Back to the Production

I took a couple of moth break from my graphic novel production due to family and personal reasons, but now I'm back and it truly is great to be back. It has been such a challenging process for a couple of years, but I feel I'm finally getting close to finishing it.

Great-great Grandfather's art pieces

My Great-great grandfather (my grandfather's grandfather) was a Noh-ga and Butsu-ga artist. Noh-ga is art for Noh, classical Japanese musical drama. These sketches are portrait for Noh actors. Butsu-ga is "painted representations of buddhist deities", and it refers to all paintings that have some relationship to Buddhism. According to my grandmother, these were done around 1930's. I wanted to share these works here because they are absolutely stunning.

Amsterdam

It was great to arrive to Amsterdam after 12 hour flight from Japan. It felt like I was back to a normal world. However, going from Japan to Netherlands is like going from a midget land to a giant land. I had no idea Dutch people are so tall.

People in Amsterdam knows how to chill. I've never been to a city where it has such relaxed atmosphere. It was a great stop over to go between two extreme countries; Japan and Israel. A walk in the Vondel Park was extremely enjoyable, as well as window-shopping at these funky stores near Dam square.

Only thing it was tough for me in Amsterdam was the food. It was especially tough coming from Japan , a food heaven. I mean how many toast and sandwiches can you have?

Have checked out Van Gogh and Rembrandt Museum. It was great seeing their original pieces.

JAPAN

There is no other place in the world where it is more suitable to say, “We're not in Kansas anymore” than Japan. You're in Oz, Alice in mirror image, spirited away into bizarre Miyazaki world, wherever it is, this place is extremely unique, and is disconnected from the rest of the world.

Japanese succeeded to create an extremely efficient and organized society, where a train arrives on schedule without a minute of delay, a shipping service called Takkyu-bin offers you an excellent and reliable shipping service, a cashier gives you an exact change at any time. I was amazed with how functional everything is here, but after awhile it does start to feel like you're living in a robot society where everything is controlled and organized. I started to miss the chaos and craziness of Israel. I even missed how Israelis don't wait in line, which usually drives me crazy.

Sketches for chapter 2 and 3

I've been working on tight sketches for chapter 2 and 3 for my "Tung Tree" Graphic Novel. I'm aiming to finish them before I'll go on to an adventure in Japan this month.

Since this is my first novel, each production step is anew and engaging. I'm learning so much from every procedure.

These thumbnail/ sketching process used to take me so much longer a year ago, but now I can work on them a lot easier.

I will be going to Japan for the first time in four years. It'll be a great family reunion, and I have two weddings to attend to. We'll be stopping in Amsterdam on the way and on the way back. I've always wanted to go check it out, so it's quite exciting. Can't wait to go to Van Gogh Museum. If you know great places to visit in the city, please email me and let me know!

The image shows process from thumbnail to inking, and shadowing on computer.

Anton Chekhov

Since I read about him in Haruki Murakami's “1Q84,” and have heard in general that he is one of the true masters of writing, I have been reading Anton Chekhov this past couple of weeks. (BTW, I am extremely dissatisfied with “1Q84,” but I won't talk about it here.) I expected Chekhov's stories to be depressing, boring, and difficult to read, but it was actually a pure joy reading his stories. They are extremely enjoyable. They are worm, and depicts human nature of caring and loving. Some stories such as “Death of a clark,” “Chameleon,” and “Tragic Actor” are really funny, as Chekhov points out human elements that make us so vulnerable and imperfect, but lovable at the same time.

His stories show me that there are great conflict, tension, human drama with intensity in our daily lives. It's surprising to realize that a moment of an ordinary person's life can be more dramatic than, say, an alien invasion, or a volcano erupting.

I've enjoyed all of his stories so far, but I particularly loved “Difficult People,” and “The Student.”