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I started writing a few Robotech side-stories sometime last summer. However, with other obligations to fulfill (as well as a few bills to pay), I wasn't able to dedicate myself full-time to comic art until mid-January.
So when I got back to the drawing table, I decided to cobble up a short story - one meant for a single-issue special, and kicked things into high gear from there.
For the most part, the plot was completed during my writing practice over the past autumn season. All I really needed to do was polish up one of the threads I had running here and sling some art with it.
For starters, replacing overdue supplies wasn't a problem -- getting back into gear after working different jobs in order to pay them bills was.
Getting Robotech source and reference material wasn't as simple as running to the nearest comic book retailer.
First of all, most retailers out here don't carry too many back-issues of Robotech material. Not to mention there're very few published data reference books beyond the RPG manual, set of artbooks, and a few guides printed by Eternity.
Of course, there are many Japanese manuals based on the original version of Macross. However, I understand relatively few words of Japanese. And besides, those books are about as rare as a blue diamond. [Or rather, they WERE, before eBay. ^_^ --JLS]
Ulitmately, I was armed with very little material to source from. Then again, being rather undisciplined and unconventional, I'd probably ignore all the statistical data anyway.
After designing the general plot, I shortened the story form a whopping (for a single issue) 60-pages down to 24-pages. I must admit that I began thinking "four-issue-mini-series" when I topped 32-pages in the script. Hopefully, the story didn't become choppy as a result.
When I had the thumbnails roughed out, I jumped the gun and rolled out six pages of pencils along with twelve break-down layouts.
By the first week of February, I popped out a completed cover illustration, two inked pages, and some more pencils. With some help, I also created my own lettering font for this issue.
Immediately, I popped the idea over to Academy and the next thing I knew, I had a deadline hanging over me - so far so good ...
But what about the completion of the book? Certainly some rather unknown artist can't just pop otu of the woodwork and end up writing, penciling, inking and lettering a book!
There's also the cost of producing the right results, too. In order to get the right look and feel of a Japanese manga, I needed to add tone - that's the dotted patterns you see in comics that emphasizes light and shadows. Anyone who has worked with toning sheets knows it costs an arm and a leg.
There simply wasn't a budget to tone my artwork, so I improvised by attempting to balance the use of blacks adn add a lot more speedline work than I had originally intended. However, I did manage to grab a bit of discarded tone to complete a few panels.
All the computer displays were milled out from my own computer, as well as most of the sound effects. The rest of the scenes, backgrounds and such were completed by hand. I guess my adeptness in rendering did come in handy after all ...
When I did a few issues of material with Eternity, I was inking mainly with crowquills and technical pens. Of course, I wasn't too proficient with them and it slowed my pace (ink/wait-to-dry/ink/wait-to-dry/smudge/fix/etc...) as well as disrupted continuity detailing with the switching of pages to and from the drying rack. Sorry!
So for this issue, I stuck with the brush for most of the work so I could meet the deadline. I was surprised that I was actually keeping a page-per-day average. That's a page which is completely penciled, inked, and lettered.
But how did it turn out? I aimed for a hybrid style that bridged the gap between the conventional North American style and the popular Japanese manga look. In a nutshell, this is traditionally a no-man's land.
I tried to remain true to the original character designs done by Haruhiko Mikimoto over a decade ago, yet I wanted to move toward a style popularized by Katsuhiro Otomo's 1,800-page epic presented a few years back [Akira, for those not in the know --JLS].
However, these two styles don't lend well to blending with the conventional North American style. The tendency to degrade into amateuristic product was nearly inevitable. Overall, I think I did well ...
With relatively little data to work with, keeping loopholes to a minimum wans't easy. The most important aspect was the scaling. I had to remember that I had 12-meter tall mecha units running all over a 180-meter wide surface.
When you cram over 70,000 civilians and hundreds of their buildings into the SDF-1 (where hangars, engines, weaponry, crew's quarters, bulkheads, labs, mecha, storage bays, power reactors, gravity generators, environment controls, and whatever else takes up about 80% of the ship's approximate volume of 15-million meters cubed), there's very little room.
I thought that the imagery should reflect that kind of high-density living so I plunked crowds wherever I could and packed buildings closer together. Not to mention, moving buildings (even in low-gravity environments) isn't easy, so to reflect the urgence of the emergency rescue, I damaged a number of them. Well, it is a war ...
I didn't have time to run a complete continuity and logistical check. Then again, I milled this piece out in a relatively quick pace: six weeks.
From what I can recall, very few artist have single-handedly bounced out a book in a month. And even fewer have completed the task while ensuring a high quality product - something I think you'll agree that this book is.
Who knows -- maybe one day I can get some sort of regular employment writing, illustrating and lettering my own book? I hope you've enjoyed reading this book as much as I've had making it. See y'all in my next book, whatever that is!
William Jang