Love Love Hill

Otakuthon 2012

Dirchansky: OMG figarizzle/kim and I commissioned these fabulous LOVE LOVE HILL portraits from Al and Ren , who were conveniently sitting across from our table at Otakuthon this past weekend! They are super adorable and talented, and we (Kim and I) leered at them allllllllllllll weekkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk—————————- belugachop/koyar wasn’t in attendance so we asked if they could draw her in for ussss hghHGNHHGGHh…!!!

Kim: We told them it was OK to draw us ugly (just to see what would happen, hahaha) but these drawings turned out so cute and amazzzinnnggg. We appreciate the accurate depiction of our fishlips pose we did on their camera. The glasses colours even match, and we purposefully were wearing striped shirts that day! They had some amazing clay charms on their table also and we touched all of them. Thanks for bearing with us all weekend, guys.

Lots of TL;DR and photos under the cut!

photo courtesy of bibliomancienne

photo courtesy of Skwerly (who was rep-ing X-Japan like a BAUS all weekend!)

We decided that we need to make manly tear die-cut tear stickers in the future.

Friday

D: Arrived in the wee hours of the morning at Hotel Figaro with spicybeefstew in tow! Was glad to see deadexit there too :). Lineup, setup! Delivered moss and a london tube map to ameru.

Soon realized that the ladies across from us (Al and Ren) are AMAZING. Had dinner at L’Express, which Kim tells me is the closest thing to a REAL Ristorante Paradiso. Enjoyed dining with noqualitycontrol, deadexit, spicybeefstew, figarizzle, and Marin. I had steak/fries.

K: deadexit and I were fresh out of the sold out screening of the Ace Attorney movie at Fantasia to pick up Dirchansky. Otakuthon registration and set up was a breeze and the staff were very nice about coming around to greet everyone. We were selling Hokuto no Ken prints like we always do, and I originally aimed to brofist any dude who walked up and recognized it, but then I realized that it was driving customers away LOL. Meanwhile, the food at the restaurant was excellent and it was lovely to catch up with all our friends. The waiters are very charming.

Saturday

photo courtesy of spicybeefstew, browsing our comics is fellow comicker Samantha Boum

photo courtesy of spicybeefstew

DAT LEER

D: We got excited about Al and Ren. Especially the donuts and hamburger charms they had! We swung by in the morning to introduce ourselves more officially. Kim and I continued to leer and ninja camera them as they drew. Why are we so good at creeping?

Had poutine at La Banquise! I had T-Rex poutine. It was kind of brutal because of all the meat! More meat and carbs. Intended to check out the drag show, but it was too late, so we loitered/drew at O-taku Manga Lounge instead. I had a diabolic soda, which was sprite + black currant syrup! Very good combo.

K: We did a lot of peeping at Al and Ren and were very amused at their quirks, ranging from the heads-down, concentrated drawing focus pictured above, to unbridled yet inexpressibly silent enthusiasm!! It makes me wonder what *we* look like across the aisle to them— singing variations of that song (Hey I just met you / and this is dandy / but now I’m crying / so draw me manly) and dancing around like weirdos.

At la Banquise I did my best at the poutine but left some fries while eating the topping. I got the peppercorn sauce~ We spent too long eating and were too full to walk (should have shared…!) so we only managed to roll slightly down the block, instead of all the way to Old Port. O-taku Lounge’s owners are really nice and they served us the very last of their mochi ice cream at the end of the day. They were weeping “SEISHUN!!” tears while watching Summer Wars.

photo courtesy of spicybeefstew

we tried to match black shorts + brown belt + stripe tshirt + sneaks

Then spicy told us to pose like comic covers

photo courtesy of spicybeefstew

We stayed right up until closing to continue chatting and drawing commissions.

K: My hair is currently transitioning from Justin Bieber to Sailor Mercury. (Originally, it was cut to be more like 2011 Ellen for Covergirl.)

Sunday

photo courtesy of Amit

D: Kim and I stayed up until 4am to finish drawing commissions/beauties for deadexit. Met Hakuku very briefly! Gave the last of our timbits to Al and Ren dramatically, assisted by HamletMachine! Sadly we had already made dinner arrangements, so we could not join the print trade/artist meetup that was going on afterwards. I love the idea of having the time to do that though! Very nice. We joined a bunch of other artists to take photos at Otakufoto!

MANLYYYYYY

KIM AND I ARE FAIL GIRLY!

Ameru tried to hug me, I ran away. Later on she tried to sneak attack hug me again, but luckily someone random body blocked her, so I was able to escape!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Had dinner with saicoink, figarizzle, figarizzle’s cousin, Chris, HamletMachine and Papermaiden at Yuan vegetarian restaurant. Great food!! Afterwards me/kim/hamlet/chris walked around Old Montreal/Old Port. It was a nice walk and good look of the city at night!

K: Despite staying up late, I also had to wake up early to see deadexit back off to her city. My batteries were a little depleted in the day but I still managed to motor out a bunch of drawings in a robotic fervour. As always, we got a wave of people at the end of the con rushing back to us to buy books last minute! Thanks so much!

After so much meat and carb it was really nice to have vegetarian/vegan food. Some of our fortune cookies didn’t have fortunes, does that mean some of us don’t have a future?? We had a lot of good chats and at one point HamletMachine was crying from tears of laughter because of a couple of our embarrassing con-fail stories (to be told someday in Life on the Hill 2???). We hung out with Papermaiden for the first time (Year-24 forever)! Chris, did you get to see the Star Wars exhibit? XD; Hurray for friends, old and new!

D: “Manly” commissions were unusually popular this year! Not that that is a bad thing (we appreciate the appreciators of manliness). It did take a significiant amount of our time, so is we seemed more occupied than usual, we are sorry. We might have to cap the amount of commissions we do next year, because we really do prefer interacting and talking to people about our books!

D: Scan stolen from renkurusu (hope you don’t mind, we forgot to take a photo of this)! I think this was our first commission on Friday!! Ren is so cute, but asking for such manly things—— <3 such good taste!!!!!

K: I was so happy to do this but I also felt like because it was the first one of the con, I got really confused by the hugeness of his chest and I sort of messed up the proportions… UGH! Despite that renkurusu seemed very happy still, but if I see you in future, I will draw you something awesome to make up for it…!

D: Another artist asked for manly Sherlock and John… I’m sorry I didn’t catch your name! Had to get Sherlock hair coaching from spicybeefstew and figarizzle HAHA.

K: I think you did a good job of it despite never watching the show.

D: Someone requested Joseph for herself, and Jotaro for her friend! I don’t understand how Jotaro’s hair merges into his hat!? Had to ask Skwerly and Andrew for advice, but it came after I inked it already.

K: I helped draw waves in the second drawing! We busted out the china markers for this one because our regular brushpens always die from how much colouring/hatching ends up happening…

D: A Joseph cosplayer in the same outfit commissioned this and even posed (YEA)

D: MANLY BARNABY IS BEAUTIFUL. Kim is better at doing this pose IRL than I am. It was funny because I asked Kim if she was going to draw him crying, then she asked “I don’t know, does he cry in the series?” and coincidentally, the answer was “YES HE CRIES A LOT, BUT IN A VERY UNMANLY WAY”. Spicybeefstew helped draw the hair curls.

K: I think doing it RL helped me understand the pose a lot better. I hope people understand this lisping in-joke, because I don’t (lol).

D: 2x Guts for another fellow artist who likes him! She lent us her precious manga for reference too <3

K: This was actually not the final version I ended up doing, I added some more hatching, especially in the crotch area… I had spent too much time drawing his weird corset-lace-up pants so it stood out a bit too muuuuchh…

D: A picture of her friend’s mafia OC!

D: Laxus Dreyar from Fairy Tale for the same girl! Kim drew one too, but we forgot to take a photo…

K: It was nearing too close to the end of the con and I had like 4 things left to do so I was over-driving it! I missed taking pics for at least two others so if any of you readers were the recipients of those, please feel free to send us pics if you have it :D

D: Hugh Jackman stripping out of his classic 90s X-men suit. We asked the girl if she wanted it to be weird sexy or serious sexy and she said she wanted something she could jack off to…… LOL.

K: The conception of this picture really brought up some really interesting discussions, like how superheroes even get their suits on and if there are zippers on there anywhere.

D: A guy who wanted to be manly in his kigirumi costume!

D: Guts/Caska for strawberryrosebud :D

D: This person actually got a commission from us before. This time he wanted exaggerated manly punching scene. He had a good moustache so Kim drew a moustache on the character in the picture.

D: For papermaiden’s friend, who apparently scoffs at shoujo-style artwork (?), so here he is crying about how awesome it really is ;D

K: I would have liked to see his reaction to this. I was kind of nervous about my bad French but it seemed to be ok…

OBJECTION!!!!!!

D: Manly Captain Harlock. Though when I was transmitting the commissioner’s request to Kim I kept saying Captain HADDOCK (Tintin) instead, and it really confused her

K: I was also a little confused because he wanted the old style of the actual comic, and “manly”, but not in HnK style? Plus for a second I thought I was supposed to draw like Hergé, lol. After drawing over 10 pictures in HnK style my brain was a little warped but he really gave a good reaction to it in the end. You can see my pens were really starting to die at this point hahaha.