Creator Spotlight: The Kamikaze Team

Another guest interview by Stephen Leotti, which originally appeared on his FB page.  This time, he interviewed all three members of the creative team behind the post-post-apocalyptic webcomic Kamikaze.  As always, Stephen conducts his interviews in a live FB chat, so it can get a little crazy with 4 people typing at once!

S: Okay, my latest interview is with not one, but three comic creators. The team behind Kamikaze: Carrie and Alan Tupper, and Havana Nguyen. You can also follow them on Facebook and Tumblr.

So one by one, let’s have an introduction with a short bio and what you do on the comic.

A: I’m Alan Tupper. I’m a freelance illustrator focusing on narrative and interactive media. I’m one of the co-creators of Kamikaze, and day to day I handle the rough sketches, background art, and compositing of the comic.

H: I’m Havana! I joined the Kamikaze team about three years ago and I am the character artist, cleanup artist, and the letterer for the Kamikaze project and webcomic.

C: I’m Carrie, I’m a jill-of-all-trades, with a passion for animation, comics and storytelling. I’m a co-creator and project coordinator on Kamikaze. In addition to that I do a lot of the writing, and the ink and paint work.

S: So who handles the bulk of the writing then?

A: It’s largely a collaboration between Carrie and myself, though Carrie tends to handle the lion’s share.

S: Awesome. And you guys are married, or siblings? Just curious.

A: Married, definitely married.

C: Haha, we’re married, I swear.

H: I’m a sibling (jk).

C: Havana’s berating us for not saying “both”, haha.

H: I’m just some homeless lady.

S: Sorry, I meant Carrie and Alan.

C: omg Havana.

S: This is gonna be hard to keep organized.

H: hahahaha.

A: We’re always this crazy.

C: No we’re professional, ya’ll. I promise. 😐

S: So let’s start with just a synopsis of what the comic is about. The story, characters, etc. Give me your elevator pitch.

C: In a desolate future, feudal corporate houses hoard the last patches of fertile crop land. A young courier is unwittingly thrown into a life or death game of espionage and sabotage from which she might never escape.

S: Ah, yet another post-apocalyptic one. That’s like #3 I’ve interviewed. Those are really popular nowadays.

A: In some ways yes. Kamikaze is set after the initial chaos of the fall.

H: 200 years afterwards.

A: It’s set during the period where humanity is getting back up on its feet. It’s dirty and imperfect, but it’s definitely trending towards better. We like to call it post-post-apocalyptic! Ultimately we’re trying to tell compelling stories about people with flaws.

C: As far as characters go, we’ve got a pretty large and diverse cast. Our lead is Markesha Nin, who really doesn’t have much of a life outside of work and home. She has a really close relationship with her father, Toshi.

S: In a way it almost feels like that’s where we are in America. 911, the war, Columbine, they’re all behind us now. We’re slowly picking up the pieces.

A: To a certain extent. There’s times when the world changes suddenly and violently. Everyone it left to pick up the pieces and make some sort of peace with it.

S: Yeah, I think pandemics and zombies and stuff have gotten more popular because of our current culture. Just a theory.

A: Kamikaze was originally developed around that time, so I’d be remiss to say that those things didn’t play a part in shaping the world of the comic

S: Sure. How long has it been going?

C: The comic itself has been going since July last year. So…it’s literally 8 months old. As far back as work? It’s been a process that’s spanned (off and on) about 7 years.

A: Our original intent has been to make Kamikaze an animated series. A lot of the effort has gone into developing the concept into a professional pitch. The comic is a relatively new twist.

S: That’s always a hard thing to do. Still, if popularity is up enough, it could still happen.

A: Indeed, that’s why we’re making the comic.

H: Not only did a lot of that time go into making the pitch, a lot of time went into development and conceptualization.

C: If it worked for Axe Cop, it could work for us. And even if we don’t get picked up for an animated series? Hey, still got an awesome comic.

S: And crowdfunding is a possibility.

C: Ehhhh…sorta.

S: Well, theoretically.

A: It is. Successful crowdfunding requires a strongly committed group of fans. We’re actively looking towards getting to the point where crowdfunding is feasible. Ongoing support systems like Patreon are more likely in the near term.

C: We’re actively getting our Patreon ready!

S: Yeah. It’s a good advertiser as well as actual support.

A: Animation production is especially work intensive, and we might consider a Kickstarter for something of that magnitude. That’s a long way down the road though

S: I know this. I am an animator myself. If you get it off the ground, I’ll work on it.

A: Haha thanks! We’re finding that a lot of folks are really excited about the possibility of helping out. That’s really encouraging as creators.

S: Sure. I’ll send you my reel. Later.

So, being that it started as an animated series, is it designed like that in comic form? A continuing story in episodes?

A: We’re approaching it as the show, just in comic form. It’s a narrative storyline, and we’re working our way through the first episode’s storyline now.

C: We’re literally following the script almost verbatim. Each episode is made up of 5 acts (or comic issues).

A: We approached the style of the comic from the point of view of what would be feasible for animation production.

S: Cool. So it’s got story arcs, but not necessarily an ending at this point?

C: No, we’ve got an ending.

A: We definitely have an end point we’re working towards.

S: That’s good. I find when they don’t, often it starts to get kind of meandering.

A: Series like Avatar: The Last Airbender are a big source of inspiration.

H: More like they have several seasons and multiple arcs planned out. It helps with setups in the beginning.

C: Exactly, Havana. Show’s like Airbender, Korra, Batman:The Animated Series, Gargoyles, and others have a really big influence on our work.

A: We also draw a lot of story inspiration from live action narrative dramas.

S: So it’s an all ages kind of thing?

A: We’re primarily aiming for a more grown up audience, ages 18-24.  We’ve seen interest skew beyond that in both ways though.

C: The way another reviewer put it is that we’re a story that feels adult in the sense that we’re a comic that expects its readers to want nuance and depth.

S: Right, taking your audience seriously.

A: We’re very big proponents of that.

S: Okay, so let’s go ahead and talk about your process. What are the steps you take in bringing a comic to life?

A: It’s a multi-step process, with a page turnaround just under a week. I generally start by roughing out a page from the script. From there, Havana will clean it up and get everything on model. From there, Carrie takes the clean lines and inks and paints it while I work on building out a background to match the sketched camera angles. It all gets brought back together and composited with Havana’s lettering.

C: It’s a pretty big team effort to keep the bar raised on our art quality. For us it’s really important for the comic to not only be a good story, but look appealing as well. The process is lengthy for sure, but the result is worth it.

A: It’s certainly more work intensive than some other styles, but on the whole we feel its worth it

S: Yeah. Multiple people certainly helps.

C: Yes it does. Everyone on our team has a part to play. We are not an island.

S: I always try to get feedback when possible. It keeps the bar high.

C: Absolutely. When we first started getting our artwork finalized for the pitch we were going to every professional we knew in the business. We got a lot of amazing feedback, even from some folks in the comic industry too.

A: We’re always seeking out input on how to make what we do better. Insulating ourselves inside an echo chamber is tempting but ultimately harmful.

S: Where have you pitched the show?

C: A couple avenues. Most of them in the adult animated arena, including Adult Swim. We’ve had a lot of positive feedback, but ultimately, we’re not Batman or anything, so a lot of networks find us risky because we don’t have a supplied fanbase right out the door. That’s half the reason we’re doing the comic, to build a fanbase.

A: It’s one of the things the net has going for it. The power to build a fanbase is more in the hands of creators than before. In some ways traditional networks are having to play catch up.

C: Netflix is our holy grail.

A: It is a platform we’d love to get onto, or even in the room with.  It will definitely be interesting to see how that pans out

S: One thing the web has over TV is the community aspect. You get to engage directly with fans more easily online. Yes?

A: Absolutely. The ability to talk directly to fans and get their feedback on what they find compelling is invaluable for us

S: It’s like the letters to the editor, but every day.

A: It is. Every hour in some cases!

S: Of course, for every positive, there’s negative comment. Had any bad trolling experiences?

A: Not yet. It’s a bit weird, but I do look forward to getting our first truly dissatisfied reader.

S: That either means you’re awesome, or not famous enough.

C: Probably both. But I’m kind of an optimist that way.

A: While we definitely aspire for the former, we’re new and it’s likely the latter.

S: I haven’t addressed Havana specifically yet. So, tell me more about your involvement.

H: I was introduced to Carrie and Alan by a mentor of mine and the ORIGINAL intent was just to hire me on temporarily as a character designer for the concept and pitch collateral only. I have been asked before to work on original content as an artist but the thing that drew me instantly to Kamikaze was the sheer depth and complexity of the world in history and characters.

This was something these two spent a LOT of time building. You can tell they were huge animation geeks with a true passion and vision for animated drama. I loved animes growing up and was always sad there wasn’t many Western animated properties that could rival the art and engagement of action/dramas in anime.

So when I came on, some of the characters were already roughly designed and many were not. Even though they’ve been working on it for 7 years, there was still a LOT that evolved even in the 3 years I’ve been involved. I finalized the designs for Toshi, Orson, and Toro for example.
Markesha still looks mostly the same from when I joined and I cleaned up a couple other characters such as Link and Audrey.

Even after the characters were designed and the character art/design of the pitch collateral were finished, I still wanted to work on Kamikaze and so I eventually became the cleanup/character artist on the webcomic.

It’s hard to find people that have great creative chemistry with so I became a permanent member.

A: Havana is an amazing member of the team.

S: Sounds like a match made in heaven.

H: Definitely. Before meeting Alan and Carrie, most of my animation trivia, references, and jokes stayed in my head. It’s also great to share the same vision as well, we ALL want to see western animation tackle more dramatic content. Plus, after working on it for so long, you grow an attachment to the characters.

S: As far as western animation, it’s getting there. But I do think we could go further.

A: Absolutely. We’re hoping to be part of the effort to push Western animated storytelling further.

H: Titles like Young Justice and Korra are a great step in that direction. And it makes us optimistic that Kamikaze can succeed.

S: One problem is, it’s so *** expensive it’s got to play to wider audiences. Which narrows the amount of content. Anime is often produced cheaper, so it can go more places.

A: That definitely is one of the fundamental business problems.

Being able to prove that there is a solid base for revenue is going to be critical in order to get funding to back more ambitious animated projects in the West.

H: Venture Bros took 7 years to pitch … the first season, while great, looked like crap Flash. But as they released more and gained a bigger audience and popularity, the quality jumped up significantly. It’s definitely a challenge we keep in mind and we aren’t naive to it. But we also truly believe there is an uncatered audience out there.

S: Make the thing you want see, I always say.

H: Yep, it helps that we are the audience we’re catering to.

A: Absolutely.

S: Well we’ve covered a lot of great stuff. You guys into any comics or web comics out there?

A: Absolutely. Personally I’m a big fan of Dresden Codak. Also, a fan of the new Ms. Marvel run, as well as Blacksad and Lumberjanes.

H: I’m loving the new Miss Marvel myself.

S: Ms. Marvel! It is so awesome!

H: I agree! I loved that they did something so different and fresh with her. Some other favorite comics include Red Son and Killing Joke, I guess I like “fresh” takes or re-imaginings on things.

C: My faves include Dooms Day My Dear, The Abominable Charles Christopher, Stand Still Stay Silent, A Red Tails Dream, and of course Dresden Codak.

S: Sweet. I think that’s good enough for me. Any closing thoughts?

A: We’re really excited to be able to keep making Kamikaze a reality. We look forward to sharing what we have planned out with our fans and getting ever closer to seeing it on a screen and moving

C: We’re always happy to have new readers and we’re eager to hear from them too. So don’t be shy!

S: Okay. Thanks so much for talking to me.

C: Okay. Hope you enjoy reading the comic we’ve worked so hard on.  And thank you for taking the time to talk to us.

A: Thanks for interviewing us!

S: You’re quite welcome.