Sorry for the lack of frequency lately. It’s been a busy time over at RAWRtacular.com, where I’m working on the launch of my second web-comic as well as a few other things. I hope to have a new page of Famous in Japan up once every 2 weeks, at least (and more often if I can manage).
This scene was kind of hard to work out. Alex had given me a lot of freedom in the script for this page. The script mostly called for sight-gags such as crashing through paper walls and knocking over stuff, the generally gist being that Lone Wolf is too tall to fit into a Japanese room. I played with a few ideas to make this fun.
Such ideas were:
Lone Wolf’s legs crashing though the paper walls…hitting Wolf Pack in the head
Lone Wolf accidentally kicking his TV out of the window while sleeping
Lone Wolf accidentally kicking Wolf Pack out of the window while sleeping
Lone Wolf drop-kicking his bags into the closet…the bags then ripping though the paper walls, and finally…hitting Wolf Pack in the head before he falls from his window.
Now don’t worry! I had no plan to kill-off Wolf Pack there. The laws of gravity are flexible in Manga/Anime, and a fatal drop will usually just result in bruising. These ideas didn’t work out well in my head, so I did what I usually do when I get stuck…I read though my manga. The whole idea of having Lone Wolf sticking his head though the ceiling, actually came from my favorite manga Love Hina.
Love Hina follows the trials of Keitaro, a hapless college hopeful who ends up sort-of inheriting a girl’s dormitory inn from his grandmother. He is compelled to move in there to fulfill his responsibilities to maintain the inn. Hilarity ensues when he finds himself surrounded by girls. This manga / (lame) anime was pretty much wall-to-wall fan-service, which can annoy me. But Love Hina was different in the way that it used it’s fan-service effectively as a comic device, while actually doing a good job at fleshing out the characters.
The idea about the hole in the ceiling comes from Keitaro’s room at the inn. He discovered this hole early in the series and while investigating he found that it led to the floor of a girl’s room….at the very moment she was undressing in it. Thus, he is horribly injured by Naru: the room’s occupant, and his future love-interest.
I stole that idea for Lone Wolf’s visit to this hotel. I made the ceiling extremely low, and had Lone Wolf hit his head through for some fan-service hilarity. I hope that joke worked! (It is second-hand after all)
Finally, a weird technical note. The hotel in the top left corner looks good doesn’t it? That’s mostly because I didn’t draw it. It’s one of the 100s of pre-loaded buildings in Manga Studio EX. It turned out pretty nicely and you might see more of them in future Famous in Japan pages.