Chrono Trigger is a Japanese role-playing game that was released on the Super NES gaming system back in 1995. As an avid JRPG player at that time, I eagerly anticipated its release. I was already a big fan of the Final Fantasy series of games, and since the same company––Squaresoft (now Square Enix)––was releasing Chrono Trigger, I had unreasonably high expectations. The weird thing is that it easily surpassed those expectations.
Frog by Chrono Trigger artist, Akira Toriyama Source: Square Enix
The previous Final Fantasy game, Final Fantasy VI, captured my imagination with its incredibly developed and nuanced characters, its complicated, thoughtful, and powerful story, and––at the time––breathtaking graphics. Chrono Trigger upped the ante by promising that––and time travel!––while also bringing in famous manga artist, Akira Toriyama (most famous for creating the Dragonball series), to design the characters.
A scene from Chrono Trigger on the Super NES. Source: Square Enix
While a bit more “cutesy” at times, Chrono Trigger matched the metric established by Final Fantasy VI and integrated things like more interesting combat systems and time travel mechanics.
But, for me, it’s the characters that stand out. Always drawn to the tragic, I became a big fan of the character Frog. He was a human knight who was transformed into an anthropomorphized frog after failing to save commander from dying at the hands of the villain and barely fought back when his fate was cast upon him. Come to think of it, he shares a lot of similarities with Cyan Garamonde, my favorite character from Final Fantasy VI.
All that being said, it’s sometimes also just fun to draw frogs doing silly things like holding a sword.
A long time ago, I dreamed of being an animator. I took classes and even got hired as an animation intern for a startup video game company (that never ended up releasing anything).
I learned quickly that hand-drawn animation is hard. It takes a lot of drawings to make something animate smoothly. To be a good animator, you had to be able to draw fast––a skill I lack even today. At the company I interned for, I was moved from animation to character design and storyboarding before the company shifted its focus entirely.
Despite never being a good animator, its philosophiesandprocesses created the foundation for not only my aesthetic but how I create characters and pages. While I call may call myself a comicker, in my head I am a failed animator.
I’ve talked a lot about using theartprogramProcreateontheiPad lately, and how I’m using it as a way to speed up some processes while also being a tool to jump-starting my creativity.
Procreate is a really impressive art program; I’m finding it more user-friendly and reliable than the Photoshop I use on my desktop computer at this point. It also has a built-in animation feature––not the playback function that I’ve used to make process videos of previous Sketch Fridays. After seeing impressive examples of animation people have posted online, I decided to try and figure out how it worked and, within about an hour and a half, I had a pretty good pencil test of Long John turning around:
The first bit I animated.
I created it in as traditional a manner as possible, drawing rough key frame poses––the main poses for the sequence––and then, based on how fast or slow I wanted him to move between each pose, I drew a reasonable amount of drawings between them (literally called “inbetweening“). All of these drawings were very rough––basic shapes and forms––drawn with the equivalent of a crayon or marker in Procreate. Once I was happy with the basic movement, I went back through and drew a more detailed drawing of each frame, doing my best to make sure essential elements and details were as consistent as possible between them.
Later that day––energized by the results––I added in some rough animation that had Long John run off the screen.
The first bit with rough running animation added to the end.
By the end of that rough running animation, I put the iPad down and thought, “Okay, I got that out of my system.” It was at least three hours of work for this very short and very flawed bit of animation. A few days later, I realized that I probably wouldn’t add any more to the animation, so I owed it to the sequence to go in and tighten up those rough frames.
While fun, this experiment confirmed that while I have the heart and head of an animator, I still don’t have the patience for it. This three-second bit contains over thirty drawings and a lot of critical thinking and happy accidents. If anything, it’s good drawing practice, a way to push myself when it comes to finding poses and angles to have ready for when I may have to draw something similar––for a single panel––in the comic. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll feel the itch again.
This nightmare is actually a composite of all 30+ frames of the above animation seen at once. Click image to see a larger version.
Normally, these posts are meant to celebrate the year that just ended. However, 2020 ended up a year not really worth celebrating; instead, 2020 became a year to survive and move past. Below is a list of the things that defined Long John over this very strange and difficult year.
VOLUME 4 RELEASED
For as low as 2020 got, without a doubt the personal high was with the publication of Volume 4 of Long John, collecting the entirety of Chapter 4 “Dead Words” and a new, all-exclusive 10-page Hellrider Jackie story, “The Patient Feast,” which brings back Josh Tobey as artist, reprising his duties from the previous Jackie story, “Save the Bones”, in Volume 1.
What made this book stand apart from the rest is that it was incredibly fun to make the entire way through. As said before, it was certainly the fastest a new book has been made since Volume 1 and sets the bar high for the series going forward.
I also can’t ignore the videos I made for each page, cinematically presenting the chapter panel-by-panel and set to music. I don’t talk much about music on this website, but it’s been a part of my life for over twenty years, and writing music––even short, minute-long pieces––was incredibly fun and something I’ll continue to do going forward (and maybe backward!). Writing the music and editing the videos stretched a creative muscle I don’t get to use very often, and really helped express the tone of the comic and that chapter in yet another potent way.
I also tried a short-term preorder that I think worked well––offering different bundle options at different prices, borrowing a model found in crowdfunding without actually running a crowdfunding campaign. I think, if pushed even harder (and if run for longer) it could prove even more successful for future releases and will definitely be doing going forward. Thank you, again, to all who preordered!
eBooks have long been on my mind. First, I discounted them––Long John is already a webcomic, why would anyone want an eBook version? Of course, a high resolution pdf is infinitely better than reading a book page by page on a website, waiting as every page loads in. Plus, the eBooks would have all the content found in the physical books. So, 2020 also saw the release of all the books as eBooks on Gumroad for only $5 each.
They were a challenge to make, but very rewarding when completed when you see them fill the screen on a tablet (I even slightly reworked all the covers, adding the chapter titles to them; Volume 1’s cover was the most reworked of the four).
COLLABORATION
Although this folds into the Volume 4 column a bit, this marked a banner year for seeing other people’s visions of Long John. Making this comic is a solitary venture and one that you could become precious with. So, it was an honor to allow such creative people whose talent I respect so much into the world of Long John.
I have had the pleasure of knowing John for awhile and was always impressed by his artistic flexibility and perpetual desire to try new things. He’s also one of the nicest guys in the world and I was lucky to have him ink and color a pinup for Volume 4 over my layouts as well as do some digital inks and colors over the “cover” page for the Hellrider Jackie short story in Vol. 4, “The Patient Feast” that will be made available as a print at future shows:
John’s enthusiasm and incredible eye for line and color is always inspired, even more so when he’s using those talents to bring Long John to life. In terms of art, aside from Josh Tobey, John is the only other person I’ve collaborated with artistically and it was surprisingly easy. I look forward to working with him more at some point in the future.
Josh Tobey
Of course, I can’t omit the fact that Josh Tobey returned to provide pencils and inks over my breakdowns for the new (and book exclusive!) Hellrider Jackie story in Volume 4, called “The Patient Feast.”
Here is a look at one of the double-page spreads from Volume 4’s short story, “The Patient Feast.” If you want to see the whole thing, you’ll have to get the book, either physically or digitally.
With the first story (from Volume 1), he lamented at not being able to fully go wild with the creepy, surreal visuals. So, this time, I did my best to let him do exactly that. I mailed him the pages with the breakdowns on them; basically all I actually drew were the figures on the page with very light guidelines for the background with instructions like, “go nuts.” What came back was some of the most exciting and wild art I’ve ever held in my hands. I’m really proud of that story for many reasons, the largest one being the vision Josh brought to this character and this world.
Kyrun Silva
Kyrun’s generosity and friendship is one of the things that helped me get through this pandemic (and continues to do so) both on a comicking level and on a personal one. His dedicated and prolific work with Taurus Comics is inspiring and was one of the main reasons I started working on smaller side comics in the off-time between my day job and working on Long John. Though not having (yet) collaborated on a comic, Kyrun and I have been collaborators in discourse, co-hosting the irregularly released podcast, Con Artists, with me as we talk about reading, making, and selling comics.
The irregularly released podcast about reading, making, and selling comics. Most recently, Kyrun and I have discussed being indie creators during apandemic.
He loves comics first and foremost, and, as I’ve been saying for years, his enthusiasm is infectious and motivating and definitely gets me to think of what I can do with comics as a medium as well as just a story I’m trying to tell. He is the constant reminder that comic books are exciting, fun, and unique forms of entertainment.
Also, while not a collaboration that involved me, Kyrun was involved in a collaboration that had a profound effect on me this year. For my fortieth birthday in September, Kyrun commissioned Simon Roy to draw Long John, a gift I’m still not sure is real or not despite literally hanging on my wall (next to the drawing of Long John I commissioned from Giannis Milonnogiannis).
Simon Roy is one of the faces on Long John’s inspirational Mt. Rushmore, along with people like Darwyn Cooke, Giannis Milonnogiannis, and Jeff Lemire. A page from Roy’s run on the Prophet reboot was the first piece of original art I ever bought, because that series and those opening issues were so fundamentally important to my development as an independent comicker.
Despite 2020 being a banner year of misfortune and anxiety––not to mention lost income from the cancellation of comic book conventions––it ended up being a very good year for me and for Long John. A new book, new tools, new stories, and new opportunities were all a part of this year because I was forced to hunker down and just focus on the art of it all.
I’m excited for 2021 (and beyond) for a lot of reasons, but I’ll look back at 2020 with positive memories for my creativity and growth. It may be a small success overall, but still a success nonetheless.
