I came back from Glasgow, where I attended Glasgow Film Festival and talked about manga in general and my work, of course including the Story of Lee, with Paul Gravett and Sean (via Skype!), last night.
At the talk, I showed this image to the audience and explained my working process.
When I create stories by myself, I automatically know who the main characters are and how they act and react. But when I’m working with the writers, in this case Sean, I need to read the script again and again and again, then digest it until I feel familiar with the characters and understand why they act like as the writer wrote. This process is very very important to me and sometimes it takes me quite long time to go through some scripts.
Once I do this part deeply, the rest is easier. When I’m ready and feel like I can see what the characters look like and how they move etc, I naturally start making memos and sketches.
At the stage of a page arrangement, one of the most important things for me is the position of speech bubbles. They will lead the eyes of the readers and make a flow of a page and the entire story. So I am very careful where I put them.
Well, I can explain how I do forever so I’ll stop here.
At Glasgow, the talk was successful and I really enjoyed my stay.
Oh if you are around the area, you can buy a copy of the Story of Lee from Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow while the Film festival is on (and you should have lunch at the CCA cafe since they serve some wonderful meals!).
(Chie.K)