Well, I’ve been crocheting a lot of cool amigurumi toys lately, which I’ll show in the next few weeks, but I also finished pencils for chapter 1 (of 9) of Small Shen, my collaboration with author Kylie Chan. This is a Chinese Fantasy story and is a prequel to her White Tiger series, and people who are familiar with what I like to draw best will probably know that I’m in my element here.
I’m sure you’re all wondering what Small Shen is about, so here are a few sample pages from chapter 1. Some are inked/toned and others are still in pencils, but you can probably get a good idea of how the art will turn out from these samples. Since Small Shen won’t be out (from Harper Collins) until Christmas 2012, I’ll probably show more later on next year.
NB. And yes, if you know your Chinese mythology, I can tell you that “Gold” and “Jade” are references to the demi-semi-gods “Golden Boy” and “Jade Girl”. The story’s written by Kylie though, so if you want to know more about how she uses these characters, I suggest you read White Tiger, which is the first actual book in the series.
I should be flying back to Sydney as we speak, so let me take this opportunity to recommend some vintage manga this week, namely Maison Ikkoku, by the best-selling female manga artist in the world, Rumiko Takahashi.
Now, I would recommend all of Rumiko Takahashi’s work, since her work is almost an institution in Japan, but I settled on Maison Ikkoku simply because it’s the most balanced of all her long-running series (and there are quite a few of them). It’s also one of her older works, with a different tone to her latest ones, which seems geared to a younger audience.
Maison Ikkoku (Rumiko Takahashi)15 Volumes
Maison Ikkoku was one of the first manga translated into English by Viz, and Rumiko Takahashi’s work remains one of the first manga to be exposed to Western audiences. Her work gained a huge following in the states (and in other countries) years before TOKYOPOP ever came to be. Apart from Doraemon, her Urusei Yatsura was among one of the first manga I’ve ever read. Her career spans over 40 years, and she has sold millions and millions of books worldwide. She is, hands down, the most prolific and best-selling female manga artist ever to have lived.
Plot Maison Ikkoku is the name of a run-down, cheap boarding house, where the residents are either broke or crazy. The building is divided into a number of rooms (with no private bathrooms), and in room number 5 lives Yusaku Godai, a ronin, described in Japan as a college applicant who has yet to successfully pass the entrance exams. Godai is a nice guy (if a bit of a loser), and constantly tormented by his crazy neighbours, who thinks the sole purpose of his existence is for them to hold loud, drunk parties in his room.
Godai’s had enough. He was about to move out of the building, when a new manager moves in – an extremely beautiful young woman named Kyoko Otonashii. Since Kyoko will be living at the boarding house as its manager, Godai decides to stay – having fallen in lust at first sight with Kyoko. Kyoko herself is a gentle, caring woman with a quick temper, and the residents quickly discover that she’s actually a widow, who had married her high school teacher as a student. Kyoko is still deeply in love with her late husband, and as Godai gets to know her better, he falls in love with her. However, the road to love isn’t so easy for these two – Godai barely scrapes into unversity, and Kyoko has other suitors. Misunderstandings and the hijinks of the neighbours also make any kind of intimacy difficult. Will Godai succeed in winning Kyoko’s heart?
Why I Recommend this Story Ofcourse Godai marries Kyoko at the end. You don’t write a 15-volume dramedy asking the readers to sympathise with the underdog hero, and then snatch the prize away in the last volume. People would be so angry. Having rooted for Godai and Kyoko for literally years of their lives, watching as Godai gets into college, almost flunks out of college, eventually graduates, attempts to find a job, fails due to bad luck, tries again, and eventually succeeds… wow, the world sure doesn’t make it easy for Godai. Unlike other manga heroes, who seem to naturally fall into leadership roles, possesses special powers, or at least has an an interesting personality or quest to go on, Godai is remarkably ordinary and average. Heck, I would say he’s below average. He struck it lucky with Kyoko.
Which is the whole point of Maison Ikkoku, a funny, poignant story about how the underdog finally wins the day. Finally. Compared to Takahashi’s other more well-known series, like Urusei Yatsura or Ranma 1/2 or even Inuyasha, the trials and tribulations of Godai seems utterly benign. While the story has its fair share of entertaining weirdos, it doesn’t have half the bombast or physical comedy of her other works – and Takahashi is mostly known for her loud, in-your-face, laff-a-minute comedy. No, this story is more rooted in reality than many of her other series, and that’s what makes it stand out. Godai eats cheap food, lives in a crappy place with crappy neighbours, constantly has money worries, ends up working in some dodgy places to make money, and constantly has to fight for almost everything he has. No need for aliens, gender-bending martial artists or monsters to spice things up. Life itself is a struggle enough, and it’s good to see a funny manga that is so rooted in a small moments of day to day life.
The romance between Godai and Kyoko is one that sticks in my mind – they’re both complex and emotional people with a lot of baggage. Kyoko feels she’s betraying her dead husband, and Godai feels he’ll never be good enough for Kyoko; often comparing himself to her late husband and her other suitors. These two drag themselves, kicking and screaming, to the inevitable final conclusion. When all is said and done, it’s a relief to see them finally acknowledge their feelings to each other. They get a lot of help (and hindrance) from Godai’s wacky neighbours, an assortment of working-class types, all of whom have sharply drawn personalities, and are always entertaining. Especially Yotsuya, the guy in room 4, who may or may not have a job, and whose life involves slithering like a snake into Godai’s room to steal food. Some of their antics have to be seen to be believed.
A Takahashi manga is always worth a read, because she’s a powerful story-teller who never fails to make you sympathise with her characters, and capable of finding comedy in the most mundane situations. Maison Ikkoku is a good place to start, as an introduction to her work (most of which is a lot whackier than this story). She excels in ensemble casts, taking extra care in the way they interact with each other, and despite the large numbers of secondary and tertiary characters, always manages to make them interesting and relevant. Her long-running series has a tendency to drag in the middle, and Maison Ikkoku is no exception, but the story ends the way it should end, and loose ends are neatly tied off. Her work is often light-hearted, with great comic timing, a fair amount of Japanese cultural references, and is always memorable.
Takahashi was one of the manga artists I tried to imitate when I was younger, and eventually gave up at, because I realised her voice was unique and inimitable. Even though I don’t follow her current work much, like some other manga artists I’ve recommended on my site, she’s a master worth learning from.
The last part of Odd Thomas 3 has finally been approved, and I can now work towards finishing the book! 40 pages left to ink before the end!
I realise I haven’t posted some art up for a while, so this week I’m posting up page 24 of “House of Odd”, the third Odd Thomas book. To give people an idea of how the art is adapted from the script, and the progression of the art from pencils to the final pages, I’ve put it here in stages.
The first stage is ofcourse the script, which in this case is written by someone else (with me acting as the illustrator only). This may be a good example of how to write a script.
PAGE 24
PANEL 1: Having turned away, Nedra walks into the house. Odd and Stormy follow behind her
STORMY: So, Ms. Nolan . . . Ozzie said you think this house is haunted?
NEDRA: These spirits are as spoiled rotten as any movie star.
PANEL 2: Reverse angle from the last panel, so we can see the characters walking towards the camera. In the background, behind them, the front door is now shut.
NEDRA: They think it’s all about them, them, them.
PANEL 3: Odd cocks his head to one side, eyes rolling a bit in frustration and bemusement. Nedra is blissfully unaware of this as she continues to lead them deeper into the mansion.
NEDRA: But it’s really my production.
NEDRA: I told Ozzie that I had no need for amateur ghostbusters like you.
PANEL 4: Stormy’s gaze narrows.
STORMY: Amateurs?
NEDRA: No offense. I’ve called in the professionals!
Next up, are the pencils. You may have noticed that I didn’t follow what was laid out in the panels in the script. This is because I feel that an illustrator’s job in comics is to tell the story as best as it can be told, and if that means not following the script, then so be it.
This isn’t uncommon in comics, since a fair number of artists will have been in situations when they can’t follow a script – mostly because what is described in the panels can’t be depicted in pictorial form. If it happens, it’s not because writers aren’t respected, but because writers aren’t always visual people, and don’t always know if what they’re describing in a panel can actually be drawn.
The inks are next. This part is straight-forward. I use a combination of dip pens (The Zebra G-pen and nikko pen) and Sakura microns to do my inking, and it’s worked for me fine. I find that the look of the art changes depending on the tools you use, but for Odd Thomas, I’ve always stuck with this style of art. Different kinds of stories call for different kinds of art, and Odd Thomas requires art that isn’t stylised or takes artistic lliberties. It’s not that kind of story.
Finally, the tones and dialogue. The tones are done by the wonderful Dee DuPuy, and she uses a program called Deleter ComicWorks, which I then later open up in Photoshop to add the words. And thus, the page is finished and ready for print.
Hi all, Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a great Xmas and New Year! As for me, I made it onto an interesting list with the Courier Mail. 2011 looks to be an interesting year!
Here’s the post I’ve been meaning to do about my week-long trip to Istanbul, Turkey last November. I had to do all this work for Odd Thomas 3 first, and now that I’ve done it, I can finally say that the trip was fantastic and the hospitality of the Turks was wonderful.
I was in Istanbul from the 31st October to the 8th November, as a guest of the Turkish International Book Fair (which I visited to do a workshop on the 7th). I was brought there by publisher Tudem, who published the Turkish version of “The Dreaming”, called “Okuldaki Sir”, which translates to “The Secret of the Schools” (The name change is customary for Turkish versions of international works). The series was quite a success in Turkey (which is why they flew me over there), and I even made it into the biggest-selling newspaper! Other than that, most of the time there was spent doing workshops at schools and museums, with a bit of time leftover for sight-seeing. Oh yes, plus a lot of great Turkish food!
While I’ll talk a bit about Turkish schools, sadly I didn’t manage to take any photoes there. All my snap-happy moments were on the sight-seeing trip, which involved me (and my kind shepherd/guide Arden) making a bee-line for the closest tourist-friendly mosque. Like the New Mosque, also known as the Mosque of the Valide Sultan, located right next to the Spice Markets:
The New Mosque from the outside, during evening prayers. For some reason, the New Mosque allows tourists at prayer time, whereas other mosques do not.
Not that there were that many people at evening prayers anyway.
Turkey is predominantly a Muslim country (with some Armenian Christians and Jews mixed in), so it has calls to prayer five times a day. However, apart from the mosques and some architectural differences, it looks much like any other European city. I lived near Taksim Square, one of Istanbul’s city centres, and the place is full of Starbucks, designer shops and thriving clubs and restuarants. The Turks (especially the guys) are red-blooded folks who like to drink, eat and have a good time. I guess nothing much has changed from the day of the Ottoman Empire, where Turkey ruled much of the Middle East as one big Islamic Empire. Some of the fruits of that Empire can be seen at the Topkapi Palace, one of many palaces in Istanbul.
I wish I took better pictures of the Topkapi Palace.
…And the massive Cathedral opposite it (which sadly was closed on the day I was there).
And a pic of Ottoman architecture. This looked European to my eyes, but apparently it’s old Ottoman.
What has changed is that modern Turkey is a strictly secular country, something that Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, enshrined in the nation’s constitution. Ataturk was a military man whose legacy lives on in the Turkish Army, who takes it upon themselves to initiate a coup if the civilian leaders of the country gets any funny ideas. The last time that happened was many years ago, but while no one wants a military dictatorship, no one wants Sharia law either. Just before I flew to Istanbul, I read an article in the Gulf Times discussing the impropriety of the Turkish Prime Minister’s wife wearing a hijab to the reception of a state function. Much consternation and suspicion abounded. Were Turkish liberties being challenged? Considering you can walk down a street in Istanbul and not see a single woman wearing a hijab, you can imagine the alarm over this seemingly innocuous gesture.
But the best and most important part of the trip were meeting the students at the (expensive) private schools. Turkish private schools, oddly enough, were mostly run by large Turkish corporations, and many have K-12 classes on the same campus. It was mighty strange seeing 17 year-olds on the same campus as 6 year-olds. I imagine the children go straight onto university, and the brightest ones are head-hunted by the corporations sponsoring their education. Thus the education standards are all very high, and nearly all of the older students speak very good English. I had my translator Abdul and Kemal with me, and sometimes they weren’t needed because the children had no trouble understanding my English at all.
The students ranged from kids who knew what manga was, and many who didn’t, but then all of the older students I spoke to knew what “One Piece” and “Naruto” was. I did a series of drawing workshops with them, and they were all talented and enthusiastic (some exceptionally so), and I can imagine a few future Turkish manga artists emerging from there. The savviness of the older kids especially surprised me – since they are fluent in English, they probably read a lot of manga from English manga sites, which is why they seem so up-to-date with the latest releases. I also sold quite a few books of “The Dreaming”, and doodled a little dog in most of them as well (Tudem’s logo is a dog’s head, and I drew the body on it).
I’d wanted to buy some Mecca cola, but couldn’t find any. But I found Turka cola instead! Apparently Mecca cola isn’t distributed in Turkey.
All in all, I had a fun time in Istanbul, and wouldn’t hesitate to go back for another visit. The city is so big, so cultured, and with so much to explore, that it would be a pity if I didn’t get to go again. Next time, I would definitely spend more than a week there. In closing, I drew a picture of Jeanie and Amber from “The Dreaming”, taking inspiration from a Harem book I bought at the Topaki Palace.
Thanks for Tudem for inviting me to Istanbul, and many thanks to Arden for showing me around!
