Updated Every Monday.
Here are a few images from a festival scene in my forthcoming graphic novel Tonoharu: Part Two. If ever you wondered why the book took more than two years to draw, here’s your answer…
Tonoharu: Part Two will be coming out this November.
For more information, visit:
larsmartinson.com/tonoharu2
Progress Bar Key
Story/Artwork: The Story, Drawing, Inking, and Computer Work
Final Edits: Post-Production Edits
Incidentals: Designing the Cover, Preparing for Press, etc.
I’m please to announce that Tonoharu: Part Two is, for all intents and purposes, finally DONE! I’ll need to make little changes once I talk to the printer and find out the spine width and stuff (hence the 5% still missing from the Incidentals bar). But other than that, it’s all ready for release.
It feels weird that I don’t have to work on it anymore. Tonoharu: Part Two has become a part of my routine; for almost three years, I’ve worked on it daily, usually for hours at a stretch. It’d be like if someone told you that you had completed the task of “brushing your teeth”, and didn’t have to do it again for the rest of your life.
Now that Tonoharu: Part Two is all wrapped up, I’m going to ramp up pre-publication marketing, and start talking with printers. There are also a few other projects I’ve been meaning to get in some work on, which I’ll write about some other time. And then I can always get started on Tonoharu: Part Three (sigh).
Next week I’ll posting artwork from one of the book’s hardest-to-draw scenes. Stay tuned!
More about Tonoharu: Part Two can be found here:
larsmartinson.com/tonoharu2
(Very Mild) Spoiler Alert: This entry discusses the story of Tonoharu: Part Two in abstract terms. Unless you’re really spoiler-adverse you should be fine; I won’t be going over specific plot points or anything. But if you’d rather not know the overall direction the story is going in, this entry would best be skipped.
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One of my main objectives in creating Tonoharu is to paint a portrait of what it’s like to live in a foreign country for an extended period of time.
Several friends who read Tonoharu: Part One told me they had no idea I had such a terrible time in Japan. Actually I had a wonderful experience, but I can understand why they’d assume otherwise. The first book focuses almost exclusively on the loneliness and isolation that are a part of any prolonged stay in a foreign country. But this isn’t the entirety of the experience; in Tonoharu: Part Two, I try to show other facets of life abroad, with a particular focus on the relationships that develop.
In your home country, your pool of potential friends is almost unlimited. You can pick and choose who you spend time with based on compatibility and shared interests.
But in a foreign country, the language barrier prevents meaningful interaction with the vast majority of the population. In the rural areas of countries where English education is poor (such as the Japanese countryside, the setting of Tonoharu), your pool of potential friends can be in the single digits. You either spend time with whoever is around, or you do without human companionship.
If you absolutely can’t stand the people who make up your minuscule friend pool, this can suck. But just as often it can be a blessing in disguise. It forces you into the company of people you’d probably otherwise never socialize with, which allows you to see the world through the eyes of people whose interests, beliefs and outlooks are very different from your own. In this way, even spending time with other foreigners can be a horizon-broadening aspect of life abroad.
Tonoharu: Part Two will be coming out this November. For more information, visit:
larsmartinson.com/tonoharu2
RANmagazine, a free English magazine based out of Nagoya, ran a two-page interview with me about Tonoharu in their July/August issue.
The interview begins on page 32; it’s available online at:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/33650987/RANmagazine-Issue-6-July-August-2010
My thanks to RAN and to reporter Adam Pasion for the coverage!
I’ll probably make some tweaks before the book goes to press, but I’m pretty much done with the front cover of Tonoharu: Part Two, so I thought I’d share it. A higher resolution version can be found here.
I’ve previously written about my design choices for the covers of Tonoharu here, so rather than repeat myself, I’ll send interested parties to that entry if you’d like more details.
I’ve also created a dedicated page about Tonoharu: Part Two, which can be found here:
I’ll update that regularly with any Tonoharu: Part Two news that comes up, so bookmark it if you’re interested.
And while I’m at it, I may as well throw in an updated progress bar graphic, for those of you who are keeping score at home:
Progress Bar Key
Story/Artwork: The Story, Drawing, Inking, and Computer Work
Final Edits: Post-Production Edits
Incidentals: Designing the Cover, Preparing for Press, etc.
That’s it. Back to work!
At long last, I’m ready to commit to a concrete release period for Tonoharu: Part Two! The book will be out by November of this year.
I know this is probably later than you’d hope; it only barely makes my self-imposed deadline of “sometime this year”, and is a far cry from “late summer”, a release period I had brandished about before.
But after seeing how long things were taking to finish up, and realizing I needed to ramp up prepublication marketing at least few months before the book actually came out, November emerged as the earliest I could reasonably put the book out.
Depending on how things go, I may have copies by October; we’ll see how things progress. Any updates will be posted to this site, so stay tuned!
