#i usually do a lot of dialogue revisions in the process of making comics

[marikodraws]

You're the one person I refuse to lose to! You're the one person I refuse to lose.

🧤 Ta-da! Here's the comic I did for @rivalszine

[fallout-lou-begas]

How's the script project like for IKROAH? Is it difficult or quite easy? Did you learn how to write comic book scripts because of IKROAH, or had you done it before? What kind of format do you use? Did you have any advice for people in the writing process of creating a comic book? Sorry if this is a lot of questions at once, but I love getting an idea of an artist's creative process.

Whew! No worries anon, I'm also someone who loves to pick the brains of other peoples' creative processes.

The writing for IKROAH can be divided into two halves: the outline and the script. The outline is a big spreadsheet and it's exactly what it sounds like, and it looks like this, but for all one hundred issues. The outline is complete and I use it tp reference all of my scripting.

The point of this outline was so that I could write the comic before I had to actually write the comic, if that makes sense. It would be extremely foolish for me to try to write all one hundred scripts up-front, especially since so many changes to the outline and overall plot of IKROAH have been made during the writing process (though it seems totally settled now). This lets me strike the perfect balance between planning ahead and knowing what I'm writing toward, and still having some freedom with the direction of each individual script. As the outline goes deeper and deeper and I get to scripts that I haven't written yet, the "synopsis" gets much more detailed as I work in very specific ideas or visions that I have for that issue. They're not set in stone, but it's just stuff I don't want to forget to try by the time I get there.

The scripts, meanwhile, are all just on one big Google Doc that looks like this.

The format of each individual script can vary: sometimes, like for IKROAH #23, I very carefully plan for myself the distinction between text and action. Other times, it's basically all just dialogue, and I let myself figure out the action more so during the composition stage. But basically every comic follows this process:

First draft of the script and dialogue

Thumbnailing of the script as I figure out page composition and paneling

Revisions of the script and dialogue to account for page composition

Digital mock-up of the comic (drawing the panel borders to scale in a digital canvas)

Lettering of the comic (to ensure there's enough room)

Revising the script again because some lines won't fit in speech balloons right or something

Drawing the comic, then inking and scanning and coloring

Further revisions of the script as I letter it and realize some lines just aren't as good and ought to be punched up

The script for each issue is surprisingly fluid and the even though it's usually minor changes, dialogue can go through revisions very well up to the eleventh hour before publishing.

The script master document also contains a complete timelined biography of Agnes Sands' life, and a complete timelined chronology of the events of IKROAH where every single issue is given a date and a "Days Passed Since Issue #1" number for my own private reference. This very rarely manifests in the text of the comic itself but it lets me accurately make references or foreshadowing when I need to.

I would say that the process of writing a comic like this is not as hard as it is time-consuming. This took a lot of work up-front, especially amassing a library of midcentury song lyrics to peruse for stingers on each issue, but now the rest of IKROAH's production is basically on autopilot. It lets me just draw it when I want to without having to worry about writing or direction as much, at least for a while -- the outline is complete, but IKROAH's scripts are only written in full up to issue #50. After that, the're mostly written with a few missing ones up to #78, and then the rest is essentially unwritten except for #98. And of course, like I said, the scripts tend to undergo a lot of revision in the production process of each issue, but this is for the best.

The closest I've come to writing like this in the past is when I hatched an idea for a superhero comic in high school and made a similar outline for all of the issues I had planned, which villains would get introduced when, and so on, but that never came to fruition. The organizational skill remained though, clearly, lol.

And as for advice, my best advice is this:

Don't wait until you're "good enough" to make a comic. You don't need to earn permission from yourself or anyone else to just do it with the skills you already have.

The best way to improve your art and comic-making skills is to just start making a comic. Your art, writing, and process will get better over time.

You only need to be good enough at art to convey your subject matter and express your vision, not to replicate anything photorealistically or perfectly. This is why strong composition and paneling can work much better for a comic than very technically good art itself. Tails Gets Trolled is unironically a good example of this point, as is the art of One (pseudonym of the manga artist behind One Punch Man and Mob Psycho 100).

For any kind of long-form work, I highly recommend this short vignette structure. It's more rewarding than making only one page at a time because each issue is still a complete story beat, but it also stops you from basically drowning in the total size of a long-form project. It used to be basically any webcomic on the internet started with totally shit art and you watched the artist get better and better over time, now the Webtoon Industrial Complex has already professional artists putting out extremely polished art from square one. That's bullshit. Reject it. Embrace your amateurism but also your ambition.

Fuck around and find out. Don't be "comic-core," just be on your comic book bullshit.

Read a lot of comics. See how great visual-sequential storytellers accomplish things with pages and panels, and adopt those tricks into your own toolkit. See how they draw things or color things and try to emulate that. One of my favorite ever art teams is the one on the 1980s The Question series, of penciler Denys Cowan, inker Rick Magyar, and colorist Tatjana Wood.

[xanofmercia]

Hmmm, interesting. Thanks for your take!

For me, the reason why I like “shittier draft” is because it gives me permission to do it badly. Almost like… “I *meant* to do it that way”. Sure, I’ll be pleasantly surprised if I come back to edit and find some gems there, but “shitty” is a vibe for me more than just a quality or moral judgment, so I expect it to seem rough around the edges and let myself do more experimenting or “good enough” stopgaps to get it done. Whereas “worst version” actually feels… to me, the same way “shittiest” feels to you! Like that’s not a vibe; that’s just a statement of quality. The worst version. It doesn’t matter that it’s relative; it still feels really bad even if it’s true. Calling something a “worst version” or “worst draft” would actually sap all of my motivation and morale to work on it.

All this is to say, it’s really interesting how different words can have massively different impacts on different people, even if we agree on their definitions.

Anyway, part of it might be things like.. I’ll say “oh this is so shitty but I love it”. The word with respect to quality kind of evokes grittiness, like “oh this isn’t smooth but the potential is there. Shaping and honing it will be fun but so is just getting it out there.” Whereas I’d never say “this is the worst but I love it.” To me “worst” carries more of a sense of… “irredeemable”, even though that doesn’t necessarily logically follow.

Also “shitty”, when I say it about my own work, doesn’t really bother me at all. It has no harmful impact and instead just lowers my expectations, which makes the process more fun. Slapping a “shitty” label onto something lets me know that this is the “quantity over quality” zone where I can dick around with things.

“it just needs to be done” doesn’t really work because it’s a mouthful and also not an adjective. It’s also not accurate! It implies I’m just trying to get it over with, like the process is a struggle but as long as it’s done that’s good. When I’m doing something shitty, the process isn’t a struggle. It’s just deliberately not trying to be good. And that feels a lot more fun! Whereas the “done version” (idk what one would call it) makes it sound like a boring slog that I definitely wouldn’t want to keep working on.

I’d never heard of “zero draft” before your post and checked out your posts on it. It sounds interesting and I’m really glad there are people it works for, but WOW that could not be me! I don’t even number my drafts at all, usually; I edit as part of the writing process (I.e. go back to read a previous scene to refresh myself on what the vibe was and where I left off, only to end up revising the scene because there are parts that need work). So it’s all one continuous first-to-final thing, until I’m at least halfway through and a really huge change comes up, and then I make a new file so it’s easier to delete big chunks and replace them. But if it isn’t halfway through, then I just move the big chunk to a section called “deleted scenes” and write the new chunk right there, making it still part of the same draft. Now that I think about it, I don’t actually use “shittiest version” at all, so oops on misleading! I’ll just classify works as “this one is ‘shitty’”, as shorthand for “this one has absolutely zero expectations, do whatever you want, write it all in dialogue if you want, or do half of it in comic sans”. And others as “no this one is actually good, so you have to be in a more serious mindset to do it, and it’ll be slower because you’re being a lot more deliberate and planning what to do, and also the structure of the plot is already in place and the style is already set so you’ll have to match both until it’s done and you start editing”. For those, I don’t actually like “playing” or experimenting, because that’ll just slow things down. I’ll come back to it and find it doesn’t fit, or it made the story way longer than I wanted it to be, and the extra length isn’t doing anything. So it needs to be tight. And I know some people hate writing immediately like that, since “that’s what editing is for”, but I don’t mind doing that sometimes; it’s a different form of fun for me. I’ll still go back and edit afterwards, but being deliberate from the very start is challenging and interesting in a different way than… being shitty 😅

I'm so glad Tumblr brought me across the guy who won't let people talk bad about their singing voices because I am his sister in another artistic line.

"It's my shitty draft."

No! It's not shitty, it's just early in the writing/rewriting process!

[nooowestayandgetcaught]

ALL 40 BAYBEE!!!!! GIMME SUM ANSWERS

5) Share one of your strengths.

Being,,, prolific?? ?????? ??? ???????????

6) Share one of your weaknesses.

My own mind. No really I'm basically my own worst enemy because I'm too much of a perfectionist and hate myself and mess myself up.

7) Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

Stars are the many, many eyes left behind of the Old Gods.

Arya heard this before. She's heard that the stars are the last of the Weeping Lady's tears. They are the eternally bleeding wounds of the Great Shepard according to the Dothraki. They are the drops of poison given to Baelor the Beloved as he laid asleep. They are the immortal sparks of R'hallor's breath. Arya believes the stars are nothing. They exist in a chasm of darkness and death, and no-one is meant to understand why.

Evermore (T, Arya Stark & Sansa Stark, Game of Thrones, 1179 words)

I HAD A LOT OF FUN GOING THROUGH WESTOROS MYTHOLOGY AND TALES IN HISTORY TO MAKE THAT PART. AND THEN WRITING OUT ARYA'S THOUGHTS ABOUT THAT.

8) Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

"I liked this shirt, you know," Will complains faintly.

Behind him, one of the car-windows rattle. A badly burned hand emerges from the smoke, clawing helplessly.

"We will find you another," Hannibal tells him, disregarding the murderer's intense, gagging screams.

"That's not the point."

"You're holding on needlessly to the limited value of your material possessions, Will. That's not like you." Hannibal lightly clucks his tongue as if disapproving, approaching him and thumbing down Will's jaw. He's warm and wet, and glorious. He's evolving.

"Says the man who buys Patek Philippe wristwatches," Will retorts softly. "For his own pleasure."

The corner of Hannibal's mouth smirks.

"And what kind of pleasure exists within your mind's eye right now, Will?"

"Ripping out your jugular vein with my teeth," Will murmurs, stroking his lambskin-gloved thumb against Hannibal's neck.

"I would be honored."

The Crescendo Of Dying Screams (M, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter, Hannibal (TV), 908 words)

THIS IS JUST FUN!!! THEY WERE FUN TO WRITE FOR AGAIN AND I HAVE NOT WRITTEN FOR HANNIGRAM IN A WHILE!!

13) What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever come across?

Even if you think it sucks,,,, write it down anyway and then fix it later. The important part is to write and start writing.

14) What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever come across?

Thankfully,,, I don't think I've come across any yet.

15) If you could choose one of your fics to be filmed, which would you choose?

I would love to see Perambulate (G, Princess Bubblegum/Marceline & Prince Gumball/Marshall Lee, Adventure Time, 1358 words) done in a comic at least because I NEED THESE TWO CANON COUPLES TO MEET AND BE SILLY. CANON WLW AND MLM.

16) If you only could write one pairing for the rest of your life, which pairing would it be?

NOT REALISTIC. I DO NOT FUNCTION LIKE THAT

17) Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order?

I start out from beginning to ending but sometimes I gotta skip around to keep it going if I get stuck.

18) Do you use any tools, like worksheets or outlines?

*shrugs*

19) Stephen King once said that his muse is a man who lives in the basement. Do you have a muse?

It's probably a little moth trapped in a jar and beating itself senselessly against the glass, but it kind of enjoys it??

20) Describe your perfect writing conditions.

Wrapped in a blanket, alone in my room with headphones and music blasting, with a large water bottle and a little bit of chocolate.

21) How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting?

Depends really! Sometimes I'll go through and correct once, and sometimes I will go through like 14 times in one day!

24) Have you ever deleted one of your published fics?

I have! I will upload it again sometime but like,,,,, the person I had made it for in an AO3 fest basically fucked off and me removing it was me going "nah fuck this,,,, it ain't yours anymore!!!"

27) How do you feel about collaborations?

I have done them! I think they're nice! I do not like long term collaboration projects but for a oneshot, yes!

28) Share your favorite fic writers and why you like them so much.

@glove23 - I look up to this fic writer so much! They have been battling depression and anxiety, and the complexities of their ADHD, for such a long time and whenever they post something,,, I get so excited! I'm really proud of them! It's hard enough for me to write on a bad mental health day, and I know the struggle they go through, and it's INCREDIBLE to see what they can do! They have been writing since they were young and it really shows how much they love writing and how hard they work on getting the characterization and dialogue to be spot on! Obsessed with their work! (AO3)

@not-so-mundane-after-all-97 - What a powerhouse! Incredible writing and fantastic handling of how she structures plot! Constantly in awe of the ideas she has and when they are well-executed (and they are all of the time)! If you are a fan of Will/Lyra from HDM, this is the person to go to for quality! I promise! (AO3)

other writers I really like are @spookywitchnerd24, @theschubita, @anxiouss-princess, @asajjvxntress, @kingburu, @rapha-writes

29) If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose?

ngl I really wanna do the "they get back from horse riding and Aleksander refuses to leave Alina's side while she's getting healed" sequel to you are too well tangled in my soul by @glove23

31) Do you take liberties with canon or are you very strict about your fic being canon compliant?

Meh. It depends on the thing I'm writing.

32) How do you feel about smut?

I write it all of the time and read it all of the time. I don't think it's a big deal at all. I respect that it's uncomfy for a lot of people

33) How do you feel about crack?

It's fun! And it can be done well! I saw more crack fic being done back in,,,, like the early 00s and now I don't see it as much,,,,, sad

34) What are your thoughts on non-con and dub-con?

You know what,,, I was just discussing the psychology of why noncon fic is so popular on AO3 (and I have written it before and to my surprise IT GETS THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF VIEWS) and,,, I think the key components to answering this question is understanding that 1) AO3 allows noncon fic to exist therefore it's a dumping ground and 2) rape culture is so embedded into US-centric society especially and 3) there's a lot of traumatized people on AO3 and likely creating noncon to process what happened to them and 4) it's a taboo subject and humanity has been drawn to and obsessed with what is taboo since forever,,,, and tbh the taboo is fascinating to me! It does draw me in! I have written for it and I've read it, and I think it's important to ask questions and examine why we do this!

35) Would you ever kill off a canon character?

HELL YEAH. ABSOLUTELY. I HAVE DONE IT BEFORE AND I'LL DO IT AGAIN!! I prefer more "oh my god they're dead--OH! now they're alive! yayyyyy!" over permanent character death

36) Which is your favorite site to post fic?

AO3. AO3 is queen. I'm not gonna badmouth FFN and Wattpad in terms of people who go there because that's your business however FFN and Wattpad are largely restrictive and mainstream corporate owned areas of interest that don't give a single shit about their users.

38) Talk about a review that made your day.

Whenever my writer friends comment on my fic,,, I literally get emotional. Like those are my favorite comments to see :)

39) Do you ever get rude reviews and how do you deal with them?

BE SAD FOR HALF A SECOND AND THEN FIGHT.

[loopy777]

RE: WIPs game: do I even want to know what Dicebenders is is it another scam how many times are the Gaang gonna get arrested for scamming

No, this time it's me scamming people. XD The dice in question are the RPG Dungeons & Dragons kind.

For a while I was doing a screencap webcomic in the style of "DM of the Rings" and "Darths & Droids" with another creative fan named Captain Boomerang. I was the scriptwriter and selected the screenshots for each panel, and Capt-BA would assemble the comics and improve my scripts (a process that did frustrate me a little, as I felt locked out of the revision process, but I did like the results. I just felt like I wasn't holding up my end of the partnership a bit). I wrote a story bible explaining the characters and storytelling rules, planned out the adaptation of the entire AtLA premiere, and had less detailed plans for the rest of the series, but we only got 6 comics in before Capt-BA went on a trip and never returned to the internet. I did manage to re-establish contact with her long enough to get permission to continue the comic, but the problem is that I have no image-editing skills whatsoever.

If I could find comic-making software that I know would do what I want and be easy to use, I wouldn't mind dropping some money on it, but everything I've looked at is trying to do lots of things I don't need. I only want a way to import existing pictures into comic grids, and then easily add dialogue bubbles. That's it. But the stuff I've found is more about image-editing than comic assembly, and it takes me an hour to put together a dialogue bubble that looks good. So I have 3 scripts that were never produced, which along with the planning docs are what's in that WIP folder, and I don't ever see myself going beyond that.

Besides, someone else already managed to complete something like this, and while I'm not a fan, I don't need to be. At this point, Dicebenders is dead. I'm glad I tried it, and it's a shame it didn't work out, but I'm happy with the other projects I've done instead.

I am squatting on an empty Tumblr for it, though.

Anyway, to share something new, here's the first section of the Story Bible I wrote to make sure Capt-BA and I were on the same page in terms of characterization. The rest of the bible details the plotlines for full series.

AVATAR: THE LAST DICEBENDER

BIBLE

Premise- A small group of players attempt to run a fantasy martial arts RPG that winds up essentially becoming the Avatar saga, or something very close. The main point of the series is comedy, based mostly on ridiculous links between Avatar and RPG's. Sometimes the humor will be in the vast difference between what happens in the comic, and what happens in the cartoon with the same screenshots. Other times, the funny will come from the unexpected ways they converge.

SPIRITUAL PREDECESSORS

DM of the Rings- The original, and my personal favorite. It's a good showcase of how to run a single quest together, while using narrative jumps to skip to the good bits.

Darths & Droids- A similar project, this stands out from its predecessor in two main ways. The players and GM are more friendly with each other, and are more or less having fun with each other. There is also a running, coherent storyline in both the game and in the lives of the players.

Benders & Brawlers- This is actually an existing attempt to do Darths & Droids with Avatar. This is helpful as an example of what we DON'T want to do, retell the Avatar story in a completely straightforward manner, with RPG players behind the characters.

CHARACTERS

None of the characters will be given real names. The players shall always be referred to by their character names, although this can be done in a teasing, ironic manner. When the characters are speaking, their dialogue bubble must always be attached to an image of the character.

The Gamemaster- The GM is a female in her early teens. She is a geek, and a bit of a social outcast for it. Nevertheless, she's trying to make that work for her, although she's not quite mature enough to make it happen yet. She has just discovered RPG's, and in her enthusiasm has gone all out in starting her own campaign. The only problem is that she doesn't know how to recruit players, so she ropes her best friend and little brother into playing with her. This is the GM's first campaign, so she'll a little in over her head. She knows the mechanics of play, and what she's supposed to be doing as GM, but doesn't have the fine skill in crafting an engaging RPG experience. Still, she wants to do her best, is willing to learn, and has a positive attitude about the whole thing. The GM has a strong crush on the Sokka player, but the only way she can express it is by having all the female NPC's flirt with the Sokka character.

Katara- Female in early teens, and the GM's best friend. Katara's player was friends with the GM from when they were both in grammar school, so while they have grown up into wildly different personality types, they are fully loyal to each other. Katara is popular, and outgoing, and doesn't care or know about geek stuff at all. She's only playing the game because the GM begged her to. At first, Katara is clueless about RPG's, and frequently questions or ridicules the mechanics of the game. She never quite gets into the idea of role-playing, but quickly takes to the idea of meta-gaming. She'll have her character act like a righteous do-gooder, because completing missions and fighting bad guys earns XP. She hoards items that will boost her stats. She'll advocate abandoning a mission/plot if it doesn't pay out enough rewards. Katara's player also can tend towards trying to Mary Sue her character, but this is inconsistent and usually shot down by everyone else.

Aang- Male in junior high, and the GM's little brother. He plays simply because his sister has cajoled him into it, and there are hints that he's getting some kind of reward or payment for it. He abuses his position by forcing the GM to give him what he wants in the game, even if it breaks the rules- access to the restricted Airbender class, the ability to bend all four elements, overloaded stats, an Avatar State that protects him from dying, a magic super flying cow ride, etc. However, it's important to note that Aang's player isn't a jerk. He's just immature, and like all kids, just always goes for what he wants via the easiest path, and doesn't realize that he may be causing trouble or hurting feelings. He's enthusiastic about trying out this RPG thing, but he has trouble coming up with any action beyond attacking or retreating. He's also hyper aware that the GM and Katara are girls. He is too old for cootie concerns, but thinks that girls are fundamentally different creatures with their own incomprehensible concerns. Having a big sister, he doesn't find this a big deal, just part of life. Aang's player is too young to be a geek. He likes cartoons and sports and fantasy and school-dramas. He also tends to follow whatever his sister likes.

Sokka- Male in late teens. This guy is your quintessential RPG player. He has is own top-quality dice, he's played campaigns and systems of all kinds, and knows the tropes of the hobby cold. He's a huge geek for all things geeky, but roleplay is easily his favorite. He's a social outcast, but he's made friends among his fellow geeks, and thinks life is just fine. Sokka's player joins when he meets the GM at the comic/games shop they both frequent. The GM was buying some sourcebooks and material to support the fantasy martial arts game she's running, and Sokka noticed, asked about it, liked what he heard, and got permission to join the game. What Sokka doesn't realize, because he is a geek and neither has experience with it or realizes it's even possible, is that the GM is sweet on him. This manifests in the character Sokka's canon luck with the ladies, only kicked up a notch. *Every single* female NPC flirts with him, whether it's appropriate or not. Sometimes player Sokka notices and tries to roleplay it, and sometimes he's just plain confused. Sokka has a few quirks. His best set of dice are his Lucky Red Dice, which always roll high when he needs it, but have been tested and proven to be fair dice. He also mandates that every character he plays use a boomerang; he was turned into a geek by the first video game he ever played, a Legend of Zelda title, and his favorite weapon from those games are the boomerang. Each of his characters has a unique, named boomerang.

Zuko- The GM's favorite NPC. She created him to be a compelling, dramatic character, with a complicated back story, moral struggles, badass loner personality, angst about his existence, a darkly noble quality, and a cool scar. The GM intended Katara to get to know Zuko, for her to try to woo him away from the side of evil, and perhaps to even have a romance with him. The PC's, however, couldn't care less about him. To them, he's just another mini-boss, and the fact that most of his character development is happening "off screen" means they don't realize that he's recruitable. A frequent gag is Zuko delivering a stirring monologue while no one pays attention.

Iroh- Background NPC. The GM tries to use him to give (ignored) hints to the players.

Toph- (tentative) A male munchkin gamer who picked a long list of weaknesses in order to get superbending. Toph's player is a friend of Sokka's player, brought in after an "incident" with his old group, and causes some initial resentment in the group when tries to show the n00bs how its done. Cowing Toph's player is a major victory for the GM.

Momo- NPC, but maybe make him a talking sidekick who gives the players hints when the GM is really exasperated?

Azula- the GM's best favorite villain. Azula is the GM unleashed, letting her take out frustrations on the players in both combat and harsh taunting. Eventually the GM comes to like the character so much, she retcons mental health issues into the character's backstory, and has her pet NPC, Zuko, spare her.

[overdrivels]

TWtaH Notes

I’m finally free. It took three years and nearly 150k words, but I’m finally done. I can’t believe it. 

It started off as a simple idea and a simple premise: a chef!reader who, while knife sharpening, catches Hanzo’s attention. It then evolved into a full-fledged fic with a plot and plot twists. Originally, it was supposed to be around 10 chapters long, but then it grew out of control over the years as I tried to figure out how to end what I started. 

In addition to being a redemption fic, this was also an information dump fic. Since this is the very first slowburn I have ever finished and I have the feeling I won’t have much opportunity to do the same ever again--I don’t think any other fandom would give me the ability to showcase all these tidbits like Overwatch does--I literally threw as much knowledge as I could reasonably incorporate as possible.

About plot changes:

Most of the original plot points survived the writing process, some minor ones didn’t for plot related reasons, so this surprisingly went better than I thought it would. 

There was supposed to be another scene where Chef faced off against Reaper in chapter 20 or so, but upon reassessing Reaper’s character, I decided he wouldn’t do that, especially not against civilians or put himself in harm’s way just to say something to Chef. He wouldn’t even say anything to his family in the comics, what makes anyone think he’d do anything to someone he had even less of a personal relationship with?

There were supposed to be more scenes about Chef’s fencing, but I couldn’t fit it in and it ended up being a one-trick pony plot device. It wasn’t supposed to be that way, but that’s how it turned out. There was supposed to be a scene where Chef fights back against Talon during their infiltration of the Watchpoint.

There were points where Hanzo himself talked his way out of situations and forced me to change the plot. In the kitchen when he first meets Chef face-to-face, he wasn’t supposed to get the chef to forgive him which is the biggest plot deviation I’ve had and it forced me to reconsider large sections of the story. Honestly, I think it’s for the better though because I was really at a loss as to how to progress the original plot under those conditions.

I also wanted to emphasize that when Chef left, there was increased tension between the members. There was little commonality joining them all together except for the fact they all needed to eat. In order for some parties to work, you have to have your support characters, and in that case, it’d be Chef. But I seem to have bumbled through that bit and made it less impactful so if I ever got a chance to rewrite this, I’d probably stress this bit more.

Symmetra was supposed to have a much bigger role in this, somehow she fell to the wayside with that one plot change in the kitchen I mentioned before. On the flipside, Ana and McCree got a way bigger role than expected. 

One of the biggest plot changes was Hanzo hating peppers. Originally he was supposed to hate onions but I thought there was way too much onion in Japanese cuisine to omit them, so I thought of something that would seem more ‘childish’.

To be fair, I also don’t really like peppers all that much either. But I sure as hell love onions.

The proposal with the miso soup at the end, the plot twist where the chefs are the real treasure, and some other minor details have been there since the beginning of the idea’s conception. Things like Reaper trading Overwatch’s life for the tamale, the name of the restaurant, and Hanzo’s fight with Genji only came after the fic was being written. 

Real life:

Covid really took its toll on me since a lot of this fic revolved around food, tasting it, experiencing it, making it, etc. I lost a good portion of my taste and smell, and it’s not back 100% even months later, so a lot of what I begin to describe after a certain point is just based on memory. If a pre-pandemic world, I would have been running around the city, sampling foods and writing down my impressions, but with things as they were, it didn’t pan out that way.

I tried to stuff as many of my favorite foods (and not so favorite foods) here as much as possible. There were a lot of foods I omitted because there’s only so much I could fit in here. A companion compilation fic of the Overwatch characters eating their favorite foods or just eating food in general made by Chef sounds really appealing right now.

May, June, and July made me really want to expand the story and include things in the fic that would turn it ‘problematic’ or at least morally ambiguous. If I did that, this fic would never be finished. 

Characterization and development:

Junkrat and Roadhog are much more docile in this story than I would have headcanoned them simply because food security is life-changing. I really liked the idea of Roadhog using his farming skills and being less homicidal with the right environment. They both know food is sacred. 

Argus 20 is in reference to Argus Panoptes, the all-seeing many eyed giant from greek mythology. The 20 comes from “hindsight is 20-20” (but now 2020 has a very different connotation and I’m thinking it’s pretty fitting). The reason for this is because she oversaw a lot of what was happening especially in the front of house. It’s not mentioned in the story, but she oversaw things like purchasing the restaurant, setting up the dummy accounts, organizing and obfuscating the donations, etc.

In case there was any confusion, ‘Tanuja Deshmukh Singh’ is Asim’s deadname. When he left Overwatch and became Asim Singh, his family disowned him. He was then free to live as himself, but he never discarded his last name because he still wanted to be connected to his family in some vague way no matter how much they disliked or denied his existence.

Head Chef Richard has been in jail. His backstory is basically after firing his staff to protect them from the fall out, he basically told the press he fired them for insubordination and took the fall for the kitchens and got quietly arrested. He was sent to the same prison that Chef would end up at. He’s not a very honest man, I don’t think, but he’s a character who was molded by the story and its needs rather than being a pre-established OC. 

I kind of wanted to write the fic in a way where Argus and Asim weren’t bad guys but people who were forced to make difficult decisions because of the position they were put in by Chef and by Talon. Cause, you know, sometimes you do things to hurt people without realizing it.

I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to push another ship in the background. If you see hints of different pairings here and there, you may be seeing it right because I kept flip-flopping between chapters as to whether I wanted to or not, and if I decided I did, I kept changing the pairings.

Hanzo. Where do I even start with this guy? I had a really tough time trying to stick to one interpretation of his character. I kept reading other fics and going, “Yeah. Yeah! I want that!” But then it just became a huge mish-mash of characterizations until I wasn’t sure who he was anymore. But I clung onto the thought of “he’s the first son of an Asian household dealing with his spoiled brother” to help get me through it. It reminds me of that tweet that goes, “You think you can hurt me? I’m the eldest daughter in an asian family.” It was so relatable. Channeling eldest sibling in asian family vibes. 

Chef. It was so hard. It was so damn hard writing a faceless character for so many words. I can usually do it in a one-shot because I can get away with not mentioning stuff, but in a slowburn?? It’s so difficult. Multiple times I had to stop myself or revise things because there were characters talking about Chef and I didn’t want to make the dialogue unnatural by saying ‘chef’ ‘chef’ over and over again. There were other moments like Soldier carrying Chef out of the Cellar and I was like: “What if the reader is taller than Soldier?!” It was a struggle. The other struggle was characterization. There were so many in-story stressful moments that I wanted Chef to start crying at but the timing of it was so frequent that I had to nix most of them or risk making Chef unrelatable. 

lol i’ve made several pseudo-cameos in the story because I’m shameless. 

Miscellaneous:

Man, my style changed so many times throughout the story. At some point I ended up writing outlines made solely of dialogue and wrote the story around it. It was oddly distressing when I realized my words wouldn’t come out like they used to.  

This fic has seen me through a ridiculous amount of crap. I kind of wished I kept a journal or something because these past three years have been nuts. 

After this, I’ll probably retire from writing Overwatch and then go into my usual writing hibernation that spans about 4 years before I reemerge with an unquenchable thirst for something stupid. 

In my nearly 20 years of writing fanfic, this is the first slowburn I’ve ever completed. To be fair, the last time I even tried was like...over 10 years ago when mediaminer was still a thing and didn’t ban CYOAs.

This was also the longest single fic I’ve ever written. I have wirtten 200k in a year before but never for any single thing.

God, this was hard. I partially did it to prove that you don’t need to use placeholders like ‘Y/N’ and stuff like that and it was possible to write a slowburn with gender neutral stuff, but I had to cheat a bit. But it’s done. 

I’ve worked in the restaurant business for a few years but not as a chef. It wasn’t even high-end either. I wanted to talk about the work conditions because it’s pretty tough in the kitchens and the amount of drugs and vices people turn to and the conditions in which people come to work is nuts. 

I wanted to cover a lot of controversial topics to see if I could but it just didn’t fit in the story. I wanted to tap into things like social justice, racism, prejudices, political landscapes, and so on. Even within Overwatch, I’d imagine there’s a lot of tensions stemming from just basic ideologies. I wanted to see if I could write about both (or more) sides of challenging arguments and still remove the author’s opinions from the story, but I’d imagine that’ll bring its own complications. Last thing I wanted was to start a fight in the comments or something.

I almost made the crew travel to Asia with implications of a changed geo-political sphere from today. Like...the status of Taiwan would’ve been interesting to touch upon, but I didn’t feel like I had the knowledge to expand on it enough.

Almost every waking of my life, I have thought or worked on this fic. During meetings, during conferences, during client calls, while I’m on public transportation, in different countries. I don’t know what to do with myself now.

Anyway, if you have any questions or anything or just want to shout at me, inbox is open.. For now I’m just going to lament over the fact that Genshin Impact gives me motion sickness and I can’t play despite working so hard to roll Mona.

[catsitta]

Your writing, especially in BotU, is just amazing! It's so poetic and flows so well! Do you have any tips for learning to write fiction? Also I've noticed in your fae focused and underworld fiction you mention so much in regards to legends and myths that reflect real ones, what kind of research do you do for this or do you already know of this/made it up?

You’re making me blush. Heh. 

Alright, this going to be a long one, I got wordy.

My writing style mostly reflects how I learned to self-edit, since most of my fics are unbeta’ed. How do I do my own editing? If I find a tricky passage, I will write it how it would be spoken. While not ‘proper’ in many ways, a language when spoken aloud can tell you whether or not a phrase will sound right to the mind’s internal ear. In fact, my main advice for anyone writing anything, essay to novel, is to read it out loud whenever possible. (It also helps find and reduce typos, but if you’re a speed reader like me, you may still skip over stuff because your brain is sometimes super helpful (not) and fixes/fills in words!) Doing this will also force you look at your writing and realize that, even if it is grammatically correct, sometimes phrases will sound/look off and need to be redone.

Another tip that works for me (and is one I learned while writing essays in highschool and really embraced in my college writing courses), is to put words to a page, perfect them later. Your best solution to finishing a fic is to literally write it, then go back later and revise. That doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be structure. If you like knowing what will happen in every chapter before you start and write purposefully, that is great! But I would never get anything done if I made sure it was perfect while writing it or constantly backtracked to fix stuff before a chapter is done.

I will use my drabble fic, Handle with Care, as an example. I have 100 words dedicated to a chapter. A chapter should always inform the reader, bring up a question, answer a question or otherwise move the story and its characters forward, whether you are writing 100 words or 10,000.

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[CHAPTER ONE:

“I, THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE EDGE, DEMAND TO KNOW WHO YOU ARE!”

Red rolled his eyelights as he dropped the last of the moving boxes onto the living room floor. Even trashed from the move in, this place looked better than the last. The walls had paint on them and the carpet was from this decade. Best go see what poor sap his little bro was yapping at before they got kicked out. Moving into the hallway outside the apartment, he spotted Edge and his victim. Red swallowed. It was a skeleton monster. Who looked up and winked at Red.]

(HwC had a basic framework written. As in, major keystones/plot points that needed reaching/bridging between.)

My process:

Q: What happened/needs to happen?

A: Red has just moved into a new apartment with his little brother, and while he is moving in, he meets his romantic interest for the fic. This romantic interest is his neighbor.

Q: Is the plot forwarded?

A: Yes. 

Q: Is new information introduced? Is it important? 

A: Red is moving in. Sans is his neighbor. Edge and Red are brothers and didn’t come from the best neighborhood previously. Edge is very outspoken. 

Q: Are there questions a reader may have? Or questions being answered?

A: Why/how did Red move? Why is his little brother living with him? Who is the neighbor? What is the neighbor’s purpose relating to the MC? How old is Edge? How old is Red?

Q: Does it make the Reader think or feel? What do I want my Reader to feel?

A: While not a very emotion impacting chapter in itself, it is supposed to be a cute bit of family fluff that hints at both a future romance as well as possible conflict arising from the reasons why Red and Edge moved.

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I highly encourage people to try writing a 100 word drabble fic. Whether you are an experienced writer that writes long, detailed chapters on the regular, or someone who is just starting out and is finding it hard to find the time to commit to a long fic. 100 words is challenging in that you have to use every word effectively, but I’ve personally found it relaxing and even beneficial to me as a writer. After all, if I am having a bad day and nothing is going write and words don’t make sense? Well, I only need to write 100 and then try again tomorrow. It’s good for breaking an obsessive, perfectionistic cycle where you may be impeeding your own progress by simply never finishing. 

My last tip is to simply read.

Read anything and everything. You like romance and want to write romance? Read a bunch of it. Professional novels, fanfiction, poems, otome games, comics, manga...All of it. But also don’t be afraid to branch out. Every genera has different strengths. I LOVE fantasy. Traditional high fantasy with dragons and elves and knights and mages and great, cliche plots about good toppling the forces of evil. LOVE IT. And what is fantasy’s strength? World building. What is romance’s? Relationships and dialogue. The more you read, the more you subconciously pick up on diction and the tropes/feel of a genera. The most common comment I have recieved while pursuing a degree, was that I write like I read a lot. That I like to read. And it really stuck with me. Because it is rather true. You can usually tell the difference in the writing of someone who only reads because they must (or only the classics you are assigned in classes) and someone who reads for the love of reading. So be someone who writes like they love to read. Like they love language. 

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Now that I have rambled!

To answer your second question, my more myth based fics are always a hybrid of real mythology and stuff I’ve made up that is more cohesive with the world I’m writing about. If I am writing Undertale fanfiction, I want it to feel like Undertale fanfiction. I want to maintain certain themes and ideas, even if they don’t align with mythology. 

Greek Mythology is also a lot more fixed in places than faerie lore, and thus it needs more research to stay true. While in turn, you can be wildly inventive with faerie lore. Thus with my fae fics, I draw from a wide variety of sources, mostly from memory, be it from books I have read, games I have played, or stories I have been told. (It is often easier to ‘write what you know’ after all. If you read Norse Mythology for fun, then writing a fic retelling a norse myth may be more fun for you as a writer than writing a scifi drama you have to pour tons of hours of research into.)

As a quick example:

Bride of the Underworld’s basic premise is the Abduction of Persephone myth. It is very popular in media and it has endless interpretations. Turning the Underground into the Underworld was a natural step. But I never feel the need to 100% follow the mythology to the tee. This is an Undertale fanfiction after all! So, the math lays out like this. If Frisk is Persephone and Persephone’s mother is Demeter, then Frisk’s mother should be Toriel. Toriel’s husband is Asgore, the King of Monsters, who would be a natural choice for King of Gods, and is thus, a placeholder for Zeus. But Demeter isn’t married to Zeus, one could say. No, but he is married to Hera and Toriel can also fill that roll. In the game, they are estranged, which works perfectly, in that Toriel could have/raise Frisk in private, and become the sheltered maiden that Persephone/Kore was in mythos. (Now play apples-to-apples with a wonderful AU co-creator for 50k+ words and you have a fic.)

[malignedaffairs]

Artist Interview

Some time ago I was asked to answer some questions for a Russian community that collects interviews from various fanartists - what a lovely idea! Here’s the Russian translation along with lots of other interesting interviews. Under the cut is the English version.

On the artist

Nickname: Fifi

Date of birth: December 11th

What city are you from? Berlin

What genre in music do you prefer? Are there any favorite bands/singers? Dark electro, industrial, gothic, EBM, new wave, with a little side of metal and rock’n’roll. My favourite band is Rammstein.

The book that made the most impression and why? There’s nothing life-changing, but I have a ritual of reading before bedtime and some books have been great companions, mostly because they are gripping as hell or because they build up a huge world to blissfully get lost in. I really enjoyed In Cold Blood, The Swarm, Out, Memoirs of a Geisha, The Fifth Woman, Into Thin Air, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the Harry Potter series, Lord of the Rings and ASOIAF.

What are your hobbies besides artistic creativity? Video games, reading up/watching documentaries on things like history, nature, the psychology connected to criminal cases or the obscure niche interest du jour, tasting and trying to cook food from around the world, spending time with close friends and family, planning trips and travelling, board games, being outside in nature, doting on my cat.

What movies (TV series) do you like to watch? Is there something you revise (recommend)? I prefer short thriller/mystery/horror series like Zone Blanche, The Sinner, La Forêt, Penny Dreadful, period dramas like Moon Lovers or The Tudors, movies/series that are funny and thoughtful like Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Intouchables and Better Call Saul, Tarantino movies, oh and movies/series about food!

Favorite anime? Mushishi, Hellsing Ultimate, Samurai Champloo, Kuroko no Basuke, Dragonball Z

Favorite manga? Vagabond, Blade of the Immortal, Naruto, Dragonball, Rookies, Shokugeki no Soma

Favorite pictures, installations? Romanticism paintings, they’re so atmospheric. And traditional artwork from indigenous cultures.

Is there something that you would have trouble parting with? (Some thing, for example) There are things like my old diaries or my hard drive full of photos and drawings, but in general I’m more attached to places than to things.

What are your future plans? Getting better at my job, falling in love, lots of drawings.

On the art

What was the beginning of your passion? Discovering how crayons work as a toddler, I guess.

Do you think the academic base is obligatory and should everyone go through universities to be good masters? I think a profound education can totally polish your technical skills, so the benefits can be great. But art is very individual, and you don’t need university for expressing yourself creatively. When I graduated from high school I thought about studying to become a professional artist, but decided on keeping it a leisure activity for me to unwind and express myself without any pressure.

How long have you been drawing? I’ve been drawing from early childhood.

Tell us about the process of drawing. Where do you start, how do you finish? How much time is spent on drawing? When I’m super lazy, I just use one layer. I start with a rough sketch and refine it by just adding cleaner lines on top and erasing the messy parts. When I’m less lazy I do a rough sketch and a second layer of clean lines on top. During the process I often adjust proportions by cutting, warping and relocating parts of the content. For a comic I first think of a rough plot and draft the dialogue, then make a rough storyboard with page thumbnails. I usually only plan around three pages at a time, never the whole thing in one go. Colouring is another beast entirely. No system there whatsoever, I just put colours on there and hope for the best. Usually a drawing takes me at least two hours, comic pages take up to eight hours. I mostly use the same three brushes all the time.

How did your nickname appear? Fifi-la-fumeuse is a random thing I found in a book about curiosities I bought in Paris a long time ago. It’s basically a vintage doll that was used for educating students about the dangers of smoking during pregnancy. I liked how creepy it looked and the name sounds nice and a little similar to my real name, so I’ve kept it ever since. Malignedaffairs is an allusion to the “forbidden” nature of Itasasu, which was my OTP when I started my blog back in 2012/13. Nowadays I’m finding the name rather corny, but it’s what most people associate with my art, so I’m just keeping it.

What inspires you? Everyday life, my feelings, media, exchanging ideas with people within the fandom.

How do you feel about criticism? Do you criticize other artists? I’m not here for the criticism. My first and foremost goals in posting art on the internet are expressing my feelings, getting in touch with like-minded people and having fun, not necessarily improving my artwork or meeting any achievement goals. I’m grateful for constructive criticism if I respect and trust the person who gives it. I only give criticism if invited to do so.

Do you have your own characters? Or maybe the whole universe? Tell a little about it. No, I don’t have any OCs at all.

How did you come to the Naruto fandom? What kind of heroes do you draw and why them? My ex bf was a big fan of Naruto and always tried to get me into it, but I found it boring and childish. After we broke up though, I felt really lost and started to watch Naruto as a way to feel a little closer to him, and before I knew it I was super into the plot and the characters and then Itachi appeared and the story of the Uchiha brothers struck a very deep chord with me. I’m very much into beautiful, tragic, brilliant but troubled characters who are sweet cinnamon rolls inside, and Itachi and Shisui are like the posterboys for this concept. I feel like they’re the perfect muses for me to give some kind of shape to my ideals of love and mutual respect.

Do you agree with the opinion that national self-perception, as an intellectual factor, is present in the creative process? You’re always influenced by the social environment, the battles and the values you grew up with, and some of that can be determined by your nationality. Themes like identity, society, communication, politics and ideologies are often expressed in art, and if that’s the case you can’t and probably don’t even aim to separate it from national self-perception. I think it’s more present in original art than in fanart though.

What topics worry you and most often are reflected in your work? Belonging, mutual love, loss, sex.

Do you consider drawing to be your recognition in life? Do you plan to continue to devote yourself to this business? It’s an important part of my life and I’m going to do it as long as it feels right, but I won’t pressure myself.

What advice do you have for novice artists? Expect your drawings to look ugly in the beginning and draw all the ugly pictures anyway. Draw whatever attracts you, however silly it may seem. “Art block” means you should lower the pressure on yourself and allow yourself to draw something ugly, silly or uncreative, or even take a break from drawing. Art is not about achievement but about expression. Don’t take it personally when no one seems to appreciate your art right away. Instead actively seek out like-minded people in online communities or in real life, get engaged and show your art to them. Also: flip that canvas!

[featureenvyproductions]

Process Things! Part 3 - Frame Layouts/Storyboarding/Thumbnailing (Part 1)

Ok so I know I said I’d get to this last time and then never did so LET’S TRY TO DO IT THIS TIME.

Somehow I made this long winded, but it really is pretty straightforward: splitting stuff up into frames is just like splitting stuff up into pages! Only on a smaller scale.

Ok it’s not EXACTLY the same. But a lot of the same rules apply. Let’s go over them again and apply them to frames this time.

Usual disclaimer: This isn’t necessarily the “best way” or the “right way” to make a graphic novel, but it’s the way that works for me, one person with no training, to get it friggin done. So maybe someone else can get inspiration from this and like make their own thing if they didn’t know how to start. We’re all bored in quarantine and the purpose of this is to help some random person be less bored.

Extra disclaimer: I’m not using my own material in this guide because I’m self-absorbed and especially like any crap I churn out...I’m more just worried about using something else and not having the rights to it. So it’s just safer to use my own shit. I apologize in advance at the subpar examples….

Splitting a Page Into Frames

Let’s Compare It To Splitting the Chapter Into Pages

Let’s revisit the summary list from last time. The general guidelines for splitting a chapter up into pages (revised now to say frames!) were:

Don’t just AUTOMATICALLY give every frame the same amount of script. Sometimes you will and sometimes you won’t. It’s all about what keeps the reader interested and makes the page flow better and also.... 

Do think about the purpose of each frame and what it shows and accomplishes, even if it’s just a vague idea.

Less is more and more is less...I.E. The more you stick in a frame the less of an impact it will have. If you stick less in the frame, it will have more of an impact. (This even applies to exposition...Like honestly you still have a frame with exposition text, but make sure it sticks to the same subject and count that as putting “less”)

Keep pacing in mind. ← this becomes like even more important now because it determines how we split things up.

Ok so let’s elaborate. 

As for not giving every frame the same amount of script, that will come naturally if you follow the other guidelines.

Think about the purpose of the frame. I mean obviously sometimes you’re just like “I have some shit that needs to happen and this is a comic so it goes in a frame” and you’re not inspired. If that happens, I recommend looking for something on the page that you want to emphasize - like the most important thing, and splitting things up around that. If anything abruptly changes the mood, if there’s a sudden awkward silence, if there’s an important line of dialogue, a key romantic moment….Any stuff like that should stand alone, or not have much distraction surrounding it. 

One thing I’d say is if you have anything like that - something that changes the mood or needs to stand out, put that in its own frame. Or even a couple frames. Use your judgment of course, but that’s usually what I do.

Comics Don’t Move By Themselves, So You Have To Mimic Movement

But sometimes you’re not going to have any mood changes or big bold things. Sometimes you’re just gonna have two people talking about cheese or something. And honestly? I think those things are more difficult to get right. So what I would do is picture it like a movie. And watch a lot of dialogue heavy movies.

Make a note of the shots and the cinematography. You notice how when two people are having a conversation, an interesting movie will generally change shots and angles and points of view to keep things interesting? Have people moving about? Rather than just having one big shot with two characters centered? You’ll find that you can apply the same things to comics. Just pretend each shot is a frame change. So in a back and forth conversation every so often change frames (I like to do this every character line or two or three depending on the conversation). Change the POV, show something relevant in the setting, that sort of thing. (Yeah there are exceptions like Rope, which intentionally has very few cuts and the ones it has are well-hidden, but keep this in mind...It still uses physical movement and dialogue delivery to keep things interesting and keep things within the shot changing, even when there isn’t a physical cut. You don’t have that advantage in a comic, so you have to “mimic” movement, as you’re limited to standalone snapshots.)

A back and forth with fists is much the same. You don’t want a bunch of the same exact thing over and over again but like one wham here and a thwack there. 

Keep that in mind. But we’ll get into the specifics of that when we actually do the storyboarding. Also, if you ended up calling out actual shots in your script (which I’ll get into in a bit), that’s great! You can split up a lot of the frames based on those. But honestly, I never do that so I’m gonna pretend you’re like me and put everything off till the last possible minute. 

I will say this though, the last time I created a comic for someone else, I did add shot sizes and angles in the script to give them an idea of what to expect, and to clarify what I was going for in my thumbnails because they needed to give me a thumbs up before I started penciling. It’s also a good idea if you’re working with like a friend who’s doing storyboarding and/or pencils for you to include more detailed shot descriptions. They’ll have a slightly harder time understanding what’s in your head otherwise if you have something specific in mind.

Splitting Things up Differently Communicates Different Things

I think I already summarized this basically. More frames dedicated to a moment, a bigger frame, isolating something specific in its own frame...Those are all things that will draw attention to whatever is in the frame or frames. How much you put in a frame depends on how much attention you want on it. And that will guide you when you split things up.

So take a normal conversation between two people that doesn’t really have anything plot heavy and is just a casual chat, the point of which is just to show the two characters making casual plans or something. You would want about the same amount of emphasis on all the dialogue, so you probably wouldn’t change that up too much from frame to frame. And you wouldn’t want any drastic closeups or dramatic silent long shots (unless of course you want some time to pass or need it to show movements and transitions). So the way you’ll be making things interesting is by varying the shot angles and frame shapes a little bit. And we’ll get to that.

But what if we do have something we want to emphasize? Like what if the point is to reveal something about the character’s preferences, or suggest that there’s more to the character and their thoughts and motivations than their agreement to the plans suggest? 

We can communicate that in part by the way we split it up. You can add a silent frame after a line of dialogue. Or have the character take a couple frames to get through their sentence. When you add extra frames for a single instant, it makes the reader take longer to get through it, sort of emphasizes it.

God this is already getting long again.

But alright let’s move on. I want to combine this with storyboarding because it’ll all start to make more sense. And I want to show some examples eventually before I’m 50.

The Fun Part - Actually Storyboarding/Thumbnailing

I call it thumbnailing when I’m by myself lol and probably slip up every now and again...that’s why I have these two terms together. But when I’m talking to other people, I call it storyboarding. And what this step is is basically just making a bunch of little scribbles sort of blocking out how you want your frames to look. Now I have no idea if other people also sketch out the layout of the whole page, but I definitely do. I do that and the frames at the same time, because not only is each frame its own composition, but each page is as well, and you need to treat it like that. If you have a decent composition for each individual frame, but then the page as a whole has no flow, your storytelling will suffer.

BUT as much as it kills me, because I want to have a special section on laying out the whole page (and laying out the frames in more detail....because how you lay the individual frames out may need to be tweaked with their size and shape and position), I’m going to just stick to shot layouts themselves right now.

Some Terms

Also a quick note on some of the terms I’m using here…I find it really useful if I ever make notes to myself on things before I thumbnail, or if I’m showing a script to someone else, to use camera shot size/angle terminology. Also when I do this, if I forgot what I wanted to do or I lose my thumbnails somewhere, I can go back and look and use these as a reminder. 

Here’s a break down of what I’m talking about when I use certain shot size/angle terminology and when I might use it. Since we’re not actually filming a scene, instead of acting like this is a camera’s POV, let’s call the camera “the observer”. To help (I hope) here are some images from my comic. (Please forgive me if these aren’t perfect examples I know...There are also shot sizes that fall in between these…but I honestly just thumbnail to get things exact.)

Long Shot - Subject is far away compared to the observer and definitely entirely in the shot. I use this for shots like where I want to pull back a bit and let the reader take something in, or show that we’re moving to a new area within the scene. I’ll also use it after an establishing shot sometimes to briefly show where exactly the characters are in the larger setting. 

Medium Shot - Subject is fairly close compared to the observer, but not like RIGHT THERE. COVID-19 conversation distance, maybe slightly more. You can see a character from approximately the waist up. I use these in normal conversations, when I want a character to be emphasized so you know they’re talking but not emphasized enough to be like DRAMATIC. It’s also a good size for when you want two people talking in a frame, but don’t need to show details of the setting.

Close Up - When you want something emphasized and you’re going the extra mile. This is the shot you use when you want an appropriate reaction to character x gasping audibly when character y says “yeah so character c was right I’m actually a vampire and here are my blood-drenched fangs to prove it.” You know or if you need a close up of a character being embarrassed. Basically when you want an emphasis on like a facial expression, that sort of thing. I don’t just use this for people either. You can also use it handily for things like clenched fists, tear puddles, a neglected letter blowing in the wind….stuff like that. Please forgive the sub par example, I’ve suddenly forgotten every frame I’ve ever drawn in my life.

Extreme Close Up - I use these sparingly because after a while they can get cheesy, but this is like...You know in some anime when a THING happens and two characters are about to fight and the screen sort of does that splice thing and you just see the characters and their “Now I mean business” eyes? That’s this. I also use it for the same stuff I use close-ups for, but for extra emphasis. Like if I was showing that neglected letter blowing in the wind, then I wanted to emphasize the word “Love” at the end or something, I’d use this type of shot.

Ok so now that we’ve tackled shot sizes, let’s talk about angles. These make things more interesting. It’s the difference between having 9 panels of back-and-forth where every other one is the exact same shot of a person, and having an interesting conversation that draws your reader through the composition and dialogue. You can really use these whenever you feel it in your gut, but I tend to save dramatic angles for action and “wham” lines, although I do use them a little bit less dramatically in normal conversations. For example, I might use an angled shot to better show a change of setting in a long shot, but I probably wouldn’t use a dramatic angle on a close up of someone saying idk  “I like to pet my dog.” 

Eye Level - I never actually write this down anywhere when noting shot angles. In a slice-of-life drama like what I write, I can pretty much assume everything is this by default unless Some Shit happened (or I need to mix it up a little briefly). This is just like a normal straight-on shot. The observer is at the same level as your subject. Like you’re walking next to a pal of the same height and talking to them. Use this as like your baseline observer POV.

Low Angle - The observer is a bit lower than the subject. Now we’re starting to get a little more dramatic. In particular, the lower the angle your observer is at, the more domineering the subject appears to be (especially the closer you get). Keep that in mind when using it. Of course it can also just be practical. Maybe your subject is character A who’s speaking while walking up stairs and character B is following them and the frames are switching between their perspectives. Then a handful of them might use this POV.

Worm’s Eye View - I had to look up the term for this because I was just calling it “ground angle?” lol….But that’s what it is. The observer is very low compared to the subject. Maybe not EXACTLY ground level, but close enough. This is like Honey I Shrunk The Kids material. Use for FEAR or AWE. Keep in mind the “subject” doesn’t always have to be a person. It can be a building. So like. Using a worm’s eye view of a school building could, depending on the other elements of the composition, be used to communicate how intimidating school is to the characters.

High Angle - The observer is a bit higher than the subject. Like the observer is sitting and the subject is standing. I actually personally don’t use this one a TON, but when I use it it’s usually for exactly that reason - just my POV character is a little bit higher than the speaking character due to being on stairs or something. You can use it for making someone look inferior and small. But I often find it works for dramatic emphasis, too. Like in the following shot where it’s a high angle, but it’s because I’m focusing on that hand to signal that my character is done playing.

Bird’s Eye View - Most people are familiar with what this is...The observer is “up in the air” somewhere looking down on the scene. To be honest, I don’t have hard and fast rules for this one...I tend to use it when I want to use a high angle but With Emphasis. But I also just use it in an establishing or transition shot to make things interesting sometimes. Doing that isn’t forbidden. Like the following shot is just the first shot in a scene and I wanted an interesting establishing shot.

Dutch Angle - Battlefield Earth angle. The observer is tilted observably to the side. Use for dramatic emphasis, but, unlike Battlefield Earth, try not to OVERUSE. I don’t use this much. Maybe like for some concert shots or when a character is disoriented.

The general rule of thumb though is that angled shots will be more dramatic and non-angled shots are less dramatic. But changing the type of shot dramatically can also serve the same purpose. For example, if I have two characters talking and I’m just switching between their points of view and I have eye-level medium or medium-close-ups for every shot, then a character says something and both characters stop walking as I zoom out and have a large frame with a long shot, that can signal drama just as well as cutting to a close-up or something. 

Frame/Panel Sizing and Layouts

I just want to make some notes briefly about this. (And also mention that I call the individual segments of the page frames, but I think some people call them panels and TBH I don’t know what’s used more, so I’m just gonna call them frames)

I actually started touching on it in the last section but frame properties themselves can also play into what you’re communicating. Not only can you have shot angles and shot sizes doing the work for you, but the shape, size, and location of frames themselves can help.

I would suggest the following use of shapes:

Angle and skew the shapes of frames themselves to demonstrate action. Good for fight scenes, or when something shakes up a normal conversation.

Use rectangular frames of various sizes - with lines parallel to page margins - for a normal conversation that isn’t particularly action packed.

Use a borderless frame for an establishing shot of an open area, or when you want to avoid boxing something in/making it feel cramped. So like if I have characters chilling outside and the scene isn’t too tense, I’ll use that.

And here are some ideas on how to size frames:

Thirds and golden rectangles are your friend. A lot of companies actually sell paper with guides that will help you see these rectangles on the page and place frames accordingly. I’ll get more into this with page layouts, but a lot of times, your choice to follow this guideline will influence the frame size.

A lot of same-sized and angled frames following each other tend to imply steps in one action. Can be used for comedic effect...which is why you see a lot of newspaper comics like this. HOWEVER, the way you arrange these frames can also have an effect. If they’re overlapping and stair-step a bit, it could be more dramatic, like a character coming to an inevitable realization, but you want to show that they have a dramatic pause before getting there. 

When doing scenes with a lot of action, it’s good to keep in mind that too many ACTION frames following each other will start to bog the reader down. You know this because when you watch an action movie and there are fight scenes, every now and then there’s a break where the characters chase each other to a new part of the environment, or they pause to say something snarky. Your action scenes should have some semblance of pacing too. I suggest having a couple frames that are “exciting”....You know, skewed, angled, etc. But then have a larger frame and pull back and give your reader a chance to breathe. With every type of scene, I ALWAYS vary the frame size a bit at points to keep things interesting and keep the reader’s attention. And the way I do that is by changing things. If I change things up, it keeps grabbing their attention.

When doing conversations, the same rule applies. You might be tempted to do a bunch of the same size frame because not much is happening BUT that’s not really true is it? Just because people aren’t punching each other in the face doesn’t mean stuff isn’t happening. It just means it’s happening on the inside maybe. Interpersonal things are happening. I tend to size frames according to importance when I’m at a loss. If something is a really important dramatic line, I’ll pull back and have a big frame. This also takes up more space on the page so the reader can’t brush it off and is forced to spend a tiny amount of extra time on it. But even if there’s nothing particularly dramatic going on, the characters are doing SOMETHING right? They should be. So vary your angles and frame sizes to show more about the setting and how they’re interacting with it. Keep it interesting.

Placement is a little trickier. I feel like this overlaps with planning out the page so I’m gonna pause for now. It also has a lot to do with those thirds/rectangles rules I mentioned.

Other Stuff To Consider

Backgrounds

Of course there aren’t going to just be characters and objects of interest in your frames, there should be backgrounds in most of them (actually all of them...but depending on your style and genre, sometimes the background is going to be a tone or color or some WHAM lines or maybe another visual effect….But don’t make EVERY background that). You need this so that you can ground the characters and have them move around in a way that makes sense. Backgrounds can also be used to help with timing. Like I mentioned before, cutting to a view of the setting can help with your pacing or transitions.

Actually you know what? I think I’m gonna do a whole section on settings and backgrounds next time? Why next time? Well for me, I have trouble figuring out shots and angles if I don’t know how possible they are. So usually I plan out my setting at least a little bit, and then include it in my thumbnails...or at least a few vague lines so I know where everything is. 

Line of Sight and Points of View

There are also a few guidelines I’ve picked up elsewhere that you may find handy for having flow in conversations. Sometimes I break these rules when they’d be really awkward or inconvenient, but for the most part they work. 

You remember how I mentioned a low angle or high angle, if subtle, can represent the POV of a character of a certain height? You can use that for effective conversation sequences. A good thing to do when having back-and-forth conversation frames is to look at the character you start with, see who they’re focused on, and then reverse the point of view to focus on what’s in their line of sight. Like maybe the other character. That way, it keeps the flow of the conversation going while keeping it interesting.

Another good rule to follow - unless there’s some significant or dramatic movement going on - is if not much is happening, try to keep characters oriented the same way.

Deciding On Shots and Vaguely Planning Out A Frame

Alright let’s get to it. I tend to do this all at the same time. So I’ll just do that here. I’ve got some basic dialogue and I’ve split it up into frames 3 different ways. I’ll show you each one and break down what I did and tell you why and how I applied the stuff above. 

Here’s the basic dialogue:

PERSON A and PERSON B are walking down the sidewalk. Person A is carrying a BAG and holding onto the strap. Person B has their hands in their pockets.

PERSON A Hey um, I was wondering, would you like to get some coffee and just talk?

Person B is quiet for a brief moment to consider. PERSON B Sure, that sounds like fun!

Not much, but actually quite a few possibilities.

Ok here’s each, and a breakdown of my thought process, and the frame notes I would put in the script to indicate something about what’s in each shot, if you decided to add those to your script.

Way 1 - this is just like a normal mundane thing happening

Script would look something like….

FRAME 1 Medium Two-Shot, Eye-Level, of PERSON A and PERSON B, from the perspective of an observer directly in front of them. PERSON A and PERSON B are walking down the sidewalk. Person A is carrying a BAG and holding onto the strap. Person B has their hands in their pockets. PERSON A Hey um, I was wondering... FRAME 2 Medium (slightly closer) two-shot of Person A and Person B, from the perspective of an observer just behind Person B’s point of view (more or less...pretend my scribbles approximate this). PERSON A ...would you like to get some coffee and just talk?

Person B is quiet for a brief moment to consider. Frame 3 Reverse angle. Medium two-shot of Person A and Person B, now from the perspective of an observer just behind Person A’s point of view (more or less). PERSON B Sure, that sounds like fun!

Way 1 Breakdown and Reasoning

I’m sure that in a real comic I would have some part of the script before this, but for the purpose of the example, I go ahead and add a grounding frame at the beginning of the snippet. It focuses on the characters, but also shows a little bit of where they are relative to other things in the scene. We can see they’re on some kind of sidewalk, flanked by trees and buildings. (In a real comic, there probably would have been other things like an establishing shot as well)

In the next shot, we dig into the conversation a little bit more. We move the observer to keep things interesting. I choose to focus on the speaker - character A in this shot. I’m not zoomed in dramatically, because the mood of this conversation is just casual, not particularly emotional, and I don’t need to show any exaggerated facial expressions or anything. I don’t feel there’s any sense in adding extra tension to the scene, so I incorporate that pause by just showing character B silent in the same frame (as opposed to having them respond in the same frame).

In frame 3, I change the point of view to keep it interesting, but also stick very loosely to the line of sight rule...We started out looking at character A and B, focused on character A, and then switched to what character A is focusing on - character B. So in a way, I’ve drawn sort of a clean, smooth line through the whole scene.

Oh also...see how I kept the characters in basically the same orientation in the frame even though I changed shots? A on the left and B on the right? That’s the kind of thing I was talking about earlier.

Way 2 - the way I don’t like

Frame 1 Medium-Long Two Shot of Person A and Person B, with the observer in front of them. PERSON A and PERSON B are walking down the sidewalk. Person A is carrying a BAG and holding onto the strap. Person B has their hands in their pockets. PERSON A Hey um, I was wondering…

Frame 2 Another Medium-Long Two Shot of Person A and Person B, with the observer in front of them. PERSON A ...would you like to get some coffee and just talk?

Person B is quiet for a brief moment to consider. Frame 3 Yet Another Medium-Long Two Shot of Person A and Person B, with the observer in front of them. PERSON B Sure, that sounds like fun!

Way 2 Breakdown….

“But EJ,” you shout, “why are you doing one where you’re breaking all your rules and guidelines.” To illustrate, my young padawan. 

This way is how I probably would never do this in a comic. And it’s not that it’s WRONG, necessarily, it’s just that it works better for short-format comics. Like newspaper comics you know? Where there’s a punchline or a wham line at the end - a setup and a payoff/resolution within a few frames. If you did that in a graphic novel for pages and pages, it would get kind of boring wouldn’t it? Don’t you think it’s a little boring after just 3 frames? I kind of do…It DEFINITELY would be boring after a chapter. Better to change things up and keep the reader’s eye busy….Well, busy doing something besides looking for a punchline lol.

Way 3 - extra drama

Frame 1 Medium-Long (kind of...or “wide”) two-shot of Person A and Person B, from the point of view of an observer in front of them, not a long way away but more than a conversational distance. PERSON A and PERSON B are walking down the sidewalk. Person A is carrying a BAG and holding onto the strap. Person B has their hands in their pockets. PERSON A Hey um…

Frame 2 Medium-Close, slightly high-angle, single shot of Person A. PERSON A I was wondering… Frame 3 Close-up of Person A’s hands on the strap of their bag. PERSON A ...would you like to get some coffee and just talk?

Frame 4 Medium-Close, Single shot of Person B, from Person A’s perspective. Person B is quiet for a brief moment to consider. Frame 5 Medium (slightly closer maybe, but less close than the previous two frames) shot of Person A and B. PERSON B Sure, that sounds like fun!

Way 3 Breakdown....

I put this version here just for fun. I wanted to change it up a little and insert some tension between these two characters, and it’s easy to do that by adding space. Because in your comic, extra space can count the same way as awkward silence or tense silence in a movie. 

Here I start again with a grounding shot in frame 1. I decided to zoom out a little. That’s the first “space” I give the reader. There’s also the implication that it might take up more space on the page, idk...I’d probably note that explicitly though. 

Now what I do is, I break down Person A’s request into a series of frames to draw it out, demonstrating that Person A is taking some time. Maybe they want to ask Person B out and this is the next best thing they can manage. Maybe they’re uncertain for another reason. But by adding some extra space, we add time. The slightly high angle in the second frame will diminish character A a little bit, giving the reader the hint that they’re a little less confident in this moment. 

The next shot, frame 3, I add a detail we can’t see in the other versions, a close up of character A’s hands on the strap. Now you might argue that it breaks the flow a little bit….I think a lot of that would depend on where we put it on the page and what comes next. We could also just modify character A’s expression so they’re looking down at the bag and then we’d be following their line of sight. We can make whatever last minute decision we want….In any case, this added frame allows us to show that maybe character A is gripping that bag nervously. 

Frame 4 is a silent medium close up of character B. Not close enough to be over-dramatic, but close enough to focus on their expression. The tension increases because we’re in character A’s shoes, seeing character B considering the request from character A’s perspective. 

And then in Frame 5, we show the two of them together, and the shot zooms out a bit, relaxing the focus and breaking the tension a little bit as the dialogue resolves.

Oh Boy This is Long

Well I guess I gotta cut this off again and come back to it. Geez there’s gonna be more stuff in this than I thought….Sorry I guess. Yeah next time though I’m gonna get more into backgrounds and if I have time, also page layouts. Otherwise that’ll be in part 5. Well thanks for reading! I hope this gives you some ideas. I’ll be back! 

[manu-graphic-novel]

When it came to putting together Episode #2, I had one goal: to make Manu look and feel like something you’d bring home from a comic store. I decided it merited a complete overhaul of my sequential art style, a deep dive into the subtextual story I wanted to tell through the artwork, and putting myself through my own comic bootcamp to learn how to ink and color from scratch.

In short, I was going to upgrade the entire operation. And I had a month and a half to do it.

PART 2: Script to Screen

The script is always in a constant state of flux from start to finish. Sometimes the dialogue changes depending on the composition of the spread or the pacing of the chapter, so I do my best to hammer it out as closely as I can to how I think the final version will look. (Case in point, the original version of the script had no narration on Manu’s journey home from the recording studio. Only when I had rendered the whole episode in ink and printed it out did I realize there was a gaping hole in the text that needed to be filled.)

There is no established format for scripting graphic novels, so I pulled together my own based on script formats I’d seen for other comics. This would enable me to work more easily with my editor who would need to know how to “read” the visuals before I even drew them.

From there, I storyboarded, and THAT process was (*cough*) a lot less formal:

My sketchbook basically becomes a testing ground for poses, layouts, and other design-y things. It’s the first time I get a sense for the flow of the entire chapter, and inevitably, it prompts a number of scriptural changes.

From there, it’s layouts and pencils, in that order. I try to do all the pages at once so I can get an early sense of the flow of the entire epsisode, and I went ahead and dropped in placeholder lettering as well, as it would help me to determine where I could reasonably fit characters and scenery in the composition. (Big-name comic shops like Marvel and DC Comics often have a separate person for lettering, which means the illustrator has to do their best to leave room for dialogue. Lucky for me, I’m basically on my own for the whole enchilada. Although sometimes I REALLY WISH I COULD SPLIT UP THIS WORKLOAD, FOLKS.)

Pencils:

After I’ve hammered out the pencils, it’s time to ink! I’ll set the pencil layer up with a blue clipping mask, and go to town in some full-on black ink. (If this were being completed in natural media as opposed to digital, I’d be using a brush and a nib with India Ink, but I’m saving that effort for a later episode. 😁)

The philosophy here is pretty simple. Closer to the camera? Thicker outlines. Further from the camera? Thinner, broken up ones. Your eyes will focus on the areas where lines are boldest. I’m usually vetting the art at this point with a small handful of trusted individuals (my husband, my editor, my mentor) to ensure that, without my helping them, their eyes are able to follow the action across the page and make sense of everything they’re reading. If their eyes jump around or they get confused, something’s not working and I need to revise.

Here’s the ink layer for page two (plus updated lettering because I had to hunt down a font that included Spanish glyphs). You might notice that the art and speech bubbles are working together to guide your eyes through the sequence--in a backwards ‘S’ shape:

Finally, coloring! Setting up palettes in advance in Photoshop ensures that I’m being consistent across the board. I spent a week alone doing just flats (i.e. the flat, non detailed color that gets filled in first) and then another week working on details including highlights and shadows. Again, all for the purpose of making sure I’m being consistent and everything looks like it belongs together:

The decisions that drive all of the above are entirely informed by the story. At every stage I’m printing out the entire episode and assembling a mockup that I can flip through and mark up with red pen just to make sure I’m being as tight in the execution as possible. If there’s something I can remove from the text because it would be more effective to render it in the art, I want to make sure I do it. Similarly, if there’s a change in the colors that would amplify a mood or help convey something in subtext, I want to make sure I have multiple opportunities to have those epiphanies in advance!

More on that in Part 3: Subtext and Symbolism, coming soon!

Read Part 1: Manu’s Character Design

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[vanholstein]

How much research is done in creating dishes for the manga?

Yūto Tsukuda: Every week, the three of us meet together—myself, Saeki, and our chief editor—and it's always explicitly for research. We talk about a lot of dishes, so we can have an in-stock library of options that we all keep with us. Depending on the storyline, we would go into the materials we had stocked and say "oh yeah, that dish would match this character or that storyline, let's use this one, let's use that one." So sometimes the dishes we have planned for an upcoming story have been in our stock for a year already, and sometimes it'll be something someone found two or three days ago.

ANN: As a producer, what do you think is the most important factor to consider when translating Food Wars!' appeal from manga into anime? What have you learned through that process that you plan to bring to season four?

Noriko Dohi: I believe that the appeal of this show really comes from the culinary battles and the comedy. It's that difference between the serious battles and the comedic side that forms the story's biggest appeal. During the creative process for the anime, I think it's most important to emphasize those two cornerstones. Usually when you're cooking, there isn't anything action-packed about it. You don't see vibrant and lively movements from everyone working on the food, so we really wanted to emphasize that difference in the anime series through the art. For the comedy, we always want to emphasize how cute and cool the characters are, so their sense of humor comes through. Those are the two most important aspects of Food Wars! as an anime. What I've learned from working on this series for a very long time is that the theme of culinary art, or even just food in general, is a major draw for a lot of people all over the world. So I really want to keep going with that energy for this new season too.

What was your mindset heading into the final arc of the manga, and what were some of the challenges you faced when deciding how to end it?

Tsukuda: Of course there's always the concern of "Is it really okay that I did this? Are the readers going to be satisfied with this sort of ending?" What I'm going to talk about now is really spoilery, so I hope everyone has already read through to the end. I've always wanted to end the series with Soma and Erina getting hitched, but it was difficult for me to get to that point naturally in the story. So I had to rewrite it over and over before I could revise it to an ending that I liked. I really hope that all the fans are satisfied with the sort of ending that I reached.

Is there any character in Food Wars! that you wish you could have spent more time with?

Tsukuda: Rindo is a character that I really wanted to explore more deeply. I didn't know she was going to be so popular! To be honest, I really want to write a version of the story where Rindo was the main character, where she's the one battling her way to the top and beating all these other chefs. But obviously, Soma was already the main character, so that kind of storyline wouldn't have been possible at that point.

Soma has a unique confidence that allows him to make connections outside of his social standing. What was the inspiration behind this aspect of his character?

Tsukuda: First of all, I really wanted to create a character that would be a good match for Saeki-sensei's art, the kind of character who could excite women with his culinary skills. I thought that a cool character who girls like would not be all over them, he would be kind of a cool tough boy who does his own thing. I wanted to depict him as someone who's serious about his art. He's focused on cooking instead of being easily distracted by girls. So his cavalier attitude was a result of wanting to make him the kind of character that girls would find appealing.

What was your inspiration behind the creation of the last group of colorful combatants Soma faces in Food Wars?

Tsukuda: In a shonen series, the final group of enemies is a major familiar trope for writers and readers. There is a popular older cooking manga called Chuuka Ichiban! In that series, there are many unbelievable chefs with superhuman powers. For instance, one character uses an ice-knife for his dishes, and if you touch it, it will give you frostbite. So I wanted to save that superhuman style of character for this important arc.

Soma has been consistently popular in our Anime Trending manga polls, and he even won most popular character of the year. What were your reactions to Soma becoming so popular abroad?

Tsukuda: That's amazing. I've often heard people make comparisons between Goku and Soma. I understand it in that they both aren't afraid to challenge foes who are much stronger than them.

Dohi: I believe Soma's character is the key to the success of this series, just because he's so easy to watch and keeps things lighthearted. Oftentimes, when things get too serious in stories, readers and viewers can be overwhelmed by that heaviness. But with Soma in the mix, it becomes much easier to relax while enjoying the story.

Has creating Food Wars! inspired you to cook more often or with more theatrical flair?

Shun Saeki: I've always enjoyed cooking myself. When I was a student in university, I cooked all the time. But I don't cook at all anymore.

Tsukuda: It's the same for me too. Back when the series was first serialized, I did cook for myself. But when I started getting really busy with the manga, most times I did not want to cook at all or even think about cooking. These days, I'm thinking maybe I should pick it up again!

Dohi: I actually cook for myself often, and when the first season started airing, I would cook each dish that was featured each time and put them on social media. I saw that many fans were loving it, even overseas, and that was really exciting. But when there was an episode about bear meat, for example, that sort of thing I couldn't do.

Tsukuda: It's impressive, because sometimes I had my doubts that any of these dishes could actually be made.

ANN: So did you start this project with the peanut butter and octopus combo?

Dohi: I did indeed.

ANN: Was it edible?

Dohi: It was edible, and I even had Matsuoka-san, the voice of Yukihira Soma, eat it for me.

Tsukuda: I've had the dish as well, and I think the key to the recipe is the peanut butter. The peanut butter you use determines whether it will taste good or not. So long as the peanut butter you choose is not too sweet, it will turn out alright. The texture doesn't make as much difference, but I think the smooth peanut butter would be best.

ANN: When it comes to illustrating "the ecstasy of food" and how good something should taste, what was the greatest challenge you faced in translating a dish into manga?

Saeki: It's really difficult to describe the taste of food purely through drawings and dialogue in manga. This is especially true in terms of spicy flavors, so I would make sure that a character's body language conveyed that detail, emphasizing the sweat breaking out on their face while they described what they were tasting. There are times when I don't even focus on emphasizing the specific taste or flavor of a dish at all, and I'm more interested in the comedic effect that it has on the character as they eat. We really want the readers to laugh at those reactions.

Do you have a favorite reaction scene?

Saeki: Yes, it's Magical Cabbage.

Dohi: Yes, you could ask all of us, and it will always be Magical Cabbage.

Tsukuda: It was modeled after Sailor Moon or especially Precure, and that was all Saeki-sensei's idea. I wanted to show Dojima as a magical girl, and he said "Then let's have five of them!"

Saeki: I've always enjoyed watching transformation sequences in series like Sailor Moon, so I knew that to have a sequence of that striking caliber, we needed several beautiful women. The only problem is that there's a muscular man right in the middle.

ANN: That's gap appeal.

Tsukuda: Yes, exactly. Thank you for appreciating the gap.

Usually, separating the writer and artist is something more associated with Western-style comic books. Is that style of collaboration becoming more common in Japan, and what was the dynamic between the two of you like?

Tsukuda: That's definitely becoming more common now. In the past, it was more common for duos working on manga to be separate rather than working close together, but nowadays, as we have a lot of titles on the market, this type of closer collaboration is becoming more common, with The Promised Neverland and Dr. Stone being other examples. My motivation throughout this whole project came from wanting to demonstrate the greatness of Saeki-sensei's art. That was actually the main point of our project at the outset, so it was always my greatest motivation.

Saeki: For me, I don't have the storytelling power that Tsukuda-sensei has, so it was like this chemical reaction of our good aspects coming together to bring this story to life.

Like a Maillard reaction, when you fry something and it creates a new flavor?

Tsukuda: Definitely like that.

What does the other person in this collaboration do that drives you nuts sometimes?

Tsukuda: I think Saeki-sensei would get pissed off when I'm slow with material.

Saeki: No no, never! There isn't anything that really gets me annoyed with Tsukuda-sensei, because we both have a strong goal of creating something great together. We can always talk to each other because of that passion, and we aren't afraid of letting each other know what we want to do and how we want to do things. That comes from our desire to work as a team and create something worthwhile together.

Was Food Wars! the first time you had collaborated?

Tsukuda: This was the first time we had formally worked together, but I knew about Saeki-sensei from the past because he was my senpai in university. He's always given me pointers and been clear about his goals, because he's a very logical individual. I know that whenever he critiques something or points out a problem that needs to be fixed, it's coming from a logical place and not an emotional perspective. So I take his critiques seriously and understand that they're something I need to work on.

Are you planning on collaborating together again soon?

(Tsukuda and Saeki high five.)

Tsukuda: Yeah, we've been talking about our future plans on this trip.

We'll be looking forward to it. If you could have any of Food Wars!' characters as your personal chef, who would you pick?

Tsukuda: Megumi. Her cuisine is based around home cooking, so it's very peaceful and kind in its flavors. That way, even when I get much older, I don't have to worry about her dishes being too spicy or weird or anything. If I eat something that the other chefs make when I get old, I might die from too much excitement.

Saeki: I actually want more excitement in my life, so maybe Rindo! She will find ways to cook something that I've never had before. I'll actually live longer, because I'll be excited all the time.

Dohi: I would definitely want Kojiro Shinomiya. For one thing, his dishes would be healthy. His food is based heavily in French cuisine, and he uses a lot of vegetables. But for another thing, he's a very sadistic character, so to be able to make him do what I want would be extra-fun for me.

ANN: I feel like that's a very fitting answer for a producer.

Tsukuda: (laughs) Well, no matter who you are, if you hire a personal chef, you would have to tell them very directly what you want.

Saeki: If I can have one more answer, I would also want Mimasaka Subaru. That way, if I'm at a restaurant and I try something I really like, I can just tell him that this is what I want, and he could whip up something just like it on the spot.

Tsukuda: Damn, I didn't think of that.

How do you feel about the series, which is unique in the world of cooking manga, being popular all over the world?

Saeki: I think its popularity is mostly due to Tsukuda's amazing writing skills and character building, but another thing that's important to note is that, compared to many cooking manga that have come and gone, Food Wars! really emphasizes the battle aspect of shonen series, which I think is a unique point in its favor.

Tsukuda: In terms of genre, there are many modern culinary manga for more mature audiences, not shonen but seinen titles. Many of them are enjoyed just to kill time, with very passive storytelling that's meant to be read on the train or while waiting around. But going into the history of culinary manga, there are many shonen titles as well, like Shouta no Sushi, and because this unchanging base of cooking stories in shonen is so easy to access and reference, I think people are still drawn to the concept of dramatic cooking manga.

Dohi: In Japan, it's very common to find culinary manga, so I believe that people will keep loving this kind of story even twenty or thirty years from now.

It stands out to me that the cast of Food Wars is very international.

Tsukuda: That was very important to me. I wanted the younger readers experiencing this manga to learn about different types of food and culture from different countries. I thought it would be great if kids reading the manga could grow up, travel the world, see unique dishes and remember, "I saw that in Food Wars! when I was a kid."

Kind of like how Slam Dunk influenced basketball?

Tsukuda: Definitely. Kids in Japan didn't even know the rules of basketball before Slam Dunk. I think it's really important for kids to learn something through manga when they're reading it.

Saeki: Because of Slam Dunk, I actually joined the basketball team in my elementary school. Obviously, I didn't stay with it, though.

Tsukuda: I didn't know that!

Saeki: I also played ping pong, and even competed in a regional event.

Has anyone told you that their life has changed or that they look at food differently because of your manga?

Tsukuda: I have gotten letters from fans saying that they wanted to become a chef after reading Food Wars!, and even some letters saying that they had become a chef! It makes me really happy.

What was your favorite recipe in the series and why?

Dohi: I actually asked this of the creative team around the studio, because I knew you guys were probably going to ask that question. From the director to the art director to all around the staff, everyone was excited about rice dishes in particular—we are Japanese, so that's always going to be a point of interest—and out of all the rice dishes, the omurice with the curry risotto inside was definitely one of our favorites to demonstrate in the anime. Of course you can't smell anything from the screen, but to be able to depict the smell bursting out from the omurice when the spoon cuts in was rewarding. That moment was shocking for all of us when we first read it, so we wanted to give it a lively and energetic presentation in the anime.

Tsukuda: For me, it was definitely the midnight laksa curry, the dark and stinky curry made from kusaya, which is a very traditional Japanese dish. I really want to try it myself, to experience that contrast between its overwhelming stinkiness and being so delicious when you actually eat it. Seeing the smell just permeating throughout the hall was interesting.

Saeki: My pick has not appeared in the anime yet, but it's the dish made by Somei Saito, a ruby sushi made of mabuho and tuna. That would definitely be delicious. Just thinking about it now makes me salivate. I love sushi.

ANN: Now that the manga is coming to a close, and the anime isn't far behind, what have been your most memorable experiences along the way?

Tsukuda: You know, now that I think about it, this trip might be the most freeing and fun experience I've had since beginning Food Wars! For seven years now, since starting the project, every single moment of my life, no matter what else I'm doing, I'm always thinking about the manga in the back of my head. So now, it's like I'm trying to remember "What was fun about it?"

Saeki: For me, being serialized in Jump was my ultimate dream. Just knowing that I was able to create a work that continued on for such a long time was a dream come true for me, every single day that Food Wars! was in serialization. So that has become my fondest memory, every day that I got to have a hit in Shonen Jump. It was the second time for Tsukuda, but the first time for me.

Tsukuda: Well, the first time I got serialized in Jump, my manga was cut in 15 weeks, so this was a much better experience. Food Wars! is my first real success.

Dohi: It's a little hard for me to think about memories at this stage, because unlike these two that are done with the project, the anime is still in the heat of production, so I get to go back to Japan after this trip, and there's going to be hell waiting for me. So I can't think of any memories just yet.

Tsukuda: I'm so sorry.

ANN: In that case, what are you most looking forward to sharing with fans in season four?

Dohi: For the fourth season, it will be a direct continuation of the arc from the third season, so we're hoping that fans will appreciate how the characters have all grown since then.

Is there someone special in your life who inspired your love of cooking?

Dohi: My parents. My father is a chef. I would just watch my father's back as he cooked for us every time, and I grew to appreciate the happiness that comes from making something for others and sharing it with them.

Tsukuda: I didn't know your father was a chef, either! What did he specialize in?

Dohi: French-style cuisine.

Tsukuda: I'm learning so many new things in this interview.

Saeki: For me, it was my father as well. Many parents like to cook things that are simple for their kids that they can easily enjoy, like hamburg steak, but when I was a kid, my father was really into cooking with unusual ingredients, like sea urchin. He liked to cook things that paired well with alcohol, since he would drink with his dinner, and when I was little, he would give me a taste of these more grown-up dishes he'd made for himself. So my father had a big impact on my love of diverse foods and wanting to try different kinds of flavors.

Tsukuda: I lived in a small town in Fukuoka prefecture as a child, until I was in high school. When I went to university in Osaka, it was my first time living in a big city, so there were many types of different food to experience, and the variety came as a shock to me. It allowed me to realize that my mom's home cooking was truly unique, as a meal only she could create that was enjoyed exclusively in my own home. It helped me realize a difference in my palate and the tastes and flavors I could enjoy.

[ngame989]

I'm new to writing fanfic, and always work solo, so when I saw you have a whole team at your disposal, it blew my mind. I've got a list of questions about that: 1. How did you guys find each other and get started? 2. How does your work flow look for a story vs. a page/chapter of the comic? 3. How much do you love having an editor? 4. How does your work change from draft to final? 5. The quality of your prose is very consistent, is that just you as a writer, or is it your team keeping you good?

1. Seddm, EA, and Dino were all good friends of mine from the fandom from before or during Season 3 (I started watching the show between 2B and BFM). Toxic started watching the show sometime in late 2018 and messaged me on Tumblr for some sort of formatting help, or tips and tricks for getting posts more noticed in the fandom or something? I don’t remember and Tumblr DMs are awful to navigate, but we quickly bonded over what really matters most.

Lawchan had been a longtime follower of the show and fanfic author who inspired me to get into it back after 3A and we started talking and became friends at some point in the last year or so. BMC popped into my askbox when I opened it up to headcanon suggestions and ended up sending me over 100 in a span of 3 days that were all wonderful and creative so we started talking more. This really is a “team” in a loose sense, I just have a ton of awesome and creative and supportive friends willing to help out with this.

Oddly enough, this project started less than a day after (and was inspired by) Lake House Fever. I had already been thinking about getting back into fanfiction writing after S4 ended and we were pissed and salty and just needed good Starco thoughts so I hit him up and we started chatting and thought “huh wait a Star and Marco section of a family photo album would be a cool concept for some sort of series” and it evolved from there. We’d planned out a lot of the basics for the comic before the show ended and were waiting on the canon resolution before going any further, and Cleaved shook a lot up for what the postcanon status quo would be, so my whole aforementioned group all sat in a Discord channel on and off for literally 8+ hours the day after Cleaved and roundtable’d the entire backbone of the Earthni timeline for almost every major character (so if there’s people in the credits for TGG that haven’t shown up directly in any works yet, that’s where they contributed).

2.  Overall I’m the project lead and head writer so the majority of specific ideas, what should this page have or where is the story going, etc, come from me although anything we do gets signed off on by at LEAST me, Toxic, and Seddm first.  For comics, I usually plan the concept (Star goes here, these people are talking to each other, happy or sad, etc) and then let Toxic do his thing - he’s great already but is SUUUUUUUUPER amazingly wonderful at reading my mind and making visuals that represent my thoughts even better than the visuals in my head for them. He’ll do a rough page layout and sketch, we workshop that, then he does line-art, we look for any issues or revisions there, then he colors as I make the dialogue.  Usually takes a few days of back and forth.

Honestly my workflow for writing fics is absolute ass and you should not learn from us (ESPECIALLY me) if you’re getting into the game, hahahaha. Every day that I say I’m gonna write something, I usually end up dicking around at my computer until 1 AM and THEN decide to write a little bit and lose sleep over it. A lot of Glow was written between 2 and 6 AM on a Saturday night. I’m ridiculously nitpicky of my own work and half the time before I even finish typing a sentence I’m already erasing it because I decided it was dumb or did something wrong, which makes drafts take F O R E V E R, but the silver lining is that my first draft is already very polished by the time it’s done.

Overall, we play to our strengths - Seddm and I are general idea guys, “wouldn’t it be funny/cool if X” or “we should tell a story about Y” etc, and Toxic is especially wonderful at coming up with fantastic visual designs or gags or whatever else. So there’s plenty of times where I’ll give him the rough outline for a comic page and he’ll slip in some goofy background thing that makes it so much better, or I’ll give him a joke idea and it’ll work amazingly. I also like to call Seddm my “internal debate moderator”. When I’m struggling to figure out what to do for something, I’m often torn between a few ideas. Getting outside advice on it can obviously be really helpful, but there are times that it leaves me even more confused about what to do. But because my and Seddm’s understandings of the characters and senses of design and humor are so damn similar, he can basically serve as both a neutral voice and still part of my own thought process at the same time, which really helps me get my own personal ideas in order before running them by others.

3. Editors are great and wonderful and perfect and I love my friends to death for graciously helping week in and week out with this when I ping them with “hey guys shat this out, sun has been up for an hour so im gonna go fucking die now bye”. As stated earlier, perhaps my need for one isn’t AS high because I self-edit so compulsively as I go, but it’s soooooooo easy to get caught up in your own head and intentions and not spot obvious issues with your own writing that outside voices help a ton.

4. Whoops I guess I answered already. Very little.

5. Given that edits don’t change much about the structure of my writing, I guess it’s me - thanks! But my team is great about keeping me in line with my own vision in editing and hitting any lines that just seem out of place. There was one particular cut line in Glow that I won’t post here that was easily a full standard deviation of naughty greater than the rest of the fic’s tone (unintentional, it was very late -_-) and that got caught and shot down real quick lmfao.

[comicteaparty]

January 11th-January 17th, 2020 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from January 11th, 2020 to January 17th, 2020.  The chat focused on the following question:

What’s an unplanned idea you had through your story part way through that forced you to change things?  How did everything go?

eli [a winged tale]

After my beta feedback there were some characters that needed further fleshing out with stakes and relationships. Therefore I had to change some backstories to make certain interactions impactful. Thankfully im at the start so nothing i had to go back and fix. I did think of some alternative openings should the comic goes to print but that can be future me’s worries

snuffysam

simultaneously very little and a huge amount, lol. in terms of big story beats, they've pretty much all stayed the same since i first started planning the comic. the twists have been set up and paid off and the like. but there's a bunch of things i've improv'd at the last minute. one notable example that was pretty well-received - in book 2 chapter 4, taci has a fear of puns (basically only shown in facial expressions and a single comment from mizuki towards the end of the fight). this was added because... otherwise the fight at the end of that chapter is just a bunch of walking around in near-identical dark tunnels. the way the fight ends is fun, but the fight itself isn't really anything. with taci having a reason to be afraid of coruby, the fight has more stakes & entertainment value, and it makes coruby feel much more interesting as a character. another huge example is the love triangle in book 1 - in that in the script, it was non-existent. mizuki being into girls was originally only gonna be introduced in book 2 (guess where), and the relationship between cahe and pejiba was going to advance with no real competition (besides bullets). it was gonna be mentioned in like book 3 that she had a thing for pejiba, but nothing in book 1 itself. (similarly to the pun thing, you may notice that mizuki being into pejiba isn't referenced at all in the dialogue besides pejiba saying "i know what mizuki thinks of me" which is kinda vague. i... don't like changing scripts last-minute lol.)

Mei

Not gonna lie, everything I do is entirely unplanned. I focus a lot on improvised comedy and what feels right 'at the moment', and considering I write scripts way in advance, sometimes it leads to jokes falling flat when I read them again a few months later. Which is all fine, honestly, it's part of the process. The main unplanned idea for My Husband is a Cultist was turning it from a 12 page one-shot into a fully fledged webcomic, now with 3 chapters and more to come. It was very 'on a whim', and from that very first chapter I came up with more silly ideas. And the more I talked to friends, the more ideas I had for chapters. So the biggest change personally was going from a pure slice-of-life comedy and spending time actually building the world around it so that there was structure to the chaos. I'm still working on it all. I now have an underlying plot that I'm hoping to explore, and I have the arcs planned out way in advance. So it's wild that I went from 'random ideas spewed on a document' to 'I now have a plot and several arcs to cover'. That being said, I still come up with a lot of things on the fly, so I'm changing things constantly as I go and hoping that there aren't too many inconsistencies!

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

One of the most important story elements of Phantomarine (http://www.phantomarine.com/) came up early in the second chapter, when I was asking myself some more questions about the world - and came upon a crucial opportunity. Luckily I didn’t have to change too much to make it work, and while it didn’t really change the plot, it upped the emotional stakes 100-fold. Which is just what I wanted. In this world, I have a big naval force, of which my heroine is (was?) the future leader - but with relative peace and cooperation between the different island nations, who the heck does the navy fight? Pirates? Eh, maybe. But vanilla pirates have been done to death, and while they can be awesome, I wanted to do something different. I wanted to tie them into the world’s supernatural element - while strongly avoiding the Pirates of the Caribbean cursed-buccaneer aesthetic. I decided to tie them to a particular blight that affects some of the characters - so as to up their stakes and better convey why they’re societal outcasts. And finally, I wanted to give them a freaking awesome name, something both nautical and supernatural. Thus, for those reading - the Fata Morgana. What didn’t even exist at the beginning of the second chapter is now an absolutely crucial story element, and I’m so happy they came into the picture. They’ve changed everything for the better. This is one reason why I resigned myself to revealing the world in bits and pieces - I’m revealing it to myself as I go along, too. It helps to be slow sometimes

eli [a winged tale]

The Fata Morgana introduction in the story was A W E S O M E! I’m so glad you have them in the story and looking forward to that amped up stakes!

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I think the biggest example would be the last-minute inclusion of Jonathan as a main character in my comic Dark Wings: Eryl (https://www.flowerlarkstudios.com/dark-wings-2/). I had originally planned for him to be a temporary character that we said goodbye to at the end of Chapter 5. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised the main travelling party needed another character to balance things out. I was really struggling with planning future scenes because the pool of characters felt too small. I also realised that I had developed Jonathan’s character quite a lot for him to be dropped so early. So halfway through drawing chapter 5, I rewrote the second half and he’s now a major part of the cast.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

A second example is Anor in my other comic, Children of Shadow: Ashes (https://www.flowerlarkstudios.com/cos/). He was originally written as a far less sympathetic character. In fact, he was going to be a borderline antagonist who only became sympathetic close to the end. But my characters often do things I don’t expect, and as I was planning the story, he and one of the other main characters, Rava, started falling for each other. I honestly loved this, and so I reworked the entire story to make Anor part of the main cast and much more sympathetic. He’s still a tsundere, and at the point where the story is now, still in constant friction with Rava, but I feel he’s now a much stronger character and is contributing a great deal more to the story than when he was a vaguely ominous frenemy in the original draft.

varethane

ooooo I am intrigued by this factoid about Anor

re: unplanned story elements, in Chirault..... [spoilers obviously] Ridriel and Trillia being sisters was something that hit me out of the blue about halfway through the story, and I immediately reworked a lot of things to make it happen http://chirault.sevensmith.net/(edited)

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

In ghost Junk... We actually avoided a major character death and had revised it literally a chapter before it happened!! We had everything written out right the the very end, but were seeing the readers reactions and reflected on the importance/and if it was absolutely necessary! So with that said, we saved the character, and kept the necessary impact and growth that it was to bring, and honestly- I'm so happy we did it

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

@varethane Yeah, Anor’s character has evolved a LOT since the first draft.

Phu

With Blackblood, we actually created the 2nd and 3rd chapters and then thought we wanted a chapter ahead of those as sort of a prologue to give some world building and lore elements haha. Worked out well i think! https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/blackblood/list?title_no=300252(edited)

Erin Ptah (BICP 🎄 Leif & Thorn)

This is kind of the opposite, since I did the "include a new thing in the story" part first, and that's what forced me to come up with a previously-unplanned idea to explain it... In Leif & Thorn, I had a character drop a reference to "that country doesn't allow interspecies marriages" before there's any canon reference to nonhuman species that human characters might want to marry. ...and even I didn't know what that species was going to be. Had some vague idea about revealing that mermaids existed, but in my head I never managed to integrate them with the rest of the plot or the worldbuilding real well. A few months later, I finally remember that I like drawing Tiny People (not like hobbit-size, think Borrowers-size), and realize this is the perfect setting to have a Tiny People Species! Now I get to come up with plot-based excuses to draw them wherever/however I want. Plus it opens up a whole new mine of jokes: https://leifandthorn.com/comic/somethings-cooking-26-29/

Can't for the life of me remember where I got this quote from, but there's an author who, when readers would ask for details about future developments in her books, would only give answers with the disclaimer "I reserve the right to have a better idea." Words to live by.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Damn, I love that quote.

DanitheCarutor

Admittedly there isn't a whole lot I've changed, maybe a couple small things here and there, but major stuff has been the same since I started. During the very beginning of the planning phase Daniel wasn't even going to be in the story and Julian was going to be homeless, but I wasn't quite satisfied with it. The story would have been too short, contrived and the resolution didn't feel satisfying. After some brainstorming and reflection on my feelings on certain experiences I've had, I added Daniel and 'The Guide to a Healthy Relationship' as it is kinda fell into place. It's weird thinking about how important Daniel is in spite of how new a character he is. Usually it takes me a little time to build one up before throwing them into a story, they gotta age like a fine wine first, but he popped out all ready to use like one week hooch.

Not sure if it counts, but I've also made changes to future parts of my comic. Like recently, even though I know what the ending is, I put a more final image in my head on what the final frame will look like. Also I changed an event that will happen at some point revolving around Apollo and his friends. Originally something skeevy was going to happen with Brandon and Apollo involving video uploads, and a homemade contract that was signed with Apollo was drunk. I thought it was too... I dunno, stupid? impractical? So I changed it to Julian was going to (unwillingly) attend a party at Brandon's (Apollo's friend) apartment, then some big, jealousy induced fight happens where Julian gets kicked out and Apollo feels bad. I didn't like that either, felt too reaching, so I'm going with another event that is a little out there but does happen in real life and something I have done some good research on.

Gonna be as vague as possible because it's spoilers.

keii4ii

Surprising myself is pretty much every step of my writing process. For good or bad.

I do plan things in advance, but find that sometimes things aren't what they seemed from 15 chapters ago.

I think what it is is this particular comic is such a visual story. I could plan out my previous comic with far greater accuracy. That comic was more dialog-driven; you could convert it into an audio drama with minimal changes, and it would still make sense. Whereas my current comic, you can't turn it into an audio drama without very VERY extensive changes (not even sure if possible... Many silent scenes). So I need to actually draw the pages to feel it out. And I can't draw out of order. Brain just won't that way.(edited)

carcarchu

totally agree with you @keii4ii sometimes u have to actually draw it out to get a feel for it. when i write out all the dialogue for my chapters i feel like it always ends up coming out so stiff, thats why i prefer to let it flow naturally and if something happens that i didnt account for just roll with it and adjust the story accordingly

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I'm kind of weird about always needing to know exactly how many pages a chapter is going to have, so I script right down to the panel. It can create flow problems on occasion, so I wish sometimes I could plan my pages more visually, but my brain just doesn't work that way. >< It's a good thing my stories mostly rely on dialogue because they're pretty much novels in comic form.(edited)

Cronaj

When planning a scene at the end of Chapter 3 of Whispers of the Past (https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/whispers-of-the-past/list?title_no=191366), I was having a hard time writing the dialogue. I had the images of my lead characters, Agatha and Izrekiel, talking by the docks in the moonlight, and I knew generally what they talked about, but I couldn't script it. And then, one day while walking to work, my characters straight up had the conversation in my head! And as the dialogue unraveled, the characters (mostly Izrekiel) did something completely unplanned (which I won't reveal because spoilers). This unplanned change has completely upped the drama and sexual tension for the entirety of the future story. The second event of this is in Chapter 2, where Izrekiel is helping out on Kelan's farm. Initially, there was going to be some dialogue that mostly served as world-building, but when actually writing the scene, it occurred to me that they would likely not talk too much, too absorbed by the work of harvest. And then, I suddenly visualized/heard Kelan and the other farmhands SINGING. I don't know why it popped in my head that way, but they began singing a working song. Now, I am not a musician, but I used to sing in choir and do musicals and such, and like half my family members are musicians, so I have a bit of a musical background. Anyway, all this to say that the characters started singing, and in response, Izrekiel (who has amnesia) has a flashback to some repressed memory of men marching and singing the same song, with altered lyrics. This can get extra spoilery, so I won't delve too deep into what his memory means, but.... The lyrics go as such: Oh earth, oh rain, Oh sun in the sky, You grant me with your fruit In this land. And they are directly mirrored in the flashback with: Oh strength, oh grace, I'll raise my sword, With victory in mind In this land.(edited)

Deo101

For me, I totally changed the ending! I was going to make it a tragedy, and then at some point I realized I didnt NEED to... that a story can be happy and good. So, I rewrote a ton of stuff, and actually ended up adding in some new characters! I'd say It's gone very well ^^ I'm much happier with everything now (for one, I can think about the ending without crying!!) I've changed a lot of other little things as i've gone along too. too many things to count, really.

Tuyetnhi

Initially I was writing the story timeline to 5 days but it spanned to something about a year. Which means I had a chance to develop it further than trying to rush plot points. Used to be like 3 chapters originally but now its like ....I guess 20 chapters? I don't remember the full count but lmao I'm ready to endure.(edited)

varethane

most of the biggest changes to Chirault were decided on during the first 3 years of me making it..... I completely threw out the first plan I had made, lol. There was no specific trigger for this, except maybe for 'I don't like this, actually'

keii4ii

Oh! I remembered something specific. My tiger character used to have a 'generic lean-ripped' build. Kinda like the rabbit from Juuni Taisen. Then I posted a random beach day picture, and someone (who wasn't used to seeing characters with visible leg muscles... A lot of comics they read have characters who suffer from Skipped All The Leg Days syndrome) pointed out how insanely muscular his legs were. I ran with it. Today his legs are 2x bigger than they were in that beach day pic, and it's all muscle. Also while this character stays very lean throughout the story, I as the author guarantee you that if he were to put on fat, his thighs will be the first to expand, and the most. 8)

Tuyetnhi

omg

Cronaj

@keii4ii I'm so glad for this change. Lu's legs are majestic

Capitania do Azar

Interesting replies here

In o Sarilho https://www.sarilho.net/en/, I have avoided one major character death in the first part of the story because I grow super fond of them and also because it wasn't really going to build up to anything... Which felt really unfair. So now I had to come up with narrative lines for them and I'm quite enjoying that. Furthermore, I was halfway through chapter 3 when I figured out Eurico's looks but especially his role in the story. It involved drawing a lot of trucks (and there will be more trucks in the future) but I'm really excited for him as a character

Desnik

As I was writing my comic I was trying really hard to keep the POV limited to one character, but that character doesn't have enough perspective to set up the plot very well at the beginning. This meant hopping POVs to some other characters and now I'm gently trying to squash a lot of these subplots before they go completely out of control...

[cdelphiki]

Fanfic writer asks: 1, 2, 5 (link it maybe), 7, 11, 12, 13, 20-23, 25, 28. Also, do you think fics should be fully written before the writer starts the publishing process? Why or why not?

Oooh, thanks for the asks.   Let’s see:

1. How old were you when you first started writing fanficiton?

It was earlier this year, just about a week before my birthday so technically I was 25.  

2. What fandoms do you write for and do you have a particular favorite if you write for more than one?

So far I’ve only published in the Batman fandom.  I’ve written in the MCU fandom and not published because they are still too drafty. (A Peter & Tony and a crossover between Batman and Avengers).  The batfam is my favorite, for sure.  Just love those kids.  

5. If you had to choose a favorite out of all of your multi chaptered stories, which would it be and why?

Life Happens, for sure.    I only have three long stories so far, and then kind of that little side fic to Life Happens, but out of the three I prefer this story.  The Missing Piece was my intro into FanFiction writing.  I had only ever written original works, so it was this nice transition to writing characters I did not make up.  Cracked Foundation was some random story that popped into my mind when I was working through the plot for Life Happens, actually, and was more of a distraction to me than actual story I loved and worked hard on. There’s a lot about it I really dislike.  Actually, I wrote all 20k words for that story in the span of a couple evenings, which probably contributes to my dislike for it.  Life Happens has been my baby for months now, and I’ve still not lost interest.  So yeah. 

7. When is your preferred time to write? 

Friday evenings, Saturdays, and Sunday early afternoon/evenings.  It kind of sucks because that’s also the time friends like to hang out, and I can’t do both. So really, I try to squeeze it in whenever I can.  Usually evening/night time is when I do the best work, though. 

11. Have you ever amended a story due to criticisms you’ve received after posting it?

Yes!  I added 800 words to a chapter of Life Happens based on feedback that it ended too abruptly and moved too quickly.  I have never and will never change the ending of a story, however, because people are mad at me that I didn’t write the story they wanted.  I will, however, write fan-service alternate endings.  (hint hint wink wink)

In my original work, I have also done major rewrites based on criticism.  That’s how writing works.  You get feedback and you respond how you see fit.  

12. Who is your favorite character to write for and why?

Uh, wow, that’s difficult.  I freaking love Damian to pieces.  Adore that stupid little brat.  But Tim now has a special spot in my heart because I’ve been stuck in his head so long, and Jason is so damn funny.  I think my favorite relationship to write is Tim & Damian, and that’s about as close to answering the question as I can get, because I can’t really pick between the three.  

13. Who is your least favorite character to write for and why?

Dick, probably.  Just because I haven’t quite figured him out.  Reading character studies on him has helped a ton, but I just never feel like I hit the mark well with him.  I still love him and would put him above all the other characters in the Batman fandom (excluding Bruce, I’d put him squarely between the three other boys and Dick).  I tend to just avoid characters I don’t know.  

20. Are there any stories you wished you’d ended differently?

Hmm.  Not so far.  

21. Tell me about another writer(s) who you admire?  What is it about them you admire?

Oh, this goes so against my shyness.  Eek. I can’t really order them.  Looking at my user subscriptions, I’m subscribed to ten people within the fandom, and they are audreycritter, autumnhobbit, bandgeek18, dawnseternallight, dreamersmyth27, fishfingersandjellybabies, lemonadegarden, lowflyingfruit, raberba_girl, and wingfeathers.

Okay, and I’ll just pick a couple to say why I love them so much, but I really do love all these writers.  I’m very likely to read whatever they post within the fandom, unless it’s just a ship I really cannot stand.  (sorry heh)  

With LemonadeGarden, I love the way her stories feel like a dance when you read them, swaying back and forth between dialogue and exposition and whatnot.  They are almost dreamlike they are so graceful.

Audreycritter was author of the first fanfic I ever read, and it’s what drew me into FanFiction in the first place.  I had been searching for a book about Damian Wayne, because while I love comics, I really wanted that inner dialogue and longer story, and came across Let There Be a Bruise on google. I was actually away at training for work, and I remember spending every single free moment I had reading through one shots on my phone after.  I was so entranced.  Audrey does Damian’s character justice and I love that about her.   

22. Do you have a story that you look back on and cringe when you reread it.

Yes.  All of them.  There are aspects of all my stories I cringe at, even my current WIPs.  It’s just how I am with any form of art I do.  

23. Do you prefer listening to music when you’re writing or do you need silence?

It varies.  I have ADHD and sometimes listening to music helps me tune the world out and focus, and other times I get really caught up in the music and start paying attention to it instead.  Just depends on the day, what my mood is, and what kind of music I put on.  

25. Have you ever cried whilst writing a story?

Yes.  I’ve cried a couple times writing Life Happens.  By cry, I mean I teared up pretty heavily.  I did so many times while plotting it out, too.  Some of my whumptober fics have had the same effect on me.  I’m weird and love when that happens.  

28. What is something you wished you’d known before you started posting fanfiction?

I can’t really think of anything, to be honest. I’ve only been writing FanFiction since March.  Maybe that Tumblr is such a great place to read about the various characters and learn more about what makes them tick.  

And finally, do you think fics should be fully written before the writer starts the publishing process? Why or why not?

I have done both ways and I see the pros and cons of each.  For me, the comments are what drive me and keep me motivated, so with my longer two works there is no way I would have found the ability to focus and stay driven to finish out the story if I didn’t have someone there reminding me that they want to read what happens next.  

But, when you write the entire thing out first, you can make sure the entire story flows well, nothing is mismatched, and the beginning and end lend themselves to each other.  So yeah.  Also, you don’t give the audience 10 chapters and get right to the climax then quit and leave every hanging forever.  I know we’ve all read stories like that.  

I don’t see an issue with writing chapter by chapter, as long as you keep in mind that it’s perfectly okay to go backward in the story and edit.  In ‘real’ fiction, authors are constantly revising earlier chapters to fit with how the story went, so there’s nothing wrong with doing so in fanficiton, even if you’ve already ‘published’ it.  

[velkynkarma]

Hey! Big fan. I've always admired your details and the characterization in your stories, and I was wondering if you have a specific process for revision? Thank you, and have a nice day!

Heeeey Anon! You are too kind. Thanks for being a fan :) I do have a revision process! A couple actually, haha. I think I might be a little different than a lot of fanfic writers since I’ve never actually used a beta reader which seems to be pretty common. But I do a couple other things to try and account for that. I usually have 2 main revisions, an “idea” revision and then the more classic edits revision. The “idea” revision comes before I ever write any actual fic at all. I’m a meticulous note kind of person, so when I first get an idea I spend a lot of time jotting down any concepts, phrases, bits of dialogue, specific details, etc that I have for scenes or as a general overall idea, and then spend a lot of time turning those into bullet point notes. Sometimes this gets hectic, so the “idea” revision is when I go through my completed notes and scrutinize it for anything out of place. This is where I do my best to fill in plot holes, make sure everything is being revealed at the proper time, rearrange things if it needs it, add more details to justify things that don’t make sense, etc. Basically, I like to make a roadmap for myself before I get started and make sure the fic has a very sturdy framework. This gets all the critical thinking out of the way so when I actually write, I can just go for it without needing to figure things out partway. (Which is not to say there isn’t room for additional details on the fly; these happen too. My notes can be flexible. A great example of this is Parasite Knight’s constant tapping details, which were never originally planned for, but I wrote the nervous tic into one scene and went ‘actually I like this, let’s make it A Thing.’ So it’s not so rigid I have no room to move). When I actually write, I don’t revise anything. I have a 30 second rule: if I can’t think of the right word, phrase, name, or detail in 30 seconds or less, I stick in a placeholder and highlight it so I’ll remember to go back to it later. If I get too caught up in finding the exact right word I lose the flow of the moment and that’s never good.The second revision comes after and this is your more standard red pen editing. Once I finish a fic, I won’t even let myself look at it for anywhere from 3 days (oneshots) to a week or more (full longfic). This is to distance myself from it emotionally so I can go back and edit objectively after I get over the victory high of writing. A lot of times I’ll use a phrase or detail that was just so perfect when I was writing, but when I come back to objectively edit I can say ‘yeah this is garbage’ and chuck it, or rework it. I read the entire fic once for general overall flow, then go through section by section or chapter by chapter and pick apart the words. Sometimes I read sentences out loud to see how they flow. This is usually the stage where I’ll go back to those details I highlighted or to “fix [X] problem” notes I left for myself in mid-write, and make it flow better. And then right before I post a fic I usually will go through it one more time to check for spelling errors and typos and things. I also never, EVER post a fic until it’s 100% completed. This is partly because I know myself and I have a tendency to wander away from half-finished fics and lose interest. It kills me as a reader to come across dead fics like that, so I try to never do it to my readers. But it’s ALSO for revision purposes. Many times I’ll hit on a detail I really like at the end that I feel needs to be referenced earlier, or I’ll get more comfortable with a theme and then go back to rework it a little, and I can’t do that if a fic is already half posted. Parasite Knight is again a great example of this. When writing the paladins’ quintessences, Keith’s was originally a little flatter and less colorful, with fewer details, and it defended Shiro a little differently, because I was still experimenting with how to write this kind of thing. By the time I got to Hunk I was much more confident with the dreamscape and the language and patterns, so I went back and cleaned up Keith’s too. And, since you specifically mentioned characterization, I’ll point out that whenever I write characters I will usually read or watch a piece of the original source media with them in it before I write on my own. This is to get a feel for the characters, and sometimes to kind of “reset” my perspective of the characters after having been apart from the show/comic/etc for a bit. I’ll also do this after binging fanfic a lot too, because it’s very easy to start assimilating common fic tropes—which may not always be bad or incorrect but may not be what I’m going for when trying to write the characters as close to canon as possible.That was a bit rambly, Anon, but I hope it was also interesting :)

[recentanimenews]

The Authors of DanMachi & Kino’s Journey Exchange Theories on the Creative Process!

  The mobile game app, Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? ~Memoria Freese~ recently hosted a special collaboration event between DanMachi and Kino’s Journey -the Beautiful World- the Animated Series, which led to discussions between their authors, Fujino Oomori-san and Keiichi Sigsawa-san. In the second part of this interview, we inquired about various key points of the scenario proposal by both authors.

  In our discussion, we cover not only the appeal of this collaboration event, but also their approach to writing their own works, unknown stories about the creation of intriguing episodes, the differences between writing scripts for novels and games, and many other topics as well. This time, we’ll touch on their later writing plans as well, so please read to the end.

  You can try the mobile game app, Is it Wrong to Try to Pick up Girls in a Dungeon? ~Memoria Freese~ here.

Read part 1 of this interview.

  Kino’s Journey is like writing a four-panel comic strip. DanMachi is like writing a shounen manga.

    —The two of you are both constantly announcing titles, but how do you usually come up with your stories?

  Keiichi Sigsawa: Kino’s Journey is built off major punchlines, so I think it feels like a four-panel comic strip. If I can come up with the punch, it’s practically done, and all that remains is placing the right characters for that situation. But getting to that point is pretty hard.

  Also, as the series has stretched into more volumes, it’s covered more episodes, so there are cases when a punchline is rejected because it would overlap with a past one.

  —But on the other hand, you don’t really need to worry about the chronology of the episodes.

  Sigsawa: That’s true. Kino’s Journey is a collection of a short stories, after all. The way I go about creating it is different from works with a continuous story like Oomori-san’s DanMachi or my own Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online.

  Fujino Oomori: That’s true. Personally, I want to bring more passion and excitement to the story than the previous episode did, so I end up debating things or working through different things because of that. Sigsawa-sensei just compared his work to a four-panel comic strip, but I think DanMachi is built around its battles. I tend to write backwards, trying to figure out how to make the final battle exciting.

  —You don’t mean like the Minotaur battle you depicted in the first arc?

  Oomori: I’m constantly hoping I can outdo that one. I think the people who read my work are also looking for the exhilaration of orthodox shounen manga-style battles. So I’m constantly thinking about how I can add excitement, suspense, and passion.

  In contrast, I challenge myself with rather serious stories and episodes featuring exchanges between those who aren’t the protagonist in my side stories. It’s kind of like learning while I write.

  —Is there anything you’ve experimented with in Sword Oratoria that you’d bring into your main work?

  Oomori: I think the side story’s setting in the Loki Familia is something I wouldn’t have been able to delve into as deeply in the main title. Plus, since it helped expand my world, I was able to provide GREE-san a lot of information for DanMemo. I think it’s been well worth the difficulty of continuing the side stories alongside the main one.

“When you give a character a name, you can empathize with them.” —Sigsawa

    —There’s an extremely large number of characters appearing in DanMachi. Isn’t it difficult writing for such large cast?

  Oomori: There’s a whole lot of characters, so honestly, it becomes a struggle for their chance to appear. I really should give Hestia and Ais more chances to shine, but now and then I also feel like, “I should let this character do this.”

  Also, sometimes I get advice from my editor, like, “We should give the old dwarf some action.”

  —How about you, Sigsawa-sensei? Though in Kino’s Journey, only the main characters have names.

  Sigsawa: Kino, Shizu, Master, Photo... The story revolves around those four main characters and their groups, so it’s easy on the character front. But in other longer works, I’ve also had the cast of characters grow too large, and start debating over the fact that some characters have lost their chance to appear.

  Oomori: I’ve been meaning to ask you this, Sigsawa-sensei, but there are times where some characters get names in your short stories, right? Like Laohua in “The Country Without Border Walls” (Volume 3) or Inertia in “Country of Illness” (Volume 5). I empathize really strongly with characters that get focused on like that, but is that something you’re aiming for?

  Sigsawa: It is. When a character is important, only then will I give them a name. The rest I just identify by their roles, like “president,” or “national leader,” haha.

  —Does that make it easy to control the reader’s emotions?

  Sigsawa: Having a name makes the characters stand out. And you want readers to empathize with the character when they’re going to have a strong impact on the story.

  Oomori: So I’ve totally been dancing in the palm of your hand. I liked Laohua-san way too much.

  Sigsawa: Oh, this is a minor spoiler, but I think most of the time I give a brand new guest character a name, they die. Of course there are some characters that don’t die, but I think maybe 70% of them die.

  On the other hand, when I make people think they’re going to die and they don’t, they sometimes rise up to join the regular cast, haha. Like Photo and Ti.

  —Haha, you were going for that with Photo, too?

  Sigsawa: In Photo’s case, I never intended that at all when I first wrote “In the Clouds” (Volume 3), but after several years passed, I thought, “You know, it would actually be interesting to retell that tale from another perspective,” so I had her reappear in “Before the Clouds” (Volume 12).

So then I thought, “Well, since she already has a motorrad (Note: two-wheeled vehicle. Refers only to those that can’t fly), maybe I’ll make this slave into a main character and expand on her,” and I gave her a name in the next volume.

  I wanted to make her “someone who doesn’t travel,” to contrast with Kino, so I had her settle in one country and crafted dramas within that land. Their names also draw on that meaning with Photo (Photograph) contrasting with Kino (Kinematograph).

  “I want to boast about collaborating with Sigsawa-sensei to other authors.” —Oomori

    —I believe both of you are involved in supervising various mixed media projects like anime and manga in addition to your novels, but what are some points to keep in mind when writing a similar script for a game?

  Oomori: There are differences due to the medium. When I’m reviewing DanMemo, my thoughts are deeply drawn to the fact that games always need expositional dialogue.

  In novels, you have stage directions to explain the situation, and in manga or anime you have images to explain that, but in games you have to convey that through dialogue. Plus, when the game is fully voiced, you can’t read it at your own pace, so that always adds tedium.

  I’m always paying attention from a user’s perspective, so I notice DanMemo cuts that out as much as possible to place greater emphasis on its tempo.

  Sigsawa: That’s a phenomenon you only see in games, yeah. I learned about that back when I supervising the script for the game BLUE REFLECTION.

  On top of that, the text window has fixed size, so you have fit every line within its confines and be careful of those constraints too when writing. Also, after everything is said and done, it’s not that difficult revising the lines for my own characters, but I had to be very careful whenever I had to change the lines of one of DanMachi’s characters during my revisions.

  Oomori: That’s true. We needed to play catch every time we needed to fix the other’s lines, so we’d have to be careful while checking in with each other. I think we took our time and went back and forth on that about three or four times.

  Sigsawa: We were checking it over word by word, so it took a lot of time and stamina, but it really helped a lot that our work was really just honing the details. I think the game’s scenario writers did an excellent job.

  Oomori: This collaboration was practically stress free for me, too. I thought writing manuscripts was fundamentally done with one’s editor, but this time Sigsawa-sensei was catching the balls I threw and throwing some right back at me. The whole exchange was just so much fun.

I want to boast about it to other authors. I want to say, “I collaborated with Sigsawa-sensei. We came up with the story together!” Haha.

  —Was there any aspect of this collaboration you paid particular attention to fine-tuning?

  Oomori: I don’t think there was anything I particularly objected to. Just, DanMemo has special moves built in, so I remember thinking Kino wouldn’t really shout “Flute!”

  Sigsawa: I remember we had to come up with special moves. It’s a pretty common pattern for me to be asked to come up with move names when Kino appears in a game, haha. Kino never has any named moves, so it’s something I always have to ponder, but in a sense it was okay, since I’m used to it.

  Oomori: When reading the original novels, I felt that Kino and Shizu’s moves were cool, so I hope we captured that sensation well.

  I really liked the fights in “Country of Heroes” (Volume 5) for Kino, and in “Tale of Extortion” (Volume 4) for Shizu. I hope we managed to capture a hint of that in the game, too, but it’s pretty difficult.

  Sigsawa: The episodes you just brought up are ones where I rather meticulously planned out the battles, so it might be a little impossible to pull that off in a collaboration. But I think the action scenes and special move effects came out looking really cool this time.

  Novels, Games, Anime. A collaboration project brought about through this trinity.

    —What were some of the scenes you two liked in this collaboration?

  Sigsawa: Personally, I really liked the section about Shizu’s group fitting right in with the Japanese-style members of Takemikazuchi Familia and becoming fast friends with them. Also the part where Photo and Hestia become close, too.

  Also, I think we really did a good job constructing the story so we could actually touch on the hidden truth behind DanMachi’s story in this scenario. I was genuinely impressed when I read that.

  Oomori: I was happiest about the scene at the end of the scenario where Kino and Bell shake hands. We managed to make that scene happen because Sigsawa-sensei said, “It would be nice if they shook hands.” That image of two protagonists from different works joining hands together was a dream collaboration of its own, and I was so happy I cried.

  Oh, right, and Sigsawa-sensei came up with all the English titles that follow the chapter titles.

  Sigsawa: That’s right, I did. I thought having those would help bring out the feel of Kino’s Journey.

  Oomori: Thank you very much! I’m very grateful, Sigsawa-sensei!

  Sigsawa: Also, those at EGG FIRM who worked with Kino’s Journey and DanMachi played a huge role on the visual end. Their producer, Nobuhiro Oosawa-san, cooperated with us and provided the 3DCG model of Hermes from the anime as-is. Same with the designs for Kino and others’ outfits. To be blunt, we could laugh without worrying about how to implement the characters, but everyone else was running around wildly for us.

  Oomori: At the end, Oosawa-san started scheming a bit, too, didn’t he? He whispered something like, “We should get both illustrators to draw something, too.”

  Sigsawa: Uh-huh, haha. Oosawa-san conspired with us on the idea of “Hermes riding Hermes.” It was the build up of one coincidence after another.

  —The production behind Hermes fighting enemies on Hermes was entertaining, too.

  Oomori: That was a part we discussed in detail with GREE-san as well. In DanMemo, the characters are split between Adventurer and Assist roles, but Hermes is a god, so really, he shouldn’t be fighting. That’s why I thought he’d be an Assist this time around. But then the Director said, “We’ll make him an Adventurer as a set pair with Hermes,” haha. It became the first debut of a god as an Adventurer.

  —This is something that just crossed my mind, but did you ever plan on Master from Kino’s Journey making an appearance?

  Sigsawa: We reached an agreement rather early on that Master wouldn’t appear. We could have the old Master, and it would’ve been pretty difficult to have the young Master cross time to appear. Not to mention, we already planned on Shizu and Photo’s groups making an appearance, so we felt that was enough.

  “If we collaborate again, we could try using Orario 3,000 years from now.” —Oomori

    —Is there anything you didn’t manage to do to this time, or something you wanted to include but couldn’t realize?

  Oomori: This is wholly my own opinion, but part of me really wanted to bring the bitter outlook of Kino’s Journey into DanMemo, too. The world of DanMachi is fundamentally a kind one, where good is rewarded and evil punished, but this time I put a lot of debate into how we could express the great, bitter harshness of Kino’s Journey. When I met with Sigsawa-sensei to discuss the plot, I was so persistent in asking, “How can we bring out the atmosphere of Kino’s Journey?” that I thought I was being a nuisance during our talks.

  Sigsawa: True. I wanted to try and include something of a bitter or mysterious punch, like Kino’s Journey does, after they left Orario. The scene after the leave the country came out promising.

  —Oomori-sensei, what do you like about Kino’s Journey?

  Oomori: Since we were going to be collaborating, I read through some of the novels and found myself drawn to its truly unique world, which I could never write.

  Also, I really like the afterwords. I’m really surprised you can write afterwords like that.

  Sigsawa: It’s hard work coming up with those, haha.

  Oomori: I thought that had to be the case. But honestly, Kino’s Journey left me with feelings after reading that I hadn’t felt before, so I really admire it. So if we ever get the chance to collaborate again, I hope we can depict that bitter outlook.

  Sigsawa: Thank you very much. I’d really like to see that, but fundamentally Kino never visits the same country twice, so I don’t know.

  Oomori: Oh, that’s right. Then how about… in a different city after 3,000 years have passed and Orario is ruins?

  —Are you okay with that as the original creator, haha?

  Sigsawa: It could be possible if we go with the pattern where all the characters from DanMachi set off on a journey. That would mean drawing all new backgrounds and so on from scratch, but would that be okay?

  Producer: I’ll draw as many as it takes!

  Oomori: That’s really just my own ego talking, so please forget about it, haha. I think the scenario for this is one that both light users and those who’ve read both original works can enjoy. It really is a good collaboration that can serve as an entry point to both works.

  Sigsawa: That’s right. Personally, I didn’t put much focus on the fact that this is for a game and approached this work with the idea of what we would do if we were creating an anime or movie together. Like it was one of the collaboration films in the old Toei Cartoon Festival.

  But I think it would have been pretty rough if we were actually working on a movie. I think this project truly took advantage of the virtues of social games.

  Oomori: I don’t think we could’ve done it with such light footwork.

  Sigsawa: I’m sure GREE-san really had a hard time, so thank you very much.

  Producer: Actually, when you put together all the data we recorded from the cast for this, it comes out to about an hour and ten minute voice drama. It really is about a whole movie’s worth.

  Sigsawa: What? Then wouldn’t it be interesting if we did make a movie version? Or so I’ll say for the sake of saying it, haha. I’m the type to say what I think.

  Oomori: The power of words is already at work here. So I think that’s important, too, haha.

  “I hope readers come to learn more about the worlds of both works through this collaboration.” —Sigsawa

    —I’d like to you ask you both to share a final message for the fans, but what are your aspirations for the future?

  Sigsawa: Well, right now I’m using GGO for my twitter icon and tweeting notices about Kino’s Journey when I happen to remember to, but I’ve really been busy since last year. Kino’s Journey is my life’s work though, so I want to work hard at it.

  Oomori: You’re too amazing, getting animes two years in a row. You really don’t get any rest, do you?

  Sigsawa: That’s true. This time, with GGO, I’m participating in all of the script meetings from the beginning, and I attend the post-recordings.

  I just hope all the fans enjoy this collaboration for now. I can only say good things, but if by chance you’re a fan of Kino’s Journey and haven’t heard of DanMachi, or you’re the opposite, then know that we’ve done some unusual things here, so if you didn’t know of one before, I hope you’ll find interest in it through this.

  —Oomori-sensei, people are curious about the animated movie and second season announced in Volume 13 of DanMachi.

  Oomori: Unfortunately, I can’t give any information on the anime, but here’s a little for the novels. Right now, Volume 13 cuts off at an incredible point, and those reading the original work are left feeling impatient, haha.

  I might even be hearing some fans say, “Write your book instead of taking interviews!” But right now, I’ve finished writing about 350 pages of it, so you’ll only need to wait a little longer.

  —Haha, using this space for advertising...

  Oomori: I thought I was likely to get asked about that here today, so… haha. But honestly, I’ve already gotten that far, so you should be able to enjoy it very soon. Also, for the users of DanMemo, if you aren’t familiar with Kino’s Journey already, then I hope you get a taste of how wonderful the original work is. Once you read up to Volume 3, you’ll get hooked and won’t be able to escape it, just like me!

  © 2017 KEIICHI SIGSAWA/KADOKAWA CORPORATION AMW/KINO'S JOURNEY PARTNERS

© Fujino Omori-SB Creative Corp./Danmachi Movie Project

© GREE, Inc.

  By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com