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These fan-drawn fused Pokémon are so cool we wish they were really in the game

When Pokémon graced our tiny Game Boy screens back in 1996 (or, depending on where you’re from,  1998 or 1999), we all thought that nothing could be better than these beautifully crafted 151 animal-like Pocket Monsters. But then a second generation of games came out and suddenly we were graced with 100 new Pokémon who pledged their loyalty and undying love to us, their trainers. Now in 2015, there are 721 different Poké-friends to collect and train and we couldn’t be happier with them…unless we could take two of our favorites and fuse them together, that is!

The concept may have been done before, but each artist brings their own personal fliar and the results are always fascinating. What makes the following combinations unique is that sometimes there are not two but three Pokémon fused together!

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Fabulous Ghibli fan art inspires us all to pick up a pencil and get drawing【Art】

When you find something you really like, it’s sometimes hard to express how much it’s influencing your life. To show off how much they love something, some fans try cosplay or rampant consumerism. Others write songs or fan fiction to tell the world the extent of their affection.

But for others, it’s as simple as drawing a picture that perfectly captures all their feelings on the paper. One such artist has put her heart and soul into some fan art that shows the kind of devotion Studio Ghibli inspires in its fans.

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This may be a rather random question, but are you capable of drawing a man in various states of undress? Most of us can probably visualize how it should look, but turning those thoughts into illustrations doesn’t always come at a snap of the fingers.

Coming to the rescue of budding illustrators and manga artists is a new pose reference book dedicated solely to men undressing. From T-shirts to kimono to boxer briefs, this is probably the most educational book we’ve seen filled with men stripping off their clothes.

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Manga materials website offers thousands of reference poses for budding artists to download

If you’re just starting out on the path to your goal of becoming a manga artist, it can be hard to properly visualize how your characters’ head, limbs, and torso should be positioned for a specific pose. Practicing by sketching with a human model is a time-tested way to hone your understanding of how to draw human anatomy and clothing, but it still poses a problem.

See, most art classes don’t feature models for such manga staples as, say, a girl in a sailor suit firing a pistol. An alternative would be to hire a model on your own, but that’s beyond the budget of many artists who’re still in the amateur stage of their artistic endeavors.

But as long as you can scrape together about 2,000 yen (US$16.26), there’s a new website that will supply you with thousands of reference photos to help kick-start your manga dreams.

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Is there a busty schoolgirl hiding in Japan’s bullet train symbol?

The art of illustration is a funny thing, because it relies on using lines and coloring to trick the mind into thinking it’s looking at a three-dimensional object. But if the whole effect is a matter of perspective, changing how you look at a picture will make you think you’re seeing something else.

Sometimes the result is cute, like when cherry blossom petals turn into a litter of puppies. At other times, the result is quite a bit pervier, like what one traveler can no longer unsee in the symbol for Japan’s bullet train.

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Like any language, Japanese has multiple words that have more or less the same meaning, but which help to put a finer point on exactly how the speaker feels. For example, pocchari and debu both refer to someone with a higher than average proportion of body fat, but pocchari doesn’t have quite the same harshness that debu does.

If we were looking for English equivalents, debu would be “fat,” while pocchari would be the softer-sounding “plump.” But as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and one Japanese Twitter user recently posted a sketch diagraming, in his mind, the physical differences between a pocchari woman and a debu one.

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Want to be a manga artist, but can’t draw backgrounds? Website has environments you can download

If you’re a budding manga creator, odds are you spend most of your time working on your character artwork. That’s probably a wise choice, too, as most famous comic artists focus on drawing their stories’ leads, and hand off work on other details, such as background art, to a team of assistants.

Of course, another reality of being a budding manga artist is that you probably don’t have a publisher bankrolling your comic and paying for the abovementioned team of assistants. But thankfully there’s now a way for you to pour your efforts into story and character art and still produce something that looks polished, thanks to a new Japanese website that sells ready-to-use manga backgrounds.

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What do you think of when you imagine a “cute girl?” The term seems like it should be straightforward enough, whether you’re using the English word “cute” or the Japanese equivalent, kawaii. But one Japanese Twitter user claims that guys and girls use the word to mean vastly different things, and has even shared an illustration diagraming what she feels is the difference between what men and women mean when they talk about a “cute” girl.

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Chinese artist personifies pictures of cats and dogs into captivating traditional paintings

Have you ever wondered what your pets would look like as humans?

We’re no stranger to personification illustrations since the Japanese enjoy turning all sorts of things from battleships to swords to computer systems and even poop bacteria into human anime forms, but perhaps this is the first time our humble website has seen real animals portrayed as human figures. Check out these beautiful Chinese paintings of personified cats and dogs after the break!

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These 19th-century Japanese miniature landscapes show that size isn’t everything

The Tōkaidō is perhaps the most important road in Japan’s history. Built in the 17th century, it connected the country’s two powerhouses: it runs from Kyoto, the imperial capital, to Edo (now Tokyo), the seat of the Shogunate. As well as being an important political and trade route, depictions of the Tōkaidō in art in literature were abundant and popular.

The best-known of these is Utagawa Hiroshiges’s series of ukiyo-e woodcut prints, The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō. Ukiyo-e woodblock printing like this continued to flourish in Japan until the 19th century.

Less famous than Hiroshige is the relatively unknown ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Yoshishige, who produced his own prints of the 53 stations along the Tōkaido – by depicting each station in the form of a potted landscape.

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While people all over the world love spotting a cute girl, Asia seems to get a special kick out of finding an attractive woman in unexpected places. We’ve seen the online community go gaga over pretty teachers, badminton players, and even butchers, but now we’re entering the new frontier: Beautiful evacuee from a bank taken over by an attempted arsonist.

And of course, there’s also manga fan art of the captivating temporary captive and her equally dramatic-looking coworkers.

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Six ways to spot someone who just moved to Tokyo

Spring is the start of both the school year and the business years in Japan. That means that right about now thousands of newcomers are pouring into Tokyo, as they move to the capital to start college or their professional careers.

But the hustle and bustle of Tokyo is on a scale unlike any other town in the nation. Even people who’ve grown up in Japan sometimes stick out like a sore thumb when they first move to the capital, as illustrated in this six-point guide to spotting someone who just moved to Tokyo.

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French artist gives us a case of the feels with his video game & superhero family illustrations

In the world of fiction, some characters have detailed, complex families and backgrounds made known to us, while others have rather vague and obscure origins, which isn’t totally a bad thing because that gives viewers plenty of room to imagine and fantasize.

Ever imagined Superman as a dad? Or, what if, after being rescued for the gazillionth time, Princess Peach actually marries Mario? Check out these beautiful families of various fictional heroes and heroines after the jump!

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Shohei Otomo brings the gritty side of Japan to vivid life with a mere ballpoint pen

Shohei Otomo can sometimes be found simply under the working name “Shohei.” That might possibly have been an effort to downplay his heritage, because when your father is responsible for some of the most influential manga and anime ever it can be hard to get looked at as an individual.

However, outside of a certain degree of edginess and high degree of Akira and Domu, creator Katsuhiro Otomo and his son each stand alone with their respective arts. Shohei has the unique gift of creating a provocative illustration using only a ballpoint with such a level of detail and texture that you can get lost in them.

He’s posted a series of time-lapse YouTube videos showing him at his craft which is a spectacle almost as impressive as the drawings themselves.

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17-year-old aspiring artist creates amazing Disney and Marvel fan art with colored pencils

When I was 17, I was an aspiring interior designer, but I lacked the passion, determination and talent for it, and never got anywhere in that trade. 17-year-old aspiring artist Mandy Wang, however, is probably going places with her talent and passion for drawing, seeing as she has already captured the hearts of over 70,000 fans on Instagram! Just look at the lovely drawings she creates with colored pencils and watercolor, after the break!

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Tear-jerking illustrations of a Twitter user’s deteriorating iPod go viral in Japan

Electronic gadgets are part and parcel of our daily lives, helping us get work done, keeping us in contact with our friends and family, and entertaining us even in the most ungodly hours of the night. Our computers, mobile phones, music players and game consoles have become like friends and partners we can hardly live without, yet more often than not, we’re on the look out for newer models that have more functions, better technology, and nicer designs.

Some of us have a greater affection for our “buddies” of technology than others, and prefer to hang on to our trusty gadgets instead of forsaking them for newer ones. Japanese Twitter user Kameco (@kameco3) is one such loyal user, and the illustrations she created depicting the heart-wrenching situation of her deteriorating iPod tugged at the heartstrings of fellow iPod users in a similar plight. Check out the touching story after the break!

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What’s up doc? Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Lola Bunny in human form are too hot to ignore!

Walt Disney cartoons were one of my favorite things to watch on TV when I was a kid. But giving the ever-popular Disney animated series a good run for its money was the Looney Tunes series by Warner Bros. In fact, if I really had to choose one out of the two, I would have leaned towards Looney Tunes, largely because of my childhood crush, the witty and crafty Bugs Bunny.

As I grew up, I became more interested in Japanese anime, and gradually drifted away from Bugs Bunny and the Looney Tunes gang, but my oh my, I think I’m falling head over heels for Bugs again after seeing Canada-based artist Sakimichan’s series of Looney Tunes illustrations. See Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Lola Bunny in their humanized forms after the jump!

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Creative 15-year-old artist makes characters pop out of “notebooks” like magic

If you’re looking at the picture above and wondering if your eyes are playing tricks on you, yes, they probably are.

15-year-old Brazilian artist João Carvalho creates these simple yet amazing 3-D illustrations of famous characters, among other things, that seem to have emerged from the back of the page of a ruled notebook. See his brilliant creations after the break!

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In Japan, a wide variety of bento, onigiri and other ready-cooked food are commonly available in convenience stores and supermarkets, in addition to the vast selection of instant and frozen choices. With such food readily available at wallet-friendly prices, not to mention they taste rather decent too, it’s little wonder why there is an increasing number of Japanese youngsters who don’t or can’t cook.

As seen in previous attempts, cute illustrated girls are effective in gaining the interest of the younger generation. Combining cute illustrated girls in skimpy lingerie and suggestive poses, with girl-on-girl action and hints of incest, and matching said illustrations with cooking instructions, however, would probably not appeal to the wide masses. Bizarre as that may sound, such a cookbook does in fact exist. We’re just not sure if the illustrations are actually supposed to whet or kill our appetite.

As you might expect, some of the illustrations are NSFW…

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Japanese Twitter users have discovered ArtPose, and they can’t stop playing with it!

Being an illustrator is definitely one of the coolest jobs in the world. It requires a ton of work and dedication, but there’s something undeniably magical about the way artists create something out of nothing but ink and pencil. However, even the best artist sometimes needs a hand when it comes to anatomy, which would explain why poseable models are always popular. After all, the morgue would be packed if every artist had to cut open a corpse to learn how the body works!

So it’s little surprise that an app for the iPhone, called ArtPose, has recently been making waves on Twitter in Japan. But the reason for its popularity might not be what you expect!

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