King of RPGS Creators
By: Static Multimedia |
Monday January 04, 2010 |
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Author Jason Thompson and artist Victor Hao join forces |
| Jason Thompson, author of the acclaimed Manga: The Complete Guide, knows practically all there is to know about the manga world-and he also happens to be a Level 14 Shaman/Oozemaster who knows a thing or two about gaming. Thompson combines the best of both worlds with KING OF RPGS, an original English-language manga to be published by Del Rey Manga on January 19, 2010 and a must-have for any RPG gamer. Along with artist Victor Hao, Thompson writes a wickedly funny story about just what it takes for one obsessed player to become the greatest gamer on Earth. At the University of California, Escondido, no one would guess that freshman Shesh Maccabee is a hard-core gamer-and in recovery to boot, following a court order, a wireless ban, and months of therapy (all because of one little seven-day Internet café episode). His friend Mike-who personally prefers Japanese console RPGs-is tasked with keeping Shesh far away from any computer with access to World of Warfare. Everything's going according to plan-until a Ren Faire fangirl introduces them to the campus gaming club, where they meet Theodore, a fanatical tabletop game master whose single goal in life is to run the greatest Mages & Monsters game in the world. And there just happens to be room for two more players. Soon Shesh and Mike are dragged into the dungeon of hard-core gaming-and cops, baboon men, Sri Lankan cave roaches, and Gothemon card collectors converge in the zaniest adventure that ever involved twenty-sided dice! Del Rey editor Kaitlin Heller talked with Jason and Victor about the creation of King of RPGS So, firstly, what is your working process together like? JT: Although I'm just the writer on King of RPGs, I work visually, so I start everything by drawing thumbnails. After I'm satisfied with the thumbnails I write the script, and then I send the whole thing to Victor. I also do sketches of most of the major characters. Victor sends me sketches back and we talk over most of the character designs and other major points of the story. We mostly work online but we meet up for ramen every few weeks. VH: I follow the script and thumbnails and I sketch out the whole page... after that I move onto finalizing the page, which includes inking, toning, text, balloons, and FX sounds. For almost half of volume 1 I started sketching out on paper and then I would scan those into the computer to finalize. Now I sketch and finalize everything on the computer. What equipment do you use? A tablet of some kind? VH: Yes, I draw everything with an Intuos Wacom tablet. At first I wasn't comfortable enough to sketch it out with the tablet, so I stuck with sketching on paper. But now, whenever I draw on paper, I miss drawing on the tablet... I miss the undo (ctrl+z) command!  Jason, do you go back and forth with Victor about the character designs? JT: Yes, we talk over all the major characters. Our art styles are different, and I like seeing how Victor gives everything his personal look. Most recently, we were talking about the design of Gamaliel the Skull Elf in volume 2. Victor, do you have other sources of inspiration for the character designs, apart from Jason's notes? VH: I use many references-I have a lot of art books at home which I use. Also, the internet has been invaluable for my researches... especially some of the monsters Jason brings up in the comic. Yeah, I was wondering whether or not you guys play WoW. VH: I used to play WoW! But my friend ditched me and got to the highest level without me!!! (>.<) JT: The MMO I've spent the most hours in is still Ultima Online back in the day, when you could play a fisherman or a cook, and get shanked by PKers continually. -- But I've played a bunch of WoW for "research." VH: It's also because I got stuck playing the PvP part of WoW that I stopped leveling up normally... I couldn't get back into normal questing after playing pvp. My PvP [Player vs. Player] was alt dwarf-on-elf hatred in D&D. VH: I've yet to experience pvp via D&D style-maybe Jason would oblige me... JT: It's a little less satisfying in D&D, since you have to look your PvPer/PvPee in the face and share Coke with them. -- This tends to dampen the enthusiasm for killin' your partners. You read a lot of manga, too. What are your favorites? VH: I grew up mostly with Dragon Ball and Slam Dunk, but now I've gotten into Berserk, Naruto, and One Piece. Oh... and Guru Guru Pon-chan. JT: I love all kinds of manga. For King of RPGs, my biggest influences are shonen manga like One Piece, Shaman King, and Dragon Ball of course. I also love Iron Wok Jan, which inspired some character designs. Yes, a lot of the book is obviously a love letter to manga, in addition to all the gaming references. One girl I gave some early pages to got SO EXCITED that there was a Vampire Princess Miyu... which I totally missed! VH: OH haha, you found that! Vampire HunterD is in there too! JT: Yes, you did an awesome job with the vampire scene!! Jason, could you explain a little more about how manga influenced KING OF RPGS? JT: I've been a fan of shonen (boys') manga since before I was the editor of Shonen Jump magazine for VIZ. I love those long, epic action-adventure stories like Dragon Ball and One Piece, where people are continually fighting, training to be stronger, making friends, getting in arguments with their friends, making up, converting defeated bad guys into friends, etc. One example of a series like that is Hikaru no Go, the manga about the board game Go. King of RPGs started out partially with the thought, "Well, if someone can do an exciting manga about a board game with black and white stones, why not a manga about tabletop roleplaying games?" As I started writing it, the story got crazier and crazier, and soon it was less of an board game manga and more like an actual fighting/adventure manga. Each character has their own motivations, but some of them (well, at least one of them) are definitely trying to become the World's Greatest Gamers. Which of course doesn't necessarily make any objective sense, but since when did sense matter in manga? -- Yes, and I like that the characters all provide different perspectives on what gaming should be. Okay, let me leave you each with this question: who's your favorite character to work on? Either to write or to draw? JT: Theo is my dream of what I'd like to be like as a Dungeon Master, but my favorite characters are Shesh, Rona and Theo. I always know exactly what they would do in any given situation. VH: Theo is probably my favorite character to work with.... he's Cute +10... plus I love drawing his hat. It's also a lot of fun to draw Shesh's evil expressions too. Oh, his evil grin is the best. |
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