Jan 25, 2011

HK '97

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Art & story: J. Piira

Imagine a situation like this; you are eleven panels short from finishing a big graphic novel project which has been in the making since the last August, but then you run out of art paper and pens you use for it and the payday is too far away to replenish the supplies in the short term. Still you want to do something instead of twiddling your thumbs. What to do? Why not resurrect a 14-year old idea for a short graphic novel, inspired by segments of Wong Kar-Wai's movie 'Fallen Angels' you had just seen back then (big surprise here, "inspired by Wong Kar-Wai", eh?), revise the script and draw it on other papers which had been lying dormant for 2,5 years. You also want to save your suitably worn-out brush pencil you draw the big project delicately with, so you adopt a different drawing style with other pen and use bold lines, and assail with colors you rarely use. And there you have it. A fill-in job to satisfy your creative needs, a bit like how Robert Zemeckis directed 'What Lies Beneath' while waiting for Tom Hanks to lose weight in order to continue filming 'Castaway'. Er, yeah... With this I don't mean this little story of a hitgirl is any less of importance than other stories herein.

A bonus for those interested in comic scripts/layouts. Here's how the script for HK '97 looks like. Yes, really, that's all there's to it. I couldn't find the original layouts from 1997, it would have been interesting to see them now, so I adapted the scenes from the memory.

2 comments:

NePaul Wilson said...

Just as the title says, it's much more graphic than your usual works and goes for a much more nitty gritty feeling not just in what it shows, but the way it was created. I really enjoy how it tells a story with little to no words, but by envoking emotion and with facial features, which is something I've come to adore and expect from your work.

Also it's even better than you have a layout on your work, haha I always love seeing those.

Nice nod to House of The Dead, at least I think that's house of the Dead.

Shunichiro said...

Thanks again! The game indeed is the original House of the Dead from 1997, and I did the panel exactly as I had planned it back in '97!

The first drawing I did for this story was the one where we see the girl's face for the first time, when she fires her gun. Everything else was pretty much built around it but still faithfully following my original story as much as placing the event to happen in 1997! I have sort of a sequel in the works, with different character, settings and time, and again I started it from the picture where we shall see the hit-person's face for the first time.