Great art, wonderful characterization, witty and funny lines are one of the most important recipes when it comes to creating an unforgettable comic. This time, OC would like to introduce Semi-chan, one of the most talented young artists in the fandom who is known for her cute depictions of the characters and her humorous story lines. With a string of very notable comics such as, "Toshiya's Hair" and "Kyo's Valentine", her comics has produced its own cult following within the Dir en grey fandom with most of her fans using her artwork as their personal avatars for their own blogs. For the not familiar, we at OC highly recommend that you take some time and check out her comics that she has archived on her own DeviantArt page, http://semichan-kokonut.deviantart.com/.

Watch out for more future collaborations of Semi-chan x OC as she breathes life into some of the content in OC!

--Tell us about yourself?

My name is Lili (but I actually never use it on internet so everyone knows me as ‘Semichan‘), I’m 20, I live in France in a small town named Morlaix. I’m a pretty simple girl, I‘m sociable and like to get to know new persons as much as possible. I used to be very eccentric when I was a teenager but now I’m kind of the average type of girl, at least physically.

I spend the majority of my time drawing, writing and working on my computer. I stopped studying a few years ago because of a poor health and actually still live with that so I cannot have a proper job right now. Anyway, I do my best to keep doing the things I like and want to do, which is basically drawing and sharing my stuff on the internet hoping some people will like it ! As far as I remember I’ve always wanted to draw, become an illustrator or a character designer. So my actual goal is to manage living with what I like to do !

I have a strong passion for music too, almost any kind. I listen to pop, rock, metal, new wave, Rn’B… Depends on my mood. I have a dozen of favorite artists but Dir en grey definitely stays on top years after years.

In my family, we’ve always been into art and music and almost everybody can draw; one of my brothers can play drums, bass and guitar so I can say that I actually grew up in an artistic environment. I guess that kind of influenced me, although I’m the only one who has an interest for the Japanese culture, Manga and the likes; so my way of drawing is fairly different from the rest of my family.

That’s about everything there’s to know about me really, to sum it up I love drawing, music, video games and of course, I’m obsessed with Dir en grey. (laugh)

--How long have you known Dir en grey? Have you ever seen them live?

I’ve known Dir en grey for about 7 years now if I’m right but I’m a real fan since 5 years or so though. The first song I heard from them was Red…[em] and the first PV I saw was [KR] Cube. Red…[em] was an immediate crush and I instantly tried to know from which album it was. That’s how I started to really listen to Dir en grey, and quickly became a big fan.

I’ve seen them live once only, but it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I saw them for their second concert in France on the 10th of November 2007, at the Zenith in Paris. The whole show was just mind blowing, I loved every second of it. The fact they started with Deity too was a plus. It remains one of my best teenage memories, I just hope they come back to France next year for a headline tour, I’ll definitely be there !

--How long have you been making comics?

I’ve been making comics for 10 years now, but I started the Diru comics 5 years ago. I started drawing really early and created my first little comics around 10/11, so. Mostly Heroic-Fantasy and stuff like that, really serious things actually, the funny type of comics came later. My first Dir en grey comics have never been published in fact ! (laugh) Most of them were about the Family Values Tour and the It Withers and Withers era. They were much shorter than the current ones, mostly one or two pages comics with no real story line. Not that the current ones have that much of a scenario (laugh) but they’re different somehow.

--Even roughly, how long does it take you to make a page of comic?

I’m pretty fast to draw the page itself; I would say it takes around 5 to 10 minutes per page; but when it comes to coloring, adding text and all, it’s much longer. I think it might take about and hour and a half to make a full page in total, but it can be longer, shorter; it really depends on a lot of things; like my actual motivation and if the page contains traditionally drawn backgrounds (which is not that often) and stuff of that kind. If so, it’d definitely be longer to do.

--You said that you like Manga, which Manga/Comic and/or drawing style do you think has influenced you the most?

Well, I don’t really know if there’s any Manga that influenced me in terms of drawing style, I’ve rather been influenced by the whole work of different Mangakas. Since years now I’ve taken Clamp, Kaori Yuki and Nobuteru Yuki as some sort of role models so there might be similarities I personally don’t even get. If I had to think of a precise manga, maybe that "Ayashi no Ceres" from Yuu Watase influenced me a bit when I started creating my own comics but yet, I don’t think it shows in the end. Later I’ve been really impressed by Kazusa Takashima (Wild Rock), she has one of the most amazing drawing style I’ve ever seen and I've always wanted to be able to draw like that one day too ! (laugh) But in the end, I think my biggest influence stays everything Clamp did. They’re my all time favorite, and "Tokyo Babylon" definitely remains one of the Mangas that made me wanna draw more and more.

--Your comics are very well drawn. What medium do you use? Did you learn this from somebody or somewhere?

Thank you ! I don’t use anything particular, I’d say I use what I find. I just use various types of black pens with different size of leads, nothing more really. As for the colors, everything’s done on the computer, and I mostly use an old program called Photostudio that I’ve been using for years now. I don’t use Photoshop much, I just keep my old habits ! And just as for drawing, I learned all by myself. I just kept trying and trying and see how things would turn out hoping it would look decent ! (laugh)

--I think that you've captured the members' personality quite well. Along with the funny lines and quips, how were you able to come up with this story board?

Basically, I decided to give each Dir en grey member the personality I thought they have, only ten times more exaggerated (laugh). So starting from that, I used anecdotes I found in interviews, imagined a story from little details seen in videos makings, backstage footage, used real happenings and turned them into something humorous to create a short story for each comic. Anything said or done by the band is an actual source of inspiration for me.

--Which do you think is the funniest backstage footage you've ever seen. Were you inspired to make it into a comic?

Any backstage footage is a potential comic for me, b ut I think that the Macabre Tour DVD could make me draw a hundreds of different comics. I feel like I could watch this one over and over again without getting the least bit bored, there is so many funny moments in it. I’ve been thinking about making a comic based on that several times already but since I usually use their look of the moment for each new comic (save for a very few), I still don’t know if that’s a good idea to go back to the past. But I definitely would love to do something using some parts of the Macabre tour DVD and also the Osaka Jo Hall backstage footage. I might do them later, I just need to what I exactly wanna do with these.

--So tell us something about your latest comic about Toshiya's hair. What was the initial inspiration for making this comic?

Actually, it’s just that he notably changed his haircut e xactly one year after I made the first comic about his radical change of haircut. (laugh) That, and the fact that it now makes a full year I’ve started sharing these Dir en grey comics on the internet. So I thought I’d make something that would relate to the very first one I published.

--Who is your favorite member to draw? Why?

Probably Toshiya. The fact he’s my favorite member might help, but also, I feel like I can give Toshiya a very temperamental personality and I truly like this. He can get from hyper to super bored in a second in my comics and he’s also very childish; it’s always refreshing to draw him.

--Who is the hardest member to draw? Why?

I would say Shinya. He is the most mysterious member to me, so I’m still hesitating on what kind of personality I should give him even now. I don’t think I gave him that strong of a personality until then, it’s like he more or less adjust to the topic of the comic. Also, despite the tons of things I read and saw about Shinya, I still feel like I don’t know much about him in the end. So that’s pretty difficult to give him the appropriate reactions sometimes.

--Which of your work is your favorite? Why?

My favorite work… That’s one hard question ! The first comic I can think of is the Valentine’s Day special I made last year. It was focusing on Kyo, which is something I don’t do much, generally my comics tend to focus on Toshiya, I just can’t help it (laugh). So here I really enjoyed drawing Kyo more, especially since he was acting differently from my other comics in this one. He’s being all sweet and insecure and it was like some kind of little guilty pleasure to make Kyo act this way (laugh). Otherwise, I really enjoyed working on the two comics about Toshiya’s haircuts, they were really fun to make.

--Do you archive all of your comics in DeviantArt? Do you have your own personal site for your comics?

When I started uploading my comics on the internet, I was using Photobucket only and didn’t have a DeviantArt account yet. So I was talking of them on Myspace and sometimes in my personal blog, but nothing more. I then created that DA account an d now archive them all here indeed, I don’t have a personal site yet but it’s a project I have since a while now.

--We think that you're comics are very popular and highly recommended by peers in the fandom. What do you think about that?

Well, I must say that I don’t really realize it, to be totally honest. I forgot to mention I’m a very unsure person and I tend to think people are all doing better than me; but I do realize there’s some people that follow my comics regularly now, and that makes me unbelievably happy. All in all I’m truly glad other fans like these little comics and the feedback I get only motivates me to make more ! So I’m really grateful for everything.

--We noticed a considerable amount of people using your artwork as their avatars on LJ. Do you have any plans of making things like avatars or wallpapers for the fandom?

I’ve been thinking of doing this just recently in fact ! Mostly for the avatars, since people sometimes asked me if they could use this or that part of a comic to make one and all, I was thinking I should make a few myself and share them.

--Do you have any plans for the future? Do you plan on taking up art and comics as a profession?

I would love for it to become my profession, yes. So right now I’m perpetually working on drawings, comics and other projects I have to try and start working with that. That’s my dream job really, so I‘ll do my best to manage living it.

--Any chances of publishing a compilation of all of your work in the future?

It’s actually planned ! I should be making a compilation of all the Diru comics with some exclusive ones sometime next year. I can’t really tell when for the moment, but it’s gonna happen. It’s one of my major plans for 2010, in fact.

--You mentioned that you are working on a brand new comic. Any chance that you'd share some hints about what you're working on?

I posted a little teaser on my DeviantART a few days ago about his actually, but it’s not really revealing, so to briefly sum up the story of this new comic, Kyo will meet someone he doesn’t really like, and this will lead to a pretty weird and (I hope) funny evening with the whole band. Kyo’s gonna feel rather lost and frustrated towards the situation and do his best to find a good way out, for him of course (laugh). Actually, there will be two really famous guests in that comic, one of them being the person Kyo doesn’t wanna meet and talk to. I can’t really say more for the moment, or it won’t be a surprise anymore ! (laugh)

--A message to all your fans and readers of OC!

First of all, thanks for reading this interview ! And to all the people who like my comics, follow me on DeviantArt or anywhere else, I’m truly grateful and thanks so much for supporting me. To the people who don’t know me, I hope that this interview made you wanna take a look at what I do ! (laugh) Thanks again for reading !

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