Hello everyone, happy belated New Year! (And Lunar New Year!)
This post is part of the series of reflection posts of my comics I created. Talking about what went right, what didn't work, and things I learnt in the process of making it.
As per most art talks I do about my comics, it is going to be SPOILER HEAVY!
Other posts in the series: Love Condemns Her
About Give Her Back to Me (buy it here)
Second up in the series is Give Her Back to Me, my 48pg manga about generational trauma and grief. This was created for ShortBox Comics Fair 2022, but I had the first iteration of the thumbnails completed before SBCF 2021 when I realised I wouldn't be able to finish it. I shelved the title to come up with a shorter comic that year, which was Love Condemns Her.
In 2022, I applied to Creative New Zealand's Arts Grants with the updated thumbnails of Give Her Back and received funding to complete the work for SBCF. After its initial digital release at the fair, it is now published in print through Glacier Bay Books.
If you've been following my comic works for a while, you have probably noticed that I love getting narrative inspirations from existing classic stories or folktales, as seen in Love Condemns Her (The Little Mermaid), Pearl Hunting, (Yaobikuni legend and others), Coppélia et Swanilda (ballet Coppélia). But Give Her Back to Me is one of my pieces that isn't based on or inspired by any existing works.
I don't exactly remember how I came up with the premise, but I was thinking about the dressing mirror that belonged to my late-grandmother in Japan, and I think it just organically developed from there.
I wanted to explore the concept of generational trauma as some type of curse that was passed down from one generation to the next. In this comic, it takes the physical form of a dressing mirror that has been passed down as family heirloom. I was also thinking about how depression runs in the maternal side of my family; my grandmother, then my mother, and then me.
In Give Her Back to Me, the "curse" skips a generation to some degree; Kyoko's mother Haruko. But Kyoko will forever live in fear that her daughter will be affected by or drawn to the curse, because she was not able to end the cycle with her (by physically getting rid of the mirror). I didn't want to present this as a failure in her part, or lay the blame on her for letting the potential of the curse to pass down to yet another generation. The thing about generational trauma is that even if you make an active effort into preventing the damage it does, you cannot just make it disappear completely, and it'll inevitably continue its effects in ways you cannot quantify or even be aware of. It is frighteningly permeant and all-encompassing, and as such, it's not really possible nor is it entirely the responsibility of a single individual to be able to end the cycle.
Things I like about it / Things that worked
1. Improved backgrounds
I mentioned in the first post of this series that backgrounds and environmental world building isn't one of my strong suits, and Love Condemns Her suffered for it, although the damage was minimal due to how short the story was.
In Give Her Back, I spent time researching backgrounds and amassed a gallery of reference images to draw from. Some of the types of research I did that wasn't google image search included:
Google maps street view screenshots
Watching Youtube videos of a walking tour to a specific shrine
Scouring the Cheap Houses Japan instagram to find building layouts I wanted to use
The backgrounds in this comic is probably the best I've done so far in any of my comics, because I really put in the time and effort for both the research and the rendering of them. It also helped that that the environments weren't fictional, so I just had to draw from reference most of the time and not make stuff up like the mermaid palace in Love Condemns Her.
2. Fisheye Lens
I drew with the fisheye lens effect on some backgrounds to give specific shots more impact and a certain quality of eeriness. I think this worked quite well.
I don't remember using this technique before this comic and I don't know why and how it suddenly dawned on me to use the fisheye multiple times in this work. Maybe horror movies do this and I was subconsciously mirroring this technique? Either way, several people have told me unprompted that they really liked this effect I used so I'm very happy with this.
3. Thumbnail revision
As I've mentioned before, the thumbnails for Give Her Back was created the year prior. At that point I remember the page count being 30-something. I reworked the thumbnails for the grant application and added more pages.
Notably, the scene where Kyoko's grandmother almost falls from the escalator was extended to add more significance to the scene and improve the panel flow.
I'm really glad I reworked the thumbnails, because I can't imagine this scene having the same impact with just a single page dedicated to it.
Things that didn't work / Things I learnt from my mistakes
1. Trouble depicting tatami
One of the things I struggled with drawing was the tatami (straw mats) texture. There's a way to draw them without lining every single visible straw, but I just couldn't seem to effectively do them well enough. I tried different ways to imply texture with the least amount of work but none of them stuck. This is something I'm still struggling with to this day whenever I have to draw tatami.
2. Burnout from applying to the arts grant
One of the big hurdles for completing Give Her Back was the fact that the grant application was so incredibly arduous that it burnt me out even before I started the actual work on the comic past its thumbnail stage.
The grant application has since been simplified, but you would not believe how many things they required from you in order for your application to have a chance at being seriously considered.
By the time I had to start the work, I was already exhausted. I had no time to rest after the submission and I drew the entire comic in the sludge of burnout. It made me exceedingly inefficient and I remember feeling miserable everyday. I think I never really completely recovered from it. Fortunately the application was successful and I received funding. I don't know what my mental state would've been after I did all that work for nothing.
I'm now in the process of recovering from my years-long burnout.
Outside Perspective
1. Double-flashback confusion
A friend told me that he was a bit confused when a flashback happened within a flashback. He was the only person who told me this so I don't know how universal the confusion was among my readers, but I thought I'd keep that in mind for the future.
2. Bringing back specific numbers mentioned in the introduction
I took Give Her Back to Me to be read by tabling editors at COMITIA in 2023.
One of them had told me that the fact that the specific number "six" mentioned at the beginning of the comic had bothered them because it was never repeated at the end to "bring it all together".
I thought it was pretty obvious for the reader to piece it together themselves but apparently it was something that stayed with the editor as a loose end that was never explicitly tied off.
I personally find that conventional (especially modern) manga text whether that may be dialogue or narration in Japan is over explanatory, particularly with shonen manga. So this comment here is one of those things that I truly don't know if it's actually something I should keep in mind or not unless other people come to me with similar sentiments.
Most Valuable Lessons
In conclusion, these are the highlights of the things I learnt from the experience of making Give Her Back to Me!
I sometimes cram too many panels into a single page for the first thumbnail draft. Revisiting them to expand some scenes for better impact and flow is a necessary change I have to make sometimes.
Well-drawn backgrounds do wonders to the overall mood and feel you're trying to get across. Even if it's not something I enjoy or am very good at, it's worth investing time and effort into research and the actual rendering of them.
I learnt a lot with grant application writing with this piece, although it may never be relevant again since they reworked the application process to be a lot simpler and less taxing. (Which is good!)