Today’s journal about the artist (me) is about some of my favorite things and favorite fandoms. I think as anyone who’s on any kind of website right now, we all have our favorite fandoms. Some may generalize their favorite fandoms—such as saying “I like anime” or “I like furry art”. Some may say more specific fandoms, like “I love Star Wars” or “I really love Dragonball Z”. I think all of us who may claim a general fandom, such as anime—we can probably claim a more specific genre or specific anime as a fandom, too.

But I believe we all have favorite things, beyond fandoms as well. So, I’m going to share with you a little bit of everything today—things that I love, general fandoms I enjoy and even some more specific fandoms that are a big part of my life.

For some general things that I love—they may surprise you. Think about when you go out shopping—what you look at and what you buy when you’re at the store. I mean, the first aisles I head for are the toy aisles, because I’m going to look at Transformers—then I look at DVDs and video games, as well as books. Most big box stores have small book aisles, so I probably more specifically look at books when I’m at a bookstore………but I will look at the small book aisles in Wal-Mart and Target, too. If I’m in an art and hobby store—then the first stop I make is usually where the pens and markers are, then the papers and then the scrapbooking supplies.

I love the artistic style and look of carousel horses. Way back in the day, when I had fewer things and more room, I collected some carousel horse music boxes—practically none of them survived the test of time, though. They’ve either broken or the music box itself went bad. I still love the look of carousel horses and love looking at art of them—I likely will never collect the music boxes or figurines again, but I might pick up coloring books of them if I ever see them. :)

When I got into anime and manga as a young girl—it wasn’t as easily accessible as it is now. Anime and manga fans are very lucky at how easy it is to get virtually anything of any genre nowadays. Back then, I took what I could find……….which was very little. Harem anime seemed to be what was mostly brought over to the U.S., then—and anything that seemed to be a knockoff of “Dragonball Z” and “Sailormoon”. Nowadays, I find myself a lot more picky on my manga and anime. Even with the BL/yaoi genre, I’m a lot pickier than I used to be in reading this stuff. Right now, I generally only still collect “One Piece” and “My Hero Academia”—these series will be ending in the next few years, too, which I do look forward to seeing the endings, because I’ve been following these series since BEFORE either were brought to the U.S. (I started reading the manga in Japanese). My favorite BL/yaoi series is Ayane Yamano’s “Finder” series—I wouldn’t have thought I’d have liked this so much, since it kind of started out in a genre I’m not fond of for my adult materials……….but the story development and the character development I’ve really gotten into over the years as the translation has shuffled through three different U.S. companies by now. I have a few newer series that I’ve gotten into, “Kaiju No. 8” and “Go Go Loser Ranger”—which fall much more into my genre wheelhouse of things, as nods to Japanese live-action series. I’ve been a fan of Japanese live-action since long before “Power Rangers” made tokusatsu popular here—or even the Godzilla films, which’ve been around forever. I love the main toku series, like Godzilla………..as well as the super sentai, Ultraman and Kamen Rider series.

I’m a big fan of “classic t.v.”—mostly stuff from the era I was born in and grew up in (70’s and 80’s) as well as stuff from before then (60’s) and some stuff that may even be considered more “contemporary”. I have tried to collect every series I can find of things I grew up with. From series like “Get Smart” to “Murder She Wrote” to “Futurama”. I love the fact that a couple of little known cartoons from the 80’s/90’s era that I loved are actually on DVD and I own them—“Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors” and “The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers”. Sci-fi stuff is my thing and I am a HUGE “Star Trek” fan. In this vein, “Transformers” falls into classic television—and if you haven’t figured out I’m a Transformers fan, here’s me letting you know that I have loved Transformers since 1983/84, when the original Gen1 toys and cartoons came out. XD I still collect Transformers stuff today and write fan-fiction/do fan-art for this series. I have many favorite figures in my collection, including my original 1986 Rodimus Prime………my [Japanese] Masterpiece Star Saber and the high-end Flame Toys Kuro Kara Kuri IDW Rodimus figure I just bought for my birthday this year. Fun fact, while I’m not a HUGE “”Beast Wars” fan—I own pretty much every version of Airazor that has ever come out (outside of Japanese or other worldwide exclusives).

The last fandom/collectible thing I’ll share with you is my love of artbooks. I have many artbooks. I have artbooks for movies (such as the one for the live-action “John Carter” movie), for manga/anime (my favorite is my oversize Yuzo Takada one for “3x3 Eyes”) and for fantasy artists (such as Michael Whelan and Joe Jusko). In the vein of artbooks, I also collect books about LEARNING art……….as in trying to learn watercolors or drawing figures and all of that.

I think that’s it for this session—next week I’ll share with you all things about drawing. What I draw, what I like to draw……..what’s easy and what’s hard for me to draw. :)