. )Being the strong man that he was he endured the war. After which he continued to be a cartoonist. He would work day and night creating comics. His fun and inspiring comics raised the morality of the H-bomb devastated Japan. After many struggles in becoming a famous cartoonist Japan would soon see him as a Japanese treasure. Because of his powerful,deep, and sometimes controversial stories He would signally start the anime craze that would last in Japan all the way until today.


There are a lot of other points of his story that I left out. but what inspired me was his devotion to his dreams. No matter what came in his path he kept walking forward and kept his heads in the clouds. He never became bitter because of the world around him, he always believed in peace. He also had a lot of deep morals on life in his comics that really made his work great. So after being hit the Anime craze in America in 1997, and learning about Osamu Tezuka and other manga and manga artist. At age 16 I really started getting serious in going into the profession of being a cartoonist..And later maybe even a director?

There! " On to animation" is over! you can give that knife back to your emo friend you don't have to cut yourself out of boredom!

On that note.
The BUHlog won't be updated very frequent for the time being because all my energy is going into the project I mentioned above.

Will call this Project " 2.0 "

It's gonna be the Cat's pajamas. I'm sure you'll love it ;D

On to animation: Darker themes

It was the last years of middle school and High school was around the corner. By now anime and manga had begun its slow decline. Other younger kids still liked it but the generation I was in who first liked it were moving on to other things. Except for anime nerds like me and my friends who were still on it like flies on shit. Thanks to Internet I was starting to discover what anime and manga really where and the Japanese culture behind it. What I also discovered was in Japan the anime and the manga that I saw in America that I thought were bad ass were EVEN more bad ass in Japan. You see in Japan many things are viewed as okay to show to children such as blood and cussing and even nudity. I was very much interested in the liberal style of these cartoons. Creating a comic based around comedy was the furthest from my mind. These three videos were trailers from one of the Godzilla movies I collected as a kid ( Destroy All Monsters ) These three trailers really blew me away in their detail and how mature they were. The Asian culture was really taking me over lol



Japanese Gunhed trailer- This is not the American trailer. But this is all I could find and is pretty similar to the one I saw


ADV Neon Genesis Evangelion Trailer.
Its funny because one of my best friends ( Cory Loudon ) would become OBSESSED with this show later down the road.
ADV Gunnm aka Battle Angel trailer

Its funny because I think I re watched those trailers more than I did the movie they were on. They really inspired me at that time. So around that time I began wanting to create darker sci-fi ish stories.

Till next time
~ Sai

So now around middle school I was hooked on this Digimon manga I found online. I would sit up all day drawing comics based around Digimon. Only with my own stories that I made up.
These are a few random examples of these comics


I would usually redraw the same pages over and over.

I would experiment with different angles and shots. My goal was to get something that flowed like the comic I loves so much,I wouldn't stop until I approved what I saw before me and also I'm a perfectionist... ( It's a bitch )


I soon became rapidly better. As I would draw day in and day out.


Soon I even developed a style of my own and after good effort I started to get that cinematic effect I was soon looking for. Far was I from being satisfied though!

It was then I started playing around with the idea of drawing comics as a career. I wasn't to passionate about it though. until I discovered other mangas in the years to come..and until I found out about my idol. The guy who would be my biggest influence in drawing comics. But thats for another day :]

On to animation Manga Vs Comics.

So at this point I just discovered Digimon v-Tamer.
It wasn't the fact that it was Digimon ( The show I was in love with at the time )that hooked me
It was drawings such as this





What got me was the use of camera angles, the zooming in on different characters the sequence of movement between the frames and many other things. It was almost like I was watching the actual show itself on paper! such techniques were either absent or not as skilled in American comics at the time. They have gotten better in these past years but I still are lacking. I will give you an example.




See how this comic looks different. It's wonderfully drawn. it just doesn't flow as nicely as the other one right? Its like your reading a book rather than watching a movie. Its all in the story paneling. That is what started a growing passion for learning how to create such works.

Next time Ill show you my first ever comics!

On to animation : Introduction of manga

It's been some time since my last Blog post. After two very busy weeks I'm back :D
but now lets get back to how I decided I wanted to direct movies and create graphic novels.


First off some of you are wonderingW "what is Manga? "
Manga is just the Japanese word for comic. Only difference is that their comics tend to be more cinematic. Relying on camera angles and aspect shots to create a feeling that your actually there.

Osamu Tezuka - New Treasure Island

Eiichiro Oda - One Piece

In the last " On to animation " post I discussed the anime fad that hit the US when I was in intermediate school. A year or two after manga started to hit the US as well. I first saw manga in Barnes and Noble sometime in 6th or seventh grade. It was the manga of Dragonball Z. I was puzzled as to why it was read right to left. I was also shocked at the detail in the comic and thought it looked different than the Us comics I read. I just couldn't put my finger on it. At that time I wasn't a big big reader and this odd book did hook me in. So I put down the book and continued on to what ever else I was doing.

I wouldn't get hooked into Manga until one night when I found this manga. Being a huge Digimon fan at the time is what really hooked my into reading it.



This would be the beginning of my manga addiction.

What was so special about manga that hooked me in compared to American comics. Which I had only slight interest in reading?

Find out next time!