BlackRawrSnowTacular!
Hello all! This is Rawr from RAWRtacular.com!
As you guys may have been following, I’ve joined forces with Alex and Michael to bring you ‘I’m Famous in Japan’; a fusion of classic Black Snow Comics humor, and my own manga-ish flavor of drawing. For those of you who don’t already know about me, my real name is Mark Egan and I’m an Irishman living in Norway, who spends his time producing a weekly office comedy comic by the name of Back Office. I tend to use a manga style in my work, and that helped lead to the idea of sending Lone Wolf and Co. on a Japanese promotion tour.
As this is my very first attempt at a collaboration comic, and I’m glad to be doing with Alex and Michael. These guys have an addictive and fun wit, which make drawing I’m Famous in Japan all that more enjoyable. It is an interesting experience to be drawing another group’s stories and characters for a change. Even from the planning stages, I could tell that this was going to be fun.
The first challenge I had, was actually producing a Manga-style copy of the I’m Famous’ cast. Converting girls into Manga characters is usually very simple to pull off, you just blow up their eyes to a massive scale and then puff up their hair into a crazy style. Guys on the other hand, can be trickier to convert well, and since I’m Famous is almost totally male, that gave me a lot to think about. For the most part, I just used a similar design to Micheal’s drawings, and swapped out the eyes and hair to more of an anime style. The more dramatic changes were Rufus, with his afro (The Japanese seem to like afros. Be it Nabashin, or Afro Samurai!), and the Dynamic Duo of Lone Wolf and Wolf Pack.
I went a little crazy with those two guys. For Wolf Pack I imagined this odd ‘lost boy’ look which somehow got stuck in my mind. He should be chubbier (beyond the massive gut he still has), but I kind of wanted to stick to the design I used. Young anime side-kicks tend to be a bit scrawny, so I guess that’s why I like face I used for him. And last, but not least, The Lone Wolf. I love this guy, and I wanted to pull off something outlandish enough to reflect his personality, while not making him too different from the original. But what would an insane superhero be in Manga/Anime? I wasn’t really sure what to do until the answer came to me….Power Ranger! That’s right, I made him a Power Ranger (as you may now notice from his white boots, gloves and ‘LW’ belt). But I wasn’t satisfied with that alone. Anime/Manga heros must have crazy hair (it’s a manga rule….), and so I took original Lone Wolf’s bangs and turned them into a pair of wolf ears! (Sort of..)
And so there you have it…Manga style I’m Famous!
I hope everyone is enjoying the plot so far. More Manga-style ‘I’m Famous in Japan’ will be arriving the the near future. Watch this space! (because the updates are usually here)
-Rawr!