Hey All!

Angelo here with another random Disorganization XIII post of chaos.

One of our favorite things to do at conventions is meet new people. In a sense, every fan we have is also our friend, and we would love to beta for our fans fanfic, critique our fan’s art, hell we even give our fans opportunities to post their own rants on the website! We are big, because you guys are big, and it’s your inspiration that keeps us going throughout the year. Our current little pack of inspiration comes from James Edwards, a DO XIII fan we met at NYAF.

James is an aspiring artist and writer who borrows heavily from the Kingdom Hearts universe. He has recently asked us to critique his work, and that actually put us in a bit of a bind. You see we aren’t artists (as much as some of us like to pretend that we are) and our opinion otherwise is split. This is basically what we have… bear in mind he told us not to pull any punches.

He is obviously new at the whole art thing, judging by the bad resolution on some of his images, the flat nature of his artwork, and the wonky proportions of some of his human-like characters, however I can tell that he is a very good designer and many of these characters designs show a lot of imagination. In addition they borrow from the Kingdom Hearts universe (plus) and whether he likes it or not they remind me of the Megaman X series (double plus) and that makes me very happy on a personal note. Even better is the stuff he has that is done in Sonic style (triple plus) because I personally am a sonic fan boy, and I think it is one of the easiest universes to create original characters in.

I personally would like to see some of these character designs cleaned up, refined, and repurposed into art pieces with some depth and shading, simply because I like some of the character concepts. Btw, when I reference character concepts I am speaking visually. Personal note from the fanfiction panel Jaimie: custom characters should have 1 name, not three, and none of them should contain the words Omega, Neo, or X unless you are working on Capcom’s staff. Also Saphron is a spice and delicious to cook with… no matter how you spell it ^_^.

All in all you are off to a good start, but you might want to think about doing some research if you are going to get serious. Do NOT do drawings in paint, they always come out bad. Invest in a copy of Photoshop (we are totally not telling you to pirate this. No matter what anyone tells you piracy is wrong, and illegal, and you shouldn’t do it even if you are poor and can’t afford the real thing. I repeat, no matter how easy and simple it might be we are not telling you to PIRATE THIS SOFTWARE), a good scanner, and read some digital art tutorials about shading, perspective, and dimension. Tutorials are a dime a dozen over the net and are really useful and they will save you a lot of money on art books otherwise. Once you get that down you can really work on refining your style and make your very creative designs jump off the page rather that look as if they were paint bucketed.

So that is our basic take on James’s stuff, but then again, as I said before, we aren’t artists. Our rapidly growing fan base however is, or at least is willing to say that they are. So instead of us giving the final critique on these art pieces, we open up the floor to the fans. What do YOU think of James’s art? Remember guys, he asked us to not pull any punches. You can see more of it at http://jamiethelynx.deviantart.com/ and http://s181.photobucket.com/albums/x117/Valyne_Sermiat/

Thank you so much James for showing us your art, and thank you doubly so for coming to our panels. Our fans continue to be the coolest around, hands down. If you have art, or stories, or even just a rant or opinion you want to share with us, don’t hesitate to send it our way at DisorganizationXIII@gmail.com