Artist's Notes: Chapter 1

Chapter 1: The Samurai Girl
The original title for this chapter was "Keito of the 4-leaf Clovers." That would have required the back story to be in chapter 1, so I changed it to what Keito actually it, just some Samurai Girl. The file where I keep all of the work for this comic is actually called "Clover's Last Stand", that being the original title of the comic.

Page 1: When I started this I was inking the panel frames by hand. And the text balloons and boxes were on the computer. This page ended up very light. The wooden post was originally rock, but A.M. colored it as wood and it became wood. I gave her a colored pict I did as reference for Keito. Keito is, of course, based off me real life self. (Hint, if there's a quote on the character information page, that character is based on someone real.)

Page 2: Overhead is DAMN hard to draw. My drawing is wildly inconsistent, and the swords are badly off model. A.M. went nuts coloring in the rock wall. It has mortar in the cracks, which is historically inaccurate (most likely). In real life, mortar is lighter than the stone, oh well...

Page 3: The first panel on this page looks like shit. The colored version looks a bit better. I wasn't paying any attention to what the hell I was drawing. I didn't notice till now that in panel two the sky has been mistaken for trees and colored light green. The eyes are (in order from top to bottom) Moshiro, Tomi, and Kontetsu. A.M. did to color variations of the last panel and I liked the red. Like the BADUM wasn't dramatic enough.

Page 4: A.M. did a great job on this, but the only thing that annoys me is the way she handled the hair crossing over the eyes. That bamboo and rake disappear in later strips. This page is WAY off model for a number of reasons. I drew it before the other pages, it's a title page, it's colored with more details... etc. I hate that damn window.

Page 5: First page with text balloons, and first appearance of three major characters (besides their eyes). This was the first time I had drawn them, and it shows. Kontetsu looks horrible in his first panel. Sorry man. Keito's in a tool shed, if you couldn't tell. Kontetsu and Tomi are based on real people also, but shall remain anonymous. Keito's headband looses it's spots in that last panel.

Page 6: After the sick word balloons from the computer I gave up and started drew them by hand. I also switched to inking the panel lines on the computer. It works MUCH better. This is my first abuse of an online japanese dictionary. I use the one located here: http://www.trussel.com/f_nih.htm that actually references a different website's engine. Yes, Kontetsu is threatening Keito with her own sword. Tomi isn't wearing any hakama. A few bolded words make the comic look more dynamic. This is where I finally started getting use to drawing this.

Page 7: Kontetsu Hiiro... (Iron Soul, Flame Red). I didn't name him, the real Kontetsu did. I'm all crooked in that one panel. The rope looks awfully smooth in that one panel, and my headband is without it's spots again. That happens alot. I LOVE the way the panel layout converges. Happy accident.

Page 8: Shirotsumekusa Keito. Yes, it's supposed to be horribly difficult to say. I'm an obnoxious person and if my character used her REAL family name, she'd be executed for reasons not seen yet. (White clover, ten-thousand blessings (actually, in writing- spoken, it means "prisoner". Subtle pun.) In all truth, Keito is just my name in romaji... Kate. It worked on so many levels.) This whole page is drawn unbelievably well, for the time being. Why is Kontetsu "Kontetsu-san" in this and Hatsuyuki was just called "Lord Hatsuyuki"? Cause I'm inconsistent and can't decide on how many honorifics I want.

Page 9: This page has a random panel cut in it. I liked it. It also has awkward white space. This page just was a bitch to draw. Tomi came out cool though. They bolted Keito in and guarded the door, which becomes apparent later on.

Page 10: Damn architecture. I played with patterns to make it look wooded at night. Kontetsu looks good and yes, Keito is drooling. Yes, that is some shrouded figure crouched on the rock wall at night.

Page 11: This page was mental. 11 panels is never a good idea, but I didn't realize that till after I had drawn it. I could have got away with half. The shrouded figure catches Keito's cat like reflexes and wakes her up, she then sneaks out the window because, as we will see, the door is guarded. Yes, her butt gets stuck, cause I find that funny. Yes, I've climbed out windows before much is that manner and usually fall on top of myself. Don't ask. Keito keeps an aikushi knife in her obi, she wasn't searched very well or at all apparently.

Page 12: Mashiro should be snoring. Oh well. I love eye close-ups. I should take this opportunity to say something on the way Keito is dressed. She wears a kimono with hakama, not unusual. The puts a thick obi on over that, which is weird. Keito, unlike myself, gets away with wearing setta and tabi, which is perfectly acceptable in japan. In real life, I used to get yelled at by my RA in college for running around in socks and flip-flops in the dorm. Her hair is bizarre for a girl of that era, she is definitely commoner material. The headband is an anomaly. It's stiffened cloth. She ties back her sleeves before a fight, and she has arm guards laced on all the time. Her swords are tied on with string, because you can't really tuck those easily into an obi.

Page 13: Originally Kontetsu was supposed to stab the shinobi with a small knife. However, to show him drawing the knife and plunging it in that sort amount of time would've taken to many frames, so I made him just smash him with the butt of his sword hilt. The "HEY" was an afterthought, it was supposed to be a whistle in the original script, but that would have been even more of a vague reason for the shinobi to hesitate for the split second he does.

Page 14: If it's too difficult to ascertain what happened, the shinobi threw dirt into Kontetsu's eyes. Keito was the one who called HEY! the page before. The middle panel is what happens when I'm too lazy to try to draw a moving action scene. We get strange distorted shapes racing around. I was trying to show the speed of the shinobi. I really like the weirdness of it. Oddly, I hand wrote the sound effects in that panel. Keito looks weird in that second to last panel, why is she gaping like that? The shadow is vague, in the script it makes more sense as to WHO that shadow could be... like Lord Hatsuyuki.

Page 15: God, I love this page. I love it so much! I love coloring blood. I could have gone the black ink route, like manga does, but I decided to leave it so I could color it. Panel two has Keito speaking in fancy mode "In most manses this is the Lord's Chamber." It should have said 'Private' in there to, but oh well. That's fancy for "Hey, isn't this the boss's room?" The speaking on this page was a last minute change, the script had the scene silent, but the goings on where to vague. I need to explain why Tomi was there. He was essentially a body double for Lord Hatsuyuki, who, incidentally, is standing behind them with his hair down. He actually appears first in page 8, eavesdropping, if you were wondering who that was back then. I love Tomi's one out of place hair. Unlike most stories, my heroes kill without remorse. Oh, and on Keito's cloth she wipes the blade off on, it has a (pi) written on it. (Inside joke.)

Page 16: I was never really sure what Hatsuyuki was going to look like. I had drawn a few sketches, but he was one of the last characters I ever actually drew. Moshiro running in and yelling that isn't in the script. Neither is Hatsuyuki's command for him to carry the body. According to my part-time colorist, Hatsuyuki resembles Keito... that's a scary thought. Maybe the comic's starting to suffer from inuyasha syndrome, all the characters look alike.

Page 17: Drawing the damn estate sucks. I had one freaking' picture to go by, actually two or three but they all looked the same. They were line drawings. No buildings from that era exist anymore, and I've yet to find an anime that takes place in the time period in question. (The majority of the time it's the Warring States, or it's the freaking' Meiji revolution when it comes to samurai anime.) If anyone has any info on everyday life in the Kamakura era, send it to me. Kontetsu is now wearing street clothes. Sorry man, that armor just sucks to draw. It will reappear much later in the comic though. I had fun drawing that scroll, maybe someday I'll include a link to a higher quality image of it.

Page 18: Hatsuyuki looks different in this picture than the last time we saw him with his hair up. Maybe last time (Page 8?) he had a bad hair day. He's not in his PJ's anymore either. This page has a LARGE amount of text. This is the beginning of a three page war of words. Keito is no wilting flower, after all...

Page 19: Comparing the original script to this page makes me CRINGE, because I had too few word balloon to fit all I wanted to say. This verbal sparing was a bit more heated originally, and Keito said nearly as much to him as he did to her on the previous page. Including the line 'why his samurai are rude and paranoid', which I cut when I realized that most samurai would probably have been both rude and paranoid when dealing with Keito. Heh, on panel 3 I honestly didn't mean for Hatsuyuki to look like a samurai in a traditional japanese painting. (it's the expression on his face). The expressions on this page are all over the place, and I toyed with the idea of him raising a hand as if to slap Keito, and thought better of it.

Page 20: This page has a lot of text. I don't know what Hatsuyuki is thinking, but he clearly knows something about something. I know nothing about any kind of fighting, and Keito is probably BSing about her sword style. To me, it looks like she just ran the guy through although she did move pretty fast. Hatsuyuki is still insulting her, notice. Panel 3 is panel 1, because I screwed up Hatsuyuki's head. Thank god for cut and paste. There's a reason Hatsyuki is clutching his arm like that, which you won't find out for a long time. He also starts to do it on 19-5 too. In fact, I have foreshadowing everywhere which you'll never notice. I'm crazy like that.

Page 21: Almost there! Hatsuyuki is better looking than page 20 here. 21-5 looks like shit because it actually looked worse. I screwed up on the original and had to cut and paste a pict of Keito doing what I wanted from another page. Insect is another CLEVER foreshadowing thing that won't be revealed for a VERY long time. Hatsuyuki comes to a rather quick decision to call Keito just Keito-san. The suffix -kun didn't exist at the time the comic takes place in. Or so I've been informed during my shoddy background research.

Page 22: Ah, the full page spread. I was happy with the way the horses came out. (Well, the one horse you can actually SEE). I don't use any references when drawing, you see. I don't have the time. My friend Chrissy actually draws heads on stakes much better than I. As for the coloring, it was all me this time. (Time constraints.) I wanted a sunset, or sunrise... it's hard to tell exactly. It doesn't really matter much plot wise. You'll be seeing these two guys again. I wonder, are they friend or foe?