[2] HARD HITTING INTERVIEW HERE WITH BUTTS!

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Breaking news! Butts has found a cool, exciting, definitely not-trying-to-kill-her artist that she feels should be blessed with a feature and interview! 

This is a DA Interview Journal, which spreads awareness of the artist, gives them a chance to explain their art/art style, and makes them feel special with exclusively written questions, only for them. You guys can ask them any questions afterwards!

(Artist interviews update ~about~ monthly, with a personal invite by exclusive Note.)


April 21, 2017
Adventure Time with the Straw Hat Pirates by Neodusk   BoTW: Prove Your Worth by Neodusk    Steven Universe: Mindbending Waterbending by Neodusk  Fandumb #85: Kojima Trolls the World by Neodusk  Fandumb #66: Splatoon Physics by Neodusk   
Behold the overly sarcastic comic-making neanderthal and recluse :iconneodusk: who I knew from back in Fanart Central (9+ years ago). I remember during my Summer breaks from high school, I would make a comic page, upload it, comment on his comics, and he would comment on mine. I literally connect Neodusk to the time frame I was developing my love of comic-making, and Neo stuck with it while everyone else gave up. I could tell he truly loved making comics and story writing. Here are some questions for him!

1. How long have you been drawing?

I’ve been drawing since I could hold a pencil—you know, literally what every other artist says when you ask them how long they’ve been drawing. Nobody’s ever like “oh, you know, two weeks ago.”

BUT, I can actually remember the first (traditional) comic I ever drew. I was maybe seven or something and I drew a fan comic of Calvin and Hobbes (though I’m not sure the concept of “fan comics” existed then, and if they did I certainly wasn’t aware of them).
The comic depicted Calvin dying, ascending to heaven, discovering that God is a giant chicken (kudos if you get the reference) and then awakening to realize it was all a dream. Upon informing his mother what he had experienced, she expressed doubt that heaven is where he would ultimately end up. Cut to a panel of Calvin descending an escalator into a fiery pit, and muttering, “Mom knows how to ruin a good childhood…”

I drew about five thousand more Calvin and Hobbes comics after that one, and to this day I don’t remember what happened to them.

2. What inspirations/factors influenced your adaptable cartoon comic style?

I have an adaptable comic style? I’d probably go with “inconsistent” or “fickle”. But, okay, rose-tinted glasses half full, I don’t know where my adaptable comic style came from. When I was a kid, I was super into newspaper comics. Then in middle and high school I was all about manga and anime. Then in college onward I became more interested in web comics and western graphic novels.

If anything, I guess you could say it’s because I’ve just had a lot of different influences over the course of my life. Even now, all I really do is just imitate other artists. If I have anything resembling a unique style, it stems from imprecisions in my ability to emulate those better than me. Like random, unwanted mutations in a pristine gene pool.

3. You have a peach salad, egg omelette, and SUPER SPICY EXTRA FLAMING HOT CRUNCHY CHEETOS! in front of you. You can only choose one. Which one do you choose, and why? Feel free to add existentialism and possibly a mental breakdown while thinking this through.

Well, if I’m following the advice of my doctor, I’d probably go for the egg-white-veggie omelet because it’s nutritious and contains protein and will do a better job filling me up and giving me long-lasting energy.

If I’m following the distorted desires of my shadow’s metaverse palace, I would eat all of the flaming hot cheetohs in three seconds and then scour the room for more and then go to the store to buy more when if I didn’t find any.

Also, the existentiality of your mental-breakdown-inducing question leads me to wonder if our beggars are bodies and our monarchs and outstretched heroes are the beggars’ shadows.

TWO OBSCURE SHADOW-RELATED CULTURAL REFERENCES IN ONE ANSWER. HIGH FIVE.

4. Do you prefer digital or traditional tools to draw?

 Ten million times digital. I’m noncommittal and prone to error by nature, so having an undo button and the option to adjust any detail at any given moment makes me much more comfortable when drawing. Major props to people who stick it out with the traditional arts, but I cannot handle the permanence and delicacy of that shiz-nat. Besides, we have to accept the digital age. Soon we will all be computer data streaming through the ether of the uni-net, exchanging thought-bits as we congregate in online cafes while sipping electric coffee.

Plus, digital just makes it easier to draw comics. Precise measurements, text tools, copy-pasting drawings for moment-to-moment panel transitions, etc. What am I supposed to use, a ruler? Ain’t nobody got time for that.

5. From the Avatar The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra world, what type of bender (or non-bender) would you be?

Oh, so just because I drew a hundred Korra comics and have cited ATLA as one of my favorite shows and constantly make avatar-themed polls featuring questions similar to the one you just asked, you ASSUME it’s appropriate to ask me a question about Avatar.

A waterbender. I’d be a waterbender.

It’s just too versatile to pick anything else. Unless MAYBE earthbending came with both metalbending and seismic sense. Then I’d consider earthbending. But, yeah, definitely one of those over being able to burn flammable materials or blow stuff around. Maybe if I were a harem anime protagonist I’d reconsider.

6. What do you struggle to draw (ex: hands, feet, realism, shoujo, birds, sad themes, water) the most? What could you do to improve?

I struggle with literally anything beyond drawing a cartoon face. Cartoon faces are the one thing I feel confident about being able to draw. Everything else requires 1000% more mental energy and time for me to feel comfortable with the final product.

Actually, what really gets my goat is anything that requires geometric precision. Straight lines, angles, symmetric designs—all that stuff both annoys and bores me. I like to draw things that are loose and organic and curvy. I think it’s why I’ve tended more towards a western “cartoony” comic style as the years went on.

I mean, if I wanted to get better at and feel more comfortable with drawing those sorts of things, I could probably practice more, use more references, draw more from life, and just generally be more earnest and diligent about becoming a better artist and overall more worthwhile human being.

But it’s haaaaaarrrrrrrrrrdddd…

I just have to find the patience. It’s probably buried somewhere along with my work ethic and my childhood fear of rocky road ice cream.

7. A cute anime girl comes running towards you saying, "Master! I have found you! ★ Tee hee! ★ I am yours to keep! Please let me fold your laundry and cook for you and be your loyal pet! ❤❤❤" What is the first thing you make her do?

Summon her friends. I need to determine if I’m in some shounen action comedy that heavily features fanservice, or a full-blown harem anime. I’d be fine with either.

Also, I’d learn firebending and airbending.

8. Break down the most important mechanics of an ideal game for you: good plot? Great graphics? Intensive characters? Good battle system? (You can give already existing games as examples, if you want!)

I assume you ask this because of my occasional video game/TV reviews that no one reads because they’re twenty pages long.
If we’re talking about my personal preferences, I get excited by games that use the interactive medium to tell a story. My favorite games are ones in which the gameplay is used to service a narrative and vice versa—Mass Effect, Persona, Uncharted, The Last of Us, The Walking Dead, Undertale, etc. I very much enjoy games which use story and character to contextualize gameplay, rendering it more meaningful, and which use gameplay to further my immersion in or influence my consideration of the narrative.

But, if we’re talking about what I think just makes a good game in general, like in more objective terms, I think it’s a game in which all the different elements serve the game’s overall philosophy/experience. Even if I don’t enjoy a game, I can respect it when it allows me to say “Okay, I can see what they were going for with this game and how all the different parts of it help it achieve that.”

I hate it when games feel like they have prominent components that don’t benefit the overall game and, more severely, detract from it (e.g. the bland, waiting-ridden open world levels in Mass Effect Andromeda, the game-consuming batmobile in Batman Arkham Knight, the awkward puzzle-platforming of some Kingdom Hearts titles, etc.).
The issue there, of course, is that sometimes different people will play the same games for different reasons. I like Persona mainly for its roleplaying and narrative, but others might like it more specifically for its dungeon-crawling and turn-based-combat. It’s a nebulous and subjective area to explore, as is the case with critiquing any art form.

Disclaimer: I don’t know anything about video game design or the video game industry and no stock should be put into my stupid opinions because I’m dumb.

9. Do you want to do an original manga/series on DA one day?

Yes, definitely. This has actually been a long time coming. I have literally hundreds of pages of different concept arts and story ideas made in preparation for such projects. But, I also have crippling issues with committing to my ideas long enough to execute on them. My interests and my conviction both tend to waver predictably unpredictably, and so that makes it hard to really stick with something like an ongoing story with character arcs and planned plot twists and recurring themes. I constantly want to drastically revise or even just rebuild things from the ground up.

Hopefully, one day I’ll find a way to feel more comfortable about the whole endeavor and just go with the flow—especially when I’d be doing this mostly for my own personal gratification. I don’t need to make something super professional. Drawing fan comics all the time can just get boring once in a while. I really want to see how people respond to my own original ideas.
More than anything I want to make a comic series that I myself would want to read. And I’m an overly-critical butthole with unrealistically high standards, so any ideas I have will probably never see the light of day.

10. Rebecca Sugar announces that Steven Universe (or some other most favorite show that you love) will be cancelled. Please, break down the 5 stages of grief (or LACK of coping) for yourself. 

Okay, first of all, I didn’t realize when I first read this that you were creating a hypothetical situation for the question and actually legit freaked out for a split sec.

1. Become extremely frustrated and hateful toward the network for prematurely concluding a story that clearly had many more places to go and ideas to explore.

2. Become extremely sad that I will no longer be able to see what other places the story had to go and what other ideas it had to explore.

3. Go find some people on reddit who are like-minded and will make me feel better about the whole thing.

4. Write some kind of schmaltzy and whiny blog about it.

5. Do nothing other than complain to everyone that the show is ending, including and especially people who do not watch/like the show.

Secretly understand to myself that the show was probably going downhill and that maybe it was for the best that it ended when it did.

6. Draw and spread fan comics about Steven Universe in light of its cancellation in an attempt to capitalize on others’ misfortune and increase my own popularity.

6. Continue this for several weeks.

7. Accept the series’ cancellation and watch the spin-off comedy series Cartoon Network creates titled “Steven Universe Go!” that everyone hates but I actually believe isn’t really that bad when you consider its popularity with its targeted demographic and that it simply suffers from having the emotional baggage of millions of pissed-off, entitled fans who can’t move on with their lives.

8. Wait, did you say five stages?

9. Move on to some other thing that I can obsess over and draw 50 comics about every week until I get sick of it.

10. Finally draw something original.

11. Thanks a lot for agreeing to be a part of this interview! Any last words to the audience (before I tell everyone you used " : P " at the end of almost every single comment in high school HARHARHAR)?

I MAKE COMICS TO MAKE PEOPLE LAUGH AND FEEL GOOD. READ THEM. THEY’RE FUNNY SOMETIMES. I NEED THE VALIDATION. I DON’T HAVE ANY REAL EMOTIONAL SUPPORT OR FRIENDS IN MY ACTUAL LIFE. THIS IS ALL I HAVE. MY SELF-ESTEEM IS BASED IN INTERNET NUMBERS AND PRAISE FROM RANDOM STRANGERS.

AND DON’T BELIEVE ANYTHING BUTT-SAN SAYS ABOUT ME IT’S ALL LIES. SHE USED TO DRAW COMICS WITH JAPANESE SOUND EFFECTS THAT WERE UNWITTINGLY WRITTEN BACKWARDS. : P



March 9, 2017
NO JAM by cowtape   IM COOL  by cowtape   special babies  by cowtape  Mug-shot (???) by cowtape  rest... by cowtape  
Here, we have the rare species of 
:iconcowtape:, who was awol for a bit, and then popped up like a daisy with IDEAS, and DREAMS, AND ASPIRATIONS! Egads! To reward her for being more active and in-tune with the Internet community again, let's do an interview! Before a Canada snowstorm blows her away!

1. How long have you been drawing?

I’d say an approximate of 5 years. I started and still am drawing with Deviantart, but I had about a 3 year hiatus like, way back. Ever since then I’ve been uploading little by little. Currently my activity has become more consistent though so that’s great LOLOL

2. What inspirations/factors influenced your traditional semi-realistic manga style?

The manga style comes from the anime I used to watch (ie. Naruto, Death Note, Fullmetal Alchemist, Eureka Seven -- all the big name anime HAHA). Another style that I really came to like is from Kingdom Hearts/The World Ends With You official arts, drawn by Tetsuya Nomura. His style is so strong and sharp, and it looks soooo so cool.


Recent influences come from my art classes that I’ve been taking, where I draw big drawings focusing on human anatomy on Friday nights, and small sketchbook drawings or painting on canvases while experimenting on different mediums. I’ve only started getting serious about art classes and I’ve been learning a lot. This is also why I’m way more comfortable working traditionally, since it’s really the only way I’ve been creating my entire life, HAHAH

Relating back to my earlier influences (shows like Fullmetal Alchemist, Eureka Seven, Legend of Korra, Voltron and the movie Anastasia) really came to inspire me to draw more and really gave me a direction on where I want to bring my drawings. These shows are full of action, and the way it’s animated is just so sketchy, especially with the way they include action/motion blur lines in very fast movements. It’s so speedy and it’s obviously animation, but the way they can create human movement like through ANIMATION is just amazing. HUGE MENTION OF STEVE AHN, WHAT A GOD

3. Two trains, one traveling at 67.2 km/h and the other at 201 km/h, are headed toward one another along a straight, level track. When they are 938 m apart, each engineer sees the other's train and applies the brakes. The brakes decelerate each train at the rate of 2.0 m/s2. Can Lo save the people on both trains before dinner?

He better!!!! He needs to be able to save everyone and have his moment of awesome so that people will fawn over him and give him the love and attention he needs


Context: Lo is my character in a gay story(?) who is your average good looking pervert who tries to hook up with anyone and everyone, but while everyone is being gay the running gag is that Lo will never be able to get rid of his “available” status

4. If :iconchronochu-chan: was drowning in a lake, :iconlaugh-butts: was getting mugged right next to the lake, and :iconskylar-kohai: was being kidnapped from a white van at the same time, who would you save first?

I’d save Sky first, kick the kidnappers out of the white van, swim and save Chro, then help you call all the credit card companies to cancel your credit cards (cause at this point you would have lost your wallet) and then round y’all up in the white van, pick up Tofu and then we’ll go to the airport and we’ll fly to Canada and live at my house WHERE THESE THINGS ARE PROBABLY LESS LIKELY TO HAPPEN--


5. Why do you prefer traditional over digital medium?

As much as I wanted to move on to using digital mediums, I’ve never had enough resources to test around with it that much (first a tablet, and then a laptop, and then the sufficient amount of space to hold more than 2 drawings, etc). My little amount of experience on digital compared to traditional just sorta told me that maybe I should stick to what I know best for now. Even looking at tutorials online for digital art just left me really confused.

Sometimes though I do have some ideas that would make me think, “if I were able to create this kind of image it’d look great, but I don’t have enough digital knowledge/experience to make such complex drawings.” But that’s when I turn and think, “that’d be a cool challenge. How would I create this with the resources that I DO have?” It also definitely helps that recently my traditional inventory has been expanding and I’m so excited to see how much farther I can go.

6. What common art themes do you pursue in your new sketches/pictures (ex: horror, everyday, sadness, nature, etc)

I usually go for everyday scenes. Most of my gifs that I’ve currently created are tiny “moment-in-time”-esque that captures the mood and idea of “existing”. They’re based off of little moments I have when I’m aware of myself and my position, and my current emotion.

Things I’d like try out with these are more like gesture drawings, where it is also like a snapshot of life but with more movement and purpose. I’m starting out with small gifs first, and hopefully I can get better and make longer gifs with more complicated movements!

7. When do you think you can successfully become a semi-homeless hermit in the mountain with your sage-like mountain goats and the occasional village pity package every month?

Probably in my early/mid-thirties. That’s when I become a professional semi-homeless hermit. I start the practice in my early twenties.


8. You get struck by lightning (ow), but you wake up to discover you now have a super power! What super power do you have? Are you on the good or bad side?

Yowch!! I’d have the super power of invisibility and teleportation! According to my friends, I would use this to my advantage to prank people HAHHAHAHAHA I think I’d travel between good and bad; I’d be an antihero. On those personality quizzes that tell you what roles you get I’m never a hero or antagonist. I’m just the third party working according to my own agenda. If only I was that independent in real life AHAHAHAHAH

9. What do you struggle with the most when drawing, and how do you think you can you approve?

The thing that gives me the most trouble is trying to think of different poses, or capturing stories in my drawings/gesture drawings. I want to expand my creativity, improve my anatomy AND HAVE MORE PERSEVERANCE TO SEE THINGS THROUGH. With the 24/24 coming up this March Break, I’m really looking forward to test that out. I think it’ll definitely a kick for me in the right direction.

10. If you could choose ONE. FAVORITE. SONG. for all of us, which would it be?

Leo by Tacica! It’s a japanese song used as the ending track for the anime Haikyuu. Which is a sports anime that is really fun and full of enthusiastic sunshine, and I love it. The song talks about how everyone goes through life, some wandering aimlessly and they’re stuck on the ground; but if you give yourself a little push and you keep persevering, one day you’ll be able to fly. This song wins first place for my ONE. FAVORITE. SONG. as the meaning of the song was actually the impression and meaning I gave myself before actually searching the lyrics, and it just hit me twice as hard. I loved it. And also I’m always about doing your best to stand up tall and push your limits.


OTHER WORTHY MENTIONS INCLUDE “Endless Rain” by XJapan, “You Were Here” by Bump of Chicken, “I’m Alive” by Becca.


11. Thanks a lot for agreeing to be a part of this interview! Any last words to the audience (before I start the fight between you and the black bear)?

THANK YOU FOR THE INTERVIEW, AND I HOPE YOU GUYS ENJOY MY SUPER LONG ANSWERS! If you couldn’t tell I get very enthusiastic when I get asked questions about myself AND I HAVE A LOT OF PASSION. Being able to ask these questions were also great refreshers for me as I got to look back on what got me started, and what I want to do with my art now. AHH. THANK YOU AGAIN BUTTS



January 23, 2017
She by FuyuDust   TeaGirl's Diary by FuyuDust  Commission 47: Osozaki Late Blooming - First by FuyuDust  

Mature Content

Yuri Valentine by FuyuDust
   Inktober #4 by FuyuDust
It took me almost a year to get this perverted old man- I mean cute Vietnamese girl to interview, so let me boast this. Introducing :iconfuyudust:, the most respectable, talented, and heart-warming online artist from Vietnam that I know (she is the only online artist from Vietnam I know). Be careful when you find her looking under your skirt; she will say it is for artistic reference.

1. How long have you been drawing?

My mom mentioned I drew some wall clock when I was really young and I don’t remember a thing about it, so no, I don’t know when the hell did I start drawing. I doodle all the time as long as I can remember but I don’t have any sketchbook tho, believe it or not, after all those years and those countless doodles, I didn’t draw any complete pictures, not even one, most of them are just anime heads, and tiny mans, some without hands, some without legs.

I started drawing properly around 5 or 6 years ago, there was this Vietnamese biggest anime/manga forum, they had a small section for Artists, people can open a thread as their gallery and post their stuffs there, I opened one myself and started doing some serious drawing to show people, I earned some fame, especially for my Teagirl’s Diary which is about my high school days. But later, the sections started some roleplay games, I joined too, it was fun at first, but later some call-themselves-good artists gathered as a group and start looking down on beginner artists, acted all high and mighty, really rude and impolited and that Artists section turned into a mess, they quarreled everyday and call it “war”, man, that was so lame, I don’t want to be equated with them, so I silently quit that forum and moved on to another one, I joined some other Vietnamese artist communities and made friends with some really cool 90s artist kids, but annoying people are everywhere and they really know how to turn something friendly to a war zone, I gave up on all those communities. 

Lucky that I found out about Deviant Art, everyone is really fun and friendly here, I can’t use English very well so it’s hard to make a lot of friends like a certain Butts, sometime I wanted to say something funny and friendly or make a joke, but couldn't find the words, but it’s still nice tho, oh wait, what was the question again ?

2. If you could marry anyone (without "forbidden relationship" being an issue), who would it be right now?

That would be nice if I can marry that best friend I mentioned all the time in all my journal and art description, homo or not, I don’t have that kind of “falling deeply in love” or “can’t live without you” feeling with anyone, to me, marrying someone means I’m going to stick with them for the rest of my life, so the answer for this question is the one I feel at ease the most when I’m around them, and it’s properly her.

3. How much do you love tea?

I’m using Tea Girl as my penname because my name means “Tea” in Vietnamese, and that tag line “a girl who loves tea” is just there because I think it sounds cool, I actually know nothing about tea and the only tea I drink is the one they serves for free in restaurants, but my dad loves tea tho, he drink them all the time, I often pour half of his pot into my iced water jug whenever I see it, I noticed he bought a bigger pot later.

4. What do you like and despise about your homeland (Vietnam)? 

An ant nest, with a dead queen

5. When does your next Slice of Artist Life comic come out?

5330123474123492 days later may be

6. What is your favorite food?

Grilled beef wrapped in betel leaf

7. What digital/traditional tools do you use to draw? 

Intous Bamboo-Manga Studio-Photoshop/Mechanical pencil-Micron Pens

8. What are your feelings on this picture?: i.imgur.com/YBwDofP.jpg

The girl is not my type, pet-human is also not my type, cat ears and tails are fine but what the hell with that chain.

9. How many siblings do you have, and do they drive you nuts sometimes?

I don’t have any, but I have a cousin used to live with us for a long time, I mentioned him a lot in my journals too, he’s like real brother to me, I mean, the real good one, but he do drive me nuts sometimes, I really love him, I considered to give him out as an answer for question 2 too, but he has a girlfriend now so I let him pass this time. 

10. What is a project (making a manga, making a dating sims game, starting a new series, etc) you interested in starting eventually?

All of them, I have a manga story, actually already drew some pages, and also a visual novel plan, actually already finished drew all the character’s sprites, but both of them are stuck at the writing part. I think I’ll need to hire someone to write for me later.

11. Thanks a lot for agreeing to be a part of this interview! Any last words to the audience (before I mug you)?

Hey everyone, I guess everyone here is Butts’ friends, and I bet most of you think she’s a friendly and cheerful lady, but don’t let that fool you, she’s actually a super duper lonely person who has a lot of problems with humans, making joke is fun but let’s have some small talk with her about life and stuffs sometime too, she’ll love to heard about little warm and happy stories in your daily life and like to talk about how bad humanity is. She’s an important friend to me but sometime I can’t understand what’s she saying and sometime I don’t know how to tell her what I really think, as I said, my English is real bad, it took me 2 hours to answer all these questions and it’s still full of mistakes, so I can not really have a good talk with her anytime soon, so please take good care of her for me too, thank you ♥


I reached the size limit for my last [1] Hard Hitting Interview with Butts journal post. So here is [2] Hard Hitting Interview with Butts journal.

Star! I dislike having multiple journal entries for each thought. I update interviews on one journal entry, mi amigos. Star! 


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AKELEUCTIOR's avatar
butts sensei chan i look forward to one of your hard hitting interviews i expect you to be relentless and brutal you will receive 100% honesty or curtailed answers thank you laughbutts you are a very unforgiving interviewer i am proud