Category: Mixplate

I’ve been working on a comic for the past year and wanted to share here on my blog some of the creative process for it.
Read first chapter here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rooeOFxU4M74vFZNe_XiUy7Gr4_HgMeZ/view?usp=sharing

I’m making part 2 this Summer, and will start Part 3 in fall.

These are inspiration boards from Spring 2018 before I started it.  Just to get an idea of what I wanted it to be.




The idea is that it takes place in the very distant future of a high fantasy world.

Pine Dadandi


Don Tobagada

Work in progress designs for new characters:
Mae Sanzang

Argo

Laross

The comic characters I design transform into manifestations of their superegos, and all of them get long floaty glowy hair in that state.

Examples from anime

Goku’s Kamehameha wave was named after a Hawaiian king and was taught to him by a dude living in the Pacific islands and wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

Gon from HxH got really long hair when he went super mode.  really really long hair.

Bobobobobobobo’s power is in his nose hair and afro.  He fights against evil bald people.

Sanjay’s Super Team is an example of what I was thinking of for my paper.  Indian kid growing up in the 80’s brainwashed by the hyper-commercialism.  Reconciling their cultural identities too: family heritage, American identity, and child identity.  I had a similar experience growing up in the 2000’s as Vietnamese American.  For some reason my mom and uncles had me watch all the same stuff they watched in the 80’s in addition to the current cartoons and so I grew up with those addictions and I would make up my own shows.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/24/18638777/akira-live-action-taika-waititi-thor-ragnarok-warner-bros-release-date

Taika Waititi is directing the live-action Akira movie.  I have high hopes for that movie now.  There have been multiple directors and writers picking up the project and dropping it over the past decade.  Katsuhiro Otomo said he wants to see an original take on his story, so I’m not worried about faithfulness.  Taika has expressed an interest in casting unknown Asian American actors, so that’s good of course.

http://newenglandfolklore.blogspot.com/2011/01/parker-house-boston-cream-pie-ho-chi.html

https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-09-18/little-known-story-vietnamese-communist-leader-ho-chi-minh-s-admiration-us

“As a cook there, Ho Chi Minh — the future leader of one of the most violent communist insurgencies the world would ever see — may well have made some of the hotel’s signature dishes, such as the Boston cream pie and the Parker House roll, both of which were invented there. Ho Chi Minh wrote a postcard to a friend in France, mentioning his job there.”

Ho Chi Minh has a surprisingly colorful backstory.  Well-educated, well-traveled, and skilled.  It is just so ironic that someone who worked as a dish washer and pastry chef in an American hotel would go on to become an influential world leader who won wars and opposed America.  It is silly and fascinating, but I don’t see the dude in a positive light given how brutal the Vietnam war was and how corrupt the communist government was.  Also because the Vietnamese government is still corrupt as shit.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2152150/dont-give-our-land-away-clash-interests-vietnams-anti

In recent years it has come to light that Vietnamese politicians have been selling out to China and giving away land to them.  There are anti-Chinese protests and Vietnamese patriotism movements over this now.  My grandpa tells me that the politicians have always been corrupt and they let the country fall apart by pocketing money that is supposed to be used for infrastructure.

Dr. Strange was originally an East Asian character that was later retconned to be white.  The racial history of Dr. Strange is very muddy, but it seems that biases, default standards, and pressure from the industry and audience is what shifted Dr. Strange from Asian to white.  His race was never a defining characteristic, so it was always a little ambiguous.  And when things are up in the air like that, you go with what the default or preferred choice is.

https://www.popmatters.com/doctor-strange-and-race-2631242477.html?rebelltitem=4#rebelltitem4

Samurai Jack is filled to the brim with pop-culture references.  Berserk was a primary influence.

LeSean Thomas is an African American animator from the South Bronx.  He was self-taught and worked his way into the American cartoon industry.  For Adult Swim he worked as an artist on The Boondocks and Black Dynamite.  He also worked on The Legend of Korra for Nickelodeon.  In 2009 he moved to Seoul, Korea to work on the animation part of making cartoons because America outsources those jobs.  After many years of grinding, he has managed to make it as a show creator.  Not many Westerners have the opportunity to create their own high-quality anime shows, but LeSean has two original shows of his own creation that are coming out this year.  Cannon Busters will be released on Netflix and Children of Ether will be coming out on Crunchy Roll.

His shows are very cross-cultural and take a lot of inspiration from Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo.  His characters are mostly people of color too.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarder/2017/09/26/lesean-thomas-on-netflixs-upcoming-cannon-busters-and-the-creative-cross-cultural-future-of-anime/

https://www.patreon.com/posts/23464405

A couple Western references to Kentaro Miura’s Berserk in pop culture.

This scene in tonight’s episode of American Gods looks to be inspired by The Eclipse! from Berserk