Project A-ko 2, 1995
I thought I knew what a packed schedule was when I did full-time freelance work for Malibu and other publishers. Then I started my own little company, Studio Go! with my pals Bruce Lewis and John Ott…and learned just how much MORE packed it could get.
I explained how our company was founded here, and showed you our first two Star Blazers comics here. Those comics were done for a client named Voyager Entertainment. All our other time went to our primary client, Central Park Media. That was the parent company for one of the most active anime importers, U.S. Manga Corps, and its president John O’Donnell was the guy who put us to work once we demonstrated that we could produce comics for him.
John’s tastes – and more importantly his contracts with Japanese studios – were the deciding factor in what titles we would do. If he could land publishing rights along with video rights, a title was fair game. If said title happened to be one of his favorites, it went to the top of the priority list. That’s how the Project A-ko comics came to be published by Malibu in 1994. This meant that the very first project on our slate was to package up a Project A-ko graphic novel collection with 8 new pages, to be published in March 1995. (Read all about it here.) And the second project on our slate was a 3-issue adaptation of Project A-ko 2: Plot of the Daitokuji Financial Group.
Directed by Yuji Moriyama (who did character designs and directed animation for the first film), the anime was released direct to video in May 1987. This was sort of a downgrade, since the original was a feature film and came loaded with Easter eggs that broke through the language barrier to capture an international audience. Part 2 was just as crazy, but was essentially more of what had already been seen. If you wanted more of what you already saw, it was made for you.
John O’Donnell was one of the people it was made for, and he definitely wanted to see it in print. His curious resemblance to the main villain (B-ko’s father) may have had something to do with it. Not for me to say. Anyway, I was talking about a packed schedule.
Prior to this, I had a steady cycle of two projects per month and could get through them while still having a life (I was a new father at the beginning of my career, so this was kind of important). Once we got Studio Go! off the ground, that number immediately went to three. For the second half of ’94 going into ’95, I had to juggle Ako 2, Star Blazers and another CPM title, M.D. Geist (which I’ll get to in the future). Once I got the art done for a book, I’d turn it over to John Ott for lettering and coloring so I could dive right into the next one. Oh, and I was still drawing Battletech for Malibu Comics and occasional Star Wars assignments for West End Games. Good times.
Japanese laserdisc, art book (super valuable!), and soundtrack album
I’d handled three projects a month before, but that was the exception to the rule. Now it was the rule. I’d learned that the trick was to keep two of them on a fast track during daytime hours and put the other on a slow track during evening hours. I carefully plotted all of it out on my calendar so I always knew what my daily goals were. It didn’t leave much room for a life, but this is what it took to pay rent and keep everyone fed (also kind of important). It takes iron discipline to live that way, especially when interruptions or setbacks inevitably pop up.
On the other hand, there was a relief valve. It was called computer coloring.
As I mentioned in the Star Blazers article, learning how Photoshop worked opened up all sorts of timesaving tricks. Being able to interface directly with my colorist (John) made sure they were properly understood, since he was the one who would actually apply them. Here’s a some of the tricks I discovered during this project…
If you’ve already drawn it once, don’t draw it again. Especially if it’s not supposed to move.
As you can see here (from issue 1), Photoshop did a perfectly good job of reprinting what I already drew.
Here’s another example from issue 3.
It’s actually BETTER not to try and redraw something again if it doesn’t move, because there will be discrepancies in your later drawing. They are unavoidable.
Here’s an extreme example. You wouldn’t do this in a serious comic, but this wasn’t one of those.
If something is meant to be symmetrical, just draw half of it.
Photoshop can duplicate and flip it to provide the other half. Trying to draw it perfectly symmetrical is a waste of your time. There are other pages that need that drawing energy.
My favorite trick is the INVERT. Back in the analog days I would spend HOURS filling in black space and then dotting it with white stars. Or worse, outlining white lines and filling in dark areas around them. Captain Harlock was full of panels like that. But not any more. Just draw the “negative” version and invert it.
This does create some busy work when you have to treat the edges, since you don’t want black panel borders to turn white, but the time you save is still a HUGE net positive.
Plus, the results speak for themselves. Black dots on a white background are way easier than white dots on a black background. As a result, your night skies look a zillion times better in the end.
Then there’s the ultimate time-saver: reusing panels from previous issues. There was absolutely no reason for me to draw that mansion again after I did it in the first issue.
Ditto the giant spaceship that basically gets seen from only one angle. It appeared in issue 1 and got cloned in 2 & 3.
Here’s a panel from issue 3 where it’s dropping and trailing smoke. I indicated to John that he should drop in the same drawing again (with the same color).
Unfortunately, I forgot to tell him to put it BEHIND the smoke. Here it’s on a layer between the smoke art and the smoke color. Communication matters.
On the other hand, I learned a valuable lesson with this two-page spread. There’s that same ship art again, but it had to be enlarged more than 200% to fill the space, and the resolution blurred out so it’s obviously a drop-in. So there are definitely limits to these tricks. I should have drawn it here.
And finally, when I look back at pages like these, I see that I hadn’t learned enough yet about layering. Energy elements like lightning and laser beams and that sort of thing really need to be drawn and scanned independently so it’s easier to color-treat them as special effects. Drawing them on the same level as the line art made this much harder for John to separate. These days I don’t use ink or paper at all, and just draw directly in Photoshop. There’s no more “original art” per se, but the tradeoff is a much wider range of effects. WORTH IT.
While I was drawing Project A-ko 2, Bruce Lewis was drawing Gall Force, and John would letter/color both titles, jumping back and forth between us. That required some pretty careful planning to avoid collisions. If we fell out of sync (which we did), it meant John would either have too much work to do or not enough.
Here’s how it played out for this series: on issue 1, I did all the penciling and inking, and John took it from there. On issue 2, John had a gap in his coloring schedule so I did the penciling and he took it over with the inking. We thought it was going to go the same way on issue 3, but when I finished the penciling John was jammed up on Gall Force. So I took it back for inking. Which made me a cranky-pants. If I knew I was going to pencil AND ink the thing, I wouldn’t have had to work as hard.
Why? When I drew pencils for another artist to ink, I made sure to put in all the detail I wanted to see in the end product. When I was penciling for myself, I could keep it loose and then draw the details in ink. Less time, less labor. But the schedule rules all, so I had no choice but to go back over everything again and draw it a second time. I was happy with the result, just not with the requirements.
Anyway, the upshot is that since I made a complete photocopy of issue 3 in pencil form, I can share two versions below.
Color was another matter, over which I had little influence. This was John’s turf, it was up to him to figure out all the technical stuff. Regardless of how much experience you bring to the table, though, there are things you can’t predict. It was still early days on the digital frontier. When the printed version of issue 1 came back to us, it was disappointing. The color that had looked right on John’s monitor was drab on paper (I color corrected it below as best I could). Some of it was monitor calibration, some of it was how the paper absorbed the ink. Adjustments were made in flight, and issue 2 came out much better. Issue 3 looked better still. In the end, it’s not the mistakes that define you, it’s how you respond to them.
Thankfully, our client had enough confidence in us to sustain these speed bumps and keep us hard at work. Project A-ko 2 was fun to draw and taught me things I didn’t know yet, so the deficits don’t get me down. You can’t complain when someone else is willing to pay for your education.
RELATED LINKS
Complete movie on Youtube (subtitled)
Issue 1: Sum-Sum-Summertime
Production: August/September 1994
Published April 1995
Inked version | Finished version
Issue 2: Off the Ground
Production: November/December 1994
Published June 1995
Penciled version | Finished version
Issue 3: Like Father, Like Daughter
Production: February/March 1995
Published August 1995
Penciled version | Inked version | Finished version
Graphic novel collection
Published November 1995
Editorial pages
Bonus
This was we used to call an “ashcan” back in the cave man days (in this case, early 1995). It was a photocopied (or cheaply printed) promo pamphlet to be handed out at stores, conventions, or other live events. For about five minutes, they were considered “collectible,” and then everyone came to their senses. It was on 8.5″ x 11″ paper, folded and stapled like a ‘zine. These days, we use the intornets.
By the way, the name “CPM Comics” was my suggestion. It simply stands for “Central Park Media.” It was either that or the more unwieldy “U.S. Manga Corps Comics.”
“IN FULL” was supposed to say “IN FULL COLOR.” Dammit.