Spec's Digital Comics

Welcome to my digital sketchbook — a space where I document my comic art journey throughout my MA in Digital Comics. From spontaneous doodles to story experiments, this blog tracks my creative process, progress, and all the amusing chaos that comes with bringing panels to life.

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Everyone's Hot: A study on Gokurakugai Character Design

I love cool looking stuff, Bleach is one of my extreme inspirations to get me into doing art, comics or animation in general. One of the many reasons I love Bleach is it's cool character design, the drip, I mean characters having actual wardrobes is something we don't often see in modern animated/comic mediums. Tite Kubo was my GOAT when it came to character design and character writing, I was heavily inspired from the characters and I thought there's nothing that will beat him in these aspects. But I was wrong... and I'm not exaggerating when I say there's another heavy hitter that may surpass bleach, which is being serialized now!

I introduce you GOKURAKUGAI. I can't stand the fact that this only releases one issue every month! I WANT MORE!!! MOREE!!!! This manga was what inspired me to create my own characters with a fun and funky vibe that also feels cool. I saw the cover of this Manga on instagram and I eventually started reading more.

The Concept/Narrative:

The premise hits right in that sweet spot of urban fantasy. The story throws us straight into Gokurakugai, a massive, lawless Chinatown-inspired district brimming with crime and hidden monsters called Maga. These beasts are born from the raw regrets and dark emotions of dead humans, lurking in the shadows and preying on the living. (Yes, similar to the curses in JJK)

To deal with them, we follow a pair of odd-job fixers operating out of the "Gokurakugai Troubleshooters" office. Alma, a wild, short-tempered kid who fights using a massive weapon forged from his own blood, and Tao, his cool-headed, ruthless business partner. They take on everyday neighbor disputes by day, and hunt down horrifying entities by night.

The Backdrops and Environment:

The visual geography of this world is an absolute masterclass in setting a mood. Yuto Sano doesn't just draw backgrounds, they build a living, breathing environment. Every frame of the Paradise District is packed with dense, claustrophobic detail. We're talking tangled telephone wires cutting through the sky, cracked concrete walls, overflowing dumpsters, and massive neon signs bleeding light into the rain. Because it's a monthly series, the ink work is astonishingly polished. The heavy use of pitch-black shadows gives the city this murky, tactile noir grit that makes you feel like you are walking through those damp alleys yourself.

THE DRIP!: Character Design Masterclass:

The character design and the sheer fashion execution. This is where the Bleach DNA shines brightest, but with a modern, hyper-refined upgrade. Sano treats this manga like a high-end streetwear lookbook. The characters aren't locked into a single, repetitive battle uniform; they have actual wardrobes, and every single fit is a certified banger.

Look at Tao. She is the ultimate blueprint of visual swagger. She rocks these sharply tailored suits paired with tinted circular sunglasses, intricate braided hair, and elegant high heels while casually chain-smoking. Her style screams absolute authority and effortless composition. Then you look at Alma, who perfectly balances her vibe by rocking oversized tactical streetwear, baggy cargo pants, and tech-wear accessories that fit right into modern trend culture.

One question I'd ask if I ever get to see Sano sensei will be WHY IS EVERYONE HOT! Sano Sensei?! WHY?

Sano Sensei pays obsessive attention to the flow of fabric, the cut of jackets, accessories like rings and earrings, and the anatomy of hands and facial expressions. The way characters carry themselves in their clothes tells you everything about their personality before they even open their mouths. It is the kind of design work that instantly makes an artist want to drop everything and sketch.

Even the monsters look incredible. They aren't just generic blobs of teeth and claws. Because they are born from human tragedy and desperate wishes, their designs reflect that emotional corruption. They look beautifully grotesque, blending body horror with a sharp, stylized edge that gives every single confrontation an underlying feeling of melancholic weight.

Conclusion

Gokurakugai is doing something incredibly rare right now. It takes the familiar soul of action comics and completely wraps it in unparalleled visual luxury and style. The wait for a new issue every month is absolute torture, but when a manga looks and feels this flawless, every single page is worth the wait.

NOW GO READ GOKURAKUGAI! It's available on VIZ Manga as well!

The world's most popular manga! Read free or become a member. Start your free trial today! | Gokurakugai - Professional troubleshooters will

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Making an Hyperdcomic Experience.

As I had planned earlier, I wanted this project to also function as a hypercomic.

I added small text instructions at the top and bottom of each page. These are to serve as a guide the experience for anyone who wants to engage with it a bit more clearly without getting confused.

Every two pages are tied together, so the instructions help connect them as a unit rather than treating every page separately. The text serves as a guides the reader on the where to find the next parts. This will help the reader to also explore the Museum.

Since the whole concept revolves around objects and their context within the museum, this layer of text also helps reinforce that idea. It adds a bit more intention to how the comic is read without taking away from the visuals.

I placed the "This is a hypercomic" in every odd page so that anyone who finds any page can make sense of it and find the previous or next part of the story. This sounded really fun in my head and I'd like to see it happen.

Overall, it helped bring the project closer to what I initially had in mind, combining a traditional format with a slightly more guided reading experience.

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The Last Two Pages.

Pages 5 and 6 are where everything starts to come together and settle into a conclusion.

After rebuilding the earlier pages, I had a clearer idea of how I wanted the final sequence to feel. The use of the environment was already established in the previous pages, so here it becomes more focused rather than chaotic. Instead of multiple objects being used, the attention shifts towards one main object.

The walking stick was always part of the plan. It starts off as something very normal, just another display item that doesn’t stand out much compared to everything else being thrown around. That was intentional, because I didn’t want it to feel important too early.During the fight, it becomes more active.

I treated it like an extendable staff, which made it more dynamic to use visually. It also gave a clearer structure to the action, especially compared to the randomness earlier.There’s a specific moment where it’s used to throw someone out of the window, and that acts as the final beat of the fight. It’s not overly dramatic, but it’s enough to signal that things are coming to an end.

The last panel then goes away from the action and presents the actual information about the object. This was important to bring it back to the museum context, connecting everything that happened.

So these pages are more about conclusion. The chaos slows down, the focus narrows, and the story closes by tying the action back to the object itself.

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The Return of the Museum Comics

Pages 3 and 4 took a bit more effort to get to, mainly because of the whole sync issue that happened earlier. I had already completed a big portion of these pages before everything got overwritten, so this phase was more about rebuilding what I had lost.

It wasn’t starting from zero, but it also wasn’t straightforward. I had to go back, rethink some of the panels, and try to match the flow I had before. In some cases, I ended up changing things slightly, which actually helped improve the pacing in a few areas.

Once I got past that, these pages became more about fully using the environment. The fight is no longer just between characters, it starts involving the space itself. I wanted the museum to feel active, not just something in the background. So instead of adding external weapons, everything used in the fight comes from the surroundings.

Page 3 focuses on the lower level where things get more chaotic. This is where the ancient helmet comes in. It’s one of the first clear moments where an object from the museum is used directly, and it helps establish the idea that anything around them can be used.

Then the action naturally moves into page 4, where the fight goes up the stairs. This shift in location helps stretch the scene a bit and gives it a sense of progression rather than everything happening in one space.

The parasol was another object I wanted to include. It adds a different kind of motion to the fight and keeps the visuals from feeling repetitive.

Overall, these pages are about building that connection between the characters and the environment, setting things up for the final sequence.

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The Open-Ending Climax

We’ve all gotten to the end of a story where everything gets wrapped up in a neat, perfect little bow. The characters have this massive epiphany, their deepest traumas completely evaporate into thin air, and they walk off into a flawless sunset. But that's not how actual reality works. Life doesn't pause, freeze-frame, and resolve its messy, complicated BS* on a dime just because you reached the climax.

That’s exactly why the final scene of this comic is intentionally left totally open-ended. When the panels finally fade out, It doesn't give out answers. You're left sitting with the actual uncertainty of what comes next. We don’t know if Miyu gets better just because she crossed paths with Ian. We don't know if she ever finds the strength to step onto a grand stage and perform again.

And on the other side, we don't know if Ian finally breaks out of his chaotic loop, starts working the way he always wanted to, and finds whatever creative fulfillment he was chasing.

We don't get those answers, and honestly, withholding them is the entire point. The unresolved ending is a direct metaphor for real life. It honors the fact that figuring out your creative path, discovering your voice, and healing from a massive, identity-shattering setback is a slow, non-linear process that doesn't happen overnight. It leaves the characters entirely in motion, still figuring it out, just like the rest of us.

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The intersection

When you're designing the layout for a graphic novel set in a real, breathing location like Kyoto, the environment quickly stops being a passive backdrop and becomes a character in its own right. A massive chunk of the visual strategy for this project relies heavily on establishing distinct common points across the city.

The interesting part about structuring these scenes is that the "near-miss" dynamic is almost entirely happening on Ian's side of the narrative split. Because he is the one who found the lost sheet music, he is the one actively moving through these urban spaces, hunting for clues, and trying to track down the person behind the notes. He’s the one experiencing the city as a map of potential encounters.

On the other side, Miyu isn’t searching for anyone at all. She is just moving around the city completely trapped inside her own headspace, trying to process her heavy emotional strain and the sudden loss of her instrument. By keeping her side of the movement completely untethered to the hunt, it makes the environment do a lot of the thematic heavy lifting. It perfectly captures that hyper-specific, bittersweet feeling of wandering through a dense, crowded city totally consumed by your own internal universe, while completely unaware of how close your path is to colliding with someone else's. This aspect was kind of inspired from the movie Past Lives, where two childhood friends reconnect after several years revisiting the places they went together at different times.

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POV: Ian

Ian’s story follows a young artist who is constantly creating but is never actually satisfied with his work. He draws inspiration from pretty much everything like indie films, games, and the internet and is always bouncing around between different creative ideas. But because he has so many hyperfixations, he struggles to pick a direction and constantly leaves his projects half-finished.

While people know him for his fan art and inspired pieces, he doesn't feel truly recognized for anything that is 100% his own. It’s incredibly frustrating for him because he just wants genuine appreciation without feeling like he constantly has to prove himself or beg for attention.

Everything changes one day when he randomly comes across a set of music sheets belonging to Miyu. Even though he doesn't know her, he instantly clues in that these sheets are deeply important. Because he genuinely values personal, meaningful creations, he makes it his mission to return them to whoever lost them.

As he holds onto the music sheets, he starts to really sit with the raw emotion and care baked into them. It completely shifts his perspective on making art. Instead of just mindlessly churning out pieces, he starts thinking heavily about meaning, intention, and emotional connection. Throughout the story, he repeatedly tries to return the sheets but keeps narrowly missing Miyu.

Each failed attempt forces him to keep moving forward while reflecting on his own messy creative process. In fact, seeing images of her while trying to track her down inspires him to finally create a proper, dedicated work in his sketchbook. He channels everything he’s learned and draws a portrait of Miyu, weaving music notes into the piece.

The major turning point hits when Ian accidentally loses that very sketchbook(the one containing Miyu's portrait). It’s a massive blow, as that book represents his goal to create the soulful artwork, It also represents his thoughts, and his hard work, mirroring exactly what the violin loss was for Miyu.

But despite losing his book, Ian’s mindset has completely evolved. He starts moving away from his chaotic, scattered workflow and begins channeling his energy into something focused and deeply meaningful, completely inspired by what he experienced through Miyu's music.

By the end of the story, Ian finally crosses paths with Miyu and they lock eyes for the first time.

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POV: Miyu

Miyu’s story starts back in her childhood, mostly just watching her mom, Miyako, play the violin. To Miyu, her mom looked completely alive and beautiful whenever she performed, and those early lessons became the absolute foundation of who Miyu is. But Miyako had this one massive dream to play on a grand stage called Symphonica that she never got to achieve because of her health. Before she passed away, she left Miyu her violin. From that day on, that instrument became Miyu's entire world, holding all of her mom's love and that unfulfilled dream.

As Miyu grows up, she completely takes on that burden as her own. She practices ruthlessly to make it to the Symphonica stage, not just for herself, but to finish what her mom started. The violin basically becomes her whole identity; it’s the only way she really knows how to connect with herself and her past. But as time goes on, the sheer pressure and toxic energy from her environment start choking her. She tries so hard to mask it and keep her head up, but everything completely shatters when her mom's violin is randomly destroyed.

That's the moment she completely loses it. For the first time, she drops the perfect act and frantically tries to piece the violin back together, but it's totally unfixable. With the instrument gone, she feels entirely erased like she lost her mom all over again, along with her purpose and who she even is. While she's desperately running out to find the violin with nothing but her sheet music in hand, she actually bumps into Ian for the first time.

After the loss, she falls into this incredibly numb, disconnected phase. She still has her sheet music, which represents all the memories and pieces of herself she created with love, but even those pages just feel cold and distant.

Her mood changes completely after when she randomly stumbles across a portrait of her on a sketchbook. It doesn't fix her, but it encourages her in someway. By the end of the story, Miyu and Ian finally lock eyes for the first time. The rest of the story is open ended.

Why open-ended? I'll explain it in a different post.

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The Narrative's Origin

This project isn’t just a random story I thought up for an academic assignment; it’s an incredibly personal piece of work.

I actually drafted the very first version of this about two years ago as a coping mechanism when I felt like my thoughts and emotions were constantly being dismissed or labeled as "not that deep."

In a very real way, Miyu and Ian represent two fractured sides of myself:

Miyu is my emotional side—the gatekeeper that suppresses everything, overthinks 24/7, and completely crumbles under pressure.

Ian is my creative side—completely restless, impulsively chasing the next hyperfixation, and utterly terrified of making mistakes or settling for mediocrity.

For a long time, I struggled to make these two halves coexist (I still do), and they were constantly fighting each other. Writing this comic was my way of telling myself that my emotional and creative sides have to get along if I ever want to move forward and build something genuinely meaningful. Since I’m still figuring that out in real life, that’s the exact reason why the comic ends on a completely open, unresolved note. We’re working through the character development in real-time.

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The Backgrounds...

I'm not a big fan of drawing backgrounds, I absolutely suck at perspective which leads me to the hate towards environments. But since this project demands a living, breathing version of Kyoto, skipping them wasn't an option. Surviving this process was only going to be possible if I brought someone in to save me from perspective hell.

Introducing my savior! an skillful artist who'd be helping me with the backgrounds, Japheth. He will be serving as the background concept artist for this project. Japheth will be assisting me and rescuing my layouts, fixing my messy vanishing points, and making sure the physical environments looks lookable...(Ik this is not a word but you get the point)

Having a dedicated concept artist for the backgrounds will change everything. Japheth is helping me establish the distinct visual identities for our main locations, making sure the campus vibes of Kyoto Seika University feel completely different from the Kyoto Concert Hall.

He’s going to be assisting me with drawing the actual backgrounds, checking my shading and lighting, and jumping in with perspective assist on some of the trickier panels.

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Music is not my Specialty...

I am definitely not a professional classical musician. So, when it came to making Miyu’s violin playing feel more authentic, I knew I needed to bring in some expert backup. That’s where my friends' friend Jerome comes in.

He’s the actual music expert on this project, helping me break down the technical side of things. Together, we’ll be analyzing actual classical violin pieces, like Kreisler’s Liebesleid (Love’s Sorrow) and Mozart’s Sonata KV331. We aren't just slapping random sheet music into the background; we are mapping out the literal emotional peaks and valleys of these specific compositions to match the exact narrative beats of Miyu’s arc.

Jerome is helping me figure out how the actual sheet music can bleed across the pages, acting as a visual connector that bridges Miyu's structured classical world straight into Ian’s chaotic sketchbook layouts.

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The Setting and Scenery

The story is set in Japan, which felt like the perfect backdrop from the very beginning. But choosing the exact city was a massive decision because the environment needed to act as a bridge for the characters. I ended up choosing a city that I’ve always absolutely adored, A place that is heavily rooted in art, music, and deep culture: Kyoto.

When you’re writing a super experimental comic with parallel narratives that constantly cut back and forth, things can get confusing fast. If the layouts are always shifting and the characters are totally trapped inside their own heads, you need something real to look at to keep track of what's happening. Because the intersections in the narratives are such an important aspect of the story, using real, specific locations makes it way easier for readers to connect both sides and find a proper link between them.

Instead of just drawing random city backgrounds, I mapped out actual spots to fit their individual worlds. For Ian’s side of the story, a lot of it revolves around Kyoto Seika University, matching his chaotic student artist life. For Miyu’s part, her narrative is tied to the Kyoto Concert Hall, which fits her classical background perfectly.

The coolest part is that they also share a few common viewpoints and everyday spots across the city. They are walking the same pavements, looking at the same views, and breathing the same air, even if their inner minds are completely worlds apart. Using these real landmarks forces their brief, near-miss intersections to feel totally natural, giving you a familiar reality to hold onto while their two lives slowly collide.

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Reference Study(6/6): Blue Period and Look Back

Blue Period by Tsubasa Yamaguchi and Look Back by Tatsuki Fujimoto were absolutely essential references for building the foundation of Ian's side of the story. When you are writing about a character who is completely consumed by creative anxiety, you have to look at how modern manga masters portray the grind, the obsession, and the crushing weight of self-doubt that comes with trying to make art.

In Look Back, the character of Fujino heavily influenced how I constructed Ian’s core mindset. Fujino has this intense, relentless drive to create, but it is constantly fueled by a deep-seated undercurrent of insecurity and the constant pressure of comparison. Fujimoto’s storytelling relies on incredible simplicity and letting the emotional weight carry through minimal dialogue, which really informed how I want to structure Ian’s silent, frantic sketching sequences. It’s about showing the physical exhaustion of sitting at a desk, fighting your own hands to get an idea out.

On the flip side, Blue Period was my ultimate guide for unpacking artistic identity and imposter syndrome. The series perfectly captures the technical and emotional struggle of feeling "not enough" despite putting in constant, exhausting effort. It explores that brutal internal conflict every artist faces: the pressure to create something deeply meaningful and original versus just making something technically good to get validation. Ian is stuck in that exact same vicious cycle. He wants absolute originality, but his anxiety paralyzes him because he views every finished piece as a potential mistake. Studying these two works helped me realize that Ian's fear shouldn't just be a plot point—it needs to dictate the chaotic pacing and restless energy of his entire chapter.

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Reference Study(5/6): Blue Giant as a Guide for Music in Comics

Trying to show a live musical performance in a static, completely silent, black-and-white comic is an absolute brain melt. You can't just draw some random music notes floating around the character and call it a day, that feels lazy and honestly looks a bit corny. To figure out how to turn actual sound waves into pure imagery, I spent some time analyzing Shinichi Ishizuka’s jazz manga, Blue Giant.

The way Ishizuka sensei illustrates music is astonishing. He captures the raw rhythm, intensity, and explosive emotion of a live performance without a single drop of audio. He uses jagged, aggressive panel shapes, heavy ink splatters, and lines that look like they’re vibrating right off the paper to make you hear the music with your eyes.

Studying his work completely changed how I’m approaching Miyu’s violin performances. I’m working on turning classical melodies into concrete visual motifs. Instead of just drawing her holding a bow, the panels themselves are going to break, warp, and flow to mirror the tempo of her music, transforming invisible sound into striking, high-contrast imagery.

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Reference Study(4/6): Your Lie in April

Your Lie in April by Naoshi Arakawa was one of the biggest inspirations toward this entire story when I first sat down to draft it about two years ago. It wasn't just a random reference; it was literally the main spark for the whole comic. I was completely captivated by the aspects of music and the deep emotional connection between the characters, which totally redefined how I wanted to approach my own storytelling.

What really stood out to me while re-studying Arakawa’s work during pre-production was the brilliant dynamic between Kaori and Kousei. You have Kaori, this vibrant but deeply fragile violinist, and Kousei, a lost prodigy trapped in his own head. The way their relationship develops isn't just through basic dialogue, it is entirely channeled through how they perform, how they interpret music, and how they challenge each other's worldviews. It showed me how an instrument can become a literal voice for characters who don't know how to express their feelings out loud.

My own fanart of Your Lie in April

The series is a masterclass in showing how trauma, personal values, and grief all connect back to music. Kousei’s inability to hear the sound of his own piano because of his past trauma is such a brilliant, heartbreaking visual metaphor, and it heavily informed how I mapped out Miyu’s arc. I drew massive parallels between his struggles and Miyu’s internal decline. For her, the violin isn't just a talent—it's an anchor to her late mother and her entire mode of self-understanding. When she plays, she is dealing with that same raw, heavy trauma of loss.

Revisiting this series helped me figure out how to visually tie music to memory on a much deeper level. It taught me how to capture that specific bittersweet, heartbreaking atmosphere where a character is pouring their hidden grief directly onto the stage. If I can channel even a fraction of that emotional weight into my own panel layouts, this comic is going to hit deep.

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Reference Study (3/6): Glancing through Oyasumi PunPun

While March Comes in Like a Lion was my blueprint for that quiet, externalized isolation, Inio Asano’s Oyasumi Punpun was what I used to figure out a raw, uncomfortable, total identity crisis. If you’ve read it, you know it’s a lot. Asano sensei's work is completely revolutionary because of how it uses surreal, abstract visual storytelling to project a character's fracturing mental state straight onto the page, completely throwing traditional formatting out the window when things get dark.

In Punpun, the psychological weight isn't just written into the text bubbles; it is literally hardcoded into the architecture of the manga itself. Asano sensei masterfully throws in these jarring panel layouts, oppressive blocks of pure black ink, and a haunting contrast between hyper-detailed, photorealistic backgrounds and weird, abstract character shapes. The environment itself literally looks like it’s closing in on the protagonist, creating this suffocating atmosphere that perfectly mirrors an identity completely unraveled.

Going through this heavy work again helped me unlock exactly how to handle Miyu’s severe emotional breakdown after her violin is destroyed. When her instrument breaks, her entire sense of self fractures right along with it. By studying Asano sensei's fearless visual metaphors, I’ve figured out how to let the artwork itself warp and distort. You’re going to see the clean, spacious lines of her early chapters give way to heavy black ink, bleeding borders, and jagged textures, letting the physical layouts project her internal chaos directly onto the reading experience.

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Reference Study (2/6): Reading March Comes in Like a Lion

When dealing with themes as heavy as emotional isolation and clinical sadness, it is incredibly easy to fall into melodramatic, loud, or corny types. To avoid this, during the visual pre-production phase of this project, I went back and closely analyzed key chapters of Chica Umino’s masterpiece, March Comes in Like a Lion.

Umino sensei's work is an absolute masterclass in portraying depression and quiet anxiety in a deeply nuanced, realistic manner. Instead of relying on explosive, dramatic breakdowns, she captures the heavy, stagnant stillness of isolation through subtle environmental storytelling, slow pacing, and deliberate empty space.

She uses visual metaphors—like the feeling of being submerged underwater or walking through a cold, silent fog to externalize a character's internal weight without needing a single word of dialogue.

Studying her approach heavily influenced how I plan to present Miyu’s initial emotional decline. Before her world completely shatters, her narrative needs to feel quiet and distant. I am utilizing Umino's pacing techniques to let the audience feel the empty space around Miyu. By controlling the rhythm of the panels and focusing on quiet, mundane moments like, the way light hits an empty room or the heavy pause before she picks up her bow, the comic ensures her sadness feels real and deeply human.