Turtledust Media

Last night I decided to give my girlfriend an opportunity to come up with a story, just to mix things up. This was possibly the most challenging thing I have ever done. Her idea pushed me so far out of my box that I got frustrated and almost gave up for the night.

I had intended to draw an entire page. We started brainstorming, one of my favorite parts of the process. She would put an idea on the table, and I would build on it. For about an hour we played off each other ideas. Never saying “no” to an idea, but “yes, and….” Ideas need to keep moving. In a creative discussion you have to nurture an idea and let it grow. After a few acting sessions and dialog run-throughs, we whittled it down to a four panel page of suspense.

Scene 1: Little girl sitting on bed, stream of light cuts through the darkness.
Scene 2: Mom and Dad taking stance in the court yard.

Scene 3: Daughter sneaking down the hall.
Scene 4: Mom horizontally strikes at Dad. Dad jumps above sword coming down with a death blow. Shi is watching in the background.

When I sat to draw my piece for the evening, I had full intention of drawing environments, furniture, and clothing. But as I began doing my research I stumbled onto interesting facts, and inspiring images. My plans to make simple studies turned into a semi-erotic scene of the Blonde Assassin and her student/lover.

When I left college I swore I was done with writing papers and looking up facts. Now I realize research is one of the most important parts of developing art, comic books, and animation. I always knew research was a large part of writing, but while working on this latest character development piece I found myself searching out images and information very similar to the way I would on a paper or report.

The comic is set in Feudal Japan. My initial Google search brought up mostly pop culture images and anime. In order to find true images and facts I had to make a more educated search. Although set in Japan, the story revolves around the human slave trade. This is what brought the Masked Man and the Blonde Assassin to Japan where they are unlike anyone else. For me the story’s genesis is the question.”What would have become of foreign slaves in Japan, prior to the arrival of the west.”

I chose a date range based on Japanese art of the 1600′s – 1700′s, during the Edo Period. My decision to set the book in the 1690′s was determined primarily by ink brush, watercolor, and block print art of the time. For my piece I took inspiration directly from the artist Hishikawa Moronobu. Moronobu’s work is my best reference for Japanese cultural aesthetics of the time. I am inspired by his line work, blocks of black, and patterned fabric. His graphic style translates well into comic form. The goal is to create something believable. It is the aesthetic texture and detail which makes the environment and clothing feel real.

Authenticity sells stories, and you can only find it at the source. I always viewed using references for creating work as cheating, but now I am starting to understand the saying, “Good artist borrow, great artist steal.”

When developing the story, I like to put characters into situations that help me better understand who they are. You can do character design all day, but until you start making characters live in their world they don’t come to life. The great part about the Love and the Blade project is that I have already draw a majority of the first book. Now I can use that rough draft as my script/guide. Allowing me to focus on putting the characters in the world and “on model”. If you are not familiar with animation and comic books, “on model,” means drawing the character the same each time, preserving the original intent of the character design. This is one of the most challenging parts of creating sequential media. There are many parts to the process and each has its own set of challenges. Creating comic books and animation is not straight forward, it is cyclical. You will write to create drawing and draw to refine your writing. Story is most important and is enhanced and emphasised by the character design, background design and shot composition, these items are not listed in order of importance.

In 2005 while living at my older brothers house I sat down and just started drawing a comic set in a feudal Japan. It is your typical Romeo and Juliette, she is from one Assassin’s line he is from another, both slaves to their craft.

“In the shadow of an aging clan leader, events have been set in motion to free the masked man and blonde assasin from their gilded cages, but revenge has a sweet way of poisoning things.”

This is some initial character design for the first book due in October. I am trying to keep the shapes simple, this will make it a lot easier to draw. Minimizing character complexity allows me to focus on character action. I am planning this as my second Open Book Project. The Open Book Project, is an effort to create a comic using an open development model, and open source tools.

Look forward to more development work. I am posting info everyday until the book is done in September.