Category: The Dreaming Series

The Dreaming: Loads of Announcements

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Long time, no update. I’ve been busy busy busy, mostly because on top of part-time work and doing “The Dreaming”, I’ve also picked up some illustrations for a company. Oh my god. No time to do ANYTHING at all. More on that in the future – many announcements to make. I seem to be experiencing server problems though. It takes forever to load my site up for some reason… I may have to start looking for a new server. No matter how great Jason and Silver Bullet Hosting has been, I think I’ve got to start looking for more bandwidth, especially since I’m going to put some video clips online.

 

New Manga: As I said in my previous post, I sent “The Two Dollar Deal” around on my fanlisting, which is growing, thanks to Emily Shao (YAY! Emily!). However, if you missed it, it’s now officially up on my site at here. It’s a short 8-page manga “cute romance” story, much like “Greenhouse”, mostly because it’s done for the same anthology (Generation 2006 this time).

 

Wirepop Calendar: WAY late announcement, but Wirepop is putting out a new calendar! I’ve got June, and I finally get some “Block 6” colour art done, though pages… getting there (ahem).

 

Wirepop Calendar - Block 6

 

Chaos Code: I had to mention this. “Chaos Code” is a 2D-fighting game I’m working on, which is my part-time job, for a company called “FKDigital”. Based here in Sydney, it’s got about 11 people working on a tonne of art for a fighting game that’s to be released for the Japanese and SE Asian market. The game art is coming along BEAUTIFULLY, thanks to all the amazing artists there, and the reason why I’m so excited is because the game engine is finally “done”. By “done” I mean I’ve finally seen the game in action, though there are a number of minor bugs that still need to be fixed. Up until then, I’ve been colouring frames, doing backgrounds and drawing background characters, never seeing what it all looks like put together. And when I finally saw it WORK, it looked so pretty that I was stunned. Sure, I’ve seen all the art, but having the near-final product… I could have jumped for joy. Part of the reason is that the game engine has been delayed for about a year, because the programmers in Japan took forever to ham it together. And so, I’ve been working all this time with no idea what the hell’s going on. But now… it’s so rewarding to see the GAME actually WORKING (mostly).

I’m afraid I can’t show any art from the game yet, because it has to be shown at a Tokyo gaming show before the public sees any part of it. So far the game is NEARING completion, which doesn’t say much… but at least we’re no longer doing backgrounds but doing background characters. The backgrounds are mostly done, which is a VERY good sign. The background characters I’m currently working on are from Chinatown, which means a stackload of cliches… but very fun to do.

 

Me on Television: I was on ABC TV on 2nd April, 2006. And I forgot all about it too – my parents taped the interview, which was part of the Otakulture Exhibition. “Sunday Arts” was the program that did the interview, and it was a load of fun. The segment is very short, but I shall put it online when I finally get the video clip editted and working on a computer properly. It’s basically me blabbering about “The Dreaming”… I actually look okay on television. Everyone says I look better than I do on TV than in real life. I should just quit manga and become a news reader. By the by, I’m going to be doing an artist’s talk when the Otakulture Exhibition comes to Sydney, currently scheduled for the 13th May. More on that later.

 

Book Signing in Canberra: This is way late, but it was a great deal of fun and I gotta thank Mal and Impact Comics for organising the whole thing! I bought some stuff as well, especially Trudy Cooper’s “Platinum Grit”, a truly funny comic she’s been drawing for a long time. And lovely to meet Nicola Scott, who has amazing art skillz, and great to see Liz Argall again, who writes some really great stuff.

 

The Dreaming (Vol2): Going to plan, and now working on the cover. I’ve now had to pencil the whole book before I do any more inking, but so far I’m up to the middle of Chapter 13, and the last chapter is 14. I’ll definately get it finished by the end of April, and then it’s inking time! The book is still coming out in November this year, so everything’s right on schedule.

 

The Dreaming: More Stuff

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It’s been a long time since my last update, and apart from being busy, I’ve also been besieged by a number of technical problems. Computer failures, hard disk failures, blackouts…all intent on happening when you least expect them to. I still haven’t fixed it yet, because I encountered the Windows Blue Screen of Doom twice yesterday. I guess the bad news is, I may have to get a new hard disk, and then reinstall crappy windows. The good news is, Warcraft III still works.

 

Book signing: There’s going to be a book signing for “The Dreaming” in Canberra, on Saturday March 11th. The place is Impact Comics, and it’s a “Aussie Comic Creators – Wonder Women” event, 3 days after International Women’s Day. It’ll be a showcase of 4 Australian women comic creators, which apart from me, includes Trudy Cooper, Nicola Scott and Liz Argall. I must say I’m looking forward to meeting everyone. Those who are fans of Trudy’s Platinum Grit can either show up or die of jealousy. And I met Liz at Supanova, so I’m looking forward to seeing her again. So:

 

What: Book signing for “The Dreaming”
Called: “Aussie Comic Creators – Wonder Women”, also meet Trudy Cooper (Platinum Grit), Nicola Scott (Penciller for alot of US comics) and Liz Argall (Writer for Aussie Anthologies)
When: Saturday, March 11th, 12:30pm
At: Impact Comics!
Address: Level 1, 45 East Row, Canberra ACT 2601
Phone: (02) 6248-7335

 

The Dreaming: The script is all done, the second book is due for a November 2006 release, and I’ve finished Chapters 8-9 completely! *Fanfare* There’s still 5 chapters to go, but here’s hoping to hire some friends as toners so I can speed up the rather sedate process of using the magic wand, and then the fill tool. They have to prove that they can tone like me first, so I’ll probably ink some chapter 10 pages and have them cut their teeth on that. Sample pages – as you can see, I’ve eschewed the digital balloons for hand-drawn ones, which look better. More organic, and with better tails.

 

Page 7 from "The Dreaming" vol2

 

Chapter 9 - "The Dreaming"

 

Working on it: Here goes my new art style. Remember the good old days when I never toned much of anything, and drew pure black and white comics? I wish those days would come back, but it seems that even when I try and do high-contrast imagery, I can’t escape the tone monster. That said, I’m not working towards a more mature, photo-realistic style of art. Haven’t got it pinned down yet, as the below picture will attest. One thing about photo-realism is that (a)you need thin and thick lines in the fight places, and no lines in certain places, and (b)you need a photo reference. I had neither in the picture below, not to mention a number of minor lighting and anatomy problems. I also used a brush pen, which I shouldn’t have if I weren’t familiar with it.

 

Cheongsam Lady

 

First of all, it wsn’t done with a photo reference, so the lighting is all mucked up for the house in the background. Secondly, the contrast of gradient tones isn’t strong enough, leading to a washed out grey look about it which makes it not as striking as it should be. Unfortunately, the ComicWorks tones I used for this doesn’t have very good gradient tones, so for now there’s nothing I can do about it. I also overlaid 2 screen tones on the dress, which = disaster in print. And the same neck-and-arm anatomy problems are still there. That said, I’m now downloading some high-contrast greyscale images of Old Town Macau to use as practice, to see whether I can get the contrast of black, white and tone right if I use a photo-reference. I think it’ll take a few more tries, but I’ll post the results up here.

 

Baseball Manga: This was fun. It’s the first time, I’ve directly imitated the drawing style of another artist (for good reason, but it’s secret), and I’ve only got the line thickness and toning whacked. I think the original was done with brush pens, but I need a better PDF version of the original before I can determine that. The toning is dodgy, probably be cause the tones in ComicWorks (once again) wasn’t fine enough, and the scratchiness of the look doesn’t help either. It’s mean to be a smoothly reflected helmet, but it doesn’t look it. Bah. That said, I didn’t copy this. I “borrowed” the art style to create a whole new panel.

 

Baseball Batter

 

That said, does anyone know recognise this art style? The originals were sent to me by PDF, so I don’t know which manga this is or who drew it. It looks familiar though, like Kaiji Kawaguchi’s art, but I can’t be sure. He’s a vey skilled artist though, and quite frankly, trying to draw as well as he does is difficult. It’s not the line thickness or toning, which can be fixed – it’s the precision inthe anatomy. The original manga had a great grasp of anatomy, and that’s where I fall short. It’s one thing doing cartoony people, but I seriously felt the differences when I drew this. Time to dig out the anatomy books again. I need it for my photo-realistic art anyway.

 

Radio Interview with me: I don’t listen to the radio, but my Triple J Interview was indeed played on radio, and was heard by people. I know because someone posted here to tell me about it, and later posted the link too. Thanks to Fiona Hogg for this interview. I remember when it was taken too – in my hotel room with a portable electronic recorder thingo that Fiona had just been given by Triple J.

The Dreaming: Working Again…

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Update: I believe Kinokuniya’s have restocked “The Dreaming”! 😀

 

The Dreaming: Sold out at Kino’s and King’s in the middle of December, and for those who don’t want to go to Chatswood or Parramatta, Phantom Zone has courier!! Apparently more stock is coming in either January or end of January for alot of places, Borders included. And ofcourse, the book is still for sale online. I’ve still got my list of Australian bookstores up, and the latest preview chapter for the book is still up on the TOKYOPOP site.

I’m currently working on book 2, and I hope to draw as fast as I can. Not least because it’s not nice to make people wait for a whole year with a cliffhanger ending. There’s been a change in the working procedures though – book 1 was written without any scripts, only chapter summaries, but the process-cycle from TOKYOPOP has officially changed for book 2. Now, for all books, a full script and thumbnails for the book is required before anything is started. Which is fair enough, though I find it difficult because up until now, I’ve never written a script in my life. It’s hard to have to change the way I work, and it feels like an extra step, but then it’s necessary. And while I initially found it difficult to get used to, it’s not as bad as I thought it would be.

Writing a script has shown me something interesting. Looking at the completed script, I find that the information contained in the dialogue and written descriptions are less than 50% of what the final product will be. Then does that mean that the pictures are over 50% of the final product? Not so. There are manga out there with no words, but we’re not talking about something with no words – this is a series of pictures that is MEANT to be embellished by words, and something like that WITHOUT words makes up less than 50% of the final product as well. So, that leads to an interesting and tongue-twisting conclusion: that the entirety of a manga contains more than the sum of its parts.

 

Words + Pictures + Something Mystical = Completed Manga

 

Aussies read this!: Exciting news from my editor Carol and from Avi Bernshaw, the editor of “Otazku” magazine based in Melbourne. TOKYOPOP has signed a distribution partnership with Funtastic Ltd in Australia! I’m not quite sure what it involves, but it’s bound to be a good thing.

 

Manga Bandwagon: The Park and Barb Show over at Silver Bullet Comics has listed out a bunch of manga titles that are recommended reading. Amongst them are old favourites, and “The Dreaming” also gets a mention!

 

Video Gaming News: The game Chaos Code is still scheduled for around March for completion, and I must say we’re getting there. At FKDigital, we’re now officially doing some backgrounds, and I swear to god, there are some FANTASTIC background artists from that company. Namely the guys doing the character animations, and even the programmer can animate a squirrel really well. I started doing a background too, a high-tech gameshow background for a cyborg character, and while I started off sucking, but seems to be improving. It’s taken me 5 working days to get to 2/3 of completion, and while it was an ego-deflating experience, I’m beginning to find that I can use Photoshop to paint now. And the picture’s starting to look pretty good. Up until now, I’ve had ZERO idea on how to use Photoshop, and while it’s been a steep learning curve, I’m so glad I can at least do SOMETHING in Photoshop now without feeling like a complete outsider. Golden Rule: If all else fails, use the dodge tool.

 

Something that Defies Economic Rationality: I like to study economics (oh how boring she is!), and something from an old Publisher’s Weekly article struck me as a fascinating example of weird human behaviour. The article is actually about Powell’s books, a good company I occasionally order from, and how they deal with their growth in manga. The paragraph that struck me the most was this:

But Powell’s has had to rethink other assumptions as well. Manga are typically fast, disposable reads, and there’s little to prevent customers from reading a series right through at the store. To discourage this, Powell’s used to shrink-wrap each volume. “We would polybag everything,” Donaghy says. This helped to prevent damaged books, but it also prevented potential buyers from getting a feel for what those titles were like. A few years ago, a sales rep at Viz promised to replace any Viz title ruined by an overzealous browser if Powell’s would agree to stop the shrinkwrapping. Surprisingly, sales increased dramatically.

So, part of the reason why manga is selling so well is because none of it’s shrink-wrapped, and anyone can sit there and read to their heart’s content? Strange, but true. Actually, my theory was whether manga story-telling is easier to get into than Westen comics story-telling, thus prompting more people to browse and freeload manga at stores than Western comics (NOT in any way saying that one form is better than the other). Normally, you’ll think that manga sales will suffer because people read them standing there and don’t buy it, but oddly enough, this paragraph proves being able to read everything beforehand has ZERO effects on sales.

Anyway, I started asking this question because I get emails from teenagers (median age: 15) saying they got into manga/anime because some of their friends were into it, but they were unconvinced. Out of curiosity, they eventually sneaked into the manga section and started reading, and because they could do it for free, they in the end finding something they liked enough to convince them to start like manga as a whole. I say to these teenagers – HURRAY!! Good on your for having an open mind and a willingness to experiment.

The Waking: Interview Question

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The Dreaming: Is out on the shelves, and online. I’ve still got my list of Australian bookstores up, and the latest preview chapter for the book is still up on the TOKYOPOP site. I’ve been told that “The Dreaming” has been sold out at Sydney’s Kinokuniya and Kings Comics, and that for Melbournians you can find it at Minotaur (see the list for details).

I’ve recovered from the worst of my flu, though I’ll probably have a residual cough for weeks. I also snuck some photoes of my Bangalore trip up on my LJ entry. But anyway, recently I’ve been interviewed by Kai-Ming Cha for Publisher’s Weekly Comics Week. For those who don’t know, it’s part of Publisher’s Weekly and you can subscribe to their email newsletter here. They on a one-week break so it’ll be out the week after, but it was a very fun interview and Kai-Ming asked some good questions. There is one question in particular that I replied in detail to, and which I’ve posted here for people’s interest.

As usual, it’s my opinion, so feel free to make any comments.

 

Question: On your website you have an essay that references the prevalence of Japanese manga throughout Asia, including Hong Kong, that has all but squeezed out local talent. There are other comments like this that have been made in countries like Thailand and China. With the strength of Japanese comics, local comics culture and style doesn’t seem to stand a chance. What are you thoughts on this?

 

You’ve just said my thoughts on this. *laughs* Local comics culture just doesn’t stand a chance, except for the nostalgia value of certain strips. Nostalgia does nothing though, besides recycling old material that may or may not be timeless, but if you’re not moving ahead and creating new material, you’re not expanding the readership for graphic literature. Mostly, if it can be said to be a “problem”, is that there isn’t a “manga culture” in whatever country the Japanese pop-culture juggernaut has colonised in the past 10-20 years. And it’s important to remember that manga comes attached with anime, video games, cosplay and J-pop; making it an all-consuming lifestyle that can be very appealing to young people. In theory, there’s nothing wrong with that because it should encourage said countries to develop their own comics, except that it’s not really happening.

Part of the reason is because manga that is read by children in Japan is exported and read by adults in other countries. Manga in Japan is very gender and age-conscious, so in theory, people over a certain age wouldn’t read certain kinds of manga (with exceptions ofcourse). Manga-reading Japanese adults read manga catered to their tastes, which are the sort of mature, adult-oriented (NOT meaning pornographic) manga that become best-sellers in their own right. Manga you barely see people reading overseas, because the 25 year-olds there are reading what 8 year-old Japanese kids are reading. That creates a bit of a problem in terms of choices for the 25 year-old casual manga readers who are tired of stories aimed at teenagers and want to read something more mature.

In theory, the companies can import the more mature Japanese manga and satisfy those readers, but in the Asian countries I’ve observed, it’s never really caught on. The trouble with salaryman and office lady manga, or seinen and josei manga, is that the latter appeals to more narrow, culturally-specific tastes. Teen angst and action-adventure is the same for teens everywhere, but people who have left high school don’t see salaryman manga as a reflection of their working experiences. Japan has a work culture and adult life that is culturally unique to that country, and other Asians who were casual manga readers as teenagers aren’t nearly as interested in salaryman or OL manga because from their point of view, it’s got nothing to do with their own lives. So the pool of casual manga readers shrink, leaving the young-at-heart to continue reading teen manga and riding the Japanese pop-culture wave.

This means that local comic artists are left to compete with teen manga for a readership that is adolescent at heart. None of them has been all that successful, because the Japanese do teen-oriented manga so incredibly well, and has multiple arms of the Japanese pop-culture machine helping out. There’s no reason for any local publisher to invest in local talent when they can get all the money-making franchises they need out of Japan, and they’re not interested in reaching out to older readers either. So in essence, you have a “manga culture” in manga-reading countries where unlike Japan, most readers are stuck in the “teen manga” phase. So the readership isn’t maturing at all, giving no incentive to produce mature works.

 

Afterthoughts: Sometimes the nationalism thing comes into it too. Some of Kaiji Kawaguchi’s work comes to mind – while it’s never stopped anyone from translating political/thriller manga in Asia, I find it uncomfortable to read manga about how the course or World War II may have been altered to have the Japanese win instead of the Allied Nations (and some such). These are clearly adult stories and not meant to be provocative to other Asian nations, but it shows a side of the nation that Chinese and Koreans particularly hate. World War II is a topic you rarely, if ever, see in shoujo and shounen manga, and perhaps for good reason.