The other yokai tag I did for Halloween
As I said in my previous post, #yokaitober wasn’t the only yokai themed tag I participated in this October. The other one was #ayokaiaday.
#ayokaiaday was originally started by Matthew Meyer in 2009 to showcase his own yokai art and the interest it gained and the clear need for more info on yokai in English is what inspired him to make Yokai.com. While he didn’t conceive the tag as a challenge for anyone other than himself, that hasn’t stopped people from challenging themselves in the same fashion. So you do find other people using the tag in October. Maybe not a ton of people since yokai still aren’t hugely popular. (Well, it's debatable anyway.)
Anyway, I wasn’t going to bother with the tag because I thought of it as just another daily art challenge and I’ve already said in my previous post how much I struggle with daily art challenges. But then I saw my friend Yokai Parade using the tag to post pictures of her yokai collectibles and I realized that there was some wiggle room for interpretation here. It didn’t have to be a yokai drawing a day, it could be a yokai anything a day! And that "anything" could even be old yokai drawings! I might not be able to produce a new yokai drawing everyday but I could easily tweet the many yokai drawings saved on my computer in a thread on my yokai twitter!
But of course me being me, it got a little more complicated than just grabbing and tweeting the drawings as they were. I ended up making a few of them into quick collages when I had more than one sketch worth showing off or if the sketches were on the same page but awkwardly spaced or something like that. I also added some background patterns to a few of them or dipped them in color using layer styles to keep them interesting.
I also tried to make corresponding instagram posts for each tweet because 1) I like Instagram and 2) it could automatically repost to tumblr which could in turn automatically make tweet on my main twitter. So it was an easy way to cover all my social media all at once. For the descriptions of most of them I just copy/pasted the tweets but for some of them I added longer descriptions for when I had more to say about the yokai or the drawing. And some of the more oddly shaped one needed background patterns to help them fit instagram.
For the purpose or preservation, I’ve recreated the thread here with bits of commentary both new and from my instagram.
The post I'm referring to here is the yurei I did for the first week of Cloudie's Yokaitober challenge.
FYI if you want to show some appreciation for my Gaki you can buy a button of it so I can maybe finally make a profit off Zazzle
People seemed to really like this one and that pleases me greatly.
For the Instagram post I added this screencap of the commercial and added the following:
"Second image is from said commercial. I’ll elaborate a little more here than I did on Twitter. In 1985 there was a Kleenex commercial on Japanese television featuring a woman playing with a baby oni and a box of tissues while the song “It’s A Fine Day” plays eerily over it. It was such a weird commercial that rumors immediately sprung up about it being cursed. Ranging from the the face of the woman distorting if you watched the commercial after midnight, everyone involved in the making of the commercial dying in some horrible fashion, that the song in the commercial is German for “Die! Die! I’ll curse you till you die!” (which is clearly false to anyone who speaks English or German), and finally- the one that peaked my interest the most- that the actress who played the woman in the commercial gave birth to an oni baby.
So I thought “Well, if she gave birth to an oni naturally she would have to raise it and send it to kindergarten“ and there you go! Also, if you’re wondering, these are old sketches on a new background pattern to make them easier to post on Instagram. Well, not that new. I originally made it for my Setsubun comic."
While I was writing this post I stumbled across this drawing that I forgot to add to the collage for some reason. Maybe I forgot it because it was in my oni folder and not my urban legends folder. Or maybe because it's supposed to be a collage of drawings of the oni that the actress gave birth to and this is technically the oni in the commercial. The first one makes the most sense but the second one does sound like me.
Also, if you're wondering why it appears to say "accursed tissue comuccion" it's probably a case of me just wanting to scribble down an idea really fast and completely giving up on spelling halfway through a word because "No! I don't care! I'm done!".
I actually first learned about this urban legend years before Tara's video from a website called Pink Tentacle. It hasn't been updated since 2014 but it's still a wonderful website that I'll link to any chance I get in case it finally blinks out of existence.
Huh, did I forget to post this guy on Instagram? Dang. Sorry kid.
Maybe I should explain myself here for anyone reading this and thinking I'm coming off as a monster... the bad kind of monster. My drawing style is very cute and simple so as much as I love drawing friendly monsters monsters I often worry about my inefficiencies in drawing more detailed characters. The idea of being able to scare someone off with one of my drawings means I succeeded in drawing something really grotesque.
Course I shouldn't take all the credit. I'm standing on the shoulders of giants here. My Hyakume Oni is largely inspired by Shigeru Mizuki's Hyakume Oni.
I still got a couple of comments saying that my Hyakume Oni is still cute which might mean it's not as effective as I hoped but I think it might also be an indication of the type of people I attract with my art and I'm quite pleased with that.
This one was slightly too big for instagram so I added a border to it using a pattern from one of my Amabie posts. It's based on the wave pattern used in the original Amabie illustration. I thought it was fitting since Arie is also a prophecy yokai from the sea. Also, I'm just really happy with this pattern.
Extra Instagram commentary:
"A collection of sketches. You might’ve already guessed I tried to make her look a bit like a kokeshi doll. The background is a piece of origami paper that I scanned and messed with in Photoshop. Kinda wished I went something less busy but all the origami paper I have are kinda busy."
Extra Instagram commentary:
"This was made using a bunch of scanned textures. A technique I wonder if I should ever go back to since it’s interesting but I’m not always able to make it work. This is one such example. Leave a comment if you think I’m wrong."
The only comment I got was from a stupid bot and it pisses me off. The fact that no one said anything could be a good sign but it's the possibility that some people may have noticed the flaws but didn't say anything just to be "nice" is what pisses me off. I could explain what I meant but it might take a whole post. If you want me to make that post, go ahead and tell me.
I talked a little bit about how I made these on Instagram and said I'd have to make a tumblr post to elaborate on them. I still haven't gotten around to writing that tumblr post and I'm probably just gonna let it slide. I have other posts to write and projects to do and I don't know if anyone really cares anyway.
Have I fixed that yet? Anyway, here's the direct link if you want it.
I love Potato Snek. I want to hug him.
When I posted Teke Teke on Instagram added screencaps of the about quote tweeted thread because the topic's that interesting to me.
Like I say in the thread, it’s still possible that these videos are just based on Japanese variations I haven’t heard of but then parts of my thread got quote tweeted by Japanese people noting my observations about Japanese stories changing to fit an American audience so now I’m even more confident that that’s not the case.
This might be deserving of it's own post and unlike the nue post it might actually be worth following up on. Still not a priority tho.
More sketches I found while writing this post. I believe these hakutakus were inspired by the idea "what if I was allowed to design Monster in My Pocket toys?". Designing marketable versions of mythological monsters is one of my top dream jobs.
Extra Instagram commentary:
"Speaking of which, if you're wondering why her hands look weird it's because she has her spider legs pulled into her sleeves and she uses the tips of them like fingers."
This was the first of three artist cards that got background patterns to better fit on Instagram. It's also another excuse to talk about Pink Tentacle!
Extra Instagram commentary:
"[Yesterday’s] #ayokaiaday is onyudo! A giant monk that stands in front of you and becomes even more giant until you fall ill or break your neck from looking up at it. Sometimes he’s just a really big guy, sometimes he’s a shadowy person-shaped mass, sometimes he has a long neck as seen here.
This onyudo is an artist card I painted a long long time ago. It’s based on giant mechanical puppet used in a festival in Yokkaichi in Mie prefecture. I learned about it from a wonderful website on Japanese culture called Pink Tentacle. It stopped updating in 2011 but despite being seemingly abandoned, the URL hasn’t expired. Can websites be yokai?
Here’s the link if you’re curious:
Second artist card to get a pattern background! The hitodama are from some dumb Foxfire joke I made a long time ago. I don't even remember the context. You might have noticed it's the same fox I started this thread with.
Extra Instagram commentary:
"Possibly a tsukumogami, possibly a fox or tanuki playing a horrible trick."
Final yokai to get a background pattern! I really like how this one turned out!
Extra Instagram commentary:
"Today's #ayokaiaday (and bonus #yokaitober) is Toire no Hanako-san! The little ghost girl that can be summoned by calling out to her from the 3rd stall on the 3rd floor of an elementary school! What she does once summoned is up to the storyteller. Sometimes she just answers back and that’s it. Sometimes she’ll try to scare you or drag you into into hell through the toilet or some other nasty thing like that. But while she can be scary apparently the nice version is so common that in Japan she’s generally regarded as mostly harmless- even benevolent.
The two Hanakos in the bottom corner are the first new drawings in this thread. Up til now I’ve drawn her short and stubby like a Powerpuff girl or Dora the Explorer ([The latter was] not my intention but there have been comparisons) but then I tried drawing her skinny like this and she might be better this way. (Especially since for some reason I found it easier to draw her in her more traditional jumper) If you agree or disagree feel free to leave some feedback!
The painting in the upper left corner is part of a painting I did for an illustration class many years ago. The painting was of yokai in a bathroom including an akaname licking the bathtub walls, a hyosube drinking from the toilet, and a kamikiri picking through the hair in a brush. My favorite comment I got from a classmate was that Hanako is the cutest character in the painting but she’s also the one doing the most damage. I hadn’t considered that when I made the painting but it’s so funny to me!"
Extra Instagram commentary:
"Today's #ayokaiaday is Okiku Mushi! A yokai inspired by the chrysalis of the Chinese windmill butterfly which can be found in wells and resembles a bound woman. A fact that drew comparisons to the legendary ghost Okiku.
I love this sketch. I’ve started making a finished version. I’ve also had an outline for a comic strip she’s in for a while and I need to solidify her design plus two other yokai before I can draw that."
