Category: The Dreaming Series

The Waking: Animania and Supanova

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A bunch of announcements to make…let’s start with Animania 2005, in the Sydney Town Hall, this weekend (8th-9th October). Once again, I’m on a panel, and I’m on another one the weekend after at Supanova, a pop-culture convention in Sydney. Busy busy busy, but at least this time I don’t have to get on a plane or cross-country train. Details are as below, but not before…

 

The Dreaming Preview: The Dreaming is finally online at Takuhai!!! Or… the magazine formerly known as Takuhai. It’s now called Manga Online, I think. Not that it matters, go on and read it!!

 

Animania: I’m doing 3 events at Animania, though there is the chance I’ll be so tired from all the work this week that all I’ll be able to manage is to slump over the artist’s table at the Iron Artist’s Challenge. Once again, panels and drawing sessions.

 

Iron Artist (Prelims)
Time: 11:00 am, Saturday, 8th October
Place: Sydney Town Hall, Main Stage/Hall (front)
What: The artist’s equivalent of the Iron Chef cult TV series. I hope I won’t be too tired to at least scream a pro-wrestler’s scream at the top of my voice.

 

Self-Publishing Panel
Time: 1:00 pm, Saturday, 8th October
Place: Sydney Town Hall, Art Room (right)
What: I’m not self-publishing, but here’s a good chance to chat about the ins and outs of the business.

 

Drawing 1 Workshop
Time: 2:00 pm, Saturday, 8th October
Place: Sydney Town Hall, Art Room (right)
What: It’s a… workshop! Run by me! Right after the self-publishing panel too. At least I’ll be able to watch the AMV entry screening afterwards.

 

Otakulture Art Exhibition: Photoes were not allowed at this event, but I was surprised by the amount of interest people had in the exhibition. The exhibition is on at RocketArt gallery, along with numerous numbers of highly talented artists. And very nice people they all were, especially Kirsty the robogirl (whom unknown to both of us, were both speakers at the Monash Manga Symposium earlier this year), and Thea Baumann, the curator of the exhibition. Looks like Pop Japan scores again – but that’s not the only good news. Thea has gotten a grant that will allow the exhibition to tour, so instead of only going to Brisbane this year in December, it’s going to go to all major Australian cities, including Sydney and Melbourne. When that happens, I’ll be sure to tell everyone so they can crash the party in the Sydney exhibition. And darn it!! My book will be already published by then! Good publicity! Go Thea!!!

 

The Dreaming proof copies: Has arrived, along with some old issues of the magazine formerly known as Takuhai. I normally hate re-reading my work, but this time it’s unavoidable, and it’s also a bit different. Regardless, it’s very exciting to be holding an actual COPY of the book in your hands, even if it’s just a raw proof copy. There are two things in my mind though: (1) I’m never, ever going to use Anime Ace as a font ever again, thanks to all the kerning problems, and (2) I’ll be hand-inking the speech bubbles in volumes 2 and 3 of The Dreaming. It may look inconsistent, but it will also look much nicer. I originally did computer-generated balloons for the ease of foreign translations, but right now I’m not so sure whether it was a good idea or not. Apart from that, let’s party!

 

New Job: I’m working part-time at a gaming studio right now. I’ve been at work for 2 days before I found out it was a gaming studio – before that, I thought it was an animation studio (actually, I didn’t know what it was). Thanks for Poshua for my job, who today brought stacks of yaoi to work to disturb the predominantly male co-workers. Poshua rocks. My job is to colour in the animated character frames for the 2D online fighting game they’re making for the PC market in Japan and South-East Asia. Luckily I’m a gamer too, so I’m in the loop – it’s interesting to see how games are developed and gain some experience working in the field. Maybe it’ll come in useful one day!

The character I’m doing right now is a huge, buff chef, and I’m getting damn good at colouring in the “muscle-bound” Capcom way. The game’s called “Chaos Code” by the way… it’ll be out at the beginning of next year. I must get my name in the credits…

The Waking: And it Continues…

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Currently I’m juggling my marketing scheme and coming out on the bottom, but at least making progress. I’m working on a flyer to distribute at the long line of upcoming conventions, and things are okay so far. I’ve also got to design a business card. I’ve got a good postcard though, and it’s here. The postcard is going to be issued by TokyoPop, and going to be distributed free as part of signings!! I took the liberty of creating all new art for it rather than just slapping the cover onto it – so power be to moi!

I’ve also printed the art for the Electrofringe festival out, and they look fantastic! Will probably reuse them for the other conventions. And it is confirmed. The Electrofringe Art Exhibition will go from 22nd September to the 9th October, and I will be there at a panel on the 2nd October to talk about my work. More details on convention attendances to be posted up later on.

 

The Dreaming - Jeanie

 

This is actually in colour, with the same colour scheme as the Cover of “The Dreaming”, but this duotone version looks pretty too, so I’m posting this up.

 

Block 6: The Webcomic is here. And page117 is up. It’s the last page of Chapter 5, though in reality I’ve decided to split Chapter 5 into two segments because of the length. Not that it’s making any difference. Part 1 of Block 6, due to the chapter changes, now ends at Chapter 7, and Part 2, I guess it’s safe to say, involves a police investigation of a suspicious murder at “Block 6”. And we get to see just how thick a folder this building has. And who gets to die in a horrible way.

 

The Waking: Additional Pages…

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Update – Interview with Marty LeGrow: There’s an interview up on MangaLife.com with the creator of Bizenghast!

I’m busy working on the additional pages for “The Dreaming”, such as the extra bits and pieces in the back, previews, table of contents, etc. It’s been a busy week, and from the way things are going, it seems that I can beat the 15 August deadline after all, even with all the extra art changes to the later chapters required as well. DAMN amazing. The deadline was originall 15th September, but since they moved the street date back a month, they moved everything else back a month too (but I didn’t find out until last Thursday). Things are going on schedule so far (it’s a miracle!), but I won’t be laughing yet until I get confirmation that all 7 chapters have been accepted by TOKYOPOP.

 

Doodle for Page 4

 

There are other hiccups. Apparently the book needs to be completely re-lettered by TOKYOPOP in-house, because of a font incompatibility issue between Macs and PCs (for Anime Ace). Good Heavens. At least my editor promised to watch them like a hawk and make sure no weird typos are made, but I feel myself losing a few tufts of hair over this. I hope nothing goes wrong.

The page for “The Dreaming” is also up on TokyoPop’s site. So far, it looks fine, though I WILL have to draw a decent pic to replace the one of Amber sleeping. Too redundant. But that’ll have to wait after the additional pages are done.

 

Raijin Comics Shamefully Dead?: Raijin Comic’s website died a while ago, and I read on another message board that it has gone totally out of business. And it was apparently a sordid story as well. I quote from the forum post:

“on anime expo 2005, I made friends with one of the shipping supervisors of raijin comics, he told me that after they refunded the money of everyone that suscribed to the magazine, they had to send everything back to japan to be resold in cheap markets, the last day of work in the raijin warehouse, everyone raided the warehouse and took whatever they could like complete collections of “the master editions” of hokuto no ken, boxes and boxes of loose manga and whatever they could got in their hands, they were fired already so they took advantage on that.

Shueisha lost a lot of money and they simply closed both companies in japan and USA, so the “Hiatus” was more like an “shameful out of business” and they are not returning anymore….”

Good heavens, I wonder if this is true. It’s not the first American manga company to end in such ignominy. They had some really good stuff too – I wonder what went wrong? Sure, they were aimed squarely at the Shonen/Seinen market – but with hits like City Hunter and Slam Dunk, and it STILL crashed and burned? At least Slam Dunk has been picked up by another company.

 

Hilarious: The Revenge of the Sith: Backstroke of the West. Sound like a familiar name? It’s the Chinglish translation of said Star Wars movie, and some of the laughable tranlsations are here. Haven’t laughed so hard in a long time. This is another testament why you shouldn’t buy pirated Chinese DVDs if you want quality. Nah, you buy it for the laughs instead. Come to think of it, at this rate, China will fast replace Japan as the #1 source of mangled English in the international arena. Not a bad thing, really – more laughs to go around.

 

Personality Test: I did this Humanmetrics Test twice, and both times I said I’m an INTJ, meaning a Mastermind Rational. Apparently they’re rare – less than 1% of the population, but the description fits me quite accurately so I can at least vouch for the worthiness of taking this test. Apparently I am in distinguished company, with Gandalf the Grey being a Mastermind Rational as well.

I got Jeanie from “The Dreaming” to do the test, and she turned out to be ESTJ, or a Supervisor Guardian, which SOUNDS somewhat like her. Jeanie likes to feel accepted by her peers, and has a strong sense of responsibility as well as a no-nonsense attitude. She does have a rebellious streak too, but that’s more due to teenage-dom than personality. She isn’t particularly conservative though, which is a mainstay of the ESTJ personality… but it’s close enough.

The Dreaming: The Final Cover!

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I just heard back from my editor – this amazing thing happened at TokyoPop. My cover got approved by the CEO without needing any changes, even after the logo and assorted stuff has been added. Apparently this has NEVER happened before, and I am in AWE that there were no changes required. WOAH! But that just leaves me more time to do work, yeah! And it seems that I’ll have to add the page numbers into the book myself, which is actually a good thing since I have time, and it’s more trustworthy than asking someone else to add it in and hope it’ll be there when the book comes out. And there *TADA* will be a table of contents.

Anyway, here’s the cover with logo. Personally I was hoping the logo would look more “elegant”, but then if Stu Levy (with his high standards) approved this, then it MUST be okay. I wonder whether additional art can be added on the back though… since it’s a repeat of the cover image, but for now it looks fine.

 

Cover for The Dreaming - vol1

 

I did a calculation of how long the book took me. When I start doing something – pencilling, inking, toning – I tend to make the starting and ending dates. There may be some breaks/pauses in between, but I still count those days in. So far, I’ve calculated I’ve done 71 days of pencilling, 93 days of inking, and 57 days for toning. Since the whole thing is 171 pages, it’s down to an average of 2.41 pages/day for pencilling, 1.84 pages/day for inking, and 3 pages/day for toning. Not bad, really.

 

Art Exhibition: I’ve been blabbering about this for a while, and details still haven’t been finalised, but I’ll post it up anyway. There’s going to be large arts festival in Newcastle in September-October, called the “This Is Not Art Festival”, which is actually a whole bunch of festivals clustered together, concentrating on New Media. MY part in it is in the “Otakulture” festival, a part of the Electrofringe festival.

I’ll be participating in a panel discussion, and also showing 6 pieces of art in the exhibit. Four of these would be pages from “The Dreaming”, while the other two would be my Chinese Opera Singer pictures. They’ll be A3 size so I need to go to a printer, but that’s plenty of work for me to do so far.