The April issue of Mania, #71, is now out, featuring a story with Tanuki effectively going solo. It also brings back that boy from Sk8brd Tanuki, so he's now an ongoing character for this series.

The concept for this one is pretty straightforward. It was an interesting process, because the story started life as a one pager (which I never finished inking), then I rescripted it as a two pager, and it finished up as four pages. While it's fairly simple, I think the final result is the ideal length.

Of course, I made one minor mistake in the finishing stages, but most people I've showed this to can't spot it. No matter how hard you scour printouts of your story before submission, some minor thing seems to get through. I used to wonder why other people let this happen - now I know :).

This is the brightest colour scheme I've used in print yet, centred around almost primaries. I was overjoyed with the result - it practically glows in the magazine. This isn't to say I'll always work similarly. The boy character usually requires a red of some sort for consistency (on his hat), whereas I often work in a palette that excludes reds.

I'm playing around with colour schemes a lot in these episodes. The one I'm currently working on is much more subdued - I wasn't even sure I liked it until I started placing the colours on the pages.

The little purple guy in the pic at left is the same robot seen floating in the bath in OzTaku #1.2, so possibly another ongoing character...

Labels: Mania, Moth and Tanuki