Blast from the Past: “Creating Tonoharu” Series

Man, I completely forgot about this week’s blog entry. I had to work on Saturday, that threw off my whole weekend routine, so the blog entry totally slipped my mind.

Anyway, no time to write an entry now, since it’s already past overdue… so instead, here’s a series of entries I wrote in 2007-2008 about the creation of Tonoharu. They were posted so far back I assume many people haven’t seen them, so there you go!

Creating Tonoharu–#1: Laying The Groundwork
Creating Tonoharu–#2: The Idea
Creating Tonoharu #3–Writing the Script
Creating Tonoharu #4–The Design (1/3)
Creating Tonoharu #5–The Design (2/3)
Creating Tonoharu #6–The Design (3/3)
Creating Tonoharu #7–The Drawing
Creating Tonoharu #8–Inking
Creating Tonoharu #9–Computer Stuff
Creating Tonoharu #10–Final Edits

“Tonoharu: Part Three” Progress Report (Summer 2014)

tono3progressummer2014

The last Tonoharu: Part Three progress report was written in 2012. Wow. I mean, I’ve never been super diligent about updating, but that’s ridiculous even for me.

As one would hope, I’ve made a lot of headway since then. In fact, just last weekend I passed a pretty significant milestone. The artwork for Tonoharu: Part Three proper is now done.

This is really awesome of course, but unfortunately I still have a ways to go. The third and final volume of Tonoharu will be made up not only of Part Three proper, but also a set of appendices and an epilogue. These sections will be comprised of about 54 pages of comics, and I still have those left to draw.

If I’m able to finish a page a week (a big “if”, but I’ll do my best), the remaining pages will take a little over a year to draw. Then once all the artwork is “done”, I need to do all the post-production edits. Those edits shouldn’t be nearly as extensive as with the last two volumes of Tonoharu, but they’ll still take time. Those, along with the cover design, should take… six months maybe? Then I’ll work with the book printer and wait for them to produce and ship the books and blah blah blah. That’ll probably be another six months or so I would guess.

So at present, I’m projecting that Tonoharu: Part Three will be available for purchase in about two years, so Summer 2016. Amazingly, this is the same projection I made twenty months ago. Usually my projected release dates keep getting pushed back ad infinitum, so it’s encouraging I’ve actually managed to have one hold this long.

I’ll do another Tonoharu: Part Three progress update entry next year sometime I hope. Or if you prefer, I tweet every time I finish a page, so you can follow me on Twitter if you prefer updates that are more frequent and less meaningful.

But next week, I’m going to have the first major artwork sneak peek from the new book. Exciting! Stay tuned!

The Future is Now (and it’s cheesy)

My parents bought a used Prius a few months ago, and I saw it when I visited America this summer. The dashboard display reminded me of a cheesy, unrealistic display you’d see in sci-fi movie from the 80s. Just look at this:

prius1

Everything about this looks fake to me. The weird, segmented gauge on the right, all the random little numbers and abbreviations… but the icing on the cake is the phrase “Hybrid System Indicator”. I mean, really? It just reeks of meaningless, high-tech-sounding nonsense.

Even funnier is the secondary “Energy Monitor” display. Check this out:

prius2

Doesn’t that look like something from Total Recall or something?

I suspect part of the reason for the Prius’ dashboard design is rooted in the whole “life imitates art” thing. They probably wanted something that looked high-tech, so what better way to evoke that than with a design that looks like it came from a sci-fi movie? I probably would have drawn inspiration from movies that came out after Reagan left office, but whatever, to each his own.

Either way, I hereby deem this little piece of reality to be unrealistic.

Thrilling “Tonoharu: Part Three” Chase Scene!


Whoops! Between jetlag and trying to get back into the swing of life in Japan, another week slipped through my fingers and I didn’t have time to compose a blog entry again. So here’s a some Tonoharu: Part Three art.

I’ll try to have something a little more substantial next week!