I haven’t gotten very far with this project yet, but the concept is as follows:
some songs give me a certain vibe or association with something (be it clothing, a situation, a place or a time period). Since I listen to Nana Mizuki’s music a lot, I’ve started getting associations with her songs and started drawing images of what I pictured while listening to the song featuring one of my JnM characters. Songs I have covered so far:
Japan celebrates Christmas, although the focus is more on spending the day with your lover than getting presents from Santa. A Christmas party is something that is celebrated naturally, be it students coming together or colleagues celebrating.
MeguNobu portraying a natural look of a Christmas party (they are themselves in this image, with their own hairstyles and expressions. Nobu is more of a lady and Megumi loves booze 8D):
‘Yankee’ is a term used for delinquents with extreme badass fashion style. They appear a lot in Japanese school dramas, mostly boys though, but sometimes girls.
MeguNobu portraying a basic image of Japanese yankee girls:
It may be weird for me to draw this within this project since Japan doesn’t celebrate Halloween, the Halloween-theme exists everywhere and Megumi is actually someone who really likes scary things. I think she’s kind of into this.
MeguNobu portraying their costumes at a Halloween-themed party:
‘Yukata’ are a special kind of kimono worn in summer. It’s lighter and thinner than a traditional kimono and worn to summer festivals, for example.
MeguNobu portraying yukata worn to a summer festival:
I wasn’t entirely sure what to call this style, but it’s not really lolita, so I went for Harajuku-style. Harajuku is a district in Tokyo where people can freely express their fashion tastes. Of course, they can express this in other places as well, but Harajuku is the kind of place where people with specific fashion styles come together to express themselves.
(Megumi is actually kind of into dressing up like this as a hobby)
MeguNobu portraying a kind of Harajuku fashion:
‘Kogyaru’ (a contraction of ‘koukousei gyaru’ (high school ‘gals’) is a type of fashion outfit based on the Japanse school uniform, but with a shorter skirt, loose socks and often dyed hair and extreme make-up. It is often used by girls as a kind of protest against the typical ‘beauty fashion’. Their make-up is so extravagant it can be seen as ugly.
Although I did not make it very extreme in my drawing, a more mild version of kogyaru as portrayed by MeguNobu:
MeguNobu is the coined name for my favourite fashion duo: Megumi and Nobu. They’re best friends and although Megumi is usually the one who’s more into fashion trends, Nobu is never tired of tagging along.
(For the record, Megumi is the one with the short purple bob hairstyle and Nobu is the one with the long blonde ponytail)
The styles I have covered so far are
The first drawing I made for this project is based on the first kiss between Kazehaya and Sawako from Kimi ni Todoke. I’ve been waiting for that moment so long ; – ; and in volume 17 (^^;) it finally happened!! \(T^T)/
So I turned the couple into Youhei and Chihiro. It was an easy choice to begin with, because Chihiro has the same hairstyle as Sawako :’) but in the actual picture, we can’t see Kazehaya’s face because his bangs hang before his eyes. Youhei doesn’t have long bangs like that, so I had to draw his expression x’D I decided to keep it basic, because it would be too cheesy if they both were blushing like crazy… from the result of it it looks like it’s not their first kiss .__.
Of course, some points are different. In the original version, Sawako is crying. But to not steal the whole concept, I changed it to a context within my comic c:
So here you can see the original pic versus my version (don’t criticize me too hard, I’m still an amateur xD)
I’ve started a new project in which I will feature my own characters from JnM in romantic scenes from existing manga 😀 I won’t leave the image exactly the same (no to plagiarism!!) and hope to gain more inspiration for cute stuff for the development of my story :3
Kazehaya and Sawako from Kimi ni Todoke -> ChiYou
Hayato and Hanayu from Mixed Vegetables -> MinaKasu
Yamato and Mei from Say I Love You ->YamiRiku
Naoki and Kotoko from Itazura na Kiss -> MeguKei