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Long John

Losing Every Thing Changes Everything

Think Like Amano

Nov17
by DBethel on 17 November 2014

One of the first artists I was introduced to through popular culture was one whose name I didn’t know for a few good years. Naturally, for nerds of my generation, it was an artist for a video game. Being that this artist was a concept illustrator for a Japanese-developed video game during the reign of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), credits weren’t readily given lest the player strengthen his or her resolve and beat the game.

My original copy of Final Fantasy (1)'s instruction book.

My original copy of Final Fantasy (1)’s instruction book.

Yoshitaka Amano is a Japanese artist who rose to fame as the illustrator and cover painter for Vampire Hunter D, a series of popular fantasy novels published in Japan (and crudely translated into English about a decade ago). At some point, he was hired by Squaresoft––a video game publisher––who was at the end of their ropes, fiscally. They figured they could make one last game and, were it good, it would save the company or, were it bad, it would sink it. They decided a turn-based, fantasy role-playing game would be the game to make. As a jest, because of their dire financial straits, they dared to name this game Final Fantasy because, quite literally, it could have been. Amano was hired to do conceptual art, character and creature designs. Though heavily digitized to work with the limited 8-bit, 25-color (at a time) NES, Amano’s very unique style––flowing, dream-like, organic––still came through in the game. It even became more prominent with the release of the Super Nintendo and Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy VI (originally released in North America as Final Fantasy II and Final Fantasy III, respectively). Though I didn’t realize it was also Amano at the time, but the popular fantasy anime, Vampire Hunter D (based on the novels), had become a favorite movie of mine as well (just to be clear, both Josh and I were figuring out this mystery together).

It's safe to say aspects of Amano's Vampire Hunter D art influenced Hellrider Jackie.

It’s safe to say aspects of Amano’s Vampire Hunter D art influenced Hellrider Jackie.

While on a trip visiting San Francisco in the mid-nineties, I somehow ended up in a Japantown bookstore. While there, I found a published collection of Amano’s work, called Maten (translated, it means “evil universe”), that had some of his Vampire Hunter D illustrations (all figured out through good guesses and conjecture, the book was completely in Japanese). The book was published long before he did his Final Fantasy work, and I don’t exactly remember when Josh and I put this book (and his Vampire Hunter D work) together with his Final Fantasy work, but that book became an artistic bible for us; however, for me it was more about learning to appreciate Amano’s aesthetic––what it can do and mean––rather than trying to figure out how it was done.

My meager collection of Amano books.

My meager collection of Amano books.

Amano’s work became hugely influential for Josh and me, though it has since manifested in our art in different ways. For me, though my style carries little evidence of his influence, his art really opened up my idea of what illustration could be. Being a big fan of the hey-day of American illustration with the stylized but realistic oils of people like N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, and J.C. Leyendecker, Amano was anything but that norm, but he was doing the same thing. All of them capture the essence of character, scene, and story in a single image, giving the reader a primer for the world created in the mind as a story is read (or played). This is especially helpful for the games of the NES and Super NES era when graphics––though improving––were still primitive and representative unable to generate the veracity of modern gaming machines.

Final Fantasy VI's opening scene.

Final Fantasy VI’s opening scene.

Amano's interpretation of the same scene.

Amano’s interpretation of the same scene.

According to Amano, traditional narrative illustration could also have elements of the surreal, of the abstract, of the impressionistic. Rather than simply being literal representations of clothing, scenes from novels, or magazine covers, illustration could have interpretive value, even if that meaning is hard to figure out or even uncomfortable to look at. The best way to describe Amano’s influence on my work and how I approach art is through a series of promotional materials he created for his first exhibition in New York. A series of prints highlighted the name of the show, “Think Like Amano,” with each carrying a different absurdist tagline. I spent too much money and got a full set of the prints, and I ashamedly admit that they sat in a tube for over a decade (last year, one finally got framed and is now proudly hanging in my office at CSU, Sacramento).

The Framed "Think Like Amano" print hanging in my office.

The framed “Think Like Amano” print hanging in my office.

The hooks of Amano’s work, for me, is that it is incredibly out of time and place. For a Japanese artist working in the Japanese gaming and animation industry in the 1980s and 1990s, I’m sure he felt, if not the pressure, the presence of what is ostensibly the “industry style” that most Americans consider to be “anime”: big eyes, big heads, spiky hair, lithe bodies and hip clothing. Were I to place an Amano print in front of someone who had no idea about Amano or Final Fantasy (Amano was also the character designer on the classic anime series, Gatchaman, which has been released in America as both Gatchaman as well as Battle of the Planets and G-Force) I would bet the viewer would not be able to tell me the art’s country of origin. As influenced by Alan Lee as he is Gustav Klimt, Yoshitaka Amano instilled in my developing brain that just because you’re working in a specific time, culture, and genre doesn’t mean you have to follow the expected rules of imagery and storytelling.

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The Story of the Hellrider

Nov07
by DBethel on 7 November 2014

This is the first post in a short series that will discuss the growth of Hellrider Jackie as a character over the years.

As I’ve hinted at before, Hellrider Jackie is a character––in concept––that has been around longer than Long John (but not longer than Eben07, technically).

Believe it or not, it all started from this:

The original Hellrider Jackie (then known as Hellrider Jack).

The original Hellrider Jackie (then known as Hellrider Jack).

This is a children’s meal toy the fast food chain, Jack in the Box, released in 1997 a collection that has the chain’s eponymous “Jack” doing a variety of interesting things that may seem out of character for a guy with a large, spherical head.  Somehow, Josh and I got a hold of the figure above. For some reason,  we got a huge kick out of this little figurine one afternoon. Being the creative people that we are––and, being the very bored kids at the end of our high school careers that we were––we each took turns making up stories about this motorcycle-driving Jack.  One day, we were sitting around playing video games and one of us was playing around with this toy, narrating his thrilling adventure out from the depths of a literal hell, and––bursting forth from the grasp of Satan’s flames––one of us said something to the effect of, “…and here comes––Hellrider Jack!”

This name cracked us up and we laughed on it for a good while.  After that, the name stuck with me even as the fast food iconography fell away, and I have worked the character into many fictions I have dreamed up over the years.

The first major implementation of Hellrider Jack was when Josh and I, in high school, decided we were going to make a Japanese-styled role-playing video game not dissimilar from major titles at the time like Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, the Seiken Densetsu series (most notably, The Secret of Mana for the SNES here in the US), or Dragon Warrior.  I got caught up in creating the characters and world-building and was able to work in a character named Hellrider Jack who was a former valiant knight who––for reasons forgotten––became disgraced and was forced to wear a cursed mask constructed a human skull.  He rode around on a robotic horse and became a legendary figure.

Hellrider Jack. Pencil, 1999.

Hellrider Jack. Pencil, 1999.

Despite being written as a man for a fantasy setting, there are fundamental underpinnings that carry through to Hellrider Jackie as she is today, though it wouldn’t be for awhile until Hellrider Jack became Hellrider Jackie as we now know her.

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Possible Monsters

Oct31
by DBethel on 31 October 2014

It’s Halloween, so here’s a story about monsters both real and imaginary and discusses where those two intersect.

The scary thing about the night––when I was a child––was that everything seemed so safe. However, I knew that just outside my doors, walls, and windows lurked evil that didn’t appreciate the calm and quiet that otherwise seemed ready-made to put me to sleep. There was a night when I was eleven years old, and it was probably a Friday, and my new friend, Josh, was sleeping over for the weekend for the first time. Back then, in the family room––as we called it––there used to be two faux-leather couches pushed up against perpendicular walls, meeting in the corner. The family room was where the TV and VCR and NES were, so it was the natural place for eleven year-olds to set up camp on a Friday night so they could resume their activities early the next morning, free from the memory of spending half of the day in school.

We camped on a couch each, our feet pointing to the corner and we lay swaddled in our sleeping bags staring, in the dark, up at the specks of glitter embedded in the popcorn ceiling. I was raised in this house, so the creaks and thumps of nightly settling were silent to me. If anything, it was a spongy quietude––no sound except for the very occasional passing car seemed to escape into the air––but we weren’t going to let that stop us.

After an evening of playing as 8-bit heroes slaying supernatural monsters and watching movies with actors doing the same, our early conversations floated around that subject. When we exhausted that topic and its surrounding scenarios, all we had left was the personal.

In the pauses, I stared at the ceiling and the thoughts––as they usually did––of the evil men possibly outside my house, walking the streets, driving in cars, shopping in stores in plain sight, entered my mind. There was a reason for this. My mother was the first female correctional counselor at the local medium-security men’s prison, and her early years there––amplified after her divorce from my father––bore much in the way of blatant threats and their associated hardships. These became serious enough that I was trained from the time I began speaking in the ways of making myself known were a man attempting to abduct me. When I had enough strength of limb, I was taught how to get free from unwanted holds or assaults. I was indoctrinated into the mindset of distrust––to stay away from adults I wasn’t related to, who taught me at school, or wore a badge. Those were the noises I heard at night––the threatening sounds of possibility. Possible footsteps outside my window. Possible cars parking across the street and watching. Possible knocks on my windows and walls. My monsters were possible.

In the company of friends––especially in the excitement of a new friend––those fears evaporated and the frightful silence became the comfortable quiet, except in those occasional pauses.

But, eventually, my nerves got the better of me. So, at one point, I asked Josh, “What scares you at night?”

“Normal stuff, I guess,” he said. He held a short breath in thought and added, with an exhale, “Ghosts, mostly.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve read about hauntings and poltergeists. There are a bunch of stories like that and it’s pretty weird, especially if you find out how some of those ghosts died.”

“Totally,” I said, though not really sure of his point.

“What are you scared of?” he asked.

I wanted to say monsters and ghosts, but they were never real to me. That doesn’t make me especially smart or special, my fears were still those of a child’s rather illogical worries. But in the face of the possible, I sorted out that the unexplainable is only possible in imagination––something that can be controlled. So, I told Josh that I was scared of someone breaking in, of taking me and my mother, of being threatened inside the doors and walls and windows of my own home with a gun. He told me that was scary, too. I hope he held my illogical nighttime fears with as much weight as I held his––in the realm of the severely unlikely.

These worries have, for the most part, faded as I’ve aged, but I feared that my mostly illogical childhood anxieties have been reinforced as of late. I’ve realized over time that, because I’m male and white, I actually don’t have much to fear, and I can’t deny that shamefully comforts me––those creaks and thumps have also gone silent because, for some reason, society prefers people who look like me. But these possible monsters that haunted my night’s mind I fear are all too real for too many people, people who don’t look like me, people who care about video games and comics just as much as I do––who have done so for their entire lives––who love the things that kept us apart from the norm for so long. We were all children who loved these things alone, slowly finding others like us and rejoicing in this secret treasure that nobody else knew about. But only if everybody else did know, how different the world would be.

Now, we live in that world where everybody does know and these things from our youth are held up as proud pieces of our culture, and it sickens me to see the treatment that some of us who remember that secret joy receive. It angers me. It frightens me.

It’s scary because these monsters look like me, and, for a majority of their day, are probably good and productive people. But to confront a new point of view with the threats of murder, threats of rape, threats of doing harm to them and their family, to post heir personal information publicly against their will and to do it anonymously––that’s monstrous, much more frightening than any creature of myth or imagination.

So, I wonder how many people––people that may look different or hold different views, values, or predilections than I––will go to bed tonight and, in the silence ready-made to put them to sleep, will instead be afraid of the possible monsters outside their houses, walking the streets, driving the cars, shopping in stores in plain sight.

And I’ll try to sleep knowing that––this whole time––there have been monsters among us, and I hope that one does not lurk inside me.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Happy Halloween, everybody. Be good to each other because we’re all just people in the end.

To lighten the mood, here is a drawing I did of a spooky creature I had a dream about a few years ago. Let it haunt your dreams, too.

A spooky shadow creature I had a nightmare about. Drawn with a brush, 2012.

A spooky shadow creature from a dream. Brush pen, 2012.

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