» Interview with RAnSOM (Augest)

Ran: Generally, I go by Ran. I only used the name augest on Smackjeeves because it's the name of my deviant art account, and I wanted them to match up for some reason.

Ran: I'll be 22 years old this year, and I currently live in Ottawa, which is the Capital City of Canada.

Ran: Ransom is my first online comic, and I began working on it for two years (character designs and so on) a year and a half before I ever started the actual pages. I officially began doing pages for Ransom in July 2005, and they were posted up on Drunk Duck until the website died. I began posting it on Smack Jeeves in November, 2005.

Ran: When I was very young, around six, I was already very good at realism. I was a big fan of shows like Astroboy and Samurai Pizza Cats, and when I turned nine, I took my first shot at a manga/cartooney style. The result was absolutely terrible, and it made me strangely determined to get it right. After that, it was all trial and error--I taught myself until 2004, when I attended college for animation, where I received formal training in life drawing, character design and background layouts. I learned a lot, and my art improved in that one year about as much as I had improved on my own in the previous five.

Ran: I am currently working on two online comics. The first is Ransom, which is a zombie/drama/horror comic, and the second is half/asleep, the project I ditched Alternote for, which is actually a sequel to Ransom that takes place about 400 years in the future. It is an action/adventure/fantasy about a young werewolf who sets out to rescue a girl he meets in the woods after a really strange series of events wipes out his clan. I intend for the two stories to intertwine near their ends.

Ran: When I first started out, my very first comic (which I have abandoned, but can't say anything about because it's being reworked as the third in the Ransom trilogy!) was inspired by a map I made on a rainy day when I was 10. I started as one paper, and it ended up as ten over the course of a few months. I had it up on my wall for years, and made characters to live in it, and monsters for it, until it was destroyed). Now a days, I'm mostly inspired by music and my age old love of horror movies (I used to watch them with my grandmother when I was very young).

Ran: I draw manga because it always seemed a bit more realistic to me that other cartoonish styles that I grew up with. It let me draw dramatic situations, from violent to sad to joyful, and the effect was much better than if I were drawing Warner-brother's or disney-esque characters. As for manga versus other styles, I remain a lover of most art--I don't care what style it's in, if it's got a good plot, I'll read it and probably like it. I can never relate to people who dislike manga or claim it is not an art style, but on that same note, I will never be able to relate to those who swear by manga as the best and only way to do comics, either.

Ran: I'm a big fan of all varieties of webcomics, and when I had more time and didn't work full time, there were a lot that I really tried to keep up with. A lot of traditional artists don't seem to like webcomics on most of the forums I post at, but I know a lot of artists who try and combine the two (I do this as well--most of my color pictures and pages are done with marker, and all of my comic pages are hand-drawn and inked before I digitally tone them), and they do a pretty nice job of it.

Ran: I start out with a sheet of printer paper and draw little doodles and try and plan out the page. I do these in big batches (around 75 pages at once) so I know what needs to be said and done in each chapter. I then write out a (terrible) script, which is then picked apart and rewritten by my editor/fiancé, and I start the page. I use mechanical pencil on cardstock to sketch it out, sakura microns to ink it, and then I scan it in at 300dpi and use a program I purchased called Computones (they're plug-in disks for Photoshop that HTDA puts out) to tone each page. Color pages are drawn and inked the same way, and then I use Prismacolor markers to color them, and white Warhammer paints or sakura ink to add highlights.

Ran: Ha-ha, actually, I have a funny answer for this one--I told you I worked on character designs and art for Ransom for a year and a half before I posted it up online--I really worked my butt off to advertise it every chance I got at deviantart.com. It actually had a pretty large fan base before the actual comic pages even existed, and when I finally did make them, a lot of artists I know from there actually followed me here and made accounts for their own comics, or commented on mine. I do a lot to advertise (in a non-annoying way), and I think it really helps.

Ran: Keep at it--a lot of online webcomics start off nice enough, and never remake it past ten pages before they die out. A lot of people quit because they think they're not getting the page views, fans or ratings they think they deserve, when their only real problem is that they're not giving it enough time. Bust your ass through those ten pages, and by the time you get there, you'll know if the online comic scene is for you, and you'll have gotten a nice taste of all that feedback you wanted. it's a lot easier to get work done when you KNOW that someone will actually be reading it.

Ran: I regularly read Vitara (the author is my roommate so if I don't, I die), Totally Kotor and an insanely gorgeous new comic called Red Dog Venue (http://rdv.smackjeeves.com/) by Miser Bellatrix here on Smack Jeeves. Outside of SJ, I love 8-bit Theater, Vampirates (which is another Canadian comic---which is awesome) and I used to read RPG World before the author quit working on it somewhere after 200 pages of awesome.

Ran: Harry Potter---I don't care HOW epic LotR is, HP is fun and interesting and reads like butter--smooth on my tired, tired brain.