Hush Ronin

A tumblr dedicated to the forthcoming/coming/bygone comic, Hush Ronin, by J. Schiek.

[jschiek]

I’ve been exploring this scratchboard type design for the second half of Hush Ronin issue #1. Once the story shifts back from the antihero Ronin to the chief antagonist, a high strung samurai landowner named Roku, there’s an inversion of reality. Roku craves revenge for the deaths of his brothers and the loss of his right arm. So much so, he’s willing to suspend all disbelief and venture to a reputedly haunted space to invoke the powers necessary to get that revenge. It’s fun to write and even more fun to draw.

[hushronin]

Posted to the wrong blog. So it goes.

[hushronin]

I bought this TWSBI ECO about six weeks ago, and since day one, it has been my constant companion. As fountain pens go, it is an absolute joy to write with. It’s also very easy to fill, which was a concern for me in moving up from my cherished Pilot Metropolitan (still a go to, and a great pen in its own right) to a piston loader like this. The book is a Moleskine knockoff I got at WalMart for around $4. It’s held up well. In changing the art direction for Hush Ronin, it meant a simultaneous shift in the temperature and direction of the story. So the saccharin sweet version I’d poured into two full price Moleskines I have begun to rewrite here with the TWSBI. Without waxing poetic about my prose, I tend to write my comics as a straight narrative first as I believe there are places only a novel can take you. Once the story is out, I can begin visualizing it as a comic so it can be told in a way that only a comic can tell it. Yes, it means writing everything two, maybe even three times, but it ensures multiple drafts, edits and revisions, which can’t be a bad thing. Plus, I just love composing longhand with this lovely, lovely writing instrument.

[hushronin]

Just a quick spot illustration I made in @procreateapp on my iPad Pro. I had only just begun exploring this dry ink style, when it dawned on me that this needed to be the look I would adopt for Hush Ronin. I had already completed over half a dozen color pages, had even filled not one but TWO @moleskine-arts notebooks with the ongoing story of my nameless, shiftless, feckless—and, most importantly: Mouthless—ronin, and this would mean an about face, 180, total change of direction. Against my inner insecurities, I did it. I was able to complete over the eleven pages in this style in the same amount of time it had taken me to make three in the old. That was omen enough for me. I haven’t looked back since.

[hushronin]

Another page in progress. Panel 6: TFW you own a 17th century Japanese brothel and you’re pretty sure that new customer isn’t going to pay up in the AM. From Hush Ronin #1

[hushronin]

Page in progress. Issue one features an inversion from day into night with these negative space scratchboard type pieces.