Monday, June 23, 2008

Ff/Iron Man: Big in Japan 4 page 16

We're going slow; page by page through the end of Big in Japan. He finished these pages and sent them in to Marvel just days before he died. Though, of course, I don't know which pages he did first. Hisako says that he didn't work on one page at a time; he had several going at one time. He made a habit of working on pages not in order; he said that in his Illustration Tips. If you work on pages in order, and the book is long, your style is liable to change between the beginning and the end.
This is another of the pages where he shows us, "This is a comic book." It opens at top left with a realistic close-up of Mole Man pleading with his moloids to come back (and be subject to him again). But the two large frames on this page have everyone in short body, big head, Comic Book mode. Note that the moloid in the upper right frame is no longer wearing a fundoshi; he is in jockey underwear (though the colorist has made them grey).

Seth writes about this page: "So here we get a tender moment with moloids. Here is kind of another allusion to the hexagon shapes. I wanted to work that into Page 18, but it just didn't feel right, so I went halfway with it here...Super sorry about that Zeb [that he diverged from the script]. I really love the image of moloids as molecules. I tried spiraling them as DNA strands and lining their feet together or their arms or all different types of things, but none of them allowed me to draw in the massive number of guys that I needed to make the scene clear and flow right and still show the Mole Man's reaction...I really tried."

Note also the legos that are part of the structure of the cave. And the large bugs (like angular roly polies) roaming here and there. Little Seth throwaways.
A small inset brings into this page the action that is happening far underground, which foreshadows the drama which will begin to explode on the next two pages.

1 comment:

j_ay said...

Great behind the scenes with Seth's thoughts on the page.
And thanks to Hisako for the great info!