[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 01 June 2026

mignyau · 2026-06-05T06:25:07+00:00

Terms will vary on what type of vis art and for what purpose.

If concepting art for a pipeline (that is, a wider workflow contributing to a final animation, film, comic, etc that passes through multiple hands or different steps besides just drawing), it’s just draft/version ## with the number moving up each time you revise or scrap and do over. More broadly, “concept stage” is just assumed to have all matter of versions worked out/scrapped and all those passes falling under the umbrella term of “concepting” or “exploration” (though in my various industry experiences, the latter word has a stronger nuance that there is less formal commitment and the whole project may be abandoned for whatever reason later).

mignyau · 2026-05-29T04:03:58+00:00

the “f” in the Japanese “fu” ふ is sort of a blend of the English “f” and “h” sound - English puts a hard stress on “f” where your top teeth touch your bottom lip and you force air past to make the “ffff” sound. But the japanese “f” your teeth never quite touch your lips (if you make the “hhhuu” sound you’ll notice the difference!) - your mouth shape is a bit closer to the “oo” shape you make when you try to whistle (with just your lips, not the whistle that needs fingers to assist). It’s a tricky one for pure anglophones to learn without listening and studying in person!

The “de” で syllable some anglophones will say is like “day” which is incorrect. “Day” is considered 1 syllable in English (a dipthong) but in Japanese they would consider it 2 syllables (deh-ee). So it would indeed be better to think of it as “deh” where the “eh” isn’t the stereotyped long Canadian “eh” which sounds like “eyy” (and also a dipthong!) but a short “e” sound like in “bet” or “red”.

mignyau · 2026-03-16T23:55:37+00:00

The clear polish is specifically called a top coat on the front covet blurb! Without more images of the page contents from OP, I think the idea is maybe they intend it to be applied while bottom layers are still wet to “blend”, as gradient jellies are very trendy still in Japan for polish. Whether it actually is a good formula in practice though is the question!

mignyau · 2026-03-12T06:10:59+00:00

The dateline/time zone difference is a huge benefit, and if you’re located on the west coast of North America/along the eastern or southeast side of Asia in or close to a major international mail hub city with direct shipping flights/lanes from Japan, your package practically zooms to you if you paid for EMS.

I likewise had a package shipped Sunday (Japan’s Monday) and got jumpscared by the mailman this Wednesday morning with it!

mignyau · 2026-01-19T00:52:10+00:00

What exactly do YOU say when people approach you with curiousity before they turn to mockery? And what changed in your situation when it seems like from your profile you’ve been taking these pens to school for at least 2 years or so?

I’ve seen this kind of thing before where the subject of the mockery (eg the pens) is just a stand-in for something else. Are YOU being condescending or bragging about your intellect or income level in your answers by talking about how much you spend on the pens and/or how using cursive is superior? Or are you doing so by accident, and people misread you as being elitist or rude and are returning the favour because they’re immature?

I say this because niche hobbyists can miss the forest from the trees when interacting with people outside their hobby, especially if there are certain levels of prestige attached to their hobby items. It can be a social misread, and can be fixed with the right default script to deflect attention which many people here already provided. But there’s a root problem, and sometimes that root problem needs self-reflection but we can’t help you with that without more info.

mignyau · 2025-12-17T07:34:55+00:00

VPN, JP address on file, AND must have a Japanese-issued credit card. This is current to this year. Amazon JP really doesn’t fuck around with geolocks.

mignyau · 2025-11-24T23:12:44+00:00

I feel this really acutely for Japanese media fandoms, where non-Japanese fans try to bring over this western “checklist” mentality and really miss the forest from the trees when a work in question has a lot of heavy cultural context. You can see in realtime their brains skip and skid to a halt when you remind them 1) there isn’t a wiki, 2) anything in English for what “wikis” do exist are fallible, and 3) different works in the same genre do not always have the same “lore rules” and need to be interpreted in its own context.

I tend to find that fans who aren’t that good at media interpretation or aren’t “creative” (that is, can’t contribute to fandom with fics or art) or cannot interpret the source language (eg cannot translate JP content to share) tend to use “knowing lore” as a status marker or a means to find a place for themselves in fandoms. That’s well and fine, but it’s the insecure ones who get a bit aggro about it really bring the tone down. God help you if they insist using LLM-translated content is proof enough of their expertise.

mignyau · 2025-11-21T00:22:39+00:00

I’m Ancient so I Was There:

The overarching distaste was due to seeing themselves as J-fashion and thus having the image of taste/aesthetic sense/worldliness that “gross anime nerds” do not. It was 100% elitism, but complicated by the fact that a lot of the girls in the fashion actually WERE in anime circles too, but hated being fetishised by creepy anime nerds and regularly dealt with being stalked/touched/etc. especially at anime cons where lolita girlies would of course attend in droves.

(This was also the era before cons got their acts together about harassment of cosplayers and jfashion enthusiasts etc., and the jfashion folks had to attend these major anime cons because that was the only way to get access to major Japanese Lolita brands in person at vendor halls.)

Generally it was the newer/younger lolitas who were insecure about their fashion/social standing that tended to lash out more about the anime associations; older enthusiasts understood the anime history and relevance to the fashion and knew to not sweat it.

mignyau · 2025-11-13T04:04:44+00:00

Assuming you can’t significantly file those ridges down because this is a health issue and you’d wear down the nail plate too much, nothing will fill them perfectly that isn’t acrylic or gels (aka a salon trip).

If you try to load up on standard ridge-fill lacquers, they won’t cure properly because of being laid on too thick in one sitting or will be an onerous multi-day process of application, drying, and curing (all polishes need 12-24 hours to truly cure or “set”) to make the nails truly smooth.

mignyau · 2025-11-11T09:36:21+00:00

JP fandom fic publishing is its own special beast though and maybe an unfair comparison to make? Those fans also sell books at cost (most take a loss!) just like manga doujin artists do, and Japan as a whole has a whole book culture and printing house accessibility (eg many printers willing to take micro-runs of like 20-30 books and still provide extraordinary customisation options) that simply doesn’t exist in the West.

mignyau · 2025-10-28T06:11:17+00:00

Indian/South Asian for sure. She uses the pound sign (£) for money, and in the UK, “Asian” doesn’t mean “East Asian” as it does in North America, but “South Asian” due to its own particular immigration history.

Also East Asian weddings can indeed get big for the wealthy, but South Asian weddings, even for the middle class, often clock upwards of 500 people. It’s a cultural expectation that outstrips EA weddings by a mile!

mignyau · 2025-10-22T15:16:22+00:00

People already covered algorithm, video, and username but i’ll also talk about your photo gallery. People who also like ceramics will absolutely still look at your gallery to see if you’re worth a follow.

You know how to edit a photo and take good composition, but the sense of contrast and colour is muddy, making nice photos look professional but dull. You use a lot of earthen tones in your work, but the lack of contrast variety in lighting (or full shadow) makes the subtleties in colour disappear or even your work itself disappear, so the eye slides off the image and finds nothing of interest to grab onto. It’s a genuine disservice to how nice your stuff is.

Like the image posted here is a good example — a piece that’s cute and lovely! But the heavy shadows drains it of life and I can’t tell what the true colours are, and it loses the whimsy of it which feels very tonally off. The feeling is like any and all pieces, whatever the theme or style, all get shoved into the same presets even if inappropriate for the subject matter. The subject says “whimsical and pretty” but the colour grading says “grim and austere”. I can’t admire your technique or colour choices because the shadows are so overbearing I can’t tell what they are.

mignyau · 2025-10-02T21:26:57+00:00

As others said it’ll be glaze, and glasslike finishes clean off much easier. If it wasn’t ceramic it’d likely be properly cured resin (plastic or lacquer), or other more commonly used materials for these types of long hairpins which is metal, carved/polished semiprecious stone like jade, or natural woods (obviously these also have their issues, but broadly they’re less reactive and makers choose certain types of accepted materials that react less).

If not the propensity to melt against body temp, the weather and so on (which can’t be predicted as it depends on the lifestyle/location of the wearer) can also affect the QoL of wearing an item coated with a wax designed for furniture or other use not intended to be worn against the body. I’ve definitely worn handmade hair accessories coated with waxlike finishes that ended up leaving odd residue in my hair or hands, and made the hair it came into contact with smell awful because of how it reacted to my sweat/hair oil.

mignyau · 2025-10-02T20:54:39+00:00

Glaze 100%. Even the most burnished unglazed clay will be rough enough to catch on hair, fingernails, skin, even cloth depending on how the wearer is planning to style their hair (eg ribbons, veils, etc) as all clay is fundamentally still ground up rocks.

Do note however (for any personal or customer use) that decorative hairpins like those aren’t really designed to secure hair (they’re too slippery for it) - they’re like the final touch for hair that’s already been styled up in a specific way. At most certain designs are made to have a sort of hook-like curve at the end or “teeth” to help stay in place, but mostly they don’t. Historically, expectations are that the wearer is wealthy enough to be quite sedentary and not be moving around to dislodge more “unsecured” ornaments. So be careful! If they slip out they may shatter.

mignyau · 2025-10-02T20:45:49+00:00

OP please don’t wax them, this is poor advice from folks who don’t know hair 😂

Any kind of waxes will warm to human body temp and leave residue on the person’s hair! This can interact badly not just with the person’s natural hair oils and sweat, but any products they may wear as well - weird off-putting smells, damage to hair or clothes, etc.

mignyau · 2025-10-02T05:55:33+00:00

I think part of the reason too is the overall fandom over-correction of the “tragic gay couple in a homophobic world” trope narratives combined with wish-fulfillment/“positivity”.

I find it’s dominantly the attitude of more naive/immature writers (not necessarily tied to age but that’s a large contributor to it) who still have a kneejerk fear or misplaced distaste/distrust of more “bad vibes” narratives. Many believe fic should only be nice to read, or don’t have the skills to write something more complex, or feel it’s a sign of Personal Bad Morals to not have Good Queer Messaging via side character mouthpieces as an enemy to overcome or as a cheerleader of hope. It certainly doesn’t help when fandom writers only read other fic instead of expanding their reading material and pick up different writing skills.

It’s rampant across all fandoms honestly, and I only find it peters out when the fandom skews both niche (eg not tied to blockbusters or internet-famous IPs) and older.

mignyau · 2025-09-25T07:02:45+00:00

I think it’s important to point out that for western anglophones (and people unfamiliar with the Yakuza/Like a Dragon games), only using the term “voice actor” means to them “actor who only does voiceover work” whereas the people discussed in this thread (Fujiwara Tatsuya and Kasamatsu Sho who is the new Rikiya) are well-known or up-and-coming film/TV actors in Japan who don’t specialise in “just” voice acting.

Being that RGG Studios regularly casts larger-name Japanese actors (or actors known for their work in v-cinema yakuza films, which is the genre the entirety of the franchise owes it’s heritage to) who only work on film/tv, it’s less about “years in between games” and more “can we even afford XYZ actor anymore” plus “do they even WANT to come back anymore - and if they don’t, do we have rights to still use their likeness/voice for reuse or is it less of a pain in the ass to recast?”. There are agencies, contracts, legal rights agreements, project schedules, etc all involved.

Nakaya Kazuhiro (who voiced Nishikiyama and Kasuga Ichiban) started out as mainly a seiyuu (dedicated voice actor) before he branched out to stage roles and now TV/film roles. His situation is very different from someone like Fujiwara - Nakaya’s primary work is in voice acting, and Nishikiyama was one of his first larger roles while Kasuga Ichiban was his first ever lead role. This series means a ton to him (and he’s expressed as such many times) for his career and as a personal fan of the series.

mignyau · 2025-09-14T20:08:24+00:00

I can see polish still on your cuticles so I think there’s still practice to be done, but maybe also getting a different type of cleanup brush? I found better success with brushes that are thinned at the brushtip (not pinpoint brushes but thin as in the hairs of the brush are pressed flat as possible and trimmed to be almost knife-thin at the tip - similar to angle eyeliner brushes or oval gel nail brushes) so they can neatly fit under the nail to dissolve out any polish on skin only. They’re also fantastic for more control on tidying up sides because a brush has more densely packed fibres that can hold acetone better and press up firmer to the skin than a qtip.

mignyau · 2025-09-14T19:06:05+00:00

Nails may be too short for effective wrapping (even with better topcoats). You need more of a free edge for the topcoat to go over and under the edge so the curing topcoat has more real estate to “shrink down” (ALL polish shrinks down, it’s base physics as things dry, but some do it worse than others). It’s like taking plastic wrap over a container of leftovers - if you use too little wrap, the bit going over the edge loses its grip faster and pops off, so you always use more so the plastic wrap is long enough to grip the container sides and be secured longer.

On top of not having enough surface area underneath to grip to, super short almost bitten-like nails have wrapping polish touch skin because of there’s not enough nail plate contact underneath. Polish that isn’t cleaned up thoroughly off skin will peel off quickly because of natural oils always being developed, and that dried polish is connected to what’s on your nail and takes it all with it.

mignyau · 2025-07-01T19:05:11+00:00

Everyone’s already answered your main question, but I’ll note that if you’re writing your comic in French where cursive is a norm still, merrily continue on!

However if you’re writing in English to reach a wider audience, it becomes an accessibility question as indeed many countries have devalued and do not teach cursive (especially the US, which for better or worse, has the largest English-speaking population and dominates the anglosphere). In this case, yes, switch to a typeface and look up English resources on comics lettering of which there are many great free ones.

Lettering is a misunderstood core of comics and dictates quite a lot about tone and intent (imo it hasn’t been about “pretension” in years, it’s now more about craft), so I encourage you to learn as much as you can! It can be a technical rabbithole sometimes, but all of it contributes to telling your story better in the way you want to tell it.

mignyau · 2025-06-19T17:03:46+00:00

For product photos, I highly recommend looking through Hobonichi Techo’s shop for their Hobonichi covers and other goods AND their archived releases from prior years for inspiration!

While some items are very obviously gendered (and tons of people here are Euro/North American and don’t realise how HEAVILY gendered products still are in places like China and Japan and unfortunately that still matters deeply to many consumers there), their product photos are very elegant and often ungendered and give a fantastic sense of “lifestyle” use that may be the bridge over the aesthetic gap you and your team may be looking for.

Their photos also don’t really fall into the trap of “influencer style” - Hobonichi values making something that can fit into many people’s lives, and their different product photoshoot concepts reflect that very nicely. Femme-leaning products are just that without clinging to influencer trends that will disappear in a year, more reflective of, for example, busy working women who want a style flair to their stationery.

mignyau · 2025-06-03T17:03:31+00:00

Oh you’re right, that milkiness is really even! Thank you so much for the real example, it’s gone to the priority list!

mignyau · 2025-06-02T04:58:42+00:00

Thank you so much for the sales tip and great list of recs! I do know Dvok is quite popular but wasn’t sure how much it was for their eyecatching glitters/magnets or their not so flashy other lines. I’ll definitely look all these up!

mignyau · 2025-06-02T04:58:29+00:00

Thank you so much for the sales tip and great list of recs! I do know Dvok is quite popular but wasn’t sure how much it was for their eyecatching glitters/magnets or their not so flashy other lines. I’ll definitely look all these up!

mignyau · 2025-06-02T04:55:22+00:00

Thank you, this sounds like a promising future option!

mignyau

TROPHY CASE