Rusty Banana Forge

September. A host of work has arrived. Wheehee!
My latest color project with Alex Sheikman has more than 30 pages to color. Hope to finish that in 2 to 3 weeks.

Alongside that is the Exotique entry I need to conceptualize with a friend adept at 3D. All before the first week of October.

Then there’s the monthly strip at Komiksnetwork. Coming up with gags isn’t easy when you work at home and the only exposure to funnies I get is from the Opinions section of Businessworld.

Then my pal Francis Bonganay has got another graphic design project for me to do. One for his mom’s cafeteria. I should be doing that right about now…

I treated myself out to watch Ugetsu Story and House at the : J-Horror (or Japanese Horror).

Ugetsu story takes place during Japan’s civil war. A lowly potter with a wife and child takes to the city to seek his fortune. He’s enchanted by a beautiful lady who turns out to be a ghost but is able to pull himself away and return home after a long time. His wife greets him, cooks for him, and mends his clothes… but the potter finds out the next day that he is alone with his son… his wife was a ghost.

I was especially eager to see how the end would turn out because the concept of a man being greeted and cared for by a ghost wife/lover upon arriving from his war-time exploits is also used in the 80s anime : Windaria AKA Once Upon a Time (Harmony Gold). Windaria ended similarly. The male protagonist comes home after ending his duties as a double agent and is greeted by his fiancè only to find out she’s just about to fly off into the floating ship of heaven. That’s the first anime that really moved me.

The Ugetsu Story wasn’t as moving as Windaria (or scary for that matter), but I believe it would have been for audiences in 1953.

“House” on the other hand is completely WHACKED. A movie made for audiences in 1977, it clearly blossoms with so much groovy disco mojo that after I could have died from diabetes. You have the chirpy Sailor Moonish grade school girls. You have upbeat music in practically every scene. Right from the get-go I was hoping against hope that the bubbly razzle dazzle vibe would be used as a foil or contrast to the horror later in the movie.

Alas, it was for naught.

Apparently the House is a low budget film with its painted backgrounds, pow and crunch
effects straight out of The Yellow Submarine, cherry juice blood, and enough surrealism to shame Parker Lewis and Ally Mcbeal.

It felt a lot like Shake Rattle and Roll (our very own bagets comedy/horror feature in the Philippines). But House does have one thing going for it - pretty teenage Japanese girls. And as you probably well know - Japanese films don’t mind showing the beauty of their women’s flawless skin to the audiences below 18, to which I suppose was the movie’s target market. I enjoyed laughing nonetheless to the film’s ridiculous portrayal of teen horror.

The Manila International Bookfair had good variety this year. Not just in the books, but in the activities and participants as well.

What could have been better was the scheduling of those activities. The INK behind-the-scenes talk was moved and we, the Inkies, didn’t even know about it until we had wasted precious gasoline to get there. It’s like we don’t have a oil crisis already on our hands.

Japan Foundation was nowhere to be found this year - but the schools presses and the spiritual book publishers were still there in force.Besides the bookstores (National, Powerbooks, Goodwill, and Fully Booked being the biggest booths) there were other booths that I found interesting:

1. The ASEAN booth had a fair number of books from our ASEAN neighbors. Laos, for instance, had a fair number of storybooks I found interesting to skim through. I have noticed in experiences how similar Malay comic art looks. And how Orientals often fancy the clean vector look for their children’s books.

2. Dianetics - I’ve never heard of it until I saw this entire booth filled with Dianetics books. As a marketing gimmick they were giving people free stress tests… The gauge on the machine swivels between low to high stress. I discovered that besides my dad — laughing makes me stressful. Look up Dianetics on the web and you’ll find the whole thing’s good for a laugh indeed.

3. The food concessionaires …. they had prices that were downright robbery.

4. Central Books is a Print on Demand (POD) that does as little as 50 copy print runs - even less if you’re crazy! They even have a package that provides you with a barcode, ISBN, posters, and distribution in their stores! They can do it color or in b&w gray. I thought it’d be a good way to get comics and children’s books printed for major publishers to read or just to sell on your own. You can have 500 copies of a 6″x9″ (a fair deal larger than Marco Dimaano’s KIA) 200-page comic in book paper for the lower print price than KIA had in newsprint. You can catch them at www.central.com.ph
I’m seriously considering CentralBooks POD for my projects.

5. Our INK-Haribon exhibit of course was a new edition to the annual bookfair. I’m happy my pin for Deep Crisis almost sold out (I could have bought the last one - but left it for display.) I’m still hoping I can sell my prints.

6. The INK Portfolio Show was a wonderful treat for us illustrators - even if hardly anyone visited our area (at the secluded edge of a long lobby outside the exhibit hall.) we still had a great time hanging out.

For the INK illustrator without any children’s books out yet (like me)… My tips for INK’s next portfolio show:
a) Produce and bring freebies in addition to your calling cards (have around 30)
b) Have a lot of samples… each illustrator at the show had a median of 20-30 illustrations. Which means more than half of the illustrators had that many. I didn’t, but at least I had a whole table for myself… so there!

Aside from all these I enjoyed meeting friends and admiring lovely chinese ladies (I didn’t have any calling cards left.)