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THE MAKING OF SLANTED MIND Before I start, this is meant to be read only once you’ve
finished reading the comic, this might contain spoilers. You’ve been warned! HOW IT ALL STARTED... I started making Slanted Mind after reading Jade
Sparkle, a defunct web comic by Juu. In fact, I did not have the idea by
myself; Juu “pushed” me into drawing my
own boy’s love (BL) comic, since I seemed to enjoy BL so much. I think I might have harassed her to
plug me to other BL comics too, maybe she just wanted to get rid of me haha!
Nevertheless, I thought it was a great idea, and that’s how the
idea of Slanted Mind was born! At that time, I was in college, doodling a lot
during class. During a philosophy
class, the teacher randomly talked about Thanatos
and Eros, greek gods of Death and Love/Lust, and
how well they completed each other.
While he was speaking, I doodled a character that was very different
from anything I had drawn up until then:
And Thanat was born! As you can see his design has not
evolved much since the first time I drew him (this was in 1999). And since Thanatos
and Eros completed each other so well, the logical thing to do was to create Thanat a boyfriend, Eros’s alter-ego: Meros. Yes,
okay, I know... Thanat and Meros have nothing
to do with Thanatos and Eros in the end, but
that’s where their names come from. I had a lot more difficulties with Meros’s design, I changed
his looks about a thousand times.
This is one of the early designs:
In the end, I decided to go with this:
At that time, I realized Meros
looked like Soujirou (Rurouni Kenshin) and Thanat, like Sydney Losstarot
(Vagrant Story), though it was not intentional. The other characters where designed on the go. Anouk, Joan
and Coloa where designed 5 minutes before I
actually started drawing comic pages, I thought “okay, if I’m gonna draw them over and over again, I guess it
wouldn’t hurt to have a plan...” lol I almost didn’t take the time to
design them ahead!
I decided of their names and personality at that
moment too. There was no visual
reference for Anouk and Coloa, they came straight
out of my mind. Joan, on the
other hand, was loosely inspired by Amber (Clueless). Rafae’s
design came later, only once I reached chapter 3.
Visually, I was loosely inspired by K (Gravitation). The way I named the characters of SM wasn’t
random at all ;) Thanat Ostrama : Thanatos (obviously), and
Ostrama is a weird half-duck half-llama (if I
remember correctly) creature invented by Juu. Meros Ani : Eros (Obviously), and Ani
was a very talented artist I was chatting with at that time... Not sure what happened to her. Rafae Drew : I
just happen to love the name “Raphaël”,
and Drew was a good friend of mine back in those days! Anouk Jamy : Arxann decided of the first name (Anouk),
and Jamy is derived from Arxann’s
real name. Joan Mitchel : Named after a famous “JM”, trouble maker in Arxann’s life back then. Coloa Bloud : Derived from the Colma
and Cloud, two very talented artists (sisters) I used to chat with back
then! Nokil Simard:
After my high school principal, Nicole Simard. I’m so creative… lol Jessa Ani:
Named after Jessi, someone I used to chat
with. Julia: Named after Juu’s real name. Kerin: Named after my host, Karin.
I can’t believe I hadn’t name a character after her
before! ^^; At the very beginning, Slanted Mind did not even
have its own website, I guess I must have hosted it on my personal website, I
don’t remember very clearly.
It’s only 2 years later, in 2001, that I opened Lucid Figment. I did not name the website after the
comic because at that time, I thought I’d maybe work on several BL
comics and post other BL art a lot, so I wanted to keep the website
“general”. Turns out
it was completely dedicated to Slanted Mind after all… THE FIRST COMIC PAGES… The first 5 comic pages where some sort of a
pilot. I had no idea where I was
going and if I ever was going to do anything serious with them. Just so you have an idea of how
unplanned this whole thing was…
When I started drawing the very first page, Thanat
was in fact a student! I wanted
to him to look classy and serious and scray, so I
drew him with a suit and a suitcase… But then he looked out of place, way
too serious. So I figured I might
as well make him a teacher instead!
And as soon as page 2, Thanat is introduced
as a new teacher. Neat, uh? That’s what happens when you
have no clue of what you’re doing!
XP At first, I wanted to make Slanted Mind a
fantasy-style comic. Back then, I
was really interested in telekinesis and that kind of stuff. Hence the first cover I drew for
Slanted Mind (and the title “Slanted Mind” itself, really):
Thanat was
supposed to be into black magic and Meros and Thanat were supposed to have a “connection”
(like, a telekinetic kinda connection)! The name of Thanat’s
cat – Crocro – was even inspired by the
Necronomicon! But then I changed my mind… After chapter 1, I figured that
I’d better not get into something too complicated for my first comic ever, I felt it was better to stick to something simple,
something I knew… X) And “something I knew” =
school & teachers. HAHAHA. After the first 5 pages, I started writing a
script. One chapter at a time: I
wrote chapter 1, then drew chapter 1.
I wrote chapter 2, then drew chapter 2. Etc. It was a step in the right direction,
but that meant I needed a plan, a story.
I adapted an old “daydream” of mine… A daydream that had been keeping me
busy with for several years. It
finally became useful. And
that’s how Rafae was born! Basically, Rafae
was not planned up until chapter 3 came along. His arrival into Slanted Mind was
completely random! Best random
thing that ever happened to Slanted Mind ♥ (in my opinion)! DRAWING THE COMIC… Drawing comic pages felt very fulfilling to me at
first! I spent whole weekends
locked away in my room, working like a maniac in order to get at least 5-7
comic pages done in order to update the website! Then I took a few days/weekends
off… To realize that I hadn’t
updated Slanted Mind in a while and the madness started all over again! I worked like this up to Chapter 10; then I suddenly
ran out of ideas for the script.
I was completely screwed.
I had no more ideas, and I suddenly realized that I needed a REAL
plan, a complete script that would tell me what to draw up until the very
end. I wanted to get to the end
of Slanted Mind, but with the way I was doing things (writing one chapter at
a time), it wasn’t gonna happen. I lacked vision and it bothered me a
lot. So I stopped drawing comic
pages altogether. I made a pledge
with myself: that I would not draw any more comic pages as long as I did not
have a complete script. By the time I got a script together, life had
happened… I went on a
student exchange in Europe, met the man who later became my husband, finished
my studies, found work, moved out of my parents and had a child. Still, I took some time to draw a few
more chapters here and there, but Slanted Mind had started to feel like a
burden, like something that was weighing me down. So I decided to quit. This was the hardest decision I had to
make in my whole life. It was
very emotional… It was so
hard… And basically, this is why I’m here today: I
could not quit after all! I
wanted to share the rest of Slanted Mind with everyone, even if I
wasn’t going to draw any more comic pages! I really hope you enjoyed the script
:) THE PLOT… The plot remained very simple in the end. But to tell the truth, I had not
planned to go into the matter of Thanat’s
cross at first. I’m one of
those people who just accept the things they see without asking questions
(when it comes to comics anyway).
In the comic, no one ever asks about the cross at first because I
simply did not have an answer! To
me, Thanat had a cross on his forehead and that was
it, almost as if he had been born with it. So I was a little taken aback when
readers started commenting about Thanat’s
cross and asking me all sorts of question, like “is it makeup or a
tattoo?” or “wth does he have a cross
on his forehead?”... The
plot was strongly influenced by these questions and comments. Since I had no clue myself, I had to think hard in
order to come up with something.
At first, I wanted do to something very different than what I have
done – Thanat getting his cross as a teenager
in order to scare bullies away, that is... Like I implied earlier, I have a taste
for paranormal, as well as drama.
The other scenario I had in mind went as follow: To make his cross the
distinctive feature of a sect. I
wanted Thanat’s mom, in an access of madness,
to have forced him into getting a cross tattooed on his forehead as a child
(5-7 years old) because she was in a sect. She could either have 1) wanted him to
be part of that sect too or 2) have her son marked as impure. I couldn’t make my mind. Either way, the plan was to have Thanat’s mom die, so the cross would have been the
only thing Thanat had left from his mother and he
would have categorically refused to get rid of it. The problem with this scenario was
that it was extremely complicated to render and it would have made the story
much longer and harder to conclude.
Oh, and as much as a like good drama, I’m not into angst and
emotional instability all that much, so... yeah XD Scenario rejected.
Goodie: Thanat as a child
with his cross on already, following the sect scenario! Once I’ve decided to make Thanat’s
cross a main part of the plot, I’ve debated a long time whether Thanat would want to keep his cross of have it
removed. To me, the only logical
conclusion was to have it removed, but Thanat
needed a kick-start... He had
been living with it for years after all, and if “getting big tough gothy
toxicoman guys interested in him and scaring
potential employers” (his own words) didn’t make him take
action... I didn’t know
what would. The idea of having
his cross scarred grew on me; who would want of a ruined tattoo? That’s how Zach came to life;
hitting Thanat in the face was his only purpose, lol! Apart from Thanat’s
cross, the break up with Rafae was problematic too,
I could not decide of the reaction he would have after Meros
announced him he wanted to break up.
At first, I wanted him to go like “oh, well, okay, whatever,
let’s have a threesome with your new boyfriend?”. That would have been the easy way
out. Funny, but predictable. Plus it didn’t give me much
material to work with when it came to the rest of the comic. So I decided to go with a different
reaction. Rafae
taking the breakup hard offered a lot more possibilities! In order to help Rafae go
through this hard time (ie: the breakup), I created
Jessa!
At first, Rafae and Jessa
were meant to become very good friends!
Jessa was supposed to be bisexual and maybe
even be interested in Rafae, in a controlling kind
of way, hence this drawing:
But once Jessa’s
personality took over, it was clear that they were not meant to be together
at all, lol.
Jessa being heterosexual didn’t help
(it seemed too weird to have two not heterosexual brothers in the same
family), of course, but this is not the only reason why they are not meant to
be together. Nevertheless, I
thought maybe Rafae could fall for Jessa and then Jessa would
decline his advances because, d’uh,
he’s not swinging that way.
But having Rafae fall for someone so soon
after the breakup was way too easy.
It was predictable and I didn’t like that. In the end, Rafae
cannot stand Jessa. Maybe he would be able to stand him if
he was his normal self (ie: not depressed and not
on the defensive all the time), but even then, I don’t think their
personalities work well together.
It just wasn’t meant to be!
Coming up with a whole story that makes sense and
feels whole and complete by itself is hard, a lot
harder than I thought it was. I
thought I had done an okay job, but now that I’m rereading the comic,
I’m finding a lot of holes...
At first glance, the story makes sense and it’s fine if you just
accept it the way it is, but when you start looking into it seriously, some
details don’t add up... Some of the stuff that doesn’t add up
doesn’t because I changed my mind without noticing. I changed my mind and I didn’t
make sure the new chapters were coherent with earlier chapters. This is why you shouldn’t start
drawing a comic before you know how it’s gonna
end!! Lol For instance, Nokil’s attitude. In chapter 5, she seems to hate Thanat even though they are related, while in chapter
13-14, she cares about him a lot.
Her attitude towards Thanat changed
completely. This is entirely my
fault! Since I hadn’t
written the whole script yet, I was looking for an idea to as why Thanat was so young and already a teacher. My first idea was to make Nokil the sister of Thanat’s
father. Thanat’s
father would have been a big shot in the school committee and have pulled
strings in order to have Thanat get a teacher job
in his sister’s establishment.
This is the reason for Nokil’s
reaction to Thanat’s criticism in chapter
5. But then, I don’t know
what happened (I think I might have realized this was a silly idea, for what
reason would Thanat want to be a teacher so bad
that he could not have waited until he had a teacher’s diploma?), but I
completely forgot about chapter 5 and I decided that Nokil
was in fact the sister of Thanat’s MOTHER,
and that she took care of Thanat when his mom died,
so she cares about him a lot in the end.
...I know, I know... wtf! I have no excuse, really. I should have been more consistent and
have stuck with my original idea.
Other holes in the story are just the kind of
details that any person with a tiny bit of a logical mind would ask
“why did this happen this way and not that way?” For instance: Thanat
getting attacked at his work place rather than at his apartment. It doesn’t really matter in the
end, but if Zach had really wanted to scare him, he should have gone to Thanat’s apartment and beat the crap out of him
there! Bonus points for Zach if Meros happened to be there and witness the whole
scene! Or even better, he could
have beaten up Meros instead, without even telling
him who he was or why he beat him up!
But this kind of hole is easy to fix... I can just pretend than Zach’s
intension wasn’t to scare Thanat, but rather
to humiliate him. So it makes
much more sense to beat the crap out if him in front of work colleagues who
didn’t even know he was homosexual! Nice catch, uh? ;D That’s my explanation for
that! LMAO I’ll let you come up with your own theories
for any other holes you might notice ;)
THE FINISHED PRODUCT… In the end, Slanted Mind has been in the works for
10 years (1999-2009). It
didn’t feel that long at all to me! The plot evolved from fantasy/paranormal to drama to
simple everyday-life style comedy...(?) Either way,
it really came a long way. I hadn’t realized how much work comic making
involved; it took me Ruya – June 21st, 2009. |
All works found on Lucid Figment is
(c) Ruya, unless stated otherwise.