(originally posted September 6, 2020)
April 9, 2019 marked the 20th anniversary of my most favorite anime ever, Turn A Gundam, and as a devoted fan since the fall of 2009, I was compelled to create something special for the occasion. I had a myriad of ideas all competing against one another in my head for many months and in early 2019 I finally settled on two projects: a cosplay of Kihel in Dianna’s royal uniform and a large, highly detailed illustration of the main cast—which ended up being just Dianna and Kihel with the Turn A and SUMO Gold Type in the background. I want to discuss the latter now as it’s a rather interesting artistic journey that spanned over a year, from conception to very slow completion.
In the early months of 2019 I began planning out a much larger illustration project: an book of illustrations of the most important or memorable characters. This idea was preposterous considering how long I take to do just one drawing of a single character, so I had to scale back considerably if I wanted to get this project done within my lifetime, let alone by April! Scrapping the book plans, I came up with a montage poster showing several characters and mobile suits instead. Now I had to figure out how this was going to be done in time for the anniversary.
By March I settled on an idea that I thought could be done in a month. Of course I vastly overestimated my ability and how much certain life events would interfere with progress on this project. What also made this final idea difficult to complete in a short period of time was that I decided to draw not one, not two, but six mobile suits in this piece. I am still pretty new to drawing mecha, with this Ideon fanart I did in October 2018 being my first completed attempt.
So while the project had been simplified from what I initially wanted to do, it was still a major undertaking. I was determined to make this work nonetheless, and figured with enough reference material I could pull it off.
Sadly, by time the grand anniversary rolled around, I was nowhere near done. I thought, no big deal, I just need a few more weeks. Then, a week later I landed a full time job after being unemployed for 15 months. With suddenly far less free time and energy, this illustration had to be put on hold. As I settled into my new job and summer came around I focused on the other anniversary project, my cosplay, in order for it to be completed in time for Otakon in July. With all of that going on, this is how far I got after four months:
At this point it wasn’t so much the lack of time that slowed me down, it was the amount of detail needed and making sure the perspective was correct in the Turn A and SUMO’s arms and hands. Having a 1/144 SUMO of my own to use as reference was a huge help with drawing its overall pose, but since that kit has its hands in fists, I had to look elsewhere for references of its fingers. The Turn A was its own beast. Cross-referencing official illustrations and photos of other people’s gunpla or figures, countless hours were spent working on its outreaching arm, even though a large portion of it is covered by Kihel’s skirt! I wanted the arm to be as correct as possible because I intended to post a version without Dianna and Kihel, just like I posted my Ideon piece with and without Karala. Anyway, while hemming and hawing over an immaculate White Doll, I still had four other mechs to paint… and only five months left in the year.
My 1/144 SUMO modeling for me!
Eventually I got extremely tired of working on the same piece whenever I had time to do art, so I took a break and worked on a different Turn A fanart. This was supposed to be a marker and colored pencil piece but ended up being digital instead because I was fed up with all the mistakes I kept making on paper. Much like the poster this too took way longer than I wanted it to, but thankfully only a month or two. That said, the more I love a character, the worse my perfectionism will be when I draw them!
With that out of my system I felt ready to resume working on the poster with all my attention. But then came more obstacles! Work was now at the peak of its busy season AND it was time to move out of the prison that was my father’s house. Goodbye free time, goodbye my sanity. Toss in the fact that Anime NYC and Yoshiyuki Tomino’s grand appearance was around the corner, and I had no time to work on the illustration at all. (Not to mention there was no furniture in my new room besides a bed for a while, but I still made it work!)
After the returning from the extravagant Anime NYC, work began to slow down for the winter and I finally had the chance to finish this piece once and for all. By this point I knew I had to simplify this project even more by eliminating the Kapool, Borjanon/Zaku II, WaDOM and Turn X and replacing them with a simpler background. Initially I felt I was cutting corners by doing this but it ended up giving the composition some much needed breathing room. Even though I felt the full moon in the corner was cheesy, I was running out of time and I did not want this to drag into the new year.
It was now December and I had a bit of time off from work for Christmas and New Years. I was inching ever closer to finishing this, but getting the fingers on the Turn A and SUMO right took so much time that my anxiety spiraled out of control and I began questioning everything. (It didn’t help that my birthday is also in December and that always puts me in a existential tizzy!) What was I gaining from all this self-induced stress? Why did I take on something this complicated? Was this necessary to prove my undying love for Turn A? While my brain was about to implode, the devastating news hit: Syd Mead passed away on December 30.
As shaken I was, I channeled my grief into this painting to try and at least get it presentable to post online. I did indeed bite off more than I could chew by taking on this project but that was precisely why I could not give up, no matter how sad and frustrated I was. I worked too long and too hard to abandon it just because I couldn’t meet my own deadline. On New Years Eve I finally posted what I had after nine crazy months:
https://twitter.com/nanopocalypse/status/1212141589553975296
It is now 2020. Like I feared, the piece remained incomplete into the new year, but all that was left to do was minor and mostly to satisfy my perfectionism. I really wanted to move onto to other art, and my computer was ready to kick the bucket after 10 years of meeting all my ridiculous artistic demands with only 2GB of RAM. Nonetheless, I eventually picked up where I left off, focusing on redrawing the SUMO’s hand, because it was sloppy and its perspective was wrong, and to actually paint the moon instead of using a photo of mine with some filters and layer blending options thrown on top of it.
That wouldn’t be enough to complete this “masterpiece,” oh no. I still had the Turn A’s arm to deal with. Much like the SUMO’s hand, its perspective was all out of whack too, and at this point I realized from where much of this piece’s difficultly came: I completely forgot to use Clip Studio Paint’s perspective rulers, resulting in a spacial mess. So my new day job while in quarantine/on temporary unemployment was to figure out to make this arm look as “right” as possible. By this time I also had a new PC to replace my ancient Mac so there was now nothing to hold me back… except the pain in my hands. But I worked through the pain!
On April 8, I could finally declare this piece finished, and onto Twitter and pixiv it went. Soon afterwards, I had a print made as a quality test for an online shop I opened the following year.
In the end, my biggest regret wasn’t that this took me a year to complete but rather that it wasn’t complete in time to give Mr. Tomino a print of it as a gift when I met him at Anime NYC. Then again, it was bad enough I subjected him to my cosplay, so he was spared from my other useless pastime! Anyway, now onto my next obsessive, months-long, obscure mecha anime illustration project…