The Fifth Columnist finale is out out OUT! \(^.^)/

...Well, it's been out since last week, but... :3

The Fifth Columnist 2
Elex Media May 2010
114 x 172 mm, 216 pages
ISBN: 978-979-27-7329-3

The synopsis on the back read:

"A series of unfortunate events finally led Bishop to confront her partner, Helix.
But their much-anticipated duel would have to wait as a team of Soviet agents showed up to spray their apartment with bullets..."

(Thank you Niki-chan for 'helping out' with the translation! ^^)

Fifth 2 is the final volume in the Fifth series, which sees Helix's true identity revealed and Bishop's persistence/courage put to the real test. While the ending still left a few things unanswered (albeit NOT intentionally! T.T), it marks the closure of the Helix and Bishop story 'arc' first concocted back in 2004.

It goes without saying that the past few months have been such a joyride for yours truly, especially with the horde of new life-long friends made both in real life and online. I never seem to say this enough but thank you, thank you, THANK YOU again for all your support and for being such great fun! XD

And... though these are not parting gifts but... enjoy them all the same :3

Image 1: A really old manga page, ca. 2006

All done with manual tones! O.O

Image 2: An old sketch of the first scene in Fifth 1, ca. 2007


Image 3: Study of Helix in short hair, ca. 2006

His character design has changed somewhat since the beginning of the project ^^;

Image 4: One of the pages pitched to Elex editor in May 2007

This came from the scene when Bishop took Helix to safety after he was shot,
but limited space prompted me to omit this scene from volume 2 -_-" Digital tones were used.

Image 5: Light drawing of Bishop, Helix and Snatch :D

Hehehe...

Image 6, 7 and 8: Just for fun! :3





See you around! :D :D



NB: Some 18 of us had a Fifth 2 mini-launching/friend's belated birthday party event last week in Jakarta, and Cyan-san has kindly uploaded the video online! Check it out HERE! ^^

*huggles*

s

The Fifth Columnist 1 half-time assessment :)

FINALLY, IT'S OUT! *tears of joy*

After several months of waiting (which felt like forever!), the release of Fifth 1 in the Indonesian manga market on Jan 13, 2010 came like a huge relief for yours truly. This has been my first manga release and to be honest, I wasn't quite sure what to expect.

Admittedly, one of the best things about having your work out in the open (ie. displayed in the bookstores right next to Masashi Asaki/Yuma Ando's Kunimitsu and Jun Mochizuki's Pandora Hearts! >,<) is the feedback you can expect from readers -- both the negative and the positive. These precious opinions are exactly what a manga artist needs in the quest for producing better and greater things.

So, without further ado, here's a very brief summary of the real-time and real-life feedbacks on Fifth 1 hitherto (as per Jan 22):

Plus points:

* Attractive cover
* Interesting, enticing storyline
* 'Fresh' espionage theme
* Distinct drawing style, not necessarily manga-esque but not typically Indonesian

Minus points:

* Finishing: inking is often sketchy, distracting and confusing

* Story is built up to take a clichéd romantic direction

* Puzzling backstory due to large number of non-present characters

* Content does not closely resemble cover

Then, on to some interesting points:

* A majority of readers consider Helix their favourite character because he's "cool" and "gentlemanly"

* One reader expressed fascination to Bishop's bust size X3

* One reader questioned artist's motive for using a Japanese-sounding last name (how observant! ^^)

* A couple of readers thought the cover drawing is reminiscent of Manhwa-style art

Response to feedbacks:

I will definitely try my best to consider all the above points when editing Fifth 2 -- which was originally scheduled for release in February but could now come out as late as March or April! One emphasis would be on making sure that all loose ends are tied and another could be on patching up/redoing some pages to improve drawing quality (oh nooooo...)

That's it for now, my humblest gratitude to everyone who has read/bought/borrowed the book and given their comments! ^^ Feel free to add your personal opinions below; constructive criticism is always welcome :)

s

Of personalities and looks, part 1

When designing new characters these days, I always refer to Myers and Briggs' 16 classic human temperaments, which I find to have been remarkably accurate to date. Basically the whole point is to categorise your character's personality based on these four distinct groups:

1. Extraverted (E) or Introverted (I)?
2. Intuitive (N) or Sensoric (S)?
3. Thinker (T) or Feeler (F)?

4. Judger (J) or Perceiver (P)?

As a result you get 16 possible types such as ESFP ("The Performer") or INTJ ("The Scientist"), whereby each type can have sets of wildly different interests, skills and motivations. I myself happen to be an ENFP ("The Inspirer"), or so I think -__-, which I discovered after taking this really simple test.

Now, though information on these 16 types are widely available on the net, variations are abound. Personally, I've always been coming back to the analyses found on typelogic.com, because not only does it describe to you what each of the 16 types is all about, it also offers some kind of type-relationship logic to help you determine how the types interact with one another in a corresponding manner.

For example, the ENFJ and ESTP types are considered to be "Supplemental" to each other. According to typelogic, this means "each can add to the other's strengths". The ISTJ and the ESTJ types, similarly, have a "Pal" relationship, meaning that they "work and play well together with a minimal natural type conflict".

But pair up an ENFP and an INFJ and you'll have a "Contrast", which will have these two types "pointing and counterpointing on each function" -- a great tool for setting your heroes and villains apart!

What's fascinating about this logic is that it seems to work for most of my created characters and even for myself. Let's derive an example from two characters in The Fifth Columnist, Bishop and Snatch.

Image 1: Bishop giving Snatch a friendly kiss

"Hello, Snatch. Long time no see!"

Needless to say, these two look like good friends and seem to have a good chemistry going on between them, though not necessarily a sexual one (for Bishop, at least ^^). After running some personality tests, I found out that Bishop is an ENFJ while Snatch is an ESTP... so "Supplemental" it is!

When you consider that these characters were created years before I started learning about the 16 personality types, no wonder it had me chuffed!

Since I was so excited about the premise of applying this type logic on all my characters and making their interaction more believable, I made the following graph in Excel based on the information found on the typelogic website:


Image 2: 'THE' graph

If this does not look geeky to you, I don't know what does! :P

Now, here is a subsequent question which will be addressed on part 2: Does your character's personality type affect the way he/she looks?
s

Mad about inking

Each manga artist has his/her own demons, and for me that's got to be INKING. This particular process takes up the largest portion of my drawing time and even if I've been doing it for nearly two years now, for some reason I still can't get it right!

I've tried using 'real' manga pens before -- the G-pens, maru pens and saji-pens -- but being a 'Wood Rat' by birth (mind you, I don't normally believe in horoscopes, either Chinese or Western ^^), I'm bound to have my fair share of jinxes when dealing with water-based elements. So I switched to mechanical inked pens, those cheaper versions of Rotring you can normally find in any bookstore in Jakarta. Yet this still hasn't salvaged me of my inking hell.

For one, I will almost always make erronous strokes in each panel and end up having to use up bottle after bottle of Pentel's blue metal-tipped white-out, which almost certainly runs out after a chapter of 32-36 pages or so (or up to two chapters if I'm lucky).

Not only does it bug me to have to wait for the white-out to dry before continuing to ink, some pen brands SMUDGE VERY EASILY when applied on white-out, which deserves its own rant (read: blog post) some time in the future.

Also, the build-up of thick white-out layer on the drawing paper makes it difficult to create smooth lines afterwards. Of course, you can always clean it up digitally on Photoshop, but this takes up valuable time which could have been used for rendering dialogues and speech balloons (yet another manga artist demon).

An example is as follows:


Image 1: Raw scan converted to grayscale


As you can see, plenty of 'defects' here, even when the image is scaled down to fit standard pocket manga dimensions.


Image 2: Cleaned up in Photoshop


See the uneven strokes on his eyebrows? Those were inked on thick build-ups of white-out. So were the two strands of fringe on the right, which resulted in those rather greyish pseudo-strokes (don't know what to call them!) If you guessed that the neck and shoulder part were also inked on white-out... you guessed right! Cleaning up has taken its toll on my patience :(

...All this, and we haven't even touched on the problem of transparent blue underdrawings? Oh well, there's always another post.
s