#itoreplies

[itowhotypes]

what would you say it's the best advice you could give to someone who wants to make art their profession?

not all good artists are great professionals.

I might sound a little jaded saying this, but I've known phenomenal artists throughout my years of college and I would never recommend them for a job. I would never work for them. If I saw them at a future job, I would groan.

For a lot of people, art is escapism and fun and self-indulging, even if it's not a simple hobby. Professional artists hardly, if ever get complete creative freedom over any project,, and to many people that sounds like hell on earth: these people wouldn't make good professionals.

Generally, if the idea of breathing life into someone else's ideas doesn't bring you any joy, don't make art your job. If you have no interest in acquiring the soft skills that make a great Creative, aside from the hard ones-- don't make art your job. If you like to take your time with it, don't make it your job.

Not because you will be bad at it, but because you will be miserable.

[itowhotypes]

do u think that to be known is to be loved?

I think that memory itself is a love language.

The unconscious act of making space in your brain for someone else, to carry parts of them with you all the time, even parts that seem silly and unimportant.

My brother, he’s one of my favourite people in this entire universe, but bless him, he’s really forgetful. I think despite his best efforts he could forget his head somewhere, were it not attached to his neck. He has forgotten deadlines and names, and missed flights, and birthdays and all.

We were in his car last week and a song came on the radio. I told him I loved it and he said he knew, because I loved it as a baby too.

He used to put various music from his ipod for me when I was a baby to see if I responded to it positively (because what else would a fifteen year old punk do with a baby?) and said I started laughing a lot when this song came on and started tapping on his arm to play it again.

That’s twenty years ago now, he still remembers something about me I didn’t even know. For no reason.

That has to be love

[itowhotypes]

Do you have any thoughts on the csm ending if you’ve seen it?

I need to like. Sit on it for a bit. But i'm also itching to be louder than the people who outright hate it so here goes;

I've seen people talk a lot about how it's a bad ending, both badly written and bad, as in depressing. Denji ends up again with no family, a slave to Public Safety under Nayuta's rule, and poor, basically. So there's the question of why the whole story even matters.

I'm not sure how many of these people were around when Part 1 ended in 2021, but that was the exact same argument going around. Denji ends up with no living family, just the promise of one, in the spirit of the woman who ruined his life, and devils still exist--So, again, what was the point? The difference being, people loved the ending of part 1.

I'm not sure if I've vocalized it before, but I always thought Part 2 wouldn't have a good ending (well written but sad, I mean), for the simplest reason that Part 1 is the good one. I think the whole point of separating them so clearly and switching casts and stakes, instead of presenting Part 2 as a natural continuation of part 1, was so that Fujimoto could go balls to the walls with metaphors and absurdism and overall craziness, while still giving the reader a satisfying conclusion to the story, if they don't want to follow. I see the ending of Part 1 as a stop sign that's like "fuckery road ahead. If you're satisfied now, this is how you should remember the ending as. If you trust me, no you shouldn't, but follow along anyway."

All this to say that part 2 is a surprisingly more hopeful ending than what I thought Fujimoto could pull. I seriously believed he was going to pull a Fire Punch and blow the earth up or something. But I guess this just says more about me, and what I think is nice, more than anything. Why is it nice if Denji ends up indebted and blind and friendless again?

The thing is, Fujimoto doesn't believe in perfection, and he keeps hammering in that Evil, Turmoil, and generally "Bad Things" are as necessary to life, and the human experience as Good things are. It's been the same point he has been making since part 1. We know what Good movies are because Bad ones exist. You only know joy because you've known pain. One cannot meaningfully exist without the other.

So of course, Denji gets some of the good bits--he gets to live in a reality where he was never horrifically abused and brutalized in the ways we saw him being in the story-- along with some bad ones; he's still poor, and family-less, and his past with the yakuza still tracks. It's forgiving, in a surprisingly realistic and grounded sense,, though I get why to many people it might ring as unsatisfactory. It's hard to see a character you've been rooting for for years not get what he wanted, even after coming so close. But it's not meaningless.

There's the Dreams bit. In a few words, I can describe it as: Is it better to dream about something forever and never know what it feels like, or to get it, and then have it be not at all what you wanted? And what if you get it and it's every bit as good? What do you have to live for, then? Are you supposed to keep finding new dreams, stuck in a never-ending cycle of fulfilling them and chasing them over and over? Are dreams better off staying dreams? Are people who realize theirs the most miserable creatures on earth?

Denji still dreams of going to school and he still has this insatiable, vaguely shaped hole in him for things he once had, but can't remember having them-- but he will never know what it's like to go to school and be completely isolated by your peers and feel the chasm between your life experiences grow unbridgeable. He still wants a girlfriend (presumably) but he will never know what sitting in a cafe waiting for Reze as she bleeds out on the street is like. He'll never meet Aki, but he will never know what sounds he makes as he dies in his arms.

And Asa, it's the same with her. He saves Asa from falling, therefore erasing the event of her becoming ostracized by her peers. But by doing so, Asa will never see her face in Denji's. She will never feel as alienated and odd as him. And she will never call him Denji.

So is the ending well-written? I think yeah. It's in line with everything that I've been told Fujimoto believes in, and everything that Chainsaw Man has set itself up as, symbolically. I can understand part of the frustration being that many plot-threads are left ambiguous, or nonsensical in a very anti-shonen fashion, but man....Chainsaw Man was never about that for me. I don't want to rip its carcass open and make sense of every excruciating detail just so that it can prove its own plot-driven genius to me. I have attack on titan and Fmab for that.

does any of that make sense?

[itowhotypes]

Hello Ito!!!!

I wanted to ask a very specific question. Throughout your history of making art/drawing what advice or tips on it did you find the most useful and helpful and also what kind of tips would you give to others that personally worked well for you (if you have any)?

God this sounds like a survey or an interview but I don’t know how to make it sound less official lol

Anyway, have an awesome day!!!

Hello!

Funnily enough I was ruminating about this a couple of days ago because I realised the advice i value the most did not come from my years of art school but my boss at my current job. So here’s my top 5:

1) Your eye is a muscle you should train constantly: consuming art should be as important as making it. Good art , bad art, doesn’t matter. What matters is that you constantly broaden your spectrum of influences and meaningfully interact with everything you consume. Figuring out what makes it work or doesn’t,,,picking up a new technique,, listening to the creators speak about their vision, ect. It all counts as practice and helps you get better at what you do

2) Everything should have a reason for existence: even when you’re filling a piece with details that seem brainless to an outside viewer, you should have a reason for putting them there. They should add something to the character, or the atmosphere or the aesthetics of the piece. Consider these details heavily and if you struggle to name their importance, remove them. You’re tiring yourself for something not even you see the point of.

3) you should sharpen your basics every once in a while: the learning curve in art looks a bit like a wave, and art block is also a thing, so what I find really helpful when I feel stuck, or that my ideas exceed my skill level, is going back to the basics. Quick form sketches. Traditional art. Painting only using 2 colors. Ect

4) if a piece is not “hitting” the way it’s supposed to even though you can’t see anything obviously wrong with it, then it’s probably the composition’s fault.

5) if you’re going to compare yourself to other people, then at least compare it to ones who have been practicing the same amount of time as you (not people who are the same age) and people who have a similar style (because what sense would it make if i want to make classical paintings and i compared them to a banger manga?) And then study them to learn from them, don’t just get stuck at the self pity stage.

[itowhotypes]

hello mr types do you happen to have any cool fyozai fanart i could use as a playlist cover (i have fallen down a Mental rabbit-hole) either yours or someone else’s it doesn’t matter. preferably blood or bones or guts or yk just any symbolism involved. thank you in advance <3 have a wonderful and hospital-free day 💕 (also good luck with the wisdom teeth 🙏)

No blood and guts from me on this one, but this used to be my favourite art of them that I made, and I remember being so bitter when it didn’t do well in numbers lol

As for someone else’s art, I really really admire user @/uwu-mi1k on here and I used to study they use of color all the time back in my second year of uni. They only have a couple of works but i think this is my favourite:

(Tw: for blood)

He’s carving a symphony!!!! On his forearm!!! How cool.

[itowhotypes]

I would really like to see your art on mors vincit omnia after you shunned your account I wasn't able to find any of your arts on your fics and I really loved your art so if you are comfortable would you like to share those arts here again

my computer files have been a mess ever since i started working last year so I was only able to recover a handful that I still like, and they're mostly concept sketches. but here:

[itowhotypes]

hey again, ito! what are some of your favorite tropes in fanfiction?

hello!

it kind of differentiates between what I like to read vs to write.

I'm much more lenient and soft with the things I read, usually. I'm a big fan of that fake-dating trope that's treated like a comedy of misunderstandings instead of angst. I like those 5+1 things fics,, mainly because I prefer short fics to long ones. Rivals to lovers, also? Not enemies, necessarily. I prefer they have an antagonistic but ultimately harmless relationship rather than harbour outright animosity. And when done right and agonizingly, I really like reading second-chance romance. Maybe it's the old man in me, now that I've grown and find myself relating more to divorcees rather than high-school first love narratives.

In writing, I'm much more unpleasant I would say. I like traumatic, cosmic horror timeloops and killing characters and having them haunt the narrative, and I like never having them touch, but spend 60k words wanting to. Not sure why....

Also really like this trope I've coined as "the unskippable event" in which characters usually have to get together after a while due to a formal event that requires their presence, such as a wedding or a funeral. I find these fascinating in real life as well, and like to observe how people have changed in how they interact with each other after such a long time. How they word and carry themselves. all that fun stuff

this is totally an invitation for people to send me fic recs they think i would like based on these, by the way.

[itowhotypes]

having read akai, i would actually pay cold hard cash to read an atla fic from your hands

You have 5 minutes to tell me you're joking before i actually get serious about this.