#Really gotta figure out how to do hair screentone

[mysticbatillustration]

...I ended up drawing Parad (again) Looking feverish? I wanted to test some things out >.>;

[chibivesicle]

into the Ogata fray

Hello Golden Kamuy peeps on tumblr, I’m toeing into the fray in regards to the most talked about character (in my humble opinion) Ogata. Apologies this is a bit long but whatever.

As work is about to get a lot busier in about a week, I figured I gotta do this now or never so here goes nothing.  Also, I’d love to thank the peeps who have been having a great dialogue on this already I’m looking at #hundredogatas and #goldenkamuyhunting for some great analyses.

I already posted some of my comments over on Mangadex in regards to chapter 165, Flag Bearer, trying to wrap my head around Ogata’s motivations and his role in the series.

I’ve really taken to the idea that Ogata is a fundamentally hurt character who has been hurting for so long that he doesn’t even know it anymore.  He had normalized his “abnormal” feelings.  As a result of his normalization to this he became in a ways “dead” to a lot of things, I agree with many others that he does have feelings but he keeps them buried deep down for the most part and the occasionally bubble to the surface.

The first instance of his feelings/humanity bubbling up are quite early on.  Others have already highlighted he did not kill Huci or Osoma when going after Tanigaki.  He is quite clear that he does not believe in unnecessary violence or actions.  The second time this pops up is in the showdown in Barato.  He saves Shinpei the gangster son and even though he calls him a weakling he is the one who allows him to be free of his meddling parents and move off on his home.  Yes, he’s drawn as a tough character but you see no malice or meanness in his expression, just a straight up explanation that he doesn’t like people who lack action or volition.  I felt he was just making a very firm point.

Throughout the series, I’ve always read Ogata as an individual who views himself as a self made man.  He rose to his position as a Superior Private through skill and hard work and in part by not making too many waves.  He highly values individuals who take control of their lives and their actions and have some sort of purpose; the people he dislikes the most are those who rose by family/title/rank which is obviously due to his horrible childhood/father issues that left him realizing that the concept of noble blood is pointless, especially given the fact that his own father made terrible military decisions. 

I feel that Noda-sensei likes to have his humanity bubble up occasionally and Asirpa will be the character who pulls it back to the surface due to her parallels with his brother.

As he is an astute observer of his surroundings and what we know of Lt. Tsurumi’s ability to manipulate people for his best outcomes I hypothesize that he recognized the “deadness” in Ogata and wanted to groom him to be the elite dirty deeds man of his select group from the 7th.  Tsurumi just keep pushing him further, first trying to get at him through his brother and then to assassinate his father.  Tsurumi thought he had groomed the ultimate stealth man for his future jobs.  These two parts of pages from ch. 165 just really highlight how “checked out” he was as a sniper in the trenches.  You could almost hear Ogata’s internal dialogue as “another day, another kill, another paycheck”.

This entire scene is so sterile, he takes his sniping very seriously but he’s so distant that he’s in his no emotion zone.

When ch. 165 gives the flashback with him and his brother discussing their roles on the battlefield and how he can’t get his hands dirty for the sake of his honor and their own father’s crazy ideas, I still feel torn on the situation.  I agree that Ogata’s brother loved and valued him as a human being and as he observed his brother closely (in the revised ch. 103) he did see that his brother had qualities that he lacked.  But I’d be as pissed as I’m guessing Ogata was at how hypocritical this point was to him.  It was almost as though it was egging him on to “go ahead and shoot” just to beat his brother in a philosophical argument to get back at their father. 

While trying to put things in chronological order, I feel that Ogata reached his breaking point with Tsurumi’s manipulation of him after he killed his father.

Here we have him thinking maybe shooting my brother might be a bad idea but i’m still hesitating just sooooo slightly with that just slightly less dead look . . .

to his oh you smooth talking bastard fake smile.  Granted this is from the original ch. 103, but I think it really gets the point across that he knows he’s been played and he’s hyper aware of the power Tsurumi wields over others.

I take it from this point on his goals began to differ and lead to him deserting.  I think it took a long time for him to feel confident that he could leave.  It was clear he at one point did feel intimidated by the power Tsurumi had over him based on how awkward his body language with Tsurumi was in ch. 164.  He’s totally informal when he’s sitting 99.9% of the time, yet he sits in seiza and buttons up his uniform. 

Here is his more informal, I’m totally hogging the heater while observing everyone around me/listening to Tanigaki’s story.

After he leaves the hospital he is now in his “liberated” form which is shown by his longer hair.  According to Noda-sensei in questions from readers in Young Jump that were translated by the peeps over at Kamuy Central, Ogata grew his hair out as he had become liberated.  What he was liberated from was unclear but it was a physical sign that he had changed somehow.  It is clear that his character has a beef with the military hierarchy and how many men died to poor decisions - which we later learn were his father’s to an extent.  This is early on when he’s discussing the type 30 rifle while sniping Tanigaki and how he continues to disagree with the whole “noble blood” line repeated by Tsurumi and backed by Koito to an extent.  With his new hairstyle he definitely expresses himself more to the other characters while he maintains his distance.

His immediate interaction with Hijikata is both pay attention to me and praise me (shooting the watchtower bell/skin on his head) but also, I’m gonna push you and sass you with my confidence b/c I know things.  Plus, he immediately makes a cutting remark about “what happens to your subordinates?”  If he were totally dead on the inside or missing his humanity he wouldn’t ask about the little guys being lead by Hijikata.  Again, I think this hints at his dislike of unnecessary violence.

We know he has issues with crappy fathers/poor leaders of people.  The angry screentones not only when Hijikata cuts off Asirpa from speaking but how he’s like she was about to say my father . . .

As a keen observer of people, he’s looking out for leadership qualities either actively or maybe even passively.  I’d like to make a really big leap for a minute and point out the cover to ch. 71

This cover has a quote from Matthew and features Tsurumi as the false prophet with Tsukishima and Nikaido.  Note that in the “Last Supper” scene here (ch. 81)

Ogata is in the place of Matthew.  If we go with the Asirpa is Jesus hypothesis, saving men with dark pasts to redeem themselves than I don’t think Noda-sensei just picked a quote from Matthew at random. Keep in mind Kiro is Judas, Sugimoto is Peter and Shirashi is John. Also remember that Matthew was a tax collector and not trusted or accepted by others but Asirpa clearly cares about him through the series. This leaves Ogata as the only person to argue against Tsurumi based on his shootout with Tsukishima in the taxidermists place as shown here

He is clearly telling Tsukishima that Tsurumi used these sentimental things to get men to follow him and dedicate themselves to his cause.  We learn much later that there is no way his motivations are based on surpassing his father - that was always a line Tsurumi told others but he does admit the he never knew what Ogata was thinking.

Anyhoo that was my really far reach, but getting back to his idea to keep his distance from people but ultimately wants to be loved aspect.  I’d state that Ogata hides some of his feelings towards others through is constant jests or teasing, despite having a hard time accepting that Tanigaki didn’t kill his comrades (who he def cared about a lot, which seems out of character at first) he gave Tanigaki the nickname “bear cub” and it stuck with others calling him that.  He also snarked at Tanigaki that if he wanted his nose cut off so badly he could do it for him.  I don’t think he meant this but it is clear he hides behind is sassy/sarcastic remarks.  As Tanigaki is the most innocent (and most similar to his brother) i’d say this spills over into his first harsh sadistic attitude towards him “beg for my help!” to “the dog did more than you.” to the harsh but in some ways likely true/protective “go back home”.  He says one thing but his actions speak otherwise just like the gangster son back in Barato.

Despite bitching about Sugimoto slowing them down while fleeing the 7th, he lets Asirpa treat him here

He’s being a bit pissy and I love the arms crossed body posture but you can tell he’s just being pushy to make sure they don’t get caught.

My absolute fav scenes of how he keeps his distance are the beach ones here where everyone holds hands and jumps while he watches over them.

Which then highlights him in the background several panels later while Asirpa and Sugimoto talk about beach kamuy etc.

He frequently is shown with his back towards many other group members, which would imply trust to an extent, he expects them not to stab him in the back so to speak.  When he shoots the herd of reindeer he states that they are just like people with one on the lookout - in the groups that he has been a part of he’s the lookout.

He may be alone and isolated but he’s always playing an important protective role towards others.  I’m not sure to what extent he realizes that he does this but he’s almost always drawn looking back while others are looking forward or looking the opposite direction of the rest observing everything.  He def is a protector of others, especially those who cannot fully protect themselves.

Ever since the beginning of the series we’ve know most character’s motivations for the gold but his remains a complete mystery.  Another tumblr post mentioned it could be the geisha debt that his mom had that he inherited, which makes sense to me, but really we still don’t know why he even joined the military. Being a solider wasn’t going to be enough at the rank of a superior private to pay off that debt . . . . I want that question answered for me - yes, it was clear he was a sharpshooter from a young age but he clearly could have been a successful hunter instead of a solider.  I hope we get answers to this in the manga.

As others have stated, since he was the only character to really respect Asirpa from the get go other than Sugimoto and that they are clear foils of how different people deal with PTSD, our current story arc will hopefully work in how Asirpa will save him by treating him like a real human being and in return he will protect her from older men/the establishment from using her.  For most of the series Ogata and Kiro were separated and we know that he knows more about Kiro than Kiro likely realizes.  The benefit of being a quiet introvert means a lot of the characters don’t notice him or read him as well as they could.

These recent panels highlight how he actually gets Shirashi and Asirpa to realize something is off and it likely has to do with Kiro.  I love how he gets Asirpa to realize they were being targeted for a reason and that stressed out look on Kiro’s face is so perfect.

Ogata knew that both Tsurumi and Hijikata knew of the links to the partisans in the far east and that Wilk and Kiro were linked.  He just needed to clue in the nicer party members to this fact.  He had to betry Sugimoto to get close to Kiro for him to play his hand.  He’ll protect Asirpa b/c that’s what he does.

I could go onto some other points but I should stop here.  Phew.  I think I could leave those for later posts.  Like how he shows affection through teasing ALL the TIME.

[maiji]

Process and wip images for A House That Holds Long Limbs (Part 4)

Previous process and wip documentation: Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3

Read the pages for part 4 here (full complete version will be linked from YYH North Bound master post)

This is a rare glimpse into how I tackle action scenes!! It’s rare because I rarely do it. Action is honestly one of the hardest things for me to draw, and as I’m sure I’ve said here many times before, I have the utmost respect for shounen manga artists whose works are steeped in them. It’s a really impressive skill to be able to do it well - to create a cinematic, dynamic sense of motion that doesn’t dissolve into visual confusion and incomprehensibleness.

This was as interesting for me to document my thought process as it hopefully is for you to read and discover what the heck was going on in my head (a big honking mess, that’s what). There was much screaming and crying while working on this hahaha.

Aside from Hokushin’s beautiful face (lmao), Part 4 is packed with things I don’t usually draw. Specifically: action, things taking place in the dark, and corpses. For things taking place in the dark, I heavily referenced the dark room rounds from the tournament for Genkai’s successor in volume 4, because it involves action and Togashi used practically zero screentones in it and I didn’t want to either. For the dead rokurokubi, I looked up photos of skulls and drew on my memory of various horror comics I’ve read, like Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service. (At one point I also googled photos of rotting skulls, but TBH I didn’t really want to spend a lot of time looking at detailed photographic references of corpse and decomposing bodies for obvious reasons, especially as I usually work on these comics late at night before I go to bed. The last thing I need is for images to get stuck in my brain when I’m sleeping.)

The rest of this post focuses mainly on action and redrawing things.

Script

The original script for this section actually ran a little further in the story than what’s shown here, but in order to convey the sequence effectively, I ended up stretching a number of key moments out and have booted the later ones to be completed for Part 5.

Thumbnails

In the thumbnails above, you’ll notice quite a few are redraws of the same page as I struggle - pages 31-33 repeat immediately in the rows after, page 37 was attempted three times, etc.

Page count growth

A script of 8 pages turned into 10 pages at the thumbnail stage, and then ultimately netted out at 12 pages in the final version that was posted. As you can see, effective action sequences generally take me more pages than I think they will. With an exception (documented below).

Thumbnailing/storyboarding things out should theoretically minimize the page count creep! But because I tend to treat my thumbnails as such a loose stage (to avoid later disappointment when I can’t recreate it as nicely in the final page), I rush through them. Unfortunately, action sequences require me to think a lot more carefully through the scene as a director - staging the shot and the experience of the motion and coordinating people’s limbs and all the items in the scene more carefully and whatnot than, say, just a couple of heads talking. So inevitably, when I rush to get ahead to the finished pages, that’s when I realize it doesn’t flow as well as I was imagining (or not really imagining it).

As a result, the actual “live” pages turn into constant mental checks and runthroughs of the panels, realizing it’s not flowing as well as I’d like, and restarting. By restarting I mean mentally reenvisioning the sequence, sometimes quickly doodling alternate thumbnails (I didn’t bother in this case, so I have no alternate examples from after I started redrawing), and erasing and redrawing and adding pages. I guess I could probably avoid this if I just stop and put more time into thinking through the thumbnails… but it seems like I end up revising no matter what. So, constant juggling forever.

The evolution of the key action sequence

In my head, the main sequence was:

Hokushin lands.

He gets up and feels something in the dark.

He discovers the rokurokubi corpse.

He turns around to discover a swarm of hands in the dark!

Ahhh hands!! Ahhhh!!

Then he gets sealed and stringed up. End action sequence, back to people standing - or hanging out, I guess - and talking.

I roughed out my panels and pencils for all the pages following my thumbnails instead of doing one page at a time, because I’m impatient and also tend to think of all the pages as a wholistic narrative and then drilling down to the details on each page (big to small perspective).

As I went back over each page and detailing the base pencil art more, I began noticing more issues with the flow of the action and the pagination. Things started really shifting and changing at point 4. Here’s essentially how my thinking played out as I drew:

He turns around to discover a swarm of hands in the dark! - WAIT he just sees the corpse and then turns around? I should have him sense something is behind him first to get you more into his head and experience. OK, insert another panel of him sensing and whatever. THEN he can turn around. This is also good because I can erase the panel where he’s turning around and give the first panel a bit more room so I can draw more of his body in the first one and make his startled falling back motion a bit clearer.

HANDS!! AHHH HANDS!! - Wait, I have hands coming from BEHIND him and don’t effectively show that before they just appear to grab his hair. Which I suppose they do, but when I review panel flow it seems jarring, like a poorly directed cut and something was missing. Let’s try adding some hands behind him in the panel where he looks shocked. Never mind, this looks dumb and he looks dumb and basically seems even more like an afterthought. Ooh, better idea: let’s have him dodge the first wave of hands. That’ll be kinda cool and more interesting. And then he can land and be like OH SHIT MORE HANDS FROM EVERY DIRECTION

Ahhh hands!! Ahhhh!! - Hmm, maybe I should add a page here to better capture his dodge sequence. So the panels will be hands, dodge, and then the next page is he lands, then he realizes there are more hands behind him. How crouched down should he be? I guess in the later pages I basically drew him in a practically fully upright position… eh.. Working this out...

*starts drawing extra page* … Mmm, thinking about this again, no. It stretches things out too much. Now it feels like he lands, the new page adds an extra pause that could be interpreted unconsciously as he thinks he’s ok, then he gets attacked by hands from behind. But that’s ridiculous because he’s a rokurokubi, he KNOWS the hands can come back around or whatever, and he’s a good and cautious fighter, the extra pause doesn’t seem to fit. Thinking this through, basically I need it to feel faster - he lands (typed “he hands” there first time around haha), and he doesn’t have a chance to react again before it turns out hands are coming from all directions. So, I’ll keep it to the one original page and draw the reaction to the sound of the hands coming from everywhere. Done. (one of the few instances where I reduce page count in an action sequence)

Oh yeah, I forgot about his arms and legs getting sealed. Er, add another page. OK done.

For comparison, below are photos of the pencils for pages 35 and 36 before the above process:

... and after:

Redraws

I generally try to avoid redrawing an entire image/page from scratch if I don’t have to.  Even if I don’t like the overall drawing, I’m still terrified of effing up the parts that turned out OK the first time around. However, sometimes you gotta know when to cut your losses and start anew and save yourself time and grief (I’m definitely still learning how to know lol). I do have a few strategies to ease my mind - I often take photos of something before I proceed to the next step or change direction (which is where many of these wip photos come from). This helps calm me down because at least now I have a reference for what it was before I took the leap of faith to move forward. Another option is to just leave it and draw on a completely new blank page.

Page 37, where Hokushin is getting his head pulled back by the hands, was an incredibly rare instance of the pencils for a page turning out almost exactly how I wanted on the first try, so I was loathe to redraw or adjust it. This means I basically forced myself to shuffle things before and after to accommodate not having to change it.

On the flipside, page 40, where the shot backs away so you can see Hokushin tied up with the hands, is one I full-on redrew from scratch. I was having a hard time with his pose and how all the hands were wrapped around him and how everything was actually working. I wasn’t happy with the drawing the first time around, but inked it anyways to see if I would like it better the next morning (sometimes this works, to wait and look at it with a distanced frame of mind). Spoiler, I didn’t lol. However, the process of inking the entire thing helped me better hone in on what parts I liked and didn’t like, so when I sketched it out again I was better able to adjust.

This photo shows the original (with the words REDRAW :/ at the bottom), a sketch I did trying to figure out his posture and where all the hands were/how the wrapping actually worked, and then the pencils of the redraw.

Final miscellaneous things

The end page of Part 4 is once again a last minute addition that resulted because I was facing a blank page (again!) after adding the page where Hokushin gets his arms and legs sealed. I changed the spoken line multiple times. First it was a line that’s been pushed to the upcoming part 5, then it was the “You certainly found my “treasure room” quickly” (that’s on the previous page). In the end, I just wrote a completely new line for it. It seemed to work better with the panel and closing off this part at a good point.

Last but not least, I somehow broke my pen inking this part lmao. Fortunately it’s a Muji pen so I only broke the tip off the cartridge somehow, probably in my intense scribbling/shading at some point. It’s not super clear in the photo but if you look closely at the point you’ll see this thin line coming out of the tip of the pen - it was this metal filament that basically scratched the paper without any ink coming out. I had to make an emergency run to two Mujis, neither of which had the black refills, so I ended up just buying two pens with similar thicknesses. Worst case scenario, I would have just inked with my blue cartridge, since the scanning would turn everything black and white anyways... the original pages would have just looked weird.

Phew! Hopefully it worked out and isn’t a totally incoherent mess!