A new title is needed

My A.M.I. keychain (previously pictured here) has been purchased this morning by my Japanese teacher, whom was planning to go to Christmas Carnival (just to see my table, no less) but was unable to. I felt kind of bad about letting a keychain go, but she really loved A.M.I., and I made more money towards the Japan trip next year.

Now, huge notes...Skipper is no longer capable of being a main character. I've tried to develop his character several times over the last four years, but he's either way too plain, a little snotball, or a cross of Astro Boy and Tails Prower. This is why he's being downgraded to a secondary character, one who never gets into his classic and sort of pointless car accident at the beginning of the series.

Instead, the story starts with A.M.I.'s reactivation.

You can probably see who's the lead now.

Con Updates

Remember how I said I'd be dressing as R Tanaka for Christmas Carnival? Well, I lied to you. Recent complications have led me to choose an Evangelion character:


There are certain people a girl should not be dressing as, but so far I'm pretty dead-on as Kaji. You'll be able to identify my table next Saturday fairly easily; I'm the one in the ponytail and red tie, sitting next to a cardboard posterboard, stacks of Cinderelliot and shirts, and an aura of transvestite tension.

In less awkward news, I finally designed the lead character of Super Fighter Gigan-X.

Roger Ross, a gay Scottish mechanic and the lead pilot of the government-funded Gigan-X robot project, potentially the only pilot. He's fun to draw, and hopefully after some further developmental stages everywhere in the series, I'll launch the miniseries next spring.

If You Wish To Be A Nerd

There's a Saskatoon convention coming up called the Christmas Carnival, and I'm set to have an artist's table there. I will, however, be in attendance in a Japanese schoolboy uniform and black wig, as Masami Yuuki's character R Tanaka, coinciding with a related AMV I've entered into the video contest. My crippling mental problems aside, there will be merchandise.

(Left to right: Quinn Haverly, Quinn; Shigeru Kagiyama, Super Fighter Gigan-X; Elliot & Magic Elliot, Cinderelliot; Endo Hiramatsu, The 27 Ghosts of Endo; The Fairy Godfather, Cinderelliot; Bunny Clea, Hyperspace Bunny; A.M.I. Phillips, Skipper the Robot Kid)

Keychains! They're about 2.5" wide and set to be $4 each. They each have hand-drawn artwork in a thick plastic disc, with one of my flagship characters on the front, and my name and their home show's title logo on the back. I love these.

These are going to be in pretty limited quantity, but there's Fairy Godfather shirts, two designs. I'm going to have a deal where you can get one and a copy of the comic for $10, whereas the comic is $5 and the shirt is $10. The one pictured is a men's large, so any obese and/or disproportionately muscular fans can get their fix here.

I'm pretty excited for this. Let's hope I'm not scheduled to work cashier that Saturday...

In other news, I have a story to tell you all. About two months ago, I bought the All-Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku manga from 8th Street Books and Comics, and watched the whole OVA series a few weeks later. That's when I realized it was about a semi-insane divorced scientist father and his shy young son, and the teenage girl humanoid whom lives with them, and occasionally the scientist's successful businesswoman ex-wife.

This is, of course, the Hatcher family's dynamic in Hyperspace Bunny. I knew Nuku Nuku existed when I designed HB, but I didn't watch it then. I have an alibi, but I still feel terrible whenever my ideas infringe on someone else's, especially on something adored by thousands. All I have to do to is add an annoying trigger-happy female rival* for Bunny, and I'm set!

(*I don't like Eimi. I've gotten e-yelled at for this, but really, she pushes all the wrong buttons on me. Dr. Kyuusaku is utter buckets of awesome to me, however.)

This is sort of funny

Last night, I looked up and downloaded the Black Jack & From Eroica With Love crossover, which is a big deal to me and two people. I read through it and was disappointed, especially when the third-to-last page featured a splash panel (I wanted to avoid calling it that) of one of the characters vomiting. It sort of had to do with the plot, but Yasuko has a thing about barf jokes, and that's terrible.

That night, I had a dream where I was reading through Cinderelliot one more time, and was getting increasingly furious with myself at the fact that I seemed to have forgotten to change all sorts of things in the updated edition. There was some page about Elliot throwing up in the parkade, and I was yelling at myself, "You stupid little homo! You thought this was funny in 2009, didn't you?! Why don't you go slam your hand in a car door?!" And then I woke up, repeatedly reminding myself that a page like that never existed.

But then I remembered that King persuades/threatens Elliot to stay behind and watch Pinhead and Palatino's "final test' to determine his mob successor. And I was getting so mad at myself; how could I drop a bomb like that and not explain it? I really never said what the final test was. After a short period of trying to remember it, I realized the comedic nature of the "test" would have disrupted the overall mood of that scene. And here it is...

King randomly shows the guys one of Charmy's bikini photoshoot pictures. Pinhead says nothing and doesn't move, but Palatino whistles and makes some crack about beachballs, then gets punched in the face. Pinhead wins.


So, that's it.

Really.

Black Jack Webdoujin Now Open

The site's front page is here. I submitted a four-page fancomic here, and it's honestly an honour to be part of the 'Big Five', even if my renditions of Black Jack, Pinoko and Kiriko don't hold up next to all the other artwork. The Cinderelliot homepage is linked to through my name on the main page.

I was flipping through it, came across Brunch With Kiriko and I just went "GUHH--" like I got elbowed in the stomach. I guess I'm just being hypersenstive...the only downfall I can really see is my fantastic inability to draw certain positions of the hand or arm. It's a little startling that these comics will be up for years, and I wonder what kinds of fan kidlets are going to see it, and what they'll think...

If you just want to get to my comic, here's where it starts. All you really need to know is that I find Black Jack and Kiriko's character dynamic fascinating (not in a slashy kind of way), and Pinoko has a speech impediment.


OTHER NEWS: Got a haircut. Look like Major Klaus von Ebernach from From Eroica With Love. Not cool; waiting for bangs to grow longer.

Angel in My Failed Premise

There was this song I always heard as a kid, Angel In My Pocket by One To One, that eventually inspired me to attempt to make a comic based on what I thought of the song. I was twelve; it crashed.

I'm almost reconsidering it, albeit completely pulling apart my original ideas. When I was fourteen, I thought it could become some sort of magical girl story, especially since One To One's music is so Eighties that it delights me, and Eighties miscellania and retro anime go hand in hand in my mind. So, I can only see a surreal oneshot in my mind, but nothing else yet from this point.

An interesting note...there were two versions of Angel in My Pocket, either the version where the angel is a girl (which I always heard) or where the angel is a boy. I find certain parts of the male version jarring (especially "I wanna keep him 'til the end of time", which sound better as "her"), but I adore the video's art and costume design.

Cinderelliot Now Available

I'm rather overjoyed by this release. The cover's coloured part is actually glossy! The only possible problem is the fact that I used the wrong file for the cover, as I had an identical one without "First Anniversary Edition" on it, but I don't mind as much anymore. I mean, it is the first anniversary, even if it's a little late. If a second print is needed, they won't have the anniversary mention on the cover.

There are five copies on the shelves at 8th Street Books and Comics at the moment, and I'll be visiting people whom expressed interest in the comic tomorrow, as well as sending a copy to Green Candy Press. Anyone outside Saskatchewan interested can email me (see my Blogspot profile) and ask to order.

Sexy Site Update

The official Cinderelliot website has been remodelled in anticipation of the new release. I've currently got the site address on the back of each book and the site linked to from the Black Jack doujinshi anthology, so I'm happy the most of the HTML work is over. All that's left is nine pages about the gobs of other comics I'm working on, but all but one of those can wait. I am in love with the character page.

I'm also going through the list of episodes I had planned for The 27 Ghosts of Endo...some of them are surprisingly dark, especially "Missile Boy" and the one with the vengeful monkey ghost. It's all how the episodes are presented that decides the mood, but some of them are more suited for a later TV slot, and I don't blame Nelvana at all for turning it down.

The printed version is coming by the end of the month.

I retract my earlier statements

I've got a job now. And a reprint of Cinderelliot is quickly approaching. Right now I'm in the process of fixing the entire comic...adding pages, replacing pages, replacing text in certain bubbles, and redoing the ending. The cover I had planned for it says "First Anniversary Edition", but it's now a over month after the anniversary, and the way this is going, I'd might as well call it a Director's Cut.

So, yes. The Director's Cut is well on its way, and will have five extra pages and a wider distribution. I'm considering adding a bonus comic too, but I can't think of anything I want to write about (all the things I was going to put in it have already been cleared up through the new material). I try asking people what they'd like in a bonus story, but I get multiple variations on "Fairy Godfather gets laid". (Plus: in the new cut, he's not sex-crazed at all. He's in fact ten times more likeable, only looking for career success and affection.) I'm considering pitching it to a Canadian publisher, but the only one who would take it prints mostly books about romance, gay and S&M guides and marijuana. Well, if they accepted "Doll City"...

Gigan-X...three more characters are nearly stable, these being Michelle Rossi-Menard, Adam Graye, and Benjamin Ross, the French female pilot, the American pilot and the gay British pilot respectively. There's a fourth guy in development, Famiel Doba, the Chilean pilot. I almost considered making Major Kagiyama the main character, but since he's totally Ichirou Mizuki, I figured Aniki would find the series one day and be all " 一体何をやってるの？"

So, anyway, Cinderelliot is returning, better than ever. Gigan-X is biking around in circles. Hyperspace Bunny is in its prime and needs love. And stop asking me to make the Fairy Godfather get some ass, please, because it's hurtful at this point.

Updates and Gigan-X

Wow, it's been just over four months since the last time I posted here. Not much happened this summer - I was expecting to get a job to pay for a professionally-printed omnibus of Cinderelliot, but of course that never happened. And my opinion of Cinderelliot right now is tanking, so to spend $50+ on reprints would be horrifying. Maybe when I have more money, it'll happen...but for now, I'm considering just dumping the entire thing for free on Smackjeeves. When I think back on the comic, all I think of is what it could have been if the Fairy Godfather wasn't so offensive. The way I portrayed him still haunts me to this day.

Hyperspace Bunny is approaching its sixth chapter, and Quinn is in Season Two. The 27 Ghosts of Endo got rejected by Nelvana earlier this year for being too dark, but I want to start on a comic version of the first episode. There's something I've had in planning for months now, and it's about giant robots in 2084...

The working title is Virtual Fighter Gigan-X, about three young men in their early twenties who pilot twenty-foot-tall defence robots (i.e. Patlabor or Votoms), their squadron led by the enigmatic Major Shigeru Kagiyama. Kagiyama is the only character who I've completely finalized, and I need to be honest that he is directly based on Ichirou Mizuki, also known as the Tom Jones of Japan who's sung over 1,200 anime theme songs. This all smashed together into what potentially could be my most badass character.

The things keeping Gigan-X grounded are my current inability to design mecha, and my inclanation to add a female pilot in somewhere. The mecha pictured was supposed to be piloted by the American Adam Graye, so I gave it a red-white-and-blue colour scheme, but now it looks like a baboon-flavoured Kamen Rider. And on the female characters - I keep falling prey to the slimy giant-robot-anime stereotypes for females. My past attempts include a hybrid of Asuka Langely and Lynn Minmei, whom dies in the third-to-last episode.

So, I like 10% of Gigan-X so far, and I don't know how long it'll be before it gets off the ground. I'd might as well just put Kagiyama as a guest character in Hyperspace Bunny.

Bulletins

Attention everyone, I would like to mention a few things.

1. A professionally-printed omnibus edition of Cinderelliot will be coming out by July, but I need to raise money for printing costs and get an estimate of how many people would actually buy it. The book would include a new cover, an extra page in the second half, and a bonus two-page comic at the end.

2. I will be at the Saskatoon Anime Blitz this Sunday the 16th, dressed as Lisa Hayes/Misa Hayase from Robotech: The Macross Saga. This is what I will look like, except I won't be a toy. Anyone interested in talking to me about Cinderelliot or anything else is welcome to approach me during the convention's free times.

3. Endo Hiramatsu will cameo in Hyperspace Bunny #4. Also on the way is a comic version of the pilot episode of The 27 Ghosts of Endo.

Hyperspace Bunny Now Online

The first story - fourteen pages with colour cover - has been put online. The second story is ten pages, and will be on the way as soon as I finish its cover.

http://hyperspace.smackjeeves.com

After school, there'll be a finished character page, and I'll check to make sure that non-members can comment.

Bunny; Paperback Cinderelliot

First off, this June, I want to release a "First Anniversary" republishing of Cinderelliot, this time in paperback graphic novel form. At the moment I'd place the books - which would have both issues and a three page bonus comic - in the $5 or $6 price range, but I'd have to see how much each book would cost from Mr. Print. I'm really excited for this; this new format would make online selling easier, and maybe I could get attention from a Canadian publisher!

At the same time, I'm torn between releasing Hyperspace Bunny in print or online. At the moment, the first story rests at ten pages completed, and I can see maybe another five in the story. I'm planning to put the first two stories in one issue. After school, I'm going to pick up some small canvases and paint a picture of Bunny for the cover, in case the cover image I have right now doesn't turn out well.

My first series was about fairies and the mob. Now my next one is about aliens, robots and mad scientists...

The Periwinkle Assault

In serious news, Imagi Studios has momentarily collapsed, and the Gatchaman movie is now in limbo. The Tetsujin 28 movie is estimated to never, ever come to light, which I find extremely disappointing. Everybody buy an Astro Boy DVD, or Imagi will die. Really.

In happier news, here's the protagonist cast of a thirty-two year old book, and evidence of the first time I've ever drawn a shirtless man...


This is based on a book series by Charles Dennis, which was supposed to span four books but ended halfway. I discovered the second book, The Periwinkle Assault, by accident at the school library in 9th grade. It was enlightening enough for me to get the first book. The only objections to content in either book were how Corporal Ahmed was portrayed with the dreadful "dumb brother" archetype, a few gross jokes, and a masturbation contest. Really.

And I haven't finished Hyperspace Bunny

Because I haven't posted this to enough of my sites and blogs, here it is. My manga review got put in the Reader's Choice segment of Right Turn Only, on Anime News Network. This is part of an endeavor to pique America's interest in KCR, with maybe a stateside publishing. I really hope this goes somewhere.

Also, here's something from the Endo production...

In big news, I'm finishing a pitch for The 27 Ghosts of Endo and will be sending it to Cartoon Netowrk or Teletoon after the final exams. The sypnosis, taken directly from the pitch Powerpoint...

"A young man is hit by a truck, but miraculously recovers hours later. He is informed that spirits had helped save him, and he must pay back Death by exorcising 27 ghosts, one for each hour he was in a coma. With his companions, he begins to visit different places around the world to try and find ghosts."

I have been informed that this seems to be like Dororo, but honestly, I didn't think of that series when creating Endo. In fact, the whole idea for a ghost series came from a dream, which I made into an episode. Let's see how this pitch goes!

(Also, I'm starting a series of stopmotion films about a girl who pilots a robot. I want a Juku Couture doll, since it has excellent posability, but they're not available in Canada. And who knew it would be impossible to find a jointed Ken doll with curly hair?)