I'm Jessica. I'm a Canadian computer engineering student. I sometimes draws pretty pictures, but not nearly as often as I wish I did. Usually I draw them in the margins of my class notes, and then they wind up here.
I decided to make a little video game. They always say make your first game small, and this game took an hour to make, and takes about 30 seconds to complete. From the itch.io summary:
“Missiles are inbound. Remember how you lived, and choose how you will die. There are 6 endings.”
Today's SketchDaily theme was Cat (or Yusuf Islam AKA Cat Stevens). I did not draw a cat. I drew another Marcus Ranum stock photo. Realistic faces are a problem for another day.
We're three days into my New Year's resolution of drawing something every day, and here's a quick drawing which I should never have attempted to shade. But hey, that anatomy isn't a total disaster! Based on a stock photo by Marcus J. Ranum.
I don't know what's happening with this pose, but anyone who has played an N64 Zelda game will understand that the Great Fairies have super weird poses to begin with. SketchDaily theme: fairies, surprise surprise. Also, I'm usually not this terrible at drawing hands.
I'm calling this "Quick and Dirty Dancing". Done in 30 minutes on a crisp New Year's Morning in a brand new Hobonichi Techo, as a part of my new year's resolution to fill the damn thing and do SketchDaily...daily.
I have this weird tendency toward drawing tiny full-body thumbnails of characters in my planner. They're super rough, but there's something really appealing to me about them.
Welp, my D&D group just finished Curse of Strahd and are about to start Storm King’s Thunder, and since that adventure is a lower level one, it’s time to roll up a new character. This time around, I’ve got Rania, a half-elf DEX-build Paladin (Oath of Vengeance) who happens to also be possessed (or probably, still working out the kinks - maybe she should be a revenant instead). Fun times.
One thing I’m learning from doing these D&D drawings is that I am GARBAGE at armour design, and obviously need to spend more time researching that sort of thing. Also, she’s like 80% neck, but as always, at some point I like to end cycle and go on to the next.
Sometimes I play Dungeons and Dragons. Here's Celdoria, my half-elven bard who may have recently stolen a dragon skull from Strahd's castle. A very lazily rendered dragon skull - apparently I was down to draw each individual stud on the armour, but heaven forbid I draw both halves of the damn skull independently. There are quite a few little things that I will probably clean up at a later time. For now, it goes into the archives.
I've been trying to do the prompts from the Sketch Daily subreddit for a little while, and Free Draw Fridays are always tricky for me (especially when you get an alt prompt like today's: "fly fishing"). Luckily, today's Hobonichi quote was Earthbound related, so here be some nice Mother 3 sketches. And then I got all wistful about creativity and tried to practice my katakana skills, and it's all very embarassing; ignore those parts.
Some days, a sketch just works, and it's the best feeling in the world. And so it went with this ten minute sketch in my Hobonichi, drawn in the car. I've been trying to find a good feel for this character for weeks, and haven't been able to get her out the way I want her. Until today. Of course, my usual Hobonichi habit of trying to work things out directly in ink doesn't lend itself well to corrections. But anyway, ladies and gentlemen, Ms Gidget Gaines.
I am a stationery addict. I own at least 15 journals and sketchbooks at any given time, and often buy them entirely on the basis of a cute cover. I am also an unabashed geek. So, as you can imagine, when I read an Earthbound Central feature on the Mother 2 covers available for the Hobonichi Techo line (and read half the planner community gushing about the paper), I jumped at it. In March, I ordered the English version, the Hobonichi Planner, along with the Mother 2 Cast cover. And then liked it so much, I dropped another stack of cash on an order of accessories two months later.
The reason we are so lucky as to live in a world where Earthbound themed planner covers exist is because the Mother series’ creator Shigesato Itoi owns Hobonichi, which started as a blog, and now sells the Techo as their flagship item. The webstore and the planner are both now available in English (shoutout to Lindsay over at Hobonichi Love, she did the translation) and they ship all over the world. In addition to the English Planner, they sell the Japanese language Techo, Cousin (larger A5 sized), and Weeks (narrower size), along with split two-book “Avec” editions for the former two, so there are a lot of options for the scrutinizing planner addict.
Even if you’re not sold on the planner, the cover really is top-notch, and I would recommend it for any A6 notebook. It’s well-constructed and sturdy, it has a number of fairly secure pockets, it has a secret message hidden in one that makes me happier than you can possibly imagine, and it has that clever pen holder/clasp thing that I need to add to everything I own. I wouldn’t use it as a wallet or anything, but I carry a lot of random things in my cover, like my Weight Watchers booklet, business cards, work activation codes and login credentials, sticker bookmarks, etc.
On that front, the Mother 2 theme covers came with a bonus set of sticker bookmarks of the main party, Mr Saturn, and the PSI Teleport Failure sprite (fave, btw). I was really wary of using them in case they lost their adhesiveness, but they haven’t done yet, in spite of me moving Poo constantly to mark my current Daily page. When I made my second order, I was by that point convinced that these sticker bookmarks weren’t going to spontaneously fail on me, so I picked up a second set of Shiba Inu themed ones, apparently by an artist named “A Cloud is Born” (probably flies better in Japanese). Anyway, they are cute and functional and don’t get lost, and I am more likely to use things when they have these qualities.
Onto the planner itself! I fucking love it. So, I obviously bought the English edition, and although there are minor layout differences in the Japanese version (dat colour coding), they are very, very similar, and the thing that clinched it for me was the translated quotes. In my experience, most planners with quotes have an explicitly inspirational bent (except for UBC’s EUS Handbuk, which has a science-based pick-up line on every page), and I generally ignore them. While a lot of the Hobonichi quotes are vaguely “inspirational”, they’re also very quirky and funny (and some of them aren’t inspirational in the slightest, like one of the “Today’s Heartbreak” anecdotes about moving through the crowded train without bumping anyone with the usual body parts because his gut did the job). I find them to be a lot of fun and actually look forward to reading a new one every two days. For example:
“Lingerie is very important - it’s the very foundation of your outfit. People can’t see whether you’re wearing it or not, so it might not seem like a big deal. But don’t people seem to shine when they are wearing it?“
-Mitsue Matsubara, former lingerie concierge, Isetan. “Gentle Breasts, Desirable Breasts“
Some people hate the quotes and cover them with washi tape so that they become usable space again. These people are monsters.
The main draw for most is the spacious, minimalist daily pages. The top portion without grid is pretty standard and includes the date, moon phase, international holidays, and which week of the year it is. The main gridded section includes one thicker line two squares in, and the only time indications are the number 12 near the middle (next to Clean Apt in the photo) and the fork and knife at the bottom. Easy to ignore. Since I’m using my planner as an actual planner, I bullet journal on the daily pages, but as you can tell from the Kappa page up there, I often fill up the remaining space with doodles, poetry, random thoughts. I have also purchased the Weekly supplement (as only the Japanese-language Cousin and the Weeks models have weekly layouts included). It is slightly smaller than the planner itself, and is clearly not designed with English writing in mind (each day is just six squares across). The times are labeled so that each hour gets one line, but I have taken to writing my own hours in so that I can have 30 minute increments per line.
A lot has been written by other people about Tomoe River paper, and all of it is true. Tomoe River paper will bring the love of your life back to you, cure tuberculosis, and prevent Rob Liefeld from working again. It holds water-based inks (and indeed watercolour paints) really nicely, and has a very smooth finish that is appropriate for fountain and dip pens (which can sometimes catch on papers with tooth). The upshot is that ink takes a really long time to dry, so I keep a stack of scrap paper to use as a blotters. Such is the price we pay.
“Normal“ mechanical pencils and ballpoint pens tend to leave impressions in the paper, and carrying around my dip pens is a pain in the ass, so I bought a pen specifically for this notebook (I went into Paper-Ya in Vancouver, and they directed me to a bin labelled “Japanese Fountain Pen” - sounds sketchy, but it’s a Pentel plastic fountain pen, and it’s quite nice to use for sketching). During my second order I picked up a Pentel Multi8 pencil, which as you might expect, includes 8 colours (and one is Non-Photo Blue!!). I like colour coding and drawing in pencil, but I hate carrying a whole set of coloured pencils, so this pencil was a convenient solution.
Some of the other random crap I picked up (that can be seen at the top of the post) are a set of little Shiba Inu note papers designed again by “A Cloud is Born“ (sometimes I glue them into my planner, but it’s generally nice to have scrap for day-to-day use), a set of mini scissors, a ruler that clips into the planner, a Mr Saturn Pencil case (which is fairly small, so would recommend for minimalists, not so much for packrats), and another Mr Saturn pouch that I use for things like a gluestick and mini-stapler. Hobonichi ships pretty quickly, and Canada Post is pretty good about getting it to you fairly quickly once it’s through Customs (Canada Customs is a different government agency from the post office, and they don’t give a shit about your “guaranteed delivery times” - not that I’m bitter).
Overall, gorgeous paper, tons of space, very customizable, lots of adorable covers, and QUOTES ARE MY LIFE. Clearly a lot of love goes into this product. I would wholeheartedly recommend this planner, whether you want a straight planner, an art journal, or a diary. The Hobonichi shop sells a lot of cool accessories, if that’s your thing, and if not, it holds up on its own. There are a lot interesting communities out there for Hobonichi addicts, including my personal favourite, Hobonichi Strictly Planning on Facebook, but you can literally find communities for it on like NeoGAF and Fangamer (unsurprisingly, a lot of Earthbound fans use these planners).
The new lineup for 2017 is announced in late August, so keep an eye out!
I bought a Hobonichi Planner back in March. I mostly use it as an actual planner, but sometimes a girl just needs to doodle, ya know? Pseudo-Review inbound.
Since the mathiest day of the year (Pi Day) lands right in the middle of Women’s History Month, take a sec to appreciate all the ways Tumblr is appreciating one of the most mathily momentous women in history.
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