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On September 1, fans flocked to the Utsunomiya branch of Animate to attend an autograph event for Shingeki no Kyojin: Attack on Titan‘s author, Hajime Isayama. During his Shinkansen train ride to Tochigi Prefecture, the artist doodled up some ideas for pictures to draw along with his signature when meeting with his fans. He took a snapshot that quickly spread through the Twittersphere of what everyone assumed would be a superb work of art…

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The caption that went along with this Tweet: “On the bullet train, Isayama-san thinks about what illustrations to draw for his autograph event. It didn’t go well, so he scrapped the scribbles. He says he’s bad at drawing deformed characters. LOL”

In fact, Isayama has specifically stated on his blog that he’s never been good at that quick, cutesy style of sketching (sometimes referred to as “super-deformed” overseas). The only deformed pictures he can draw are the strangely-shaped Titans in his manga. Even so, some fans are stunned at the unapologetic lack of art skill shown in the doodles. Some commenters pointed out that the guy could have been drawing crappily on purpose. After all, someone who can draw this-

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-can’t be that bad with a pen and paper.

Nevertheless, the much-lauded illustrator has definitely made many a fan raise their eyebrows at his blob-renditions of Mikasa and Armin, lazy-eyed Lance Corporal Levi, and square-faced Eren Yeager, rough draft or not.

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Source: NemuSoku
Image source: Isayama Hajime’s Blog