"Kurenai Mashin" is japanese
for "crimson devil". I call it "KM"
for short. I also use "KM" when I refer to
the main character, since it's his name. Ah, confusion.
How I love thee.
The comic updates used to update
every Monday (at least, as much as I was able), but
given life, liberty and the vortex called "school",
KM has now switched to a random schedule. I will try
my darndest to get an update out every couple of weeks.
In order to keep updated on new comics and KM news,
join the mailing
list.
There are four main reasons
(and to think I actually started out with two :3).
Firstly, though trying to maintain a regular schedule
these past few years has vastly improved my art, it
has, perversely, also made my art suffer. One needs
only go through the archives to see great pages followed
by pages make my eyes burn. I'm a perfectionist by nature,
but with the regular schedule I often sacrificed a perfect
page for a perfect schedule. In the end, I didn't achieve
either. Why, you ask? Good question. This brings me
to the second reason.
I'm a student whose life for the next couple of years
will consist of school in the morning, school in the
afternoon, and school in the evening. And if I'm really
lucky, school in my dreams. My program is basically
a full-time job. Except that instead of wages, I get
homework, which explains why most of my evenings won't
be free either. KM's a hobby of mine and I love it to
bits, but a regular schedule would not be conducive
to sanity or a passing grade.
Thirdly, I'm away from home
all summer, and though I'll be churning out all the
pages I can, I won't have access to a scanner. Which
means a regular schedule would be impossible even if
I spent all my waking hours working on KM.
Finally, I'm working on a joint
anthology which I want to make as professional as possible.
More details about this later.
I blame it on an overdose of anime/Megatokyo/online
Japanese dictionaries. When I first started the comic,
I believed, naively, that a sprinkling of Japanese vocabulary
would work in a comic that took place outside Japan
(heck, the story doesn't even take place on Earth!).
When I grew out of that phase, the use of random Japanese
became a rather frivolous homage to the elements that
most inspired the creation of Kurenai Mashin. I have
since stopped injecting random Japanese into the mouths
of my characters, but there are a few Japanese terms
I've decided to continue using. Some of them are names,
such as the "Kurenai Mashin". Others belong
to that wonderful class of Japanese name suffixes (ie.
"-san", "-chan" etc), because they
bring another level to the characterization.
Creator/writer/artist. And yes, it's spelt "bluebug",
"bb" for short. No capitals, I'm funny that
way. I started the comic way back in 2001, first on
Geocities, and then I moved to Keenspace. KM is a project
that I hope to see from beginning to end. It's a nice
epic story that goes on for a quite a while and takes
many twists and turns along the way. The story is pretty
hard to describe because it takes the characters over
a long, complex journey whose focus sharply changes
directions a few times. I first started using an "anime"
like style in 1999 and I've been working on my style
ever since.
Likes :
|
ANIME
|
| Naruto, Full
Metal Alchemist, Ghost in the Shell, Monster,
Bleach, Hikaru No Go |
|
MOVIES
|
| LOTR (I,II,III),
Matrix (II and III sucked), Gladiator, Donnie
Darko, Shawshank Redemption, Boondocks
Saints |
|
AUTHORS
|
| Tad Williams,
Charles deLint, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Louise
Erdrich, Terry Pratchet |
|
FOOD
|
| Tapioca, Spicy
food, sleep (who needs food when you can sleep!),
art (I can easily go without meals when
I'm working on a piece of art) |
|
|
|
Dislikes :
|
MISC
|
| Pink, creepy
crawlies, zombies, scary movies/scary stories/
creepy people :P |
|
Former part-time artist for KM. QG for short.
She did some pages for KM from September 2003-September
2004 when I lost half my soul to school. Which means
I only have one 8th of my soul left, having sold the
rest of it for chocolate long long ago.
It takes me about 10+ hours to make
a page. That includes the sketching, inking, CG work.
Rurouni Kenshin is the most obvious
influence overall. The idea of a killer assassin was
born from a melding of Kenshin and Musashi (a real life
samurai). But look past the katanas and the billowy
pants and you'll see a story rooted in fantasy and betrayal.
KM isn't a story about one assassin and his many epic
fights. That's only one arc of the story. I hope that
those who read the comic will be able to take a step
back and see the many facets of the story.
The other influences have all melded
together ... I'm sure there are elements of Inuyasha
and Lord of the Rings in it as well.
Like a lot of artists out there,
I had very little formal training. I've loved drawing
for as long as I could remember and throughout my life
I've learned by trial by error. Most of my improvement
has stemmed from drawing the comic by virtue of sheer
volume and experimentation.
Ask away in the forum
or by email.
bluebug = kurenaimashin(at)yahoo.com
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