The Musician Manga

(March 2010 - May 2011)

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If you haven't read the Prologue to Prison School, please read that here first

Read from <<--------Right to Left

This has been a project long in the making. I spent about 2 months on the IP development front, creating the story outline, coming up with the character profiles, and preparing the documentation that I would use to communicate with future creatives. From there, it was another 3 months of work on the script, working with writer Mari Holy to capture the essence of the major theme that I wanted to communicate and transforming the rough outline I wrote out into a fully voiced work. After locking the script down, it was about 4 more months of concept art, working with many talented artist to visualize the setting of the school and the appearance of the main cast. Finally, it took a whopping year to fully storyboard, draw, ink, tone, and letter the final piece above working with the very talented and versatile Shilin Huang (granted everyone involved was working on this in their spare time).

In the end, it was all very much worth it. I grew by leaps and bounds on this project. My creative direction skills grew, not only from managing the communication and logistical load of the project as an IP developer and director, but also from reader feedback and understanding how every word written and every image shown was having or not having an impact on the audience. I think it was all of the mistakes that I made in the creation of this work that so prepared me for the development of the story in Profit Motive, which has had quite a bit more success connecting with people.

The other important thing I learned working on this project is that I could complete stories and IPs without having to do all of the heavy lifting myself. Outsourcing various aspects of the production is actually a viable and incredibly effective way to create and finish multiple projects at a high level of quality and in a lot less time than it would take me personally. I plan to use this approach more often as it's become all too apperent that I will never have time to fully realize that mountain of IP in my backlog on my own :)

I'm proud of what I accomplished with the Musician and look forward to delving a little deeper into the Prison School IP as a whole to take what I've learned from all of my recent projects and make the next story even better.

Related Links

• Prison School IP Outline

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