Category: comics

AnimeNYC 2024 – Come see me!

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Manga Lettering Round Table, at AnimeNYC, Sunday August 25th, 12pm, room 1A15


HELLOOOOOOOO. Good news! I’ll be taking part in an awesome panel at AnimeNYC, next Sunday! It’ll be my first time attending (and first time in New York in eight years) and I’ll be speaking with some amazing manga letterers and we’ll be answering audience questions. My fellow manga letterers:

● Sara Linsley (@salinsley) – host of the panel
Dandadan, Sweat & Soap, Revolutionary Girl Utena: After the Revolution
● Brandon Bovia (@brandonbovia)
Dragon Ball Super, Kaiju No. 8, Beyblade: X
● Barri Shrager (@omgitsbarri)
Sword Oratoria, Hikaru in the Light, Mecha-Ude
● Lys Blakeslee
Witch Hat Atelier, Yona of the Dawn, Noragami

Our panel will be Sunday August 25, at 12pm, in Room 1A15.

If you’re at the convention, please do stop by and check out the panel, and say hi! I’m pretty stoked about the panel, the convention, and taking a few days off for a New York visit. My wife & son will be with me on the trip (we’re driving all the way from Toledo!) and we’ll be fitting in a little around-town fun while there. I’ll be at the con a couple of the days at least, wandering around and meeting people who I’ve worked with on various books over the years, but never previously met IRL. Last year, Ohayocon was a pretty inspiring event for me to attend, and my first time on a panel (and first anime con since I was 18 yrs old.) I think AnimeNYC will be pretty inspiring too 🙂

PS: Shout-out to Sara Linsley for the header image and of course for putting the whole event together!

MUSIC / 音楽 / ΜΟΥΣΙΚΗ / ดนตรี / संगीतं

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I just finished fully integrating my music into the site, after having it as a separate site for a long time. I haven’t had time to actually make any music for a long time now, but I’ve been going nuts wanting to, and invested in some new equipment and made a nice little home music studio setup in preparation for hopefully having some time later this year. When I finally do make brand new music, it’ll be under a new name, with new gear, new software, and a new sound. Figured a new, prettier, more in-depth site would fit that well! Click above, or here to go check it out!

Also, I added my old pre-2000 albums to the Archive page, just in case you want to read about and see art from my bizarre old “Evil Eye” albums.

There are probably some little errors I need to fix here and there, and I also plan on adding more later, but I have another avalanche of manga work coming up, so this is good for now. Catch you on the flipside!

PS: I’ll be coming to AnimeNYC for the first time, this August! I have no idea what my financial / time situation will be like then, but I got a badge, so I’ll figure it out. no set plans now, but if I end up doing any panels or other events, I’ll post more info on that later!

Ohayocon 2023 in Columbus OH – Come see me!

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HEY MIDWEST MANGA MANIACS! I’m taking part in a couple panels at Ohayocon in Columbus this Saturday, 1/21/2023 (I’ve tabled at cons, but this is my first time as a panelist!)

  • 10am – A213-215 (Panel 5): The Manga “Panel”!
  • 4:30pm – A210-212 (Panel 4): Breaking into the Localization Industry

I will be on the panel with talented fellow manga industry folks:

Kristine Johnson (@Kristine_JE)
Lead project manager at J-Novel Club & Japanese-English translator
Jennifer Sherman (@jaasherman)
Editor at Square Enix Manga & Books.

I’m very grateful to them for inviting me to join in on the talks and am looking forward to meeting them IRL!

If you’re near Columbus and going to the convention, come stop by one of the panels! I used to get stage fright really bad as a kid, but I mostly got over it. Come there in person to witness whether it’s come back, so many years after my first time speaking in front of a crowd, haha. I’ll be at the con all day and am looking forward to meeting fellow lovers of all things manga!

Barefoot Gen cover designs

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Barefoot Gen cover designs

Last year I had the great honor of redesigning the outer sleeves for Last Gasp’s 2016 Kickstarter campaign edition of Keiji Nakazawa’s “Barefoot Gen”. The first four volumes were released in hardcover form to backers, and donated to libraries and schools. Over time, the softcover versions of all ten volumes will be replaced by new editions with my designs. Click here or the above preview to see the sleeves larger and in detail.

 

For these covers, I scanned-in many interesting and emotional panels from my copies of the 1985 run of the Japanese edition. My books are old and weathered, and I decided to retain that for the images in my final design(hence the back cover of volume 3 having some damage, for example.) For the logo, I made that in sumi ink with a large brush.

 

I’m very proud of these designs, and very much enjoyed seeing the hardcovers in print, and am looking forward to seeing the softcover editions when they are in print. Barefoot Gen is an extremely important and historic work of art, and I’m happy I got to take part in its new print run.

Lots of manga lettering!

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Lots of manga lettering!

Hey everyone! A couple years ago, I added examples of my manga lettering work to the site. Since then, I’ve done a lot more books (I’ve lettered 60 manga volumes to date!), but never really had the time to show examples of that newer stuff here. Well, I just posted a TON of samples of my lettering work, showcasing a wide range of techniques. You can see the extremely complex and challenging lettering tasks I’ve taken on on Real Account, the large amount of hand-written work I’ve done on Forget Me Not, the all-by-hand lettering I do on Land of the Lustrous, the crazy action-packed sound effects of Ninja Slayer Kills, and other fun stuff! Also, check out the work I’ve done on dream-come-true projects such as Akira (for the upcoming 35th anniversary box set), Die Wergelder, and The Osamu Tezuka Story. I’m still in disbelief that I got to work on Akira. I’ve been a big fanboy for that series since I was 13 years old! Also, feel free to take a look at some of the pages for manga that I’d previously posted here, such as Sankarea and Maria: The Virgin Witch, since I overhauled the pages and added new examples. I think in general, the stuff I chose to share gives a good example of my range as a letterer, and I’m excited to finally have something convenient to show to family and friends who are curious what I do. Oh and btw, I went out of my way to avoid using images that are spoilers, so if you’re a manga fan, don’t worry about having stories ruined for you when looking. While you’re checking out the samples, feel free to follow the links on each page to buy the books from their respective publishers! More manga selling means dinner on my table.

 

Anyway, you may notice that I’ve changed the location of my manga lettering pages from the Design gallery, to the Comics gallery. Even though I do plenty of design work as part of my manga job, as a whole it seemed like it would fit in better in the Comics gallery, not to mention adding a little life to that page (since I never seem to have time to make my own comics.) Go ahead and check out the Comics gallery to see everything, but if you want a handy little list of all the titles reflected there, here you go!:

 

Akira  |  Barbara  |  Cat Diary: Yon & Mu  |  Complex Age  |  Die Wergelder  |  Forget Me Not
The Ghost and the Lady  |  Land of the Lustrous  |  Livingstone  |  Maria: The Virgin Witch
Ninja Slayer Kills  |  The Osamu Tezuka Story  |  Panorama Island  |  Real Account
Sankarea  |  That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime  |  Tokyo Zombie

 

PS: I also relettered a volume of Battle Angel Alita: Last Order a couple of years ago (another dream title, seeing as the original Battle Angel Alita is what introduced me to manga in the first place), but since I just handled dialog balloons, I figured there wasn’t too much to show of that.

 

What else is new? Since last I typed here, I had a crazy busy month of work, then a lot of preparation for my wedding, then the big day itself, then showing my parents around Japan for a couple weeks during their first visit here, then a couple weeks of recharging my batteries, then more work. I’m in a brief time of respite at the moment, then back to more work soon. I have another post ready to share with you soon, however, about another neat comic-related thing I worked on. Stay tuned!

Tatemae / 建前

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Tatemae

Hey everyone! I’m, uhhhh, not DEAD. I finally made a new illustrated-photography piece. (Well, I made a quick one two years ago in ink over inkjet print, but this is my first digital one since 2013.)

 

Honne (本音) and tatemae (建前) are Japanese words used to describe the contrast between one’s personal feelings (honne) and the facade that one presents to the world (tatemae). While it certainly depends on the person, in Japan it’s often difficult to get past the wall that people put up and get to know someone’s true feelings. Generally this “wall” is a friendly one, mind you, but sometimes not genuine. I don’t think this is a uniquely Japanese thing, and I think we all conceal parts of our true feelings. I thought I’d explore this idea a bit since I find it both fascinating and frustrating.

 

One thing I often found unsettling while teaching English in Japan was how many of my students would wear a mask, not just when they were sick, but in general. Some kids wore it every day. Once in a while, during flu season, I’d walk into a jr high classroom and every single kid would be wearing one, and I’d be unable to fully “read” their social cues. I think for most people it’s a matter of stopping germ transfer when a bug is going around, but for the folks who wear them every day, it seems like the tatemae mask takes on a literal form.

 

Anyway, as usual these days for a lot of my art, you can pop on over to Society6 to order a print of it, or cell phone case, pillows, tote bags, whatevs!

 

In other news, this has been a crazy busy year so far with manga lettering, but pretty front-loaded. From now on I’ll have a bit more free time here and there to make more art and hopefully music. One of these days, I badly need to update the lettering section of my design page since it only reflects four of the 17 different manga series I’ve lettered, but that’ll have a wait a bit more. Right now, after a nice stay-cation, it’s time to get to work on the next book.

 

I will say, I got to work on a dream project earlier this year. I got to re-letter Akira for the 35th anniversary boxed set that Kodansha is putting out this fall! It was amazing! I’ve always deeply loved that manga, and it was a huge inspiration on me growing up, and to be able to observe Otomo’s art with the level of intimacy that working with it on my own computer brought, was a truly special experience. More on that later.

Looking back on Project Orion, and my history in and around comics

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Project Orion: a restrospective, 1993-1997
(I meant to make this post on July 15th 2016, a special day, but life got crazy-busy. Oh well, better late than never. I’ll explain the significance of that date soon enough.) (Also, in case you’re reading this several years later, something broke in my WordPress files and it’s jamming all the paragraphs together. Sorry if it’s a little hard to read because of that. I’ll fix it when I have time. )

When I was in middle school and high school, I used to draw a ton of comics. I’d usually crank out an issue per month, full-color, and sometimes two. I started several series, all of which were seen by only friends and family, and the occasional comic artist I was getting a portfolio review from. I had big dreams of exploding upon the comics world as soon as I graduated and finding a spot in said world for my manga-influenced comics – a sort of rare thing in the states, in the mid-90s. Various things eventually kept this from happening… the realities of life… I started college and didn’t have time to make comics. My interest in photography became a full-on passion and pushed the comics aside and I took on new hobbies like making music. I started having a social life in high school, and later in college at techno & house music nights. I started enjoying dating girls as opposed to just wishing I could be less awkward and shy. …aaaand my confidence in my artistic abilities and ability to network waned, but let’s keep this post positive. Anyway, let’s rewind…
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Belladonna of Sadness

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Belladonna of Sadness

Hello everyone! Long time no type. I’ve been back in Michigan for about four months now and haven’t posted anything on here because my comic lettering job has been keeping me so busy I haven’t had time to make personal art. Well, I did carve out some time at the end of March to make something, and I’m finally posting it now. Click above, or HERE to see the full pic!

 

I created this for an art contest for the Cinelicious Pics release & remastering of  “Belladonna of Sadness”, Mushi Productions’ final film. It was a lot of fun to create and to experiment more with paint, a media which I don’t often use. Anyway, before you click that link, note that this one has nudity and is NSFW / 18+, like the film that it’s based off of. I’d recommend if you didn’t catch the film on its limited art house cinema tour, to pick up that Blu-Ray!

 

As for when I’ll have more art to show you, no idea… Still in a glut of work for the next few months so I can’t promise anything, but I would recommend you pick up any of the following book series, as I’ve worked on them recently and/or currently! Die Wergelder, Junji Ito’s Cat Diary, Sankarea (I did vol 2 & up), Maria: The Virgin Witch, Livingstone, Real Account, Forget Me Not, Ninja Slayer Kills, Complex Age, & The Osamu Tezuka Story.

Panorama Island – out now!

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Panorama IslandIn other news, “Panorama Island”, a manga that Ryan Sands and I adapted into English is now available! It’s being put out by Last Gasp, and is now available to purchase in lots of different places, such as directly from Last Gasp, or via Amazon, for example. It was a dream project to work on, since it’s a Maruo comic, based off of an Edogawa Ranpo story. The book came out beautifully, and is a nice big hardcover. Here’s what Amazon has to say about the story.
On a remote and mysterious island, one man builds a playground of hedonistic excess – replete with waterfalls, grand palaces, and gardens – a backdrop for his decadent feasts, orgies, and dark secrets. Set in 1920s Japan, The Strange Tale of Panorama Island follows the twisted path of failed novelist Hitomi, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the son of a rich industrialist family. Hitomi learns of the rich man’s sudden passing and creates a desperate plan. He fakes his own death, digs up and hides the other man’s body, and then washes himself up starving on a beach near the home of the dead man’s family. After successfully impersonating the now-dead son, Hitomi takes over all aspects of the industrialist’s life, including his company, his fortune, and eventually his wife. The failed author soon redirects the family’s wealth to his own perverse aims. A graphic novel based on the revered novella by Edogawa Rampo. Rampo was the godfather of Japanese pulp mysteries. Stunning artwork by master manga artist Suehiro Maruo deftly illustrates this Japanese pulp classic in fine detail. * 13th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize for New Artist

 

I handled the lettering, touch-up, and book design, while Ryan handled the editing. Ryan and Kyoko Nitta did translation. Pick up a copy and enjoy it 🙂